This piece of obvious research from George Mason University stems from the fact that almost every TV met takes in the entire newscast before going on the air, and if there was a Climategate related story, they’d see it. Combine that with editors, reporters, and the public making the TV met the “go to guy” (or gal) for the hows and whys of the story (I can see them asking: what’s paleo proxy records about?) and it adds up to maximum exposure.
‘Climategate’ Undermined Belief in Global Warming among Many TV Meteorologists, Study Shows
FAIRFAX, Va.—A new paper by George Mason University researchers shows that ‘Climategate’—the unauthorized release in late 2009 of stolen e-mails between climate scientists in the U.S. and United Kingdom—undermined belief in global warming and possibly also trust in climate scientists among TV meteorologists in the United States, at least temporarily.
In the largest and most representative survey of television weathercasters to date, George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication and Center for Social Science Research asked these meteorologists early in 2010, when news stories about the climate e-mails were breaking, several questions about their awareness of the issue, attention to the story and impact of the story on their beliefs about climate change. A large majority (82 percent) of the respondents indicated they had heard of Climategate, and nearly all followed the story at least “a little.”
Among the respondents who indicated that they had followed the story, 42 percent indicated the story made them somewhat or much more skeptical that global warming is occurring. These results stand in stark contrast to the findings of several independent investigations of the emails, conducted later, that concluded no scientific misconduct had occurred and nothing in the emails should cause doubts about the fact which show that global warming is occurring.
The results, which were published in the journal Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, also showed that the doubts were most pronounced among politically conservative weathercasters and those who either do not believe in global warming or do not yet know. The study showed that age was not a factor nor was professional credentials, but men—independent of political ideology and belief in global warming—were more likely than their female counterparts to say that Climategate made them doubt that global warming was happening.
“Our study shows that TV weathercasters – like most people – are motivated consumers of information in that their beliefs influence what information they choose to see, how they evaluate information, and the conclusions they draw from it,” says Ed Maibach, one of the researchers. “Although subsequent investigations showed that the climate scientists had done nothing wrong, the allegation of wrongdoing undermined many weathercasters’ confidence in the conclusions of climate science, at least temporarily.”
The poll of weathercasters was conducted as part of a larger study funded by the National Science Foundation on American television meteorologists. Maibach and others are now working with a team of TV meteorologists to test what audience members learn when weathercasters make efforts to educate their viewers about the relationship between the changing global climate and local weather conditions.
Ultimately, the team hopes to answer key research questions about how to help television meteorologists nationwide become an effective source of informal science education about climate change.
“Most members of the public consider television weather reporters to be a trusted source of information about global warming—only scientists are viewed as more trustworthy,” says Maibach. “Our research here is based on the premise that weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education for a broad cross section of Americans.”
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Media Contact: Tara Laskowski, tlaskows@gmu.edu 703-993-8815
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“Our research here is based on the premise that weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education for a broad cross section of Americans.” (funded by the National Science Foundation)
Talk about the last S T U P I D S T R A W to break the stupid Taxpaying Camel’s overloaded back! What are we doing sitting here like a bunch of stupid idiots? Day in and Day out, year after year, stupid study after stupid study, no change just more idiotic waste of a VERY perishable resource (MY Money, YOUR Money, EVERYBODIES Money). Fellow Tea Drinkers, Coffee Drinkers, SodiePop Drinkers, AND Water Drinkers, it’s time to STOP the insanity of BIG Gobberment and cut the Federal budget to something less than $1T and payoff the national debt down to 10% of GDP. WE ARE LETTING THESE IDIOTS RUN THE NUTHOUSE AND WE ARE THE CASH-COW INMATES.
PS: Everyone in this country knows what their weatherman thinks BUT they needed a BIG BIG BIG Psyentific Study?
“weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education”
As if they don’t already get enough flak when the weather doesn’t quite turn out as planned. Now, they’ll have to take the blame for the climate too!
I guess we will have to see who sends us a check in the mail … George Soros or the Koch Brothers … before we decide. High 6 digits would do it for me
“Our study shows that TV weathercasters – like most people – are motivated consumers of information in that their beliefs influence what information they choose to see, how they evaluate information, and the conclusions they draw from it,” says Ed Maibach, one of the researchers. “Although subsequent investigations showed that the climate scientists had done nothing wrong, the allegation of wrongdoing undermined many weathercasters’ confidence in the conclusions of climate science, at least temporarily.”
Talk about motivated consumers of information. In one paragraph they display the exact flaw that they would attribute to “politically conservative” TV meteorologists.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
“…Says Ed Maibach, one of the researchers. “Although subsequent investigations showed that the climate scientists had done nothing wrong, the allegation of wrongdoing undermined many weathercasters’ confidence in the conclusions of climate science, at least temporarily.”
Yeah, George Mason University. Let’s ask how much of this research funding comes from government grants. In fact, let’s (this includes parents who send their kids there) ask how much the university contributes to political campaigns and how much they must raise their tuition in order to fund these “contributions”. I was shocked when I found that most universities do this (and how much they contributed to Obama’s campaign), how much of their tuition increases comes from government backing of student loans. Oh, my, are students leaving your university with home mortgage-sized loans. Oh, my, that’s ok; we give them such a marvelous product for future earnings. (The Financial Aid Officer at my university argued and argued about how unreal and unethical it was to keep raising tuition while also raising the amount students’ could go into debt.)
There are many more questions like this to ask, but they might become moot because we (the US govt) are out of money. Not only that but we (the people) are finally asking the relevant questions — teaparty questions. The higher education bubble is about to burst. (How much do all those upper administrators make and how cushy are their retirement packages?) So you continue on, George Mason University, in your propagandistic ways, and you might be one of the first to “go under”.
stan at 5:54 am: “Not only were they stolen, but after they were stolen their release was unauthorized!”
With personal knowledge as to the extreme aversion that many academics and research scientists have for computer security policies and measures of any kind whatsoever, and the general sloppiness and whimsy with which they protect, archive, and propagate communal data of all kinds, I’d say the word “stolen” is a bit over the top. It’s also demonstrably unproven.
As for “unauthorized,” well that’s probably true, and the reprehensible content of those emails demonstrates exactly why it was unauthorized. Any organization that conspires to destroy FOI data and raw scientific collections (i.e., Phil Jones) will probably not “authorize” the unveiling of that intention.
Who cares what some doofus media anchorite (sic) or Weatherthing fusses and grumbles about in any circumstances? Any disinterested observer of the Green Gang –Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al.– is perfectly capable of scrutinizing UEA’s brutally revelatory inner-workings, unquestionably not hacked but well-and-truly leaked by a sophisticated whistleblower. The idea that, of all people, agenda-driven TV hype-sters have any persuasive heft is typical Climate Cultist asininity, doubtless because that’s who they are themselves.
A vision critical poll released today shows that only 14% of Canadians believe that Global Warming is unproven. In England its 18% and 25% of Americans are non-believers.
Doubt went up for a short while, but has fallen back to previous levels.
They were never found to have done nothing wrong. The CRU illegally thwarted FOIA requests. Over and Over. That is a real crime.
Serious question: What did you expect exposing the fraud and lies would do?
What kind of poll asks about the undermining of belief in global warming? It is a trick question. Of course there has been global warming. A poll with a trick question is not a poll – it is a propaganda lever that is used to distort the outcome of the poll.
The struggle has never been about belief in global warming. The globe warmed. That is unquestioned. It is all to do with the cause and and appropriate response to global warming. It is all about believability of the reports and projections of dodgy data. It is all about validating reconstructions. It is all about believing the models (which are all wrong, btw). It is all about trusting the people who are collecting, processing, and reporting this data. It is all about trying to understand if 0.7ºC/100 years is an anomaly or part of a natural cycle.
My personal feeling is if the tree ring data falls apart during the instrumented era why the hell would anyone with a degree choose to use it as a proxy in the pre-instrumented era? It cannot be justified. As a tax payer I am owed an apology and a refund for this shoddy work.
Finally, the Climategate emails and documents should have caused people to rethink what we’ve been told about AGW. It turns out many of the participants in spinning that tale are shady characters with an obvious agenda. The Climategate papers did not remove global warming – they removed faith in the people whose lives were exposed to scrutiny in those papers. They are creeps. I would have no problem at all defunding the likes of Schmidt, Hansen, Jones, Briffa el al. I would also set them loose to follow other careers. Were I king Trenberth would be decertified and his parchment reclaimed and delivered to the land fill. I would not defund climate research, but it seems we’ve never gotten climate research despite our fawning government’s largesse to these people.
Another useless bit of research which starts from the pre concieved viewpoint that sceptics are wrong and the warming cult are right. Why don’t they refer to the fact that all the enquiries into the climate email scandal were conducted by members of the cult who did not investigate detailed content of the emails? Without building this fact into their research the report is quite useless and therefore another attempt to try and manipulate the thinking of those who will believe only what they read. George Mason University does not impress me if this is the quality of their output.
I’m shocked! Shocked I tells ya! I had no idea that “the doubts were most pronounced among politically conservative weathercasters and those who either do not believe in global warming…”
There are educated people walking amongst us who DON’T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING!!! Obviously, these same TV “weathercasters” must not believe in the Little Ice Age either because for the LIA to have ended mustn’t there have to have been some measure of “Global Warming”? – /sarc
I’m sick and tired of being spoken down-to but people who are obviously my intellectual inferiors.
We must listen to our Betters: ” there is no goddess but Gaea and Algore is her profit…”
John McManus,
Only climate alarmists mistakenly believe that global warming is unproven. Scientific skeptics know that natural climate variability explains both warming and cooling.
Get with the program, and stop trying to obfuscate the issue.
“Our research here is based on the premise that weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education for a broad cross section of Americans.”
Just like CO2 controls the climate, pick a false premise and push an agenda. This is not science. This was labeled ‘re-grooving’ by the Firesign Theater, for those who were deemed ‘not groovy’, 40+ years ago. See ‘Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him’.
“… several independent investigations of the emails, conducted later, that concluded no scientific misconduct had occurred and nothing in the emails should cause doubts about the fact which show that global warming is occurring.”
Nice. The author obviously did well in his or her brainwashing 101 course.
Speaking of George Mason University, how’s that I’ll-drop-the-whole-thing-if-you-alter-the-Congressional-Record thing against Wegman going? From the sounds of this, I would certainly not like an employer like this defending me.
“Our study shows that TV weathercasters – like most people – are motivated consumers of information”
“Our research here is based on the premise that weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education for a broad cross section of Americans.”
=================================================
…and in the past 30 years, these motivated consumers of information were not given the opportunity and resources…….
How can a local TV meteorologist maintain his or her credibility with their viewers when they make unproven claims of the cause of the weather report and forecast.
Promoting climate change as a part of a weather forecast is like a writer giving personal opinion in a news story without informing the reader of the departure from news into an editorial. That is at least not professional and most not ethical.
Among the respondents who indicated that they had followed the story, 42 percent indicated the story made them somewhat or much more skeptical that global warming is occurring. These results stand in stark contrast to the findings of several independent investigations of the emails, conducted later, that concluded no scientific misconduct had occurred and nothing in the emails should cause doubts about the fact which show that global warming is occurring.
While this might be a fact, it glosses over that quality and real intent of these so called investigations.
IMHO The goal of this research was this:-
Ultimately, the team hopes to answer key research questions about how to help television meteorologists nationwide become an effective source of informal science education about climate change.
Did the MSM actually cover Climategate? I never saw it, nor did anybody I know. I actually learned about it from an M4GW You Tube video 3 weeks later (before I started reading this blog).
Garry says:
“As for “unauthorized,” well that’s probably true, and the reprehensible content of those emails demonstrates exactly why it was unauthorized. Any organization that conspires to destroy FOI data and raw scientific collections (i.e., Phil Jones) will probably not “authorize” the unveiling of that intention.”
I’ve often wondered about how unauthorized it was. I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories but this set of shenanigans always seemed a bit too scripted. CRU was faced with the prospect of having to respond to FOI requests (sooner or later). After compiling requested e-mails into a FOI file someone may have looked at all of the e-mails and realized that releasing them via FOI would be devastating to the scientific credibility of CRU et al. (even more so than “leaking” them as “unauthorized” or “stolen”).
So the weird idea I keep getting is that to get out of responding to the FOI, CRU took a sub-set of the files and “leaked” them. This allows the press to use words like “stolen” and “unauthorized” and allows all of the follow up reviews to use similar words to cast doubt on their provenance.
Additionally, I believe that responses to the FOI requests were never fully supplied because of the “leak”. I may be wrong about this part, if I am someone please correct me. If this is the case, there may be more e-mails and information that have not been released.
Yes, this survey was agenda driven. The George Mason University unit is funded to promote Global Warming according to the IPCC Chapter and Verse. The survey was clearly an effort to develop a seemingly unbiased relationship with the TV weathercasters to open the door to the future educational feature material that they are distributing.
TV stations in the United States for the most part did not cover “climategate”. The local news Producers regarded it as an unimportant, foriegn science related boring internet incident that did not interest their viewers. Instead they made sure to keep their viewers informed about the latest reports about drug crazied rockers and the pronouncements of smooth, well known local political figures.
As employees of the News Departments within their TV stations, the weathercasters are expected to remain unbiased but if they occassionally support the well institutionalized Algorian view of global warming it will be accepted by their Producers and News Managers. Any skeptical pronouncements would be grounds for an cautionary note from management.
However, in this day of cutbacks within news operations, if a well produced piece of Global Warming scare material packaged as a news report comes in, many Producers would use it to fill some air time.
As an old man who can retire at anytime and because of my appeal to viewers gives me some considerable standing in my my station, I am able to occassionally stray outside of the box. I got a couple of brief climategate news reports on the station where I work and I am able to present an occassional global warming skeptical report. And, I am able to stop or balance global warming scare pieces when they come along from CNN (We are an affilliate) or some other source. But, I am truly a major exception. Ninty-nine percent of TV weathercasters have to keep their opinions under wraps and say nothing and walk a totally noncommitted walk.
Because the owners of the TV station where I work are a local man and his family (one of only few such stations in the county) and the owners support my global warming skeptical position, I was able to do two skeptical hour long global warming specials. They are still available for viewing on line. No other TV weathercaster in the county has had such an opportunity. And, none will.
I have just finished producing a new thirty minute skeptical video presenation on global warming. As best I can tell, it will not be put on TV locally, but it will soon be posted on my webpage on the station’s website and hopefully linked and have some impact, but I don’t expect any other TV people to pick it up.
George Mason will have some impact in coming months; but nothing that will tip the scales. TV weathercasters will have little impact in the global warming debate; their world is too restricted. Lindsey Lohan will get far more coverage on local news that global warming pro or con. That is the sad state of TV news.
The smugness and arrogance of the all knowing AGW elitists never ceases to amaze me.