Essay by Eric Worrall
“… what most people want to know is, is it going to be hot? …”
‘You don’t want to waste time on climate change’: TV weather’s big problem with the environmental crisis
Stuart Jeffries Sat 26 Oct 2024 01.00 AEDT
Lack of time, difficulties with scientific rigour, an uninterested public … television meteorologists open up about why they’re so quiet about the reasons for extreme conditions
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Met Office forecaster and presenter Alex Burkill does not agree that climate denialism is rife among meteorologists. “I think the reason we don’t do it very often is twofold. One is timings. We don’t always have a huge amount of time to talk, particularly on TV. If there’s important weather to be discussing, you don’t really want to waste time talking about climate change. You’d much rather get the information the public need to make sure they stay safe.”
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Andrew Charlton-Perez, professor of meteorology at Reading University, several of whose students have gone on to be weather forecasters, says it’s hard to strike the right balance. “It’s a bit of a Trojan horse. If you possibly can, you squeeze in some meteorology to explain something, but actually what most people want to know is, is it going to be hot?”
The second reason Burkill cites is more surprising. It is hard, he says, to demonstrate with scientific rigour that looming extreme weather definitely is caused by the climate crisis. “We’ve always had high temperatures, we’ve always had low temperatures, we’ve always had heavy rain, we’ve always had strong winds,” he says. “Obviously, a changing climate is making extreme high temperatures and rain more common and they’re likely to be down to climate change, but it’s hard to show that.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/25/tv-weather-climate-crisis
Of course, these responses refer to weather forecasters polluting their TV news weather segment with climate rhetoric. Anthony is a meteorologist, and his WUWT website is pretty popular.
Why is it OK to discuss climate change on a website like WUWT, but not OK to discuss climate change in the weather segment?
I believe the answer is, when people watch the weather forecast, they just want to know the weather.
People choose to visit websites like WUWT when they have the time and inclination to do so.
Visiting a website is voluntary.
Being force fed loads of climate propaganda while you are rushing to get the kids to school and trying to figure out if they need warm clothes is an abuse of people’s precious time.
In my opinion, greens pushing weather people to abuse their audience’s patience by cluttering weather forecasts with climate propaganda is a sign of desperation, a sign they are losing their audience.
It is hard, he says, to demonstrate with scientific rigour that looming extreme weather definitely is caused by the climate crisis.”
So in the absence of scientific rigour, we have a “crisis”.
“Obviously, a changing climate is making extreme high temperatures and rain more common and they’re likely to be down to climate change, but it’s hard to show that.”
Well which is it? Climate change IS making extremes more common, or climate change is LIKELY causing more common extremes?
And since climate change is the outcome of weather patterns changing, how can it be their cause?
And this stuff and nonsense from a Professor of Meteorology – an indication of the standard of Reading University.
It’s pretty easy, actually. Weather patterns, pressure zones, jet stream, polar vortex, tropical influence on atlantic weather are recognizable, traceable and self explanatory. Can be adjusted in real time. THE Climate is complex with a high level of uncertainty about underlying assumptions and span minimal 3 decades. You can also be a great meteorologist but mediocre in physics. The climate is based on a lot of hypotheses that mostly never quite make it to theory and renain highly speculative. It’s hard to separate noise from signal. This cannot be overcome and the nature of the system. Anyone looking at the climate system for more than 5 minutes will know what we are dealing with. This pretend certainty / settled science is laughable. I am able to explain this in 5 minutes to anyone with an open mind..
“You’ve gotta know the territory.”
— Harold Hill, The Music Man
“Obviously, a changing climate is making extreme high temperatures and rain more common and they’re likely to be down to climate change, but it’s hard to show that.”
It is hard to show because the observational data doesn’t support it.
There are always periods of years warmer and cooler, wetter and drier over all regions of the planet. High temperatures don’t cause more rainfall on there own as they require a clash of cool and warm air. If especially the cold air clashing is reduced the weather becomes less extreme.
The science suppports a warmer world becomes less extreme and a cooler one more extreme, but alarmists and activists with this agenda try and spin it the other way.