NYT stumbles upon a well known scientific phenomenon;
A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.”
More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” the researchers found.
The split between climate scientists and meteorologists is gaining attention in political and academic circles because polls show that public skepticism about global warming is increasing, and weather forecasters — especially those on television — dominate communications channels to the public. A study released this year by researchers at Yale and George Mason found that 56 percent of Americans trusted weathercasters to tell them about global warming far more than they trusted other news media or public figures like former Vice President Al Gore or Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate.
[…]
Several well-known forecasters — including John Coleman in San Diego and Anthony Watts, a retired Chico, Calif., weatherman who now has a popular blog — have been vociferous in their critiques of global warming.
Why do they keep refering to these fraud artists as “climate scientists”? They are as close to scientists as I am to a snake.With the exception of Anthony,Steve,and a few others,they are all after one thing….follow the money!
The “problem” with climate scientists is that they tend to deal with abstracts and theories rather than figuring out how weather works as meteorologist do.
For example, any weatherman worth his salt will tell you that it is impossible for the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period to be regionalized based on weather patterns. Climate scientists look at proxies and do statisical analysis on them to coax out a hockey stick.
Perhaps it is simply that weathermen have no political agenda. The weather is the weather. “Scientists” on the other hand…..
You are about to hear the sounds of indoctrination:
“Three years ago, Dr. Cullen found herself in a dispute with meteorologists after she posted a note on the
Weather Channel’s Web site suggesting that meteorologists should
perhaps not receive certification from the meteorological society if they ‘can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change.’ ”
One major difference is that weather forecasters
and everybody who listens to them know whether
they have been right or wrong. With climate
predictions, the wait time is long – assuming the
climate people are honest. Usually they are not,
and are prepared to declare every hurricane evidence of global warming. One of the fishiest
parts of “climate” “change” “science” has been the
lack of public discussion on the time scales over
which the predictions are being made.
the new term is climatology , very much like scientology
On Jeopardy last night Trebeck made some snide remarks about deniers and stated that he felt that Climategate was just a few misguided people and that he believed that ‘global warming’ (not even ‘climate change’) was actually taking place. Looks like he joins the long list of unqualified entertainers who have drunk the Koolaid. Also, a game show is hardly the place to spout one’s political or religious beliefs,
Astonishing!!!
… … …
‘Climategate’ inquiry largely clears scientists
The Associated Press
LONDON — The first of several British investigations into the emails leaked from one of the world’s leading climate research centres has largely vindicated the scientists involved.
The House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they’d seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.
… … …
Read the rest at,
http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100330/uk_climategate_100330/20100330/?hub=MontrealHome
Well, personally, I don’t see how weathermen/women/persons keep their jobs they are wrong half the time. Of course, I do live in the deep south.
Meanwhile, in another section of the NYTimes —
// Having been a TV weather anchor in three major markets, I can say that TV weather announcers, even if they have meteorology degrees, are TV personalities, not meteorologists. They derive their reports from the National Weather Service forecasts and they try to minimize the damage from being wrong by identifying when a forecast is marginal, adding quibble words to protect themselves.
I’ve never met a TV weather person, meteorologist or not, who understood how science works. I’ve met a lot of quacks and hacks, though. My degree is in geophysics, and I talked my way into the “profession”, which is really a racket. I left because TV news is aimed at stupid people, a shill for anxiety based advertising. //
The Times is like the poet —
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
@Ratt, I assume you were kidding at least a little bit, but as a meteorologist I must still respond:
Our verification shows that we’re accurate to within 3°C about 95% of the time on a day-1 forecast and about 90% of the time on day-2. Our precipitation forecasts aren’t quite as stellar but are in the ballpark.
The part in the NYT article that I find most frustrating is the continued elitism of climatologists:
“Yet, climate scientists use very different scientific methods from the meteorologists. Heidi Cullen, a climatologist who straddled the two worlds when she worked at the Weather Channel, noted that meteorologists used models that were intensely sensitive to small changes in the atmosphere but had little accuracy more than seven days out. Dr. Cullen said meteorologists are often dubious about the work of climate scientists, who use complex models to estimate the effects of climate trends decades in the future.”
If the models the climatologists use do not include complex mathematical functions such as derivatives and integrals, then the models they’re using have no basis in the science, i.e. the equations (or at least the equations that we know of right now) that approximate how the atmosphere works, in both the short term and the long term.
Now if the models do use these complex mathematical functions, then after so many iterations of a timestep truncation errors come into play more and more, rendering the model useless anyhow.
So either way, climate models are useless as tools to forecast the future state of the climate.
Shouldn’t “climate science” have to establish a history of accuracy and credibility before they are granted our unwavering trust? References anyone?
cal2: Several years back (right after Al Gore’s envirothriller came out) I used the phrase “Church of Environtology” in a letter to the editor sent to my local rag. Surprisingly, it was published, as were a couple of subsequent responses. Unsurprisingly, the content of my detractors’ letters proved my points better than I ever could.
“former Vice President Al Gore”
While technically correct, this description willfully leaves out some possibly important details.
I’m watching a new documentary series on the Historty Channel. It’s called “Ancient Weather” and it highlights the fact that weather has been more extreme in the past and that these NATURAL cycles were instumental in Human and eco system development/evolution.
It makes clear the deadliest weather changes were cold spells which wiped out Neaderthals and nearly wiped out Cro-magnons. Warm spells brought the greatest human development, natural abundance and species diversity in history. Even extreme drought periods that made deserts out of a lot of the planet provided technological innovation in homo sapiens who learned to adapt to warm spells. ALL these weather extremes happened without aid from yuppies with SUVs or massive human populations.
Warming periods are natural and generally good for mankind is the premise of this anthropological climate study.
A great series that simplifies the truth and dispells the global warming hysteria. Sit the kids in front of it to deprogram the junk science they get at the state indoctrination centers.
I can’t stand it anymore.
I don’t understand why people mix together “climate change”, “global warming” (+/- anthropogenic), and “anthropogenic climate change”.
I would say the climate is always changing, depending on local/regional factors, and certain macrocycles including sunspots. (ie Maunder minimum etc). So, “climate change” exists, and has *always* existed, and anyone would be an *idiot* to deny it.
Global warming – the term should be dropped, because people use it synonomously with climate change to indicate anthropogenic global warming, and it has lost its meaning.
Surely, the *only* debate of any use is the contribution of “anthropogenic” to climate change (ACC). And then the discussion should then be, if ACC is x% of all climate change, what is the benefit of spending $y to acheive z effect. (I would expect that it would be prohibitively expensive to achieve minimal effect).
Simple. What am I missing?
Oh, and if people were serious about pre-emptively remediating Anthropogenic Climate Change based on current evidence, nuclear reactors would be sprouting up everywhere, because they actually make environmental sense.
But try to explain that to 80% of the population, it’s hopeless.
OK, there, I’m done, thanks . . . . . flame away at me.
Eric
With respect to your frustration with our politicians tasked with running our country, I’ll quote the Governator in the “Simpson’s Movie”: “I’m paid to lead, not to read.”
Erik, I agree with you. I am frustrated by the 20/20 and other surveys when they ask questions such as. “have you seen evidence of climate change.” We’re no in an ice-age so the climate must have changed. Yet the uniformitarians automatically assume climate change must be anthropogenic.
Thanks IH and WF. It should be so simple. We have regular cycles, spring, summer (one week in YYC), fall, winter etc, so why not larger macrocycles? It would be idiotic to assume the earth stays “as is” forever, especially when we have evidence is hasn’t in the past (glaciation etc).
Yet too much ink has been spilled, and idiotic comments aired about “climate change”. What do they mean? Spring? A snowstorm? Evil men from Blackwater, producing hurricanes?
It is all just too ridiculous. It is typical of our modern society, with BS people wasting everyone’s time talking about BS issues.
Why doesn’t something that is real, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, get some air time? I want to know more about this. How big is it? How bad is it? Who is studying it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
The ACC people can go fly a kite until they come up with a real impact analysis
The computer models designed to forecast the unknown future climate can’t backcast known climate history.
Says it all.
Erik Larsen
[…..I can’t stand it anymore.
I don’t understand why people mix together “climate change”, “global warming” (+/- anthropogenic), and “anthropogenic climate change”.]
Easy answer. The media/education agenda produced this. The Koolaid anology is apt….indoctrinated group think…
The very same process gave rise to The Third Reich and elected OBOZO.
The puppet masters have no intention of allowing your suggested debate and infact fight desperately to avoid it…..because they would lose…..and they do know AAC/AGW is BS….
Believers fit 2 categories—the liars and the useful idiots (unwitting dupes).
“The ACC people can go fly a kite until they come up with a real impact analysis”
This is what I’ve been saying, I’ve used a wrestling analogy describing the “bad guy begging for mercy” on other SDA threads. Now that the AGW advocates are “on the ropes” they cry for a “reasonable debate”.
As far as I’m concerned, the debate is over! And regarding the AGW advocates: “They are who we thought there were, and we let them off the hook”- Dennis Greene
Lets not “let them off the hook”.
Also, I find it interesting (in a creepy way) that in the end the AGW debate may have boiled down to a coin flip. Had the Warm-mongers picked “Global Cooling” for the header instead of “Global Warming”, it might have been much more difficult to debunk the fraudsters in the eyes of the public. Just a thought.
Notice how Kate doesn’t post this:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/climategate-scientists-vindicated-in-investigation/article1519115/
Maybe because it isn’t news. Left wing government panel clears left wing government science. About as farcical as Penn State absolving Mann.
batman-vindicated by a committee of Brit Labour politicians who just happen to have an interest in the continuation of the fraud of Glo-Bull Warming?
batboy
a whole 1, yes ONE day inquire, so’s they could put something out before the election??????
are you serious????
Fun how you all jump to poison the well on this issue (liberal media, bias panel, etc.) yet don’t really care about hard, scientific data when it comes to global warming.
You think the left and labour care have an interest in perpetuating global warming? Bullshit. Labour needs the auto workers union to thrive and the left wing would rather spend it’s time and tax dollars on social programs, helping the needy, education, health care, etc. than on trying to regulate industry.
Moreover, you will use a manufactured uncertainty about global warming to try to discredit environmental protection generally.
I was listening to a TV Weather guy who does top of the hour weather for a morning radio show here. The host was making the usual inane chatter, and was describing the composting process that she uses in her garden. The weather guy was clueless, had no idea what she was talking about. The guy is dumber than a bag of hammers.
Moreover, you will use a manufactured uncertainty about global warming to try to discredit environmental protection generally.
~batman
LOL
The default position is that global warming doesn’t exist.
No uncertainty has to be manufactured, understand?
The burden of proof that global warming exists at all is entirely on those who believe in it and they have completely failed to prove anything about it.
The temperature record doesn’t even exist, did you know that batman?
Wow, are you ever behind the knowledge curve.
What does the date November 20th 2009 and the word Climategate mean?
Meteorologists doing the job the media used to.
Calling the TV weathermen “forecasters” is like calling Peter Mansbridge and Lloyd Robertson “journalists”. They are merely news readers.
Crimatology
Oz: I say manufactured uncertainty because anti-science activists point to things like the so-called ‘climate-gate’ (which has been debunked http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/climategate-scientists-vindicated-in-investigation/article1519115/) to try to manufacture a false uncertainty about climate change. The scientific consensus it that man-made global warming is happening. Next you’re going to be arguing that the earth is 6,000 years old.
And if you’re talking about a high school debate or a court trial, yes, the default position is that the party asserting something is true has the burden of proof. In the real world, the default position is that until the research is done, we don’t know the truth one way or the other. The truth will exist whether or not we know about it.
Oh, and if you need proof of anti-science activists using nonsense arguments to create uncertainty about global warming, look no further than Kate posting the aggregate of OPINIONS of people who READ THE WEATHER ON THE LOCAL NEWS. It’s pathetic, anti-science hackery.
I wonder if they’re aware of what “50% chance of rain” actually means?
It means that 5 out of 10 forecasters have predicted rain.
Holy profound thinking there!, Batman!
“The truth will exist whether or not we know about it.”
The truth is the earth warmed 1000 years ago and we are still here!
Robin: thanks for demonstrating my point. Anti-science activists say things like ‘omg the world hass been heatinga dn cooling for years, lol’ to suggest that there is uncertainty about whether or not human activities are increasing the temperature of the world. They are and we do need to actually do something about it.
Get your ass back in the batcave.
Batfink:
About 1,000 years ago, the Vikings visited Greenland and parts of Newfoundland. Because of the abundance of grapes in Newfoundland, the Vikings called it “Vinland”. Today, there is no viniculture in Vinland, and there is precious little green in Greenland.
So my question to you is: has the Earth not warmed and cooled considerably over the millenia with scant regard to human activity, or do you think the Vikings named these lands out of some advanced sense of irony?
KevinB: Please see my post directly above yours. Replace ‘Robin’ with ‘KevinB’ and the same applies.
You’re argument is comparable to saying ‘evolution never happened because no monkey has popped out a human lately.’
The CTV affiliate in Toronto has a few dopey weathermen.
Anwar Knight will occasionally make comments about how we have to save the planet because of global warming.
So I sent him a few links to “impartial views” in an effort to enlighten him.
I’ve been getting spammed every since.
aknight@ctv.ca
Thank you Anwar.And thank you for your efforts to save us from global warming.
“KevinB: Please see my post directly above yours. Replace ‘Robin’ with ‘KevinB’ and the same applies.
You’re argument is comparable to saying ‘evolution never happened because no monkey has popped out a human lately.'”
~batman
Wrong!
KevinB’s argument is the equivalent of saying that the oldest Cro Magnon human fossil predates the earliest monkey fossil by 10 million years and therefore monkeys are not ancestors of man according to the known fossil record.
(not that KevinB is saying that, but it’s a better analogy if you want to make analogies instead of using known human climate history)
Either way, the Medieval Warm Period de-links the cause and effect of global warming theory and shows the theory has been debunked, which is why Michael Mann’s hockey stick sought to eliminate or minimize the MWP which was warmer than the global climate today without being able to say that there was anthropogenic activity which triggered the warming.
OZ:
“Wrong!”? My analogy was to explain that a small piece of ‘evidence,’ while on the face of it might be persuasive, isn’t persuasive at all when placed in a the greater scheme of scientific knowledge. I don’t know or care if your analogy is ‘better’ but maybe next time I won’t bother analogizing.
Global warming is pretty well supported. It’s certainly supported well enough to come to the conclusion that we ought to be doing something. I’m not a doomday eco-freak. I think reducing our carbon output and doing a lot of other things to preserve our own habitat is a wise move. This includes everything from reducing the amount of waste we dump in our own water supply and supporting alternative energy research. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable position. I’ll support my believes as best I can both as a consumer and at the ballot box.
Finally, I’m going after Kate’s ridiculous tactic of using the opinions of weather readers to go after global warming. Surly you agree that their opinions hold no more sway than any lay person and therefore are not notable enough to promulgate?
Oh, and I assume you were just making up an example for your analogy, but the oldest Cro Magnon fossil is about 35,000 years old (not more than 10 million years). We wouldn’t want anyone accidentally taking that as fact.