The Weathermen's stance on the global warming debate

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jason's picture
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The Weathermen's stance on the global warming debate

I read a NY Times article today discussing the doubt that weather forecasters have about global warming, which I found quite interesting. So far I've focused this site on science and climatology, but never on what the weathermen think. Weathermen are basically meteorologists - a science which deals with more short-term variations in global temperature. The article basically states that meteorologists seem to think global warming is not a reality. I find it interesting that meteorologists would take this stance in the global warming debate, because we are today seeing quite a strong consensus towards the idea that global warming is happening within the climatologist community.

This fits in quite well with the idea that global warming is a long-term phenomenon, so really it's not so much of a surprise to me...

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1546964857@facebook's picture
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well Jason, for the

well Jason, for the arguement's sake let's say that they're right and global warming is not a reality, i would be the happiest of them all,....but what if they are NOT right?

jive's picture
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another point...

Something else which I could add to this, is that meteorologists are not at all qualified to comment on climate change, which is why the media coverage of this issue is kind of pointless. Meteorologists are effectively TV presenters, and if they don't say what a) reflects public opinion or b) is not controversial, they simply won't keep their job. The fact is that the US public don't believe in global warming, so why should the TV presenters put themselves out on a limb and support anthropological climate change theories that they don't really understand anyway? More on this here:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/ar...

jive's picture
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meh

Quote:
According to a recent George Mason University-led survey, the majority of TV meteorologists (about 63%) think global warming is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/04/tv_mets_shou...

Recent trends do show global cooling, so it's no surprise that those dealing with the weather on a daily basis would be seeing this.