AMS Survey of Weathercasters on Climate Change

[Sunsettommy]

ABC Weather Blog

November 15, 2009, 11:36 pm | Bill Murray

EXCERPT:

A survey of weathercasters’ feelings on global warming was published in this month’s edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It had some interesting findings. There were 121 respondents. 94% of the respondents had at least one of the three major seals.

Television meteorologists are the official scientists for most television stations. The overwhelming majority felt comfortable in that role for their stations. The majority agreed that the role of discussing climate change did fall to them.

The eyebrow raising responses:

http://www.alabamawx.com/?p=24574
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No "consensus" at all here.

[JohnWho]

I wonder if this will get national attention in the main stream media?

[Mike Davis]

Only if the results were the reverse!

[Sunsettommy]

[quote author=Mike Davis link=topic=306.msg2225#msg2225 date=1258578768]
Only if the results were the reverse!
[/quote]

That is why the media is screwed up,they fail to be reasonably fair in reporting various viewpoints.

[HarpoSpoke]

Anyone read the source article?

The whole thing smacks of elitism. The whole tone of it is that those poor Meteorologists "need more education". This quote:

Quote: "Heidi Cullen, then The Weather Channel’s in-house climate expert, addressed that matter in a 21 December 2006 blog post when she said “If a TV meteorologist has the AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then they have a responsibility to truly educate themselves.”

is typical throughout the article.

Quote:This new survey builds on surprising research findings from a larger, random survey of 249 television forecasters (discussed in a 2002 Science Communication paper by Wilson), which found that meteorology/science degrees, seals of approval, years of experience, newscast position, and market size had no statistical impact on accurate climate-change knowledge. Ultimately, the only variable that did have such an impact was TV forecasters’ “attitudes and values” about the subject, and those often drive many weathercasters’ approach to the subject today.
The new, shorter, more targeted survey sheds more light on those attitudes while guiding the development of online instructional materials to educate weathercasters about the science of climate change.

Sounds familiar, if you disagree then the only possible reason for that is because you aren't aware of the facts.

Maybe the fact that Meteorologists don't have anything to gain from AGW hysteria like Climatologists do explains it better.

This quote stuck out for me too:

Quote:Since model-based prediction is a crucial component of climate science, three questions addressing their use followed (Table 4). Almost two-thirds of this sample disagreed that “global climate models are reliable in their projections for a warming of the planet” (Q. 20), with n = 3.65 indicating how strongly this group rejects this basic premise of general circulation models. Perhaps because this group works so closely with weather models, which are much more volatile and less reliable than longer-term climate models, they project that same unreliability onto one of the areas all climate models agree on: warming of the planet.

The first sentence gives away what is often denied...that most of AGW theory is based on models.

Notice how the author attempts to explain away any disagreement. Somehow because Meteorologists don't show the appropriate level of faith in models it must be because they work closely with models. They know first-hand how inaccurate model predictions are...the fact that climate models "agree" doesn't change the fact that they are all getting it wrong as well.

[Mike Davis]

Harpospoke:
Welcome to the site. That said you left out a word that I have often heard regarding climate models. The word is "Almost" Or "In General" They agree. See while not agreeing They can deceive by saying the agree almost when almost may be as much as 2 degrees apart. From the worst to the best the range may be 5 degrees but they agree in principle with each other. That is why you need to look at the average of the models for the best answer and the error bars for the entire range to see if they agree as the error bars would allow anything to be part of the answer.

[HarpoSpoke]

(11-24-2009 11:03 PM)Mike Davis Wrote:  Harpospoke:
Welcome to the site. That said you left out a word that I have often heard regarding climate models. The word is "Almost" Or "In General" They agree. See while not agreeing They can deceive by saying the agree almost when almost may be as much as 2 degrees apart. From the worst to the best the range may be 5 degrees but they agree in principle with each other. That is why you need to look at the average of the models for the best answer and the error bars for the entire range to see if they agree as the error bars would allow anything to be part of the answer.

Thanks for the welcome Mike.

Yes the "wording" is often the thing to watch. Newspapers use that trick all the time.