The Disconnect Between Weathermen and Climate Change

According to an article in Columbia Journalism Review there is a surprising disconnect between climate scientists and weathercasters/meteorologists on climate change. (Technically, weathercasters lack formal degrees and credentials.) The Weather Channel founder John Coleman has called it "the greatest scam in history." According to one survey:

Twenty-nine percent of the 121 meteorologists who replied agreed with Coleman—not that global warming was unproven, or unlikely, but that it was a scam. Just 24 percent of them believed that humans were responsible for most of the change in climate over the past half century—half were sure this wasn’t true, and another quarter were “neutral” on the issue.

The exact reason for this disconnect is unclear, but two issues seem to stand out: education and difference of perspective. Historically, weathercasters had little formal training in atmospheric sciences. This has improved over the last few decades, but there are still many with non-science backgrounds (e.g. journalism). Thus many of these visible ambassadors of science don't really have a strong background in science. This is a problem. Everybody knows a local or national weathercaster from TV. How many people know a single climate scientist? Or any other kind of scientist, for that matter?

And then there is the confusion between weather and climate. Weather is what we experience on short timescales and is difficult to predict. Climate refers to the big picture--trends over decades or longer. Confusion between these two is everywhere. Even meteorologists that appreciate the conceptual difference may still project the short-term uncertainties that they confront every day onto the models and methods of climate science, with which they are less familiar.

Of course politics or journalistic skepticism can play a role. And then there is this:

The biggest difference I noticed between the meteorologists who rejected climate science and those who didn’t was not how much they knew about the subject, but how much they knew about how much they knew—how clearly they recognized the limits of their own training.

The American Meteorological Society is working to better educate its members about climate science. It's the same as their philosophy back when few weathercasters had any real background in science:

If viewers are going to assume weathercasters are experts anyway, we might as well try to make them experts.

On a different but related note, I once saw one of the Salt Lake City weathermen field a question about Noah's flood and the Grand Canyon on the air. I don't remember what he said; I think it was a respectable response. To a layperson there's a superficial plausibility that the weatherman would have insight into that question, and the TV presence gives an added aura of authority. In reality...um, no.

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