Weathercasters’ lament . . .
Like a song that gets stuck in your head and won’t go away, sometimes I read a story that just bothers me relentlessly. That was the case when I saw a Cleveland Plain Dealer story early last month.
The PD story focused on the fact that a preponderance of television weather forecasters seem to think that concerns over global climate change are, at best, overblown, and at worst, a grand conspiracy by doomsayers. You can find the story here.
While the story actually focuses on Cleveland-area forecasters, the same disbelief seems to permeate among their peers around the country. And judging by the feedback the PD got from readers of the story – a printout of the web version of the story and the comments it elicited ran more than 40 pages – there’s a sizeable chunk of the public content to abide by the weathercasters’ disbelief.
Key to this quandary is the contradiction that comes with those TV gurus’ credentials. Many weathercasters, with their stations’ support, tout their accreditation by the American Meteorological Society as evidence of their scientific knowledge of the field.
But the AMS is soundly on record supporting the evidence that global climate is changing – mostly warming – and that human activity is largely to blame. That is the position taken by the United Nation’s 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as other august bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences.
It would be easy enough to just ignore this conflict and chalk it up to being another indication of the shallowness of television. But that would be dangerous.
A report at the end of last summer by the respected Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that 52 percent of those surveyed watched local television news regularly, and 48 percent saying that they watched weather news “very closely.” In fact, of the 18 “types of news” the Pew study asked about, weather was at the top of the list!
Too many people still believe that global climate change is a relatively balanced, intellectual tug-of-war among scientists whereas, in reality, the actual proportion of credible researchers who doubt the IPCC’s conclusions is minuscule.
Puzzled by this, I asked two colleagues for an explanation:
Bud Ward is one of the most respected environmental reporters around and was just named Climate Change Communicator of the Year by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communications. Ward edits the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media and also commented on the Plain Dealer story.
He pointed to the presence and influence of the forecasting giant Accuweather, a service out of State College, PA, as having some influence. He also suggested that in some cases, professional pride and jealousy can pit weathercasters against climate scientists, with the latter having strong academic credentials but the former enjoying popular appeal.
Bret Atkins, former reporter and weathercaster at WCMH-TV in Columbus, suggested that, “In TV, it doesn’t always take facts to make a story or an opinion.” He questioned how many – if any – TV weathercasters actually wrote a well-thought-out piece for a magazine on the topic – “something that has to undergo some review or scrutiny?”
“Until they take the time and risk of professional wrist-slapping from the academic or interested community by researching and writing something that appears in the arena for debate, they’re much like the opinion from a drunk on a barstool – pull his string and he talks.”
Harsh words but bearing some truth.
Personally, I fear the answer is much simpler: Understanding science can be hard, and climate science with its seemingly limitless variables is extremely difficult even for experts. The public likes things simpler, less complex.
It’s just easier to simply say that the experts are wrong and trust the smiling weatherman instead.__Earle Holland