My post last Sunday about the recent global weird weather has been echoed (in an obviously much more complete manner!) by
today's NY Times...wondering if the extremes of hot and cold, wet and dry, are evidence for (or against) Climate Change (the preferred name for what used to be called "Global Warming", as I understand it.)
On Thursday it was CBS-TV featuring
a big story on the same question. Earlier this year, CBS produced
a story that featured an Alabama meteorologist (Dan Satterfield of WHNT, Huntsville) who believes CC is happening, and a Huntsville scientist who says it is natural, not man-made.
TV Weather meteorologists play an important role in communicating to the public about the issue, according to
a survey by George Mason University earlier this year, yet they are divided about whether it exists, and if so, what the cause is:
More than half of our respondent (54%) indicated that global warming is happening, 25% indicated it isn’t, and 21% say they don’t know yet. About one-third (31%) reported that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, while almost two-thirds (63%) reported it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment.
Some of this is almost certainly politics. Some TV weather folks may be adopting one position or the other not because they are climate change experts, but because of' political leanings, or the prevailing politics of the market where they work. Years of work cultivating a positive, believable on-air image could be destroyed in a flash by taking a "wrong" position.
Al Gore's central roll in the issue may have turned it into a liberal/conservative flashpoint, instead of the critical scientific issue it should be.
I disagree with your statement that VP Gore politicized the issue. Gore was simply passionate about an issue, and his findings were attacked by those seeking political advantage. It's almost like demonizing fertilizer companies because plum gowers use their product, of which some fruit in turn becomes prunes, and then calling fertilizer salesmen purveyors and promulgators of poop.
ReplyDelete