{"id":486710,"date":"2010-03-29T23:09:13","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T03:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22104"},"modified":"2010-03-29T23:09:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T03:09:13","slug":"in-yet-another-front-page-journalistic-lapse-the-ny-times-once-again-equates-non-scientists-%e2%80%94-bastardi-coleman-and-watts-%e2%80%94-with-climate-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/486710","title":{"rendered":"In yet another front-page journalistic lapse, the NY Times once again equates non-scientists \u2014 Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) \u2014 with climate scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memo to NY Times<\/em>:\u00a0 TV weathermen are not climate experts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In fact, Dr. Judith Curry<\/a>, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech explained to me a few years ago:<\/p>\n

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Meteorologists are not required to take a course in climate change, this is not part of the NOAA\/NWS [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\/National Weather Service] certification requirements, so university programs don\u2019t require the course (even if they offer it). So we have been educating generations of meteorologists who know nothing at all about climate change.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The reason I am repeating this basic fact for the umpteenth time — see “Are meteorologists climate experts?<\/a>” — is that the former paper of record has once again<\/strong> equated people who don’t know about climate science with people who do (see “NYT<\/em> Faces Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

In a new, uber-dreadful he-said, she-said piece, “Scientists and Weathercasters at Odds on Warming<\/a>,” the NYT<\/em>’s Leslie Kaufman gives a platform to some of the most uninformed, most widely debunked anti-science weathermen in the country, including Joe Bastardi and, yes, Anthony Watts!\u00a0 Does anybody read Boykoff any more on (see\u00a0 \u201cExaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change\u201d<\/a>)?<\/p>\n

Wow!\u00a0 I see that this is now a front page story for Tuesday and that the NYT<\/em> changed the headline in the last hour to the much worse, “Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming.”\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 May I suggest instead, “Some non-scientists who don’t know much about how humans are changing the climate spout nonsense on the subject”?<\/p>\n

Either way Andy Revkin’s\u00a0blog<\/a> hypes the whole damn piece:<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cMeteorologists are far more likely than climatologists to question the science of climate change,\u201d Leslie Kaufman reports in an article in The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One reason, the article suggests, is that climate scientists study long-term weather patterns and meteorologists make short-term forecasts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ya think?<\/p>\n

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There are also suggestions that some meteorologists resent the primacy of climatologists with Ph.D.\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So there are “suggestions” that meteorologists (i.e. non-experts on climate) resent the primacy of climatologists with Ph.D.’s (i.e. experts on climate).\u00a0 I can hardly wait for rumors that other people who don’t know what they’re talking about resent those people who do.<\/p>\n

And here’s how the blog post ends:<\/p>\n

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Whom do you trust when it comes to climate science?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n

But Revkin is just a blogger these days with a modest, self-selected audience.\u00a0 The NYT<\/em> still reaches millions on unsuspecting people expecting to be informed on the key issues of the day.\u00a0 And this is what passes for front-page journalism in the former paper of record:<\/p>\n

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Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Huh.\u00a0 People who don’t actually study the climate and aren’t actually scientists have less of a firm grasp of the overwhelming scientific evidence on human-caused climate change.\u00a0 Stop the presses, clear page one, get me Clark Kent and Lois Lane on rewrite!<\/p>\n

Note also that Kaufman uses the weakest possible attribution statement:<\/p>\n

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humans have contributed to climate change<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think you could find one climate scientist in a thousand who disagrees with that statement.\u00a0 I’m not sure you could find one scientist in a hundred who disagrees with that statement. \u00a0 Our scientific understanding today is that humans are the primary cause of warming in recent decades.\u00a0 One can simply assert that it is basic physics that “humans have contributed to climate change.”<\/p>\n

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Joe Bastardi, for example, a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling<\/strong>, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a great deal of consternation among a lot of us over the readjustment of data that is going on and some of the portrayals that we are seeing,\u201d Mr. Bastardi said in a video segment<\/a> posted recently on AccuWeather\u2019s Web site.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Joe Bastardi knows absolutely nothing about climate science and has been consistently spinning illogical and self-contradictory tripe on the subject.\u00a0 His beloved satellite data clearly shows we’re warming.\u00a0 And, in any case, it’s far from clear how much he really knows about meteorology, based on recent statements:<\/p>\n