{"id":512518,"date":"2010-04-04T08:13:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T12:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22447"},"modified":"2010-04-04T08:13:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T12:13:18","slug":"best-headline-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/512518","title":{"rendered":"Best. Headline. Ever."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Headline1\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Okay, freelance business reporter Chris Morrison writing <\/a>on the popular website Bnet doesn’t have the reach of the NY Times<\/em>.\u00a0 But you have to like his headline compared to the NYT’s, “<\/span>Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming” (see <\/span>In yet another journalistic lapse, the NYT<\/em> once again equates non-scientists \u2014 Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) \u2014 with climate scientists<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

And his content and framing is vastly superior also:<\/p>\n

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

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… According to George Mason University\u2019s Center for Climate Change Communication, some 87 percent of weathercasters also talk publicly about climate change<\/a>.As you might gather from its name, the Center would be happy with that number if weathercasters also generally believed in climate change \u2014 specifically, anthropogenically-caused global warming. But for the most part, they don\u2019t. Another majority, 63 percent, told George Mason that global warming mostly stems from natural causes, while 27 percent called the entire theory of global warming a \u201cscam\u201d.<\/p>\n

The problem, for George Mason (and me; I should note here that I generally accept AGW) is that modern meteorologists combine two qualities: the first is that they\u2019re one of the most skeptical scientific groups toward climate change, following only oil and gas geologists; the second is that they\u2019re probably America\u2019s most visible scientists, by a long shot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, they are mostly sciency-sounding weathercasters, rather than actual scientists.\u00a0 Indeed, only about half of them even have a degree in meteorology.<\/p>\n

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So it\u2019s possible that weathercasters, with only four-year degrees and no grounding at all in climate studies (a field quite distinct from predicting local weather), are guiding the national dialogue on climate change.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s guiding their opinions? Here are a few possibilities:<\/p>\n