A Very Political Climate (Weather Channel climate expert responds to blog fervor)

The Weather Channel ^ | 01/19/2007 | Heidi Cullen

[cogitator]

I wrote a post recently that has generated some pretty strong reaction and I wanted to take a moment to stop the spin.

I am a scientist. And I'm a skeptic.

AND after more than a century of research -- based on healthy skepticism -- scientists have learned something very important about our planet. It's warming up -- glaciers are melting, sea level is rising and the weather is changing. The primary explanation for this warming is the carbon dioxide released from -- among other things -- the burning of fossil fuels.

With that knowledge comes responsibility.

Here at The Weather Channel, we have accepted that responsibility, and see it as our job to give YOU the facts on global warming.

Our position on global warming is supported by the scientific community ... including the American Meteorological Society. Their official statement says:

"There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."

I've read all your comments saying I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming. That is not true. The point of my post was never to stifle discussion. It was to raise it to a level that doesn't confuse science and politics. Freedom of scientific expression is essential.

Many of you have accused me and The Weather Channel of taking a political position on global warming. That is not our intention.

Our goal at The Weather Channel has always been to keep people out of harm's way. Whether it's a landfalling hurricane or global warming.

Consistent with this goal, on this site and on The Climate Code we aim to help our viewers better understand why scientists are so concerned about climate change -- and then to decide for themselves what they want to do about it.

The bottom line is ... this issue isn't going away.

That said, I would like to extend invitations to any of my colleagues in climatology or meteorology to join this discussion by posting a blog on this site or even coming on The Climate Code.

However, know that we here are focused on moving this discussion forward.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I was always self reliant since about 14 years of age and I traveled to communist countries in oil exploration engineering.

I had always thought a smart person with education and hard work being able to have a good life.

The people living under the slave state of Communism had very poor lives.

On my trip to the University of Brno, I waited until about 1 PM before I asked "When do you go to lunch?".

The reply was "We don't take a lunch break".

A high up in the College heard this and the next day, I was escorted to several class rooms at 12 noon where the people were eating fried chicken.

I was both self reliant and apolitical, this turned me against all forms of socialism.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

...glaciers are melting, ...

Actually most glaciers are growing. About 45% of the measured glaciers are shrinking.

[Tzimisce]

>I am a scientist. And I'm a skeptic.<

You're a skeptic? And you bite in to global warming?

>AND after more than a century of research -- based on healthy skepticism -- scientists have learned something very important about our planet. It's warming up -- glaciers are melting, sea level is rising and the weather is changing. The primary explanation for this warming is the carbon dioxide released from -- among other things -- the burning of fossil fuels.<

What are your sources on this?

>Here at The Weather Channel, we have accepted that responsibility, and see it as our job to give YOU the facts on global warming.<

Excellent. What are your sources on this?

>Our position on global warming is supported by the scientific community ... including the American Meteorological Society. Their official statement says:

"There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."<

Oh right, the consensus argument. You know, we don't need consensus on the idea that 1 plus 1 equals 2 - we can just prove it. So why do we need consensus on global warming when you just said we could prove it?

>I've read all your comments saying I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming. That is not true. The point of my post was never to stifle discussion. It was to raise it to a level that doesn't confuse science and politics. Freedom of scientific expression is essential.<

...you're advocating punishing people who don't hold to the myth of global warming. You want their creditials taken away and you want them not to get jobs in weather reporting. I'd call that silencing them - especially when you just got done saying that part of your job as a weather girl is informing people about global warming...

>Many of you have accused me and The Weather Channel of taking a political position on global warming. That is not our intention.<

But that's what you're doing.

>Our goal at The Weather Channel has always been to keep people out of harm's way. Whether it's a landfalling hurricane or global warming.<

And the harm caused from scaring people with myths?

>Consistent with this goal, on this site and on The Climate Code we aim to help our viewers better understand why scientists are so concerned about climate change -- and then to decide for themselves what they want to do about it.<

You just advocated silencing people who disagree. How is the general public to decide for themselves when they only hear one line?

>The bottom line is ... this issue isn't going away.<

Yeah - until you provide some hard evidence, you've got a serious problem.

>That said, I would like to extend invitations to any of my colleagues in climatology or meteorology to join this discussion by posting a blog on this site or even coming on The Climate Code.<

Why? So open minded, accepting, tolerant people like yourself can call them names and belittle them publically?

[Mr. Silverback]

Cavemen in Hummers.

[HoosierHawk]

lol

To say nothing of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

[Lancey Howard]

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up.

[westmichman]

ping for later

[Mr. Silverback]

My wife is a former USAF weather observor. She still chuckles whenever she hears the words "seven day forecast."

[Mr. Silverback]

Testament is another one I remember from the Eighties. A total load of lib crap, but I have to tell you it was very effective when the emergency broadcast system broke into Sesame Street to warn of a nuclear attack.

[DBrow]

Good point on consensus. Isaak Newton and his peers all agreed that space between the planets was empty, therefore the stones that fell from the sky from time to time were, by consensus of well-respected scientists, a phenomenon of the atmosphere; possibly due to the effect of lightning on aerosols.

There was a paper in Nature in 1924 that still referred to these stones as "thunderstones", even though Barringer Crater had been ID's as extraterrestrial in origin.

[etlib]

But of course! Scientists are completely unbiased, impartial people with absolutely no ideological agendas or axes to grind whatsoever. In fact, they are the only human beings in existence who see Absolute Truth. How dare anyone question them?

I have been skeptical of global warming claims since I read an article by a warming advocate "scientist" who plainly stated that any evidence against the earth warming was so clearly incorrect that it can and should be ignored. This is just plain bad science of the worst sort.

And then there was the article which addressed claims against global warming stating that there was no political agenda behind global warming.

[Mr. Silverback]

Everyone says they're a skeptic. No one ever says "I just take what they spoon feed me." She probably thinks she really is one, the poor dear.

[Robert A Cook PE]

I've read all your comments saying I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming. That is not true. The point of my post was never to stifle discussion. It was to raise it to a level that doesn't confuse science and politics. Freedom of scientific expression is essential.

Many of you have accused me and The Weather Channel of taking a political position on global warming. That is not our intention.



But it WAS her specific and deliberate intention to DECERTIFY ANY AMS member who DIDNT play the party line.

But, of course, not any intention to stifle discussion while de-certifying them.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

in the meantime, at the DU, they're buying into global warming, global climate change and other invented names

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3155677

[Mr. Silverback]

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm told that in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore shows a chart that is supposed to prove that CO2 caused global warming in the past*, but it also happens to prove that global warming is a natural cycle, because all of the CO2 + high temp periods are before the Industrial Revolution...indeed, most of them are before we had civilizations.

*It doesn't prove it, it only proves that at times of high temp we also have high CO2. The high temps could be causing the high CO2 by causing it to outgas from the increasingly warmer oceans.

[Finny]

Yeah! And what caused the Pamlico Terrace ridge that you can see from the road in Florida, which marks a shorline that existed about 125,000 years ago when sea levels were 25 feet higher than they are now and Florida was about one half its current size?

Ignorant people are gullible people, and gullible people fall for the man-caused-global-warming scenario because they are ignorant of basic earth science. It's disturbing how many people are surprised to learn that the polar ice caps have melted and refrozen many times in the earth's history, or that there is pretty strong evidence of mass global-wide extinctions happening many times, or that a look at ice core drillings that date 10,000 years or even 200,000 years represent a time span that is nothing -- less than the blink of an eye in the context of earth's past.

More folks should grab geology and paleontology books and read them for kicks just for a basic education -- and then do what I did, read Gore's "Earth in the Balance" and see how many BLATANLY false statements he makes in the book that you may not have known were false if you hadn't just read some of the latest books on paleontology and geology.

[Robert A Cook PE]

1920's?

One remarkable thing about Barringer Crater was that even through the mid-60's (until Apollo landed!) there was FIERCE opposition to the theory that the moon's craters were due to meteor impact.

Continental drift was opposed since it was first proposed seriously in the 1920's .... until the seabed surveys in the late 60's showed the undersea mountain ridges in the north pacific WERE more recent than the floor further from the rift zones.

[b4its2late]

If I can, I'll send her this link, well the actual link to the article on The American Thinker. I don't think she'll have an appreciation for FR:

Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock

[Mr. Silverback]

Great posts!

[Zionist Conspirator]

I want a scientist to tell me when LIFE begins. Then we can take this evidence to the legislature to prohibit abortion of children who reach that threshhold ("alive").

Sorry, but science can't determine that anything is right or wrong. Only G-d can. I suggest you forget about what scientists say and work for G-d's standards rather than man's to be adopted.