CNN Meteorologist: ‘Definitely Some Inaccuracies’ in Gore Film (Rob Marciano)

newsbusters ^ | October 4, 2007 | Paul Detrick

[My Favorite Headache]

Rob is a class act who will not have a contract with CNN in 2008.

[My Favorite Headache]

Official Transcript...looks like Roberts got his word in as well off camera:

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: A British judge may ban Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” from schools. He says it’s unfit for schools because it’s politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush. The case stems from a father who accused the government of brainwashing kids with propaganda by showing Gore’s film in the classroom. Schools may have to issue a warning before they show students the controversial movie about global warming.

ROBERTS: Finally, somebody ... CHETRY: So, you don’t agree.

ROB MARCIANO, AMS, METEOROLOGIST: There are definitely some inaccuracies. And you know, the Oscars, think about awards for fictional films as well. The biggest thing I have a problem with is his implication that Katrina was caused by global warming and there’s a number of studies that have been out and really the jury is still out — global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen. By the end of this century, we might get about 5% increase, but that’s by the end of the century. (INAUDIBLE) seen that yet.

CHETRY: And this year, in fact, we’ve had a relatively quiet hurricane season.

MARCIANO: It’s been relative. Well, we had 13 named storms but two or three of those storms have been, you know, kind of toss-away storms. They haven’t been that strong. This guy right here in the Gulf of Mexico, waters there are about average. So, we’re not really looking at too much as far as the long-term average is concerned.

Here it is. You see the circulation. Not a whole lot going on right there. Let’s move over to the Bahamas where this, this is a little bit more impressive circulation here. A larger cloud mass, we got high pressure at the upper levels of the atmosphere, which is important. You kind of see the swirl through there. And they may send a hurricane hunter aircraft into this system later on today.

All right, let’s move along and show you the next graphic, which I forgot what we have lined up. Oh yes, the showers that are rolling into Georgia and the Carolinas. These are not really getting to where we really need the action. Up here is where the drought is, most of the rain is staying across the southeast coastlines of Georgia.

CHETRY: Where is the lake you were at a couple days ago?

MARCIANO: Altoona. Right there, pretty much.

CHETRY: So, they’re not getting rain in this system?

MARCIANO: Not enough. Most of the heavy rain is going to stay in the south and east. We got a little bit up to where we need it, but Tennessee and Kentucky really seeing most of the drought conditions. Warm temperatures across the northeast, I don’t have to tell you that. It is soupy out there this morning. Temperatures in the upper 60s, had a fog in some areas and temperatures today can easily get into the lower 80s.

CHETRY: So, you go to the pumpkin patch with shorts and a tank top on, I guess — Rob.

MARCIANO: Global warming.

CHETRY: Thank you — John.

[RDTF]

My hero, LOL

[My Favorite Headache]

His credentials are sweet too..he knows what he is talking about.

Rob Marciano is a news and weather anchor for CNN Worldwide and is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta. He joined CNN in May 2003.

Marciano’s enterprise reporting contributed to the network’s comprehensive coverage of the 2005 hurricane season. His reports from field during Hurricane Katrina led to him covering most weather events since then. Marciano also serves as a correspondent for Anderson Cooper 360º.

Before joining CNN, Marciano served as chief meteorologist for KATU-TV and 750 KXL News Radio in Portland, Ore. From 1994 to 1997, he worked as morning and then chief meteorologist for KPLC-TV in Lake Charles, La. Marciano began his career as a weather anchor for WVIT Connecticut News 30 in West Hartford, Conn.

Marciano holds a bachelor’s degree in meteorology from Cornell University and has the American Meteorological Society’s Seal of Approval.

[cogitator]

ROB MARCIANO, AMS, METEOROLOGIST: There are definitely some inaccuracies.

The Web site RealClimate agrees that there are some inaccuracies in "An Inconvenient Truth":

Al Gore's Movie

Regarding Katrina:

"He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity. As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesn't highlight the connection any more than is appropriate..."

But more significantly:

"There are a few scientific errors that are important in the film. At one point Gore claims that you can see the aerosol concentrations in Antarctic ice cores change "in just two years", due to the U.S. Clean Air Act. You can't see dust and aerosols at all in Antarctic cores — not with the naked eye — and I'm skeptical you can definitively point to the influence of the Clean Air Act. I was left wondering whether Gore got this notion, and I hope he'll correct it in future versions of his slideshow. Another complaint is the juxtaposition of an image relating to CO2 emissions and an image illustrating invasive plant species. This is misleading; the problem of invasive species is predominantly due to land use change and importation, not to "global warming". Still, these are rather minor errors. It is true that the effect of reduced leaded gasoline use in the U.S. does clearly show up in Greenland ice cores; and it is also certainly true that climate change could exacerbate the problem of invasive species."

and perhaps most significantly:

"Several of my colleagues complained that a more significant error is Gore's use of the long ice core records of CO2 and temperature (from oxygen isotope measurements) in Antarctic ice cores to illustrate the correlation between the two. The complaint is that the correlation is somewhat misleading, because a number of other climate forcings besides CO2 contribute to the change in Antarctic temperature between glacial and interglacial climate."

So Marciano's point is somewhat minor, actually.

Mountain:

Molehill:

[WOSG]

Yes, Gore has made many mountains out many molehills.

the pro-Hansen-orthodoxy website can’t even defend Gore’s crackpot movies, but they do their best to minimize the errors.

Reversing the cause and effect wrt CO2 and post ice-age warming is a huge and hilarious blunder.

[Lancey Howard]

Wow. I presume by now that it's former CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano....

[Lancey Howard]

I see from your Free Republic homepage that you are a "Global Warming" alarmist and proud of it. That takes guts around here. But to clear up another "myth" about Free Republic posters (most, at least) there is little skepticism expressed here that the earth may indeed currently be in a natural "global warming" cycle.

It is the proposition that "man" has contributed to "global warming" in any significant way, or that "man" can prevent or otherwise effect "global warming" (with tractor-trailers full of US taxpayer money, natch) in any significant way.

In short, like "global cooling" and other alarmist scams of the past, freepers understand that it's all about the money.
It's always about the money.

Regards,
LH

P.S. I heard that several big-time D.C. law firms have hired SCORES of "global warming" litigators recently.
I wonder why?

[cogitator]

Reversing the cause and effect wrt CO2 and post ice-age warming is a huge and hilarious blunder.

I guess you haven't read point #5 in my profile.

[cogitator]

I see from your Free Republic homepage that you are a "Global Warming" alarmist

I am not an alarmist. I am proud that I understand the issue well. I'm an advocate of technological advance (including increased use of nuclear power) to address it.

there is little skepticism expressed here that the earth may indeed currently be in a natural "global warming" cycle.

However, we're not. The current warming trend is predominantly anthropogenic.

In short, like "global cooling" and other alarmist scams of the past, freepers understand that it's all about the money.

Addressing the problem will require money. NO doubt about that.

[WOSG]

The blunder was Gore's and has nothing to do with what is on your page. Gore's yammering about losing polar ice caps when the sea level rise has been miniscule, has not accelerated and antartica as a whoe has not had warming --- another error/blunder/lie/take-your-pick.

[NordP]

Thinking the same thing...

[cogitator]

Item I: Antarctic cooling, global warming?

is a far better treatment than the information provided by "Thank you for smoking" Steven Milloy.

Item II: Greenland Snow Melting Hit Record High In High Places, NASA Finds

Paleoclimatic Evidence for Future Ice-Sheet Instability and Rapid Sea-Level Rise

[WOSG]

Has antarctic warmed or not in the last 100 years?

If it has, Gore is spewing disinformation.

You keep running back to realclimate.org, the AGW alarmist home base. Sophistry abounds in their usual way, but they acknowledge the fact that up until now, the antarctic has not warmed as a whole. Yawn, we knew that, someone tell Al Gore.

Gore got his ice age stuff wrong too, a scientific study confirming that warming 19,000 years ago increased CO2 not the other way around:

http://physorg.com/news110121579.html

“You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages.”

Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown – but was not its main cause.
... The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.

“What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2,” Stott said.

But where did this energy come from” Evidence pointed southward.

Water’s salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin – and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.
...
“In addition, the authors’ model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, “

[Vanbasten]

I’m surprised this was even mentioned on CNN.

[seekthetruth]

I heard this first last Thursday 9/4 on the Schnitt (?) radio show, and posted the link on another thread. Was sure Rush would pick it up soon, but have not heard him talk about it yet. :)

[seekthetruth]

By the way, Schnitt said he was going to follow this story to check on if the CNN weatherman did not get fired.

[cogitator]

Gore got his ice age stuff wrong too, a scientific study confirming that warming 19,000 years ago increased CO2 not the other way around:

Addressed in this posting: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1899336/posts?page=177#177

You keep running back to realclimate.org, the AGW alarmist home base.

If I wanted alarmism, I'd go to the UCS. RealClimate has a recored of addressing skeptical positions with the perspective of actual climate science, and for that reason I utilize them.

A small cooling trend in parts of the Antarctic does not refute the basics of climate change driven by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. That is why I posted the link.

[WOSG]

I posted news of a scientific study. I don’t see how your FR posting ‘addresses’ it, you merely made some comments. The 1,000 lag between ocean warming and CO2 increase stands as a clear scientific result that settles the cause-and-effect link between the two.

Gore’s attempt to tie current CO2 AGW increases to these prior trends is laughably wrong, and skeptics are right on this - the science backs them up. And no, it doesnt refute AGW per se, that is not the point. It refutes Gore’s phony chart that imagines that CO2 is the main driver of climate (wrong!).

RealClimate has a recored of attacking skeptical science and positions, often in unjustified ways, and defending discredited work like the Mann et al. hockey stick, with the perspective of one-sided scientists who have the axe to grind of keeping AGW alarmism alive. Right now they are going after a peer-reviewed paper that dares to suggest the time-constant RealClimate was specifically set up with an agenda to defend AGW orthodoxy/alarmism. The #1 scientific proponent of AGW alarmism, James Hansen of NASA, who is the source for Gore’s confabulations, has many of his GISS underlings running the RealClimate show.

To use RealClimate to defend Gore’s errors, when Gore is a non-scientist who merely channels and hyperbolizes the errors that Hansen himself promotes, is an exercise in circular logic!

Now we know that there were many errors in Hansen’s ‘adjustments’ for US temperature readings, the Climate Audit guys have looked at global temperatures and found many anomolies...

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2077
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/17/nasa-s-hansen-playing-enron-accounting-games-climate-data

Most of the warming both in US and in global temperature records, is based on adjustments, not raw data. Are the adjustments right?
Before you decide to use NASA GISS researchers as the ‘unbaised’ view of science, first ask yourself if they are getting their facts and numbers right. then ask if they can validate and prove that.

They can’t, because alot of the adjustments in Hansen’s temperature reconstructions are questionable at best.
Thank God we have the Climate Audit guys around to at least attempt to keep these guys honest.

“A small cooling trend in parts of the Antarctic”

Wrong, its the average trend over all of the Antartic for 50 years... and “small” ... WELL, it’s greater than the US warming trend from 1930s to 2000s (which is admittedly miniscule).
So is ‘warming’ in US actually a small thing?
Funny, how come Gore neer admits that?

” does not refute the basics of climate change driven by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

YOU MISS THE POINT. This one data point is not a refutation of AGW as a whole, that wasn’t the point; its a refutation of Gore’s credibility, who’s made unfounded claims about antartica and other things besides.

Another phony claim by Gore is the huge sea level rise, when in fact (a) sea level rise has been tiny and (b) it is not accelerating and (c) most scientists do not at all predict the scenario Gore paints of the Greenland ice sheet melting away.

He exagerrates entirely the current situation, the scale of the issue, the impact of our use of CO2, and neglects the many many mitigating facts of real science that would tend towards understanding AGW for what it is: A much more moderate and non-catastrophic issue than the alarmists want us to believe.

[WOSG]

More GORE IS WRONG stuff:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1909408/posts