Forecasting Denial: Why Are TV Weathercasters Ignoring Climate Change?

[vortmax]

It is quite unfortunate that your brother finds one of the great achievements of modern science untenable in his own estimation. Denial of scientific findings and the scientific consensus is not limited to climate science. People finding scientific revelations threatening their cherished belief system in some way will tend to reject the science out of hand, and fight to ensure the scientific view is held in contempt by as many as possible.

Ah, but according to him, on a microbiological level, there are some serious issues to the theory of evolution as it stands today, but you'll never hear that on the news or from many scientist. Just as tacoman25 said: "People become attached emotionally to ideas, and sometimes those ideas become sacred, whether they be in science or not. It's not like science is immune to this. And I'm not just talking about ideas relating to AGW." My brother noticed this behavior in his peers. Any new ideas, even when scientifically supported are sometimes shunned by the 'religious' scientific community at large.

You MUST understand that there is a very real thing called pride that starts to invade people when they become more knowledgeable. Once that starts to interfere, it's very difficult to stop. True science begins and ends with humility.

[WeatherRusty]

Ah, but according to him, on a microbiological level, there are some serious issues to the theory of evolution as it stands today, but you'll never hear that on the news or from many scientist. Just as tacoman25 said: "People become attached emotionally to ideas, and sometimes those ideas become sacred, whether they be in science or not. It's not like science is immune to this. And I'm not just talking about ideas relating to AGW." My brother noticed this behavior in his peers. Any new ideas, even when scientifically supported are sometimes shunned by the 'religious' scientific community at large.

You MUST understand that there is a very real thing called pride that starts to invade people when they become more knowledgeable. Once that starts to interfere, it's very difficult to stop. True science begins and ends with humility.

I don't doubt your sincerity, but if there were serious concern at the microbiological level it would be written up in a scientific journal somewhere. If it is not written up in a peer-reviewed journal, it is not "scientifically supported". You make it sound like a conspiracy to cover up the truth such as in the supposed UFO incident in Roswell, NM.

[blizzard1024]

I agree, but I though you we implying all of AGW to be etched in stone as a "settled science" from the perspective of it's adherents. Skeptical disagreement over AGW is empty absent concrete research and evidence which falsifies it.

How can you be skeptical of CAGW when that possibility can not be ruled out?

For everything including politics, (e.g. gun control which now will be front and center I bet) and other emotionally charged issues there always will be extreme views.

American is probably the most polarized politically that it ever has been IMO.

When dealing with climate science which is multidisciplinary, extremely complex and lots to still be understood, there are going to be extreme views.

There are those who I would even call deniers: those who don't believe the Earth has warmed in the past 100 years, those who don't believe doubling CO2 will cause

some warming effect. Then you have the other side: Those who believe the end of the world is coming and the world will warm 2-5+C over the next 50-100 years.

I call this catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Then there are those who I believe make up the majority who believe we are in for some

modest warming 1-2C/per century if CO2 doubles. This is anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I call this modest because the paleoclimate record is full of times when the Earth

warmed and cooled by more than this pace and people and animals survived. Extinctions are normal. Some animal species will go extinct no matter what. People

ARE presently hastening this from habitat loss and poaching which is bad and we all can agree is wrong(I hope).

If it was global cooling instead of warming I would be MUCH more worried about a drop of 1-2C! So I believe in AGW just not certain about CAGW. I take offense to people

calling people who believe in AGW "deniers", "skeptics" etc. I think there is a chance of CAGW. That is where I am uncertain and still looking to learn. I do worry

about this even if there is a 10-20% of it.

[WeatherRusty]

For everything including politics, (e.g. gun control which now will be front and center I bet) and other emotionally charged issues there always will be extreme views.

American is probably the most polarized politically that it ever has been IMO.

When dealing with climate science which is multidisciplinary, extremely complex and lots to still be understood, there are going to be extreme views.

There are those who I would even call deniers: those who don't believe the Earth has warmed in the past 100 years, those who don't believe doubling CO2 will cause

some warming effect. Then you have the other side: Those who believe the end of the world is coming and the world will warm 2-5+C over the next 50-100 years.

I call this catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Then there are those who I believe make up the majority who believe we are in for some

modest warming 1-2C/per century if CO2 doubles. This is anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I call this modest because the paleoclimate record is full of times when the Earth

warmed and cooled by more than this pace and people and animals survived. Extinctions are normal. Some animal species will go extinct no matter what. People

ARE presently hastening this from habitat loss and poaching which is bad and we all can agree is wrong(I hope).

If it was global cooling instead of warming I would be MUCH more worried about a drop of 1-2C! So I believe in AGW just not certain about CAGW. I take offense to people

calling people who believe in AGW "deniers", "skeptics" etc. I think there is a chance of CAGW. That is where I am uncertain and still looking to learn. I do worry

about this even if there is a 10-20% of it.

Thank you for the reasonable response. Now that we understand each other a bit better, hopefully calmer heads will lead to interesting discussions and an opportunity to learn from each other. When I say learn, I mean trust but verify.

I really do not believe we have amongst us here on this forum the type of CAGW proponents as you describe them, i.e. end of the world types. What we do have is a reasoned bunch who understand that as the warmer scenarios may not necessarily be in our future, as long as the world heads in that direction the costs will continue to rise, costs both economic and to a biological world tightly adapted to current climatic conditions. I agree that a cooling of 1 to 3C would be very disruptive as would a warming of the same magnitude.

For instance, growing zones would shift by hundreds of miles in either a warming or cooling scenario. Water availability would shift in or out of various regions. It may not be the end of the world, but it would be a very different world.

A warming of 2-4C would clearly position global temperature warmer than the Earth has experienced for at least 15 million years. A cooling of the same magnitude would plunge the world near half the way to a full ice age temperatures, probably couldn't happen for 10s of thousands of years as it would take that long to build the massive continental sized glaciers. It will happen someday however, but if we are not careful we will warm the Earth to temps not experienced for millions of years long before we have to worry about any cooling.

[blizzard1024]

Thank you for the reasonable response. Now that we understand each other a bit better, hopefully calmer heads will lead to interesting discussions and an opportunity to learn from each other. When I say learn, I mean trust but verify.

I really do not believe we have amongst us here on this forum the type of CAGW proponents as you describe them, i.e. end of the world types. What we do have is a reasoned bunch who understand that as the warmer scenarios may not necessarily be in our future, as long as the world heads in that direction the costs will continue to rise, costs both economic and to a biological world tightly adapted to current climatic conditions. I agree that a cooling of 1 to 3C would be very disruptive as would a warming of the same magnitude.

For instance, growing zones would shift by hundreds of miles in either a warming or cooling scenario. Water availability would shift in or out of various regions. It may not be the end of the world, but it would be a very different world.

A warming of 2-4C would clear position global temperature warmer than the Earth has experienced for at least 15 million years. A cooling of the same magnitude would plunge the world near half the way to a full ice age temperatures, probably couldn't happen for 10s of thousands of years as it would take that long to build the massive continental sized glaciers. It will happen someday however, and if we are not careful we will warm the Earth to temps not experienced for millions of years long before we have to worry about any cooling.

I tend to agree that over 2C warming would be bad....3C worse and probably an exponential disruption of society/life etc for each additional degree. But this is just an opinion.

[WeatherRusty]

I tend to agree that over 2C warming would be bad....3C worse and probably an exponential disruption of society/life etc for each additional degree. But this is just an opinion.

If I had to guess, I would suspect that even if the world were to eventually settle at say, +3 to 4C at radiative equilibrium, during the remainder of this century we wouldn't experience more than half that warming. Things would have to escalate very significantly for even that to happen. Even so sea levels will continue to rise, maybe by as much as half a meter this century alone. Glacial melt will continue to increase, water shortages and areas of drought will likely worsen.

We are on track to an uncertain future, the degree of eventual climate change and it's pace not all that well understood. What we do know for sure is that we are headed in one of two dangerous directions and we will have to adapt if we can. That adaptation if possible will come at enormous cost.

[LocoAko]

Great article on NPR this morning about this topic: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/19/171832641/forecasting-climate-with-a-chance-of-backlash