Dick Goddard said the answer is that weather forecasters appreciate better the lack of reliable records.
“There’s only one constant, and that’s change,” he said. “We’ve only got accurate weather records back to 1874 and things have been changing back and forth since long before that.”
Bernier said local meteorologists “are just more practical” and not swayed by the opportunity for more grant money to do more research proving climate change.
As with most things, follow the money.
PS: just for reference, the article ends up with a balanced opinion form another meteorologist.
Teach said: As with most things, follow the money.
Or you could follow the evidence: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm
No, following the money works pretty well.
The article says climate records are only available back to 1874. Even this is a wild overstatement. Temperature monitoring stations have not been in place in most of the world for more than a few decades. During Communist times, the weather was regarded as a state secret. Disinformation was a way of life. All data from about one third of the world’s land area was suspect if available at all. Also, who has good records from Africa or South America for the first half of the twentieth century? The telling factor in the AGW debate is the refusal to state a margin of error in both models – which don’t predict the same results when run with more than one set of available historical data – and in the data itself, including ice cores and tree rings. I won’t even get into the lack of reliability of the monitoring stations that do exist. The only reason I can come up with as to why a margin of error isn’t stated – one always exists – is that any change predicted is well within that margin, casting doubt on its validity.
The whole idea of a steadily increasing temperature is counter to the historical pattern. Assuming that one factor – increasing percentage of CO2 – will drive a steady increase in temperature is nonsensical.
Meteorologists are not climatologists. Yes climate HAS changed and will continue to change. 300 million years ago Antarctica was tropical. Now it is not. Teach what people are worried about is what the climate change will produce as results in the near term 10 years to 100 years, within the lifetime of people now alive. What will happen to the world as we know know it ? Climate change is an accepted scientific fact. The planet is getting warmer at a or the fastest pace. This year to date has been the 9th warmest on record. Arctic ice the second smallest on record. See the pattern here ?
08-12-4 John Ryan stated:
“On 20 This year to date has been the 9th warmest on record. Arctic ice the second smallest on record. See the pattern here?”
Actually, it looks as if 2008 will go down as the coldest year of the decade and the warmest year was back in 1934. So, I do not see THE pattern.
Also, the Arctic Ice Cap is shrinking on Mars, which is a pattern. That leads me to lean toward natural climate change caused by the sun.
Think of the carbon footprint caused by World War II when you had thousands of airplanes plowing the skies with 4 gas burning, fume belching motors apiece, setting whole cities on fire, releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs during around the clock bombing….throw in the millions of tanks, trucks, jeeps, rifles, machine guns, cannon, flak guns, naval bombardments, mines, explosives, depth charges, smoke screens, fires and heaters for warmth in the snow, smoke from destroyed aircraft, trains, oil fields, forests, then throw in three or four nuclear bombs (Including the tests) and one would expect there to be some sort of spike.
Nope, nada.
So, if we couldn’t change the climate when we were really beating the crap out of Mother Gaia…why does anyone think that current human activity can move the temperature up?
This especially becomes critical when one finds out that, even if we could get a Kyoto Accord “Green” society, that the maximum estimated reduction in temp would be somewhere around .3 degrees.
So, humans acting as individuals have the power to change the climate by several degrees, but all humans working toward the same goal only have the power to budge the climate by three tenths of a degree.
Something is wrong with this model, besides its margin of error.