Climate change sceptics on your TV

The Guardian (blog) , Thursday, April 01, 2010
Correspondent :
A survey of America's television weather forecasters finds that one in four of them think 'global warming is a scam'

Would you trust this man on climate change?

Winning over hearts and minds in the fight against climate change has run into a cold front: America's television weather forecasters.

An academic survey of more than 500 US television meteorologists found that one in four of them say there is no global warming, and 27% agree with the statement "global warming is a scam".

Perhaps even more worrying for the climate change camp are the 63% of weather presenters who think global warming is caused mainly by natural environmental change. A mere 31% agree with the scientific consensus that human activity is the cause.

That's important, because TV weather forecasters have a daily direct line into American homes and are regarded as credible sources of information. "Our surveys of the public have shown that many Americans are looking to their local TV weathercaster for information about global warming," said Edward Maibach, director of the centre for climate change communication at George Mason University, which conducted the research along with the University of Texas at Austin. "The findings of this latest survey show that TV weathercasters play – or can play – an important role as informal climate change educators."

An earlier survey found that a majority of of Americans (56%) trusted weather forecasters on the issue of global warming more than they trusted figures such as Al Gore or Sarah Palin, or other media outlets.

The full survey can downloaded here [pdf]. Its findings include:

More than half of our respondent (54%) indicated that global warming is happening, 25% indicated it isn't, and 21% say they don't know yet. About one-third (31%) reported that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, while almost two-thirds (63%) reported it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment. Half indicated that they have thought "a lot" about global warming, and a large majority said they are fairly or very well informed about the causes of global warming (93%), the consequences of global warming (89%), and the ways to reduce global warming (86%) — numbers that are much higher than public responses to the same questions.

Over half of weathercasters indicated that humans could reduce global warming (58%), and that the US should reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do (63%). Almost half (47%) felt they needed some or a lot more information before forming a firm opinion about global warming, and almost one-third (30%) said they could easily change their mind about global warming. Just over one quarter (27%) agreed with the statement by a prominent TV weathercaster: "global warming is a scam."

The views on climate change show a clear split between TV meterologists and academic climatologists, which the New York Times suggests may be the result of resentment on the part of the weather presenters: "Climatologists are almost always affiliated with universities or research institutions where a doctoral degree is required. Most meteorologists, however, can get jobs as weather forecasters with a college degree."

 
SOURCE : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/mar/30/climate-change-scepticism-us-television
 


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