Posted on 16 August 2016 by greenman3610

This is a re-post from Climate Denial Crock of the Week

In June, I flew to Austin TX, for a conference that brought together prominent regional television weathercasters and scientists, for a concentrated update on climate science and communication.

For years, it seems, there has been a disconnect between those who  are the most familiar and trusted sources of weather information, and the climate transformation that is affecting the stories they seek to report and interpret.   In a summer like this, more and more weathercasters are being beseiged with questions about climate, and how it is impacting the seemingly endless parade of extreme events that are hitting all around the country, and the world.

The TV Mets I interviewed were smart, thoughtful, had science training, though not at the PhD level, enough to have begun digging into the data on their own to draw conclucions. Some, like Amber Sullins of ABC 15 in Phoenix, had initially been skeptical, “10 or 20 years ago”, she told me. But after doing what a scientist does “..take in the information, question, and research it yourself” – she came to understand the problem was real. Likewise Greg Fishel of WRAL in Raleigh, formerly a self described “hard core skeptic”, who finally realized that he was only seeking “information to support what I already thought..” – and began searching independently for answers.

Dan Satterfield, of WBOC in Maryland spent his own money to travel to the high arctic, where he witnessed the change first hand, as did Fishel.

I followed up with Jason Samenow,  Washington Post meteorologist, who serendipitously was working on a piece on the same topic.

Importantly, all the Mets I interviewed spontaneously grasped the importance of communicating their sense of conscience, responsibility, and simple right and wrong – exactly the components of the story that help non-scientists make sense and meaning of it.