From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… what most people want to know is, is it going to be hot? …”

‘You don’t want to waste time on climate change’: TV weather’s big problem with the environmental crisis

Stuart Jeffries Sat 26 Oct 2024 01.00 AEDT

Lack of time, difficulties with scientific rigour, an uninterested public … television meteorologists open up about why they’re so quiet about the reasons for extreme conditions

…

Met Office forecaster and presenter Alex Burkill does not agree that climate denialism is rife among meteorologists. “I think the reason we don’t do it very often is twofold. One is timings. We don’t always have a huge amount of time to talk, particularly on TV. If there’s important weather to be discussing, you don’t really want to waste time talking about climate change. You’d much rather get the information the public need to make sure they stay safe.”

…

Andrew Charlton-Perez, professor of meteorology at Reading University, several of whose students have gone on to be weather forecasters, says it’s hard to strike the right balance. “It’s a bit of a Trojan horse. If you possibly can, you squeeze in some meteorology to explain something, but actually what most people want to know is, is it going to be hot?”

The second reason Burkill cites is more surprising. It is hard, he says, to demonstrate with scientific rigour that looming extreme weather definitely is caused by the climate crisis. “We’ve always had high temperatures, we’ve always had low temperatures, we’ve always had heavy rain, we’ve always had strong winds,” he says. “Obviously, a changing climate is making extreme high temperatures and rain more common and they’re likely to be down to climate change, but it’s hard to show that.”

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/25/tv-weather-climate-crisis

Of course, these responses refer to weather forecasters polluting their TV news weather segment with climate rhetoric. Anthony is a meteorologist, and his WUWT website is pretty popular.

Why is it OK to discuss climate change on a website like WUWT, but not OK to discuss climate change in the weather segment?

I believe the answer is, when people watch the weather forecast, they just want to know the weather.

People choose to visit websites like WUWT when they have the time and inclination to do so.

Visiting a website is voluntary.

Being force fed loads of climate propaganda while you are rushing to get the kids to school and trying to figure out if they need warm clothes is an abuse of people’s precious time.

In my opinion, greens pushing weather people to abuse their audience’s patience by cluttering weather forecasts with climate propaganda is a sign of desperation, a sign they are losing their audience.