Masters on Climate vs. Weather

Christine Shearer (another one of those educated youngsters who happen to be female; doubtless this will elicit a virtual chuckle and condescending head-pat from you-know-who in the comments) has a really good interview with Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground: “Expect the Unprecedented”: Weather Underground Meteorologist Jeff Masters On Our Shifting Climate.

The whole interview is highly recommended, but here were a few of my favorite parts. On TV weathermen:

Christine Shearer: Despite these shifting parameters, many meteorologists do not consider climate change when offering their reports, even when it comes to events where it seems it would at least deserve a mention. Why do you think that is – is there something fundamentally different about how meteorologists and climatologists are trained?

Jeff Masters: TV meteorologists are not required to have training in climate change in order to get their AMS [American Meteorological Society] seal of approval, and most do not have any formal training in climate science. In a subject as complicated and politically charged as climate change, I would expect most of them would be reluctant to offer their views on the subject if they have little training.

And this, on what we should be most concerned about:

Jeff Masters: Stronger hurricanes, bigger floods, more intense heat waves, and sea level rise have been getting many of the headlines with regards to potential climate change impacts, but drought should be our main concern. Drought is capable of crashing a civilization. To illustrate, drought has been implicated in the demise of the Mayan civilization in Mexico, the Anasazis of the Southwest U.S., and the Akkadians of Syria in 2200 B.C. The Russian heat wave and drought of 2010 led to a spike in global food prices that helped cause unrest in Africa and the Middle East that led to the overthrow of several governments. It’s likely that global-warming intensified droughts will cause far more serious impacts in the coming decades, and drought is capable of crashing our global civilization in a worst-case scenario, particularly if we do nothing to slow down emissions of carbon dioxide.

Extreme weather years like 2010 and 2011 are very likely to increase in frequency, since there is a delay of several decades between when we put heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere and when the climate fully responds. This is because Earth’s oceans take so long to heat up when extra heat is added to the atmosphere (think about how long it takes it takes for a lake to heat up during summer.) Due to this lag, we are just now experiencing the full effect of CO2 emitted by the late 1980s; since CO2 has been increasing by 1 – 3% per year since then, there is a lot more climate change “in the pipeline” we cannot avoid.

We’ve set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action. A boulder rolling downhill can be deflected in its path more readily early in its course, before it gains too much momentum in its downward rush. For example, the International Energy Agency estimates that every dollar we invest in alternative energy before 2020 will save $4.30 later. There are many talented and dedicated people working very hard to deflect the downhill-rolling boulder of climate change–but they need a lot more help very soon.

12 Responses to “Masters on Climate vs. Weather”

  1. jbc Says:

    Again, your arguments are fallacies all the way down. I never said, nor implied, that being a meteorologist automatically makes someone wrong about climate change. A meteorologist (especially an actual scientist with a PhD, as opposed to the TV-weatherman-style meteorologists with BS degrees who figure prominently in many denialist PR campaigns) can be non-ridiculous in his or her views about climate, just like anyone else. All it requires (as with Masters) is that he or she be reasonably well-informed about the state of climate science, and not think (as Gray apparently does, or at least as you apparently do) that several-decades-old expertise in a related field like hurricane forecasting automatically confers authority to publicly push opinions that are rejected by the large majority of current researchers working in the area of climate science.

    This gets into the realm of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. It’s not impossible that the large majority of the world’s climate scientists are wrong in their shared belief that the climate is warming, it’s the result of human activity, and the consequences will be dire if we don’t act. It’s not impossible that the dissenters are wrong, despite the fact that when you plot dissent vs. expertise, it quickly emerges that nearly all the dissenters lack expertise, while nearly all those with expertise endorse the consensus view, and the likelihood of endorsement gets higher with expertise. It’s not impossible that almost all the experts are wrong, and the non-experts with their ideological agenda and their fossil-fuel-industry funding and their demonstrably silly right-wing media network are right. It’s just really, really unlikely.

    Someone making really, really unlikely claims on a scientific question should be willing to offer evidence — strong evidence — if they wish to be taken seriously. You’re unwilling (or unable) to offer such evidence. Therefore, you shouldn’t be taken seriously.

  2. enkidu Says:

    As with so many wwnj comments, I’m not sure how Mr Smith’s post elicits wwnj’s response. Similarly, how is asking Mr Grey to stick to the science instead of personal attacks trying to shut him up? Is it now considered legitimate ‘debate’ to just scream socialism! whenever you have nothing substantial to say?

    I sure hope you voted for Newt yesterday wwnj: MOONBASE!

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