Who has the final say behind the forces of Mother Nature?
0 
VIEW OF A WEATHERCASTER
The Chief Meteorologist for WHNY TV in Huntsville, Alabama, Dan Satterfield, told Xinhua in an email on Wednesday that "if the weathercasters who disagree think they have made a mistake, they have an obligation to write it up and submit it to a journal."
Satterfield also said he found the results from the survey to be "unfortunately very representative."
"Frankly the results floored me," he added, noting that he also saw his role as a "formal" science educator for audiences.
"I think we have a responsibility to provide accurate information about science," Satterfield said.
He said that it was important to keep in mind the wide range of education among television weathercasters.
"Many have no undergraduate degree and little or no training in physics," Satterfield said as he also emphasized that it's "only part of the story."
"I know some really good forecasters who make a right turn into a brick wall when it comes to climate change," Satterfield said.
Controversy has surrounded the prickly subject when a 2007 global assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-backed climate body, faced criticism over a miscalculation in the rate of the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
In partnership with the scandal that has been nicknamed "climategate" from last November at the Climatic Research Unit at a British university, where over 1,000 emails along with thousands of documents were leaked over the Internet, a whirlwind of backlash against climatologists and public distrust seemingly grew.
"People who responded to our surveys (who said they) lost trust when any of this happens were not likely to trust sources (like the IPCC, for example) anyway," Maibach noted.
But what is also catching waves in the heated climate change debate and gathering storm in media channels is a so-called rift between meteorologists, particularly weathercasters on air, and climatologists, according to a recent New York Times article.
"The whole notion that there's a rift between meteorologists and climatologists, I don't necessarily believe that it's true," Maibach noted as he cited that climatologists are trusted by meteorologists.
Meanwhile, on the cultural front, an American news parody show, The Colbert Report, gave their spin of the "Science Catfight" which featured a run off of those two forces -- dubbing it " science rivalry."
The show featured the two sides -- a well-known meteorologist and a climatologist -- duking it out over the causes for global warming, including natural devices and human drivers in a humorous exchange of words.
But the question remains, who gets the final say in the often thin ice debate on the forces of Mother Nature?
Go to Forum >>0 Comments