I noticed for example that Texas had an EXTREMELY hot and dry summer last year (2009). But I didn’t hear a lot of media outlets reporting that this was associated with global warming. [And that was probably a good thing because climate and short-term weather aren't the same thing.] But now that Texas is having a colder than average winter, I hear people screaming, "Global warming can’t be true. See how cold it is?"
So why do you think the media (and many people who are unfamiliar with what climate change theories claim) are being so inconsistent about how they report "trends"? And why don’t they point out that weather EXTREMES are exactly what some climate change scientists had been predicting?
Is it just a matter of what people want to hear from ratings-conscious journalists?
Who is being inconsistent? How about the global warming alarmists? In 2007 the alarmists were (using your words) screaming about the lack of snow and cold weather being caused by "global warming". Now, the alarmists are screaming that the excessive snow and cold weather back east is caused by "global warming". Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.
Is it just a matter of what people want to hear from ratings-conscious journalists?
Yes, its exactly that.
It might also make a difference if they had the odd one journalist in a hundred with a scientific background.
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Who is being inconsistent? How about the global warming alarmists? In 2007 the alarmists were (using your words) screaming about the lack of snow and cold weather being caused by "global warming". Now, the alarmists are screaming that the excessive snow and cold weather back east is caused by "global warming". Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.
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Sometimes media articles attribute individual weather events (like heat waves) to global warming, but it’s relatively rare. The reason is that journalists aren’t climate scientists, and when they’re writing climate science articles, they usually interview climate scientists. And climate scientists don’t attribute individual weather events to global warming. Sometimes they’ll say "this is consistent with global warming" or "this type of extreme weather will happen more often due to global warming", but those are correct statements.
On the other hand, there’s no shortage of deniers willing to claim cold weather disproves global warming. While these are not climate scientists, the media is often willing to report on them. For example, global warming denier Senator James Inhofe’s family built an igloo and named it ‘Al Gore’s new home’. A story on this igloo quoted Inhofe as saying that the snow disproved global warming. Various other politicians said the same thing. So did some journalists, on Fox News for example.
The difference seems to be that deniers are willing to make false ignorant statements, and the media is willing to cover it, whereas climate scientists and most AGW realists are not willing to make false ignorant statements. No doubt the media coverage of the ignorant denier statements is an effort to get ratings through controversy.
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http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/Inhofe-Family-Igloo-Gores/2010/02/10/id/349514
Fortunately for journalists, people have very short attention spans, especially Americans (not bashing us, just pointing out the obvious). So one day you can point out that the hot, dry summer is just weather and isn’t indicative of global warming, and then a few months later you can point at a patch of snow and claim that the earth is cooling because frozen water is falling from the sky and that global warming must be a hoax. Not many will remember that it was on average 5 degrees F warmer for the entire summer, and has only been 3 degrees cooler on average for a couple weeks or that fall didn’t come at all.
Edit:
"It also predicts more warming higher in the atmosphere relative to low in the atmosphere."
What? Quit trying to confuse people. Or are *you* confused? Is this why the data doesn’t add up in your head? I really want to know…because I’ve NEVER heard that one.
Section 3:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
Or here, right at the top of the page…:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
_
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You ask some good questions. I believe people go to extremes, cooling vs warming, to emphasize the side they have painted their selves into. On the other hand, scientists are powerless to control idiots who misrepresent their work. I don’t agree with everything he says, but Bill Maher is right, Americans are stupid, and during my military service, I have been stupid enough to defend stupid.
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They are pathetically simpleminded and either cannot or will not consider statistical variability and the ambiguity inherent in all complex natural systems.
Look at the way the sling out the "cycle" explanation as if that implies a deterministic solution. Even the best known cycle, sunspots, is a complex of non-stationary harmonics.
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"Climate Scientists predicting extremes" is part of the problem. The theory of greenhouse warming predicts more warming in the higher latitudes relative to the lower latitudes. It also predicts more warming higher in the atmosphere relative to low in the atmosphere. Both would reduce storm formation and not increase it. It is only alarmists pretending to be scientific and distorting the science that predictably predict everything bad that could possibly happen and then blames that on global warming (climate change). You can find some alarmist predicting almost anything under the sun except perhaps the sun as the cause. When you can blame cold on warming, what is the point in even acknowledging their arguments anymore. We have already received 3/4 of the predicted radiative forcing from CO2 to what it will be if we double CO2. That is supposed to result in 5 degrees C warming. You would think that 15 years of no statistically significant warming would put a damper in that 5 C prediction but apparently not. Seriously cold winters in Europe and the most of the US apparently don’t either. Alarmists don’t follow logic. They calculate what will scare people into giving them attention. It isn’t irrational to recognize what is clearly the same thing as a used car salesman selling undercoating and talking about how salt will cut years off the life of a car. It is just typical alarmist anti-science nonsense.
"CNN warned yesterday “More Snow Is Coming South” Alarmists blame this on global warming. What would they say if it hit 100 degrees this week in February, like it did in 1996? What do readers think?"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/16/global-warming-in-texas/
If you look at the raw data on the various graphs in the link, there is no actual warming in at least much of Texas except for urban heat islands. That is very common in raw data that hasn’t manipulated by climate scientists. You seem to be under the assumption that Texas is getting hotter. Not in that data.
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This is a El Nino year.The wormier waters are making things wormier,It has nothing to do with Global Worming.
http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/
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