Television weathermen disagree with climatologists

Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the Earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns...

"There is a great deal of consternation among a lot of us over the readjustment of data that is going on and some of the portrayals that we are seeing..."  Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology. A study released recently by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was "caused mostly by human activities."

More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement "Global warming is a scam," the researchers found...

Yet, climate scientists use very different scientific methods from the meteorologists. Heidi Cullen, a climatologist who straddled the two worlds when she worked at the Weather Channel, noted that meteorologists used models that were intensely sensitive to small changes in the atmosphere but had little accuracy more than seven days out. As a result, Cullen said, meteorologists are often dubious about the predictions made by climate scientists, who use complex models to estimate the effects of climate trends decades in the future.