FAUX weather, just as bad as FAUX news.

Just when you thought it was safe to watch the weather report on your LOCAL station, it becomes clear that the "foxifacation" of news even extends to the weather. Check out Kevin Lemanowicz's blog on MyFoxBoston. Now, as we all know, weather and climate are two very different things. When meteorologists start opining on climatology, hold on to your hats. Lets hit just a couple of the flaws in poor Kevin's argument. First, Kevin seems to be unsure if a. climate change is happening and b. if human activity is causing it. Well it's been fairly well established that a. the climate is changing in ways unprecedented during the current geological age and that b. human generated Green House Gases are the cause. Kevin would do well to visit our friends at Real Climate or peruse the IPCC 4th assessment report.

Kevin also seems in a tizzy about the "disrespect"sic of Dr. Bill Gray, a respected hurricane forecaster who seems not to mind being in over his head on climate change. Dr.Gray likes to snipe from the stands apparently and in my pinion, got exactly what he deserved. Dr.Gray is no longer content with hurricane forecasting and likes to dabble in global warming denial. Dr.Gray is free, as is any other scientists in the contrarian camp, to submit his ideas to peer reviewed journals. He, like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer, are free to submit their earth shattering research proving global warming to be a sham. The only problem is, they don't.

The arguments over climate change and hurricane activity are pretty heated and this seems to be one of the areas where there is genuine debate and disagreement. Does this debate have anything to do with the basic, factual premise that the earth is warming because of our GHG emissions? In a word, no.

As for arguments that climate models are inadequate, this article on realclimate.org seems to address that fallacy. The fact is,the more research we do, the clearer it becomes that climate models are pretty accurate.

Kevin Lemanowicz's real crime here isn't that he has an opinion, or even a poorly informed one. The problem is that he's a respected public figure with scientific credentials who is misleading the public. By providing only his opinion, and short video snippet from a conference without explaining the context or providing an evenhanded treatment of this complex subject, Mr Lemanowicz mislead the public and gave then a poorly written, 4th grade level commentary. At a minimum, Mr Lemanowicz should have provided a link to some objective, primary source material (as I have here).