Meteorologists and Climate Scientists
As this article in the NY Times points out, meteorologists in general are both ignorant and doubtful of climate change science. (Doubting the conclusions of climate scientists usually requires ignorance of the science.) The NY Times itself harbors much ignorance about the topic, as the story shows.
Here’s a detailed refutation—too bad the Times couldn’t do better research.
One glaring problem. There is essentially no such thing as a “climate scientists” or a “climatologist” insofar as education is concerned. It’s a job not a true degree path.
The only Climatology degree programs I could ever find that predated 2001 were PhD programs in Geology with a couple of added courses such as Environmental Biophysics & Ecology; and Biometeorology.
Or… Look at NASA’s job requirements: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/cfs/generic/climatologist_143.pdf
jonolan
30 March 2010 at 11:51 am
Good point, though this lack of clearcut educational programs is typical of emerging sciences of all kinds: people get a PhD by doing original research, and gradually the body of original research (generally reported in peer-reviewed journals and also the topic of presentations at scientific conferences and in science-oriented professional forums via the Internet) coalesces as a body of knowledge that new climatologists must master in order to do their own research and get their own PhDs.
I came along, to take a mundane example, when programmers by and large learned programming on their own and at conferences and through training programs offered by computer vendors. University “computer science” departments were just getting started, and certainly in those days relatively few programmers got their training there.
Now, I think, enough specialized knowledge (about programming, data structures, and the like) is in place that formal education is a more typical path.
The Climate Progress post (though lengthy) does do a good job of distinguishing meteorologists (generally with just a bachelor’s degree, with perhaps a master’s in “communication”) from climate scientists (PhD and many peer-reviewed publications in the field).
BTW, did you view this video? Amazing. Note the timeline at the left—how the melting has accelerated.
LeisureGuy
30 March 2010 at 12:15 pm
Yeah, the melting, OH! the melting. 970-980 AD saw ice covered land turn verdant and some crazed Norsemen sailed where they could not sail a decade earlier and named the newly verdant place Greenland. Man had nothing to do with that warming nor the subsequent cooling a few centuries later. And if there is (doubtful) any significant warming now, only sheer arrogance would have us believe man is responsible.
Man made global warming is farce, witness all the lies perpetrated by these climate ‘experts’. These ‘experts’, self appointed and self anointed “climate scientists”, merely put whatever data suits them in a computer until they get the results they desire.
Don
30 March 2010 at 1:10 pm
Don, I want to be tactful, but you do not know what you’re talking about. In the future, I will delete your comments about global warming since they simply add to the noise and have no factual content. Do your rants elsewhere.
Thanks.
LeisureGuy
30 March 2010 at 1:37 pm