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3 March 2017
Weathercaster Survey Shows Increasing Acceptance of Climate Science
The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University is out with its latest survey of TV weathercasters and their views on climate change. For the most part, it’s good news, and I was one of the survey participants. Full disclosure: I’m doing a talk on science communication with one of the authors of the study (Ed Maibach) at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Broadcast Meteorology conference in June. Just …
6 February 2017
The Graph The Daily Mail Does Not Want You To See
The Daily Mail says that NOAA is manipulating the climate data! No, really? That’s certainly a first for them. NOT. Here is a graph they published as proof. Now, there is just one tiny problem, well actually, there are a bunch of them. The Hadley (UK) data is based on an average from 1961-1990 while the NOAA data they plotted is based on 1901-2000. The baseline choice does not make …
5 February 2017
Science, Government, and the Environment. Society of Environmental Journalists Seminar
The Society of Environmental Journalists held a mini-conference today (Saturday, 4 Feb. 2017), which I’d hoped to attend; Instead, I ended up watching the video replay (see video below.) Kudos to AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein. He was involved in organising the conference, and you can watch a lot of it below. Right off, let me say that you should not miss the talk by my friend Ed Maibach of George Mason University. …
1 February 2017
You Really Must Read this Book
I have a book you should read, but if you live in Miami, Northeast North Carolina, New Orleans, or own a home near salt water, you MUST read this book. If you live in Kansas and didn’t know your tax dollars are going to rebuild millionaires beach homes after they were destroyed on a retreating beach, you just might be interested too. Anyone who starts looking for a good science …
21 December 2016
Science Books Make Great Holiday Gifts – Especially These!
There are few gifts better than books, so here’s a list of great science books for ages 13 and up, along with a brand new entry that is rapidly becoming a best seller. First, is Carl Sagan’s 1997 classic The Demon Haunted World. I frequently quote from it, and every true science geek will tell you they love this book. If it were up to me, it would be required …
16 December 2016
Two Broadcast Meteorologists Working to Separate the Real from the Fake
I’m often asked questions about climate science from colleagues who work in TV (and other media), and even they have a tough time separating the political propaganda surrounding climate change from the facts. Now if college grads, who are trained to sift fact from fiction are getting confused, imagine how it is for the public at large! This is where broadcast meteorologists have really stepped up. For many people, we …
6 December 2016
Another Smoking Gun that the Earth’s Thermostat is Going Haywire
While those who do not live in the world of facts share fake news stories about the planet’s temperature dropping, the real data is far different. We will almost certainly set a new hottest year on record this year, breaking the previous record, last year, and the current second place holder, the year before that! Meteorologist Guy Walton keeps close track of the number of record highs versus record lows …
11 November 2016
Bright Moon Rising
The Moon does not orbit the Earth in a perfect circle, anymore than the Earth orbits the sun in one. That being the case, once every 29 days the Moon reaches its closest approach to Earth. IF that happens to be when the Moon is full, we get a very bright Moon. Astronomers have taken to calling it a “supermoon”. The closest approach every month also varies somewhat from year …
18 October 2016
U.S. Model Issues Reach Main-Stream Media
Meteorologists have been talking about the long-range model issues for several years now, and many viewers of local weather already know that their local forecaster depends on the European long-range model much of the time. The superior performance of the European ECMWF global model made news during Hurricane Sandy, and the public likely first heard about the issue then. Congress did, because due to public pressure (and embarrassment?) NOAA finally …
22 September 2016
This Photo Speaks Volumes and Gives Me Hope For A Better World
The state of science literacy in America is frankly abysmal. Yes, I could write paragraphs about the chemtrail folks; those who think the world is 6,000 years old, and the 6% of the population who are convinced that the Moon landing was a hoax. Then I could start with the climate scientists I know who get death threats. BUT THIS PHOTO GIVES ME HOPE. It’s a photo of …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.