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TV Weather Casters
Tue Sep 30, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton with The Weather Notebook's weekly segment on Global Climate Change.
What does your television weatherperson know about our warming climate? Correspondent Bob
Henson looked at the question.
BH: When it comes to global warming, most TV weathercasters don't go near the subject. But
Kris Wilson did. He's a former weathercaster who now teaches journalism at the University of
Texas. Wilson recently surveyed over 200 weathercasters around the nation to find out what
they knew about climate change.
KW: Well, there's good news and bad news from the results. Good news such as, 93% of
weathercasters acknowledge that weather and climate are not synonymous, that they are very
different concepts. Most weathercasters thought that climate change is a serious
environmental issue. Most of them recognized carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, but then
when you get to the subtle nuances of understanding that, as the world warms up, the world
will be cloudier and the world will be wetter, the numbers dropped off very
dramatically.
BH: Wilson found that those who knew more about climate change tended to be more concerned
about it. That doesn't necessarily mean they can put their concerns on the air.
KW: One of the sources for this research said that they had a memo, internal, and it said the
term 'global warming' was not to be used onany of their local news or weather
broadcasts.
BH: Wilson sees weathercasters as a main link between science and the public.
KW: Certainly they're prominent science communicators in our culture, and we don't know very
much about them, so this attempt was to try to get a first look at their ability to
communicate this very important topic.
Meteorologist Bob Henson comes to us from Boulder, Colorado. Our program is supported by
Subaru of America, and The National Science Foundation.
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