{"id":1226,"date":"2010-03-31T18:52:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T23:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/03\/31\/meteorologists-on-the-moon\/"},"modified":"2010-03-31T18:52:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T23:52:02","slug":"meteorologists-on-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/03\/31\/meteorologists-on-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"meteorologists on the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trusting a weather forecaster to tell you about climate change is like trusting the view from your bedroom window to inform you about what’s happening in China. (Unless, of course, you live in China.) Why is this so hard to understand?<\/p>\n

These pieces at the New York Times<\/a>, Dot Earth<\/a>, and Grist<\/a> help us get at this issue: it’s because TV (and radio) meteorologists are people’s most obvious connection with the weather — they are the mediators of most weather news\/events — and, for the lay person living their (relatively) ahistorical one day to the next, weather and climate have always been practically synonymous. This highlights the role of the media in the public understanding of science, and pinpoints the challenge for educators: how to separate weather<\/em> from climate<\/em>, and how to mediate<\/em> climate, which is something that most people rarely have to deal with except in occasional conversations with their elders (“I remember the winters we used<\/em> to have!”).<\/p>\n

And while I’ve generally been suspicious of most forms of geo-engineering<\/a>, in part because they deflect attention from the need to transition away from fossil fuels, Living on Earth’s interview with Jeff Goodell<\/a> pointed out that one of the good<\/em> things about it is that the very idea<\/em> of geo-engineering underlines the fact that humans are, in fact, in a position to change the Earth’s climate, consciously or otherwise, and for better or for worse. So even if most geo-engineering proposals sound pretty wild, it could be useful to give them an airing. In the end, are wild ideas about renewable energy and green cities really wilder<\/em> than continually injecting millions of reflective particles into the stratosphere, or setting off nuclear bombs on the moon?<\/p>\n

(Hey, maybe we could send a few of those climate-skeptic meteorologists<\/a> to the moon to forecast what effect that will have. Joe Bastardi<\/a> in space…)<\/p>\n

\"earth276.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trusting a weather forecaster to tell you about climate change is like trusting the view from your bedroom window to inform you about what’s happening in China. (Unless, of course, you live in China.) Why is this so hard to understand? These pieces at the New York Times, Dot Earth, and Grist help us get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[520594,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-ecoculture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-jM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/11\/30\/vermonters-climate-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":1226,"position":0},"title":"Vermonters & climate change","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I was interviewed yesterday by the local CBS-affiliated WCAX news show on the topic of how to motivate Vermonters to take action on climate change (while Bernie Sanders and Cornel West were speaking just up the road). What was used of our interview was fairly minimal, so I thought I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1052,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/11\/trusting-obama-or-not\/","url_meta":{"origin":1226,"position":1},"title":"trusting Obama or not","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"With protests gearing up today to push the Obama administration away from its current timidity with its economic policies (see A New Way Forward and Democracy Now's broadcast on it), it seems apropos to ask whether and to what extent the Obama administration should be trusted by progressives. Open Left,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2287,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/01\/13\/34-warm-years-counting\/","url_meta":{"origin":1226,"position":2},"title":"34 warm years & counting","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The results are in and both NOAA and NASA agree that 2010 is statistically tied (with 2005) for the warmest year on record, globally. Nine of the last ten years are among the ten warmest years on record. (The exception was 2008. The records go back to 1880.) And the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7374,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/02\/23\/still-warming\/","url_meta":{"origin":1226,"position":3},"title":"Still warming","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For all the complaints many of us in the U.S. heard or voiced about the cold, this past January was the fourth warmest on record, and the 38th consecutive January and 347th consecutive month (almost 29 years) that global temperatures have been above the average for the 20th century. 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Generalizing about global climate change from a cold snap is like predicting who will win the world series based on a single ball or strike\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"1533819_10152492896785898_1967026371_n","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/01\/1533819_10152492896785898_1967026371_n-275x229.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}