The rise of the Weather Carnies

So we've all heard about the heat waves this year.  Every morning for over a year and a half the national morning news shows have opened the broadcasts with a weather crisis story (along with daily Trump/Jan 6 stories).  Granted, I haven't seen every broadcast.  I usually only watch in the morning during the week when I'm getting ready, but not weekends.  My wife and I share a coffee, and watch to see the weather and local traffic.  Then we watch the opening of the national broadcasts at 7 AM.  We watch through the opening segments, which is our cue to wrap up the morning routine.

But during the week, I do believe for over a year and a half, every national broadcast on the three networks has led with a weather crisis story each and every day.  Doesn't have to be weather in the US.  It doesn't even have to be much of a story.  But some form of 'severe weather' headline must be shown. So when it heats up like it did this year, you can bet they were going all out in their coverage - as they did.  

Now, one of my beefs with the Global Warming political narrative is that tendency advocates have of hedging their bets.  It isn't enough for them to declare their beliefs about the climate.  It isn't enough to just stay with the facts.  They have to find ways, clever or goofy, to convince me it's more than just change, but an apocalyptic holocaust in the making that will doom mankind if I don't obey get with the political program. 

To that end, the meteorologists on the news, or the scientists interviewed, or the various climate activists banging their drums, can come off more like used car salesmen rather than experts or scientists.  And that tendency to inflate or spin or just BS makes me wonder. 

For instance, it has been hot in some parts of the country.  That much is true.  And at least some records in our 140 years of keeping track have been broken.  Not in our neck of the woods, it's worth noting. For one week - naturally the week we went on our belated anniversary vacation - the temps got into the 90s.  And the local news stations went crazy with the warnings.  But that was it.  It's been the 80s or less for most of the last month or so.

Not to cry quits because of facts and reality, however, when the heatwave in the Southwest was at its height and the news outlets were warning the rest of the county it was coming our way, our own weather stations jumped on the bandwagon.  By the end of a rather cool first week of August, they predicted the scorching heat wave was coming our way.  But nothing happened.  It didn't get that hot.

Not to cry quits because of facts, they went ahead and issued a regional heat advisory for central Ohio, on the off chance it at least made it to the high 80s (the forecasted high for that Friday).  It didn't.  It stalled at around 84 degrees.  

Not to cry quits, they kept the heat advisory and insisted if you add that rather ambiguous and subjective Heat Index, it could almost feel like 100 degrees!  Yet not only was the afternoon high only 84 degrees, there was actually a rather pleasant breeze out of the north that day. I took advantage of it to work some in our outside herb garden.  My guess, off the cuff, was that when the breeze picked up it was probably closer to feeling like the high 70s, at least in the shade.  And for late July and August in Ohio, that is cool (these are usually the dog days when high 80s and low 90s and no rain are the norm).

Finally they cried quits and by mid afternoon cancelled the heat advisory.  They still insisted that if you count the heat index, in some places the 'feels like' temperature at least was close to 100.  Which is quite a heat index bump.  I'm old enough to remember that when the heat index was mentioned (it was introduced in the late 1970s), it usually bumped the temperature from high 80s to low to mid 90s.  But this time it was supposed to be an over 15 degrees bump, or so said the local meteorologists.  

All of this is to say that we didn't witness science, or journalism, or expertise, or information that day.  We witnessed the equivalent of snake oil salesmen peddling their wares.  And that's the sort of thing that raises warning flags with me.  

With Global Warming, we are continuously treated to a never ending list of slick sales pitch style rhetoric that even the most sympathetic listener has to question.  Like the famous 'exactly when is it weather and when is it climate?' question that always seems to fluctuate depending on the temperatures and locations at hand.

Or this.  Given the strange morphing of Heat Index to apparently any number that gets the 'feels like' temperature close to 100, I begin to doubt things like this:

Fact is, it's been closer to one of the mildest and coolest summers I remember for this time of the year.  And it's been that way all over central Ohio.

But the news casts, local as well as national, have pounded the pulpit about extreme heat, Extreme Heat, EXTREME HEAT every morning of every day for weeks and weeks.  Every extended forecast has assured us that by the end of the week it's going to be a scorcher!  90s and 100s are just around the corner!  Yet by the time those days reach the left of the graphic later in the week, they've dropped to the mid to low 80s or lower. Even yesterday, the extended forecast had the high temp jumping into the low 90s.  What did it end up being?  84 degrees.  

Yes, I realize we'll probably be pummeled in the Fall, as September and maybe even October see the temps skyrocket to the 90s or hotter.  It's been doing that in recent years, even as spring has lagged later and later, with cool temps and even late frosts becoming common even into late May and June.  Climate does change.  But the hysteria, the medicine shows, the weather carnies have almost become a joke.  

As a bonus.  We were watching the news on NBC, and the forecast was for high 80s.  The meteorologist said we were still going to be lower than average, though the forecast suggested we'd be getting close to normal.  The graphic showed the average and the highs and lows for the day, with the forecasted high being just shy of the average.  Then in the next weather segment later in the broadcast, the headline on the screen said that today we would be 'unseasonably warm.'  How, pray tell, are we unseasonably warm according to the statement on the screen when the meteorologist said we would be below average?  Again, car salesmen weather carnies.  

This time we mean it!