Memo to NY Times:  TV weathermen are not climate experts.

In fact, Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech explained to me a few years ago:

Meteorologists are not required to take a course in climate change, this is not part of the NOAA/NWS [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service] certification requirements, so university programs don’t require the course (even if they offer it). So we have been educating generations of meteorologists who know nothing at all about climate change.

The reason I am repeating this basic fact for the umpteenth time — see “Are meteorologists climate experts?” — is that the former paper of record has once again equated people who don’t know about climate science with people who do (see “NYT Faces Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage“).

In a new, uber-dreadful he-said, she-said piece, “Scientists and Weathercasters at Odds on Warming,” the NYT‘s Leslie Kaufman gives a platform to some of the most uninformed, most widely debunked anti-science weathermen in the country, including Joe Bastardi and, yes, Anthony Watts!  Does anybody read Boykoff any more on (see  “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change”)?

Wow!  I see that this is now a front page story for Tuesday and that the NYT changed the headline in the last hour to the much worse, “Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming.”  Great.  May I suggest instead, “Some non-scientists who don’t know much about how humans are changing the climate spout nonsense on the subject”?

Either way Andy Revkin’s blog hypes the whole damn piece:

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has expressed “deep disappointment” with the direction Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) is heading with climate legislation being crafted with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). In a letter to Kerry, the Vermont independent praised Kerry’s “continued leadership” as a “tireless advocate for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” However, Sanders has “serious concerns about provisions that could harm our environment and provide new federal government support for polluters”:

– State Preemption: “In my view, preempting leading states would be a huge mistake: we should definitely set a floor, but not a ceiling.”

– Support for New Nuclear Power: “If the private sector will not finance new nuclear plants, the government should not risk taxpayer dollars by stepping in.”

– Offshore Drilling: “We should not, in a global warming bill, support increased offshore drilling.”

– Coal Plant Emissions: “Global warming legislation should move us forward by requiring coal plants to meet increasingly stringent pollution standards. It should not take us backwards by exempting coal plants from this kind of regulation by grandfathering in the dirtiest plants so they can continue to operate for years to come.”

Ten other senators have challenged new support for offshore drilling in the bill. Sanders also called for several green economy initiatives to be in the legislation, including green jobs and energy efficiency funding that was included in the Kerry-Boxer climate bill that passed out of the Senate environment committee last December. That legislation limited EPA and state authority to set rules for global warming pollution, but it appears that Kerry-Graham-Lieberman could go even farther to preempt existing law with a new framework, leading Sanders to warn, “I do not want to see a global warming bill become a bonanza for the coal industry.”

Sanders’ concerns mirror those of Mike Brune, the new executive director of the Sierra Club, who told The Hill:

We will go to the mat for defending Clean Air Act authority. We are also concerned about offshore oil drilling, and we will not be able to accept the dramatic giveaway that offshore oil drilling represents.

Climate legislation will, by discouraging global warming pollution, support existing low-carbon energy technologies like renewables, natural gas, and nuclear power, and will also create a market for advanced coal technology. The coal, gas, and nuclear industries certainly do not need an additional layer of taxpayer subsidies to thrive in a low-carbon future. However, they have the resources to make clean energy reform an arduous process unless their demands are met, especially if, as Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard argues, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are “neglecting the Senate’s environmental champions.”

Download the Sanders letter.

The Hill‘s blog has a post, “Why kill cap-and-trade? Because it’s there.”

The NYT‘s John Broder had a piece, ” ‘Cap and Trade’ Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice.”

CBS reports of the forthcoming Graham, Kerry and Lieberman bill, “notably missing from it will likely be the cap-and-trade system that had not long ago been expected to be the centerpiece of any legislation.”

Peter Barnes comments on my blog, “If cap-and-trade is politically dead, why not try some version of cap-and-dividend?”

Two points.  First, the bipartisan bill will have a cap. And it appears almost certain it will have a trading system.  But such is the world we live in that this isn’t cap-and-trade.

I’ve said many times it is crazy from a communications perspective to build your core message around a process — “cap-and-trade” [or health care reform] — rather than an outcome, like clean air or clean energy jobs.  If it needs a name, let’s call it “puppy.”  We can call cap-and-dividend “baby seal,” since it has a cap and a trading system, too.

Second, conventional wisdom says we probably won’t get a climate bill this year, whatever it is called.  But that’s not because of “cap-and-trade.”  As Harvard economist Robert Stavins explains in “Who Killed Cap-and-Trade?“:

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Yeah, please vote here.

Pointedly ignoring my plea for an end to online polls, CBS has come up with perhaps the dumbest idea yet.

Let’s use the least scientific, most easily manipulated choosing scheme invented since eeny-meeny-miny-moe to pick what major piece of legislation president Obama should pursue next.

Seriously.  I can almost hear Walter Cronkite reading the results on the evening news….

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