One of America’s most influential global warming skeptics, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, has finally admitted that global warming is “caused by man.” During the hottest year ever recorded, following the hottest decade ever recorded, Russia is burning under heat not seen for at least 1000 years. Heat waves have set records throughout the United States and throughout the world. A monsoon season of unprecedented intensity has displaced tens of millions of people across Asia, threatening the nuclear states of China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. The largest iceberg to calve from Greenland in fifty years has added to its precipitous decline of ice mass since 1980. Decades ago, scientists predicted these consequences of burning fossil fuels and heating the planet.

Yesterday, in what CNN anchor Rick Sanchez billed a “good, smart conversation,” Myers actually recognized the reality of a “consequential global warming caused by man,” when not repeating climate-denier talking points:

Is it caused by man? Yes. Is it 100% caused by man? No. There are other things involved. We are now in the sun spot cycle. We are now in a very hot sun cycle. there are many other things going on. But, yes, a significant portion of this is caused by greenhouse gases keeping heat on the shore, on the land, in the atmosphere that could have escaped without those greenhouse gases, so, yes, it’s warmer. . ..

There is absolutely something going on here for this summer being the hottest and some of the water that we have in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico the hottest ever on record which could cause a pretty significant hurricane season still to come.

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Unfortunately, “scientist expert” Chad Myers (actually a bachelor-degree meteorologist, not a climate scientist) also made the blatantly false claim that we are “now in a very hot sun cycle.” In fact, the sun is just emerging from an extremely low two-year minimum of activity, with years to go before it will reach another peak. Since 1980, average solar irradiance has been on the decline, even as global temperatures have risen.

Myers has long abused his role at the “Most Trusted Name in News” to misinform the American public about the science of climate change. In October, 2005, Myers promoted the debunked idea of negative cloud feedback overwhelming global warming. In January, 2006, Myers promoted the debunked idea that urban heat islands were distorting official temperature records. In December, 2008, Myers told Lou Dobbs “to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant.” In April, 2010, Myers admitted the planet was warming, but accused climate scientists of corruption, questioned climate models, and implied that the sun is driving global warming.

Myers and Sanchez also promoted other denier canards, from petty jokes about Al Gore to a mention of winter in South America:

So it’s the coldest winter on record in Bolivia. Okay. So. Well does that counteract? Probably not. They’re having millions of fish killed because they’re freezing to death literally in Bolivia.

In fact, it is only the coldest winter in Bolivia in 47 years, not the “coldest winter on record.” In contrast, Russia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Niger, Sudan, Belarus, Ukraine, Cyprus, Finland, Qatar, St Helena, Solomon Islands, and Columbia have all seen all-time record-high temperatures this year. The global average temperature is at or near record highs, far above the long-term average. Fortunately, global warming has not yet gotten so extreme that record lows are never set — but they are now greatly outpaced by record highs.

It’s an encouraging sign that Myers is now speaking more truth than misinformation during the killer summer of 2010, but the damage of his years of propaganda can never be undone.

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On Tuesday, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers accused climate scientists of corruption, saying that because they “work for the government,” they could lose their jobs if they didn’t say man-made global warming was real. In an interview with CNN’s Ali “Clean Coal” Velshi, Myers responded to a New York Times article that television meteorologists widely believe that man-made global warming is a hoax, in stark contrast to actual climate scientists. After admitting that “man has a lot to do with” the rising global temperatures, Myers went on the attack:

I also think it has something to do — follow the money a little bit. Meteorologists aren’t paid by the government, the ones on TV, the climatologists are. If there’s nothing to talk about, will their jobs really be all that secure? So, follow the money a little bit, I think you’ll find 10% and 15% and every little corner has to do with it.

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Myers’ implication of a widespread conspiracy to doctor science for cash seems odd, coming from someone who almost without doubt makes considerably more money than any climate scientist on the planet. The television industry — unlike scientific research — is driven by pursuit of controversy, not accuracy. Myers, who has a bachelor’s degree in meteorology from the University of Nebraska, had been a denier of man-made global warming as recently as 2008, telling Lou Dobbs, “To think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant.”

Myers also raised two other classic canards of climate conspiracy theorists — that the sun is responsible for global warming and that climatological models can’t be accurate if meteorological models aren’t. Rather than retreading the reasons those are debunked fallacies, I’ll just direct you to SkepticalScience.com (“It’s the sun” and “Scientists can’t even predict weather“).

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