The politics of climate change and global warming are fascinating to me- the amount of argument and disagreement over something that is affecting the entire world is either a major issue or just a fringe group with some good media connections, depending on who you talk to. Either way, the politics behind what does and does not happen in our national policy in regard to climate change are now an entrenched part of the way things work in the United States- it will be part of every election and government stance for either the next few decades, if it is indeed a passing perspective and fad, or forever, if it is indeed something that is happening. Can you imagine a politician getting elected President with an outspoken view that human-caused climate change is not true? Wait for 2012 and we’ll see what happens.

The vast majority of scientists agree that humans are a cause of climate change- at a minimum that we have sped up what was already happening, or that we kicked off the whole series of ozone and warming and weather events. That is, unless you believe the skeptics and deniers who say that global warming and climate change are natural, if they are happening at all, and that there is nothing we can do about it anyway.

But what about meteorologists? What to the people who watch and predict our weather every day, year in and year out, have to say about the idea that the weather is drastically changing right before our very eyes?

Rick Montgomery wrote an interesting article for the Kansas City Star that examines the varying opinions and positions of meteorologists. He intriguingly points out that while most on-air weathermen are not climatologists and some even majored in journalism rather than weather-related disciplines, the one thing all weather-predictors know is the that computer forecasting models are wrong regularly.

Thompson quotes University of Texas researcher Kris Wilson who has been researching climate change attitudes among people in weather professions for years now. According to Wilson, 29% of meteorologists think that climate change is basically a scam. What’s more, 62% think that the climate models are unreliable for predicting temperatures or sea levels. Wilson reports the data but tempers it with an observation about the nature of weather vs. climate models.

“The models used for predicting weather are inherently volatile. The climate models are not like that. They’re inherently stable.” said Wilson, a scientist and member of the journalism faculty in Austin.

And I think the key to the whole thing is in that distinction: There is weather and there is climate. Meteorologists predict weather. Climatologists research and predict climate.

Kansas City’s KSHB chief meteorologist Gary Lezak believes much of the skepticism is political at its core: “I absolutely believe it’s politically driven. I’m not politically driven … I go with the overwhelming scientific evidence. The fact is, the Earth is warming up. Far as I know, 90 to 95 percent of scientists believe climate change is real and it has a human influence. Am I able to change my mind in 10 years if the facts show otherwise? Of course.”

And that is true politics, folks.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks (via Flickr under CCL)