WCVB's Harvey Leonard on Climate Change and Extreme Weather

If you're a TV meteorologist who's not talking about global warming, you're not giving your viewers the whole story.

If you're not talking about how warmer ocean temperatures are adding strength to storms or talking about how higher sea levels are adding to flooding concerns (among many other ways carbon pollution is changing weather patterns), you're putting ignorance, fear or politics ahead of forecasting the facts.

Last week, some Massachusetts viewers went to WCVB to say thanks to WCVB Chief Meteorologist Harvey Leonard for talking about global warming's role in fueling the February "Nemo" blizzard. You can add your name to the petition thanking Leonard at ForecastFacts.org.

Here's the segment that earned Leonard viewer thanks:

How Did Wind Turbines Do During the Blizzard?

Many of the wind turbines in Massachusetts automatically shut down over the weekend due to the blizzard, annoying but necessary considering ice buildup can hurt a turbine's performance just as much as it would an airplane's. (Notable exception: Ipswich Wind, which had its best two-day stretch of catching clean energy in at least a month.)

One of the more entertaining myths pushed by anti-wind activists is that after an ice storm wind turbines will start aiming chunks of ice at distant homes like a carbon-fiber eye of Sauron. Studies have shown that if a turbine continues to operate even during an ice storm, ice may fall up to 90 meters away. But that's about 4 times closer than any home should be from a wind turbine, so consider yourself safe. Just to be sure, take this advice from The Green Miles: Do not hang out directly under a 130-meter wind turbine during an ice storm.

As is often the case with wind turbines, people worry more about the new weird-looking thing than they do about the existing and actually dangerous thing. Just as people worry about made-up health impacts of wind power while overlooking the very real and very deadly impacts of our dependence on coal-fired power, they worry more about ice chunks from wind turbines that I can't find any evidence have ever hurt anyone when ice chunks from ordinary buildings will murder you dead.

White Out: Will Climate Science Denying TV Weathermen Forecast Less Snow During Blizzard?

Today's massive Northeast blizzard must put climate science-denying TV weathermen in a tough spot. Do you stick to your political guns and forecast based on a world with no temperature increase - pretend there's less energy in the atmosphere for the storm to draw on, pretend the ocean isn't much warmer than usual to add moisture to it - and risk underestimating its strength?

Or do you forecast with the baseline of a warming world fueling extreme weather and acknowledge climate disruption is helping make "Nemo" into a monster?

My guess: All TV meteorologists incorporate climate impacts into their forecasts, but few (if any) talk about the influence of climate change in their on-air forecasting discussion.