Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

I don’t necessarily want to associate myself with every word in John’s Buell’s post at Informed Comment, The Politics of the Local Weather Broadcast: Call your Station and Demand News of Climate Crisis, but it inspired me to wonder why it is that the local and national weather news doesn’t include the latest figure on atmospheric carbon dioxide. I’m not a climate scientist, but the overwhelming scientific consensus seems to be that the more CO₂ in the air, the more the earth traps heat. That should be of concern to everyone. And the data are not hard to find–such as at CO2.Earth, which reports a current number of 409.95 ppm, which is certainly the highest number in the past 1,000 years.

Mentioning the weekly CO₂ number as a routine part of the weather report would not only make the point that weather forecaster think carbon matters, it would sensitize the public to the so-far inexorable rise in a key heat-trapping gas.

This is a international issue, but it’s one of particular salience to South Florida: There’s a pretty simple thermodynamic correlation between atmospheric heat and water temperature. And we know that hurricanes get stronger when they go over warmer water. Higher temperatures also contribute to ice-cap melt, raising sea level. Want to avoid more of this? Time to call or email your local weatherperson?