Joe Bastardi - Stance On Global Warming

Stance On Global Warming

Bastardi is skeptical of human-induced global warming. He asserts that the world was likely warmer in the 1930s than today, that human contribution of carbon dioxide is too small to have any effect, and warming is caused by sun spots and exchange with warmer oceans. He frequently argues in his columns that extreme weather events occur occasionally and that there is not enough evidence to state that such events are unusual. For example, commenting on major storms and flooding in 2006 Bastardi stated:

I have no doubt this may be some value to human-induced global warming, but there are a lot of things that are happening now that have happened before. —Joe Bastardi, Larry King Live

Bastardi has also argued that carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming, because this would violate the first law of thermodynamics, despite the fact that carbon dioxide traps atmospheric heat through the greenhouse effect and is not claimed to heat the atmosphere directly. He expects that over the next 30 years, the global average temperature will return to levels seen in the late-1970s due to a so-called "triple-crown of cooling" comprising oceanic temperature cycles, solar radiation cycles, and volcanism.

According to a New York Times article on the subject, there is much more skepticism of global warming among meteorologists (such as Bastardi) than among climate scientists. Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology. A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.”

More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” the researchers found.

Nevertheless, the American Meteorological Society has affirmed the science of global warming.

Bastardi believes in the cyclical theory of climate and uses this in his long-range forecasts. He predicts two major hurricanes to hit the Northeastern United States by 2015, one of which has already come to pass as hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey in late October 2012 as the most powerful storm to hit the region in recorded history. He also predicts that with the PDO (Pacific decadal oscillation) cold and the AMO (Atlantic multidecadal oscillation) turning colder, the global temperature will fall to 1970 levels within the next 20–30 years.