Getting climate change into the nightly weather report

Also on Salon today is a fascinating piece from Linda Baker on efforts among the meteorological community — that is, local weathermenpersons — to inject a little scientific education on climate change into their segments, and the resistance they’re getting from the suits. The depressing thing is the consensus among everyone Baker spoke to that stories about, or even mentions of, climate change are bad for ratings. People seem really to resist having global warming inserted into what, uh, somebody (who was that, anyway?) called the "sacred mundane," the rituals of day-to-day life that give us a sense of grounding and safety. Joe Sixpack would rather climate change stay "out there," as a political or scientific issue, a public debate. He doesn’t want it intruding on his private world.

That’s the kind of barrier we have to get through. We have to connect climate change to the sacred mundane. And what’s more mundane than the nightly weather report?

(On a related note, see Amanda’s interview with the Weather Channel’s climate-change specialist Heidi Cullen.)