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Meteorologists are increasingly attacked when they make climate change an issue. How does so much fuel get into the weather broadcasts? The guests in the “Club” discuss this.
In the past, if you wanted to have a nice chat, you talked about the weather. “You could hold on to that,” says NZZ journalist Claudia Schwartz at the beginning of the show. Today you can hardly choose a more explosive topic: “If we talk about the weather, we are immediately in crisis mode.”
It won’t be any different in this «club» either. Presenter Barbara Lüthi and her guests explore the question of how statements about the weather become a political issue. And how scientists, meteorologists and journalists can suddenly find themselves in the eye of a shitstorm.
Why are they so hostile? Lukas Rühli from ThinkThank Avenir Suisse also locates the problem in the reporting: “It contains a certain asymmetry,” he criticizes. If it’s cool in summer, don’t report about it in any media. After a few hot days, however, alarmism prevailed. What bothers him most, however, is when media professionals become activists and no longer report impartially.
With Rühli’s statement, the temperature in the “club” immediately skyrockets. “The accusation of activism is systematic,” replies journalist Eliia Bülle. “It is regularly collected when journalists deal with climate issues.” The example of Thomas Bucheli, for example, has shown how quickly meteorologists are accused of running a political campaign. SRF Meteo had forecast temperatures that were too high for the Mediterranean region for several days. The “World Week” thought: on purpose
Climate change is dividing society
Reto Knutti, ETH professor of climate physics, has a different explanation for the hostilities. As a climate researcher, he also experiences them almost every day. His science is about basic physics, thermodynamics, data and climate models that are modeled on high-performance computers. “But no matter what you say about physics, it’s always politics,” he says. How come? The weather is equated with the climate and the climate with climate protection. And this divides society. It’s about left and right, about the state and about the freedom of the individual.
Not only in Switzerland, meteorologists are increasingly being attacked all over the world: in Spain they were insulted just because they predicted high temperatures. And in the US, a KCCI weather forecaster was so violently insulted and threatened that he quit his job – the job he dreamed of when he was a second grader.
Such shitstorms shake up the affected teams. “We first had to digest what happened,” says Thomas Bucheli, editor-in-chief of SRF Meteo. No one likes to expose themselves in the knowledge that they will be hit on the lid. At the same time, it was clear to him and his team: “We have a task.” The task of creating weather forecasts – and classifying events that are out of the ordinary.
Reto Knutti also sees it as his duty to continue to express himself: “Science cannot just produce numbers. People also need someone to explain them to them.”