Wrestling with the warm mongers

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Joe Bastardi believes he is the only meteorologist in the land with a varsity wrestling letter, a trophy from his undergraduate years at Penn State.

And now he may be in the wrestling match of his career, taking on a behemoth: the scientific consensus that the Earth is warming, perhaps catastrophically, and that human-produced carbon dioxide is to blame.

Bastardi is one of the most visible forecasters at one of the nation's most visible forecasting companies, AccuWeather Inc., which is almost a Penn State annex. He has long voiced reservations about global warming.

Lately, however, he has become a go-to meteorologist for media seeking a second opinion. He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and on the front page of the New York Times. On Tuesday, he's due to tape a segment for The Colbert Report.

All of which puts him in the hot seat.

"There's been a squelching and demonizing of people who would dare speak up," says Bastardi. Or as his nephew put it after doing some Internet research: "There's a lot of people who hate you."

Bastardi advocates waiting two decades or so to see if the current global warming continues, slows, or reverses - which puts him at odds with environmentalists, earth-sciences experts, and some faculty in the renowned meteorology program that attracted him to Penn State in the first place.

Happy Valley has become a hot spot in the climate debate. Michael Mann, a professor across town at Bastardi's alma mater, can relate to the vitriol. He, too, has been a target of attacks, for very different reasons. Mann is the author of the "hockey-stick graphs" that show radical upward spikes in 20th-century temperatures, and in the fall was implicated in the so-called Climategate scandal.

"I happen to like Dr. Mann," said Bastardi. "I've read a lot of his stuff, and this is a brilliant man." Said Mann, "I have great respect for Joe Bastardi, and for AccuWeather."

But while he and Bastardi remain friendly, they don't agree on climate change, nor on how to settle their differences. Bastardi wants Mann to debate the heavyweights who disagree with him; Mann wants Bastardi to talk climate over a beer. (No date has been set.)

Bastardi's forte is midrange and seasonal forecasting - where he has had his share of triumphs and busts, accolades and detractors, but is generally well-regarded for recognizing pattern changes that can affect the weather for days, weeks, and months.

And for being outspoken.

"I like Joe," said Paul Knight, the state's official climatologist, who teaches in Penn State's meteorology program - but "he tends to say things that will give him visibility."

So what is Bastardi doing butting into an area his critics say is better left to climate scientists?

"It's all about the weather to me," he says. "This is nothing but a glorified wrestling match that never ends."

Bastardi, whose father and great-great-grandfather were weathermen (the latter, a town forecaster) and who is convinced he was conceived during Hurricane Hazel in 1954, says he looks at climate history for the same reason wrestlers train: to get better.

He believes that some of those who embrace catastrophe scenarios overlook the fact that extreme weather is not new to the nation or the world.

"My point is this: If I understand what had happened before, and I see it happen again, it gives me an advantage over someone who won't even look."

He has little use for devotees of former Vice President Al Gore, whose Nobel Prize was for spreading the global-warming message. "I can understand not believing in God," said Bastardi, a devout Roman Catholic. "I can't understand making Al Gore your god."

In an interview in the gleaming glass AccuWeather building on Science Park Road, Bastardi emphasizes that he is well aware that the planet got warmer in the last 30 years. But he opines that we now have superior ways to track temperatures - via satellite - instead of relying on surface thermometers, or reconstructing past climates through such proxy measures as analyzing tree rings.

Since the satellite record is short, dating only to 1978, he argues for tracking another 20 to 30 years of data to see if the warming continues. Instead of doing something, he said, "I believe we should just stand here." Bastardi thinks the planet may even be a tad cooler in the next couple of decades.

That stance is anathema to the environmentalists and earth-sciences experts who hold that the planet will warm up dangerously unless carbon-dioxide emissions are drastically reduced.

In the late '90s, Mann documented significant 20th-century warming by using "proxy" data from earlier in the millennium, and surface data that scientists began collecting in the 19th century. When he graphed the temperature lines across time, they spiked in the last century or so, forming a hockey-stick shape.

Mann got in hot water in November after someone stole e-mail exchanges between climate researchers. One message told of a "trick" Mann used to tweak his results. The e-mail's sender quickly explained that "trick" meant simply a graphing technique, and a Penn State investigation cleared Mann of wrongdoing. Even so, Climategate left critics with lingering doubts about Mann's results.

That the climate is ever-changing, no one disputes. Volcanic ash, changes in solar radiation, and subtle shifts in the Earth's orbit all have had effects. Knight said he and other states' climatologists represent quite a range of opinion on human-enhanced vs. natural warming.

"Some believe that we have yet to credibly define the limits of natural variability," Knight said. No one doubts that the climate swings between warm and cool over time; what's in dispute is the extent to which the latest swing - the blade of the "hockey stick" - is human-made.

But computer models keep showing the warming, and that's hard to ignore. "A lot of folks feel the case is settled," Knight said. He is not one of them, holding more nuanced views on climate change, while most of his Penn State colleagues come down on the "warming" side.

Not Bastardi. He recalls how, as a Penn State student during a series of brutal 1970s winters, he heard talk of global cooling.

He graduated in 1978 and went right to work at AccuWeather, the company founded by Penn State icon and Philadelphia native Joel N. Myers, for whom the department's weather center is named.

Like Myers, Bastardi was AccuWeather's familiar radio voice in years past. Throughout his career, he has stayed on what he calls the "ditchdigger" side of weather as a forecaster. He blogs for thousands of paying customers on an AccuWeather site, posting 1,000 words a day over the last three years, enough to make War and Peace seem like a short story.

His reach is global - Thursday he blogged about claims that Britain's cool winter was caused by plastic bags dumped in the Atlantic. (In blog update, he admitted he had been the victim of an April Fool's prank.) He also provides long-range forecasts for energy, retail, and agricultural interests, as well as the public. He's been widely quoted in recent weeks predicting a hellacious hurricane season.

While some critics say Bastardi has rarely seen a storm threat he wouldn't promote, he has also had his share of coups.

In 2007, he predicted a mild winter would shift dramatically that January. It did. Last July, he foresaw a cold, snowy winter - though he didn't say anything about 78.7 inches, and it wasn't quite as cold as expected. Last month proved a forecast bust, with the winter ending precipitously in one of the warmest, wettest Marches on record.

If he blows a forecast now and then, it isn't from laziness. Bastardi, who looks as if he wears shoulder pads, works seven days, taking two half-hour breaks daily to pump iron. He's won weightlifting trophies.

To ease his load, his AccuWeather boss, Ken Reeves, had two laptops delivered and two desktops installed in his house, about ten miles from the office.

But Bastardi still comes in each day for Web-video shootings, and works so many hours that Reeves has given him some friendly advice: "Sleep."

He shows little interest in that advice. He wonders if people on the "warm" side of the climate debate share his passion for weather.

"I've been in this since I was a kid," he said. He recalls arguing with his father over whether it was snowing - when he was 4.

"If I'm up to all hours of the night trying to figure something out," Bastardi says, it is no big deal. He just reminds himself: "This is nothing compared to wrestling."