So why do AGW alarmists say Joe Bastardi should not be listened to?

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I used to read Joe Bastardi's blog on AccuWeather Professional almost every day. It was always the same (1) trash the National Weather Service and (2) promote himself. He would get forecasts wrong and never mention that, but if he could find an NWS forecast in error he would spend no end going on about it. I dropped my subscription to AccuWeather Professional because I couldn't stand his variety of self-promotion with very little behind it. I subscribe again, now that he has gone off and started his own company with other AGW deniers. (WeatherBell). They have nice graphics, but I still wouldn't pay a thing for his forecasts.

He is an excellent bowler and bodybuilder, and he did graduate Penn State with a bachelor's in meteorology, although my impression was that it was touch-and-go whether he'd make it through.

EDIT: I should point out that my distaste for him was due to his attitude and the inaccuracy of his WEATHER forecasts. I had no idea of his opinions on AGW at the time, and at that timeI probably didn't even care about that.

And jim z, reading his weather blog it was impossible to tell whether he was a Marxist, a capitalist, a Republican or a Democrat. Unlike you, I guess I care more about whether someone's science is correct more than I do about their politics....Show more

I thought Al Gore was your scapegoat-in-chief... Personally, I think that various people are just either clarifying their actual positions or admitting to saying things that were 'alarmist' for speculating about possible dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming. So far I haven't seen anyone actually admit that there isn't a need to be concerned about even the more mild possible effects or that they were wrong to accept AGW. I think that this really has something to do with all the various denier ploys to discredit them by focusing only on their worst-case scenario claims in interviews (not in a scientific presentation or debate) and the addition of 'Catastrophic" to AGW to try and make them seem like doomsayers. _...Show more

Big Joe Bastardi...Show more

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If you read the full story then it’s very different.

In 2010 Bastardi predicted that the winters of 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15 would be severe and his reasoning for that he believed was due to ENSO and the eruption of Arctic volcanoes‎.

On ENSO he said “"We have a cold Pacific now. We had a La Nina, El Nino, then a stronger La Nina [similar to the cycle] that happened in the early to mid '70s that set up the winters of the late '70s."

On the volcanoes he said “The last time we had arctic volcanoes go off, in 1912 - similar to what we had two winters ago - the winters three years removed got very bad across the United States," Bastardi said.”

Now, he said this in 2010 and was therefore referencing Arctic volcanoes in 2008 – of which there weren’t any, other than some heat loss from the Gakkel Ridge. The big Arctic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, didn’t erupt until 2010. Perhaps Bastardi was referencing this and got “four months ago” confused with “two winters ago”.

Whatever it was, he was very wrong to suggest that 2012/13 would be a severe winter, temperatures were considerably above average. Only two states recorded temperatures that were well below normal whereas there were 26 that were well above normal.
http://earthsky.org/earth/recap-of-the-2012-2013-u-s-winter

As for this winter, he was right to say it would be very cold but for all the wrong reasons. He predicted that ENSO and volcanoes would cause cold weather and therefore his prediction is wrong.

Bastardi’s more recent predictions for the current winter have met with mixed fortunes. In October last year he was predicting that it would be colder then normal for the eastern US, warmer than normal for the western US and much warmer than normal across Canada. So he’s half right on one of these three points.
http://theharlemvalleynews.com/9067/55926/a/joe-bastardis-winter-2013-14-summary-forecast

Just out of interest, here’s something Bastardi said in 2012, do you agree with him? “CO2 cannot cause global warming. I'll tell you why. It doesn't mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot -- it literally cannot cause global warming”

On the plus side, the accuracy of Bastardi’s forecasts regarding Hurricane Sandy were probably the most accurate of all the forecasts. So, like all forecasters, sometimes he gets it right and sometimes he gets it wrong....Show more