Weekend Weatherman David Aldrich
by Doron Taussig
David Aldrich, the weekend weatherman at Fox 29,
considers himself a green guy. He recycles, uses nontoxic cleaning
products in his house and his next car will probably be a hybrid. But
when it comes to the biggest, most controversial environmental issue of
our time, Aldrich isn't signing on.
This weatherman is a self-proclaimed "Global Warming Skeptic."
On the blog he maintains for Fox29's Web site, Aldrich liberally
employs varying font colors, sizes and styles to cast doubt on the
biggest forecast of them all.
"After the 13th COLDEST February in Philadelphia and the coldest
since 1979, many are scratching their heads on what to believe when it
comes to global warming," he wrote. "My goal is NOT to convince or
persuade you one way or the other — but rather, to expose you to the
multiple sides of this argument. And yes, there are MULTIPLE sides."
We were curious to hear Aldrich's side. After all, our nonscientific
understanding had been that there was incontrovertible evidence of the
Earth getting warmer and a considerable body of evidence that humanity
was responsible for the trend. That's what the U.N.'s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change says, anyway.
Aldrich looks a lot like someone you might expect to see on TV: a
traditionally handsome man with a boyish haircut. When we sat down with
him at Fox's studios, he acted like someone on TV, too. He was full of
smiles, and very friendly.
"I totally believe that we are in a warm phase," he began. "There's no doubt the Earth is warmer."
But?
"There's a different side to what is causing climate change. I think
too much emphasis has been put on CO2. I do not believe CO2 is a
pollutant. I'm made of CO2, you're made of CO2 ... the ocean is a
reservoir of CO2."
Aldrich says he believes the Earth is warming because of natural cycles of the sun and the ocean.
The "cycles" explanation is a common one among global warming
skeptics, says Nathan Wilcox of Penn Environment, a local advocacy
group. The trouble with Aldrich's thinking, he says, is that CO2 is
being stored in the wrong place.
"If CO2 is stored in the ocean — well, that's the point. It's stored
in the ocean, not in the atmosphere," Wilcox says. It's the high level
of carbon in the atmosphere that makes this warm cycle particularly
worrisome. (Aldrich thinks the carbon is in the atmosphere because of the heat.)
People are naturally inclined to want to hear about global
warming from their weatherman. "It's one of the hottest items," says
Steve Harned, executive director of the National Weather Association.
But the NWA doesn't have an official position on the matter. Weathermen
and women are "geared more toward short-term forecasting," Harned says.
Global warming is about the change in climate, not weather (hence the
more formal label "climate change").
Aldrich acknowledges this. "I'm not a climatologist," he says several times during our discussion, by way of a disclaimer.
But why, then, is he evangelizing about global warming? It's not the
company line — Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox, has publicly declared his
concern about the problem.
"I don't want to be afraid to be myself," Aldrich says.
And Aldrich, himself, is a "weather geek." Whether it's promoting a British movie called The Global Warming Swindle
or telling people to watch Al Gore's movie, he just wants to be talking
about the weather — and he might as well share his opinion.
Speaking of which, Aldrich says, he's not sure of his global
warming convictions. "If we move past five or 10 years and we're still
warming," he says, then he'll accept that there's a man-made problem.
Until then? "Global warming may keep people up at night. I don't worry
about that. I get about three minutes and a half to present the
weather. I've got to give people the conditions, [the forecast] and
what to wear."
