The Contra Costa Times picks up on the modeler vs. forecaster split:

Before Spencer Christian, a weather forecaster with KGO-TV Channel 7 in San Francisco, steps before the camera during the station’s 6 p.m. newscast, he scrutinizes a computer screen to analyze the latest forecasting data. But unlike some of his counterparts, Christian doesn’t view his extensive knowledge of storm fronts and high-pressure systems on the week’s weather as credentials to assess the effects of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate in the coming decades. “The climatologists are the experts in this field,” said Christian, who started weather reporting in 1975 and worked for 12 years as the weather anchor on “Good Morning America” in New York City before joining KGO-TV in 1999. Christian is among the majority of TV weathercasters — but a slim majority, only 54 percent — who believe that the planet is warming, according to a new survey. About one-quarter of the 571 weathercasters surveyed also said they’ve seen evidence of climate change in their local weather patterns. The survey was released this month by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin. Nonetheless, while other surveys have reported that more than 90 percent of climate scientists think that human-generated greenhouse gases are a major contributor to climate change, just under one-third of weathercasters think human activity is behind the rise in average global temperatures in recent decades. And about a quarter of those polled agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “Global warming is a scam.” These divided views between climate scientists and weathercasters matter, the surveyors said, because TV weather anchors have become the de facto science reporters on most TV newscasts. Only 10 percent of TV stations have a dedicated news reporter covering the topic, and two-thirds of the weathercasters were eager to add reporting on climate science to their coverage. Almost half of them reported discussing climate science with news anchors during broadcasts, and nearly 90 percent said they had spoken on the subject in a public forum, according to the survey.
“Some of the people who do weather on TV actually may have a degree in meteorology and some of them don’t,” said David Easterling, chief of the scientific services division with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and chair of the American Meteorology Society’s Climate Variability and Change committee. “But they have an important role to play in the whole climate change issue,” he said. “People see them as a credible source of information on TV.”

The rest here.