The One Group of People Americans Actually Trust on Climate Science
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he weatherman’s striped tie is still snug on his neck as he starts an evening bath for his three kids, one of whom bolts naked from the bathroom and does a lap around the kitchen before running back, feet slapping on the hardwood floor. “Okay,” Shel Winkley says, walking into the kitchen where his wife is loading the dishwasher. “I love you,” he tells her, and then he walks outside to his gray Prius, gets in, and drives to the TV station. Dinner’s over. Back to work.
It’s warm outside in Bryan, Texas, warmer than usual on this Wednesday night in October, and on KBTX at 10 p.m. Winkley is going to talk about rising temperatures as a symptom of global climate change. The climate crisis, of course, is a divisive issue in America. A little less than a third of adults don’t see a crisis at all; they see a melodrama. Winkley, 36, used to not worry about climate change much either.
A decade ago, Winkley was a few years out of college and focused on doing his job without messing up on air. TV was intense—the hours, the pace, the volume of work—and he was, as he puts it, a “baby deer.” In school he’d certainly learned about the climate, because he had to understand trends in long-term weather in order to issue short-term forecasts. But when class discussions turned to climate change, his meteorology professors talked mostly about natural cycles instead of human causes.
Winkley, now planted back at his desk in front of his three computer monitors, is clicking and clacking, compiling the weather. On the center monitor he’s loaded rows of daily temperature data, which he’s copying one day at a time into a calendar open on the left monitor. In the right corner of the calendar is a big blank space. It’s 8:27 p.m., and in an hour and a half, when the calendar is projected on the studio’s green screen, he’ll stand in front of the blank space. He has the script in his head. (On the right monitor is Twitter; on Twitter are fans, who respond to his tweets with piles of hearts.) He looks at a coming day’s temperature and the number of degrees it’s forecasted to climb above average. “Pff!” he exclaims. “17.” One or two
