I just love this cartoon that accompanies an article on the Climate Progress blog:  Joe Bastardi can't read a temperature anomaly map and so spins another conspiracy theory: Accuweather's "expert long-range forecaster" Joe Bastardi has now firmly established himself as the least informed, most anti-scientific meteorologist in the world.  Climate Progress suggests that the video from Accuweather is more suitable for The Onion or April 1st.

Bastardi misunderstands a map of temperature anomalies for a temperature map.

"Bastardi tells his viewers, “The picture you see here is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies temperatures for the winter and you can see it was a torrid winter according to this.”  He then spins a long conspiracy theory suggesting that these numbers can’t be true and must be due to a “magical readjustment” because sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic aren’t at record lows.

But the picture is NOT of temperatures.  It is not warmer in the Arctic than in the United States, as Bastardi seems to imply. The picture is of temperature anomaly — the local temperature compared to the 1951-1980 mean — as anybody looking at the original can tell."

Comment:  I don't use Accuweather,  I use Weather.com for weather information, so I had no idea this character exists.  Apparently some people call it (in)Accuweather.  One of the comments on the post suggested: "Anyway, it seems Bastardi’s and/or AccuWeather’s M.O. is to trash all government weather/climate services to spread uncertainty and doubt and to build up AccuWeather’s business."  Someone else suggested that since Bastardi is paid he is a "professional idiot."  In some ways he reminds me of the "bimbos" who used to present the weather forecast on the evening news, except they were they to be pretty, not to pontificate on conspiracies or misuse science.  Presenting the weather versus forecasting the weather and climate research are quite different areas of endeavor