Joe Bastardi

Biography

Bastardi was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He spent his childhood moving frequently, first to Texas in 1960, then to Somers Point, New Jersey in 1965. He enrolled at Penn State University, where he was a member of the varsity wrestling team. He graduated with a degree in meteorology in 1978. In 1992 Bastardi married Jessica Jane Strunck, also a Penn State graduate. They have a son Garrett (born 1996) and a daughter Jessica (born 1998). In his free time, Bastardi enjoys bodybuilding, and has won the NABBA American Bodybuilding Championships.

Bastardi worked for AccuWeather from 1978 until February, 2011. He joined WeatherBell Analytics LLC as Chief Forecaster in March, 2011.

His work

Bastardi's forecasts were previously offered free to the public on AccuWeather's main site. However, in the early 2000s, AccuWeather launched its "professional site," and his forecasts were made available to paying subscribers only. He also forecasts for corporate clients. Despite his recent intensified focus on private forecasting, Bastardi frequently appears on cable news channels, such as CNN and Fox News, during storms.

Bastardi produced several weather analysis videos most weekdays and some weekend days, including "Bastardi's Big Dog" and "Long Ranger". His Long Ranger video features his thoughts on long-range trends. In addition to his videos, Bastardi contributed to official AccuWeather press releases, such as annual winter forecasts.

Bastardi wrote a column that summarized his views in the videos. Bastardi sometimes contributed columns several times a day when a storm is approaching. He maintains that he has not taken a day off since 2002, including "Christmas and Easter.".

Bastardi is currently a Chief Forecaster at WeatherBell Analytics LLC. At WeatherBell Analytics he provides frequently updated blog postings and videos on the weather through WeatherBell Premium, as well as services for commercial clients.

Forecasting style and accuracy

Bastardi prefers to make definitive, rather than probabilistic, predictions: "The weather [is] an opponent that never quits, and the best you really can get is a tie with it."

He has been critical of National Weather Service forecasts:

Look at this: TONIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY. SNOW LIKELY THIS EVENING...THEN A CHANCE OF SNOW AFTER MIDNIGHT. TOTAL ACCUMULATION AROUND AN INCH. BRISK WITH LOWS IN THE MID 20S. NORTH WINDS 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 MPH. CHANCE OF SNOW 70 PERCENT. I continue to marvel at NOAA forecasts. Does anyone in the NWSFO understand they put out forecasts that make no sense? Why not at least make sense? Now I do have a disagreement with them as to snow totals, for instance at the Jersey Shore where I think they wind up closer to 3 than 1, but that is not my problem. My problem is the darn forecast says they will get an inch, that it is a fact that there will be an inch, but then has SNOW LIKELY THIS EVENING. How the heck can it only be likely? It has to snow to accumulate an inch, doesn't it? How is there a 70% chance of snow, but you say it will accumulate an inch? How can it accumulate an inch, if there is a chance it doesn't fall (30%)?

Bastardi has asserted that he thinks private companies make more accurate forecasts than the government, and he bases this on reports he and his associates have prepared.

On October 25, 2011, Bastardi and colleague Joe D'Aleo correctly forecasted the Halloween nor'easter.

In October 2012, Bastardi correctly predicted as early as October 22 that Hurricane Sandy would form in the western Caribbean and make landfall on the Jersey Shore, over a full week before Sandy made landfall on October 30. He was consistent with his forecast despite the constant changes in forecasts from weather models and other meteorologists claiming that his idea of a Jersey landfall would fail to come to fruition.

Stance on global warming

Bastardi is an outspoken contrarian regarding human-induced global warming. His views are sharply at odds with the scientific consensus on the topic.

Bastardi has asserted that the world was warmer in the 1930s than today, as well as stating that human contribution of carbon dioxide is too small to have any effect, and warming is caused by sun spots and exchange with warmer oceans. He argues in his columns that extreme weather events occur naturally and that there is not enough evidence to state that such events are unusual. In 2011, Bastardi wrote that, as he had predicted three years earlier, global average temperature was falling, and by 2030 would return to levels seen in the late 1970s due to the "triple-crown of cooling" comprising oceanic temperature cycles, solar radiation cycles, and volcanic activity.

Bastardi also states that carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming because this would violate the first law of thermodynamics, a misunderstanding of that gas's role in causing warming. He has further explained:

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. --- Joe Bastardi, Fox Business, March 9, 2012.

Physicist Richard A. Muller states that Bastardi's explanation of CO₂ is "completely wrong" and "even skeptics of global warming, if they know physics, would disagree with him."

Bastardi and science popularizer Bill Nye have clashed over climate change. In 2010 they debated on Fox TV. In 2015–2016 Bastardi and Nye publicly challenged each other with predictions of mean global surface temperature in the near term.