Politically Correct Meteorology
by Ian Mosley
Global Warming is the theory that industrial pollution by man is the primary cause of recent increases in the earth’s average temperature. Added to this is the frequent assertion that something must be done now –as in forcing industry to spend billions of dollars and creating a new federal bureaucracy to “fight” global warming.
What is particularly disturbing is that the same liberal crowd which is wrong about gun control, wrong about the effect of diversity on America and wrong about the continued “need” for Affirmative Action is apparently 100 percent committed to the Global Warming theory. This alone should prompt an intelligent, independent-minded person into taking a second look at it.
First of all, the most widely accepted predictions are that the earth’s temperature will rise about two degrees in fifty years. So then, who in his right mind would get all panicky about a change this small and this slow? Isn’t it a reasonable assumption that in fifty years, we will have tremendous breakthroughs in science, that will be able to repair any ill effects on the atmosphere caused by man? Given all the burdens on the average American family, do we really want to stick Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack with higher taxes, higher energy prices, higher priced cars and higher priced fuel, all to “solve” a problem that mankind may not be causing after all? Nations like China and Mexico will ignore any new pollution laws, which will strangle the US economy further, while China’s economy grows at our expense.
If industrial pollution is causing global warming, then there should be a steady rise in the earth’s average temperature from the nineteenth century to the present day. This however is not the case. There was about a decade of “Global Cooling” in the 1970s. This period of Global Cooling occurred while mankind was steadily building more factories and cranking out more pollution. If the temperature of the earth could drop for this many years in a row, it clearly shows that the LIBERAL theory that man-made pollution is the dominant factor in raising the temperature of the earth is absolutely wrong.
If we truly want to get to the root of Global Warming, a satellite should be launched to measure the heat output of the sun. The Global Warming theory assumes that the heat from the sun is not changing. Before we spend hundreds of billions to “fight” Global Warming, maybe we should determine if pollution is all that important a factor or if the sun is causing 99.9 percent of the problem.
Much like the fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes” some fast-talking shysters have fooled a great percentage of Americans into believing something false. Something which was disproved in the 1970s. Everyone wants to be part of the “in crowd” and wants to get along with all the other snobby “elite” at the next cocktail party or various celebrity events.
ABC’s 33/40 meteorologist James Spann unwittingly ignited a PC firestorm when he dared to speak up against a proposal from one of his female TV weather-colleagues. This weather-gal has demanded that anyone who disputes that global warming is caused by human industrial activity should be “excommunicated and de-frocked” by having their meteorological credentials and certification revoked.
On December 21st, The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen posted an article called “Junk Controversy, Not Junk Science” on her semi-official blog. Cullen repeated the “authorized” left-wing, liberal theory that increases in atmospheric levels of gases, particularly carbon dioxide, which are produced by human activity such as manufacturing and driving automobiles and burning fossil fuels are what have led to global warming. She attacked any other meteorologists who dare to question this theory and who dare to speculate that it is the result of natural cycles of weather patterns of a kind which have been known to occur throughout the earth’s history, such as Ice Ages, but which are not yet fully understood. Then she threw down her kicker: “If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the (American Meteorological Society) shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval,” Cullen wrote.
James Spann is one of the many meteorologists and climatologists who accept that there is in fact a general warming trend in the earth’s weather, but who believe this may have other causes than human activity. He was sufficiently irritated by Ms. Cullen’s ranting to respond on his own blog that “…Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon.” Spann was amazed at the response; his site got so many hits that it was temporarily shut down on January 18th by the sheer volume of viewership. The neocons have now made Spann into an instant hero. He has been invited to appear on such right-wing cable shows as Fox Network’s “Hannity & Colmes” and CNN’s Glenn Beck, invitations he has accepted and which are scheduled for airing on January 22nd.
“Well, well,” Spann wrote on his blog. “Some `climate expert’ on The Weather Channel wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent `global warming’ is a natural process. So much for tolerance, huh? I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country….I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global-warming hype. I know there are a few out there, but I can’t find them.”
Whatever the scientific facts of the matter may be, the thing is that Global Warming has now become an article of faith in the Politically Correct secular religion, along with the Holocaust and the “need” for diversity. Spann has received hundreds of responses to his post, almost all of them favorable to him and many of those opposed to him critical of Heidi Cullen’s advocacy of Inquisition-like intolerance for “heretical” viewpoints on scientific matters.
The issue here is not what causes global warming or any other point of scientific debate; the issue is whether or not liberal and left-wing Political Correctness wields sufficient power in this society to actually impose physical, economic punishment on weather reporters who do not toe an ideological line in science. This would be rather similar to the lunatics in the Tennessee state legislature in the 1920s, who not only outlawed the teaching of evolution but also passed a law stating that within the bounds of the state of Tennessee, pi would be equal to EXACTLY 3.14. And of course, there was always old King Canute, who commanded the tide to stop rising where he sat on a beach, resulting in a wet monarch.
The neat thing about science is that it does NOT conform to fallible and mostly incorrect human standards of Political Correctness, of any variety. Science deals with things that ARE. All the hatecrime and thought control laws in the world can’t change them. But unfortunately, people who dare to question religious and scientific orthodoxy can be punished, and this is what the academic and intellectual elite seem to be thinking, as witness the tide of slime unleashed on scientists like the late Dr. William Shockley and the late Dr. Linus Pauling, two Nobel Prize winners who dared to question the racial and medical orthodoxies of our own time. Now they’re apparently trying to crack down on any questioning of the Global Warming orthodoxy.
Anyone who wonders how Galileo could have been persecuted for his study of astronomy, needs only to look at hysterical liberals like Heidi Cullen, who would gladly throw James Spann’s diploma into a bonfire.