PrintNovember 26, 2008
When Warming Ideologues Attack
It's still uncertain whether Heidi Cullen, who once wrote that the American Meteorological Society should pull the certification of any weatherperson daring to question AGW, will be a casualty of last week's Weather Channel employee purge. But yesterday's rabid multi-front name-calling attack on an energy and environment reporter who dared question greenhouse gas canons quashed any doubt that the choir of green-snobbery has many voices.
Two pieces by Erika Lovley were published at The Politico Tuesday, one serious, the other -- mostly for laughs. But the Big Green Scare Machine was amused by neither.
Scientists urge caution on global warming opened by getting right down to business:
"Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation."
The article attempted to present a rational examination of the impact recent cooling -- an alarmist conundrum -- may have on emissions trading schemes Democrats promise to pass through Congress next year.
But what should have been seen as a moment of MSM balance was instead seen by the usual suspects as a philosophical punching bag.
Indeed, it didn't take long for Think Progress -- the George Soros-backed liberal propaganda machine -- to label it as "toxic stupidity about global warming," containing what they call "zombie lies" about sun-cycles and dissenting scientists. Or for Joe Romm at Climate Progress to accuse Lovely of "pimp[ing] global cooling for Hill deniers," demean her work as "laughable," and demand she be either fired or pulled "from the environmental/energy beat." But it's unlikely the latter would satisfy his green zeal, given this attack on her overall journalistic skills:
"Even as pure political reporting, the piece is beneath rank amateurish -- as if climate change deniers on the Hill are ‘quietly' doing anything."
Ouch!
When he felt he'd pumped enough lead into Lovley, Romm then turned his sites on the dissenting scientists she mentions, including Weather Channel co-founder and IceCap editor, meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, who he branded as "a well-debunked denier."
And get a load of this little bit of green reason. Romm called "balancing stories on the reality of accelerating human-caused global warming with a quote or two from deniers" a "mistake." Then, in the same paragraph, complained that Lovley "manages to cite multiple deniers, including Patrick Michaels from the right-wing Cato Insitute and a staffer [Marc Morano] from lead Senate denier James Inhofe (R-OK), but then doesn't bother to quote a single climate scientist in opposition." Wow.
Still, the Xanax moment award goes hands down to David Roberts, the Grist reporter who once suggested that the "bastards" denying AGW be subjected to Nuremburg style trials for their "war crimes." Referring to Politico's journalist malpractice in his title, he blasts Lovley's as "two of the dumbest stories of the decade on climate science," and the author as the "most dimwitted, gullible reporter in D.C."
Jumping on the dissenting scientists denigration wagon, Roberts calls Lovley's "worse" than "those articles you'd see five years ago, ‘balanced' stories on global warming science quoting the same small group of deniers, citing the same debunked myths." What is it about balance that gets these "experts" into such a tizzy?
But Roberts' reaction to the second article was perhaps the more curious.
Tracking 'The Gore Effect' takes a blatantly (to anyone with even the most diminutive of funny-bones) comical look at the phenomenon of extreme winter-like weather befalling global warming related events. Lovely cites some great ones, like in March, 2007, when "a Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate's new climate bill was cancelled due to a snowstorm." And when "Gore's global warming speech at Harvard University coincided with near 125-year record-breaking low temperatures." What - not funny?
The point is, the reporter made clear her lampooning intent right from the jump:
"For several years now, skeptics have amusedly eyed a phenomenon known as ‘The Gore Effect' to half-seriously argue their case against global warming."
Apparently missing the joke entirely, Roberts nominated this "the single stupidest sentence written by any journalist this year, possibly this century:"
"While there's no scientific proof that The Gore Effect is anything more than a humorous coincidence, some climate skeptics say it may offer a snapshot of proof that the planet isn't warming as quickly as some climate change advocates say."
Lighten up, Dave. Most readers managed to visualize the tongue in her cheek.
You've got to wonder -- If these guys are so convinced of their position's immutability, then why does the slightest challenge to it unleash such frenzied behavior?
