I’ve been scarce of late — a lot of recent travel, then this past week I was crashing on the cite-check for my latest book, then dashing out for a magazine interview (which you won’t believe, so I’ll see if it goes to print before mentioning any details), and then guest-hosting for G. Gordon Liddy on Monday.
Instead of staying for the G-Man’s Tuesday show, I had to bail and head back out to the country. Otherwise I would have been trapped in D.C. rather than trapped at home by that latest installment of winter deluge that is, apparently, precisely what scientists have been predicting as a result of global warming. (Hmm . . . seems to me severe winters returned a few years ago, once we began cooling — but more on that momentarily.)
But before heading out after Monday’s show I sat in a cubicle at Radio America and worked on the book, while someone in the next cube (for some reason) watched MSNBC. Really loud.
That was an experience — my first with the new, openly loony MSNBC. It had a certain comical quality to it, at once heavy-handed and fevered — thanks to the collapse of their hopeychangey candidate and his signature issues; Scott Brown’s election; Sarah Palin’s continued relevance; and now, severe winter weather.
One of the late-afternoon news hosts went off on a rant about how the severe winter weather we are experiencing on the Eastern seaboard (again) was precisely what scientists have been predicting for years that we should expect. (That’s a close paraphrase if not an exact quote — I heard it replayed again on a radio show the next day and then on a television talk show last night.) At first, they didn’t use the weasel-wording of “consistent with” — whatever happens weather-wise is “consistent with what we should expect,” as we heard on the publication of the unfortunate Steig, et al. and again last winter. (The “consistent with” used here came after what I assume was a moment of reflection).
Then, as Ed noted below, Keith Olberman treated us to a remarkable new definition of climate change which, particularly when reconciled with the decade-plus long “global warming” campaign, is all the more amusing by his attitude in introducing it. This oh-you-people-are-so-stupid pose even as one flaunts one’s own ignorance really adds a certain spice.
I’m not sure, but I believe that Olby is telling us that of course the Eastern seaboard was supposed to get colder and snowier and that’s why it is, duh. And, er, why the Midwest is, too. All of those places that were supposed to get warmer which is why they were were really supposed to get colder and that’s why they are. Science! Watch the clip, it’s short. And disregard people who, unlike Olberman and his peers, didn’t just jump to this issue to try and save the agenda and/or insulate a particularly strange and rather primitive worldview which, for many, drives it.
Yet, oddly, I actually had not heard that, but instead the opposite, and quite regularly (see “D’Aleao”, below). So I asked around. Because, really, you would think that these guys at MSNBC and others would trot these scientists out to point to their precise predictions of this. I mean, if they could.
Apparently, this insistence was the result of a blog post on Team Soros’ site, as one fellow who has his own highly trafficked website responded that “Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground via Romm [that’s Team Soros’ Joe “the Assassin” Romm] is what got this elevated”.
Masters is a meteorologist and meteorologists are relevant to the debate — but only when they agree; otherwise they are utterly irrelevant. Romm here calls Masters an “uber-meteorologist,” which means he really agrees with Romm. (I wrote about this specific practice in Red Hot Lies.)
This Masters fellow is also the only guy that the New York Times mustered to support the statement that “Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.”
Re-read that. Then overlook the “most climate scientists” thing — wow, he’s been a busy journalist! And who knew scientists were suddenly so loath to go on the record!? — so as to soak this one up:
“It is perhaps not coincidental that the snowstorm scuffle is playing out against a background of recent climate controversies: In recent months, global-warming critics have assailed a 2007 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and have claimed that e-mail messages and documents plucked from a server at a climate research center in Britain raise doubts about the academic integrity of some climate scientists. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators made light of the fact that the announcement of the creation of a new federal climate service on Monday had to be conducted by conference call, rather than news conference, because the federal government was shuttered by the storm.”
Coffee-spitting hilarious. And, er, what isn’t coincidental about these storms and another wicked winter coming on the heels of those global warming’s scandals? Did, ah, the Republicans arrange for it? Do tell. I smell a mighty big conspiracy coming. Or one soon-to-be-unhappy editor heaeded back from a coffee break right about . . . nnnnnow.
So, anyway, it seems that GE has some marching orders out to the kids over at MSNBC. They’ve got all of those old Enron Wind contraptions lying around that aren’t going to mandate themselves, people! And the Grey Lady is coming unglued. Alarmists are scrambling. NASA as we already know is freaking out.
For more, detailed and very enjoyable expose, head over to read Joe D’Aleo, a meteorologist and publisher of ICECAP, whose digging has produced observational data and other gems reflecting quite poorly on the unfolding, panicked claims.