The severe floods that occurred in Texas over the weekend of July 4th was a massive natural disaster. Families experienced unimaginable grief as a result of the lost lives. The fact that so many of the casualties were young children is particularly hard to comprehend.
The careless blame game that almost quickly followed the catastrophe only served to deepen the anguish. From Texas Governor Greg Abbott to President Donald Trump, many on the left were eager to blame Republicans.
Naturally, the climate cult once more vilified global warming, fossil fuels, and other well-known villains from the past (or Gore). The organization Climate Central was only able to hold back until July 8 before rushing out to have a press briefing to restate their tenets that the Texas storms were made more likely and violent by a warming climate and that climate change causes more extreme weather.
Anyone who disagrees is frequently labeled a climate denial by left-wing climate organizations. However, very few people truly dispute that the climate does, in fact, change, frequently significantly. Long before human behavior could be blamed, the archeological record demonstrates that the earth has warmed, cooled, flooded, and gone through several other climate-related upheavals over the ages. However, organizations like as Climate Central point to the combustion of fossil fuels as the contemporary offender.
The cult shouts down and buryes any courageous person who dares to question the extent to which greenhouse gases and carbon emissions contribute to climate change under a mountain of academic papers written by the vast majority of the scientific community.
The good news is that, according to documents examined by The New York Times, the Energy Department has hired at least three scientists who are well-known for rejecting the overwhelming body of scientific evidence on climate change. This was reported by the newspaper on the same day that Climate Central was repeating its tried-and-true rhetoric, and it was probably regarded as an expose.
For millions of other Americans who think that the fight for affordable and reliable energy supplies is more political than scientific, what the Times and the brainwashed left found alarming is a welcome relief.
Recent polling makes it evident that fewer Americans are being successfully propagandized. Harry Enten, a CNN statistics analyst, informed viewers on July 11 that by 2020, 46% of Americans were extremely concerned about climate change, up from 35% in 1989. However, Enten acknowledged to some surprise that only 40% of Americans are currently very concerned about climate change. The public’s growing skepticism about climate change is likely due to the fact that most Americans are aware of how easily data can be manipulated for political purposes.
Similarly, hundreds of scientists frequently do not write individual climate science treatises. Each one is authored by a small group of researchers at most, who then share their work and invite others to sign on, providing activists with the evidence they need to assert that the vast majority of scientists agree. Actually, there is an increasing issue with scientific publications being published as authoritative when they are not.
Thankfully, there has always been a subset of scientists who are prepared to defy authority and conduct their own independent interpretations of climate data. Among the courageous are the three scientists—meteorologist Roy Spencer, atmospheric scientist John Christy, and physicist Steven E. Koonin—who were employed by the Energy Department and singled out by the Times for voicing doubts about man-made climate change.
In previous decades, a fundamental principle of science was to challenge everything, based on the idea that the only way to discover the truth was to raise questions and worries. “Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future,” Koonin wrote in an essay published in the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s hope for a new era of climate enlightenment, driven by scientists, journalists, and others with the curiosity and guts to challenge everything, rather than using natural calamities as justifications to launch assaults and assign blame using the same stale, lockstep rhetoric.
Longtime newspaper editor, reporter, and columnist Gary Abernathy most recently worked for the Washington Post. He writes a contributing piece for The Empowerment Alliance, a group that promotes practical methods of conserving energy and protecting the environment.
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