This is the season of the whistleblower. First, we had the IRS and FBI whistleblowers. Now we have Dr. Judith Curry who has blown the whistle on the extreme climatologists. Dr. Curry is a leading climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. However, before describing her "conversion," let me give some background of the climate change movement.
The term Global Warming was first used by James Hansen in 1988. Al Gore picked up on the term and predicted that we have just "ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin." (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006.) Global Warming became the term used by the climate alarmists until 2009. Then what happened? Alarmist information was exposed during Climategate when their files were hacked in East Anglia, England. Here are a couple of quotes from those 2009 exposed files:
"I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020....I seem to be getting an e-mail a week from skeptics saying where's the warming gone."--Head of the Climatic Research Unit, England.
Another quote from an activist in Boulder, Colorado: "We are asking here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record.... The high for the last two days (during October) was below 30F and the normal is 69F....The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."
So, the battle cry was changed from Global Warming to Climate Change. Now it could be touted in winter as well as summer. And all sorts of weather-related events could be blamed on man's use of fossil fuels. It was the extremists' objective to do away with fossil fuels, and to reward underprivileged countries with the proceeds from taxing the affluent--i.e., redistribution of wealth on the international stage.
With that background let's return to the climate whistleblower, Dr. Curry. After she published information on the growing frequency and intenseness of hurricanes in recent years, she says that she became "the darling of the corporate media." She was flown all over the country to meet politicians and treated like a rock star. She says that she enjoyed the publicity.
But then some scientists pointed out that there were gaps in her data. As a true scientist Dr. Curry examined these criticisms and found them to be true. So, she decided to come clean. She now says that the fearmongering "science" has been fabricated to make the public believe we are facing a "climate emergency." We must quickly face these alleged risks in order to "save the planet."
Further she says that the alarmists became careful to avoid releasing data under the Freedom of Information Act, and they petitioned to fire editors of publications that opposed their objectives. Little if anything is now allowed in those publications unless it agrees with the alarmist positions. If a person wishes to succeed in appointments in the climate field, they must kow-tow to the extremists' agenda. The United Nations became involved. She said that some UN officials were motivated by anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and used climate change to further their objectives. This also is true in this country. Her conclusion is that we now have a massive government-funded climate alarmism complex.
That's a summary of her change of heart. Allow me to add a couple of instances of "rules for thee but not for me." Al Gore has a huge house that uses as much fuel in one month as the average US homeowner uses in a whole year. In addition, he flies all over the place in a gas guzzling private jet. He probably eats meat as he sets a very poor example! Then John Kerry, our present energy czar, also has jet hypocrisy. His family jet burned 325 metric tons of carbon during Biden's first 18 months. However earlier this year he said: "one of the most outrageously persistent lies that I get is that I own a private jet. We don't own a private jet. I don't own a private jet. I personally have never owned a private jet." Technically he's correct. But his wife Teresa Heinz owned their private jet which he used for many years. Only when the heat got too uncomfortable did she sell it in February 2023. They now use private jets owned by others.
Back to the whistleblowers. Dr. Curry is not alone in notable scientists objecting to the activists' agenda. Dr. John Clauser, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Physics prize, says that the climate emergency claims are a "dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world's economy and the well-being of billions of people." It is a hoax, he warns. Further, Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, says that the anti-carbon dioxide narrative is a scam. CO2 in the atmosphere is beneficial to plant growth. It is essential to all life on earth. Moore says that environmentalism has "abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism." Around 300 climate professors agree in a "World Climate Declaration." They say that the earth's climate has varied with cold and warm periods for as long as the planet has existed, and therefore it is "no surprise that we are experiencing a period of warming." Wouldn't it be nice if the compliant media would carefully study the work of the whistleblowers and report honest conclusions?
Peter Gilderson, Madison.
