Year 3, Month 1, Day 31: Just The Facts, Ma’am.

The Milford-Orange Bulletin (CT) runs an article detailing the work of a new group, http://forecastthefacts.org/ , which has called out a local TV weatherdude on his denialist stance:

As if broadcast meteorologists didn’t have enough pressure to get their forecasts right during the season of ice and snow, an advocacy group is slamming them for denying climate change. And one of the perceived offenders is Connecticut’s Geoff Fox of WTIC (Fox Connecticut), who in turn calls the people behind the group “zealots.”

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The group says that’s because the majority of meteorologists don’t believe in it. The online group (forecastthefacts.org) asks the public to sign on to the campaign to hold weathercasters accountable. It has a petition urging the American Meteorological Society to take a position on the facts of climate change and make it known to members.

Fox, a longtime forecaster in the Hartford-New Haven market who also does a science segment for WTIC, said Wednesday, “I’m not a denier, I’m a skeptic. The people who are advocating for global warming treat it like it’s a religion. So it’s like blasphemy (to question it).”

Good for forecastthefacts.org. This one was fun and easy to write. Sent January 25:

When it comes to climate change, there’s one absolutely sure bet: when someone says, “I’m not a denier, I’m a skeptic,” it means he’s a denier. Skepticism is a philosophical stance in which claims without verifiable evidence are rejected in favor of those which can be confirmed. Genuine climate skeptics are extremely rare, because the plethora of available evidence has convinced almost all of them that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are triggering a greenhouse effect, with potentially catastrophic consequences for human civilization. Climate deniers, by contrast, are a dime a dozen. They can be identified by their fondness for unsupported categorical statements, such as Geoff Fox’s, “the people who are advocating for global warming treat it like it’s a religion.”

The comparison is upside-down. Those who ignore the sound science of climate change are rejecting robust but disturbing evidence, in favor of debunked but comforting platitudes. In other words, deniers.

Warren Senders