Year 3, Month 5, Day 31: Sounds Pretty Fair And Balanced To Me….

The West Virginia Gazette-Journal has an editorial by some brave fellow who dares to speak the truth in the midst of Coal Country:

Last year, America suffered historic weather calamities: disastrous tornadoes, severe floods, extended drought, record-breaking snowfall, raging wildfires, etc. Federal agencies say $52 billion in property loss was inflicted, and more than 1,000 Americans died in weather ravages.

This year brought the warmest March ever known, breaking about 15,000 local U.S. heat records. Early tornadoes again left wreckage and death.

Scientists say the violent weather is solid evidence that fossil fuel fumes are girdling Planet Earth with greenhouse gases that produce global warming and climate change. Warmer air holds more moisture, producing more extreme storms.

A new study by Yale and George Mason university pollsters found that 70 percent of Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” Yale professor Anthony Laiserowitz commented: “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Read the comments for the full effect. Sent May 21:

On one side of the Great Climate Change Debate, we have almost every single scientific association on Earth. Their overwhelming consensus, built on the integrated results of thousands of different studies and research projects over the past five decades, is that climate change is real, it’s dangerous, human consumption of fossil fuels is a major factor, and doing something about it before it gets worse is both an economic and an environmental necessity.

On the other side, we have the oil-funded American Association of Petroleum Geologists along with a few other scientists (like Dr. Richard Lindzen, who still firmly believes the link between cigarettes and cancer is statistically inconclusive). We have conservative “think-tanks” like the Heartland Institute (recently famous for recklessly comparing environmentalists with mass murderers), a coterie of professional denialists whose voices are heard constantly in our broadcast and print media, and a major political party firmly opposed to science of every sort. Their interpretation of the data? There is no such thing as climate change; if there is, it’s not dangerous; if it’s dangerous, it’s not caused by humans; if it’s caused by humans, it’s too expensive to address. And anyway: Liberals! Socialism! Squirrel!

Warren Senders