Global Warming is big business.  And no matter which side of the aisle you stand on you can point your finger at various companies and industries about their influence in shaping policies in regard to Global Warming, or it’s new cooler name (no pun intended) “Climate Change”.

If you’re a believer then you’re going to point your finger at the oil and automobile industry and say they are trying to prevent the truth from getting out.  If you’re a non-believer than your going to point your finger at the carbon credit and “green” industries with companies such as GE and say they are trying to use fear-mongering techniques to scare us all into buying their products.

In a recent Gallop Poll on if or not Global Warming is being seriously exaggerated in the news, 59 percent of Republicans said it was, along with 18 percent of Democrats – that’s a total of 77 percent of registered voters that were polled with the exception of independents which were not shown.

I suppose that a lot of people are like myself in that I get irritated after a weather event happens  (e.g. tornado, hurricane or a wild fire) when the media produces their “experts” who write articles and give interviews on how Global Warming contributed to the event.

I think that the media greatly over-hypes the Global Warming aspect to these stories, if there is really such an aspect at all.  It happens after every hurricane that impacts the United States,  it happens after every out-of-season tornado or really devastating tornado that hits a town (as if “Global Warming” could just steer a tornado straight into a town), it happens after every major wildfire.

One such event happened in February 2009 after a large and violate tornado hit the small Oklahoma township of Lone Grove.  In less than a week, an news story caught my eye where a storm chaser and a storm chasing tour competitor no less stated that he believed that the tornado was caused due to (you guessed it) – Global Warming.  Here is the full context of the article - http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/storm-chaser-believes-global-warming,713368.shtml.

And he’s not the only storm chaser that is dealing the Global Warming card on the table.  Recently photographer Jim Reed authored a book that was published by Abrams Publishing of New York.  In their marketing information used to sell the book they say this –

Issues of global warming continue to be relevant, and every day brings front-page stories about the weather, generating new research, raising even more questions and possible solutions. Storm Chaser is a mesmerizing look at some of the catastrophic consequences of our planet’s increasing temperature, captured by an expert in the field.

Really? Everyday Global Warming brings front-page stories about the weather? That’s interesting – Global Warming sells newspapers.  I’m digging that.  Even though that’s not the message their marketing department wanted to convey – but nonetheless, it’s their words – not mine.  I also think the last line in the quote should have stated “photographer in the field,” and not “expert”.  No offense to Jim, but he’s not an expert on Global Warming as the quote is implying – at least not to my best knowledge.  He is however an expert photographer and a great forecaster and storm chaser.

Its a marketing technique that has proven success.  Al Gore has made over $100 million by exploiting unsound scientific data and packaging it into a presentation that was well delivered.   So it seems that not only do politicians have an edge on Global Warming by helping sell carbon credits and making a buck, but storm chasers have now figured out that Global Warming is good for their businesses as well.

In a blog post from March 2008, AccuWeather’s Lead Forecaster Joe Bastardi spoke out about Global Warming and provided his thoughts and opinions about Al Gore’s success.  Yes, this guy is a real scientist that does real science stuff and actually studies the atmosphere – not to mention that he’s an expert on tropical weather systems and hurricanes.  Here is what meteorologist Bastardi had to say:

I am absolutely astounded that someone who refuses to publicly debate anyone on this matter and has no training in the field narrated a movie where frames of nuclear explosions were interspersed in a subliminal way in scenes of droughts and flood, among other major gaffes, can say these things and then have them accepted… by anyone.

The list of degreed meteorologists, climatologists, scientists, that signed the Manhatten declaration stating their disagreement with Mr. Gore’s premises grows by the day.

What gets me most is he goes on unchallenged one-on-one on this. Never in all my years of competition have I seen someone elevated to a level that he is, in any thing, without any face-to-face competition to establish credibility.

When someone gets a PhD, his or her thesis is normally attacked, for lack of a better word, in something known as the “orals,” at least it was for those venturing into those waters at PSU.

I don’t always agree with Joe Bastardi, but when I do disagree with him it’s typically over something said in a forecast – and that is expected to happen amongst weather forecasters.  But, I whole-heartily agree with Bastardi on his thoughts and philosophical views towards Mr. Gore’s successes based on bad data for a political agenda.

The problem is with the public – they don’t read.  They don’t study the facts themselves – they just take what someone says at face value and run with it.   I find it funny that when Mr. Gore was the Vice President that nobody would trust him with their kids, but as soon as he’s out-of-office we not only fully believe that he invented the Internet, but we follow along like puppies being strung along on this big fairy tale about Global Warming and the Earth’s destruction.  Yet, there so many things in his film that one could easily have pointed to as being false – if people would have just looked!

In fact, even the animal species in Mr. Gore’s movie that he claims have gone extinct as victims from Global Warming were even false.  One of the animals shown in Gore’s movie presentation was the Thlyacine, or “Tasmanian Tiger”.  Yes, it’s a creature that no longer survives on Earth.  No, it didn’t die from Global Warming – but it did die due to human influence because they were over-hunted.  In fact, the last one died on a concrete floor in 1936 while imprisoned in it’s cage.  Global Warming had nothing to do with it.

Non-Profits are Big Money Too

Greenpeace is another organization that is hyping Global Warming in order to try to increase their donations.  Greenpeace of course only gets money when someone gives it to them because they don’t sell anything – but they use this money to fund actions in order to raise awareness to various problems.

Most of those problems I do agree with and I love Greenpeace’s mission overall – but I really wish they would stop pushing “Global Warming” because I think in the long run it’s going to hurt their overall image.  If Global Warming is in fact not what is happening – are people going to be forgiving of an organization that pushed an agenda which shaped policies and experiments that actually did hurt our planet?  Doubtful.

Again, I’m going to go back to AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Bastardi who recently agreed to debate officials from Greenpeace on live national television – but something happened…the debate didn’t take place.  Who backed out?  You watch the video and see for yourself.

That’s right – when push came to shove Greenpeace pulled a “Gore Maneuver” and decided it was best to not debate a real scientist that probably had scientific charts and graphs to back up his claims, and worse – that those charts and graphs were based on real scientific data collection – and they weren’t doctored up by some politician with a lot to gain, and nothing to lose.   Yep – it’s best to stay off television and away from those types of people when you’re asking people to give you money so you can fight a cause with so much scientific uncertainty.

Let me get back to the storm chasers – because this is a group of people that I know and I have a lot of respect for, including my storm chasing tour competitors (most of them anyway).   For the one in question, I do have respect for him as a storm chaser and a competent forecaster – I think anything less than my respect for that would be completely absurd.  I have seen him time and time again while I am chasing and while I have never chased with him personally – I do know that he’s either a highly competent forecaster, or he at least has some around him.  But he should know better than to drop the Global Warming bomb out there and hope to transport customers from their sofas to his vans.

Even the very well respected tornado scientist Dr. Charles Doswell, with whom works with the tour company in question – has himself published the fact that one of his pet peeves is -

If a weather event of some sort (e.g., a tornado) happens to hit in a place or at a time that is climatologically unusual, then it is attributed variously to such things as – Global Warming, El Niño/Southern Oscillation, Gravity waves, Atomic bomb tests (out of vogue, at the moment), Conditional Symmetric Instability, Clashing air masses, Sunspot cycles (not as popular as it was), The most recent volcanic eruption, Elvis Presley, UFOs, Ill will on the part of the Deity, etc. [all clearly outside the domain of "establishment science"].

The (un) funny thing about this is that my competitor’s statements were given to the media when responding about a tornado that happened in February ~ which is a weather event that hit during a time that is climatologically unusual.   And, Jim Reed’s book publisher was referring to exactly these types of situations – “weather events caused by Global Warming making front-page news stories.”

Why aren’t these people thinking?

Blaming these events on everything (including Elvis) is a pet peeve of many forecasters, I just pointed out Dr. Doswell due to his highly respected status as a meteorologist and as a storm chaser and I won’t lie – the fact that he also works with the tour company in question, or at least has in the past had a lot to do with it as well.

Jim Reed evidently named his dog “Doswell” – so both the chasers referred to, seem to have a great deal of respect for Dr. Doswell as well  And, I would like to think that when they are sitting back watching the news and they see some “expert” come on the news after a major weather event and blame it on uncertain science that they get upset about it as well.   Yet, when it came time to turn a buck they either sold themselves out, or perhaps they really do believe that Global Warming is creating tornadoes – I don’t know.

What I do know is this – while I can easily see the benefits from laying blame of such weather events to Global Warming as a means to “get your name out there”, I would encourage all storm chasers to use a lot of caution when doing so.  Not because someone with too much free time on their hands might end up blogging about you – but because everything you say that gets printed on the Internet – it’s there forever.  You can’t take it back.

So, if you’re not absolutely sure about the scientific uncertainty of a topic – at least conduct some hard research before trying to use it as a selling point for your book, your tour company or latest DVD or whatever it is that you’re selling.  Otherwise, there are probably better ways to market your product, your service and yourself.

You can toast me for my opinion of Al Gore’s movie – but all I ask before you do is that instead of just shaping your opinion of what you know about Climate Change or Global Warming from what you’ve seen in Gore’s movie, or what you see while watching nationally syndicated news networks – get some real science!  If you’re unsure of where you can go to get that science, you can start with asking the thousands of scientist listed in the link section below by clicking on the link to the Manhattan Declaration’s website for their names and universities or organizations.

And one last note because I have to be fair, while I highly protest the strong “Global Warming” alarmist phrasing of the marketing techniques being used to sell Jim Reed’s books – the photographs in the book itself are exceptional, Jim is a truly gifted photographer.   I do recommend you purchase the book and see the 180 full-color photographs for yourself – you can do so on Amazon.com

Do your research and arm yourself with knowledge!  In the meantime, I feel a cold wind blowing.

Links

Joe Bastardi Blog Post as Referenced Above: http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/03/joe_bastardi_responds_to_gores.html

Manhattan Declaration (Names of creditable scientist opposed to “Global Warming”): http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63

Tags: Opinion