Heidi Cullen, a Weather Channel meteorologist who hosts the station’s alarmist weekly program The Climate Code, created a media stir on January 18 by calling on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to decertify meteorologists who disagree with her alarmist global warming views.
Politically Correct Warming
On her Weather Channel Web log, Cullen stated, “If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval.”
Added Cullen, “It’s like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It’s not a political statement … it’s just an incorrect statement.”
Nuremberg Trials
Cullen’s aggressive remarks continued a recent trend of global warming alarmists seeking vengeance on scientists who disagree with their theories. In 2006 Dave Roberts, prominently featured in the December 17, 2006 episode of Cullen’s The Climate Code, called for Nuremburg-style trials to convict and execute global warming skeptics.
Similarly, university-appointed state climatologists in Delaware, Oregon, and Virginia have been threatened with dismissal from their positions because they have raised questions about suspect global warming assertions. (See story, page 10.)
Scientific Method Ignored
Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, noted the irony of scientists calling for draconian reprisals against skeptics of global warming alarmism.
“The entire scientific method is built upon the enormous value of skepticism,” Burnett said. “Good science depends on skeptical voices challenging the dominant belief until theory is proven to be fact. Until and unless all reasonable doubt has been removed from a scientific theory, scientific challenge and debate is essential to the scientific process and, ultimately, human well-being. History has certainly proven that over and over again.
“With this in mind, what they should be doing is stripping away the credentials of those who seek to stifle scientific debate. Those who seek to stifle scientific debate are the true enemies of science,” Burnett added.
Eco-Money OK
Writing on the Web site of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Marc Morano, communications director for U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), noted a deep irony in claims by global warming alarmists that skeptical scientists are merely pandering for industry dollars.
Morano wrote, “The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming skepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often-media-derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget.”
Burnett concurred. “Scientists and policy analysts seeking to profit economically from their position on global warming have a very easy choice to make. All the big money from government grants, non-government organizations, and foundation gifts is dependent upon the perpetuation of global warming fears,” Burnett observed.
Dr. John Dale Dunn ([email protected]), an inactive attorney, teaches emergency medicine at Fort Hood, Texas and is a member of the Science and Policy Advisory Board of the American Council on Science and Health.
For more information …
“Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics,” by Marc Morano, Inhofe EPW Press Blog, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528
