The way the wind blows

update below

If you watch Fox News, you know that global warming was something Al Gore cooked up after he invented the internet just so he could win a Nobel Peace Prize.

According to critics of global warming, now known as climate change, the scientists may say one thing, but we all know better because it was a miserable winter in at least half the country. For the record, we had a mild winter here in Central Oregon. In fact, it was probably the warmest February on record, thanks to El Nino. Now that April is nearly here, it's snowing again.

According to an article in the New York Times, though, climate change not only pits almost all scientists against big oil/coal and overheated politicians, but it also pits climatologists against meteorologists. The former studies long-term weather trends, while the latter predicts short-term weather forecasts on TV.

Yes, the weatherman has improved his game in forecasts, but he or she still gets it wrong much too frequently. They would be more accurate if they didn't hype the weather so much. For example, when the temperature is going to drop a couple of degrees from one day to the next, this is not a cold front. Likewise, when temps break into the 70s from the upper 60s in the Central Oregon in late spring, it is not a heat wave. The hyperbole, more than anything else, undermines most local weather reports.

The reason is that weathermen must make the weather sound dramatic when it isn't. That's why it's humorous to see the meteorologists practicing caution and restraint when it comes to climate change. You would think they would love to hype weather armageddon, at least on a weekly basis.

But, they don't, because many of them don't believe climate change is real, or is out of the ordinary or caused by man.

They're entitled to their beliefs, but, outside of geologists, almost all scientists believe that climate change is happening. The oceans are expanding and icebergs are melting. Geologists believe this is a normal pattern. Climatologists do not.

The reason why climate change has so many doubters, is that there is an entire industry devoted to causing such doubt. Check out this story on Koch Industries, an American oil and pipeline conglomerate.

The story says:

"Koch Industries has 'become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition,' spending over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the climate denial machine, according to an extensive report today by Greenpeace. "

It even outspent ExxonMobil, if that's possible.

Here's another nugget from the article:

"The company’s founder, Fred Koch, who once earned $5 million building oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s reign, was a co-founder of the libertarian John Birch Society. Charles G. and David H. Koch, two of Fred’s four sons, each now own 42% of the company’s stock. According to 2009 Forbes rankings, the Koch brothers are tied for the 19th-richest person in the world, and for ninth-richest American, each worth between $14 and $16 billion, more than George Soros or the founders of Google."

Of course, all those billions are nothing against all those millions that scientists the world over own collectively. And you know scientists, always pushing an agenda from gravity to antibiotics. What's with those guys? Why do they always act like they're smarter than everyone else. Okay, they may be smarter than me or you, but what about all those teabaggers? Or John Birch?

Why should we trust people whose life work is to study the weather? Don't they have anything better to study? How about left-handedness? Or why some people detest Italian food? Something that matters.

But, no. Now scientists are trying to replicate the "Big Bang" with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Please, is this necessary? Do they need to destroy the planet in order to save it?

In the meantime, pass me the sunscreen.

update: The so-called "climategate" was bogus all along. A British inquiry says climate data was not manipulated. The story is here. A key paragraph from the story is below:

In their report released Wednesday, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."