By Robert Bradley Jr. — March 1, 2021
“To think you are smart enough to control nature and you must force people … to obey? That is the same kind of despotic behavior we have seen out of the worst tyrants.”
– Joe Bastardi (quoted below)
A recent E&E News article, “Fringe weatherman advised Abbott before deadly Texas storm” (February 25, 2021), is the latest marginalization job on a “climate science critic.” Author Scott Walderman begins his piece as follows:
Days before a historic snowstorm crippled his home state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sought advice from an unusual source: Joe Bastardi, the go-to weather forecaster of Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The hit piece (against Bastardi, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Abbott) goes downhill from there with ad hominem.
Here are the Bastardi quotations in Walderman’s piece:
By Bastardi’s telling, the conversation with Abbott wasn’t groundbreaking or controversial. “I said this is a winter version of a Category 5 hurricane,” Bastardi told E&E News.
Bastardi has claimed that carbon dioxide is not the “control knob” for the atmosphere. He has said that teaching children about climate science is “indoctrinating” them. He has suggested that burning more fossil fuels will benefit the planet by increasing carbon dioxide levels.
On Tuesday, Bastardi said he wants to emphasize to Cruz and Abbott in future conversations that the electrical grid should not be so reliant on renewable energy…. “Wind and solar power are supplements to the main diet,” he said.
In a post for the Heartland Institute, the climate denial advocacy group where Bastardi is a senior fellow, he wrote last week that people using extreme weather conditions to justify climate action “reveals a certain kind of narcissism.”
“To think you are smart enough to control nature and you must force people … to obey?” he wrote. “That is the same kind of despotic behavior we have seen out of the worst tyrants.”
Scott Walderman ends his piece by quoting Andrew Rosenberg, Director, Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists:
“When these guys are talking to Bastardi,” Rosenberg said, “they’re trying to come up with maybe aliens did it or it’s sunspots.”
At this point in the not-so-grand debate, it’s all about sound bites and PR, with no quarter given to any person or view that challenges the climate orthodoxy of alarmism/forced energy transformation.
Mainstream Climate Misdirection
An important takeaway from the Great Texas Blackout is that weathermen and weatherwomen are the experts, not climate scientists whose warmer-winter predictions proved to be a great distraction.
It was supposed to be a warm 2020/2021 winter Texas-way, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (U.S. Winter Outlook: Cooler North, warmer South with ongoing La Nina).
And winters in general are supposed to be warmer with less extreme cold events, according to climate models. As flagged by Bjorn Lomborg, all climate models predict fewer cold days and cold nights. He links to “Future extreme climate changes linked to global warming intensity” [Science Bulletin (December 30, 2017), where the authors state:
Based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) daily dataset … under the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario … [c]old extremes decreaseand warm extremes increase in a warmer world, and cold extremes tend to be more sensitive to global warming than the warm ones.
But, but … it’s global weirding, John Kerry and the MSM now insist, a catch-all phrase when global warming predictions result in anomalies. Lomborg’s tweet deserves the last word:
How is this science? Global warming is rebranded “global weirding.” CBS & Kerry wants you to believe climate change also leads to *colder* temperatures. Of course, convenient to blame everything on climate But wrong.
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E&E Reporter Scott Walderman is a moron.
It really IS as simple as that. You can’t fix stupid.
Every Bastardi quote cited above is true, perceptive, and right on the money. The “hit piece” is ironically a confirmation of JB’s excellent understanding of the Great Climate Hoax. Walderman and Rosenberg are twits. E&E News has been Lefty propaganda garbage for their entire existence.
Recommended reading if you dare https://www.cfact.org/2021/02/27/timeline-of-my-warnings-on-historic-texas-cold/
Those are the public statements I made Clients were being warned Monday about how bad this was going to be as an energy company had to know when their preloads were not going to be useful if based on the models. On Saturday night before I had a 745 pm conference call, right after I got out of church ( this is 8 days before) with some meteorologists in Arkansas on the matter. There is an advantage to be a total weather nut who lists the WPC daily weather map site as one of sites I spend the most time on. looking at weather maps so when crazy things like 1899. show up, I can recognize it. I don’t think this makes me better but it may make me different.. In fact from now on instead of JB. you can call me the Fringe. Sort of like the Edge on U2. Heh sometimes you just gotta smile at all this
Dear Fringe,
Ten gold stars! Again, for the umpteenth time, you called the weather before it happened when few or nobody else did.
I’m going to call you America’s Top Weatherman from now on. So please use that handle whenever you wish.
Please refrain from using derogatory terms for persons with intellectual disabilities. They cannot help it, and many of them bless us in unexpected ways. Using disabilities as an insult is crass.
For the most part, the folks being criticized here are not lacking in IQ. Rather, they have accepted a quasi-religious world view that blinds them to counter narratives. It is a herd mentality, like the Salem Witch Trials, that was identified long ago in the parable of the emperor’s new clothes. They just can’t accept that they are the naked ones.
“An important takeaway from the Great Texas Blackout is that weathermen and weatherwomen are the experts, not climate scientists whose warmer-winter predictions proved to be a great distraction.”
This was my forecast before this extreme Winter weather hit Texas.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/65704/#66168
Yes, we did a much better job forecasting this particular SHORT TERM/WEATHER event than longer term predictions could ever do.
That will always be the case. The farther out the time frame of the forecast period is, the less skill is expected.
But here’s the thing with that and operational meteorologists. We are also wrong a lot too. Wrong enough, many times every year to stay humble and reconcile our actual forecast(before the weather happened) with what actually happened.
We base much of our weather forecasting on global computer models. Models that sometimes cause us to be wrong…..even though they are programmed with thousands of the best mathematical equations to represent the physics of the atmosphere.
When this happens with regularity(weather models being wrong) it causes the user to be cognizant of the limitations of models and also to be accountable when it happens………acknowledge a busted forecast ASAP, so you can adjust quickly to provide a BETTER UPDATED forecast.
Forecasting climate, especially for periods that are decades from now is different in many ways. However, the user is also completely dependent on global climate models……simulations of the atmosphere using mathematical equations to represent the physics.
The problem with many climate scientists is that they never have to reconcile their forecast with empirical data/observations with the regularity that a meteorologist does. A climate scientist in 2021, for instance. projecting climate in the year 2100 will be dead long before having to reconcile a busted projection and learning from it.
This seems to have been the rule, not the exception in climate science during the last 40 years. Predictions that bust with high frequency (often too warm) but are not reconciled because the climate model users give so much weighting to the models, that they get married to the model solutions/simulations and are slow to………..or even unwilling to be humble enough to make needed adjustments.
Dr. Spencer had a wonderful article discussing, exactly this:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/
It is my impression that weather forecasts have a higher rate of false-positives than false-negatives.
I say we listen to the mainstream media and climate “scientists”. After they do have a perfect track record at 100% (of wrong predictions)!
I like Bastardis Saturday briefing -although I am from Sweden .
He shows the weather maps and try to find similar years to see the development.
He is sceptical to those who think normal weather is the normal and everything else is our fault.
I guess the rest of the Weathermen has sold their souls or prefer to sty low and silent.
Remember the snow of 1888-is on Youtube!
We in the UK downgraded the Met Office’s seasonal forecasts to ‘junk status’ about 10 years ago.
It takes true skill to get it wrong each and every winter. A no-nothing should get it right close to 50% of the time just through flipping a coin.
Walderman is the quack, not Bastardi.
Bastardi tends to get things right. How that must annoy them
Wind and solar power are supplements to the main diet in the same way that Twinkies are. They do not add value, but rather detract it.
Joe has forgotten more about meteorology than these fools have ever known.
Joe Bastardi is right…CO2 is beneficial to the planet. In fact, a report I read just yesterday touted a 10% increase in the greening of Mother Earth over the last 2 decades, most of that as a result of shrinkage in the northern African desert. CO2 promotes plant life, which in turn releases oxygen, even for the mouth-breathing liberals that are stuck on anthropogenic causes as the prime mover to this transient warming.
I’ve been a fan of no-nonsense Bastardi from his student days at U-Penn as well as his stint at Accuweather. He’s an excellent climatologist as well as a meteorologist.
“It was supposed to be a warm 2020/2021 winter Texas-way, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”
Climatically, that is a correct statement and for December & January, it was following the climate norm of a warm La Nina winter:
OK, +1.9 & +1.6 …then February came with the outlier:
...THE DALLAS/FORT WORTH CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY 2021... CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1981 TO 2010 CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1898 TO 2021 WEATHER OBSERVED NORMAL DEPART LAST YEAR`S VALUE DATE(S) VALUE FROM VALUE DATE(S) NORMAL ................................................................ TEMPERATURE (F) RECORD HIGH 96 02/25/1904 LOW -8 02/12/1899 HIGHEST 81 02/23 80 1 81 02/02 LOWEST -2 02/16 22 -24 25 02/14 AVG. MAXIMUM 50.8 60.4 -9.6 59.8 AVG. MINIMUM 31.4 39.4 -8.0 39.4 MEAN 41.1 49.9 -8.8 49.6Waco NWS & Amarillo NWS had similar numbers.
Amarillo NWS office has a good writeup concerning El Nino’s & the Panhandle. From the text:
What about Amarillo?
Although it is unwise to contribute any one weather event to El Niño or La Niña, the generalized effects can be seen over an entire season. A detailed analysis of the weather over the past 60 years at Amarillo has been conducted. A comparison was made between temperature and precipitation observations and the status of El Niño/La Niña based on the Niño 3.4 Index. In general, El Niño conditions lead to wetter, snowier conditions in Amarillo and cooler maximum temperatures during the winter. La Niña conditions lead to drier and warmer temperatures overall, with notable extreme cold spells. In stronger El Niño or La Niña episodes, these trends are even greater.
https://www.weather.gov/ama/elnino
I don’t get it – historically, La Nina winters are dryer & warmer than the long-term norm & that is what was happening…what’s the problem, they didn’t catch the quick anomaly? What was your forecast?
Bastardi studies climate history and his forecasts use past climate cyclical events to predict upcoming conditions. His AGW detractors ignore the history of climat and changes far too often.
The Texas energy supply tragedy occurred when the renewable supply failed at a crucial upswing in energy load and cascaded with failures when alternative energy sources took time to bring on and switchgear/transformer failures occurred.
These propagandists are not stupid. They are trying to convince people of a lie that will allow governments to have complete control over them. Look at the electric car. Governments around the world are mandating them by 2030. By 2030 batteries will only let you go about 350 miles and will still take about 8 hours to fully charge, that way the governments control your travel and movement.
Ahem….from my 90’s era website. It caused NO suicides nor accidents:
Carbon is 84% of petroleum and makes 80% of all our energy.All life on Earth is carbon based.
The UN will soon declare CO2 a poison.
The control and taxing of carbon will give the elected/unelected ruling castes more power than anything since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 AD.
It is just that simple.
As a pilot I will listen to what Joe Bastardi has to say if I want to stay alive. In the days of calling the FAA for a weather briefing I could be in Texas and they would tell me there may be a little fog in the morning. I would wake up to thunderstorms all quadrants. I will trust a straight shooting forecaster like Joe any day over the agenda driven ones.
Nonetheless, Big Joe nailed the forecast on Feb 10th and gave the warning.
Bastardi got it right, makes the hit job lines in the article look silly
Two weeks before the Texas Freeze, Joe Bastardi was pointing to models and analogous years indicating unusually cold conditions lining up for texas and the Plains. The weekend before frigid conditions emerged, Bastardi frantically contacted media and Gov. Abbott warning of “Cat 5” Cold… but no one in authority seemed to have lifted a finger.
The Snark Kings at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the like, of course, have no insight into weather, climate or atmospheric physics. Basically, they’re loud mouth parasites.
Joe Bastardi is the man. He was spot on regarding multiple snow storms impacting the Northeast in Feb. He called these storms two weeks in advance.