Essay by Eric Worrall
What kind of religion would climate change be, without some good old fashioned conversion stories?
‘I thought climate change was a hoax. Now I’ve changed my mind’
Sarah Ott spent years believing climate change was a hoax, influenced by friends at church in the US south and a popular right-wing radio host. Here she shares her journey from being a climate sceptic to becoming an advocate for clean energy, with a passion for teaching teenage school students the science of climate change. She features on this year’s BBC 100 Women list.
I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn’t believe in the science either.
When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.
…
We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.
…
My conviction that climate change was a hoax solidified when I heard Limbaugh talk about Climategate. It was a controversy involving research from the University of East Anglia. Only much later did I learn that the material was twisted and taken out of context.
…
An independent enquiry cleared the UEA scientists of wrongdoing and concluded that “their rigour and honesty are not in doubt”.
…
That’s when the big turning point came.
I tuned into NPR, a US non-profit broadcaster. I don’t remember which show it was, or the specific news story, but I remember how they described the issue in a completely different way from what I had heard on my usual stations. And it sounded so reasonable.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67483064
What I find most striking about Sarah’s conversion story is the lack of detail.
Sarah claims she realised how wrong she was about climate change when she started tuning in to NPR.
Would that be the same NPR / PBS which somehow blurred the signature of physics legend Edward Teller, during their rather feeble expose of the climate skeptic Oregon Petition? PBS claims Teller’s signature was blurred to emphasise other content, not to hide the fact a climate skeptic petition signatory was one of the USA’s greatest physicists.
Sarah Ott claims she doesn’t remember which NPR story triggered a fundamental re-appraisal of her life views.
I find this claim to not remember the details of such a life changing event a little puzzling. Why wouldn’t Sarah make an effort to share that special life changing story which can reach climate skeptics and Conservatives?
I don’t know about you, but the handful of life events which caused fundamental pivots in my values and life choices, I remember them like they were yesterday. Like the time I got so mad I finally decided to defend myself against the schoolyard bully. Such pivotal moments in one’s life tend to stand out.
Sarah accepts at face value that an “independent inquiry” concluded the Climategate scientists’ “rigour and honesty are not in doubt” – but doesn’t mention any specific emails she found troubling. Did she not bother to look at Climategate for herself?
The British BBC, which published this religious and political conversion story, would love for you heathen climate deniers to blindly follow Sarah’s example, to switch off conservative commentators and tune in to NPR, so you can have your scientific, political and religious views corrected. But they must think we are all really dumb, if this pathetic conversion story is their idea of persuasive marketing.
Perhaps the BBC is so used to abusing the trust of their own loyal fans, they have gotten complacent, and think everyone is easy game.
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It sounds to me as if the charming Ms Ott had a brief phone chat with a journalist at the Beeb, who then ghost-wrote the article to fit into a nice tale of conversion and redemption, filling in with some rather vague and inconsistent details. And making a nice contrast between what we are invited to assume are the rabidly racist, misogynistic, slavering lies of Rush Limbaugh and the calmly measured objective truths of NPR.
That’s what journalists do – all of them – they take your words and hammer them into something you might not even recognise. Here’s a couple of probable journalistic artifacts.
“I remember the first time I ever encountered the term “climate change” … in the late 1990s and I read an article…” Well, someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall hearing or seeing “climate change” until it became obvious that “global warming” wasn’t alarming enough for the alarmists, in about the early 2010s [I suspect that the journalist is young and may not even know there was a time when it was only global warming].
There’s also a disconnect between Sarah apparently being a Roman Catholic and the juxtaposition of “all I had in my social circle was my church group” with “Protestantism in the US south tends to have a strong anti-intellectual background” (which the reader is intended to interpret as “knuckle-dragging, gay-bashing, pistol-toting, black-lynching, cross-burning, immigrant-hating Neanderthals”).
Excellent detective work! Logic! Logic!! 🙂
First time I drove down south from ultra sophisticated and superior Wokeachusetts back in the early ’70s, that’s exactly what I expected to see in the Dixie population. I was amazed to see it wasn’t true. Sure, there’s some people like that in that region but plenty here in WK too.
The fact the BBC covered this on their website is beyond parody. Reveals just how low this once great organisation has sunk. There’s no news value in the piece and it’s really one big own goal given that religion appears the only reason this woman changed her view. From one religious belief to another, apparently.
She comes across as a very confused lady. She fits the type of back
in the ’60s would be taking “mothers little helpers. She has
her religion and sexuality confused among other things.
“Beware of false prophets” is what comes to my mind. Specifically applied to this situation but generally applied to the “AGW religion” in general (see Matthew 7:15)
This reads more like a comedy skit for SNL!
“I went on to study zoology at university and became a science teacher”.
“We listened to Rush Limbaugh, a radio host known for his controversial opinions on topics such as race, LGBT rights and women, and I would hear him every day for two hours.
He would talk about how climate change was just a hoax.
Up to that point, I had been exposed to a lot of misinformation about evolution in my church groups, but I had studied the theory of evolution at university, so I was equipped to spot it.
But I didn’t have that same skill set for climate change.”
Seriously, a SCIENCE teacher was getting her science from Limbaugh?
Now, the same SCIENCE teacher gets her science from NPR?
Don’t they have internet where she lives?
Any person with a 5th grade education knows how to use the Internet to research and learn about millions of topics, from basic knowledge to the most complex.
We’re supposed to believe that a SCIENCE teacher, never thought to use the internet to learn about climate SCIENCE? Especially one so smart because she studied SCIENCE at University.
On a related not. As a meteorologist the past 41 years (11 on television, 1982-1993) I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to speak at 100+ schools about the weather.
It’s always science classes that are studying chapters about weather.
7 years ago, a science teacher at one of the schools where I’m the chess coach at(1 of the 5 schools I coach chess at), asked if I would give a talk to her 5th graders (who were studying weather).
Heck yes! I love educating young minds! So she arranged to have all 4 classes of 5th graders together at 1 time. I actually know some of what they teach the kids now, which is that CO2 is a pollutant that’s destroying the planet.
As an invited guest, I had to be very respectful of that and it would be inappropriate (and be confusing/ineffective) for me to contradict the climate crisis narrative IN THAT SETTING. Especially since I was invited to discuss how we measure and forecast weather.
However, that didn’t prevent me from bringing up an extremely relevant element to climate change and increasing CO2, that they had recently just learned about in their SCIENCE class.
Photosynthesis.
When I told the class that the increase in carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is massively greening up the planet and increasing world food production because of its key, beneficial contribution as part of the law of photosynthesis, the SCIENCE teacher blurted out loudly….. “Wow, I never thought about that!!”
Maybe she was like the science teacher in this story…….getting her climate science lessons from NPR (-:
Despite this, the teachers at the schools that I coach chess at, overall are wonderful, dedicated people who teach mostly things based on solid principles.
Shock Horror. World News. Breaking Headlines. Read All About It. World Exclusive
oh yeah, what’s this all about then…
<reads 1st paragraph>
“”Human Female Changes Her Mind About Something””
we are lost, we are soooo dooomed
“What kind of religion would climate change be, without some good old fashioned conversion stories?”
Wow, born again climatistas!
“An independent enquiry cleared the UEA scientists of wrongdoing and concluded that “their rigour and honesty are not in doubt”.”
And we KNOW that we can TRUST those who did the inquiry. Sure we can. After all, it’s independent!
“switch off conservative commentators and tune in to NPR”
Yuh, like Limbaugh, now that he’s dead.
I miss Rush. A voice of reason in the Wilderness.
The Left hated him because he exposed the Left for what they are, and it’s not a pretty picture.
And they hate DJ Trump for giving Rush the Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union speech right in front of Queen Nancy (Pelosi).
I have a brother-in-law who is the program director of a PBS FM radio station. That’s about as impressive as being the VP for the fax machine division for Canon or HP. Just to get to FM radio in my car I have to switch to the Mazda app which brings up the default settings on the screen, then I have to scroll to FM, at which point you’ll find that that it is tuned to the lowest frequency on the FM dial because I never use the thing to create preset stations. NPR is going the way of the pay phone.
There are plenty of radio stations on the internet, the key is finding those you like who DON’T use NPR.
Me, I like Jazz, One of my favorites is WWOZ (New Orleans), all volunteer, no NPR, Live 24/7, 2 Week Archive. Check out Breaux Bridges, Wednesdays 6-9 AM Central Time.
Just music to listen to whilst reading Wuwt.
Sarah might be a real person and the convenient climate conscious story of her conversion might even be a real event. But the message I got from the short version above is that the Sarah, real or not, formed her opinion on a topic critical to health and flourishing of human society on the flimsiest foundation of personal impression and the appearance of authority. Not a shred of critical thinking and logical thought to be found. That is perhaps the real truth that needs be unpacked from this anecdote of idiocy.
Which is pretty pathetic, coming from someone who claims to be a science teacher.
How NPR Converted a Southern Christian to the Church of the Climate CrisisWhat has the residence of this person got to do with anything? Is it an attempt to associate her with Southern Baptists or something? If she lived in New York would the headline have referred to “A Northern Christian”. I’m not even sure that her religious background is even relevant, She says that she has a Polish-Catholic background (whatever that means) and “attended” (past tense) church regularly.” She doesn’t say that her well-found belief that there is no climate emergency had anything to do with her religion, assuming she still has one. She merely states that she was “influenced by friends at church”. Which church, she doesn’t say. But it was the friends who influenced her, not her church.