The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Politics of Weather

Posted on | November 13, 2013 | 23 Comments

One of the horrors of 21st-century America — a harbinger of creeping totalitarianism — is that everything is becoming political.

Sex is political. Food is political. School is political. And, thanks to the global warming scare, even the weather is now political. Except we don’t even call it “weather” anymore. Now it’s called “climate.”

Silly as they seem, these word games are always significant. Until about 1970, for example, people talked about “outdoors” or “nature.” Once the elite started calling it “the environment,” however, you knew it had become political. It was the same way with sex. People used to talk about “homosexuals.” Once the elite decided to use “gay” instead (as random as this choice may have seemed), it was political.

The change of language from “weather” to “climate” is intended to impress and awe us with the authority of Science. Whereas mere weather is something that anyone can talk about — it’s cool, overcast and windy today — you have to be a scientist to talk about climate. And anyone who doesn’t endorse the Scientific Consensus about global warming is marginalized and demonized as being anti-science.

Dr. Heidi Cullen (and don’t you dare omit that authoritative “doctor” in front of her name, you science-hating sexist) once suggested that “meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of man-made catastrophic global warming,” Becca J. Lower reminds us, in explaining how Doctor Cullen smuggled politics into the Philippines typhoon story.

 

Category: Global Warming, Science

Comments

23 Responses to “The Politics of Weather”

  1. rsmccain
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:31 am

    The Politics of Weather http://t.co/AoRWQZgTC2 Hat-tip @BeccaJLower | cc @wattsupwiththat @jlakely @instapundit

  2. FormerUSN
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:32 am

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM The Politics of Weather http://t.co/4A11PQrP5t #TCOT

  3. MarkG_03
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:33 am

    RT @rsmccain: The Politics of Weather http://t.co/AoRWQZgTC2 Hat-tip @BeccaJLower | cc @wattsupwiththat @jlakely @instapundit

  4. StacyOnTheRight
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:42 am

    RT @rsmccain: The Politics of Weather http://t.co/AoRWQZgTC2 Hat-tip @BeccaJLower | cc @wattsupwiththat @jlakely @instapundit

  5. rsmccain
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:44 am

    The Politics of Weather http://t.co/6o27xaZ4NR

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:02 am

    Of course the dynamics of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and Typhoon Haiyan had little (if anything) to do with global climate change and everything to do with geography, tide tables, costal development and bad luck.

  7. The Bearded Bastard of Babylon
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:10 am

    It strikes me as odd that the Left has famously claimed that “the science is settled” on the issue “climate change”, yet persists in spinning the well established biology of male and female, and of sexuality itself as legal and political issues!

    I’m never going to believe that Chaz Bono is really a man now just because it says so on her driver’s license, and I am never going to believe that two people of the same gender can ever really be married!

  8. robertstacymccain
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:21 am

    During the 2012 campaign, Rick Santorum brilliantly made the point that to say that life begins at conception is not a matter of belief, but rather a statement of scientific fact.

    It is wrong, Santorum explained, to say, “I believe that life begins at conception.” Life begins at conception without regard to what you “believe.”

    The science is settled!

  9. McGehee
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:54 am

    Heil Cullen got political about the typhoon? Color me hey are those jelly donuts?

    What? Oh. Cullen. Yeah. That’s why I’m glad I live in a market where there’s an alternative to the Catastrophic Climate Change Propaganda (acronym intended) channel that used to feature her and still interviews her.

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    November 13th, 2013 @ 12:19 pm

    Santorum said it correctly. And then the “choice” argument is when is it okay to kill someone.

    Call it what it is.

  11. Quartermaster
    November 13th, 2013 @ 1:20 pm

    With sex now being politics too, and we can’t talk about religion, I guess we are rapidly approaching the day when we can’t talk about anything in the mess.

  12. BeccaJLower
    November 13th, 2013 @ 1:30 pm

    RT @rsmccain: The Politics of Weather http://t.co/AoRWQZgTC2 Hat-tip @BeccaJLower | cc @wattsupwiththat @jlakely @instapundit

  13. Finrod Felagund
    November 13th, 2013 @ 2:08 pm

    I’ve taken to throwing Richard Feynman’s speech about Cargo Cult Science in the face of anyone that pulls out the stale ‘the science is settled!’ line.

    http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

  14. Dana
    November 13th, 2013 @ 3:13 pm

    Our esteemed host erred on the side of political correctness:

    People used to talk about “homosexuals.” Once the elite decided to use “gay” instead (as random as this choice may have seemed), it was political.

    No, clinicians might have talked about “homosexuals,” but people talked about queers, or, at best, homos. A short, preferably one syllable, word was needed that didn’t carry the stigma of homo or queer, and that’s where gay came from.

  15. Alessandra
    November 13th, 2013 @ 6:21 pm

    No such word was needed – at all. Normalizing homosexuality is the biggest social-engineering hoax of the last 50 years. People were very right to talk about homos and queers – as they are in talking about pederasts and pedophiles instead of the non-stigmatizing “man-boy lovers.”

  16. Alessandra
    November 13th, 2013 @ 6:23 pm

    Sex is political. Food is political. School is political. And, thanks to the global warming scare, even the weather is now political. Except we don’t even call it “weather” anymore. Now it’s called “climate.”

    🙂

    Have you checked the climate for the weekend?

  17. Anchovy
    November 13th, 2013 @ 6:24 pm

    Before there were large cities, large cities were not hit by hurricanes. Now there are large cities and large cities are hit by hurricanes.

    Large cities cause hurricanes.

  18. RosalindJ
    November 13th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

    Oh hell. Everything, is political to the left. Because #Caring.

    http://neveryetmelted.com/2013/11/08/your-purring-little-murderer/

  19. thatMrGguy
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:48 pm

    The Politics of Weather http://t.co/7XSUfLYiV8

  20. Adjoran
    November 14th, 2013 @ 3:28 am

    Of course true science is never “settled” – much of Newton’s work has been corrected, and even Einstein’s work has room for questioning, including by Einstein.

    Those serious scientists who believed in this idea that man-made greenhouse gas production was a prinicpal cause of global warming were careful to advise that local weather was indicative of nothing in particular. But that was 25 years ago, before Al Gore made his movie.

    My late father reacted to Gore’s assertions by asking, “How can I believe the predictions of the exact temperature and sea level 50 years from now when they can’t even tell me with certainty if it is going to rain tomorrow?”

  21. Adjoran
    November 14th, 2013 @ 3:30 am

    I can’t recall who responded to the liberal claim that the life which began at conception was “not human life” by asking, “What the heck is it, then, a dolphin?”

  22. RKae
    November 14th, 2013 @ 1:46 pm

    Have you checked the climate for the weekend?
    Sort of like how you never hear a pregnant woman say, “Oh! The fetus kicked!”
    It’s a “baby” if you’re letting it live; it’s a “fetus” if you want to kill it.

  23. RKae
    November 14th, 2013 @ 1:50 pm

    I said it in another thread, but I’ll put it here, too: The “L” and the “G” in “LGBT” will tell you “God made me gay and God doesn’t make mistakes!” while the “T” will inform you that God DID INDEED make a mistake and now medical science must correct it with creative butchery. (The “B” just doesn’t give a damn about anything.)