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James Taylor
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WUSA’s Erica Grow Shows Off Her Strength
Television weather presenter Erica Grow deserves a hearty Thank You for advertising The Heartland Institute’s new pamphlet, “Global Warming: Crisis or Delusion.” Grow also perfectly illustrated how global warming alarmists can expand their knowledge with assistance from the new pamphlet.
Two weeks ago, Grow on her Twitter account posted a photo on her ripping the pamphlet in half and calling the pamphlet “propaganda” and “BS.” Grow’s followers apparently flooded her inbox with dissatisfaction about her Tweet, prompting her to write a column on the WUSA website explaining her actions.
“As you can imagine, a bunch of people got pretty ticked off,” Grow acknowledged.
Grow explained that she called the pamphlet propaganda because the pamphlet concluded by stating, “Public policies should aim at fostering economic growth to adapt to natural climate change.” According to Grow, “The final bullet point is especially egregious because it contains the word ‘should’.” Grow added, “A fact statement cannot contain a persuasive word.”
Curiously, Grow did not call out the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for similarly advocating for a particular course of action. Just two weeks before Grow’s Twitter tantrum, BBC News published an article titled, “Fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 says IPCC.” As BBC News pointed out, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a stark report that most of the world’s electricity can – and must – be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050.”
So when Grow’s alarmist friends at a United Nations bureaucracy employ stark, strong language in an attempt to dictate energy policy to the United States, Grow considers that science rather than propaganda. By contrast, when climate realists propose policies favoring climate adaptation instead, Grow considers that propaganda rather than science. Hmmm…..
Later in her column, Grow revealed her fundamental lack of understanding about the global warming debate. Grow argued the pamphlet is misleading because “it’s well-documented that the majority of the scientific community agrees with the hypothesis that climate change is at least partially caused by human activity.” However, few skeptics claim global warming is not “at least partially caused by human activity.”
The key issues dividing alarmists and skeptics are the degree of human causation, the pace of recent warming, the proper context of recent warming, the current and likely impacts of global warming, and the desirability of alarmists’ prescribed solutions. By closing her mind to all of these issues merely because she erroneously believes most skeptics dispute any human role in recent warming, Grow has allowed her preexisting lack of knowledge to preclude any future gains in knowledge.
Simply put, objective scientific evidence and an open mind are the best means of discovering scientific truths and implementing beneficial public policy. Grow’s theatrical destruction of a climate science pamphlet that contradicts her own limited knowledge of the topic is a disservice to open and honest scientific discourse. The ironic silver lining, however, is Grow’s actions merely directed more people to the scientific summary.
