WOOD TV 8 meteorologist Bill Steffen is picking up where Craig James left off in hyping flawed science on global warming. Before he retired, James never turned down the chance to either argue against global warming on his blog or in presentations to the community).
Now Bill Steffen appears to be filling the void that was left when James quit and when his blog posts were erased from WOOD TV 8’s website. Like Craig James, Steffen is using his status as a meteorologist–and a trusted member of the community for some–to argue against the scientific consensus on global warming.
Steffen’s latest effort is blog post titled “MSNBC Needs to read Bill’s Blog” in which Steffen rails against MSNBC for their four-part series “Future Earth.” In the post, Steffen says that the show’s science is flawed. He argues that arctic ice is not decreasing and points to numbers from 2007 that show an increase in arctic ice. However, scientists have suggested that this is likely a temporary phenomenon and that ice will continue to melt if greenhouse gasses continue to rise.
Beyond that, Steffen argues that there is nothing we could do about it anyway, as “YOU can’t stop it’s decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big – you personally are insignificant compared to nature.” He also advocates a rather bizarre position that so-called global warming skeptics like to argue: people who warn about global warming just want to make money. In this case, Steffen says that NBC has a vested interest in promoting global warming because they are making money off of it. Steffen argues that General Electric stands to profit from proposed cap-and-trade legislation because it produces some energy efficient appliances. It’s an argument that might have an ounce of validity in the case of GE (we should always be suspicious of the motives of corporations, especially those that control the media), but when they use it to dismiss scientists–who describe dire environmental problems and peril–it’s hard to believe that they are hyping up the situation just to sell a few more copies of their academic tomes.
For this, Steffen’s post spread rapidly across the global warming denier/delayer blogosphere, as well as getting attention via conservative commentator Michelle Malkin’s blog–since that crowd is always trying to find someone “credible” to argue against global warming. However, what’s interesting is that there has been a fairly strong counter voice to Steffen’s arguments in the comments section of his post, with a few voices strongly arguing the validity of the science and how Steffen draws his conclusion. Most often, Steffen has shied away from making detailed responses to those comments.
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