Global Climate Battle Comes To California – OpEd

“NO Climate Crisis’ Says Coalition of 1,600 Actual Scientists,” ran the headline on the May 13 California Globe article by Katy Grimes.

In an open letter to the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the 1,600 scientists noted low levels of air pollution, no danger of drought, and contended that carbon dioxide (CO2) is beneficial to the earth and other evidence.

That prompted an email from “Julie Johnston from Canada,” who told Grimes: “I’m wondering why you decided to amplify dangerous and deadly climate emergency denial.” And Julie wanted to know:

“Could you explain why—in the midst of flooding all over the world (Texas, Brazil, China, Afghanistan, eastern Africa, all at the same time), huge evacuation-causing wildfires already starting up (actually, never going out completely) in the north (24,710 acres burning across western Canada already; Russia, too), killer heatwaves throughout South and Southeast Asia and Mexico, etc.—you would amplify a PR/publicity stunt meant to confuse and disinform your readers about the climate emergency? Doesn’t a journalist research their sources before publishing a PR piece?” And so on, but Julie wasn’t done:

“You know what? Shame on you. You, too, conflated your paper’s political/economic views with the science of the climate emergency. You made a deadly decision, and you should retract it.” Instead of backing off, Grimes answered every charge in detail, but there was more to it.

Like Gov. Gavin Newsom, Julie failed to note that May 5 marked the heaviest snowfall of 2023-24 in California’s Sierra Nevada, with an accumulation of 26.4 inches. That was according to the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab which pegged May 3 as the second-snowiest day with 23.8 inches. Chains were required in the Sierra, but the central valley, normally quite hot in May, could be traversed with no need for air conditioning.

Gov. Newsom attended Santa Clara University on a “partial baseball scholarship” and graduated in 1989 with a degree in political science—which is not the same as empirical science, a matter of measurement, testing, and replication. The debates on global warming seem to have passed by the governor. In 2021, when much of California was ablaze, Gov. Newsom blamed climate change.

“The hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier,” Gov. Newsom explained, “something happened to the plumbing of the world. Climate change is real and exacerbating this.” According to Wade Crowfoot, Gov. Newsom’s natural resources secretary, “If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians.” Californians had cause to wonder.

Wade Crowfoot graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1996 with a degree in political science and in 2004 earned his master’s degree in public policy—not atmospheric science. Crowfoot was deputy cabinet secretary to Gov. Jerry Brown and served as West Coast director for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Gov. Newsom jetted off to the May 15–17 “From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience” conference at the Vatican. According to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:“The Climate Crisis is upon us. It will get a lot worse over the next few decades as planetary heating shoots past 1.5C by early 2030s. The warming curve is likely to bend around the latter half of this century in response to global scale actions to mitigate emissions of the heat trapping pollutants. We no longer have the luxury of relying just on mitigation of emissions. We need to embark on building climate resilience so that people can bend the emissions curve and bounce back from the climate crisis safer, healthier, wealthier to a sustainable world,” and so on.

That sounds a lot like Julie Johnston from Canada. As Grimes explained:

“‘Consensus’ on climate change has become a form of bullying, intimidation and censorship—which is exactly what Julie from Canada tried to do here. It has been used to bludgeon and attack the character of anyone who questions the very shallow claims. It is a cult completely divorced from science and reality. And the larger problem with these climate change cultists is they lack humility, and any interest in self-reflection. I rest my case.”

At this writing, Julie has issued no rejoinder.

• This article was also published in The Orange County Register