‘Fringe’ or Reasonable? Bastardi on the Firing Line – Watts Up With That?
A recent E&E News article, "Fringe weatherman advised Abbott before deadly Texas storm" (February 25, 2021), is the latest marginalization job on a "climate science critic." Author Scott Walderman begins his piece as follows:
Days before a historic snowstorm crippled his home state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sought advice from an unusual source: Joe Bastardi, the go-to weather forecaster of Fox News host Sean Hannity.By Bastardi's telling, the conversation with Abbott wasn't groundbreaking or controversial. "I said this is a winter version of a Category 5 hurricane," Bastardi told E&E News.
Bastardi has claimed that carbon dioxide is not the "control knob" for the atmosphere. He has said that teaching children about climate science is "indoctrinating" them. He has suggested that burning more fossil fuels will benefit the planet by increasing carbon dioxide levels.
On Tuesday, Bastardi said he wants to emphasize to Cruz and Abbott in future conversations that the electrical grid should not be so reliant on renewable energy…. "Wind and solar power are supplements to the main diet," he said.
In a post for the Heartland Institute, the climate denial advocacy group where Bastardi is a senior fellow, he wrote last week that people using extreme weather conditions to justify climate action "reveals a certain kind of narcissism."
"To think you are smart enough to control nature and you must force people … to obey?" he wrote. "That is the same kind of despotic behavior we have seen out of the worst tyrants."
"When these guys are talking to Bastardi," Rosenberg said, "they're trying to come up with maybe aliens did it or it's sunspots."
