Rantz: Progressives attack scientist for telling truth about smoky Washington

On the topic of climate change, Progressives often demand we listen to scientists because, after all, they’re above political ideology and are sounding the alarms about the manifestations of global climate change. Only, when they say something Progressive activists disagrees with, then they get personally attacked.

RELATED: New smoky norm of the Northwest

It happened this week to UW Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Cliff Mass.

Mass told the Ron and Don Show this week that no, the smoke we have experienced from the nearby fires, is not a result of climate change.

“If you are … 120 years old, this would not be a big event to you,” Mass explained. “There used to be a large number of fires in the early part of the 20th Century and before that. People don’t realize that this used to be a very smoky place because we have forests all around us. There used to be fires all the time. So smoke is not unknown around here.”

The forests have degraded over time due to, among other things, poor management that have allowed substantial growth in material that can easily catch fire. Fire used to clear out forest debris. We stopped that. Consequently, because we’re not clearing out the density of some of this material (trees, brush, etc.), when fires hit, they are more severe.

Mass, who believes in human influenced climate change, simply doesn’t think what we experienced this week is because of it.

Cue the outrage mob.

In The Stranger, Charles Mudede, the paper’s film editor, personally attacked Mass, implying he’s not really a scientist and that: “He is not, as far as I can tell, much of a thinker.”

On Twitter, the hot takes came pouring in, fueled on by an angry blogger who posted one sentence from the Mass interview without context, because it serves her agenda.

wonder who his “soft money” grantors to UW atmospheric sciences are. Big oil?

— ChangeTheCulture (@emeraldciti_zen) August 23, 2018

Welp there’s a prof to stay away from when I go there…

— Chimmy 🌹 (@chimmysthoughts) August 23, 2018

Yet he gets his knickers in a twist when international climate scientists and Al Gore consult with his colleagues and ignore him.

— Dorothy (@dorothyneville) August 23, 2018

Probably high.

— Madame W (@Madamewoo) August 23, 2018

That Mass guy who is barely a “scientist” and “not much of a thinker” went to Cornell University, where he majored in physics, before earning a Ph.D at the University of Washington. He’s much smarter than Mudede and the Progressive Twitter mob posting studies on climate change they can’t understand, nor did they even read.

Climate change is real, though Progressives don’t much care. This isn’t about our pristine forests or coastlines or air quality; it’s a means for them to push a political agenda unrelated to the environment. Every time it gets warmer than usual, colder than usual, or wind pushes smoke our way from a fire, these activists scream about out of control climate change, before they have any facts. They use climate change as a vehicle to dismantle capitalism and attack corporations, which is why folks like me want nothing to do with many of these crazy environmentalists.

If you scream that we should listen to what scientists are saying about climate change, perhaps you should practice what you preach and actually listen to them — even when they say things you don’t like.

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