Tag Team Club Membership
Best Science
Expression Normale
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
This
delayed celebration reminder of earth day 2020 was deliberate.
Perhaps one
of you might remember, the celebration was scheduled for April 22. The rest of
you can be assured it was a huge disappointment. Nothing was as good as planned.
There was not even the usual charge from the precipitous cliffs of Valhalla of
the evergreen warriors clad in their birthday suits (or the speedo inspired
regulation loin cloths), either.
COVID-19
wrecked their party.
That
intrepid climate sleuth and global warming skeptic, Benny Peiser, however, was
on the job. He was diligently going through the records documenting all of the
accurate predictions the thermal briefs crew had made since that remarkable day
back in 1970 when the remnants of the flower children gathered to celebrate
their first official day of anticipating the planet’s demise.
Point
number six of the foundational, environmental synopsis coming out of their seance
was most clairvoyant. It was already too late to save the earth.
Wow!
Even the most skeptical worshipper should
have thought that to be a bit too harsh and profound. If saving the earth was out
of the question, what else could the highly acclaimed men and women of science
possibly predict? Perhaps a better question should have been why schedule any
follow up meetings if the whole show was going to go south anyway. That, of
course, was where our friend, Dr. Peiser, comes to the debate. In his overview,
the good doctor crafted his executive summary and shared it with the world.
He
concluded that, over their 50 years of annual earth day celebrations, the
greatest scientists in the world… have failed to correctly predict a single
outcome.
Best
Science
In fact,
the best evidence of the first earth day was suggesting the planet had been
cooling since 1950 and was on track to drop a whopping 11° by the turn of the
century. Another ice age was in the offing. Loin cloths and that au naturale look
was about to be displaced by Carhartt blue collared cold gear.
The
environmental movement with its best science was being spawned.
It hasn’t
shown any signs of weakening, either. Within the past several days the former
Clinton administration vice president, Al Gore (seemingly doing his best to
support the ag industry through high caloric intake), has stepped back into the
spotlight from the shadows of his climate lab to expound upon the COVID-19
pandemic and its tie to the climate crisis.
The
climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic are linked in some ways, the former
the VP pontificated. The preconditions that raise the death rate from
COVID-19 … are accentuated, made worse, by fossil fuel pollution. Of,
course this gives rise to a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Environmental injustice is just one factor.
He ignored
President Trump’s reliance on a supposed topflight science advisory crew.
Having transitioned from a liberal to the current conservative administration
and its ongoing pandemic war, Drs. Fauci and Birx, have apparently lost their
professional standing since both were fixtures in his own administration’s
structural table of organization.
There is similar disdain for the
administration’s Science and Technology Policy director, Kelvin Droegemeier, a sixty-year-old
academic who has studied weather for 40 years. In filling his current post, he
faces constant challenges from a sea of bureaucratic researchers who show a
permanent hatred for any counter scientific evidence toward global warming. The
consensus amongt that tag team, paid science club membership is that there is
no other side of the discussion.
Their science is settled.
Of course,
this leads to the matter of our titled topic, best science. We hear the
phrasing constantly. It has become part of our vocabulary and as an expression
normale. It has emerged as the
pinnacle of rebuff akin to that erstwhile zenith of the ‘50s, I double dog
dare you!
Remember
that?
In the heat of verbal battle, the
ultimate challenge would be offered only as the last resort. It was held in
reserve until there was no other recourse. The two combatants would be standing
in the full spotlight. No other peripheral conversation was allowed even if it
could compete with what would be uttered from one of the illuminated
contenders. How on earth could this be settled, and, then, there it was.
I double dog dare you!
It was done! No
other challenge was relevant from that point. Nothing could be said that would
supersede such a consummate demand of proof.
Expression Normale
Similarly, nothing in the world stands in such glaring
juxtaposition of the absurd as the magnificent natural resources of California
and the liberal political tunes of that state’s endemic political leadership.
The point is not the pandemic issue. Rather, it is the
absurdity of the most recent and ongoing water war that threatens to permanently
idle more than the conservative estimate of 300,000 acres of that state’s world
class soil. The setting is the delta and at issue is fish and fresh water to
the sea in conflict with people and the only segment of their economy that
remains open for current business.
In what appeared to finally be a successful agreement between
the state and the federal government based on the best science and resulting in
a reasonable split of water uses, an unfortunate discovery was revealed. The
Trump plan was found not only to yield more water, but it would also help
fulfill a campaign promise for the President.
California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, didn’t like
that at all and filed a lawsuit opposing the best science and the resulting
biological opinions. He is shutting down what amounts to water serving not just
Agriculture but 75% of Californians and now 4,000,000 acres of agricultural
production.
The
best science didn’t equate to his political tastes, and, in that, is revealed
the true meaning of the words.
Stephen L. Wilmeth is
a rancher from southern New Mexico. “God bless those folks who till California
soils.”
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