IS SOROS CONNECTED TO NEW GLOBAL WARMING WEBSITE TARGETING METEOROLOGISTS?
(Image: Forecast the Facts)
A website — Forecast the Facts – devoted to calling out weather forecasters who aren’t convinced of man-made global warming and informing them about “the most important weather story of our lifetime” launched Sunday.
In addition to drawing criticism from some meteorologists, the site also seems to have a curious connection with billionaire George Soros.
Michael Lewis and Anthony Watts write on the Watt’s Up With That? (WUWT) blog that Forecast the Facts partner, Citizen’s Engagement Laboratory — a “non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies” — has received funding from George Soros in the past.
Receiving a tip from a reader identified as Jan, Watts — a former meteorologist with 25 years of on air experience who runs the blog as commentary on the “puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news” — along with Lewis, his co-author for this post who holds a Ph.D., show that Soros donated money to CEL and “its projects, Color of Change (CoC) and Presenté.”
Screenshot of a grant found under one of Soros' initiatives on his Open Society Foundations website.
CEL is co-directed by James Rucker, who co-founded Color of Change with Van Jones in 2005 to help “strengthen Black America’s political voice”.
According to the press release, Forecast the Facts was established to “pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change”
Forecast the Facts went live on Sunday to coordinate with the timing of the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in the hopes of gaining signatures from the association to “pass a strong statement on climate change” — its current statement is set to expire Feb. 1.
“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director, said in the release. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”
According to the Forecast the Facts website, a little more than 50 percent of meteorologists “deny human-induced climate change.”
Among other things, what Watts and Lewis take issue with the fact that CEL, a Forecast the Facts partner along with 350.org and League of Conservation Voters, in that it states it is a “non-partisan organization”, when they find it clearly has some partisan undertones. The WUWT post notes that CEL is located in a building in Berkeley, Calif., that describes the organization as with “key progressive messages”.
Screenshot of CEL's description on the website of the building within which it is located.
Looking at web servers with the same domain IP address as Forecast the Facts, the authors state, “you discover a whole flock of political activist websites” (see their screenshot below).
WUWT screenshot of the reverse IP domain check for Forecast the Facts.
WUWT notes the following about some of the organizations in the list above:
Turn Off Fox, “bastadobbs” (to get Lou Dobbs fired from CNN), occupyhomes ( an occupywallstreet spinoff), and trail2010 (a website pushing a vote for the Dream Act) are just a few of the “non-partisan” websites run by the same outfit on the same server.
Watts and Lewis believe that the campaign to educate meteorologists on man-made climate change “is Big Money come to the service of shadowy figures in the background of international politics and economics.”
In a response to criticism about the campaign, Forecast the Facts has written that “when the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Military, and the insurance industry all agree that humans are a leading cause of climate change, when prediction after prediction of climate models is borne out, when highly trained and incredibly learned professionals tell us that the window for action is closing, and when the effects of inaction are going to negatively impact millions if not billions of lives, it is simply not acceptable for professional journalists (that is, after all, what broadcast meteorologists are) to refuse to inform their viewers of this information, or worse to say that these things that directly contradict these facts. ”
Forecast the Facts compares meteorologists avoiding what it considers widely held climate science to doctors refusing to tell patients that smoking does not cause lung cancer. Forecast the Facts states that it sees the American Meteorological Association as having a responsibility to address the issue of climate change strongly in its new statement as many broadcast meteorologists are its members:
[....] in our eyes, there is only one way for them to appropriately comport themselves — quickly pass a statement that is consistent with the current scientific consensus, and then vigorously promote that statement to their members. Anything short of this would be a derilection of their duty as a scientific association.
Forecast the Fact is identifying meteorologists‘ position on climate change and is encouraging citizens to email them tips as to their meteorologists’ stance. So far, 52 meteorologists have been identified. Forecast the Facts is calling out meteorologists on their website who don’t believe in man-made global warming, including what it believes are incriminating quotes on this stance. Here are a few examples:
Watch Forecast the Fact’s animation, which is being used to promote the campaign:
Confused at all? Here’s the recap: Forecast the Facts is pressuring meteorologists to accept man-made climate change; one of its partners is the Citizen Engagement Lab (CEL); CEL, which claims to be non-partisan, received funding from George Soros.
Curious?