There are those in the United States who understand the value of free speech, of freedom of expression, of the freedom to dissent from the prevailing opinion. There are also those who understand the scientific method, how it works, and how to objectively gather and analyze data to reach a conclusion.
Then there's the left, who value none of those things.
It's always the way with the left; if you step off the reservation, they go to great lengths to shut you up. Chris Martz is a meteorologist, a guy who studies and predicts the weather, and it happened to him. Why?
Because he questioned the narrative.
Over the weekend, Sam Zeff, a reporter for KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, told me over X that "you wasted your money on your degree."
I am a recent college graduate with a degree in meteorology. Zeff was replying to my post on social media, pointing out that he, and other climate activists, were ignoring basic scientific facts when they blamed man-made climate change for the tragic flooding in Texas. The truth is that the rainfall and flooding along the Guadalupe River were not historically unprecedented and had little, if anything, to do with climate change. Neither heavy rainfall nor river flooding has increased in the Texas Hill Country over the last six decades.
The rainfall and flooding, tragic as it is, were not a new thing for that part of Texas. I've driven through there when I was stationed in San Antonio, in 1985 and again in 1987, and believe you me, from a guy who grew up on the banks of an Iowa trout stream prone to spring flooding, I know the signs. Some of the high-water marks around Kerrville, in that lovely part of the country, are pretty impressive.
But Mr. Martz called out the climate apparatchiks on this issue, and they came after him.
As a trained meteorologist with a passion for truth, I can authoritatively tell folks on the right that the floods were not caused by cloud seeding or "chemtrails." Yet, when I also try to explain the data to social media users on the left, showing them that there is no evidence climate change caused or exacerbated the Texas floods, the conversations quickly devolve into insults or even threats.
Indeed, taunts from people like the NPR reporter who mocked my education have become sadly familiar.
After one of my posts on X about climate change went viral last year, I unintentionally became an online influencer.
Again, that's the way of it with the left. And the climate scolds may be among the worst of this sort, clinging as they do to their pet issue with religious fervor. Mr. Martz quickly learned this the hard way.
The viral tweet that shot me into the stratosphere was one I posted in June last year. It attracted more than 2.5 million views and over 30,000 likes. The post detailed my experiences trying to find the truth about climate change and encountering the reality that free speech can come under a sustained and ugly attack if it challenges certain cherished left-wing causes. When it comes to climate, unpopular statements—even if they are based on undisputed scientific facts—are labeled by the loudest voices in the room as "false," "misleading," or "misinformation."
These people aren't interested in facts, of course. They are all about the agenda, and that agenda is control. As Mr. Martz has learned, it's not just control over where we live, how we live, what we eat, or what we drive. No, they even want to control what we think, or at least, what we say.
Why? The leaders of the climate cult movement, both the politicians who push for “action” and the supposed scientists who push debunked data, for sure and for certain, have other motivations. We have the Doom Pixie, Greta Thunberg, that annoying loudmouth from Sweden, who noisily bemoans fossil-fuel use but who grows strangely quiet when Israel gives her a sandwich and puts her on a huge, gas-guzzling jet home. Then there are the Hollywood types, who fly off in private jets and cruise in huge private mega-yachts to attend climate conferences, in which they enjoy wagyu beef and spotted-owl appetizers while they finger-wag at we peasants who have the temerity to defy their pet cause by driving SUVs and pickup trucks. Their motivation, as with pretty much their entire lives, is publicity – and it’s working for them.
But the rank-and-file, those who are contending with Chris Martz on social media? Their cause is control, to be sure. Why? Very likely (and I'm speculating here) because they have very little control over their own emotions, their own thoughts (I use the word in the broadest possible sense), and their own lives. That's sad, and frankly kind of pathetic, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.
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But here's where Chris Martz registers his winning attitude, and we applaud him for it:
America has a grave problem when a culture celebrates free speech "for me—but not for thee," as the late Nat Hentoff famously put it.
True believers in free speech like Hentoff can be hard to find these days. Today, free thinkers who won’t go along with the establishment on certain, third-rail topics—more often than not concerning race, gender, or climate—run into a ferocious opposition that seeks not just to silence their voices, but to crush them. I’ve come to understand that the vitriol directed at me is precisely because, perhaps, no one else my age with my reach is actively challenging the belief system on climate with facts and demanding answers.
This is, of course, precisely what he should continue doing, and I suspect he will.
You fight bad information with good information. That's what Chris Martz tried to do, and they came after him for it. This is how they operate - but they can't shut him up, and better yet, they can't shut all of us up.
