Popular local weatherman Greg Fishel had strong words for climate change deniers on his Facebook page on Sunday.
Fishel, chief meteorologist at WRAL, went off on people who question the science behind climate change, telling them to “put up or shut up.” The post had earned more than 3,500 reactions by Monday afternoon.
“You know everybody reaches their breaking point and quite frankly I have reached mine with the folks who post all over the internet about the scientific fallacies of man induced climate change,” Fishel wrote. “All of them are guest bloggers or essayists. None of this stuff has ever been published in a peer reviewed atmospheric science or climate journal. But we live in an age today where higher education and research are no longer respected. Heck, think of all the money my parents wasted on my education when I could have waited for the age of twitter and Facebook and declared myself as an expert in the field of my choice.”
For most of his 36 years broadcasting the weather in the Triangle, Fishel also held a contrarian view about climate change. He didn’t believe that humans had much to do with warming the Earth’s atmosphere and would say as much when the topic came up on the air.
But several years ago, he says he decided he wasn’t being open-minded about the issue and began to study what climate scientists were saying about it. He now approaches the issue on the air and on social media with the zeal of a convert.
If someone does have “a critical piece to the puzzle no other scientist has,” Fishel implored them to submit their findings to one of the American Meteorological Society’s peer reviewed journals for publication.
“If they are rejected, and the author feels unfairly, then make public each and every one of the reviewers’ comments for the entire world to see,” Fishel wrote. “If there is bias and corruption in the peer review process, everyone needs to know about it so this flawed process can be halted and corrected.”
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