Think Ross Gelbspan is a long-forgotten figure from the past in the minds of enviro-activists? Think again.

In a Tweet from two and a half months ago, Slate.com’s Eric Holthaus castigated meteorologists as people who are steered by their political motivations to ‘deny climate change’:

Political ideology is a leading indicator of whether or not meteorologists accept mainstream climate science.

Responding directly to Holthaus, Daily Kos Contributing Editor Laurence Lewis tells the following story via a trio of tweets:

@EricHolthaus Mid ’90s I briefly dated a meteorologist who was working at SFO. She hadn’t been taught ANYTHING about climate change…

She thought it was a crock. One night while she was working, I read her some Gelbspan, from Harper’s. She bought his book…

Soon was teaching her colleagues about climate change.

Think about the irony here. Enviro-activists routinely vilify any meteorologist who questions the notion of catastrophic man-caused global warming by saying the person has no expertise in the matter. However, here we have a suddenly enlightened meteorologist informing her colleagues about the issue as the direct result of reading a book authored by a revered investigative journalist who …

 • was not a climate expert himself

• has never won a Pulitzer

• is besieged with problems in his narratives about his alleged ‘discovery’ of industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists

• has not yet told the world what investigative process he undertook that caused him to obtain leaked material which legions of people quote as evidence indicting skeptic climate scientists of conspiring with industry people to lie to the public

Now, think just how much wider this entire ‘enlightened by Gelbspan’ situation might be. By way of example, I encountered a similar ‘enlightenment’ attempt back in 2008.

Then consider the day-old news of Senator Ed Markey’s proposal for a bill in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would establish a nationwide education program for school kids on “climate change and its effects on environmental, energy, social, and economic systems.”

What name do we already see in a 2007 NOAA document titled “Bibliographic Resources for Teachers”? Ross Gelbspan.

There is a consistent theme throughout: “the science is settled, and you need not listen to any skeptics because their motivations are suspect – in fact, one fellow who is a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter found out that the most influential among those people are paid industry money to lie. Let us educate all of you on this, trust us on what we say … and do not question a word of it.”