The Mighty Wurlitzer.....

As we approach the IPCC's release of the fourth Assessment Report the animals in the woods are stirring. Among the news of the week is that

• Marc Morano, a nasty piece of work, formerly Rush Limbaugh's man in Washington, and now Mother Inhofe's little helper starts a blog on the US Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee web page in late December 06, the first posts appearing in early January.
  
• On the 17th he posts about a posting on the Weather Channel Blog on his MySpace page
  
• Morano puts an extended rant up on his own MySpace blog on the 18 January and on the Senate Environment Works page 19 January
  
• The posting is by Hedi Cullen, a climatologist who works for the Weather Channel on global change issues. It appeared 21 December 06. Cullen notes that the American Meteorological Society has issued a policy statement on climate change
  

  "There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."

and adds

I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming. (One good resource if you don't have a lot of time is the Pew Center's Climate Change 101.)

Responses kind of perk along at 3 a day until the 9 Jan when it gets blogged about in Sister Todjah and begins to spread slowly among the right wing blogs in the US, only to explode when posted by Morano. There are now 93 links.

• There are 1617 comments on the original post, almost all after Jan 17
  
• Cullen has additional posts AND a video response
• There is a response to the response from management

UPDATE: A weather TV show personality in Alabama by the name of James Spann also posted on this up on the 18th and it was picked up by Drudge.

Other than directing anyone with a losing Global Warming Denialist Bingo** card to the comments in these posts if they want to win, Eli merely notes that Cullen was perhaps a bit off. What AMS has to do is to set requirements for accreditation based on what is taught about climate and climate change.

UPDATE: For some more links this 19th December post by Richard Littlemore. In about three hours the number of linking posts to the Weather Channel has increased by 10 to 103. The number of links to the Wurlitzer's keys (Morano's post) is 213 as if 13:15 EST US. Sorting by "authority" in Technorati gives you an picture of the food chain. This is indeed the devil's work for idle hands. Go out there and shop people!

UPDATE^2: Deltoid has more links, and is not happy with the good Morano either. Eli muses that Morano's blog is masquerading as US Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee Blog. With Inhofe no longer the Chair, the Rabett modestly suggests that US citizens write to the Chair, Barbara Boxer (CA-Dem) asking that Mr. Morano retitle his blog, perhaps, Dumber than a Sack Full of Hammers Denialist EPW Blog. We need something catchy here folk the Rabett is taking this personally and needs some distance. A few Emails from CA would be of great help. The other members of the Committee can be found here. Feel free to drop them a note. Yr humble hare intends to.

**(ok Tim Eli changed the name, but we have moved on since then, and what could be, with a stretch, called scepticism then is denialism now)