The National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) has again noticed feeble-minded thought brought to the masses through the pages of a local unnamed daily newspaper, feeble-minded thinking masqueraded as thoughtful in some way. 

The feeble-minded thought in this case was once again directed at the issue of climate change by a climate change denier, self-proclaimed conservationist and recreational land owner apparently angry at “canoe paddler protesters” and “hypocritical” environmentalists and “phony science” for getting in the way of copper-nickel mining and industrial farming and fossil fuel production.    

NUFA is in the process of analyzing reams of data regarding feeble-minded thinking that has taken place over the past year in order to assign personal bartenders to those who engage in feeble-minded thought.

As in the past, the timeline for processing the data is taking longer and longer each year, proof that more feeble-minded thinking, not less, is taking place on a yearly basis. We have not studied that phenomena, only noted that it is taking place.  

The assignment of personal bartenders to those in need is just one of the services provided by NUFA in its ongoing efforts to assist the feeble-minded in this hectic, pell-mell world of factually challenged information.

NUFA-trained personal bartenders are multiplying at an exponential rate to meet the growing demand.

One would think that in this day and age no one would be factually challenged given all the sources available. That may be one of the great ironies of our age, the persistent lack of factual information in this whiz bang technological age. From the NUFA perspective, factual information is available not only from the vast array of staid and true Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias stacked in the library of the Great Hall of Camp Shack but also at the push of a button of your personal computer or other hand-held electronic device, linking nearly every American to the worldwide web and all the factual information you can stuff in your head if you so choose.

NUFA-trained Internet Disinformation Specialists have so far analyzed just a smidgeon of the cloud and found a disturbing amount of non-factual data whizzing along like wolves in sheep’s clothing.   

NUFA supposes the if-you-so-choose is the critical part of the equation. NUFA supposes people choose to gobble up the disinformation because of worry, anger and hardheadedness among other maladies.

In researching the particular opinion expressed by the aforementioned climate change denier, conservationist and recreational land owner, NUFA noted the claims made in his writing are very familiar and found time and again, repeated nearly verbatim and without thought on climate change denier sites all across the cloud.

“There is plenty of solid evidence that global warming is a phony science.”

“It’s time for people to wake up and see this movement for what it is: nothing but a money-making industry and a lobby for the ‘environmentalists’ of the world who are never satisfied and who actually believe the earth is their mother.”

“Facts are a stubborn thing. The Arctic ice cap has rebounded fully, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center; and is at its thickest since records started being kept in 1978.”  

 Those views are traded about with apparent self defense-like glee in primarily conservative circles.   

Years ago in my life as an editor at a community newspaper I entertained a local opinion page contributor quite often. One day, many letters into his term, someone at the newspaper said, “Gee, I went on the web and found most of what he is saying on various conservative sites. He’s kind of just re-writing them but sometimes he’s just mixing them around and handing it to you pretty much verbatim.”

I inspected and found that to be true. He was simply picking a topic and going to the blog sites and finding the previously described sayings to support his cause. The next time he came in with a letter to the editor I asked if he would make sure that his writing, his opinions, were his own and in his own words.

The only original letter I ever received from him came soon thereafter, telling me I was censoring his views. 

The climate change denier, conservationist and recreational land owner likely found disinformation from sources like noted conservative commentator Erick Erickson, or someone like him, and gobbled it up. Deniers seem to be circling the wagons and claim they’ve found phony science and money making schemes and environmental extremists attacking “our way of life” from every angle.

Climate change deniers also gravitate to comments from one professor emeritus Leslie Woodcock, of England, who claims that “there is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years.” 

Yes, NUFA researchers simply went to various climate denier sites and found that statement, even though science has utilized Beer’s Law to easily measure carbon dioxide concentrations to see that they have risen dramatically. 

Some in the scientific community say Woodcock’s statements are noteworthy simply because of how “magnificently bogus” they are.

By the way, according to the NUFA interpretation of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, Arctic ice has continued its ongoing meltdown, resulting in the smallest September ice mass (the height of the yearly melt) since records have been kept.

According to the NSIDC:

“At the end of its melt season, Arctic sea ice fell to the sixth lowest extent in the satellite record, both in the daily and monthly average. Sea ice hit 5.02 million square kilometers (1.94 million square miles) on September 17 and averaged 5.3 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles) for the month of September.

‘Twenty years ago, having ice extent this low would have astounded us,’ said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze. ‘Now it is expected.’

Through 2014, Arctic sea ice has now been declining at a rate of 13.3% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average. The ten lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred in the last ten years.”

NUFA-trained personal bartenders are spreading out across the landscape to meet the growing problem of feeble thinking.