Latest news with #Martz
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Meet the ‘anti-Greta Thunberg' weather nerd debunking climate myths and skewering the extremist elder statesmen
CHARLES TOWN, West Virginia — Chris Martz was still in diapers when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 — but that moment, he says, kicked off the political indoctrination of 'extreme weather events.' Now the 22-year-old freshly minted college grad has decided to make it his life's mission to lower the temperature on climate hysteria. 'I'm the anti-Greta Thunberg. In fact, she's only 19 days older than me,' Martz tells The Post, barely a week out from receiving his undergraduate degree in meteorology from Pennsylvania's Millersville University. Unlike the Swedish climate poster child turned Gaza groupie, Martz tackles the incomprehensibly complex subject of Earth's ever-changing climate with reason and data, rather than alarmists' emotional outbursts and empty, disruptive antics — or the increasingly mystical theories of left-wing academics. 5 Chris Martz calls himself 'the anti-Greta Thunberg.: Samuel Corum / NY Post 'I've always been a science-based, fact-based person,' Martz says over lunch near his small-town Virginia home. 'My dad always said, 'If you're going to put something online, especially getting into a scientific or political topic, make sure what you're saying is accurate. That way you establish a good credibility and rapport with your followers.'' 5 Greta Thunberg, here at a 2024 Stockholm protest, made her name as a climate scold. He started tweeting about the weather in high school and has amassed more than 100,000 followers, including, increasingly, powerful people in government. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and Reps. Chip Roy and Thomas Massie have shared Martz's posts examining weather patterns with fair-mindedness. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis paraphrased a Martz tweet last year when he shot back at a hostile reporter who tried to link Hurricane Milton to global warming. DeSantis noted that since 1851 there had been 27 storms stronger than Milton (17 before 1950) when they made landfall in Florida, with the most deadly occurring in the 1930s. 'It was word-for-word my post,' Martz says. 'His team follows me.' 5 Gov. DeSantis used a Martz tweet to slap back at a reporter last year. Fox News Trump first-term Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler invited Martz to lunch two weeks ago in Washington, DC, where the two discussed Martz's future and his experience as a college contrarian. Hollywood celebrities have also taken a liking to the weather wunderkind. Martz brought his parents this year to dinner with Superman actor Dean Cain in Las Vegas. And in May, comic Larry the Cable Guy invited Martz backstage to meet after a show in Shippensburg, Penn. 'They didn't have to be as nice as they were. They just treated me like I was their next-of-kin,' Martz says of his new celebrity friends. 5 Dean Cain invited Martz to dinner in Las Vegas. Masters of Illusion, LLC The son of an auto-mechanic father and a mother who works in water science for the federal government, Martz grew up near Berryville, Va. (pop. 4,574), where he still lives. His interest in meteorology started in childhood but not for the usual reasons — say, a fascination with tornados or love of winter storms. But from a young age, Martz suspected his teachers and the media were lying to him, and that unleashed a storm of righteous indignation and a quest for truth. It started Christmas Eve 2015 when 12-year-old Martz was sweating in church. An outside thermometer read 75 degrees. It was a rare December heat wave, and the media were catastrophizing about global warming. Martz became stricken with paranoia over our boiling planet's future. 'Everyone seems to remember white Christmases when they were a kid, but the data doesn't back that up. It may be that we're remembering all the movies where it snows at Christmas,' he says. 'And I had science teachers telling me New York City was going to be under water in 20 years and that fossil fuels are destroying the environment.' But just a couple weeks after that December heat wave, a blizzard slammed the eastern United States, dumping record snowfall on his Virginia town. He wondered: What was really going on? Then Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston in 2017, and the media again blamed man-made climate change. Martz dug into the data and was shocked to learn there'd been a hurricane drought in America in the preceding 12 years, from 2005 to 2017, the longest period on record — dating back to George Washington's time — that a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm had failed to make landfall. In fact, many of the most powerful storms to hit the United States, he learned, occurred before the 1930s. 5 Martz's tweets have some powerful fans in government. Chris Martz / X Today, Martz calls himself a 'lukewarm skeptic.' While he does believe the Earth may be warming and human activity may contribute, natural variation remains the more likely culprit for changes in climate, and doomsday predictions are fueling unnecessary hysteria with a political motive. Martz instead looks at physical measurements to assess what's happening with Earth's climate. Catastrophic climate models that are so fashionable in academia can be manipulated to say whatever you want, he says. 'Models are not evidence.' 'You can make the case we've seen heavier rainfall in the eastern United States, but it all depends on where you start the graph,' Martz says. 'Since 1979, there's been an eastward shift in Tornado Alley. Okay, that's evidence of climate change. That's not evidence that humans caused it. 'A lot of the biggest tornado outbreaks during the 1920s and '30s occurred in the southeastern United States, where we see them today. Whereas in the 1950s and '60s they occurred more in the Great Plains,' he explains. 'So it's likely that it oscillates due to changes in ocean circulation patterns and how that affects the placement of pressure systems and where moisture convergence is and wind shear is and how those dynamics play out. It's much more likely an artifact of natural variability. 'There's no physical mechanism that makes sense to say, well, if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that it's going to cause an eastward shift of tornadoes in the United States.' As hurricanes have failed to become more frequent or powerful, the media has glommed on to wildfires as the climate emergency du jour. Even the Trump administration's states in the aftermath of this year's Los Angeles Palisades fire: 'Scientists widely agree that human-caused warming is generally making fires in California and the rest of the West larger and more severe.' Martz counters this. 'California has been getting drier in the last 100 years or so,' he says. 'However, in the geological past, it's been much drier in California. Between 900 and 1300 AD, there was a 400-year-long drought that was worse than today's in the southwestern United States.' Blaming Big Oil is much easier than blaming themselves, Martz says of California's politicians, insisting many of the state's fires could be avoided if powerlines were placed underground, instead of on dry hillsides where downsloping winds snap transmission lines (a likely cause of January's fires, he says), and if the state had better forest management. 'It's all a giant money-making scheme,' Martz tells The Post. 'Politicians and bureaucrats latch on to scientific issues, whether it was the pandemic, for example, or climate, to try and get certain policies implemented. In usual cases, it's a left-wing, authoritarian kind of control. 'We want to control what kind of energy you use, control the kind of appliances you can buy, how much you can travel, what you can drive, what you can eat, all that. But in order to do that, they need scientists telling a certain message. And the science is funded by government actors.' Martz himself gets accused of having nefarious backers, namely Big Oil, which he finds laughable as just a college kid with a Twitter account. He works part-time as a research assistant for the DC-based nonprofit Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which advocates for free-market energy solutions, and insists it hasn't taken money from the fossil-fuel industry for nearly two decades. That hasn't stopped angry climate cultists from trying to ruin his life. 'For my last three years of college, there were endless phone calls, emails sent to the provost, the president, trying to get me kicked out. They'd have department meetings about me. Thankfully, my professors had my back,' he says. For all his detractors, Martz remains in good company. The meteorologist founders of both The Weather Channel and AccuWeather have been known to push back against the left's climate-change voodoo, along with prominent climatologists like Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and John Christy. But Martz thinks his youth makes him particularly threatening to the established order. 'They don't seem to realize yet that cancel culture doesn't work anymore,' he says. 'They're getting angry because they're losing their grip on the narrative. They're getting desperate to try to stop anyone who is making a difference.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gov. Kim Reynolds appoints Sarah Martz to serve as Iowa Utilities Commission chair
Gov. Kim Reynolds has selected Sarah Martz to serve as chair of the Iowa Utilities Commission, the regulatory panel that oversees carbon capture pipelines and other utilities across the state. Martz, who has served on the three-member commission since May 2023, was among the commissioners who voted to grant construction permits to Summit Carbon Solutions' planned carbon capture pipeline, allowing the company to use eminent domain to acquire land from owners unwilling to sell it access. 'Sarah's background, engagement in regional and national associations, and experience to date on the commission will be an asset to the IUC as it prepares to help our state navigate an expected increase in demand with additional heavy power consumers coming online,' Reynolds said in a statement May 19. A two-thirds majority of the 50-member Iowa Senate will need to confirm Martz's appointment as chair. Her overall term runs through April 30, 2027. She succeeds former Republican lawmaker Erik Helland as chair, effectively immediately. Helland and another former GOP legislator, Joshua Byrnes, will continue to serve on the commission. Helland's term spans through April 30, 2029. The Senate recently confirmed Byrnes to a second term that runs through April 30, 2031. In addition to overseeing pipeline projects, the Iowa Utilities Commission regulates investor-owned electric, natural gas and water utilities. It has specific regulatory jurisdiction over municipal electric and natural gas utilities and over rural electric cooperatives. Martz leads the commission while it has increasingly fallen under scrutiny from those pushing back on eminent domain use for carbon capture pipelines. After years of House- backed legislation stalling in the Senate, Iowa lawmakers finally sent a bill to Reynolds on May 12 that seeks to limit eminent domain use for the private projects. More: Republicans' frustrations spill into debate as Iowa Senate passes eminent domain bill The measure, House File 639, also would implement new requirements for the Iowa Utilities Commission, including that all members be present at hearings on proposed public utility regulations, electric transmission lines and pipelines. Reynolds has not said whether she will sign or veto the legislation. Martz serves on various committees and state working groups at the National Association of the Regulatory Utility Commissioners, including the Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment as well as Transmission and Performance-Based Regulation State Working Groups that bring together nationwide peers and other experts. She also is the Iowa representative to the Organization of MISO States, which represents state and local utility regulators in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator region. Before she joined the Iowa Utilities Commission, Sarah worked in roles at Alliant Energy for 11 years optimizing power plants, researching solar performance and piloting new technologies such as energy storage in Iowa communities. She managed the company's electrical distribution engineering team. While all three commissioners approved awarding permits to Summit's proposed pipeline project, Martz was the only commissioner who didn't file a written dissent in connection with the order. Helland, as chair at the time, objected to delaying construction of some sections of the pipeline until Summit had obtained permits to build connecting pipelines in neighboring states ― South Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska ― and to the sequestration site in North Dakota. He said doing so delegates "the statutory authority of the board to the public utility commissions of other states." Byrnes objected to approving part of the pipeline he thought imposed more burden than benefit. "The North-South lateral runs approximately 123 miles through seven counties and impacts 118 eminent domain parcels — all of which are necessary to serve only one ethanol facility," Byrnes wrote, referring to a section of the proposed pipeline running from Ida County to Fremont County. But all three commissioners found that overall, "the proposed service provided by Summit Carbon is in the public convenience and necessity" and should be approved. Marissa Payne covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. Reach her by email at mjpayne@ Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @marissajpayne. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Kim Reynolds appoints Sarah Martz to chair Iowa Utilities Commission
USA Today
14-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Mike Martz: Hall of Fame snubs Torry Holt because 'there's enough' players from '99 Rams
Mike Martz: Hall of Fame snubs Torry Holt because 'there's enough' players from '99 Rams Apparently, the Hall of Fame voters think there are 'enough Ram players from that team' in Canton already There may not be an eligible player more deserving of being in the Pro Football Hall of Fame than Torry Holt. He's been a finalist six years in a row, yet the committee still will not vote him in and give him a spot in Canton. As one of the greatest wide receivers in NFL history, it's shocking that he hasn't been inducted yet. There could be a reason for that, though. Former Rams coach Mike Martz, who was the offensive coordinator in 1999 when St. Louis won the Super Bowl, revealed on 'The Coach JB Show' that one voter believes 'there's enough Ram players from that team' in the Hall of Fame already, so that's why Holt hasn't been voted in yet. 'The top three guys that do this now, they're dead-set – and one of them said this in a meeting and it got out – that, 'Ah, there's enough Ram players from that team, we don't need anymore.' Which makes no sense,' Martz said (h/t Turf Show Times). That's a baffling reason for keeping someone out of the Hall of Fame. Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Orlando Pace and Dick Vermeil are all in Canton as Hall of Famers, and though Aeneas Williams wasn't on the 1999 Super Bowl team, he did play four years with the Rams from 2001-2004. If a player is great, he should be in the Hall of Fame – regardless of how many of his teammates are also in. As Martz points out, Holt should be a no-brainer considering he was, at the time, the fastest receiver ever to 10,000 yards and is the only player in league history with six straight seasons of 1,300 yards. 'To me, it's the biggest in all of professional sports that he doesn't have a jacket right now,' Martz said. 'His numbers are just ridiculous. He's the quickest guy to 10,000 yards receiving. Nobody has ever gone six seasons in a row with 1,300 yards or more. Nobody's ever done it. Jerry Rice didn't do it.' Martz believes that at some point, the committee will put Holt through and give him a spot in Canton. 'He'll get in eventually, but it's just painful to sit there. I feel bad for him because he's so deserving,' he said. It's easy to make the case for Holt to be in already. He had 13,382 yards and 74 touchdown receptions in his career, recording at least 1,100 yards in eight straight seasons. Jerry Rice is the only player in NFL history with more seasons of at least 1,100 yards than Holt, and he finished with 13 such seasons – just two more than Holt. It's time for Holt to get his rightful place in Canton.
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
In quarterback-driven NFL, winning the turnover battle is no longer best path to victory
When he was introduced as the Chicago Bears head coach last week, Ben Johnson subtly revealed an emerging truth across analytics. 'It's clear modern football in the NFL is quarterback-driven. That is no secret,' Johnson said. 'Right now, quarterback success is a higher predictor of winning and losing than turnover ratio.' Advertisement Wait, what? From Vince Lombardi to Bill Belichick, from Bill Walsh to Bill Parcells, coaches have stressed for decades the importance of ball security and limiting turnovers. The team that wins the turnover battle wins the game, right? Not necessarily. As teams get familiar with new data, there are more accurate indicators of success that buck that long-held assertion. Johnson was speaking specifically about quarterback Caleb Williams and why he was drawn to the Bears job, but the premise applies to teams across the NFL. GO DEEPER Super Bowl LIX projections, analysis: Chiefs meet Eagles in rematch Obviously, turnovers remain an important factor, but the days of overcoming moderate quarterback play with a stout defense and takeaways are quickly fading. 'Game managers,' the obscenity uttered for good-not-great quarterbacks, will always have a place in the NFL. Plenty of them reach the postseason every year, but they usually aren't good enough to make a deep run. In the simplest terms, the best path to winning in today's game is for your quarterback to consistently be better than their quarterback on dropbacks, especially in the postseason. 'If you're that good of a quarterback, you overcome turnovers, you just will,' said former NFL coach Mike Martz, who was ahead of his time with some of his offensive concepts with the St. Louis Rams. Martz was the offensive coordinator for the Rams' victory in Super Bowl XXXIV, then guided them to a 14-2 record and another appearance in Super Bowl XXXVI. Martz focused on yards per attempt as a more important indicator than turnovers in the 1990s before analytics were commonplace. Of course, he had pretty good quarterbacks in Marc Bulger and Kurt Warner. Martz believes there are more good quarterbacks today than there are good franchises and offensive systems surrounding them and guiding them. As for turnovers, Martz said he never discussed interceptions with his quarterback during games. Advertisement 'Most of the time during the game, when you see it, you don't really know what happened until you look at the tape,' he said. 'You can be upset and talk to him, he can tell you what he saw, but that never works out. It never works. They're in a fragile state at that point. You leave them alone, encourage them. … You tell them let's keep going, we're not going to slow down.' GO DEEPER Inside Patrick Mahomes' 'superhero' transformation and another Chiefs AFC title 'Quarterback success,' as Johnson used it last week, is a broad term that can include many factors. One standard measure in advanced data that accounts for most of them is Expected Points Added per dropback. It is exactly as it sounds — how many points is the quarterback expected to add every time he drops back to pass. The league average this season, according to TruMedia, was 0.06 points added per dropback. It has increased to 0.08 points during the playoffs. Last year, the league average per dropback was 0.02 points added during the regular season and 0.13 in the playoffs. The Baltimore Ravens scored the highest in EPA/dropback this season at 0.31, and the Cleveland Browns were last at minus-0.2, well behind the 31st-place New York Giants (minus-0.08). In the last five seasons, NFL teams had an .800 winning percentage in regular-season games with a positive EPA-per-dropback differential. In the playoffs over that same span, they have an .844 win percentage in such games, according to TruMedia. Over the past five years, teams that lost the turnover battle but had a positive EPA/dropback differential (the quarterback who outplayed the opposing quarterback) had a winning percentage of .519, according to TruMedia. In the playoffs, that climbs to .571. Conversely, teams that won the turnover battle but had a negative EPA/dropback differential (their quarterback was outplayed by the opposing quarterback) only had a .481 winning percentage. In the playoffs, it sinks to .429, according to TruMedia. Advertisement That held true last weekend when the Buffalo Bills won the turnover battle but lost to the Chiefs in the conference championship because Mahomes outplayed Josh Allen in EPA/dropback. It was one of Mahomes' 10 best career performances, according to TruMedia's dropback metrics. EPA/dropback is a broad statistic that encompasses several factors — including turnovers. It also takes into account time, score, down and distance. Essentially, quarterbacks can score big in higher-leverage situations (third down, fourth down and red zone opportunities) and a higher rate of explosive plays over negative plays. Quarterbacks that can extend drives and create favorable scoring opportunities grade out the best. For all of the attention Philadelphia's defense and running game receive, Jalen Hurts' EPA/dropback of 0.13 was tied with Mahomes for ninth in the NFL this season. GO DEEPER Jalen Hurts 'just wins,' and that's what matters to the Super Bowl-bound Eagles Ten of the top 12 teams in EPA/dropback made the playoffs this year. The two that missed, the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals, were either overcome with injuries (49ers) or by their horrific defense (Bengals). The two Super Bowl teams, the Eagles and Chiefs, ranked ninth and 10th. Only one team made the postseason this year with a negative EPA/dropback — the Houston Texans, who lost 0.01 points every time their quarterbacks dropped back to pass. In the last five years, the top 16 teams and 18 of the top 20 in EPA/dropback all reached the playoffs, according to TruMedia. Given all of those numbers, it should be no surprise that the teams with the three worst EPA/dropback scores this season are the three teams at the top of the draft: the Titans, Browns and Giants. The Browns and Giants enter the offseason searching for new quarterbacks while the Titans hold the top pick and could also move on from Will Levis. Advertisement 'The quarterback has as much influence in a game as any position in sports,' rookie Browns offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. 'I think when you're in a high level of efficiency offensively, that leads to wins and losses. I think the turnover margin is still a good number, but I think you see the pass efficiency number in the NFL continue to be a good indicator. And obviously, that's a big part of playing the quarterback position.' The teams caught in the middle, such as the Arizona Cardinals with Kyler Murray and the Jacksonville Jaguars with Trevor Lawrence, might be in the most difficult position. Both were chosen with the first pick in their drafts, but Murray is 24th in EPA/dropback since entering the league in 2019 and Lawrence has a career mark of minus-0.01 to rank 37th. They are two of many examples of decent quarterbacks who have led their teams to the postseason, but are they good enough to win multiple playoff games by outplaying the opposing quarterback? That's what football has become: The team with the better quarterback that day will usually win the game. Can Lawrence, for example, outplay Allen and Mahomes in the AFC playoffs in consecutive weeks? How many owners are content with putting a competitive product on the field, making the playoffs a few times but never advancing far? For the owners who want more, what is the exit strategy on highly paid quarterbacks? More importantly, how can teams caught in the middle move into position to find someone better? For now, it's no surprise that most of the league is chasing the Chiefs and Mahomes. Since entering the league in 2017, Mahomes has the highest EPA/dropback of any quarterback in the NFL, according to TruMedia, in regular season and postseason games combined. Hurts is 21st. Place your bets accordingly. (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Patrick Smith, Todd Rosenberg / Getty Images)
