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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
25-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Over $1M donated during 2025's One Day Give at Millersville University
LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Millersville University brought in $1.1 million with its One Day Give event. Over 2,400 transactions came through Thursday. Last year the school raised $826,000 for One Day Give. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Donors get to pick what their money goes towards. Scholarships and athletics had the most money pour in. 'What these scholarship dollars that are raised on one day give, as well as through other donations throughout the year, helps to offset that educational cost for our students so they can focus on their studies as opposed to worrying about taking on those extra shifts or extra couple of hours to pay for their education,' Vice President for Advancement at Millersville University Victor Ramos said. The $1.1 million is the most money donated in a single One Day Give at Millersville. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
How much snow will southcentral Pennsylvania get from midweek winter storms?
Southcentral Pennsylvania is facing two winter storms midweek that are expected to deliver snow followed by a mix of precipitation. Residents who live near the state line are expected to see higher snowfall totals from the first storm Tuesday into Wednesday because of its track to the south. Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are predicted to receive up to half a foot of snow. The second storm, which is expected to arrive after a brief break, is predicted to be a wintry mix, according to the forecasts. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for parts of southcentral Pennsylvania, including Adams and York counties. It advises that a total of two to three inches could fall between 2 p.m. Tuesday and 7 a.m. Wednesday. Drivers should expect slippery road conditions, it states. The first storm, which is predicted to be all snow, is expected to arrive mid-afternoon Tuesday and end around 5 a.m. Wednesday, senior meteorologist Tyler Roys said. The Weather Information Center at Millersville University anticipates the snow will arrive around noon on Tuesday and fall steadily before tapering off later in the night, director Kyle Elliott said. While the snow will not be heavy, untreated roads will become snowpacked and slippery, Elliott said in an email. He anticipates that travel conditions will deteriorate for the evening commute. Storm No. 2, which is expected to be a wintry mix, arrives later on Wednesday and continues into Thursday morning. AccuWeather is predicting a mix of snow, sleet and rain while the National Weather Service is calling for snow and rain. Meteorologists are predicting the precipitation will switch to all rain. The high on Thursday is expected to reach nearly 50 degrees, according to is predicting one inch to 3 inches for Adams, Lebanon and York counties for the first storm, Roys said. Spots near the state line could possibly see 4 inches or 5 inches. The National Weather Service is predicting 2 inches to 4 inches closer to the state line, and one inch to 3 inches for the rest of the area, lead meteorologist Greg DeVoir said. The Weather Information Center at Millersville University is predicting two to four inches across York County, Elliott said. The lowest amounts will be north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the highest amounts will be along the state line. Little accumulation is expected from the second storm. Much of southcentral Pennsylvania, including Adams, Lebanon and York counties, remain in a drought watch, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources. The onslaught of storms is good news for alleviating the drought, Elliott said. "The county is still dealing with moderate-to-severe drought conditions, but there should be some improvement in the drought through the end of February," he wrote in the email. "Another rain event is likely on President's Day weekend before the active pattern finally winds down next week." This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Snow accumulations expected for York, Adams and Lebanon counties
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pennsylvania universities accused of discriminating against Asian, white students
[Source] Four Pennsylvania state universities are facing a civil rights complaint filed Tuesday for allegedly discriminating against Asian and white students through their participation in a minority-focused STEM program, marking another challenge to race-conscious academic initiatives following last year's Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. The Equal Protection Project (EPP), a project of the conservative Rhode Island-based nonprofit Legal Insurrection Foundation, filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights against Millersville University, Slippery Rock University, East Stroudsburg University and West Chester University. The universities are members of the Keystone Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, which Millersville University describes on its website as 'an NSF-funded program intended to support historically underrepresented students pursuing a major in science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics.' The complaint alleges that the program's eligibility requirements — which specify that applicants must be African American, Hispanic American, American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander — violate Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 'By having a description of the program that requires you be how they have defined minority and by having an application which requires that you certify that you are one of these minorities they are in fact discriminating and excluding other people,' said EPP founder William Jacobson. Trending on NextShark: The complaint comes in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark June 2023 decision striking down affirmative action programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In that ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that both universities' programs 'lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping and lack meaningful end points.' The EPP's filing argues that the Alliance program is 'underinclusive, since the racial restriction is arbitrary and excludes swaths of candidates who could benefit from the programs but who are not permitted to apply due to their race and skin color.' The organization is requesting an investigation and, if necessary, the imposition of fines and suspension of federal funding to the four universities. The complaint parallels elements of the Harvard affirmative action case, where Asian applicants were allegedly held to higher standards for admission. However, while the Alliance program's guidelines specify eligible minority groups, they do not explicitly state that other racial groups cannot apply. Trending on NextShark: Jacobson expressed hope for a resolution. 'Our hope is that the four universities who comprised the alliance will look at it this and say, 'You know what? We did it wrong. We made a mistake here, and we're going to change it.' And if that's the result, we would consider that a win,' he said. This story is part of The Rebel Yellow Newsletter — a bold weekly newsletter from the creators of NextShark, reclaiming our stories and celebrating Asian American voices. Subscribe free to join the movement. If you love what we're building, consider becoming a paid member — your support helps us grow our team, investigate impactful stories, and uplift our community. Trending on NextShark: Subscribe here now! Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today!
