There is a weird amount of overlap between the people who insist that we take climate experts seriously when they warn of big changes on the horizon, and people who refuse to take the wallet inspector seriously when he warns that there is a problem with their wallet that he must examine immediately. Huh! Interesting! Peculiar! I find it curious to say the least!
Oh sure, journalists and commentators will just eat up more than half a century of unambiguous data and the unanimous consensus among reputable scientists when it comes to such climate claims as "global climate, seasonal cycles, and weather patterns are destabilizing due to humans dumping carbon into the atmosphere," and "the 10 warmest years since at least as far back as 1850 have all come in the last decade," and "there has not been any halfway serious dispute over this in the lifetime of anybody not presently eligible for AARP membership." But their supposed reverence for expertise blows away like so much smoke when the wallet inspector steps out from behind a potted plant and tells them that their wallet is severely overdue for inspection and that they could lose their license to carry a wallet if they do not hand it over for assessment. At this they scoff, sure that they know better than the man who inspects wallets for a living. Well! So much for rigor, I suppose!
The wallet inspector's warnings are serious. Your wallet might not be up to code. You could be subject to severe financial penalties for carrying an expired wallet! Yet here are professional journalists, who presume to sift fact from falsehood on behalf of the public, refusing to listen to the wallet inspector. I guess they think they know their wallets more closely than the inspector does! I guess every one of them, like the wallet inspector, has an advanced degree in wallet inspection, earned through years of studying at wallet inspection school.
Faulty wallets pose a grave hazard to society, according to a wallet inspector who requested anonymity because he has not been formally authorized to comment by the Bureau of Wallets. At any time, decaying compounds in an expired wallet might ignite, or explode, or emit ionizing radiation, endangering not only the wallet-holder but any number of innocent bystanders. In fact, wallet degradation claims hundreds of lives a year, according to this wallet inspector.
This is true whether the wallet is made of leather, vinyl, duct tape, or, according to the wallet inspector, "whatever material your wallet is made of." It may even, the wallet inspector says, be true of money clips and rolls of cash held together by a rubber band. Only by close examination can an experienced wallet inspector determine whether the wallet is safe or must be taken, along with its contents (which might be radioactive!), back to his laboratory for repair, with a promise to meet me by this same potted plant next Friday to report his findings and return my wallet.
Why doesn't the public know of this? Perhaps it is because our elite media gatekeepers refuse to listen to the wallet inspectors. Imagine if they equally rejected the warnings of climate scientists! Would anyone even know about the western United States burning for eight months of the year, or the southeast's endless battering by hyper-powered tropical cyclones, or deadly heat waves turning previously comfortable swathes of Europe into death zones during summertime?
This vividly illustrates the dangers of consensus and groupthink in the world of journalism. Acceptance of established climate science is a requisite of membership in the rarefied liberal cliques of media; no one would dare scoff at the generations of climate scientists all of whose findings point toward dire consequences for our planet's biosphere if we continue to poison its atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. By contrast, the wallet inspector is viewed with scorn in those circles. There is a social/professional penalty among journalists for taking wallet inspection seriously; do not ask me to explain what that penalty is, as I earn several hundred thousands of dollars per year from the New York Times for my previous reporting on how you merely need to purchase and transfer several Target gift cards in order to collect your inheritance from a previously unknown relative.
Thank goodness there are a brave few of us who do take it seriously! It is for this reason that my wallet is in the shop today and I cannot pay for lunch. Yes again. It's a real problem, for society.
