A Lick of Guts and an Ounce of Smarts
I was fortunate to have wrestled under Bill Koll for three years at Penn State. I say fortunate not because of the beating I took on the mats with my 1-4 career record – we weren’t as good as we are now under Cael Sanderson, but we always were a top 10 dual meet team and dominated the east, in spite of fierce opposition from the likes of Lehigh and Navy – but because wrestling under Coach Koll and assistant Andy Matter re-enforced the values I learned from my parents. The child of strict Italian parents, my first year or two at Penn State was like a kid being released into a candy shop whose never had a sweet before. I almost flunked out of school, but once I went out for wrestling, my grades shot up as the discipline returned. I quickly understood that if you want something you have to work for it. It also showed me why athletics can be a huge aid in education if done *right*. A big lesson for me: If you want something and someone is smarter or stronger than you, you have to outwork them to even have a chance.
I was fortunate to have wrestled under Bill Koll for three years at Penn State. I say fortunate not because of the beating I took on the mats with my 1-4 career record – we weren’t as good as we are now under Cael Sanderson, but we always were a top 10 dual meet team and dominated the east, in spite of fierce opposition from the likes of Lehigh and Navy – but because wrestling under Coach Koll and assistant Andy Matter re-enforced the values I learned from my parents. The child of strict Italian parents, my first year or two at Penn State was like a kid being released into a candy shop whose never had a sweet before. I almost flunked out of school, but once I went out for wrestling, my grades shot up as the discipline returned. I quickly understood that if you want something you have to work for it. It also showed me why athletics can be a huge aid in education if done right. A big lesson for me: If you want something and someone is smarter or stronger than you, you have to outwork them to even have a chance.
> Koll began his wrestling career in high school, winning the state title in 1941. > > After World War II, in which he participated in the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day, Koll dominated the 145 pound and 147.5 pound weight divisions. In 1946, 1947, and 1948, he was the NCAA national champion for his division. Koll was also named the NCAA Tournament Outstanding Wrestler in 1947 and 1948. He ended his career with a 72-0 record. > > Koll was one of only of five UNI wrestlers to have competed in Olympic games. In the 1948 games, held in London, England, Koll placed fifth.
Impressive.
Most Penn State wrestlers have their favorite Bill Koll story. Mine is a little known one. I called him up about a week before Christmas one year to check up on him. He was excited to talk me. “Joe, I just got through making the most expensive doll house ever… It’s a three thousand dollar doll house.” (For his granddaughter).
My response: “Coach, how do you know it’s a three thousand dollar doll house?”
“Because that’s the hospital cost when you chop off some of your fingers.”
He liked to call himself “Sweet Ole Bill,” or if you preferred, S.O.B. for short.
To this very day, in spite of our fierce rivalry with Cornell, I remain friends with his son Rob, who is now their coach. In fact many of the people at Weatherbell.com are Cornell grads. I still want our guys to beat the tar out of any Cornell wrestler that happens to show his face on a mat across from a PSU wrestler.
Coach Koll (my coach Koll) used to have a saying: “If you had a lick of guts and an ounce of smarts,” you would have done this or that. In today’s world, that seems like a cruel admonishment, but he would say it about himself too. Something minor would happen and he would say, “Well if I had a lick of guts and an ounce of smarts, I would have done this.” It was never guts OR smarts – always guts and smarts.
Where is this leading? I think, regarding the climate issue, objective journalists today need to have an old school “lick of guts and an ounce of smarts” when reporting on this. (There are those that are beyond objective.)
First: You should not be reporting on “climate change.” The climate is always in a state of change. There have been glaciers in New York City, and most of what is now our most densely populated areas of the East Coast as well as the fertile lower Mississippi Valley was under water at one time. Right off the bat you should be asking, “Well, why is 4 -8 inches of sea level rise in 100-150 years a big deal compared to what has actually happened?” Alarmists said global warming. They own it. And journalists should make them own up to it. Why in the world are you letting them get away with switching horses mid-stream – climate change is obvious and natural – and not holding their feet to the fire?
Second: You should do the work yourself to see what is going on. The journalists of the ‘70s and '80s understood their job was to question authority, not obey it. I think part of the problem is that some of the great journalism of those days past made stars out of journalist. This granted them access to some of the glitter of stardom, and in a way, became a perk that many are seduced by today. I don’t know if it’s intentional. The current governor of Ohio, John Kasich, once told me to never let being on TV get in the way of what you are really made to do. (I used to love Saturday nights when he asked me to be on his show “Heartland.”) He said it can be seductive. I pooh poohed it for awhile, but then started noticing that if there were stretches no one asked me to be on, I started getting mad. He was right. Being in the media can be seductive.
Third: You are supposed to be liberal in the true sense of the word. That is akin to being able to think with your head and pursue with your heart, and to do that you need a lick of guts and an ounce of smarts. Use the head first – not the heart! Being sheeplike is not the answer for a journalist. They go where they are told without thinking twice about it. Is this what journalism has become? I am not advocating you being wolves; perhaps more like a fox is better. But on this issue, one that is sapping our nation’s strength like heat out of a drafty house, we need true liberal-minded people to discern what is right and wrong. And that means taking you wherever the path of truth leads, not where it is you might want to go based on some high-minded abstract that can never be defined nor measured!
Let me give you just one example – global sea ice. Global warming was supposed to produce shrinking sea ice, right? How is that working out?
We are currently well above normal globally.
This is largely because of the expansion in the Southern Hemisphere, even more impressive since it’s expanding into an area that is almost all water, and it’s tougher to move the temperature of the oceans than land masses around it, such as the Arctic.
The coming Southern Hemisphere winter could result in record breaking sea ice extent. Last time that happened, the Northern Hemisphere was at record low levels in what AGW hysteria was promoting as “The Arctic Death Spiral.” My side pointed to the warm Atlantic Multi Decadol Oscillation (AMO) as the reason for this, and once it flipped to cold, as it was through the 1980s, sea ice would expand. Please remember that the Pacific has flipped to its colder mode, but only at the very start of this graphic was the Pacific and Atlantic in their cold modes together. So the start of the measurement here was at the height of what was the best set up for the expansion of Arctic sea ice.
Again, as long as the Atlantic was in its cold overall mode, sea ice was more or less above normal.
So I made a forecast back in 2007 that the Arctic would return to normal and above once the Atlantic flipped to its cold mode for good, which is around or after 2020. We can already see evidence now. The Atlantic has cooled some. (Even in warm periods, we see ups and downs go on, just like we see El Ninos – like we will this year – in the colder times of the Pacific, but they are short lived overall and preceded and followed by longer periods of cooling.) Look what the forecasted Arctic sea ice anomaly is for the height of the melting season this year now that the Atlantic is a bit cooler.
It’s nowhere near as low as previous years. It’s the summer min. that is what the sea ice death spiral people have been jumping on, yet this minor turn to colder overall – again, we are not ready to shift completely out of the dedadol warm mode – has it near normal for this melt season and increasing against the anomaly from the level it’s at now!
So what do you think is going to happen when the AMO turns cold overall again?
I am directing this at the vast majority of journalist out there that may not understand there is so much contrary information to the missive that you are constantly bombarded with on man-made global warming. I am not asking you to charge a beach into a hail of machine gun fire and go cut bob-wire in a maze of hedges. Nor do you need to go win three NCAA titles and be undefeated in college. But I think what my Coach Koll said is needed here – “a lick of guts and an ounce of smarts.” I am not insulting you since I believe that is what is in you, since the very nature of this vocational calling means that is a given. But you have to get a little old school, think with your head and pursue with your heart. The truth in this matter, and all it implies for freedom and the ability for untold amounts of people to have a chance at a better life, depends on it. It’s no different than the great “liberal” lights that is shown before you to give you this chance to do what you do.
Sometimes being a “hero” is simply the situation you are in and the ability to fight for the answer. And that takes a lick of guts and an ounce of smarts.
Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.
