[Vision2020] University of Idaho Argonaut, 1-25-11: Bret Zender: "Climate change is not to be ignored"

[Ted Moffett]

  Other journalistic offerings from the Argonaut on the problem of
anthropogenic climate warming have been rather lacking, but I thought this
article covered some important points concisely, while being entertaining.

Given gravity is just a theory, for fair and open minded debate and
education in the public schools, physics classes should present the theory
of levitation, don't you think?  This makes as much sense as insisting
creationism be taught in physics classes.... After all, evolutionary
biologists might be just as fraudulent and or incompetent as some
insist climate scientists are, ditto for physicists and their "theory of
gravity."  Just a theory, remember!

http://www.uiargonaut.com/sections/opinion/stories/2011/jan/12511/climate_change_is.html

Climate change is not to be ignored
 Bret Zender | Argonaut

I get this weird aura sometimes. It's that sort of
"Alice-in-Wonderland"-like sense of being in a place where reality isn't at
all what you know, love and thought it was. It's like reality came home
violently drunk and slapped you around and said it was cheating on you. Then
it swiftly apologizes and says it's sorry and it should never have done that
and didn't mean any of it, but things are never quite the same again.

I felt that aura while reading a news story at ClimateScienceWatch.org about
the newly elected Republican House majority disbanding Nancy Pelosi's Select
Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. That's right —
disbanding. Why are they doing this?

In the words of Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), the climate
scientists might have been the perpetrators of a "massive international
scientific fraud." In James Sensenbrenner's mind, science is an organization
— a competing organization like any other, driven by its own profit.

In other words, it's something they have a reason to commit fraud for — as
though scientists will finally get to show numbers in the black this
quarter. Some say you can only perceive the world as it appears through your
own eyes, and it's hard to find a better example of that than James
Sensenbrenner.

Disproving global warming at this point is like trying to disprove evolution
or gravity. It's not about disproving Darwin — it would be like uncovering
the Illuminati, Bigfoot, King Arthur and the hidden alien knowledge
Egyptians used to build the pyramids at once.

That's how big of a conspiracy this would require within the scientific
community. It would be a conspiracy within NASA, the National Organization
for Science, the Pew Center, and 99 percent of the scientific community. So
many people have tested the evidence and theories out there that you can
barely find a single reputable scientific organization that contests it.

And yet, another glance down the page reveals this other gem of a news
story: "Sarah Palin Supports Teaching Creationism in Schools." Great. She
declines to say what she believes is truth but the controversy should be
taught in schools, slipping back to the core argument that "debate is always
healthy." This is the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president. This is
the woman who was a heartbeat away from becoming the leader of the free
world.

Do we teach the controversy to gravity? Do we allow the view that Yggdrasil
drags the planet along by its tentacles a fair shake right up there with
Einstein? Do we let Holocaust deniers present their side of the Anne Frank
story?

No. Schools teach the truth. They teach science.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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