Posted by
Steve on Friday, December 05, 2008 12:39:40 PM
In a speech in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom showed a slide of the San Francisco Airport under water. He said that this would be reality. He also reported that the tides in San Francisco have been getting higher in the last 30 years. It turns out that the tides have not deviated one millimeter (an amount far smaller than an inch) in San Francisco Bay during the time records have been kept. Also, historical records indicate that the bay has maintained its level for thousands of years. If the bay is not rising, the chance of San Francisco Airport being under water are very low.
It never ceases to amaze me to find people who support global warming try and tell me that the earth is still warming. When NASA and other quasi scientific groups try and “cook” the books to “prove” that it is warming, they get caught. According to NASA, 2007 was supposed to be one of the hottest years on record until it was discovered that they were using summer records for October. Then 2007 slipped to being one of the coldest years in the last 150 years. That was to be expected as a large number of cities reported record low temperatures during much of the year.
People that believe in global warming claim that I am ignoring science by not believing in global warming, but the temperature of the earth has cooled each year since 1998. If I am in denial on science, why does the scientific record not indicate that the temperature is going up? If we are experiencing global warming, you would expect that the temperature would go up every now and then. And, you would expect that there would be more ups than downs. We have had 11 down years in a row. That would constitute a trend in anyone’s book, if they were looking at the actual records instead of projections by Al Gore.
As the scientific evidence piles up against global warming, more and more scientists are coming out in opposition to global warming. Most of the scientists that still believe in global warming are in academic circles. When scientists are in colleges and universities, they have to toe the liberal agenda or be shunned. That is why scientists in colleges and universities are not coming out in large numbers against global warming. On my campus it is no different than any other college. If you come out against global warming, you are considered a crack pot and a conservative. There is nothing worse to be considered on a college campus than a conservative. You can be a crack pot and still be considered acceptable if you are a liberal crack pot. If you are a conservative and a crack pot, you must go at any cost.
There are some major university scientists that are starting to come out against global warming. They are the ones that are mainly in research and hardly ever see a classroom. Researchers take their reputations very seriously. If they are perceived as being out of touch scientifically, they are then not given any grants. Researchers live by grants. They have to be considered as the most up to date and innovative scientist in the world for their field. That is why they try to keep everyone else out of their particular area of study. They do not mind a related field of study, but just not the same field of study. So, when they see a trend occurring, they jump on the band wagon and cheer.
Teaching scientists at colleges and universities do not have to be considered the “best” in their field. They just have to attract students to their classes. They can be dull and teach required courses, thereby requiring students to take their class. Or, they can be exciting and up to date and encourage students to come. I think it is better to be the up to date and exciting teacher to attract students. Many feel it is just ok to teach the required classes and get it over with.
But as a teaching scientist, you are not expected to be the most up to date scientist in the world. You are expected to be current, which means you should know what has happened in your field recently. But, there can be some things in the last year or two you may miss. To a researcher, missing anything within the last two years would mean death for grants. To a teacher, it just means they need to study a little more. But in global warming, researchers see the latest and have to react. Teachers may not perceive that the data is not on their side and are teaching things from 10 years ago without a thought in the world. Unfortunately, there ate too many teachers that teach from 10 years ago. They will not perceive of the cooling trend for another 10-15 years. By then, they will be wearing parkas in the summer.