Climategate

I continue to be astounded that the students and I are on such different planets.

Today, I talked about how science goes wrong when fraud and ideology get in the way.  I mostly illustrated this with Lysenko and the tragedy of Soviet plant genetics, a intellectual and humanitarian disaster from which America gained excellent scientists and substantial wheat sales. But I ended by discussing the politicization of climate change science, particularly the data-free schallacking that Penn State’s Mike Mann has taken (e.g. 1, 2).
None of the students had heard of Mike.
One had heard of climategate.
Only a few think climate change is the most important scientific question of the age.  
And just less than half the class think humans are causing global warming:
I know we academics live in a bubble.  But really.

One thought on “Climategate

  1. MADELINE KAY LABORDE

    Honestly I don’t even remember you asking if anyone knew what Climategate was, but maybe I’m just tired.

    I have heard of it and got the jist of it, but leaked emails and “fudging global warming” data was as much as I picked up.

    I think it’s harder to care about global warming, especially for kids our age, since it’s so hard to understand. There are opposing viewpoints shouting at us anywhere. It’s hard to get in a discussion about it without someone getting all huffy about it. It also deals with a lot of science and statistics that aren’t so easy to just browse through.

    Alternative energy, on the other hand, is super easy. All you need to do is look at how dramatically the price of gas has increased in less than five years. I remember when it was around $1 or $2 a gallon! Climate change doesn’t have anything so obviously clear. It doesn’t help that it still gets cold in the winter.

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