Re: [Phys-L] a climate of deception

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

His undergraduate degree is from Yale.  I don't know his major, but Yale
should be ashamed to graduate someone who is such a know nothing in science.
He also proposed political oversight on peer review.

Of course Harvard has its share of ignorant graduates as whown by the
Private Universe video.  Either Smith is very poorly educated in science or
is using his "opinions" for political advantage.  After all it is impossible
for many politicians to espouse either evolution or climate change and be
elected from most of the West TX districts.  It just shows how conventional
science education has failed when you have Yale graduates, MDs, dentists...
who distort the science.

One important idea here is that to understand climate change you have to be
at least formal operational.  To understand and make arguments using
invisible things like atoms requires you to be at the theoretical level
according to Lawson.  The other idea is that students do not change their
minds about things like evolution in conventional classes.  But classes
using the learning cycle with interactive engagement are more successful.
For the research on this read some of the papers by Anton Lawson.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> I mention this because on Monday May 20th Congressman Lamar Smith
> (R-Texas) published an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
>   "Overheated Rhetoric on Climate Change Hurts the Economy"
>   
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lamar-smith-overheated-
> rhetoric-on-climate-change-hurts-the-economy/2013/05/19/32cb6d
> 94-bda4-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html
>
> Among other things, he says "global temperatures have held 
> steady over the past 15 years".  Well ... it turns out that 
> there was a tremendous temperature spike in 1998.  Back in 
> 2003, climate deniers were saying temperatures had held 
> steady for five years.  In 2008 they said temperatures had 
> held steady for 10 years.  Now it's 15 years.  HOWEVER ... if 
> you go back 14 years, or 16 years, or 17 years, or 30 years, 
> or 100 years, or 1000 years, you see a dramatic increase.  
> The fact is, global temperatures are not holding steady.
> USDA plant-hardiness zones have moved northward by an entire zone.
> Glaciers are vanishing.  The sea level is rising and /accelerating/.
>
> Mr. Smith's piece came out on the same day that an 
> exceptionally violent storm killed scores of people in Moore, 
> Oklahoma.
>
> He goes on to say 
> 	the resulting increase in carbon dioxide emissions would 
> 	be a mere 12 one-thousandths of 1 percent (0.0012 percent).
>
> That just cracks me up.  That's typical climate-denier arithmetic.
> He cites an authoritative government source for that number, 
> namely a statement that he himself made during a 
> congressional hearing a week ago.  He got the arithmetic 
> wrong back then, too.  (I'm pretty sure that back here in the 
> real world, 12 divided by 1000 is 0.012.)
>
> The fact remains that no matter how you do the arithmetic, 
> tar-sands oil releases /disproportionately/ more greenhouse 
> gases than other forms of petroleum, out of proportion to the 
> net energy obtained.
......
> This guy is not just a Member of Congress ... he is the 
> /Chairman/ of the House Committee on Science, Space and 
> Technology.  He's obviously not lazy or stupid;  it takes 
> effort and ingenuity to pack so much dishonesty and deception 
> into a short article.