At 08:42 PM 5/1/01 -0400, Kevin Tarr wrote:
>Everyone breathe in deeply, hold, hold, let it out. Feel better?
>Nice and calm now.
>
>Penn State has a fifteen-minute show Monday to Friday, usually
>past weather, current weather, forecast, then depending on the
>day a long range forecast or a special event forecast. Then a
>five-minute 'topic' segment. For some reason, just this week, all
>five days are about Global Warming. The web site has nothing
>about it, a weak site overall:
>
>http://www.ems.psu.edu/WeatherWorld/
>
>You don't have to believe them, or me or anyone. Today?s topic
>had different atmosphere professors, by the video it looked to be
>over years from the early 80?s to now and one said this and one
>said that and the next said something else. Their point was that
>even when you have an open mind and really know the facts you can
>still disagree on the outcome. These are experts and their
>statements ranged from doomsday to not enough data to absolutely
>nothing to worry about. So are you going to believe a newscaster
>or politician or worse some actor when they TELL you that they
>KNOW we are destroying the world?
>
>Bad news sells.
Your last line is exactly the point I emphasized last night in class when
this topic came up. I spent some time on the natural climate variations
such as the "Little Ice Age," which generally get short shrift both in the
popular media and in contemporary science textbooks.
BTW, one student asked the question "What ONE news source do you recommend
for us busy* students that will give us THE TRUTH?" My answer was that
there really is no one source: a person seeking "the truth" (or some
approximation of it) needs to look at a variety of sources whose biases
range from left-wing to right-wing and try to strike a balance. How would
any of you have answered her?
(*Many of the students in this particular evening class are adult returning
students who have families and full-time jobs, and some are single parents,
so they really do not have a lot of spare time.)
-- Ronn! :)
