Science and Jailing Dissenters

Here is a fun fact and something you should know. All of the global warming information you have been led to believe is based on data from the last 100 years as recorded by machines; however we have reliable data going back 800,000 years and you have never been told about it. Why not take a look at the complete picture.

Wikipedia - European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica.  EPICA is the scientists that we fund to take ice cores in Antarctica and from those cores they can see how warm it was in the past, even before people were capable of determining it. Guess what it shows? It shows that we have not been warming steadily; but, rather we are in an expected cycle of warming. In fact if you go to Wikipedia - Temperature Records you can see their chart.

If you want to look at temperatures for the past five and a half million years you will see that we are actually colder. Wikipedia - Geologic temperature record. This is not surprising as we have known that the earth has been cooling for millions of years for a pretty long time.

If you go back to the Temperature records link you can scroll down till you get to their chart and you will see that the earth has been warming for about 22,000 years since the last time temperatures bottomed out. In fact, while the earths temperature has increased in the last 22,000 years it appears to have topped out, as was expected, and is now going down again and there is nothing we can do to cause it or prevent it.

Now, solar activity also has an effect on climate; but, that is harder to measure back in history. We can say that the planet gets hotter for a short period of time following intense solar flare activity; but, one also has to consider how trees and atmospheric changes effect temperature. We have a much easier time showing how volcanic activity effects temperature as extreme volcanic activity has a much more immediate and extensive effect on temperatures as it can block out the sun's rays. On top of this we look at the effect of asteroids on the earth. It is believed by just about every scientist that the dinosaurs were extinguished because of a single asteroid hitting the earth and putting such an alarming amount of dust in the air that it caused an ice age that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Here is a simple question, if we are going to ignore the scientific evidence that we have spent billions in collecting regarding temperatures over earth's history, then why would we rely on the records only for the last 100 years? The temperatures for the last 100 years are well within the predicted ranges and that includes all the records that pre-date man even inventing fire.

So why do I bring all of this up today. To begin with, I have been writing about the presidential race more than I wanted to. It is an important issue and attempts to limit our democratic approach to our representatives disgusts me and if you read my last post you probably feel pretty disgusted to. I went out to dinner with two very conservative friends tonight and we discussed that post and the prior ones that were labeled "What's Going On" and it had upset them because they finally saw how they were being lied to by the politicians and the "political establishment" that funds them, you know, the wealthy who make up the donor class. The second reason is that this blog has never been about one thing, it has always been about looking at everything through a different lens.

Now I want to discuss science in general. Those who have been reading this blog for a long time know that I have frequently written about science and I like science. I also know how science and other areas of study are managed and manipulated by political and other forces. Recently there has been serious discussion about being able to sue people over denying man made climate change. We have seen this before. Not that long ago we saw a law suit against a teacher who taught evolution in America, it was called the Scopes trial. Wikipedia - Scopes Trial.  I find it amusing that now people seek to sue people for teaching creationism in school, nothing has changed we sue people for saying things that we disagree with. In the past history has done worse, people were jailed and outright killed for disagreeing with the beliefs of the day. Galileo was jailed for saying that the universe revolved around the sun and not the earth. I am less concerned with which science is correct than I am with the willingness by the establishment to punish people for having opposing views.