Global Warming: HOT Topic

Fahrenthold, David A., and Juliet Eilperin. “Science of global warming debated hotly in e-mails.” Daily Herald. 6 December 2009.

SUMMARY:

Apparently scientists are hiding their findings in hopes to trick the public in believing more in global warming. “It began with an anonymous Internet posting, and a link to a wonky set of e-mails and files,” stolen files that contained flaws in their own data that seemingly were to “muzzle their critics.” Scientists were releasing invalid information to the public, and they were caught. This scheme is called “Climate-gate,” it’s a scandal that has brought much public attention on the science of a warming planet. Although the hidden e-mails don’t prove that human-caused climate change isn’t true, they raise many questions. They are trying to control what the public hears and understands. There are more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents that were all stolen from servers at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

RESPONSE:

So global warming is a hot topic… But hot enough to lie about? No. In fact it’s really not even that hot. The earth hasn’t warmed as predicted over the past ten years. But what does the media want to hear? The media wants to show something dramatic and in turn have the public respond in a dramatic way. Stressing that global warming is influential makes the media be able to make a turn to be eco-friendly and encourage low fuel emissions and good habits for the environment. It’s amazing that scientists will lie about their findings or try to “hide” them so they can release what they want to release, but the truth is always exposed or found in this case. This is proof to me that we as citizens need to find out for ourselves, rather believing everything that the media tells us. For scientists to break from using the scientific method when publishing their findings makes you wonder what other inaccurate information has been released. This is so inappropriate for anyone to do, especially a scientist.