Dear God, someone get this man under police protection. The Gore Cult will try to kill him, and I fear he will be ostracized by the academic community. I mean, who the hell knew that an institute of higher learning should actually be open to different, divergent views and not seek to proselytize students into blind obedience. God bless this professor, we need more like him.James Wanliss, a space physicist who teaches at Embry-Riddle, showed students the two films in an honors course titled "The Politics and Science of Fear" because he said more and more the public is being sold one side of an issue with many dimensions.
"I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals," he wrote in an e-mail. "Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself. The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science."
"I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals," he wrote in an e-mail. "Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself. The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science."
"An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary starring Gore and a lot of graphs, makes the case that humans have contributed mightily to a 1-degree rise in the Earth's temperature in the last 50 years. It uses images of melting ice caps and dying polar bears to nudge viewers toward action for reasons of morality.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle," an anti-Gore documentary, doesn't question the Earth's temperature increase but takes to task the questions of why and what's next. For example, it suggests solar activity may have more to do with the planet's warming than carbon dioxideemissions.
Wanliss said he doesn't necessarily subscribe to either film, but believes his students -- and the public -- should remain skeptical of theories such as Gore's explanation of global warming.
Given what I read from a FRESHMAN (read--my brain is full of the mush retardation given out as what passes for a secondary education today) and another professor from, get this, the sociology department, I think this professor is living on borrowed time...how sad for the true pursuit of what college should be about....
