I have always been amazed by the ability of conservative pundits and politician to exploit any minutia — with a strait face — to argue against scientific facts. They have done this with sex education and birth control, with toxic wastes, but most notably with global warming. For years these ersatz scientists have downplayed and degraded the mere idea of global warming. Today it was revealed that one of the studies most sited by these yokels was incorrect in it’s data timing. Yes, though the rest of the earth was warming the top scientists at Fox news and Exxon were noting that temperatures in the tropics weren’t rising as much, or at all. “J’accuse – they said. There is no global warming — it’s all a hoax”. Science arrived at the solution to this inconsistency recently:
After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting nighttime temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend.
It seems little wonder that conservatives are trying so hard to weaken science education, through creationism and NCLB, as facts have a terrible tendency to undermine their arguments.
