Saturday, June 8, 2013
Whitman College student Austin Biehl begins his guest column (Do politics, economic interests control government?) with the statement, “scientists almost unanimously agree that our world is warming and that humans are the dominant cause.”
Science does not state the answer first, then examine only the evidence supporting that answer. And science is not done by majority vote.
As Steve Singleton has made abundantly clear in his numerous letters, for every scientist who says yes on the climate question, there is an equally-qualified scientist who says no.
Whitman College is not teaching the real sciences of geology and biology if its students turn out being as helpless as Mr. Biehl in the face of Mr. Singleton’s exhortation to “prove it.”
Not that Mr. Singleton is himself a model scientist. Mr. Singleton and Steve Luckstead appear to be at each other’s throats over nothing more substantial than, “Nyah! Nyah! My scientist is better than your scientist.”
It does no good to claim that climate-deniers are wrong because they are funded by the oil companies, when it is so obvious that climate-acceptors are funded by the windmill companies.
U-B letters to the editor would be more interesting if they contained more science and less petty name-calling.