Climate Change Lecture

I found the Climate Change lecture to be very informative, interesting, and above all scary. My knowledge of the physical sciences is pretty rudimentary so the Dr.'s lecture really helped me out and presented a wealth of material in way I could understand. I left the lecture with mixed feelings. I was somewhat distraught given the challenges we will face in upcoming decades yet there was more than a glimmer of hope, especially given the voice we have in voting. Fred Upton has a powerful voice in Congress and has used that voice to block some legislation regulating climate change. Paul Clements a professor in the political science department right here at WMU is running against Upton.

After the lecture I did a few quick Google searches through the poplar media to find some dissenting opinions on the subject, expecting that most of those opinions would in someway be tied to interests of industries that would be hurt due to carbon emissions legislation. (cap and trade) Most of the articles in the mainstream media that I could find that resisted carbon emission legislation were from the Wall Street Journal. As a reader of the Wall Street Journal I have found the actual reporting content of the WSJ to be fairly balanced, but the editorial page has a pro-business bias. The overall view of climate change from the editorial writers of the WSJ is that climate change is being caused by humans, but that the overall effects are ambiguous an therefore we shouldn't do anything drastic if at all about it. The WSJ recently found 16 accomplished scientists to dissent from the IPCC consensus opinion, but all of those scientists have ties to Petroleum industry think tanks or aren't in the specialty of climate science.The piece has been vigorously attacked, fortunetly.