Telco said:
I also don't think that those scientists, with research dollars at stake, are being completely honest about global warming's source.
Here's a story, not that interesting but I'm going to bore you anyway - first hand experience.
When I was in college (place shall remain nameless), I took an after-class job with a professor (who shall also remain nameless) that I had in a biology class the previous semester. It paid squat but I was looking for experience. Looking back, I got a WHOLE lot of experience, I just didn't realize it at the time.
In short, the professor was studying the plight of a certain species of fox found in one part of our state, its numbers had been declining for a long while. He had all these dead foxes that had been trapped, my theory was that the fox numbers must have been declining because they had trapped so many of them. But I digress........
Anyway, there was some evidence that these foxes were getting sick from some type of intestinal roundworm. What us lucky students got to do was to cut open the intestines of these dead, frozen, and re-thawed foxes, empty them out through a series of filters, rinse and plate the residue off of the smallest filter, examine the residue under the microscope, and count the number of roundworm eggs that we saw. He took us through a couple of hours of training and turned us loose. It was a very yummy assignment. Foxes like to eat lots of things that smell good when they are partway digested, frozen for 6 months, then thawed out and rinsed.
After the first two days of my after-class worm-egg counting, he called me into his office. We talked about how many eggs I wasn't finding compared to previous studies; he wanted to make sure that I was counting as many as possible, did I know what I was looking for, and if I wasn't sure about what I was seeing, to count whatever as an egg. I pointed out that I had taken a lot of microbiology, was no stranger to a microscope, and was following his SOP and training as closely as I could, and that I'd do my best not to miss any.
Another two days of after-class worm-egg counting go by. I went slower. Tried to make sure I was counting everything. I was doing it right -- the numbers weren't really that much different than the first two days. Another request to come to his office. This time, he didn't ask me anything about counting eggs. He gave me a speech on how "interesting it was" how a department like his was funded. He pointed out that his fox-roundworm-egg study was up for review in about a year, a lot of projects weren't going to be renewed and this was one that he really wanted to see through. We then talked a little bit about what I was studying and how important good people were to his program, microbiology majors should do really well with this kind of study. We closed with how he was really looking to get the "maximum impact" from this study in order to support the declining fox numbers.
I'm not kidding, I really had that conversation. You always think that kind of conversation happens over some cutting edge technology or to cover something up, etc. but freaking fox roundworm eggs?
I didn't come back to count any more worm eggs, sure it would have been easy to give him the numbers he wanted (can you believe that someone would want inflated worm-egg numbers to try to get State money?). Ultimately, I ended up transferring schools the next semester for family reasons; but I was in a bad spot in his department if I had wanted to continue on there.
There is plenty of good science out there, There is just as much bad science out there. It's almost impossible to filter through who has what agenda. Ultimately, people have to use common sense and -- as my Dad always says -- moderation in everything is the key.
