2/15/06 - It Seems That Heart Disease Gets the Best Of Us.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has been catching a lot of flack lately over giving an award to Michael Crichton for a recent book of his which challenges global warming. I've always had something of a different insight into the controversy. My father was a mining engineer - equal parts geologist and civil engineer - and one of our close family friends is actually a petroleum geologist. They were both very aware of all of the benefits and costs associated with fossil fuels and their use, and the both scoffed at the idea of global warming.
Their argument was this: it's a scientific fact that the general trend in Earth's temperatures for the last few decades has been upward. The question is whether Man is what has been causing this*. Climatologists, with a few hundred years of selective data and models that have never actually worked, say it's Man's fault. Geologists, with millions of years of evidence and an abundance of proven theory, offer a resounding, "Maybe, but not likely." The geologic records say that this sort of thing has happened many times before, and worse, long before Man was a twinkle in some fish's eye. They can't say definitively that human beings aren't causing this temperature change, but there's just as much reason to believe that they aren't.
If this is true, why don't the two groups discuss the issue? Because this sort of fear-mongering brings in lots of federal funding to climatology research. As scientists, geologists also can't outright say the climatologists are full of shit. Thus, all arguments against the idea of man-made global warming are, as in the link above, framed as warnings against "shoddy science".
But our cultural zeitgeist says that we as humans are imperfect, and that our lust for control must necessarily breed our downfall. Thus, every global warming article you read will quote a climatologist, not a geologist.
* - The link to the AAPG website doesn't even question man's role in this change, but instead questions whether this change really qualifies as "climatic" (i.e. a long term, significant affect on weather patterns). This isn't what I've heard most, but it works, too.
P.S. In looking up the links for this, I ran across this editorial in the Charlotte Observer criticizing both the award and argument. I found their closing particularly ironic: "The petroleum geologists' association takes a pre-Enlightenment view: If it reinforces your opinion, it must be fact."
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The LJ boards for my high school have been alight recently with the news that one of my old physics professors died of a heart attack last week. He was only 53.
Thinking on my time there, he was one of those people I never really understood. He had a bachelor's degree from MIT, and a doctorate in Physics; with that sort of pedigree, he could have been earning a six-figure paycheck working for NASA or in the private sector. Instead, his career consisted of professing at a couple of colleges, then settling down to teach high school physics to a bunch of whip-smart teenagers. Outside of school, he was a HAM radio nut, but that was about all. He had no wife, no kids - just his job and his radio.
And he never seemed to enjoy teaching all that much, either. He always wore something of a sneer and acted like we were annoying him when we had questions. He was on a few boards at the school, but spent the rest of his time reading the paper or surfing the Net.
There were two times, though, when I saw a glimmer of something different.
The first time was a few weeks into the semester, discussing Newtonian physics. His class was the reason I had to learn trigonometry; never encountering it prior to The Academy, daghain and kimbyrle gave me a crash course in a couple of hours after class. However, even with their tutelage, I had a hard time remembering the difference between sine and cosine, so I made up my own funny symbols for the functions. After turning in a few homeworks consisting entirely of numbers and my invented symbols, he asked me about it. Explaining the situation, he cracked a smile, and let it slide from there on out.
The second time was later on in the year. My roommate at the time, Mick, was having tough time finding a ride home for break, and 200 miles was long ways to walk. A few of the guys came up with the idea of building a giant slingshot to do the job - which quickly precipitated into a discussion of the construction requirements for such a device.
With my background now, I could tell you that such a device would have had to shoot my roommate into the thermosphere if the G-forces wouldn't have vaporized him on the launchpad. (At least I'd finally get a single!) But I wasn't as sharp a physics student at that time, and I was interested in how wind resistance would play into the equation. So, I went and asked the professor.
Although it took him a little while to get into the premise, he quickly got into the solution. He lit up when he began explaining aspects of the trajectory, the impact of wind resistance, the heating my roommate would be subjected to, and several other aspects that came into play. He was writing equations and drawing force diagrams furiously, genuinely excited about the challenge. It was the one time I ever saw the reason he did the work he did.
But that's about all I know. I was only in his class a semester, and only in the city for a couple of years - I can't really say anything about anything.
Regardless, I hope he got to live the life he wanted, and not just live the life he got. Rest in peace, Dr. Doiron.