Open Letter to Dr. Robert Davila and Gallaudet Community

December 27, 2007


To Dr. Robert Davila and those who may share my concerns.

I couldn't help but notice in a recent Alumni eNewsletter "Green Gallaudet invites alumni to make the world a greener place" (see http://tinyurl.com/335nl6 )
and a very recent newsletter announcement in Inside Gallaudet “Gallaudet to join Focus the Nation’s fight against climate change” (http://news.gallaudet.edu/?ID=12431 ) that have caused me some concerns lately. Though I'm glad to see that there are initiatives being undertaken on how we can go "green" using responsible, common sense practices and goals. We all want clean air and water. We all want to see healthy and productive lands. No one is denying that. People want to see environmental conservation efforts at the local and regional scale because results are relatively quick. However, I am quite concerned that bias or one-sided teaching is possibly being introduced to undergraduate students over the supposed man-made "global warming" issue. For one, this is because "global warming" was mentioned along with a link to "Focus the Nation" seen in the recent Alumni eNewletter.

"Focus the Nation is exploding because, across the country, educators and students at every high school, college and university understand that we have just a few short years to act decisively to hold global warming to the low end of 3-4 degrees F."
http://focusthenation.org/

The key words, "...a few short years." This smells of preying on the uninformed by introducing hysteria with hyperboles, not to mention a way to make a buck by jumping the bandwagon scare of this supposed "anthropogenic global warming."

Climate change is a climate system that we have no real control over. For Gallaudet University to align, politically and environmentally, with an organization that uses hysteria and dire warnings should not be in the best interest of Gallaudet University when it comes to unbiased and neutral teachings. Nor should this be in the best interests for undergraduate students when crucial critical thinking skills are important rather than to be swayed by emotional hysteria.

In fact, in Gallaudet University's Monitoring Report to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (September 14, 2007) specifically emphasized "Critical Thinking" in a new curriculum that "draws on best practices in higher education, articulates specific, assessable learning outcomes, offers unprecedented opportunities for collegial interfaculty collaboration, and integrates learning across disciplines." One of the five expected outcomes is "Critical Thinking" where it states "Students will summarize, synthesize, and critically analyze ideas from multiple sources in order to draw well-supported conclusions and solve problems."
http://ims.gallaudet.edu/pdf/20070914-0003.pdf

Still, in a very recent Inside Gallaudet newsletter it also describes one student’s fear about the supposed anthropogenic global warming will have in the future.

“Student Earl Terry, chair of Green Gallaudet’s FTN planning committee, feels that addressing this issue is incumbent upon his generation. 'It’s very important for us to do something about [global warming] because if we don’t, our children will suffer,' said Terry.”
http://news.gallaudet.edu/?ID=12431

And in the same article it boasts of a special guest trained to give presentations based on that of vice president Al Gore in the film “An Inconvenient Truth” who completed an intensive three-day “Climate Project” training session to become certified to give the presentations. Yet, this is ironic considering that Christopher Monckton of Brenchley produced a detailed report that listed a total of 35 errors in Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth”
(http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html ).

Our understanding on the complexities of our climate system, the Earth itself and even the sun are still quite limited. Scaring people into submission is not the answer to get people to change their environmental ways. Scaring students at Gallaudet University isn't the answer either when they cannot develop their own critical thinking skills on their own.

I fear that Gallaudet University has not taken the steps to ensure students are on the path of self-sufficiency to learning when it comes to critical thinking skills on issues such as climate change. Or in this case, the claims of global warming caused by anthropogenic means that would lead to worldwide catastrophic environmental events or so say the proponents for Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” For Gallaudet University to associate with such an organization such as "Focus the Nation" whose main thrust is to induce or produce a “climate of fear” by blaming the human race as the cause of our global warming. There is no real basis for this. There is a growing body of scientific literatures outlining that this not to be the case. People simply need to be careful about using the "scientific consensus" meme by saying that there were very "little dissent among scientists worldwide." Not so when you have one analysis of a peer-reviewed literature that was done very recently showed just the opposite of what some people have been saying.

“A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. ‘This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850,’ said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.

Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.”
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,176495.shtml

Just as well, in December 2007, a team of over 100 prominent international scientists, who warned the UN, that attempting to control the Earth's climate was "ultimately futile."
http://tinyurl.com/2m27n5

Then we have a peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology that was published in a December 2007 issue said that climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that “ observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation. And that the results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data.“
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/908

And again in December 2007 over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming and that climate skeptics appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.
http://tinyurl.com/2hmrer

Other than that, there are many examples of other studies on time lags between rise/fall of temperature prior to the rise/fall of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. A few examples of research results include:

* Indermühle et al. (GRL, vol. 27, p. 735, 2000), who find that CO2 lags behind the temperature by 1200±700 years, using Antarctic ice-cores between 60 and 20 kyr before present.

* Fischer et al. (Science, vol 283, p. 1712, 1999) reported a time lag 600±400 yr during early de-glacial changes in the last 3 glacial–interglacial transitions.

* Siegenthaler et al. (Science, vol. 310, p. 1313, 2005) find a best lag of 1900 years in the Antarctic data.

* Monnin et al. (Science vol 291, 112, 2001) find that the start of the CO2 increase in the beginning of the last interglacial lagged the start of the temperature increase by 800 years.

Now, if Earth was suffering under an accelerated greenhouse effect caused by human produced addition of CO2, the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface of the planet, but data collected from satellites and weather balloons do not support this fundamental presumption even though we are seeing higher CO2. We ought to see near lockstep temperature increments along with higher CO2 concentration over time, especially over the last several years. But we're not.

In keeping up with Gallaudet University new efforts on transparency, I sincerely hope you will find the time to ensure that Gallaudet University’s best interest is to teach and provide materials to students in a neutral manner and allow students a chance to form their own conclusions through critical thinking. Neutrality is very important when it comes to teaching science by separating facts from fiction. For Gallaudet University to tie itself to an organization that prides itself on inducing a “climate of fear” when it comes to “global warming” without any real regards or acknowledgement that earth or climate science is complex and still in its infancy. We still do not fully understand the involvement of water vapor, a major greenhouse gas, which play a much bigger role than that of CO2
(see http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Evans-CO2DoesNotCauseGW.pdf ).

Dr. Davila, you said, “Our goal then and now is to create a stronger, more united community with a more rigorous academic curriculum to better prepare our students to thrive in the new, global economy,” in an Inside Gallaudet announcement about the Middle States Commission on Higher Education who unanimously voted to remove Gallaudet from probation (see http://news.gallaudet.edu/?ID=12229 ). That is what many people would like to see students do at Gallaudet University and that is to do rigorous, independent academic work.

I have posted this email letter as an open letter in my blog for all to see (http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.com/ ). And I hope Gallaudet University will approach students from a teaching neutral point of view so they can develop their own critical thinking skills. I have written a few emails to Gallaudet University about their April 2007 Earth Day global warming presentation at Gallaudet University that was set up with the help of students and faculty members (see http://news.gallaudet.edu/?id=11005 ). I expressed concerns that there were no efforts to present facts (see examples in this email) and realities about our limited knowledge of our own climate system when it comes to causal relationships with that of our Earth and sun that help directly and indirectly induce climate change (i.e. warming and cooling). But with the recent collaboration and support to continue with global warming teaching using Al Gore’s movie and it’s talking points can only mean that future efforts to present an open view without politics involved will not happen. This is what concerns me the most.

If you need more information or would like to discuss more, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Sincerely,

Mike McConnell



BIOGRAPHY: 11 years of professional work in earth science involving groundwater, geology, atmospheric pollution, wildfire effects on watersheds, post-wildfire mitigation planning, hydrology, and groundwater and surface water modeling. He holds a bachelor degree in mathematics (Gallaudet University, 1991). He also holds a M.S. degree in Geology (Univ. of Idaho, 1999) with emphasis in geophysics, hydrogeology and groundwater contaminant modeling while as a fulltime graduate student for 5 years.
Emails sent to.

Contact:
Dr. Robert Davila, president of Gallaudet University – Robert.Davila@gallaudet.edu

CC:
Sen. Wayne Allard – http://allard.senate.gov/ (emailed via official website)
Sen. Thomas Harkin – http://harkin.senate.gov/ (emailed via official website)
Sen James M. Inhofe - http://inhofe.senate.gov/ (emailed via official website)
Dr. Caroline Solomon (biology) - caroline.solomon@gallaudet.edu
Dr. Michael Moore (Chemistry) - michael.moore@gallaudet.edu
Dr. Henry Snyder (Physics) - henry.snyder@gallaudet.edu
Middle States Commission on Higher Education - info@msche.org