Whether the topic is Iraq, religion, discrimination, or even the scientific theory of evolution, you can likely find a use for John B. S. Haldane's description of the four stages of acceptance of ideas: i) this is worthless nonsense; ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of…
Have you ever wondered why humans must eat fruit to stay alive, but dogs, cats, cows, squirrels and other mammals don't? It's because all mammals need Vitamin C to survive, but simians (including humans) are among the very few mammals that cannot synthesize Vitamin C from their diets. Why? Because…
A friend from Kentucky recently sent me this local newspaper column about the soon-to-be-opened Creation Museum in Covington, Kentucky (just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio). This museum aims to counteract the secular lies about how old the Earth really is, and to show that only the Bible has a…
I've always been fascinated by the moon. Perhaps it was my father's work with NASA from the 1960's through the 1990's, or maybe just a fascination with shiny things. I was sitting in my back yard watching the fireflies and bats at dusk, when I was inspired to grab my…
Mechanical engineer and kids-show host Bill Nye the Science Guy spoke to about 1,500 Columbus-area students this Monday. I attended his talk, and found that the peppy, brilliant man who preached the fun of science during my childhood had come bearing a hopeful message of the earth’s future.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has helped to make climate change an enormous hot-button issue, and as the “future owners of the planet”, we college students hear about it a lot. Five separate school organizations have hosted five separate on-campus showings of An Inconvenient Truth in the past three months. The intent to inform and warn has gotten a little out of control.
With the media coverage of climate change in addition to this campus onslaught, most students get it. The close-minded may stick to their guns, but those moveable students understand. Yes, climate change occurs, yes, it will have grave consequences, yes, something desperately needs to change. Now what? The constant reiteration of Gore’s warning leaves all too many jaded and bored with the message.
Bill Nye, in his classically playful-yet-educational way, reframed the issues at the heart of global warming. He dispensed no Gore-like nay saying, he made no threats of the doom to come. Instead, he said this:
“People talk about how we have to ‘Save Planet Earth!’ But the Earth will be fine. The cockroaches will keep living; life on the planet will go on. It’s the humans I worry about.”
So, no forthcoming apocalypse after …
