Science is Hard

The raging debates on evolution and climate may have root cause that is unavoidable. The fact is, science is hard. You have to actually work and think clearly to understand what is going on. As you study an issue and delve deeper and deeper, your opinion can flip flop back and forth.

My experience with climate issues has the following history:
1970 - As a kid I was fascinated by the ice ages, and lived in Upstate New Your that is all glaciated terrain. The belief then was that over the next several thousand years we would head back down into an ice age. Cool!

1990 - I was convinced that global warming was just hysteria.

2005 - Even the cynic in Scientific American flips over to believing in global warming. I'm fairly convinced it is happening.

2006 - Saw the Al Gore Flick. This was the turning point. His data was so clearly flawed it was ridiculous. Scientific data is never that clear. Also his conclusion was completely wrong. The issue is not how to halt global warming. The issue is how to deal with climate changes, both up and down.

2007 - Searched really hard for real data and unpublished (mainstream press) theories. The revelation was this chart http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/zurich.gif which clearly shows the little ice age. More study showed that Dr. Mann's data used by Al Gore was seriously compromised.

But here's the thing: Finding scientific data in the press is impossible. I like to play a little game while reading articles on anything scientific. The game is, find the hard facts in the article. The vast majority of mainstream news articles have exactly zero facts. They are all opinion and he-said, she-said. Once in a while an article will have a single actual fact.

So the only way were are left with is to dig for the data on the internet. You can find the data but it is difficult. You then have to back away from the data and take a good hard look at it and suspend preconceived notions and really look at the data. What does it really say?

Most of the people on the planet are not able to seek scientific truth by them selves. First of all, they lack the education and training. Second, the average IQ in the world is 100. They just don't have the ability to figure things out. That was ok when all we had to deal with was spears and saber tooth tigers, but falls flat on questions like global warming.

So what would you estimate is the percentage of people on the planet that are able and willing to actually dig for real answers?