As early as the 1930s, the person on the street was discussing how “the weather wasn’t what it used to be.”  How is your personal experience with the weather congruent or incongruent with what climate scientists are telling us?   Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina I am accustomed to warm summers and mild winters. During the summer I remember summer days as typically being in the upper eighties or lower nineties with thunderstorms fairly common in the afternoon.In the past ten years, Raleigh has experienced two severe droughts along with several years of below average rainfall. Most winters Raleigh could expect at least one snow storm of about five inches and a few additional small snow showers. Raleigh had a blizzard in 2000 dropping nearly two feet of snow overnight. Since … Read entire article »

Have public media and journalists contributed to confusion and doubt about climate change? What can/should they do to present science and scientific debate accurately on this topic? Public media and journalists, in their effort to provide “fair and equal coverage” of issues such as global climate change and acid rain, have ultimately distributed mass amounts of misinformation about critical environmental issues. In Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway investigated the sources of this dubiousness and narrowed it down to two main sources: influential conservative think-tanks and the inability of journalists and major media sources to circulate the consensus of the scientific community to the general public. The latter source, to me, is the most disturbing. Despite concurrence throughout nearly the entire scientific community as well as several international conferences and four … Read entire article »

Explain the reasons behind the creation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).  Do you think adopting violence as a method strengthened or weakened the anti-apartheid movement?   Fifty years of non-violent opposition to the government of South Africa brought the majority of South African residents nothing but oppression. After fifty years of stay at homes, slow downs, strikes, and rallies, the African National Congress (ANC) had made little progress and the patience of the nation was wearing thin. Without a more radical solution, the nation of South Africa would erupt in a series of slaughters by the dictatorial government. Non-violence was only strategy and Nelson Mandela knew this. After examining the state of his nation, Mandela recognized the need for a reevaluation of ANC tactics. Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was the result of his … Read entire article »