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Students hear different
take on global warming
By COLIN HICKEY
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel Wednesday, April 25, 2007

WATERVILLE -- Retired physics professor Howard Hayden does not dispute that global warming is happening.

But Hayden is an unabashed contrarian when it comes to assigning blame for the phenomenon.

Sports utility vehicle owners are innocent, he told his audience of about 90 people, most of them students, at Colby College on Tuesday afternoon.

The culprits, he said, are more likely astronomic and solar events.

"You think SUVs are the cause of glaciers shrinking?" he said to his audience. "I don't think so."

Hayden, though, certainly could be blamed for heating up debate on global warming causation, as well as debate between Democratic and Republican students at Colby.

Colby Republicans were the ones who invited Hayden to speak at the college, a presentation that took place in the Diamond Building.

Nathaniel Betz of the Colby Republicans said their objective was simply to provide a balanced account of an important issue.

"We are not trying to make this a partisan thing," he said.

Henry Beck of the Colby Democrats, however, had a different view.

"At times it was more an anti-Al Gore presentation," Beck said, "than a scientific presentation."

Hayden did poke fun at Gore in the course of trying to debunk the arguments of "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore's book and movie on global warming.

"Don't believe what you hear out of Hollywood and Washington, D.C.," Hayden said.

Hayden, a physics professor for 32 years at the University of Connecticut, is an editor of a monthly newsletter called "The Energy Advocate."

He also is the author of the book "The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World."

In his presentation, Hayden blended humor with computer-generated images of various graphs and charts on global warming and carbon dioxide levels over the centuries and millennia.

He argued that climatic history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backwards.

A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said, does not cause the Earth to be warmer.

Instead, he said, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels.

"The sun heats up the Earth," he said, "and the oceans warm up and atmospheric carbon dioxide rises."

Hayden said humans' contribution to global carbon dioxide levels is virtually negligible.

After the presentation, a Colby student asked Hayden to explain his belief that liberal politicians and the media promote the theory that humans are causing global warming.

Hayden said: "I don't pretend to understand people's motivation. I really don't."

But Hayden also said recent cap and trade policies earmarking big carbon dioxide emitters tend to benefit Third World countries and penalize highly industrialized nations.

Jacob Roundtree, executive director of Colby Republicans, said Gore's view on global warming also meshes well with the environmentalist agenda.

"Look at the people predisposed to that global warming view," he said. "They happen to be stewards of the environment."

Roundtree said he is not against protecting the environment but opposes promoting false information to achieve that goal.

Beck, in turn, rebutted the arguments of Hayden and Roundtree.

In a statement e-mailed after the event, Beck said Colby Democrats "believe that global warming is real and that governments must work toward solutions. Howard Hayden suggested that climate change science is a conspiracy by Al Gore and foreign governments. We reject that notion. This was political event about the issue of global warming."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com


Reader comments

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Sam Prentice of Andover, CT
Apr 26, 2007 8:00 PM
JThompson and Brian Alves should share with us the truth Mother Gaia told them that real scientists haven't yet discerned. For instance, CO2 doesn't cause temperature increases, it lags behind them as an effect. The oceans store CO2 in cooler conditions and then release it into the atmosphere when they warm - this is the earth's way of providing fertilizer for plants during the periods of warmth that are conducive to growth.

Why can't global warm-ongers understand that increasing trace amounts of a trace gas only exerts a minor warming influence? CO2's warming capability is logarithmic yet the AGWers claim its effects are exponential in nature; if this is true then we've over-ruled a law of physics and discovered the elusive perpetual motion machine that generates more energy in output than what was initially input.

Humans only contribute 3% of the total going into the atmosphere each year so fractionally reducing what is already a miniscule contribution is nothing more than an exercise in handwaving.

JT and BA, please dispute these facts rather than just engagine in juvenile name calling otherwise it is you who don't look especially intelligent.report abuse
Leon Richard of Farmington, ME
Apr 25, 2007 6:00 PM
Oh, I didn't have room for this in my post yesterday, so here it is.

This man and those of us who don't argue with him have questioned the far left liberal thought monopoly. Therefore, we already know that we're "closed minded", "intolerant", "ignorant", "uneducated", "unintellectual", "simpletons", and "cerebral troglodytes". Did I forget anything?

Of course, if we were "open minded" maybe our brain would fall out on the ground, then we'd agree with Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson. I, for one, would like to know what original research you have published on the topic of climate and global warming? What are your educational credentials, level of study? Is it within the sciences? Maybe a BS in English, sociology?

I have a masters of science degree. And although I have not studied, nor published, on climate and global warming, I have some level of education in the natural sciences, and I also know how to critically read a scientific study.

The true "scientists" involved in this are not sold on the idea that we all have to wipe ourselves with one sheet of toilet paper, and freeze to death in the dark, riding back and forth to work in a rollerskate with a battery operated motor on it that causes more environmental devastation and costs more than a H-1 Hummer to drive.

Open-minded my behind. The Global Warming crowd is as open minded as a bunch of cows that gather under a tree during a thunderstorm to keep out of the rain.

Get an original thought, and don't come around calling people names. You won't convince anyone by calling them an idiot. And only prove your own predisposition in that regard.report abuse
John Proulx of Hampton, VA
Apr 25, 2007 4:51 PM
I think Leon Richard has said it all for the most part. I'd just like someone to explain why the polar ice caps on Mars are melting, no SUVs or Republicans up there.report abuse
JR of waterville, ME
Apr 25, 2007 3:03 PM
I was at that event and that vain partisan Henry Beck question Professor Hayden as to what he believed to be the political motives behind Al Gore supporting the claim that Global Warming is caused by Human beings. And because the guy answere the little shmucks question Henry claims the event was political. Hayden answering Henry's question was the only political claim he made during the entire event.

The entirety of the presentation focused solely on what many scientists believe is causing global warming and how our planet has been much warmer in our recent past (the medieval warm period.). The only person who made this event political was Henry, Professor Hayden honorably stuck to the science of the matter except when prompted by that political opportunist to answer a political question and this journalist demonstrates his bias by closing this article with a statement from the Colby dems when it was the Colby Republicans that brought Professor Hayden in. report abuse

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