Why do this blog?

Growing up in the 70's, I vividly recall every nature show I ever watched ended with the obligatory comment that man was the greatest threat to nature.  I read the same message in my Weekly Reader in grade school. that we were overpopulating the earth, and that our pollution was destroying the climate and going to cause...the next ice age.  No kidding!  I even remember seeing this Time magazine headline in 1973:

I was always interested in science and eventually became a science teacher, teaching mostly physical science.  I realized how many students (and colleagues) didn't understand what good science was, so I focused on what they needed most--the basics, from which they could look at new information with better and more critical understanding.

Fast forward to the 90's.  Global warming began to be a huge concern.  I started reading--claiming man was causing it and those who said it was normal oscillations--because we were coming out of a cold spell in the 70's.  I read several articles on climate change every week, including scientific peer-reviewed articles.

Then, in 2006, I was reading a scary New York Times article on the loss of ice in Arctic.  The New York Times article linked to a graph something like this (the university web page that graphed the data is no longer active, but the Internet Archive has it):

It was startling.  Notice it melts and refreezes, but less area re-freezes each year.  After seeing this and looking at satellite images made into scary videos of the loss over the years, I wondered, "How bad is it in the Antarctic?"

After many failed attempts trying to find the data, way down at the bottom of another page on the site, I found something like this:

The Antarctic was gaining almost as much as the Arctic had lost!  I was stunned.  I realized I was being manipulative.  Good science (and good journalism) doesn't just ignore contrary data.

This site is an attempt to be a resource for those wanting the basics about quality scientific investigation, climate change, whether it is man-made or natural, and if it really a great threat to our survival.