Sanity at Western?

Reinsertion.

My blog? Oh I still have a blog. I know I've seemingly abandoned it recently but considering the intensity of life in general right now I'm sure you will forgive my little hiatuses. It hurts because there are at least three different reviews I wanted to write of both books and movies and I've let all sorts of good topics escape my attention... And now for my official, for-the-moment reinsertion post:

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UPDATE: The Bellingham Herald picked up the article for today's front page, building off the Western angle.

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I'm just aghast. A geologist from Western Washington University was quoted in the NY Times recently hotly criticizing Al Gore.

In an article brought to my attention by Orbusmax and Newsbusters, Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, "an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. 'But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.'"

What can I say? That I have never been this proud of my home institution of higher learning? Perhaps in a certain shallow way…

I loved this quote though:

[Dr. Easterbrook] hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”