Foreword by Anthony Watts -Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
This essay is written by a student at the University of Wyoming, who finds herself in the middle of a set of circumstances that are pushing her further into the realm of being a climate skeptic. It is an eye-opening read. I have verified the identity of the student, but per her request (due to the backlash she fears) I am allowing her to write under the pen name of “Clair Masters”
Guest essay by Clair Masters
The class was languid, most kids were on their phones, or surfing Facebook on their laptops. I sat with my notebook open in front of me, empty except for the lecture title at the top of the page. The professor put a slide up on the projector showing a chart relating CO2 and temperature over the course of a few million years, the one we’ve all seen by now. The CO2 curve lags after the Temperature one, and anyone’s first reading of the chart would probably be that temperature is driving the CO2 changes, not the other way around, if there is any trend at all. I perked up slightly, it was new for a professor to show alternate data, and looked around expectantly at other students, waiting for some kind of reaction—confusion, frowns, anything to show they’re seeing something that fights what we’ve been told since elementary school. I saw a few yawns, dull stares, people on their phones, though one loud girl who was a religious global warming fanatic was glaring at the slide, slouching in her seat so her hand could pet her (dubiously trained) service dog.
