Last week Senator Amy Klobuchar came to Gustavus to lead a discussion on global warming. Although I strongly disagree with her on this and most other issues, she appears to be an intelligent and passionate representative for Minnesota who has a strong character and values. Out of respect for her and her office, I listened to her views on how we can find long term success in preserving our environment, but I vehemently disagree with her analysis and proposals.

She began her presentation by showing a video she had made for high school students describing the effects of global warming on Greenland. This point alone made me somewhat uncomfortable. Should politicians be giving propaganda to high school students? I’m not sure schools would like it if a teacher showed videos showing the harmful economic effects of illegal immigration or how abstinence is the best way to eliminate unwanted pregnancies and STDs. I’m all for educating the masses about controversial issues, but I’m not sure that minors should be force force-fed only one side.

Senator Klobuchar chose the spring for her trip to Greenland, probably thinking the normal annual melting of the ice would make for a more dramatic film for high school kids. Maybe in response, Mike Huckabee’s supporters Chuck Norris and former pro-wrestler Rick Flair should make a documentary in Minnesota during the frigid winter round-house-kicking and body-slamming her flawed claims by presenting the NASA research that reports growing of other ice caps in the arctic. NASA has also reported research finding that our planet is recovering from a miniature ice age and has not yet fallen to the previous levels.

However, this type of information never makes it into these biased presentations. According to Ms. Klobuchar, “We’ve received the science and you all know it,” but only the politically useful science will be given to you because right-wing fringe organizations like NASA just make things up for sinister ends. I’m sure liberals are clamoring at this very moment to blame these contradictory evidences on oil companies and evangelical Christians.

Amy Klobuchar would have you believe that every scientist in the world is driving a hybrid and screaming about a fiery Armageddon, but the Heartland Institute in 2003 took a survey that told otherwise. Their survey showed that of 500 climatologists, meteorologists and other climate-related scientists, only a slight majority even believed that humans had some effect on global warming, and beyond that, a majority believed that it was not yet time for global warming to be turned over to policy makers.

These might be some of the same majority of scientists who told Newsweek magazine in 1973 that global cooling was taking place because of pollution. They are perhaps a little more hesitant to jump on the bandwagon this time. For some reason politicians are pushing man-created global warming as fact when a majority of scientists aren’t asking them to. This is what happens when science is driven by politics instead of the other way around.

Gustavus has taken the same bait as our Senator. They followed the liberal college status quo this year by having only like-minded speakers at the energy-focused Nobel Conference. I believe the Nobel Committee selects the speakers, but Gustavus has never had any contradicting speakers on these issues on campus. Isn’t the conference supposed to be about experts on all sides having intellectual debates? Perhaps liberals aren’t always as open-minded as they claim to be. I guess you do have to question the decision making skills of a group that gave Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for making a movie. I’d like to give next year’s Peace Prize to Oprah Winfrey for creating the television show “The Big Give.”

There are a few points where Senator Klobuchar and I do agree. I do believe that the temperature of the globe is rising, and I also believe that we should all show respect for the environment wherever and whenever possible. The problem is that I believe the ideas of Amy Klobuchar and other politicians around the world will sacrifice economic growth and hamper our ability to give aid to less fortunate people around the world in order to enact policies that will provide theoretical solutions for theoretical problems that could affect our planet hundreds of years from now. In my view, we can only have real environmental progress when it is financially beneficial for families and companies to change their ways without subsidies and mandates that ruin our economy and create inflation.

I hope Senator Klobuchar will continue to make visits to Gustavus, but I also hope that we can have other speakers on the other side of such important issues. I am more than happy to give you a list of highly respected professors and scientists from MIT, Princeton and the United Nations just to name a few, but that really shouldn’t be my job. Let’s open up the discussion and let “cooler” heads prevail.

Photo Courtesy Of: MCT Campus