POLITICAL SCIENCE: What a change

As a pre-law student at UCLA in the early ’60s, I majored in political science. That curriculum was primarily how our government works and the Constitution.

Today, we seem to have a new “Political Science” based upon political points of view. If you are liberal in thinking, you get your information about science from AP and CNN. If you are conservative, you get your information about science from Fox News or similar providers of news.

Unfortunately, what is “real science” is different depending on your news source. For example, the difference in consideration of what is now called “Climate Change” (previously called “Global Warming”) is based solely upon total solar irradiance. Since solar minimums and maximums produce much the same total solar irradiance, the “science” says we must look to another source for climate change, and that must be CO2.

Other “science” says that we must look at all of the energy produced by the sun and interstellar energy and not just the visible light given off by the sun to find the causes of a changing climate. When scientists do that, CO2 becomes irrelevant.

The first theory is proposed by what conservatives call liberal scientists who want to convince us that we need to do without fossil fuels, and liberals call the second theory unproven. Unfortunately, neither side is willing to recant their theory. Thus, we are in a conundrum neither side will try to resolve because the science is really a political issue. Thus, the new “Political Science.”

KONRAD LARSON

Hayden