Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog

BTW they need to add one more type of UPWELLING!

"TUNNEL UPWELLING"

Neat "COOL IT" idea. This can also produce electrical power!

The Nutrient Megapump

Mixing deep ocean nutrient depends on being able to use the heat energy from hydrothermal vents on the ocen floor to raise cold, dense, nutrient-rich sea water from 1000m depth into the sunlit surface layer at, say, 20 m depth. To do this we designed a nutrient megapump. The megapump is a bubble pump in which the "bubbles" comprise slugs of steam. The steam is very "wet" meaning that it still contains a good deal of unevaporated water. Pumps need valves to control flow. The Nutrient Megapump utilizes the strange properties of wet steam to create a valve. The speed of sound in wet steam is extremely low which means that sonic shock fronts form readily. It is impossible to force fluid through a pipe at speeds greater than the speed of sound. In the diagram on the right superheated water flows through a short "injector" pipe and flashes to steam once it has passed through the pipe. In the diagram on the left, wet steam is inhibited from flowing through the injector pipe by the formation of a sonic shock.






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One of the drawbacks of the Nutrient Megapump is that it warms the oceans surface temperatures something we can not afford now.

"NSIDC should add a line for absolute daily record lows to their graph, instead of just showing the year with the lowest minimum, because of course 2007 wasn't at record lows every single day of the year, even less so when you include the past few years:"

Correct Michael they should do that! I have always wondered why they don't do that????

Ocean Geoengineering Scheme No Easy Fix for Global Warming

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2010) — Pumping nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean to boost algal growth in sunlit surface waters and draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere has been touted as a way of ameliorating global warming. However, a new study led by Professor Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, pours cold water on the idea."Computer simulations show that climatic benefits of the proposed geo-engineering scheme would be modest, with the potential to exacerbate global warming should it fail," said study co-author Dr Andrew Yool of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

If international governmental policies fail to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to levels needed to keep the impacts of human-induced climate change within acceptable limits it may necessary to move to 'Plan B'. This could involve the implementation of one or more large-scale geo-engineering schemes proposed for reducing the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.

One possible approach is to engineer the oceans to facilitate the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It has been suggested that this could be done by pumping of nutrient-rich water from a depth of several hundred metres to fertilize the growth of phytoplankton, the tiny marine algae that dominate biological production in surface waters.

The aim would be to mimic the effects of natural ocean upwelling and increase drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton through the process of photosynthesis. Some of the sequestered carbon would be exported to the deep ocean when phytoplankton die and sink, effectively removing it from the system for hundreds or thousands of years.

A previous study, of which Yool was lead author, used an ocean general circulation model to conclude that literally hundreds of millions of pipes would be required to make a significant impact on global warming. But even if the technical and logistical difficulties of deploying the vast numbers of pipes could be overcome, exactly how much carbon dioxide could in principle be sequestered, and at what risk?

In the new study, the researchers address such questions using a more integrated model of the whole Earth system. The simulations show that, under most optimistic assumptions, three gigatons of carbon dioxide per year could be captured. This is under a tenth of the annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which currently stand at 36 gigatons per year. A gigaton is a million million kilograms.

One surprising feature of the simulations was that the main effect occurred on land rather than the ocean. Cold water pumped to the surface cooled the atmosphere and the land surface, slowing the decomposition of organic material in soil, and ultimately resulting in about 80 per cent of the carbon dioxide sequestered being stored on land. "This remote and distributed carbon sequestration would make monitoring and verification particularly challenging," write the researchers.

More significantly, when the simulated pumps were turned off, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures rose rapidly to levels even higher than in the control simulation without artificial pumps. This finding suggests that there would be extra environmental costs to the scheme should it ever need to be turned off for unanticipated reasons.

"All models make assumptions and there remain many uncertainties, but based on our findings it is hard to see the use of artificial pumps to boost surface production as being a viable way of tackling global warming," said Yool.

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The ecological effects of upwelling are quite diverse, but two impacts are especially noteworthy. First, upwelling brings up cold, nutrient-rich waters to the surface, which encourage seaweed growth and support blooms of phytoplankton. The phytoplankton blooms form the ultimate energy base for large animal populations higher in the food chain, including fish, marine mammals and seabirds. Coastal upwelling ecosystems like the U.S. west coast are some of the most productive ecosystems in the world and support many of the world's most important fisheries. Although coastal upwelling regions account for only one percent of the ocean surface, they contribute roughly 50 percent of the world's fisheries landings.

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The problem was a shift in a Pacific upwelling current that normally drives deep water to the surface, fertilizing a crop of tiny zooplankton at the base of the food chain.

That upwelling current is back, visible in the abundance of whales and dolphins that tourists enjoyed off the Monterey coast this summer.


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/13/3181995/salmon-make-a-comeback-in-central.html#ixzz15w6qXUP7

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EPA Affirms Threat of Ocean Acidification, Recommends Coastal States Take Action

SAN FRANCISCO - November 16 - Responding to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Protection Agency is recommending that coastal states begin addressing ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. The announcement arose from the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Center in Washington state, the first of its kind challenging the EPA's failure to address ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act.

"This marks an important step toward protecting life in our oceans," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center. "The Clean Water Act has successfully reduced water pollution for decades, and now it can be brought to bear on ocean acidification, a huge and growing threat to marine life around the globe."

As oceans absorb carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere, waters are becoming more and more acidic. The water is increasingly corrosive to shellfish and corals and impairs the ability of marine animals to build the protective shells they need to survive. Nearly every marine animal studied to date has experienced adverse effects due to acidification. Under stress from ocean acidification, some corals are already growing more slowly and will begin to erode faster than they can build within decades. Acidification has contributed to oysters failing to reproduce for the past six years in the Pacific Northwest.

"Ocean acidification is one of the biggest threats to our marine environment," said Sakashita. "Oyster hatcheries are already failing, and fishermen fear the collapse of the ocean food web. CO2 is changing ocean chemistry so rapidly that the corals, plankton, fish and shellfish are at risk. We need prompt action to curb CO2 pollution, and the Clean Water Act can help."

According to the EPA, states should identify waters impaired by ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. Also, the EPA is urging states to gather data on ocean acidification, develop methods for identifying waters affected by ocean acidification, and create criteria for measuring the impact of acidification on marine ecosystems.

Scientists have confirmed widespread ocean acidification due to CO2 pollution. A survey off the West Coast showed that waters affected by ocean acidification are already upwelling onto the continental shelf and exposing marine life in surface waters to corrosive conditions. The Arctic also faces imminent consequences, and areas of the Arctic are expected to become corrosive by 2016.

The EPA plans to publish guidance for the states on addressing ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act. Meanwhile, it is encouraging states to focus their efforts on waters that are most vulnerable to ocean acidification, including those with coral reefs, fisheries and shellfish resources. The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned all coastal states to identify their waters as impaired by ocean acidification. The Washington state lawsuit arose from one of those petitions.

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Create upwelling events and feed the world and watch a population explosion!



"That makes this case unusual but not alarming," he said.

Durgerian said marine biologists with the park service determined there has been an upwelling of nutrient-rich cold water near the ocean surface, which has made it easier for jellyfish to reproduce, causing their population to soar.

"The higher numbers at the beach may simply reflect higher numbers in the water," he said.

Park officials will allow nature to take its course with the remaining jellyfish carcasses on the beach, Durgerian said.

"Unless there's a public health hazard like a whale or it gives off a significant odor, we're not going to bury or remove something from the beach, and there's no impressive stench from these things," he said.

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Ya'll get it yet?


"There's just not a lot (left) to be impacted," pointed out Mr. Patterson.

What helped buffer the corals around the Virgin Islands from high water temperatures this year were tropical storms that literally mixed things up. Not only did their associated cloud cover and rains help cool off the ocean waters, but strong winds brought an upwelling of cooler waters that took the edge off, temperature-wise, according to the scientist.

“That kind of resets the temperature clock quite a bit,” he explained.

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Quoting MichaelSTL:


So much for your tunnels... you'd have to leave them on forever, and that is a very tall order, which is why most geoengineering schemes will fail; for example, if we decide to pump SO2 into the stratosphere and let CO2 levels continue to increase (never mind ocean acidification), we'd have to keep doing it or a very nasty temperature spike would occur. Seems like your tunnels would have the same problem.

Negative! You see that's what is so great about the Tunnels they remove Co2 by not producing any Co2 and therefore fossil fuels are not needed due to the huge amount of kinetic energy they tap from the flowing gulfstream. Atmooceans plan doesn't produce power to lower Co2 in the atmosphere. Calculate how much fossil fuel Co2 the "Kinetic Energy" in the gulfstream can eliminate. Is is far greater than what would be upwelled and therefore the planet cools!

For the scientists on board the Maria S. Merian, the discovery of the ecosystem with living cold water corals came as a surprise. Andre Freiwald sees one reason for the southern occurrence of the anthozoans which are adapted to cold temperatures in the upwelling ocean cells steered by the Passat wind. The offshore winds push the surface waters from the Mauritanian cliffs out into the open ocean and thereby permit a following flow of cold and nutrient-rich water from the depths. This evidently not only ensures that the Mauritanian waters are among the richest of any in fish but also presumably also provides the cold water corals with appropriate feed. According to statements by coral experts, the marine creatures feed on the nutrients released by plankton organisms.

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Barnacles Prefer Upwelling Currents, Enriching Food Chains in the Galapagos

ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2010) — There's been a rich debate in marine ecological circles about what happens to a key food source along rocky coastlines dominated by upwelling. The literature is filled with studies suggesting that the larvae of simple prey organisms such as barnacles and mussels hitch a ride on the coast-to-offshore currents typical of upwelling and are thus mostly absent in the coastal tidal zones.That theory is getting a major challenge. In a paper in Ecological Monographs, Brown University marine ecologist Jon Witman and colleagues report that a key thread in the food web, the barnacle -- the popcorn of the sea -- flourishes in zones with vertical upwelling. Working at an expansive range of underwater sites in the Galapagos Islands, Witman and his team found that at two subtidal depths, barnacle larvae had latched onto rock walls, despite the vertical currents. In fact, the swifter the vertical current, the more likely the barnacles would colonize a rocky surface, the team found.

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Warming Coastal Water, Thinning Marine Populations: Tracking of 2010 El Niño Reveals Marine Life Reductions

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2010) — The ongoing El Niño of 2010 is affecting north Pacific Ocean ecosystems in ways that could affect the West Coast fishing industry, according to scientists at NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

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Threshold Sea Surface Temperature for Hurricanes and Tropical Thunderstorms Is Rising

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2010) — Scientists have long known that atmospheric convection in the form of hurricanes and tropical ocean thunderstorms tends to occur when sea surface temperature rises above a threshold. The critical question is, how do rising ocean temperatures with global warming affect this threshold? If the threshold does not rise, it could mean more frequent hurricanes.According to a new study by researchers at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), this threshold sea surface temperature for convection is rising under global warming at the same rate as that of the tropical oceans.

Their paper appears in the journal Nature Geoscience.

In order to detect the annual changes in the threshold sea surface temperature, Nat Johnson, a postdoctoral fellow at IPRC, and Shang-Ping Xie, a professor of meteorology at IPRC and UHM, analyzed satellite estimates of tropical ocean rainfall spanning 30 years. They find that changes in the threshold temperature for convection closely follow the changes in average tropical sea surface temperature, which have both been rising approximately 0.1°C per decade.

"The correspondence between the two time series is rather remarkable," says lead author Johnson. "The convective threshold and average sea surface temperatures are so closely linked because of their relation with temperatures in the atmosphere extending several miles above the surface."

The change in tropical upper atmospheric temperatures has been a controversial topic in recent years because of discrepancies between reported temperature trends from instruments and the expected trends under global warming according to global climate models. The measurements from instruments have shown less warming than expected in the upper atmosphere. The findings of Johnson and Xie, however, provide strong support that the tropical atmosphere is warming at a rate that is consistent with climate model simulations.

"This study is an exciting example of how applying our knowledge of physical processes in the tropical atmosphere can give us important information when direct measurements may have failed us," Johnson notes.

The study notes further that global climate models project that the sea surface temperature threshold for convection will continue to rise in tandem with the tropical average sea surface temperature. If true, hurricanes and other forms of tropical convection will require warmer ocean surfaces for initiation over the next century.

This work was supported by grants from NOAA, NSF, NASA, and JAMSTEC.

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Bottom line it still produces Co2! Nuff said!




Researchers Debate Whether Biofuels Are Truly Greener Than Fossil Fuels

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/21/biofuels-harmful-helpful-researchers-argue/#ixzz15wMvvOQT


If Willie Nelson supports it, it must be green, right? Not so fast.

Amid rising concern over U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, many hope that running our cars on so-called "biofuels," which are grown rather than processed, could solve our sustainability woes. But a new report argues that these renewable resources may not be as green as they seem.

The ETC Group, an international organization supporting sustainability and conservation, has just published its newest report, an 84-page document that presents a lengthy criticism of "the new bioeconomy." In it, principal author Jim Thomas argues that using biofuels for energy and resources isn't green -- in fact, he says, it's even more harmful to the environment than coal.

"What's being presented by the government as 'the green way forward,' is this idea that we can use plant matter from crops, trees, or algae and convert it into fuel, plastics or chemicals," Thomas told FoxNews.com. "And it's just assumed that it's carbon neutral. But when you burn something like a tree, you release as much, if not more, carbon dioxide than when you burn something like coal."

Biofuels are fuels derived from living organisms, such as trees, algae plankton and more; they're collectively called biomass.Thomas' report -- "The New Biomassters: Synthetic Biology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity and Livelihoods" -- acts as a comprehensive critique of the entirety of the biofuel industry, summarizing all the different criticisms and compiling them into a single essay.

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He says he hopes that his research will be able to educate others on what he feels is a scary and careless venture.

"The essential tool the industry is using is called synthetic biology, designing new organisms that have never existed in nature," Thomas told FoxNews.com. "This is a very risky venture, and there's no regulation surrounding it. And that's one of the findings in this study, that this is growing very fast without regulation or oversight."

Early biofuels came about from fermenting sugars from foods such as corn and wheat. But the movement came under scrutiny after it led to crop shortages in developing countries and sharp increases in food prices. At issue was whether thos crops should be used to feed humans or power cars.

But other scientists say the biofuel economy is complex, and they note that it's hard to lump absolutely everything labeled biomass together.

"One needs to recognize that all biofuels are not the same. The current generation is based on corn in the U.S., based on wheat and rapeseed in Europe," Dr. Madhu Khanna, a professor of agriculture at the University of Illinois, told FoxNews.com.

"But even among the first generation, there is also sugarcane, which is a much cleaner fuel, and Brazil has a lot of available land for sugarcane production. You're able to expand without coming into conflict with food production. So you don't hear the same criticism necessarily about sugarcane."

There are up to four "generations" within the biofuel movement, starting with its origin in corn. Second-generation biofuels arose to combat the problems of the first, by using parts of crops that were not consumed, such as corn stalks rather than the corn itself, or non-food crops such as rapeseed. Third and fourth generations move into other areas, such as algae. Thomas claims that this just raises more issues.

"If you start using the stalk of a corn, you have to put more fertilizer in the soil," Thomas said. "Fertilizer production is very energy intensive. It produces large amounts of nitrous oxide, which is 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide. So if you're moving over to these fuels that use the corn stalk supposedly to cut back your greenhouse emission, then it's very counterproductive."

The report also claims that this transition doesn't solve the food shortages in third-world nations.

"The U.S. government says there's a billion tons of fair biomass that they can turn into fuels and chemicals and burn for electricity," Thomas said. "When I began to look at the billion-ton study, it doesn't exist. In fact, it doesn't make any sense to source biomass in the U.S. because there's much more biomass coming from Sub Sahara Africa and Brazil."

Thomas is adamant that land use will become a massive issue for the biomass industry. "This isn't a switch, it's a massive grab on land," he said. "This movement to a plant-based, or so-called green economy, will throw a lot of people off their land in the developing world."

But Khanna cites recent studies that have shown a decrease in deforestation in Brazil due to recent regulations. She attributes the difference in opinions like this to the intricacy of such an ambitious movement. Both Khanna and Thomas agree that a proper combination of well-developed technology and public policy are the keys to solving the fossil-fuel issue.

"The government, instead of putting money into these quick technological fixes, need to invest into more long term fixes," Thomas said. "It's economical and social fixes rather than technological fixes that will help us through. It's about the government giving support for both kinds of choices."




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These students must watch to much FOX NEWS!

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You are just making more CO2 when you burn it! It isn't clean!

Arctic's 'fiery ice' is potential new energy source

Scientists drill through permafrost to assess challenges in harnessing gas hydrates, a source of clean-burning methane


For the Japanese, drilling down through Arctic permafrost to get at "fiery ice" was much less daunting than boring into the deep sea.

They came up with $48 million -- with $3 million from Canada -- for an epic experiment in the Northwest Territories that has generated tantalizing evidence, to be detailed in Tokyo this week, that frozen gas hydrates may live up to their billing as a plentiful new energy source.

The Canadian and Japanese team will describe how they got the hydrates to release gas, like bubbles out of champagne. In a world first, the team got a production well to generate a steady flow of gas for six days, fuelling a flame in the Arctic darkness.

"The message is quite clear, you can produce gas hydrates using conventional techniques," says Scott Dallimore, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the project in the Mackenzie Delta. Over two winters the researchers drilled down more than a kilometre into a 150-metre-thick layer on the edge of the Beaufort Sea at Mallik -- the most concentrated known deposit of the frozen fuel in the world.

"It's a landmark, no doubt about it," says Ray Boswell, technical manager of the U.S. government's gas hydrate program. Boswell will be taking close notes Tuesday as Dallimore and his Japanese colleagues describe how the well and hydrates responded as the gas was freed.

Previous experiments have produced gas from hydrates for a few hours. Mallik's steady, sustained flow for six days "is very good news," says Boswell, who is optimistic gas hydrates may one day heat homes and fuel vehicles.

Hydrates occur in vast quantities under the oceans and permafrost, where tremendous pressure traps gas in tiny cages or crystals made of water molecules. When brought to the surface the cages melt, releasing methane gas that will burn if lit with a match, generating "fiery ice" -- a potential energy source that has long intrigued researchers.

The volatile energy source has traditionally been a nuisance for drilling operations and folks poking around deep water. A decade ago, B.C. fishermen were startled when they dredged up a huge chunk of icebound hydrates off the coast of Vancouver Island. It fizzed like a giant Bromo-Seltzer as it reached the surface and released flammable methane gas.

There are also concerns about its environmental impacts and the possibility of "burps of death" as the planet warms -- the fear being some hydrate deposits might melt releasing huge amounts of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- that could then speed up global warming.

On the upside, hydrates are said to contain more energy than all other fossil fuels combined, and are much cleaner than oil and coal.

Global estimates "range from merely jaw-dropping to the truly staggering," according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Canada is believed to have enough hydrates along its coasts to meet the country's energy needs for a couple of hundred years.

Hydrates contain methane, also known as natural gas, which produces 40 per cent less carbon dioxide than oil or coal when burned. Some analysts have suggested the "clean" hydrate gas could significantly reduce global emissions if used to help wean the world off dirtier fossil fuels. There is also a possibility, to be tested in Alaska this winter, that carbon dioxide can be pumped and stored underground as part of a novel process to liberate the gas from the ice.

Tapping into gas hydrates for fuel is still years, if not decades, away because "the game-changing, paradigm-shifting" reserves are under the oceans and are very hard to get at, says Boswell.

Still, Japan, India, Korea and the U.S. are all sizing up their marine hydrates. Japan's national gas hydrate program is the most ambitious and calls for offshore production testing to begin in the deepsea Nankai Trough in 2012.

For their test runs the Japanese turned to Canada's Arctic, where hydrates were first encountered 40 years ago during oil and gas exploration in the Mackenzie Delta.

The Japanese approached Natural Resources Canada scientists in the late 1990s about collaboration and in 1998 a Canadian-Japanese team cored into the Mallik hydrates for the first time, bringing chucks of frothy, sandy material to the surface.

Working with U.S., Indian and German scientists in 2002, the team tried to melt gas out of hydrates with hot water without success.

Japanese and Canadian scientists turned to conventional oil-and gas-extraction techniques, which involve reducing pressure on deposits, in 2007 working with Inuvik's Aurora College on full-scale production tests.

The crew hauled a drill rig north to Inuvik, then over the 200-kilometre ice road they built up to Mallik, where the research could only be done in winter because the low-lying delta is so wet and ecologically sensitive in summer.

With temperatures at times dipping below -60 C with the wind chill, they threaded pipe, containing gauges and monitors, more than 1,300 metres down through the hydrate layer. They then created holes in the pipe to reduce the pressure holding the methane in the icy cages.

By March 2008 they finally got gas to bubble up the well and it flowed steadily for six days.

David Boerner, acting assistant deputy minister at Natural Resources, says the Mallik project has been a major step forward and hopes to get a sense this week of the type of projects and problems that need to be addressed in the next phase of research.

Boswell and Dallimore say longer production tests on land are needed to see if hydrates can generate gas for months and years in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

Dallimore says long-term production tests, ideally at several locations around the world, are a logical next step. "My hope is that Canada will find a way to continue to play a leading role," says Dallimore.


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Quoting cyclonebuster:
These students must watch to much FOX NEWS!

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(It looks like this is a stripped version of the full lecture and doesn't include the reverse arguments the professor used. But I'm going to treat the video as is and assume the professor adopted an aggressive attack campaign on the "deniers". I think this does happen sometimes and people become too narrow in focus. This leads to a situation where nobody learns and everyone is angry. That would not be conducive to learning.)

So... (ignoring that this is probably? a spin on the actual lecture...)

(also ignoring that this is an ASTRONOMY class?)

Classic example of a professor talking AT kids and not practicing what he was taught. Now those kids are going to walk out of that room remembering being talked AT, and they will not forget. The teacher had a lapse in judgement here. He has a few things to learn too.

The issue I see is one of time. You can't get someone to learn something like this by talking AT them. No matter how forceful your words are or how strongly you feel them it will not get through to them. All they will see is your anger and none of the science and reasoning will transmit. Lots of lots of time and learning will, but it's never easy.

That's why I think politics should stay out of education because it's too easy for people to get angry when something gets political. When they get angry they talk too forcefully and it ends up being a one way kind of thing where nobody learns anything. By separating his class like he did he was inviting those political leanings to enter into the scene and it was a mistake. Should have focused on the issues point by point and looked at where they could be wrong or where they need improvement. If you stick to singular things and examine them you don't open the discussion up to political things and broad incoherent attacks.

Science doesn't have enough room for politics or opinion. As it should be.