OPINION OR SCIENCE?

Global warming is one of the most important issues of our time. In the Spring of 2003, I wrote a piece on global warming and submitted it to the Opinion section of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The article was rejected and returned to me unpublished.

Disappointed but not undaunted, I sought the advice of a friend, who recommended that I submit the article to the Science section of the paper instead. Here again, the article ran into trouble: It was too straightforward, too simple, to constitute a veritable scientific piece.

In 2006, after Vicepresident's Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," global warming made it to the mainstream of public discourse. Yet, to this day, sorting through the myriad facts and opinions remains a challenge for many people. Nevertheless, the world continues to warm up.1


1 According to NASA, the year 2005 was the warmest year of record.

Source:  NASA

Source:  NASA