why do you talk about religion and the Bible in the same paragraph? The Bible has nothing to do with religion. yes, there are a lot of politics in religion. it sucks. i don’t subscribe to religion at all. and yes, we should question everything we read, including certain textbooks and even the Bible.

people may have other motivations other than money and career. like fame, or trying to outsmart others. they’re not the only ones who have proposed something contrary to the popular trend, and neither will they be the last. i’m not saying they’re wrong; they may very well be right, but until there is more evidence to support their claims i would rather not take their word for it. actually, i don’t really care either. the only reason i left a reply was because of what i mentioned in the first paragraph here.

anyway, this is my opinion and you have yours, so i suppose there’s no need for any further discussion…

I beg to differ that science is not objective. The appropriate statement should be science influenced by politics is not objective. Likewise, religion + politics is equally problematic. And from the recent local gay issue, we see how Christians are trying to use politics to impose their belief system and preference over this issue. That’s another topic altogether.

My conclusions are not simply based on that so-call report of Al Gore’s failure to walk his talk, in fact, that is the least of my consideration. If we base on what you’d said “we shouldn’t always believe every single thing we read…”, does it follow that we shouldn’t believe some parts of textbooks, the bible or newspapers? And on what criteria should be assess the validity and correctness of those materials and which stuff to believe?

Believing and understanding are quite different things. It is easy to believe in things without evidence. It is unlikely to understand something without learning or taking a closer look. The issue here is not so much of believing who said what, but rather what is being said.

It doesn’t make sense to say I believe that the Earth is revolving around the Sun. It is a fact and it is proven with science. I singled out Al Gore for the fact that his gross mis-representation of time relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide level is absurd. If someone else didn’t point out the lag and order between the two variables, many would have taken it cause. In fact, many are already taken into this CO2 nonsense.

If your other source is simply dog-eat-dog type of journalistic mentions that are more concern with the people than science, then sorry, perhaps you have to try harder to share with me concrete scientific materials that help me see otherwise.

I am not a journalist, I am an engineer by training and I prefer to reason based on knowledge and common sense instead of merely believing. It doesn’t really bothers me if you want to believe CO2 is causing the world to melt down. But I am inclined to agree with the idea that the Sun is the major contributor to climatic changes that many have grossly overlooked.

These days, many things are driven by economics and politics. Given that science can be twisted by scientists who thirst funding, I do agree that science can lose its objectivity because politics have given the motivation. But if the scientists who presented information that contradicts the trend and tread themselves into predicament of lose funding or jobs. It would be hard to conceive any reasons for doing so apart from being objective in presenting knowledge and information in spite of risks.

i’m not into US politics either, but perhaps you should wait a while (for more information to surface), check out other sources of information other than those two you provided before coming to a conclusion? afterall, science is seldom objective. it’s very easy to misinterpret data (intentionally or not) and only present information that is supportive of your claims. i’m sure the producers of the documentary will agree on that as well since that’s part of their case against the traditional point of view.

neither are journalists always objective. it’s just as easy to present quotes and information to bias the article, while ommitting those that are contradictory. i’ve been taking modules in journalism, and whilst i won’t say i’m an expert at it, it doesn’t read like a very well-written piece. it gives too little information for reporting such a controversial claim and uses emotive words (’unimpressed’) which is not very acceptable in hard news writing. also, there’s this other article that reports the washington post omitted the anti-environmental background of the tennessee center for policy research. http://mediamatters.org/items/200703020001?offset=20&show=1

i’m not saying that the source i provided is unbiased itself. i suppose for every article/piece of work that argues a case, there will at least another that argues the opposite side. sometimes people want/need to ‘prove’ something because they’re invested in it. we shoulnd’t always believe every single thing we read…