The second Common Experience meeting, “Reality or Hype,” was held on Oct. 14, in the IUS Library, where some interesting debates were taken place.

The topics for this year’s Common Experience meetings have been focused on environmental matters.

There will be a total of four Common Experience meetings all centered on changes in our current climate.

Most who attended were freshmen, who were looking to get their FYS credits for going to a Common Experience meeting.

But there were others looking to find some answers about global warming.

Three speakers each gave 30 minute presentations on the debate whether global warming is an actual threat to humanity or if it is just skeptics among scientists.

Speakers for this event included Lynn Jarret, biology professor, Tom Wills, meteorologist for WAVE 3 and Kyle Forinash, professor of physics.

Jarret was the first to speak. His speech came from a biological point of view. He mainly discussed the history of the Earth’s atmosphere and how its chemical makeup has evolved over billions of years.

“There have been major catastrophes on this planet due to the relationships between organisms and their environment,” Jarret said.

He discussed how life on this planet maintains a certain balance and that the balance is being disturbed.

Wills was the second speaker and contradicted himself.

He said at the beginning of his speech that he does not believe that there is any controversy that the globe is warming. Then he said that humans were contributing to the problem. What problem? If he believes there is no controversy.

Wills said that global warming is highly political and that most science was turning political.

“Good science is good science but it is not science anymore it’s politics,” he said.

Wills concluded his speech by saying that we must try to do everything in our power to keep the environment as clean as we can.

Forinash first started his speech by saying that science is not political and that he disagreed with Wills.

The reason that he gave why global warming is not political is because scientists from 130 countries around the world make up the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC evaluates the chances of climate change due to human activity on the planet and much more. Forinash said that 2,500 scientists have to agree on all of the data that they release and if science was political the chances of all of the scientists from all over the world agreeing on every little detail would be slim.

He said there is a difference between weather and climate. Climate has a longer time span.

Scientists are slow not stupid. Forinash said that no scientists doubt today that the climate is changing and getting warmer.

Glaciers are shrinking and the sea level has risen by 2.6 inches. The increase of global climate has been 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

“There is definitely something going on,” Forinash said.

By NATALIE DEDAS
Staff Writer
natdedas@ius.edu