How is this funded?: Arizona State University academics take fossil-fueled trips to Middle East to save us all from CO2

Academics from Arizona State University are hard at work promoting sustainability and regional cooperation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a politically stable and very prosperous Gulf country.

A delegation from Arizona traveled to the United Arab Emirates this past January for a series of meetings to follow-up on last summer’s visit to their university by Sultan Saeed Nasser AlMansoori, minister of economy for the UAE. They also visited Jordan and Israel, along the way.

The Arizona group, the university reports, met with government leaders, university officials and private sector representatives, with a focus on education technology and teacher training; and sustainability, with emphasis on renewable energy and public policy decision-making.

Steve Goble: Are you in denial about global warming?

Every time someone points at the snow or the low temperatures and says, "So much for global warming," a truth fairy dies.

One of the growth industries in our tumbling economy is the global warming denial business. According to the sellers of this snake oil, the whole idea of global warming was invented by Al Gore to scare you into voting for Democrats.

Climate obstinacy is a kissing cousin to denying the theory of evolution. When science tells people something they don't like, you can't cram it into their heads with a crowbar.

Here's a hint: If you really want to understand what's going on with the climate, look beyond Al Gore.

Get your science from people like James Hansen...
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Steve Goble is a copy editor and page designer for the News Journal.

Connell listens to NPR

On this drive, one of the hosts mentioned how researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute believe emperor penguins may go extinct because of climate change.

Wow, bummer.

It made me wonder how penguins survived the Eemian, the most recent interglacial excluding the one we're living in, which is the Holocene.

The Eemian was even warmer than the Holocene. If I remember my geology, enough of Greenland's ice cap melted that rising seas turned Scandinavia into an island.

This was maybe 120,000 years ago, which is a long time in people years but a blink of an eye in the evolution of a species. Somehow the penguins survived. So did the polar bears, come to think of it.