EINSTEIN - THE GUY AND GLOBAL WARMING - AT 8:37 A.M. ET:  Last night I watched a pre-recorded History Channel program, "Einstein."  I strongly recommend that all readers see this program when it's rebroadcast. 

I'm no longer a great enthusiast of the History Channel.  Shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and "Pawn Stars," while very entertaining, don't strike me as great history.  But "Einstein" is superb...because it's so relevant to the debate over global warming.  The program examines Einstein's efforts to get his general theory of relativity accepted, and shows us how real science proceeds.  It isn't a "consensus."  It isn't a bunch of idealogues meeting in Copenhagen.  It isn't a new American president waving his Chicago-trained hand and rolling back the oceans.  It's proof and observation.

Einstein, after all, was trying to overturn part of the work of Sir Isaac Newton.  He was trying to reverse hundreds of years of accepted physics. 

The program takes us through Einstein's struggle, and demonstrates how the theory was finally proved, by a scientific experiment using a camera directed at a solar eclipse. 

I felt a sense of anger while watching this program - noting how real scientists, almost a century ago, went about proving or disproving Einstein's theory, and comparing it to today's publicity machines surrounding global warming. 

The program also teaches what is perhaps the most valuable lesson in examining global warming, or any other theory - that science is often wrong, that an inaccurate idea can be accepted for centuries, and that only real science, subjected to the most scrupulous examination, is worthy.

December 21, 2009