Patrick Henry College’s CFACT Campus chapter is off to a running start for the spring semester! PHC CFACT hosted back-to-back events on Thursday and Friday, the 21st and 22nd of January in downtown DC. This is the momentum they will carry with them throughout 2010!
On Thursday, PHC CFACT was excited to join other volunteers from Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute to stage a ‘Global Warming Beach Party’ protest in front of a lecture at George Washington University by Thomas Friedman on his book ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded.’ His book encourages individuals to invest in and promote industries to solve a problem that CFACT holds does not exist-that of global warming. Although well-intentioned, such policies reinforce rising energy costs and government intervention, phenomena which are harmful to American citizens, American industry, and the global poor.
Christopher Lore, a PHC CFACT member, said ‘Thursday went really well. I managed to pass out a handful of fact sheets in regards to the lack of foundation for the global warming theory. While this information was not always taken warmly, it was good to get the truth out there.’
Waving signs, handing out literature, and talking with lecture attendees, PHC CFACT members were able to help raise awareness of questionable studies and research methods, actual earth temperatures and ‘warming’ phenomena, and of the simple fact that the science is NOT settled.
On the following day, PHC CFACT took a trip back downtown to visit the CATO Institute, a policy think tank and educational institution that hosted a lecture by Dr. Pat Michaels, a current member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and longtime research professor at the University of Virginia. During an educational and entertaining evening, Dr. Michaels shared a skepticism for many of the current claims of global warming scientists, and an anger at the actions of the scientists’many, his former colleagues’implicated in the ClimateGate scandal of last year. He demonstrated the overstated claims of the IPCC, and shared a hopeful and positive vision for the future.
Bridget Degnan, brand new CFACT member, thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and said, ‘Listening to Pat Michaels explain the details behind global warming science was a huge eye-opener for me. Much of the information he shared I had never seen before, and I definitely appreciated the question and answer time at the end. His discussion of climate gate revealed that even science, in the hands of mere men and women, can still be fallible ‘ despite its supposed ‘objectivity.’
Also this past week, PHC CFACT was covered in both the student newspaper, and on the front page of the Patrick Henry College website . Both articles spoke about PHC CFACT’s president and vice-president Ryan Rogge and Josh Nadal and their recent trip to Copenhagen with CFACT for the UN Climate Change Conference, relating their experiences, and discussing the student group and its activities and goals.
To take advantage of this early-year momentum, PHC CFACT staged a very successful registration drive on Monday the 25th, spending the day speaking with students about CFACT, and signing up new members to be a part of this active and excited group!
Josh Nadal, who ran the event, said this: “We set up camp in the lobby of PHC’s new building to talk to students and accept new members. It was a major success! Over the course of several hours, we spoke to a lot of students, raised awareness of our group, and gained seven new members!’
Yet another CFACT group, off to a great start in 2010!!
