Global Warming Denial: How and Why People Distort the Science

Bihl Haus Arts is inside the gates of Primrose at Monticello Park Senior Apartments and across from the Tip Top Café

Professor Gunnar Schade, PhD (Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A & M, College Station)

The denial of Global Warming is widespread in America. The tools people use for their denial are not new, but were carefully crafted during the tobacco wars and highly successfully re-applied to stop our consumer society from addressing a major threat to its own existence. In this presentation, Prof. Gunnar Schade (Texas A & M, College Station) will explore the distortions of science and why people continue their denial despite the facts, and even despite their own knowledge to the contrary.

About the Speaker: Dr. Schade is Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He received a PhD in Chemistry in 1997 under Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen as advisor. Dr. Schade studies the exchange of atmospheric trace gases between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and how humans have altered them. He teaches courses on General and Air Pollution Meteorology, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Biogeochemistry, with a recent interest in Science Denialism and how to combat it.

The talk coincides with the exhibit “Some Kind of Primitive,” by Antonio Serna, which continues at Bihl Haus Arts (open Fridays and Saturdays, 1-4 pm, or by appointment) through December 13, 2014.

About the Exhibition: Some Kind of Primitive is the debut solo exhibition by San Antonio-born artist Antonio Serna. Antonio Serna has lived half of his life in San Antonio and half in New York. His hybrid-sensibility is apparent in his work. For example the paintings in Some Kind of Primitive recall the dark silhouettes of endless New York city blocks set in front of expansive landscapes and skies of the Dinosaur era, similar to the “Big” landscapes of Texas. Coincidentally, the bones of Quetzalcoatlus, the largest winged dinosaur depicted in this series, were discovered in the Big Bend in 1971.