Wayne Gilchrest: “What I would like to do to the Members assembled here tonight is to give a perspective on whether or not to some degree…”

“What I would like to do to the Members assembled here tonight is to give a perspective on whether or not to some degree the climate on the planet is changing based on observational techniques by U.S. scientists. What I would like to do as far as this perspective is concerned is to say about 500 years ago people thought the world was flat until there was observations and exploration. And through those techniques, Columbus, for example, it was discovered that the Earth was round. Galileo, the scientist, said that the Earth revolved around the Sun. As a result of that, he was put in prison and his life was threatened because at the time the religious doctrine was that the Sun revolved around the Earth because it was not mentioned in the Bible that it was the other way around. But then through certain techniques and observation, scientific discoveries, more information being disseminated, we realized that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The other interesting perspective about 100 years after Galileo was a man named James Usher, a bishop in Ireland, said that the Earth was formed in 4004 B.C. but that was before we had the science of geology, geologic techniques. And through a series of information-gathering, it was discovered that the Earth was several billion years old. In fact, we did not realize how old it was in the extent of the universe until the Hubbell spacecraft. Now we have this thing called climate change.”