CA Academy of Science AGW display apparently not very popular

The displays at the CA Academy of Science really ticks me off. They’re using out dated material to scare the kids and uninformed public. The oceans are no longer warming and the Hockey Stick has been discredited. Gross mis-representation of climate “science.”

I think the lack of interest is definitely a sign of school indoctrination overload. In my school district the indoctrination into the beliefs of environmentalism start in kindergarten. Last summer, after my son had finished his first year of school, we had the following exchange:
“Ok, if you’ve finished your lunch, clean up. Fork and plate in the sink, water bottle in the trash.”
“Aren’t we going to recycle this?” (plastic water bottle)
“Why?”
“We don’t want to end up with a big pile of trash somewhere.”
“Son, our trash is burned to make electricity so you can play on the computer and watch TV”
“Oh.”
I don’t fight his indoctrination by the educrats at his age. I’m waiting until he’s ready to rebel as a teenager and then I’ll turn him on to science. Hopefully he’ll drive his highschool teachers crazy with talk about free markets, scientific method, and fusion energy.

That hockey stick is a CO2 version, and crafted in such a manner to look very scary.
They should instead have a 20,000 year time line with CO2 starting off at 180ppm at around the time the Neanderthals disappeared up to the present day 385ppm.
It’s a gradual increase over 100ppm before the Industrial Revolution and another 100ppm after that. Spectators will see that higher carbon concentrations are not an avoidable industrial pollutant. It is a byproduct of productivity and development, without which we would never be able to develop cleaner sources of energy.
The museum display should also make it clear that modern cities experience CO2 concentrations of almost 600ppm and that it used to be more or less the same concentration in urban areas a century or more ago when smoke from coal and woodfires clogged the air with all sorts of nasty chemicals on top of not-so-nasty carbon dioxide.

I attended this revamped academy of science just a few months ago. I was disappointed to say the least. As a child I took field trips to the old planetarium, aquarium, etc. It was broad and extensive with each wing dedicated to a different science. It did for science what the nearby musem does for art.
This new “sustainable” building seemed small, crowded, and didn’t elicit any strong understanding of the sciences. It appears more dedicated to showing how smart their building design is. The lines were long, and the payoff was small. The capstone (literally) of this project is the living roof. True to form, it is nice to look at but all of the humans had to be crowded onto a walkway and kept well away from the “nature”. The global warming concern expressed via the threatened polar bear cub was over-the-top, but no more disappointing than the rest of the experience.
The Exploratorium on the other hand is still a great place to take kids to see scientific and engineering principles in action. While there we watched a cow eye get dissected. Pretty neat. And gross. Perfect for an 8 year old.

Phil (10:14)
It is a hockey stick. That is the most important religious icon in the fundamentalist faith based AGW cult. It is used to rally the unthinking zombies that follow Pope Gore and Archbishop Hansen’s holy edicts.

Heh, my daughter’s teacher tried to pull a “fast one”. She sent home a note that said students would, from time to time, be allowed to watch a movie a few times a year. She gave a list of movies that they might watch and asked parents to note any objections. Most of the movies were just normal kid/family movies but buried in the list about 2/3 of the way down was “An Inconvenient Truth” I checked the “NO” box with the note that my daughter could only see it if the movie is balanced with “Swindle” and “Swindle” is shown in its entirety after “AIT”.

MartinGAtkins (10:34:07) :
I think the main reason why the top elite of warmists will not debate is here.
‘Global Warming Is Not a Crisis’
YouTube – Global Warming Debate – Introduction, part 1 of 10
Part 1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6t2D74UcrY
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151

The best children’s science museum / exhibition is the science museum on the outskirts of Toronto. It’s well worth a visit if you’re in the area. I forget what it’s called.

LOL, why does that poster look like a ransom note?

Aron, I don’t know where you live but low ceiling rooms are diabolical for large groups of people and rely entirely on costly and polluting air-conditioning to maintain even half-decent air to breathe.
High ceiling rooms purpose built are both practical and efficient. All they need is good insulation to be warm in cold weather.

Notice on the CO2 hockey stick how they have the horizontal axis starting at 280ppm?
It is the usual trick to make the uptick appear much MUCH larger than it really is. If they used an accurate and honest scale, starting from zero, then the true scale of the increase would be demonstrated. Ah, but, that would not look as scary would it?

Aron, I don’t know where you live but low ceiling rooms are diabolical for large groups of people and rely entirely on costly and polluting air-conditioning to maintain even half-decent air to breathe.
It was sarcasm! I was referring to environmentalists who have said homes in eco-towns should be built with low ceilings to make them cheaper to heat. It’s another example of their lack of foresight.
I lived in Mumbai for over a year, spent most of time in a low ceiling room. It was very hot, needed air-conditioning and a ceiling fan switched on 24 hours a day. Even then I lost 30 pounds of weight, developed breathing problems and lost cardiovascular fitness.
I won’t talk about the black hole of Calcutta. That’s an extreme example!

Mike Ryan (12:23:05) :
Mike Ryan, I suspect I follow the same religion as you, and am routinely mocked for it, by the secular humanist crowd which interestingly constitute the majority of the AGW true believers, I merely enjoy pointing out that they have become that which they despise, yet are so caught up in their righteous indignation that they cannot grasp even that simple truth.
As far as being offensive, well, sorry. I find the concept of offense at the written opinion of another to be a little thin skinned. Disagree, out argue, subdue with superior reasoning and logic, but some guy said something eminently reasonable about defending to the death the right to say potentially offensive things.

The new museum is a fiasco
The old museum needed to be rebuilt to meet Earthquake standards. Before the “upgrade” the exhibits were the focus and the building was just a container. The rebuild process was taken over by Enviros and now the building is the focus, with exhibits secondary. The upgrade cost ~$500M and thus tickets are now $25 per adult, $15/$20 per child up from $10/$5. A family membership used to cost $60/year, now it $160. We used to be members and visit all the time, but we have not been since it reopened and even if we do go, it will be a onetime event.
I watched a TV show on building the new museum and one thing that clearly came through is that the green roof is HEAVY and requires a LOT of structural steel to support. All the spending on the building meant less was available for exhibits. What a mess…

IRELAND’S BIRDS have fared well over the past decade, with many species showing population increases, according to a major new study.
It appears they like it warm.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0328/1224243618753.html

I read about the exhibit somewhere and, my wife has asked me a couple of times to take the kids. I’ve resisted because I don’t like getting angry in public. I may, however, go and check it out, maybe print out a copy of the ocean cooling graph that was posted on here this week, and see if I can find someone to give it to strategically.
I used to live right by the place when I was at UCSF, right on Lincoln Way. It was great then – the late night planetarium shows set to Pink Floyd music were very “entertaining”.

OT Obama is hosting climate change meetings in April. See http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/03/28/obama-climate-summit.html?ref=rss

LATE SEASON WINTER STORM???? Does NOAA know something and are not telling the MSM????? Late season or late winter? late spring? anyone?
Great lakes …WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 11 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM EDT SUNDAY…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GAYLORD HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 11 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM EDT SUNDAY. SNOW WILL OVERSPREAD THE AREA LATE THIS EVENING…BECOMING HEAVY AT TIMES OVERNIGHT INTO SUNDAY MORNING…BEFORE TAPERING OFF LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON. SOME THUNDER IS ALSO POSSIBLE WITH THIS STRONG LATE SEASON WINTER STORM. SNOW MAY OCCASIONALLY MIX WITH OR CHANGE TO SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN… MAINLY ALONG AND EAST OF A LINE FROM CHEBOYGAN TO CADILLAC. A TOTAL ACCUMULATION OF 6 TO 8 INCHES OF HEAVY WET SNOW IS EXPECTED ACROSS THE WARNING AREA…THOUGH ANY MIX WITH SLEET OR FREEZING RAIN WILL RESULT IN LOWER TOTALS. NORTHWEST WINDS WILL INCREASE TO BETWEEN 15 AND 25 MPH WITH HIGHER GUSTS INTO SUNDAY AFTERNOON… WHICH MAY PRODUCE AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW.
A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW OR WINTRY PRECIPITATION WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL…USE EXTREME CAUTION.

This fits a pattern of slightly abated enthusiasm in the AGW camp. I’ll admit that the extremists continue unabated. But, they are compelled to do so, because they have no road back. They either see the disaster happen or their reputations and livelyhoods evaporate.
But, there are regular folks in the alarmist sector who have seen the grafitti and are now adopting CYA* positions.
You will see more and more abstracts, papers and powerpoint presentations that question “the answer”.
*Cover Your (donkey)”

My clever nephew taught me something about recycling which I suspect isn’t well understood. Most “recyclables” can only be recycled two or three times, before they are useless. Even glass winds up as part of asphalt after about four recycles. Since we all believe science will be better in the future, we should stop recycling and do all the mining now, so that the earth will have longer to recover from the mining process. All the stuff to be recycled by much more efficient processes in the future should be stored in clearly marked and maintained places where we can monitor their natural degradation, and utilize the otherwise wasted outgases they produce, like methane. Future recycling engineers will be able to find these resources without searching or disrupting the fragile environment, because we have clearly marked them. My nephew, the mining engineer, said we should call these places (Wait for it, wait for it!) “Municipal Landfills”.

DR (16:18:55) :
“Climate models, using typical presumed scenarios of climate forcings for the
past century, suggest that the planet should be out of energy balance by +0.75 ± 0.25 W/m2, but observations of ocean heat content change (averaged over the 11-year solar cycle) suggest an imbalance of only +0.5 ± 0.25 W/m2 (absorbed solar energy exceeding heat radiation to space).”
Anyone else notice the ‘suggested’ imbalance is exactly the margin of error? Wattsupwiththat?

REPLY: Cheapest ones are about $500, but they only have a +/- 50PPM accuracy. Useful for monitoring industrial environs, not so useful scientifically.
That’s too bad. Ever since this whole thing started I have wanted to check the air here in Ohio out. You know, a measure in my neighborhood, one in an urban area, one in Hocking Hills. Guess I’ll have to keep saving, or hope for a government grant… 🙂

One expects the media to be sceptical and challenge the status quo, yet for some reason world wide climate and science reporters for all the major newspapers have bought in to the IPCC world view, we need to know why.
Its been reported that 70% of journalists (even on Fox News) have a socialist inclination, does this have a bearing on the lack of media scepticism about the claims of the Hansen Gore IPCC ideology. Probably
Or does it reflect the relative young age of most science /climate reporters, who are low on the pecking order, and the shallow science Education they have received.
Does it reflect a political agenda from the owners and editors who perceive that alarmism sells papers better than trying to explain real science, and the huge uncertainties in the climate debate.

Christopher Booker’s just kicked a big hole in the sea level story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
He’s quoting Nils-Axel Mörner.
“One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC’s favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a “corrective factor” of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they “needed to show a trend”.
If this is true, then it’s a real smoking gun.
I think I’ll drop it into the maw of “Unreal Climate”. Any bets on it being a) censored or b) heavily denied with a big ad-hom on the good Danish Dr?

In response to Rob’s earlier post about small birds in Ireland a recent radio item mentioned an increase in long tail tits due to warmer winters.
Strangely the survey was carried out this January, one of the coldest for years.
Mostly blue tits around here although, while trying to spot the thrush in the bush, I saw a pair of great tits hanging out by the pond.
Sadly I haven’t seen any coal tits this year. Perhaps they need a more politically correct name?

Mr. Lynn
I like your idea of some kind of “Truth Squad” to combat AGW mania. Like you, getting of my duff requires more and more effort but it would be well worth it. I am currently emailing my elected ‘representatives’ a couple of times a week and would encourage all to do the same. I would love to see some sort of pro-active response to the insanity of AGW. I mean, I enjoy the postings here but…what effect are we having on the potentially catastrophic policies being dreamed up in ‘smoke filled rooms’ by ignorant pols egged on by the AGW cult? Can we do more? I think so…
At least the war on prosperity is going well…

Today, Obama announced an International Forum on Energy and Climate to be held in Washington in April.
His objective is to turn the December UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen into a success.
This step also allows him to concentrate on the establishment of a new Economic World Order during the upcoming G20 meeting.
How much slag are we going to give this crackpot of a President who is prepared to drop an atomic bomb on the economy.
Thousands of Americans having lost their houses already live in tents.
Are we risking the revival of the Civil War?
There is NO climate problem and there is no reason to shut down our economies.
This is “Change” nobody asked for.
http://climaterealists.com/news.php?id=3119

Part of the CAS display on AGW includes a bit about a mass extinction, drawing parallels of the present state to catastrophic worldwide extinction events such as “the big five” — K-T, Late Devonian, Triassic/Jurassic transition, Permian-Triassic transition, and Ordovician-Silurian.
I have colleagues in CAS. I pointed out to some of them that Cenozic climate variation such as the Eocene/Oligocene transition caused abrupt extinctions much more serious than now, but not as severe as the “big five.” It was hyperbolic and disingenuous to assert that the present condition is at all like the K-T event or other catastrophes.
The present extinctions (where documented) are on the species or genus level. I know of only one recent family level extinction and that was a relict dolphin (Baiji, Family Lipotidae) and that as caused by habitat loss, not climate change. I added that the worst-case scenarios postulated by the AGW crowd still fell well within Late Holocene normal climate fluctuations. A one meter rise in sea level over the next 100 years is insignificant when compared to the 100 meter drop in the Early Oligocene.
But, as per usual in this debate, even to learned scientists in the tank, the empirical data really doesn’t matter anymore.

Welcome to “spring” in frozen Kanada!
I did my part for “stupid hour.”
Here is what I did. (I have both solar and wind power to augment my grid power but I turned them off for the “stupid hour.”)
Last night at 8:30pm I started all my farm vehicles, turned on all my appliances, turned on all my lights, turned up the thermostat and opened a window, even though it was -15 C and there is still over four feet of snow in my fields and no sign of melting 8 days into “spring!!” SOMEONE had to make up for any loss of CO2 by “stupid hour!”
This is probably the most serious threat to humanity in our time. The study done on the “environmental” effect of a Prius vs. a Hummer is indicative of the farce being brainwashed into our children. Can you imagine the amount of coal and natural gas required to produce and distribute (along with the huge loss in transmission) enough electricity to charge up the inefficient “electric” and “hybrid” vehicles if everyone was forced to drive one? (Not to mention the vast costs to produce, and the environmental disaster that would be caused by the spent poisonous batteries!) We would need more than the 650 “dirty” coal fired power plants that China is currently constructing with NO outcry from the hypocritical and destructive “environmentalists!!”
A chart of CO2 for the past 500 million years shows that it is now at almost the lowest point in the studied geological history of the Earth. CO2 was vastly more concentrated during the last ICE AGE! What does that tell you?
I recently saw a show on Geographic channel where a huge icebreaker and a crew of “scientists” were hired by National Geographic to crash through extremely thick ice in the Arctic, TO “STUDY” HOW GLOBAL WARMING WAS CAUSING THE ICE TO THICKEN!! Even Geographic has bought into “junk science!”

Actually, Ron, there is a climate problem. It’s the Sun.
And the attendant lack of activity.
Instead of preparing for upcoming consequences of colder climate, they are instead chasing a mirage, and playing silly games with energy economics.
They should be finding ways to conserve energy usage, as in addressing superfluous lighting, inefficient forms of transport, etc.
Globalized trade is the biggest energy hog ever invented.

My family and I were there 3/21, and spent about a half-hour at a table next to the AGW displays. We did not see a single person who appeared to give anything but a cursory, while-heading-elsewhere, look at any part of the displays in view from our seats. We heard no one comment on the displays while we stood in lines for the cafe closest to the AGW area. We did not look at any of it, but were predisposed to ignore it. Our family group spanned 3 generations of life-sciences enthusiasts.

Somewhat OT: A PBS Nova episode, Extreme Ice” was broadcast last night in the Puget Sound area. It was an outrageous misrepresentation of what is happening in Alaska and Greenland. Some of the filming and data from 2008 was incorporated.
All contradictory research was ignored. There was no mention that Alaskan glaciers, the Juneau Ice Field, and Greenland Ice sheet gained mass in 2008.
I changed stations after 30 minutes rather than break my TV.