Posted by Dee Norris
Teach children the path to follow, and even when they are old, they will not stray from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Childhood indoctrination. It’s a dirty word. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. It can never happen here in the free world, now can it? Of course not.
In the past few days, I have had a couple of disturbing conversations about AGW with the younger generation, including my own daughter. Particularly striking is the one I had with the 12-year old daughter of a friend.
(Warning: The following transcript may incite anger in libertarians and parents).
Dee: So, do you believe in Global Warming?
Melissa: Oh, yes!
Dee: Oh? Do you think that people are responsible?
Melissa: Uh huh. They put all that junk in the air and it has to be causing the world to get warmer.
Dee: Is that so? That junk is called carbon dioxide and of all the carbon dioxide that is going into the air, how much of it do you think that people are adding?
Melissa: I dunno… Maybe 75 percent?
Dee: 75%? What if I told you it was less than 5% and the rest was all natural?
Melissa: Well how about all the polar bears that are drowning? The ice cap is melting.
Dee: Ummmm… How many polar bears have drowned?
Melissa: I dunno, but they’re going extinct.
Dee: Oh, really? Polar bear population had doubled in the last few of decades.
Melissa: You are making me mad.
Dee: Why is that?
Melissa: Cause you are.
Dee: OK, so where did you learn that the polar bears are dying?
Melissa: A movie they showed at the school.
Well, gentle readers, I knew to which movie she was referring: Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In fact, I was there that day when the school’s earth science class sponsored a public showing and did my best to correct some of the more glaring errors made by Mr. Gore, but it seems that I failed in my task.
To this day, the indoctrination continues to warp the opinions of children too young to understand the science or politics behind AGW and who only care about the cute, cuddly polar bears having to swim 50 or more miles between melting ice flows just to stay alive.
Recently, the American Institute for Public Service, a national foundation that honors community service, recognized Cool the Earth for the efforts to educate the youth of the San Francisco Bay Area about the dangers of Global Warming. The founder of Cool the Earth, Carleen Cullen had this to say:
“What I love about working with young people is their absolute optimism,” said Cullen. “You tell them, ‘Hey, we’ve got this little problem over here with our friend, the polar bear, and with humans as well,’ and they’re not overwhelmed by it; they’re not skeptical or cynical. They just ask, ‘What can I do to fix it?’ “
Read the entire article at the SF Chronicle here: Carleen Cullen fights global warming or see it for yourself at Cool the Earth.
P.S. I haven’t given up hope for Melissa – she is a bright kid. I am planning on making a special middle school-level presentation to help her understand both sides of the debate so she can make up her own mind. Who knows, perhaps I can shame the school into letting a skeptic have equal time.
Update: I spoke with Melissa tonight (Sept 10) and she is quite excited that an essay about her is so popular that Google ranked it in the top 10 out of 1.2 million hits for ‘Inconvenient Youth’. This seems to have spurred her into digging into the facts behind AGW to see the truth for herself.
On the other hand, in that same search, I found a video posted just this week which was also entitled “An Inconvenient Youth” and is of an 8-year old boy with a message for politicians to stop global warming. I am very sure he didn’t just come up with this on his own. Judge for yourself:
An Inconvenient Youth from Colin McCullough on Vimeo.
evanjones: Do you have a link to your data source? Also, the monthly change in CO2 as sensed at the Mauna Loa Observatory varies with SST, specifically with ENSO as one of the primary drivers. How is this accounted for in the analysis?
http://i34.tinypic.com/2sb0k6g.jpg
I discussed the correlation between ENSO and CO2 on this thread.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/atmospheric-co2-concentration-versus.html
Mike McMillan (13:37:05) :
This last half of the solar cycle, Virgo has shown a 2 w/m^2 drop, good I’d guess for maybe a third of a degree temperature drop
The only TSI instrument with reliable calibration is LASP’s TIM instrument on SORCE. It shows a 1 W/m2 drop:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png
good for a 0.15 degree drop.
but for the MWP or LIA or any of the Big ice ages, who can say that the sun’s burner wasn’t set to a different level?
But who can say that it was? unless you WANT it to be so in order to explain the LIA etc.
proxies we do have show 40 and 100 thousand year ice age cycles. Could something 1.4 million km in diameter have 100k year cycles? I’d guess yes.
These cycles have absolutely nothing to do with the Sun, but results from changes in the Earth’s orbit and tilt.
There is no firm evidence for climate change caused by changes of the Sun’s output on a time scale of less than several hundred million years.
Back when i was young, I could go to the school library and look up recipes for high explosives. Now I wouldn’t dare even try. But using them to harm someone was unthinkable because I knew that life is not meaningless and because I had a very healthy fear of hell! The truth is a mind is a DANGEROUS thing to educate unless strong morals are taught too. The government schools can only teach watered down morals because they have to please everyone. My guess is they water down the science too to protect us from morally clueless graduates.
Are private schools any better?
Somewhat. Not a heck of a lot. At least most of them require three actual Rs. I have yet to hear that the abomination of “Everyday Math” has infiltrated private schools.
I did see the bio curriculum of the NYC charter schools and at least the text was (pretty much) on the money.
Most are pretty bad on the pc stuff, though.
When I was teaching “Resource Room” (which translates roughly to “Waste o’ Time” – except when -I- was teachin’ it!) the main problem was reading (and everything else, but never mind that).
I kept telling them, “Sound it out, sound it out!” It was a new and wonderful concept to them: They had been subject to the horror of “whole word” their whole lives. (If I had my ‘druthers, I’d have made a giant house of cards out of all those dang flash cards. And set it on fire.)
You are a wit if there ever was one.
I can’t take credit for that one (hence the quotes). But whoever came up with it was a wit indeed.
“I can’t take credit for that one (hence the quotes). But whoever came up with it was a wit indeed.” evanjones
Well it takes a wit to know a wit. Since I sometimes recognize your’s, I hereby claim half-wit status.
Same here, in good ol’ Germany.
Kids are indoctrinated by teachers.
By teachers who don’t even know the very basics of science.
Had an argument with two teachers about nine years ago.
They both did run second classes basic school. The time of lessons wasn’t
fully parallel, often one class did run about a week ahead. Nevertheless they
did same tests on same days. Was simply too convenient, especially for the creatress
of the tests, her class results mostly looked better than the other class.
They assumed a gaussian distrubution over both classes, and gave their
notes accordingly.
I asked them: “Did you ever try that statistics in a production environment?”
“Assume, you have parts producing machines, two of them. One produces above
standard quality. The other slightly below standard quality. For quality assurance
you use the results of both together. Summarily, they are above standard. All is fine”
“One day the machine with the better quality broke. Now you are hanging with a machine producing below standard quality for the time, until the better machine is fixed. How long do you think, your customers will live with that?”
“Especially, you are in a competitive business, and your margin is so small, that you can’t afford to pay the service for the broken machine on 7d/24h notice. You may have to wait a week or two. Your business will broke very soon.”
The response: Blank sheeply eyes
I further told them, they will need six parallel classes at least to use statistics that way. I even offered, to provide an instruction by a professor for statistics.
More sheeply eyes.
KlausB
p.s. They did stop that nonsense after short.
Does anyone know if there is a “sceptics” PPT presentation out there designed for middle school?
I would be interested in giving a persentation at some of our local schools.
Public Schools, controlled by Left Wing Movment…..that’s why my kids are in private school
mcates:
You can start here:
http://store.demanddebate.com/the-skys-not-falling.html
not quite middle school, but a start.
Yeah. The DoE. It’s the diagram about halfway down the page.
And I see they’ve updated the data to 2007, so the stats are more recent than what I posted (I must update my notes).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
Leif Svalgaard,
I’m a little confused then. If it’s not CO2 and it’s not the Sun, what has caused the warming of the past few decades? And more importantly, in a long-term view, what has caused the warmer weather of the past couple of centuries as the Earth has recovered from the LIA? And what caused the LIA itself?
Do we really know as little about climate change as it appears we do if the assertions about the strength of CO2 and the Sun in the role of climate change are correct? And do we have any idea where it’s coming from at least? I mean, my point is that if we say it is warming and cooling oceans, or a warming and cooling atmosphere – exactly what is causing those? It just seems strange that our records reflect changes, and we can sense change in the wind, so to speak, yet we seem not to know the causes?
It’s a strange feeling.
Warren wrote:
To be approximate humanity has purportedly added 100 ppm CO2 to the atmosphere, which as a proportion of current levels is 25% or in addition to preindustrial levels 35%.
You’re right. It does incite anger in Libertarians. Hopefully it incites anger in most other people too.
Leif:
The matter of indoctrination is of paramount concern especially in this post-Enlightenment era. It’s one thing for faddish beliefs to get general public circulation, it’s far worse for it to be inculcated in schools.
In the end, who did more – and suffered more:
Giordano Bruno OR James “Jim” Hansen?
Galieo Galiei OR Mann (don’t even know his pre-name, and don’t bother about it)?
Bobby Lane (15:40:01) :
I’m a little confused then. If it’s not CO2 and it’s not the Sun, what has caused the warming of the past few decades? And more importantly, in a long-term view, what has caused the warmer weather of the past couple of centuries as the Earth has recovered from the LIA? And what caused the LIA itself?
You are touching upon one of the real problems here. And that is that ‘ideology’ or beliefs have made people take leave of their senses. If you fervently believe in AGW [that it is CO2 released by Man], then you do not want to hear any claims about the Sun and will go so far as to deny even the existence of the LIA. If you loathe the AGW idea [and there hardly seems to be any middle ground], then you cling to the notion that it MUST be the Sun. In both cases, no arguments either way will sway you and the whole debate is therefore silly.
The oceans store a very large amount of heat [300 times as much as the atmosphere or some large number like that], accumulated over hundreds of years. Internal oscillations of the oceans can possibly explain lots of the changes we see. This is just one possibility. But, neither of the two camps will really go along with that because it leaves too much wiggle room. You see, if it is 100% AGW and 0% Sun, or 0% AGW and 100%Sun, then the situation is clear, no discussion needed, as the science is settled, but if it is X% AGW, Y% Sun, and Z% something else [and maybe W% and U% of still something else [e.g. volcanoes], then the science is not settled and there can be debate as to the values of X, Y, Z, W, …, and that neither camp wants.
It just seems strange that our records reflect changes, and we can sense change in the wind, so to speak, yet we seem not to know the causes?
A similar situation arose 100 years ago, when geomagnetic disturbances had been carefully recorded for 150 years and aurora and sunspots for hundreds of years, and yet the cause that connects them was not known. We now know that cause, as we’ll know, in due time, what causes climate change [provided we can off the politics and do some science instead].
thanks, Leif – insightful perspective!
Hey everyone, I think you’re looking at this all wrong.
Having raised three kids, I can tell you right away how to deal with this when the kids come home full of AGW:
“Then why don’t you turn the damn lights off!”
“Why don’t you ride your bike to the mall?”
“Do you know how many pounds of CO2 that Supersized No. 5 produced?”
“I can’t take you out to practice your driving…burns too much gasoline.”
“Why don’t you hang those clothes on the line rather than use the dryer?”
(That last one works even on the teachers.)
Remember jiu jitsu…use your opponents weight to throw them.
Leif,
Thank you for your participation here.
Change in total radiative forcing by CO2 up to the present is said to be about 1.5 wm/m2,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Radiative-forcings.svg
about the same as the increase in solar irradiance in the last century according to multiple sources (from about 1364 to 1366).
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-recon3.png
Leif’s ref above, although showing different numbers from Wiki, have TSI dropping in the last decade.
I sent this e-mail to our local school Superintendents today
Subject: Climate change studies at your school
Dear School Superintendent:
Ellen and I no longer have children in school, but we continue to monitor student programs. We strongly believe that future generations must have a strong science and math background. These are essential component for maintaining our economic vitality and leadership in the global economy. Plus, a well educated electorate is an essential element for maintaining our political freedoms.
I am concerned that children in American are being subject to environmental indoctrination. Schools across the country are showing students Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth without presenting alternate points of view, or pointing out the scientific errors in the movie. This movie does a disservice to good science.
I would like to know if An Inconvenient Truth is being shown in your schools? Are scientific errors in the film being discussed in class? Are alternative points of views being presented, such as the Great Global Warming Swindle Documentary or Apocalypse? No! Why Global Warming is not a Global Crisis.
If An Inconvenient Truth is being used in your schools please explain how it is being used.
Thank you for your time.
Russ Steele
You see, if it is 100% AGW and 0% Sun, or 0% AGW and 100%Sun, then the situation is clear, no discussion needed, as the science is settled, but if it is X% AGW, Y% Sun, and Z% something else [and maybe W% and U% of still something else [e.g. volcanoes], then the science is not settled and there can be debate as to the values of X, Y, Z, W, …, and that neither camp wants.
Leif, I think the “anti” AGW camp, if you want to call it that, would be perfectly satisfied to let the science play out and see what unfolds. I know I sure would. The problem is that the “pro” AGW camp insists that we do “something” now. Unfortunately, the somethings they want to do prove to be very expensive, and some of them may be foolish. Therefore the “anti” camp is forced into an extreme response to counter this foolishness. If there were no political repercussions, and the discussion was merely scientific, then no big deal either way. When Al Gore wants to tell me how much Gasoline I can have, and how much electricity I get, then that’s a problem.
Leif,
Damnit! there you go making some simple things more complex so the rest of us need to think! Stoppit! We want things simple and easily understood, like in 20 seconds of a news program. We’re busy and don’t have the time to think or study or whatever!
Serously Thanks for your input, it does cause questions, and thought. I think with the Sun’s current activity, if it continues for a while, will give us some clues.
To an engineer, the interesting think about popular belief is that it often meets with an accident. Collapses, wrecks, and just plain idiocy result. Good engineers look at history for answers, and even sometimes find them.
Mike
Dee Norris: Great Post
“No Kids for Bears”
“Save the children”
apologise to friends.
While I do not necessarily agree that Global Warming is not a real thing, I do agree with you that today’s youth need to be educated about both sides of the debate. I agree even more that todays science classes are one sided and don’t teach a thing except what to do to “fix” the climate problems.