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.
Leif,
I appreciate your honesty there. That is very true. I think most people here would fall into the ‘varied cause’ camp if they were able to stop and think about it. But the Sun is a big issue now too. That the AGW camp denies it is the Sun, I think, only accelerates the cries of ‘foul’ from the anti-AGW crowd and perhaps drives more of a sense that something is being hidden for political reasons. Even if the facts do support the AGW crowd in that case, that the Sun takes far too long to cause what really amounts to minor changes, the level of hostility between the factions is such that the truth is seen as a lie. Huh. Very tricky that.
Okay, so it’s not the Sun so much as the Oceans. I did not know that the oceans retained that kind of heat volume. That’s really astounding, but at the same time I guess it makes sense. So you would say that oceanic oscillations are most probably the main driver (bigger percentage) of the ups and downs of our climate? I have some basic understanding of their function myself, but not really enough to know how it all works. Obviously each ocean is different yet they are also connected, so that makes it pretty complicated. Do you have any colleagues you can bring on board that would give us a more scientific understanding of those?
So are we concerned about sunspots for their magnetic value, so to speak? Is the magnetic influence of the sun more ‘present’ for us than its thermal influence? More quickly to be felt on a short time scale? I realize a super-active Sun can cause magnetic storms that could do a lot of real damage (such as to electricity generation and to electronics) as has been demonstrated in the past when one could see the Northern Lights in Jamaica at one time. But then why should we be concerned about no sunspots other than that it is an interesting anomaly (and minor related facts such as bees can’t seem to find their way home without it). And why does it seem that low sunspot production appear to correlate (I realize this does not prove causation) so well with lower temperatures here on Earth? Is the thermal significance of those minima (e.g. Dalton and Maunder) a pop science legend too?
I think you confirm the thrust of my posting though. We really don’t know enough at this point to make such firm assessments, and thus to make political policy based on those assessments. It just seems that we do, and one side can be goaded into thinking we must because the other side pretends so well that it does in order to achieve its political aims. That and there seems to be a good bit of pop science legends about climate. I do agree on the politics. This would be a mainstream non-issue without the politics and a much better environment (no pun intended) for science to get on with the hard task of honest research.
Thanks for your participation here. It is much appreciated.
Remember those book order sheets that your kids bring home from school. We have probably bought thousands of dollars worth of books from them over the years. Imagine my surprise last year when Al Gore showed up in my 3rd graders book order form.
Best regards,
ClimateSanity
Belief in AGW is fun, for both kids and so-called adults. No need to worry about boring little things like facts, or science, or of questioning and thinking for oneself. It’s a ready-made belief system, perfect for indoctrinating kids and gullible, simple-minded adults. We’re training kids to be robots, and not think for themselves, which doesn’t bode well for the future.
I see several comments on indoctrination and I found the most agreeable one by Leif I think. I want to set out my own opinion for consideration, though it coincides greatly with what Leif said.
The article is not about indoctrination. Indoctrination is neutral. Even the usage of it in encouraging one morality over another, such as happens with religious education, is not a bad thing necessarily. But in this case obviously the proponents of AGW are not waiting until the science is settled to teach kids. They are teaching kids their POV and excluding others purposefully in order to co-opt them into their movement before they are able to grow up and honestly evaluate the various positions on the subject. It is much like conscripting an army. Think of what Hitler Youth would have been doing once the kids had grown up to become adults. THAT co-opting is much like Hilter and Stalin, and THAT I think is Dee’s point.
Hitler and Stalin are examples not of teachers but of political leaders. It is the politically connected that are influencing schools and teachers to show such nonsense as AIT. There are of course people with good intentions who want to take care of the planet and have been duped by misinformation into misleading actions, such as appears to be the case in the SFC linked story. But mostly it is about politics. It also says a lot about our educational system when free thinking is limited in this way. Our children are being ‘vaccinated’ against skepticism, the very skepticism that many of us here share on this blog because we did not grow up such things as AIT being shown in class. Young children are highly impressionable as the Proverb says, and that is true whether you believe the rest of the Good Book or not.
About Melissa’s anger. It is not an anger of outrage based on the direct perception of a lie. It is an anger based upon the confusion of authorities that a young child’s mind cannot handle. In that sense, it is a lot like the Matrix (the movie). What would you do if one day you ‘woke up’ to the fact that much of what you believed and built your world-view upon was not real but only seemed that way? My point exactly. Children do not understand the concept of varied perceptions and opinions. Children have an innate need to be told what is right and wrong until they are grown up enough to evaluate it for themselves and make their own decisions. If you were trying to get somewhere and two ‘authorities’ on the area told you to go in opposite directions to get there, I suspect you’d get pretty mad about it too. How would you know which was true?
Well, Melissa and kids like her are trying to understand the way the world works in regards to climate and their role in it. With Dee one is being told two diametrically opposing things. That is hard to deal with for any kid. But kids also do not know how to express that confusion either much as a baby does not know how to express itself when it is wet or hungry unlike when it grows older. The foundations of a world-view have to have absolutes before subjective opinions can be added or else it descends into incomprehensibility and insanity. The problem Dee highlights in the article is that the absolutes regarding climate and the human role in it being taught here are presented not just as settled science but also as moral norms that everyone agrees upon when that is not the case at all as is clearly illustrated by the existence of this blog and many others like it. That is the real danger. We have a generation being brought up to believe that the habits of their parents are bad in absolute terms instead of in relative terms. Absolutes are the foundations for law and for judging what is and is not a crime. And that, ladies and gentleman, is the end-game.
Caleb, thanks for the sobering, realistic post. I’m reminded of a quote from a sci-fi writer (can’t remember who):
Nothing born with a need is innocent.
“…we’ll know, in due time, what causes climate change [provided we can off the politics and do some science instead].”
Leif,
Is there a general science text or series you like for youngsters – say, for the average fifth – seventh grader (10 to 12-year-old)?
Perhaps you would give an example of the “science” kids should be getting which might lead them to better understand this subject (later)?
I’m picking on these grades because I noticed some gaps in my own child’s science ed, and because Dee started this thread with an emphasis on “youth”. And I do think that’s where the battle for more balanced thinkers will be won.
BTW: The quality of my daughter’s p.s. science teachers and education has, markedly improved since she got to 10th grade.
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All I want is a breakdown of the CO2. How much currently in the atmosphere is from man, how much from nature. I’m sure they can tell the difference between man-made and natural CO2 by the differences in isotopes. So why can’t I find a site that measures both types of CO2?
From what I can dope out, about a third is manmade. It has accumulated slowly, esp. over the last seventy years. (This presumes the overall measurement is near-correct.)
CO2 has a long persistence (though estimates vary sharply) so it stays up there for a while. It weighs a bit more than “normal air”, so eventually it sinks out.
I think it’s possible to tell the difference between manmade and natural CO2 via isotope measurement.
But, as I’ve said before, a 33% increase of a thirtieth of 1% is still spit in the ocean. As Cyrano Jones once said (will say?), “Twice nothing is still nothing.”
BTW, in case anyone here doesn’t know, Leif is a BIG NAME solar scientist. He’s a true authority. He may be right or he may be wrong, but he’s a very heavy hitter. (He’s also far more fairminded than most.)
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?
As for the last few decades, all one has to do is look at the “big 6” multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles. These were not discovered by science until 1998 or so (10 years after CO2 AGW theory had become holy writ).
Starting in 1977 and ending in 2001, one by one, all six flipped from cool phase to warm phase. Now, one (the PDO) has gone back to cool phase (note the huge global drop over the last year) and two others are wavering.
That explains why temps rose, why they leveled off, and why they have dropped. I can’t say if it’s causal, but it correlated pretty darn well so far as I can see.
I don’t know how much those cycles are affected by smaller variation of solar activity. But the “big 6” do seem to be the proximate drivers of temperatures.
Yes, by definition, the sun must be the ultimate driver. But how much solar variation [sic] affects it is a very much different question (and one that Leif is addressing).
I can’t speak for the LIA. I’m still on the sunspot bandwagon–for now (yes, I know Leif questions the correlation).
Bobby Lane (08:37:27) :
Obviously each ocean is different yet they are also connected, so that makes it pretty complicated. Do you have any colleagues you can bring on board that would give us a more scientific understanding of those?
Oceans were a choice simply because that is where the sun’s energy is mostly stored. Without the oceans, the Sun’s energy would quickly be lost [think cold desert nights]. But oceans are not really my field so I have no immediate colleagues to persuade.
So are we concerned about sunspots for their magnetic value, so to speak?
The magnetic field is what makes the Sun ‘interesting’. The direct effect of solar magnetic fields cannot be felt at Earth [they are too weak and the distance to the Sun too great], but there are very many phenomena [you mentioned some] that owe their existence and variability to the magnetic field. Although some of those may locally be highly energetic [melting a power transformer], these are transient and local and their global effect is very small [a hundredth of a Watt/m2 or so], so the energy involved is minuscule compared to that of the ordinary solar irradiance, and therein lies the problem: solar effects on weather and climate are small and barely [if at all] detectable, If they were clear and overwhelming [as claimed in another post in this blog http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/even-doubling-or-tripling-the-amount-of-co2-will-have-little-impact-on-temps/ ] we would not be having this debate.
Anyway, I’m not here on my soap box about solar effects. The present post is about indoctrination and my concern was about replacing one flimsy argument with another and presenting that to children as scary ‘fact’.
Couldn’t you get her to look up “Paunder the Maunder” and let her read a girl with some sense.
Bear facts:
Perhaps this site is not so optimistic as you. Bears are in fact in danger.
Read this article please: http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/
Reply – Polar Bear International seems to be principally concerned with stopping the harvesting of polar bears. Climate change rates only a minor mention in their FAQ.
The whole ‘polar bear is endangered due to man-made global warming’ argument rests on a few debatable assumptions: 1) The world will continue to warm, 2) Past and any future warming is a result of human activities and 3) the resultant loss of ice is actually a threat to the polar. There are too many undecided ifs for me to even consider applying the precautionary principle here. – Dee Norris
evanjones (09:57:03) :
Thanks for the kind words, although I on principle object to being an ‘authority’.
As for the last few decades, all one has to do is look at the “big 6″ multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles.
My problem with this is that ‘the number of degrees of freedom’ [5] is too low to be compelling, since they are ‘after the fact’. Now, there is nothing wrong in speculating [and I have often done that myself on even flimsier grounds]. That is how new ideas are formed for consideration and testing. But it should be recognized as that: ‘speculation’, maybe even ‘tantalizing speculation’, ‘fun’, ‘interesting’, ‘thought provoking’, etc, all those good things, as long as one remembers that there are also things like WAGs, even SWAGs [Scientific Wild A** Guesses], flight of fancy, delusions [scientists are very good at deluding themselves], etc.
Living in on the left coast, I am surrounded by devout believers of AGW who range from quietly guilty to abjectly terrified. Somehow, the crusade has not invaded the public schools in my neck of the woods however. I’ve found that the best way to deal with youthful anxiety concerning the imminent end of the world is to talk to your kids and show them the other side of the debate. When I did my own research on the subject, starting about 4 years ago…I was amazed that the theory had ever taken hold much less persisted. Al Gore must therefore be commended. He’s managed to unite a HUGE number of lay people and a fair number of scientists behind a theory that has no basis in observational reality – an impressive feat even if (as I do) you find it highly irresponsible. In my opinion, the AGW nightmare will surely go down in history as one of the worst manipulations of science in the last hundred years. Ultimately, kids learn from their parents, and the more you make learning fun and exciting, the more they crave it. Now, when my children cross paths with one of the AGW faithful, they take it with a grain of salt and politely disagree. I do wait with excuse note in hand the day they want to show ‘inconvenient truth’ to MY kids however.
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Being from a family of teachers, I can tell you that this is all tied to the same agenda. Teachers unions, like all unions have battled viciously against standards and productivity. Paramount to that battle has been the “always-there-when-you-need-an-excuse” democratic party. And despite still being one of the best in the world, our education has fallen victim to a consistent “dumbing down” as a result of these forces.
The ugly blowback of course, is the Democratic Party, convinced that they have created a sufficiently idiotic educational system, looking for a payback from teachers and unions in the form of socialist indoctrination being introduced into the curriculum as legitimate science.
So in a country where we’re still not sure if we want to teach evolution over creation, we are regularly teaching Global Warming (read Global Warming Politics) as legitimate finished science with no counterpoint.
Congratulations America. Your schools are now Cult meeting places where your children are indoctrinated into politically correct social rhetoric, and Earth Love. Al Gore is your David Koresh, and the big finish that all cults eventually move towards, will be the total collapse of our economy. And it won’t be anywhere near as cute as your 10 year old talking about polar bears.
Anyone old enough to be a parent has lived long enough to know that the alleged altruism of the Environmental Movement flies in the face of what governments are really up to. It’s infuriating to see grown adults so incapable of thinking with their own minds. Maybe the dumbing down of our schools is already becomng a liability. Maybe the spite games of politics have blinded people with fear, anger and loathing. But in any case, accepting lies as truth to stick it to the next guy, or allowing children to be indoctrinated into the principles of bad people trying to do bad things is a dispicible way to live. Saving the world by using your children as pawns in a political agenda. Hilarious…
Oh the disgraceful lies we are willing to tell ourselves to hide from the realities of who we are!
I should add that there is an upside.
When the lies are exposed and this sham all comes crumbling down, our children will be so disillusioned with government that perhaps, finally, the business as usual system we’ve been victimized by for some time now will finally get some real reforming.
But those are high hopes with half of America intent on teaching their kids to be dumb gullible shits…
Leif Svalgaard (17:21:57) :
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.
I think the biggest issue is measuring “climate” to come up with some “climate change” number. Mr. Watts’s project surveying ground stations exposes the first chink in the armor. We can’t trust the temperature numbers in the US at all. If you take the error in all of the measurements into account, I have to wonder if the “global temperature” anomalies are even scientifically significant.
Certainly local climates change–noted as far back as Plato. But for global climate change, we are trusting temperature proxies to be as accurate as modern instruments. More accurate data over a longer period of time is going to expose much of the hysteria for what it is.
Also, someone posted a link to calculations showing what impact could be attributed to CO2 changes in the atmosphere, but I can’t find it now. The numbers showed that even a large increase would not produce a multi-degree change. Can anyone point me to that site?
Hey there-
I tend to fall on the side of the argument that agrees with Melissa, and feel that Global Warming is much more a man-made issue than some may want to believe.
HOWEVER, with that being said,
I appreciate anyone- whether I agree or disagree with them personally- who does their best to educate people- kids and adults alike- by telling both sides of the story.
I hope you successful in making your presentation idea a reality.
More important than where we, as adults and parents, stand on the issues, is our ability to raise our kids to be independent thinkers. Personally, I’d rather my own daughters tell me all day long that they disagrees with every single one of my views, as long as they aren’t coming to these conclusions by being sheep, merely regurgitating rhetoric they’ve heard from others. I want them to be an independent thinkers, and I want them to be educated young women…
It isn’t something that will happen if she’s being spoon-fed.
Thank you for your role in presenting the “other side” of the spectrum, and I hope you are able to open the minds of many…
Regardless of their final opinion on the issue.
Reply – Welcome Chaze! Hang out here long enough and you may find yourself becoming a skeptic!
I think you hit the nail on the head. We owe our older children a balanced presentation on the issues and we should not involve the very youngest who lack the ability to grasp the larger concepts involved. Let the little kiddies be just kids and enjoy themselves. Isn’t that what childhood is supposed to be about? – Dee Norris
John B (13:39:38) :
I think the biggest issue is measuring “climate” to come up with some “climate change” number. Mr. Watts’s project surveying ground stations exposes the first chink in the armor. We can’t trust the temperature numbers in the US at all. If you take the error in all of the measurements into account, I have to wonder if the “global temperature” anomalies are even scientifically significant.
And our solar ‘indices’ [sunspot number, TSI-reconstructions, etc] are not calibrated correctly going back in time, so you have a double problem: correlating ‘garbage’ with ‘garbage’. Well, maybe not ‘garbage’, but certainly uncertain data with large errors.
Raise the children-
Leave your campsite better than you found it.
If you kill it, clean and eat it.
Watch your fire, douse it before you leave the site.
“Dee: 75%? What if I told you it was less than 5% and the rest was all natural?”
Well, then you would be misrepresenting reality. Way to go you non Stalin, non Hitler type person!
We do emit less than 5%. But that 5% does cause an accumulation over the years. So perhaps around a third of atmospheric CO2 is a result of man.
But so what? A 1/30% to 1/25% increase in the absence of positive feedback loops isn’t even going to show up among the statistical snow.
Teachers unions, like all unions have battled viciously against standards and productivity.
When I was teaching I was “invited” to join the NEA. They said my family needed protection. I told them that was wonderful because I didn’t have any family.
Then they told me my job needed protection. I told them that was wonderful because my employers loved me and when they wanted to show off a teacher who “knows his stuff”, they took him directly to my classroom.
(I thought they were going to take me into an empty classroom and work me over.)
Well, I was wrong. I DID need protection. From them.
What I should have done was smile and request that they give me the number of the AFT. Hired myself a bigger gorilla. But I was young and naive–I thought quality, hard work (I designed vocabulary exercises they used for years afterwards), and universal popularity (among colleagues, supervisors, and students) was enough.
Result: Six months later I was back at my old private sector job (with a hefty raise), wondering what hit me . . .
chaze77: Amen to that. Welcome aboard. Falsifiability is key to any scientific proposition. You talk like liberals used to in the old days. Breath of fresh air. Stick around!