What are we teaching our children?
Guest post by Russ Steele, NCwatch
Ellen and I spent the day at the new California Academy of Science building yesterday and really enjoyed the experience, except for the crowds. I break out in crowds. With spring break in full force, there were hordes of children, the lines to the tropical rain forest sphere, the aquarium, bugs in 3D, and the planetarium were long. One display that did not receive much attention was the global warming, save the planet from global warming display. Or, as it was properly labeled the Ocean Warming display.
The interactive display to save the polar bear cub, by creating more ice by reducing greenhouse gases was empty the three times I passed by the booth. [A carbon] “hockey stick” was is full view.
There was a clever device to demonstrate the value of carbon credits to off set the family carbon foot print stood unused except for one young man and his dad. There was no pushing and shoving to observe these displays or use the interactive tools.
For the most part these displays were ignored, except for a few casual observers seeking refuge from the long lines at the real science displays. This lack of interest and participation seems to reflect the recent Gallup Polls indicating people are not really concerned about global warming, or ocean warming either. It could be our children have caught on to the scam, or they have reached global warming overload for the school lessons, and want some real science for change of pace.
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This section of the museum looked empty because all the visitors had become unpersons for mocking the display. Deniers must be vaporized! Praise be the Glorious Revolution of Oceania.
That wasn’t The Hockey Stick
Reply: True, it is not Mann’s, though a hockey stick shaped graph nonetheless, complete with Gore elevator requirements. A small edit has been made to make it clear it is not The most famous one.
Please consider a salute to all of those people who work hard on real science and real achievement. Coincidentally, it takes place this evening at the same time as “Earth Hour.” Is is called the Human Achievement Hour and is the brain child of the folks at CEI. Please give the website a read and consider joining me as I fail to darken my life in honor of bad science and politicized energy policy.
Greg
http://cei.org/human-achievement-hour
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.”
They say it is education. I say it is indoctrinaction.
They say it is science. I say it is a video game.
meh
In the OP: hordes of children, not hoards.
REPLY: I fixed Steele’s word use, thanks for pointing it out – Anthony
It seems that the general public and more importantly our young folk are not as gullible as the propagandists would wish.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2200792/posts
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.
A few trade show gimmicks might work. Say, maybe a draw for free carbon credits….
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.
Global Warming and Green House Gas Emissions are all about the politics of wealth redistribution(US left and UN). There supposed science is a smoke screen.
As with all political advertisements they are off limits to non-profit organizations and government entities.
All non-profits who have advertised as such should lose their non-profit status retroactively and pay all back taxes. Any government employee pushing the political agenda in any way should be fired.
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.
I am a member of the California Academy of Politically Correct Science. This is San Francisco after all. The Galapagos display also has some questionable science related to climate. Go to the blog of their “Climate Expert.” He seems devoted to RealClimate. I spent much of my childhood at the Academy (and the deYoung) almost 60 years ago. I am saddened by this display. But I have confidence that as children grow older and can think for themselves, they will see through this nonsense. I recall “refer madness” propaganda. It became a joke. So will this climate display.
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.
Sounds to me exactly as it should be. Since AGW alarmism has nothing to do with science, its propagandizing should be ignored in a science environment.
Their gigantic “hockey stick”, complete with the ridiculously exaggerated scale and zero line at 280, looks more like a particularly steep mountain than any kind of realistic graph. Hopefully they outsmart themselves with that one.
And the giant interactive balance thingy… reminds me of fundraisers where they show the amount “needed” and the donations to date. Really original. Not.
I do, however, wonder just how much CO2 was emitted creating this ugly, horrifically ugly, and muddled display. Obviously the wood needed to be harvested and transported, it’s coated with varnish, the plastics and metals don’t just appear naturally, and no doubt many people spent many days driving in to work creating it.
Your key phrases for extracting money from the gullible: “tackling”, “offset”, “footprint”, and “taking action”. Check, check, check and check.
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”.
Judging by the latest SOHO image, we’re in for some serious global cooling.
http://i39.tinypic.com/14wg6es.jpg
Never seen a sunspot covering 90% of the surface.
Perhaps they shut the sun down for earth day.
🙂
Wonder if anyone noticed they have a problem?
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
Peter (11:32:24) :
“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.”
Peter: Say what you like about climate science but please avoid being unnecesarily offensive to people who follow a particular religion.
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.
Lon (11:07:23) :
I attended this revamped academy of science just a few months ago.
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.
During the Medieval Warm Period the great cathedrals, temples and mosques of the old world were built with very very heigh ceilings because worshippers needed to keep cool.
Temperatures are supposedly lower now and we don’t need such spacious rooms do we? If this new California Academy of Science building was smartly designed with efficiency in mind the ceilings shouldn’t be more than 7.5-8 feet high. They’ve chosen very high ceilings which make the building harder to keep warmth.
Another example of “Do as I say not as I do.”
LOL, why does that poster look like a ransom note?
Did they have polar bear wrestling? You know, where you try to put the polar bear in a life jacket…. 😉
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.
That CO2 chart is absolutely a hockey stick chart. It is intended to alarm the viewers, nothing more or less. It is an alarming chart, made by a climate alarmist. Just look at it! [click]
If they wanted to be honest, they would use a zero base line chart like this: click
Also, UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki Moon made a statement I heard on the radio just now: “Our planet is getting hotter.” This guy must be one of the original Moonies.
Mr. Moon is telling a fib. Our planet has been cooling for the past decade.
When someone lies to get your money, it’s called “fraud.”