Omaha.com reports on the school board that made this decision here. This book has been around since 2007. Since she’s married to Seinfeld producer Larry David, so it fits right in with the rest of the Seinfeld saga. For example, did you know NASA GISS is over “Monks restaurant” from the show? No, really.
An SPPI report on David’s book in 2007 said:
On page 18 of Laurie David’s new children’s global warming book, there is a glaring scientific error. David tells children:
Deep down in the Antarctic ice are atmosphere samples from the past, trapped in tiny air bubbles. These bubbles, formed when snowflakes fell on the ice, are the key to figuring out two things about climate history: what temperatures were in the past and which greenhouse gases were present in the atmosphere at that time. The more the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature climbed. The less carbon dioxide, the more the temperature fell. You can see this relationship for yourself by looking at the graph:
David adds:
What makes this graph so amazing is that by connecting rising CO2 to rising temperature scientists have discovered the link between greenhouse-gas pollution and global warming.
What really makes their graph “amazing” is that it’s dead wrong.
In order to contrive a visual representation for their false central claim that CO2 controls temperature change, David and co-author Cambria Gordon present unsuspecting children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that falsely reverses the relationship found in the scientific literature.
The actual temperature curve in the chart was switched with the actual CO2 curve. That is, the authors mislabelled the blue curve as temperature and mislabelled the red curve as CO2 concentration. The real data show that the red curve represents the temperature changes over geological time, followed (lagged) by changes in CO2 concentrations represented by the blue curve. Thus, children tracing the properly labelled curves from right to left (from past to present) can easily see the real, science-based relationship (particularly clear in the interval between 500,000 and 150,000 years ago).
The David-Gordon manipulation is critical because the central premise of the book argues that CO2 drives temperature, yet the ice core data clearly reveal temperature increases generally precede increasing CO2 by several hundred to a few thousand years. This fact may have been too inconvenient for David, who instead presented young readers with an astoundingly irresponsible falsehood. Parents and teachers of these children should be concerned.
More here in the SPPI report
============================================
From Omaha.com:
By Joe Dejka
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Millard Public Schools will stop using a children’s book about global warming — but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.
A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” contained “a major factual error” in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.
Mark Feldhausen, associate superintendent for educational services, this week sent a letter to parents who complained, including the wife of U.S. Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, outlining the committee’s findings.
…
Three parents, including Robyn Terry, complained to the district. The Terrys’ 12-year-old son attended Beadle Middle School last year. Mrs. Terry said that the materials used in his class portrayed global warming as fact when scientists disagree.
In the video, DiCaprio attributes global warming to mankind’s “destructive addiction” to oil. He says “big corporations” and politicians gained too much money and power “on our addiction,” making them “dangerously resistant to change.”
…
Corrected versions will continue to be used in Millard’s sixth-grade language arts curriculum, he wrote.
However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, he wrote.
The committee found the video “without merit” and recommended that it not be used.
More here.
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What is 800 years +\- among friends?
Laurie David….. isn’t that Al Gores…..uuuummmmm….squeeze? Global warming sure makes strange bedfellows. Thats keeping the money in the family!
Nebraska, the heartland. May it spread to the rest of the land!
this graph goes from present (left) to right (past). That seems opposite the direction I’ve generally seen these time-line graphs presented, and opposite the direction that children usually deal with for time-lines.
all part and parcel of the AGW hoards.
I greet this news with great joy.
Of course you know that Laurie David was being boinked by algore.
Green Gang propagandists pushing this cynically manipulated garbage on schoolkids may find to their surprise that Fourth Graders are not as stoopid as they’d like to think. The time will come when these ex-victims react to Laurie David and the fatuous poseur DiCaprio by redacting anything and everything related to their smarmy scam. Like innoculated survivors of rabies or smallpox, kids in maturity will have witnessed Climate Hysterics at first-hand and so become immune.
Isn’t it enough that my 4551 sq. ft. beach house is totally green? And I’m a movie star. So, shut up you little people.
What’s really nice right now is to watch the critical sides to folk’s brains light up and find voice. That this scare overwhelmed and corrupted science for so long is depressing, but to now watching folks say hang on a minute, you science-communicators can’t just lie about this and that…this is, well, redeeming of ones faith in society, in humanity.
Yesterday I got through security check (“We are really sorry we have to do this sir”) to this insiders Dealing with Denialism talk. I was not surprising to find no mention of any of the (“well funded and highly organised”) sceptics, nor of any their arguments, nor the scandals (nope, it was like climategate never happened) in what was a condescending and logically sloppy whitewash of all the issues.
But what was surprising about this seminar was question time. About half the questioners clearly wanted to discuss the sceptical concerns, and two of them actually asked that they not be ignored, and dismissed, but that they be discussed by the AGW authorities as represented on this stage.
I had to remind myself that these folks asking the questions (by their own declaration) were all working in departments infused by AGW funding. Our $16 Million Dollar Grant-Man, the presenter, was clearly caught of guard and fumbled his responses, so that the MC (confessed director of an offset company) tried to help out. These were precious Louis XIV moments.
In the court of enviromental science they have had it so easy for so long. Sure, there was a noticeble shift in the message, no doubt worked out at this closed door conference. But still they seem like its only just hitting them the nature and the power of what they are dealing with. The truth will out, and it might just be the likes of the Millard Public Schools council who will be doing the out-ing.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know who’s the boinker, and who’s the boinkee.He does seem to have a habit of not understanding the details of things, butgoes along for the ride anyway if there appears to be some tangible benefit.Maybe he hasn’t been getting much understanding at home recently. ☺
/dr.bill
Larry David was a writer of “Seinfeld”, but the really funny episodes were by Spike Ferensten, Seinfeld, and others. David’s episodes usually focused on high school bathroom humor, condoms, orgasms or tampons, and at times were embarrassing to Seinfeld. The series finale was a David “gem”, for example, and a huge disappointment to everyone at the time.
Witness the lame, slow, provincial, very New York Yiddish humor depicted on the HBO series by David – “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, that could not even make the networks “standards”. A really excruciating show to watch. The narcissistic David tried to show that he was the creative force behind “Seinfeld”, but showed his true mettle with “Enthusiasm”.
Irregardless, the Davids’ positions promoting CAGW shows how much they know.
There’s only one word for that CO2 graph: Fraud.
Laurie denies accusations of her affair with Al.
Look at the CO2 vs. temperature graph in the rejected material:
It unwittingly shows CO2 lagging temperatures throughout the last 650,000 years. Temperature rises, then CO2 rises. temperatures drop, then CO2 drops.
You couldn’t possibly make a better case for CO2 being a consequence and not the cause of global temperature change. Thank you Laurie David; you seem to be a secret AGW skeptic.:-)
[REPLY – No, it just looks that way because the timescale is “backwards”: it goes from present to past ->. The problem is that the lines were mislabeled. ~ Evan]
It’s normal to lie to children in order to get them to do all manner of things. Some even go on to establish whole careers based around lies in an effort to get other people to do all manner of things. Hey, it worked on them… why wouldn’t it work on you?
I suppose that this is a ‘teachable moment’ – review finds the errors – eventually. Hence it is better not to game the peer-review system.
…I wonder if this particular work will be cited in the next IPCC report(?)
The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming
Hmmm … isn’t that the one with the subtitle
The Comedy of Errors ? ((Sorry Bill))
And as for a possible Gore/Laurie David connection, the most relevant comment I’ve seen is “please don’t let there be a sex tape, please don’t let there be a sex tape”.
Back on topic – good to see people scrutinizing the Warmist propaganda being mindlessly foisted off upon the children. Probably the most despicable tactic in the whole bag of alarmist tricks, following the advice given by Lenin – “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”
I wonder how they got Fred Flintstone and his cavemen friends to stop spewing CO2 back 120,000 years ago so the temperatures would go down? Worked pretty well it seems. Earth had a real long ice age. Maybe Betty and Wilma wrote a cavekids book….
Still claims that increasing CO2 causes increasing temperatures.
Absolutely no science papers explaining HOW!
Outside my window, right now, June 19 2010 at 05:50 GMT there is peasoup fog!
Visibility is less than 50 meters. Humidity is over 90%. Temperature is 10C.
Water vapour, H2O, is a more effective “greenhouse gas” than CO2.
Why is it so cold for this time of year? There is no wind.
It should be possible to observe any small temperature increase.
Only as the sun rises and diffused radiation penetrates to the ground will
temperature increase slowly until fog dissipates and then we will rapidly
get a temperature rise to normal. “Greenhouse gasses” are a fraud!
I get very angry about these stupid claims.
We have now graphically witnessed fudge-factors for deflating and inflating values; the splicing of unrelated data; and now the transposition of cause and effect. What other tricks are up their sleeves?
OK. How about this one then! 6 degrees of seperation and conclusive proof AGW is all a Hollywood hoax! But first a quote… “Some days I find things by accident. Today, researching for something else online, serendipity paid me a visit.” A. Watts Oct 21 2009.
Seinfeld (produced by)………Larry David (ex-married to)…….Laurie David (produced An Inconvenient Truth and shagged)……..Al Gore (shagged John Q. Public and took advice from)…….James Hansen (shagged John Q. and works above)…….Toms Restaurant (AKA Monks Resaurant, a set locale from)…….Seinfeld.
Voila…. 6 degrees. It just took a little time to figure out just who was ultimately getting shagged!
Have a happy weekend all!
Am I being too pedantic in wondering how this mangled sentence ever passed the editors of an educational book?
They always have these little inconvenient “errors”…… On the face of it, one could suppose the whole Hypothesis of AGW is in error then? 🙂
Destructive addiction to oil, eh? Where do I sign up for a disability check? I’m a victim!
One complaint at a time, one teacher at a time, one school at a time, one district at a time. T-minus one year & two months for me, and I’m in the game. I’m going to be one of these parents. I refuse to let my kids be subjected to this garbage.
Given the growing numbers of children being presented for treatment with stress and anxiety problems related to fears generated by their nearly constant exposure to CAGW propaganda, perhaps rather than trying to get the green loons at EPA, the kleptocrats in Congress, and Obama’s collectivist mafia to recognize the weaknesses of CAGW science, it would be more productive to launch child abuse complaints against every school district that still features this terrorizing propaganda. I believe that the vast majority of states now have laws that mandate that any allegation of child abuse be investigated. Undoubtedly many jurisdictions would be entirely dismissive of such complaints, but if only a small minority would take them somewhat seriously, it could create a fairly massive groundswell of indignation, given the very large number of school districts nationally.