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
If the graph with the temperature-CO2-mixup serves as proof of the causation of temperature by CO2, then it follows that after correcting the error it becomes proof of the reverse causation.
“Dave, UK says:
June 19, 2010 at 6:16 am
Is it just me, ”
The time direction is also reversed. Often used in this way by geophysics; present is the point on the left.
If their curriculum is now short of suitable material, then Jo Nova’s excellent little book should be ideal to fill that gap. It is very communicative, with short, clear concise explanations of the essential points, and plenty of superbly illustrative cartoons. It would be ideal for children, if only there were a suitable edition written in more sensitive & perhaps less ‘un-equivocal’ language.
I’d commend it to anyone trying to cut through the confusion & get to grips with the essentials if this rather emotive subject.
Aside from the reversal of labels, this graph is trash and shows nothing since it has no scale and clearly has suppressed zeros. Are the variations parts/billion, a few percent, or factors of 10? This sort of thing fosters lack of appreciation of the magnitude of effects that permeates public analysis of science. Kids deserve better. Quantitative pornography would do better service.
An interesting conclusion for the corrected graph would be that, when the temperature gets too high, mother earth releases CO2 that drops the temperature. CO2 actually cools things down!
I have a couple of charts showing the correct message (although I do have the charts going the wrong way as well – from present to past – it is just easier if you are doing lots of charts and if you have dual Y-axis (tempC and CO2 ppm) Excel cannot do Time from past to present with both datasets).
CO2 only explains about 30% of the temperature changes in the ice ages at 3.0C per doubling – 70% to 85% of the temperature change is caused by something else. The scale used for CO2 should match 3.0C per doubling not 10C per doubling like Al Gore’s chart in the Inconvenient Truth uses.
CO2 also lags behind temperature by 800 to 2000 years over the entire time period available of 800,000 years (although there are a few very short periods of time where the lag is smaller).
CO2 also has conflicting trends given this lag. Sometimes temperatures are going up while CO2 is going down and sometimes CO2 is going up and temperatures are going down.
If one is going to show these charts to kids and to a world-wide audience and win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, they should be done properly and not provide a misleading picture.
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2127/last3iceages.png
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8371/transitioniceageco2.png
@ur momisugly DirkH:
Thanks for the explanation (the time direction runs right-to left). I feel like a complete numpty now! Seems a bit counter-intuitive to present graphs in this way, but hey, I’m no geophysicist!
“Climate temperature” (right Y-axis label) shoulda been a dead giveaway regarding authors’ competence. Is anyone reviewing those things at all?
so glad that i missed getting crap like this crammed down my throat.
It would be funny if she said, “I did not have sexual relations with that man, Mr. Gore.”
Not all students are dumb . . .
A student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.”
And for plenty of good reasons, since:
1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients
He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.
* Forty-three (43) said yes,
* six (6) were undecided,
* and only one (1) knew that the chemical was water.
The title of his prize winning project was, “How Gullible Are We?”
He feels the conclusion is obvious.
There isn’t any reasonable explanation for how an error like that can happen accidentally.
“stevengoddard says:
June 19, 2010 at 8:45 am
There isn’t any reasonable explanation for how an error like that can happen accidentally.”
But there is also no reasonable explanation as to what made them think they could get away with it. My guess is: some guy doing the layouting of the book didn’t know which was which and assigned the colors in a way that made sense with the text. Somebody reviewed his design and thought that that’s the way it has to be – otherwise the conclusion would not follow. And so it went…
I’m still keeping a keen watch to catch those polar bears foraging through my garbage in Halifax, Ms. David. Oh, by the way, Halifax is further south than Portland, Oregon. Just sayin’, is all. 😎
and they whine that they are misunderstood and need better PR………..
When you have to resort to lying, making up data, manipulating data, God that list could go on a few pages………
and get caught, over and over
Pat Heuvel says:
June 19, 2010 at 5:36 am
Thanks for the correction…you are right. I am ashamed of my weak grammar skill set.
BTW, are you ADHD, easily distracted, and having a difficult time focusing on main issues? Just asking*.
*Is this an incomplete sentence?
C’mon, it was just a “trick” used in constructing that graph and we all know that “trick” just means a tool used by climate scientists.
From: Pat Heuvel on June 19, 2010 at 5:36 am
See Wikipedia.
That there just ain’t so. 🙂
DirkH @9 re: Steven @8:45
Years ago a meteorology text book was published in which someone decided all the temperatures should be reported using the other scale (I’ve forgotten which way the conversion went.) The copy-person at the publisher must have been given a formula and the directions to apply it to all the numbers in the book that had the little circular thingy after it. He/she/they did just that. Including all the maps and references to latitude. I can interpret this as an explanation but not reasonable and also not fraud. It did produce an interesting set of maps!
(I have a copy of this book packed away among hundreds of others in scores of boxes and if big oil or some other benefactor will send a check of sufficient value I could maybe find it in a week or so.)
Remember people, the thing about Gore and David isn’t true at all, unless it is published in a peer-reviewed journal.
This piece about Laurie David is clearly not peer-reviewed.
Clearly further fact-checking was needed. Hey, I remember the 2000 election, I saw at least one Bush/Gore debate. My impression: Wow, Disney has sure come along with those animatronics. Noticeable lag time between prompt and response though…
How certain are we that the error was not, in fact, deliberate? I wouldn’t trust these clowns any farther than I could throw Gore.
Note: I know people who have had hernias and I’m not about to get one due to trying to lift a really, really, really tubby person.
Just to pick nits, the Davids divorced like a year or two ago, so that’s Larry David’s ex-wife.
So she wasn’t cheating on Larry David when she, allegedly, was gored by Gore.
From the Amazon page
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Earth-Guide-Global-Warming/dp/0439024943
i get the impression that Laurie David is the frontperson (“About the Author” shows only her picture and name) and Cambria Gordon was the (ghost)writer. Cambria Gordon also writes childrens books and scripts alone:
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=10360
Probably neither of them had the slightest idea about what that grah with those 2 axises and two wiggly lines meant. Oh, just give it some nice colors.
————
I can’t believe they didn’t consult Gavin Schmitdt upstairs before publishing. Or did they? :o)
From the Amazon reviews at:
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Earth-Guide-Global-Warming/product-reviews/0439024943/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
about the corrections to later editions of the book:
J.S. Green [2007]:
“[…]
Scholastic is planning to issue a revised version with an updated chart, but there will be no revision to the text of the book, which references and explains the chart. I don’t know that most kids will notice that the chart does not support the argument, but an important subject like this should be accurate in all details.
[…]”
If that is correct that means you end up with a corrected graph but the textual description will no longer match what the graph says. Which makes the whole thing confusing and inconsistent; and at least one smart pupil per classroom will spot it. A whole lotta fun for the teachers to find their way out of that mess i would say.
Yes, of course the Science and Public Policy Institute, one of the most vehement anti-global warming “groups”, would come out against any book about AGW. Is not the Lord Monkton 3rd Viscount of Brenchley and former Science Advisor to Margaret Thatcher a charter member?
REPLY: So are you interested in accuracy in the education of our children or do you just want to play anonymous rant-o-matic? Sheesh. SPPI was right. The school board is right to pull the book, and your foaming won’t change that. Take a time out. – Anthony