People send me stuff. This arrived today in my inbox. This anonymous survey (open to anyone) was announced via the American Geophysical Union mailing list, done by the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA, and also available at their website) and is rather telling.
IMHO many of the questions are rather leading, and based on some news headlines we’ve seen in the past, and in my opinion these lead the survey to a predetermined outcome. That said, I know we have many K-12 educators who read WUWT, and I encourage them to take the survey and give it your best honest answers. For non-educators, there’s a question to declare that as well. (link to survey follows below the Continue reading line).
Some of the questions test knowledge of climate systems, GHG’s and other basic science. I’m sure our WUWT readers will score quite high on those questions. There are a few trick questions too, like the one about Earthquakes causing global warming (insert eye rolling emoticon here). There’s also a question about which nation per capita emits the most GHG’s and the one that is actually in the lead (Qatar) is oddly not listed but instead wants you to answer USA I think. That’s just a couple of the oddities I noticed.
Unfortunately, none of the multiple choice questions had an option to check [ ] This question is ridiculous which I probably would have checked a few times if it were available.
Though, looking at the NESTA website, I see they are pushing a card game from the Union of Concerned Scientists (where you need only a credit card to join, no scientist credentials required) called “Cool it” so I suppose we’ll have to give them points for being silly with this survey, which is about on par with the UCS card game.
Here’s the AGU notice to members and the link to the survey:
Dear Members,
The National Earth Science Teachers Association has developed an anonymous survey to gather information about climate change education underway in the K-12 classroom today.
1. If you are a K-12 educator, please take the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N5ZHKFJ .
2. Please consider forwarding this notice about the survey to your networks of teachers through emails, listservs, and other postings.
The survey will be available through September, and results will be made available through the NESTA website at http://www.nestanet.org in November of this year.
Bethany
[AGU Website]<http://www.agu.org>
Bethany Holm Adamec
Education and Outreach Coordinator
American Geophysical Union
[email deleted as a spam courtesy]
AGU galvanizes a community of Earth and space scientists that collaboratively advances and communicates science and its power to ensure a sustainable future.
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Union of Concerned Scientists should be called Society of Fruitcakes. Whe is the MSM going to recognize this?
That survey was certainly… a biased crock… of something that would get bleeped here.
I looked through the survey and my heart goes out to high school kids who face a curriculum like this every school day and have to somehow navigate their way through to graduation without going either insane or brain-dead!
This is better than most as it has other (real) selections beside the AlGore ones.
What a cr[***]y survey, why can’t a survey just ask:
Which is most likely?
A: Aliens are altering the Earth’s atmosphere.
B: Humans are the dominant force in climate change.
C: Humans are a significant variable among many in climate change.
D: Climate change is natural and cyclical to which human impact is barely discernible if at all.
E: No comment. (Code for I work for RC and can’t tell you what I really think.)
F: Humans are evil and must be eradicated under whatever guise available.
G: Who can tell! Agenda driven “climate scientists” have so corrupted the data that it will take years for real scientists to sort it out.
Did it for a laugh – but it really wasn’t any fun – very unscientific in the wording of the questions and often making the supposition that ‘global warming’ is a fact and that it must be linked to human activity – at least, that was my impression……..
It struck me that the survey was more akin to trying to see if folk had been ‘influenced’ by the media and how much of that MSM hype they had retained?
Took the survey, there are a LOT of questions that I was thinking “All of these are wrong!” or at least “None of these options represents my views.”.
Anyways, if at all possible could you put up an article in November when the results are made public? I’m probably not the only one like to forget by then, so hopefully someone with a better memory can remind us around that time as I’m definitely interested to see the results.
I am an educator, although not K-12 (I teach a vocational course to ages 18-50). Among the courses I teach is meteorology, and I have a degree in Earth Sciences, so I feel I can judge some of this and I answered the questionnaire.
I have to agree that some of the questions were very frustrating. Some I wanted to answer “a tiny amount” or “no answers valid” instead of saying “yes” or “no” or have to say “I don’t know” when I do. I know for a fact that Canada has higher CO2 output per person than the USA now (your list ends in 2008, I believe Canada overtook the USA in 2009 or 2010), and it seems that the USA is not even close to the highest.
What a terrible piece of propaganda.
Most of the answers were skewed towards attributing warming to co2. Or you had to answer “Don’t Know”. They’ll get the results they wanted.
Anthony, I reckon the desired outcome is to use the results to work out where they have to increase the indoctrination pressures. I don’t think the results will be used to say “See, there’s even a consensus amongst lay people.”
Just completed it. Incredibly biased rubbish.
“Dear Members,
The National Earth Science Teachers Association has developed an anonymous survey to gather information about climate change education underway in the K-12 classroom today.”
===========
If I’m not mistaken, the questions in the poll always referred to “global warming”, not “climate change”.
FWIIW, before finding WUWT I wouldn’t have had any idea how to answer most of the questions.
The questions seemed to be rather “deep”, especially for a kindergarten teacher ?
Some questions were just stupid. For example, the one about how much certain things contribute to global warming. It includes the sun. Fine, Without the sun how warm would the earth be? So, the answer should be “a lot” for the sun, but I bet it won’t be when the survey results come out.
@Patrick Guinness.
The article mentions American Geophysical Union, not Union of Concerned Scientists.
Pretty lame survey. You would think they’d at least run it by a well respected AGW critic before publicly posting it. I had to skip one large section entirely because the loaded questions were clearly designed to maneuver the respondent into a politically correct corner.
I had some serious fun with that survey. I expect that they’ll think me completely unfit to teach Earth Science.
Heh heh heh
I did the survey as a home school teacher. It is a bit biased but they at least allowed for the possibility of the sceptical position.
Some of their general knowledge questions were very slanted but most had a “don’t know” option.
Plus are a few “essay” questions which offer opportunity for fun.
I think it must have been a logic test….. they wanted to know if the fact that the climate has changed naturally in the past proves that man is not responsible now. They kep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means. Taking that survey left me a bit nauseous.
It’s really sad that these polls are actually that bad. What was with “Energy Independence” as an option in science questions. It has absolutely nothing to do with science. As a thought experiment lets suppose that China creates a watershed scientific achievement in solar panels, should we not buy theirs and build more expensive less efficient solar panels or windmills ourselves? It just shows how politically and economically ignorant the activist are who create these polls.
But earthquakes do cause global warming (if you believe in the GHG theory.
– Japanese earthquake damages nuclear power plants
– Germany shuts down all nuclear power plants
– More coal must be burnt to meet poser needs
– More GHGs.
See?
(Yes, I’m joking — in case that isn’t clear)
🙂
A few spots actually contained more accurate skeptical positions than I expected. Just a few.
Did the survey, can’t really believe they’re teaching this stuff in schools. It really brings home the message from the documentary “Searching for Superman”.
This stuff does nothing to prepare children for the real world.
Begging the question…
Are these people really this dopey? Of course, the sun is the root cause of all warming. And these are educators? Science fail, and English fail.
Golly. At the end of the survey, I get a chance to … send them money!