You have to wonder who at the National Science Foundation thought funding a website that makes fake voicemails from the future and games that have people running around looking for fictional fallen “chronofacts” (artistic plastic disks named “chronofalls” that apparently fall out of time) was a good idea? Yes, you can hear voicemails from the future about “Arctic Corn” and “Hurricane Simulator Booths”. Your tax dollars at work.
Eric Worrall writes:
Columbia University’s Climate Center has received $5.7 million from the National Science Foundation for the university’s “PoLAR Climate Change Education Partnership,” to “engage adult learners and inform public understanding and response to climate change.”
The funding was used to create climate change “games”, including fake voicemails from the future, one of which bizarrely warns that in 2035 neo-luddites would kill scientists, anyone who “knows anything”, and other oddities such as advertisements for Tsunami insurance.
http://futurecoast.org/voicemail/93594-38625955/
This cloud has one silver lining – next time anyone you know suggests that the government spends your money wisely, on your behalf, send them a link to the Future Coast project.
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Note from Anthony.
When I saw this story submitted I thought surely this must be some sort of mistake, but the deeper I went, the more bizarre it got. And it is true, the website is set up by Columbia on a grant from NSF: See http://www.futurevoices.net/the-fine-print/
Strangely, and perhaps illegally (since this is publicly funded), the ownership of the website is secret: http://whois.net/whois/futurecoast.org
Here are some voicemail topics: http://futurecoast.org/voicemail/93594-38625955/
And a video they produced, which looks like a bad version of the “Blair Witch Project”:
Actually, ten of them: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa0iSEwmopVXf2Y8x1NnbSg
And of course, anyone can play. You can call this number and make a “voicemail from the future” about climate. From http://www.futurevoices.net/
Here are the people and rationale behind it, something called “The Polar Hub”, they say:
Mission and Vision
The world’s polar regions are changing rapidly. What implications do these changes have for polar ecosystems and communities? How do they compare to changes of the past? Do changes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions affect life outside of the poles? The Polar Learning and Responding Climate Change Education Partnership (PoLAR CCEP) seeks to inform public understanding of and response to climate change through the creation of novel educational approaches that utilize fascination with shifting polar environments and are geared towards today’s adult learners.
Supported by a five year grant from the National Science Foundation, the PoLAR Partnership is developing a suite of interactive and game-like tools that capitalize on the iconic imagery of the Arctic and Antarctic, areas of the globe that are experiencing the most dramatic shifts in climate. Games and game-like activities are increasingly used to engage diverse participants in problem solving. Focusing on the poles also leads to discussion of broader impacts, especially as the changes taking place in the polar regions are increasingly linked to concerns about rising sea levels and extreme weather around the globe. Adult learners, be they community leaders, the general public, pre- and in-service teachers, or college students, are today’s decision makers and are more likely to make informed decisions if they understand the scientific evidence of climate change and its social, economic, and environmental consequences.
The PoLAR Hub is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DUE-1239783. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
![PoLAR_ProjectMatrix_10-25[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/polar_projectmatrix_10-251.jpg?quality=83)
http://thepolarhub.org/content/mission-and-vision
The next time somebody complains about a climate skeptic getting a tiny scrap of funding for a study or a project, show them this.
Whenever you see this kind of funding you realise there is TOO MUCH money available. Does anyone remember a time in the last 2 years when a climate scientist complained about funding?
Here is what Columbia has on this ‘Cosee’ relationship. It’s good to see they see ‘climate change’ as fun and games.
Below are some of the effects of too much climate change funding.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/03/the-big-self-parodying-climate-change-blame-list/
Since the disclaimer says that “Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation,” WUWT should apply for a grant to see if NSF would support an opposite finding of these “leaked emails from the future:” inverted hockey sticks – Gleick doing time – wooly mammoths staging a comeback in the frozen north, etc.
Graft is the personal gain or advantage earned by an individual at the expense of others as a result of the exploitation of the singular status of, or an influential relationship with, another who has a position of public trust or confidence. The advantage or gain is accrued without any exchange of legitimate compensatory services.
Voicemails from the future.
“OMG Pat, just heard about the CO2 leak from the abandoned CCS scheme. Hope you’re ok.”
“I’m fine Sam, just a few headaches. More than can be said for the poor souls who died. They just didn’t wake up. How’s the dredging going?”
“Dredging is going on… and on… and on. Now we’ve got rid of the stupid tidal generator, why won’t the flow of the river go back to its old pattern? It’s like we’re being punished for tinkering with nature.”
See, it’s easy and no money needed to change hands.
OK– assuming for a moment that I leave any semblance of moral principle behind— how do I get in on a racket like this? Voicemails from the future— and you can get money for setting up something like this? Please say you’re kidding!
Newsflash from the future: Mile high Laurentide continental glacier causes flood of illegal American immigrants to cross Mexican border.
Yeah, sure. We are supposed to enjoy fiction coming out of the woodwork to surround us on taxpayers’ money, right? The dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
To US citizens:You may want to file a Federal Funds Fraud report at the U.S. Government Accountability Office
Robin says: “Jane MacGonigal of the Institute for the Future and a game designer wrote a book published last year called Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World laying out gleefully the ability of video games to change children’s belief and values frameworks at an unconscious levels as they play games that have been created with that very change in mind.”
It was called “brainwashing” when I was a child. I suppose in the 20 teens this is what you do when actual events don’t take place like the computer models predict they will!
They are hiding their registration behind “contactprivacy.com” which, if memory serves, is in Toronto, Canada. You can phone the phone number, and you get a recording from contractprivacy.com referring you to their web site where you can enter the url you want to send a message to, and they relay the message to the real web site owner.
In other words, someone has gone out of their way to set this up without anyone knowing who they are.
For ‘climate science’, the troughs overflow.
For real science, funding is nearly always difficult.
I suppose it must make sense to someone.
Oh wow, I just the video. I made it through the whole thing, but I’m not going to look at the others. How are we going to determine which one is worst?
I was going to ask if there were a good version of the Blair Witch Project, but compared to this clip, the BWP is comes out looking pretty good!
If conservative politicians can’t or won’t stop this, I will STOP voting FOR THEM TOO!!!!!!!
That money should have gone to the homeless and needy in America. What a disgusting farce this is.
‘Future Coast is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between its characters and any person, living, dead, or yet unborn, is a coincidence.’
Huh? Do they realize what they’ve just wrote? Unborn? Really? Resemblance to anybody that doesn’t exist yet is a coincidence? They have to tell us that? Columbia College and the NSF are clearly promoting negative education. What blithering idiot could not possibly know that representations of people in the here and now … oh, chrissake it’s utterly impossible to try and describe how mind numbingly stupid that disclaimer is.
‘FutureCoast does not intend for anyone under the age of 13 to participate.’
Why? What possible scientific explanation for that cutoff age can they justify? Now, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (keep your comments to yourself) that cutoff age gives me the creeps for the following reasons. Ezekiel Emmanuel (the brother of Obama’s former Chief of Staff, and now Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emmanuel) is Obama’s chief medical advisor and promoter of Obamacare. Ezekiel Emmanuel is a controversial bioethicist who has developed the concept of what he refers to as, ‘Life Years,’ for the distribution of medical interventions that may be in short supply. At first blush it sounds somewhat benign: a younger person would receive the intervention in favor of the older person under the principle that the older person has had more years of life. But, true to form, it gets creepy: You see a definitive cutoff age not to receive a scarce intervention is for anyone under the age of 14 (quite close to the 13 year old cutoff age for FutureCoast, eh?). According to Ezekiel, the reason for denying scarce interventions is because … ready? … society has not yet made the full investments in somebody under 14. (Don’t take my word for this; Google it.) Now, could Columbia, or the NSF, be worried about some tear jerking stories from 10,11, or 12 year olds, with critical conditions, pondering a bright medical future for other kids in similar situations?
Bell Canada reverse lookup says the number 416-538- 5457 is for a company called 9Football Shirt. Category: Sportswear Stores
It’s not useless. It’s designed to indoctrinate/brainwash the young generation. Most of them are too smart to swallow such BS but enough will turn into climate crusaders.
It is information theoretically possible for one to receive a coded message from the future and to decode this message thus gaining incomplete but useful information about the outcomes of the events of the future; in fact, this possibility has been already been realized in the case of mid to long range forecasting of weather outcomes for the far western states of the United States. There is no evidence that reception of a coded message or decoding of this message is happening for global warming climatology, however.
My message, “The NSF just gave a $10 million grant to produce new voice mails from the past to revise history to fit the real world of today. It is an effort to undo the future voice mails produced at the time in order to provide falsified validation of accurate future casting of back dated anticipatory memories for predictatorial instruction. That is all.”
Yes, many want to know the same of this foolishness with our taxes. Through the GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) should be a proper start if we still have an operational federal ‘government’.
Navy Bob says:
May 26, 2014 at 7:05 am
Is it possible to uncover the names of the NSF officials who approved the funding for this propaganda campaign? It would help conservative news reporters and members of Congress expose it.
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I like that.
Personalize and ridicule them and their actions.
cn
“artistic plastic disks named “chronofalls” that apparently fall out of time”
LOL! My first quick read was “CHRONOFAILS”.
I do give them cudos for imaginatively moving beyond the ‘settled science.’
Is there no avenue for protesting this effectively? I guess one can find out who signed off on this grant and then let 300m people know. It seems a worth billboard advert.
Robin says:
May 26, 2014 at 7:08 am
“Jane MacGonigal of the Institute for the Future and a game designer wrote abook published last year called Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World laying out gleefully the ability of video games to change children’s belief and values frameworks at an unconscious levels as they play games that have been created with that very change in mind.”
If your beliefs are false then teaching them as games is a life saver. You do not have to address questions of truth. In addition, the “language,” so to speak, of the classroom becomes further removed from daily life and weakens the influence of parents and peers. All mavericks become irrelevant for the simple reason that they are not playing the game.
Not even Milan Kundera could imagine a socialist hell as final and complete as this.
Oh god, Mike. Turn on the news! The coast guard just arrested Sam and his entire crew for ecosabotage, just because they had a ton of iron sulphate on board. Goddamit, salmon runs have been going up for the last four years and everyone knows it’s because we’ve all been seeding the plankton blooms. Those bastards just want us all to to scuttle our ships and become landsmen.
True, it is $5,655,000.00.
Does anyone happen to know what “Congressional appropriations in FY 2009” is supposed to mean?
By the way, they have already got $1,219,217.00 under Award #1043271 in 2010.
There are other NSF awards under CCEP-II (Climate Change Education Partnership, second phase).
$5,852,000.00 Pacific Islands Climate Change Education Partnership
$4,928,001.00 Making Global Climate Science Local: Implementing an Effective Model to Educate Key Influentials and Community Leaders
$5,882,653.00 Climate and Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP)
$5,630,000.00 MADE-CLEAR – Maryland-Delaware Climate Change Education, Assessment, and Research
$5,506,000.00 National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation
That makes $33,453,654.00 total. I wish I had it. Pretty puhleese?