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.
Chuck Nolan says:
May 26, 2014 at 8:40 am
Navy Bob says:
May 26, 2014 at 7:05 am
Frequently US Govt. agencies produce Request for Proposals (RFPs) and university researchers respond. If this is the case then the idea originated within the NSF, not just the approval of the funding. Also, there are often groups of reviewers that travel to headquarters and read and evaluate the proposals (in great numbers). I have no knowledge of this particular funding but there will be lots of documentation and many guilty.
Man, that was fun, reminded me of the days when I did voice recordings for a friend’s audio newsletter.
Silent voices from the past at Lake Nyos Co2 release calamity.
Bull [cough].
sad, Wallace Broecker and James Hansen are affiliated with this nonsense… well maybe not surprising at all:
http://climate.columbia.edu/about-us/people/
“To contact the gamemasters …”
I think that says it all.
Someone wrote me a check once that was returned NSF. It was for a large amount of money and threw my finances into disarray for months. Even so, I didn’t despise those three letters as much then as I do right now.
I want names. I want to know who signed off on this project and what was the expected result? “Neo-Luddites from Texas” killing scientists? I can just imagine the adolescent giggling when they came up with that one, but do we really need the federal government to underwrite this kind of nonsense?
Pachygrapsus says:
May 26, 2014 at 9:28 am
but do we really need the federal government to underwrite this kind of nonsense?
==============================
If not the federal government, then whom? Nobody else could waste money this prodigiously on such abject foolishness.
Of course, it doesn’t matter that it’s patronizing and condescending and thus will have no effect whatsoever. It’s the transfer of money from the taxpayers to self-seeking climate-alarm opportunists that’s the main point.
It has come to this, so much money has been thrown at the warmists they have run out of even semi-intelligent things to waste money on.
“PoLiAR Climate Change Education Partnership,” … there fixed it for you
mjmsprt40 says:
May 26, 2014 at 7:34 am
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!
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It’s pretty simple: pay to play. Make big donations to important Democrats via a cadre of expensive “lobbyists” and line up at the trough. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.
What in all the gods’ names is an ‘authentic fiction’?? Is that another version of ‘fake but accurate’? Also known as ‘we made it all up to sell you a bill of goods’?
Didn’t they used to just call that snake oil?
Orion
The propaganda is just a side-benefit: the point is to waste as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, to cause the collapse of society. See Greece.
This makes me physically ill….. undisguised propaganda funded from the public trough.
I must set this aside, for today.
On this Memorial Day, I ask each visitor to WUWT to remember the generations before us that fought to establish and preserve our freedoms. Reflect on their sacrifices, in the service of Liberty. Say a prayer for the fallen and another for those who serve.
And remember: “We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
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.”
====================
Good luck teaching this old dog new tricks, whether it be by engagement, or any other form of enticement.
It is no longer a matter of failed communication, so much as a failure in results.
Where are the rewards ?
Skeptics are lavishly funded by Big Oil, activists by meager taxpayer’s money.
Patrick B. says:
Haven’t tried this yet – but it appears anyone can leave a message “from the future”
How about one concerning failing to win a Hugo?
It should have been, “yet to be born” or “unborn as yet.”
REPLY: And in the scope of the larger train wreck and squandering of public funds, I don’t anybody but you cares about the pedantry sir. – Anthony
Located above Tom’s Olde Tea Shoppe?
Truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense (Xiphias)
We might have to update this.
My correction wasn’t pedantic. Columbia’s statement was an oxymoron (a ludicrously self-contradictory statement). I wasn’t “overly concerned with minute details or formalisms” or “making a big display of knowing obscure facts and details,” which is how a couple of dictionaries define pedantry.
And I wasn’t attempting to divert the discussion from its focus on important things with my one-line “aside.” If you want to get upset at someone, turn your ire on the person who raised the topic with the sentence I quoted, ddpalmer at May 26, 2014 at 5:47 am, who wrote seven lines about its absurdity.
Wow! I just got one of these! It fell right down my chimney! I had no idea what it was until seeing this article.
So I got in contact privately with Contact Privacy Inc. in Toronto and they decoded it for me. It appears to be from an Imam of the Coptic Church in Nigeria in 2035 who needs $1,000 in 2014 dollars so he can transfer $5.7 million to my account in 2036 dollars……………………….
/sarc off
Talk about Pretzel Logic. If everyone who believes in AGW would hold their CO2 laced breath for just 10 minutes, this lunacy would be over.
I think this will backfire on the warmists when taxpayers see what their money is being spent for.
Don’t laugh this is the serious business of diverting hard science money to political or artistic groups. Columbia/Lamont are clearly on the warmist/alarmist side (I once gave money and am on their development list) but a lot of the motivation is to extract funds from the trust fund babies of NYC. They do some real basic science. This also checks off some NSF boxes for “Native Alaskans”, science ‘outreach’, and global stuff. These guys get money sluffed off from every physical science program.
“Honest Graft” as it used to be called by Tammany Hall.
Berényi Péter says:
May 26, 2014 at 9:03 am
That makes $33,453,654.00 total. I wish I had it. Pretty puhleese?’
I wish I had a tenth of it,
And Ralph (11.36) since when has the “taxpayer” ever had any success protesting this s.it?
Fraud. Criminal misappropriation of public funds. Columbia University is no longer an institution of higher education, it’s a kangaroo court for burning skeptics at the stake, like witches.