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Portland’s recent ban of educational books which question alarmist climate narratives has attracted strong criticism from the NCAC. The National Coalition Against Censorship is a group which normally focusses on issues like Creationism, and other efforts to stifle politically or religiously inconvenient freedom of speech.
The statement from the NCAC:
Portland Resolution on Teaching Climate Change Raises Concerns
NCAC has released the following statement on the climate change controversy brewing in Portland:
On May 17, the Public School Board of Portland, Oregon unanimously adopted a resolution to “Develop an Implementation Plan for Climate Literacy,” which concluded with this recommendation: “The implementation plan should include a review of current textbooks for accuracy around the severity of the climate crisis and the impact of human activities. PPS will abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities.”
For all its good intentions, the resolution raises serious concerns:
Most critically, the resolution is dangerously over-broad, potentially affecting a wide range of valuable educational materials. Social studies texts accurately describing the political debate around fossil fuels and climate change, for instance, would presumably contain comments from individuals who “express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis.” If such material is excised from the curriculum, will students be prepared to face – and argue with – climate change denial when they encounter it in the world outside school?
Purging the curriculum of this kind of material will undermine public education, which should equip students for critical and informed consideration of important matters of public policy and controversy. This goal is clearly identified in the 2011 Oregon Social Sciences Academic Content Standards, which state that “Students learn to assess the merits of competing arguments, and make reasoned decisions that include consideration of the values within alternative policy recommendations.”
Even if some scientists questioning the human causes of climate change do so apparently at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, it is still a fact that environmental policy is a subject of ongoing debate. Students should be conversant with, and equipped to address, the various questions and issues that are the subject of public discussion.
The resolution is also unnecessary. Oregon has standards in place to insure that education in science and social studies is consistent with current scientific and scholarly consensus. In March 2014, the Oregon State Board of Education adopted as the Next Generation Science Standards based on a framework developed by the National Research Council. These include as a “disciplinary core idea” the role of human activity in global warming: “Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).”
Finally, the resolution is undermined by the appearance that its adoption was driven primarily by political pressure, rather than pedagogical considerations, because it represents the views of environmental groups that have lobbied the school board for many years. Curricular decisions that appear to be a result of political pressure are suspect no matter from which political side the pressure comes. This is especially true when such decisions are made by school board officials who generally lack the subject-area expertise essential to the development of accurate and effective curricula. Under these circumstances, it is incumbent on the board to defer to professional educators and subject matter experts in determining the content of curricula.
Deciding how to approach the existing political debate around the causes of climate change should be left to those who teach about it: science professors, social studies and civics professors may approach the issue differently in accordance with the requirements of their subject matter. Elected officials have an important role in ensuring the availability of an adequate education to all students; they should devote their energies to that worthy goal, and leave decisions about what and how to teach to the people who are trained to do it.
Source: http://ncac.org/blog/portland-resolution-on-teaching-climate-change-raises-concerns
To be fair, the Portland Public School Board are simply progressing a long standing alarmist obsession with attempting to stifle and suppress dissenting views and access to raw data.
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Read more: Climategate Email 1089318616.txt
And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.
Read more Climategate Email 1107454306.txt
If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them.
Read more Climategate Email 1106338806.txt
Plenty more where they came from.
The real question is, why do the Portland Public School Board, and other Climate Alarmists, feel so threatened by alternative interpretations of the data?
I don’t feel threatened by the views of people who think we are on the brink of a climate apocalypse – I spend a significant amount of my personal time researching and publicising their views, so people can see how silly they are.
In my opinion, the reason Creationists and other pseudoscientists frequently try to suppress viewpoints which do not conform to their dogma, is because learning about evidence based science is like a mental vaccine – it tends to inoculate the minds of students against nonsensical alternatives.
Why does the Portland Public School Board feel the need to protect their indoctrination of students with alarmist climate dogma, using the same harsh, anti-freedom censorship techniques which pseudoscientists use to defend their untruths?
With friends like that…
The :”Next Generation …” … is political = not educational bunkum, It is proper to read “social studies” and NOT “social sciences”
What does this reveal ??
Heaven Forbid that we teach young minds to actually think, to be able to perform a critical analysis. Better that they simply learn to parrot back the ‘thought of the day’ like ‘the earth is flat’ & ‘man can’t fly’, or ‘the way to cure any disease is to bleed the patient to get the bad blood out’.
How rigorous are things that can’t withstand the scrutiny of children?
4 marks!
Yeah, they are working hard at dealing with these mutinous scrutinous children. Probably Ritalin would pacify them and adjust their over-active brains.
Yes. When indoctrinating the kiddos, it’s important to give them the tools to be able to parrot the ideology back, no matter what someone says. It’s like an innoculation. You inject a small amount of the “virus”, which is actually just a laughable straw man version of what skeptics/climate realists say, and then have the kiddos stomp on it. Good job! Yeah, that’s the ticket. If you are going to produce robots, they should at least be skillful robots.
Enough pandering to the ecobaters with conciliatory phrases like, “For all its good intentions…” Only serves to justify and validate the further imposition of their values on others. Much like the “we need an all of the above energy supply strategy” trope. No, we don’t.
The project is to produce the next generation of Greensheep who will mindlessly follow their dear leaders.
When dissent is politically suppressed, be very ware:
– Of course the Iraq war is justified – to suggest otherwise is unpatriotic
– Ditto Vietnam
– The ongoing wars on drugs, poverty, cancer, crime – all heavily funded political dogma that no one dares question
– Heck, the Iron Curtian was a political construct agreed to by both sides in order to prevent the free flow of communication and justify huge arms build ups. Both sides had a field day rooting out and persecuting “traitors.”
Now we have the War on Climate.
My liberal, as in supporting freedom of thought, parents would be revolted to find the new McCarthyism taking root in Portland of all places.
Joe McCarthy was, in the end, correct. The so-call “victims” of the congressional investigation (McCarthy was in the Senate) are the very same people who are trying to take MY free speech from me…. in 2016.
He knew that communism, is a hammer that destroys freedom of speech. It is pernicious in it logic and infectiousness. Now the left says, “McCarthy” was against free speech… no, he was against the ills of communism which was the loss of all freedoms including speech.
So the left paints him with a label. The hypocrite free speech haters on the left use his love of freedom as a weapon to kill his name. I am not a sucker for the leftist inversion reasoning.
Mr. Layman here.
As I understand it, McCarthy was not against Freedom of Speech but rather those who in Government, Hollywood and the Media would seek to control and influence the information behind what others spoke.
A very thin line to walk.
“Hollywood” hates him. “Media” hates him.
He tried to prevent those with power from controlling/slanting the information available.
How many of those who vilify him today know anything about Stalin and how he operated at the time?
Believe what you want. Say what you want. But, don’t believe it or say it because that’s what “they” want.
Exactly. McCarthy was never against free speech, rather the opposite. This is expressed by Hilton Kramer in his interview with W F Buckley:
Also, Joe McCarthy reads from the Communist instruction book regarding “McCarthyism”
Time stamp 20:20
Reason enough to get rid of government run schools.
at least some enthusiasts are tossing away their AGW manuals, going out there and findding out for themselves what actually is going on
https://youtu.be/xMozB4BZpAU
link to the article
Leftists, socialists, greens, you know, the tyrants that are ruining our world, hate free speech.
The truth will prevail over their lame attempts to shut you down by labeling you the pejorative of the day.
White man…creationist, homophobe, …new words to stop you from speaking. I speak anyway.
The f@scism is coming from the ignorant left.
For those who may not know. But U.N. has captured the thoughts of creationists.
https://parliamentofreligions.org/parliament/salt-lake-2015-0
It is not just local school boards only. Censorship extends, unannounced, to colleges too. I have a book out called “What Warming?” that I once presented to Dartmouth College Library as a gift from a graduate. Two weeks later I received a letter stating that “…our bibliographer has decided not to add it to our collection.” What they did was to donate my book to a charity that gives free books to poor people. Somehow they imagine that this wonderful good deed will make up for censorship. The message is clear: just don’t expect that your Alma Mater cares about your books unless they are in line with her ideology.
Another trend is that ou are not allowed to use certain words or language, because it might “offend” someone or some group. Apparently we are raising a generation of emotionally fragile ninnies (oops) who will whine and pee their pants (oops) if someone says something they find “hurtful”.
It’s the left coast censorship is what they do only they renamed it “open mindedness”.
When has a Creationist been in a position to censor opposing opinions?
I don’t know what you are saying.
Even though they criticized Portland for banning books, they are no “friend” to science. One example, “Even if some scientists questioning the human causes of climate change do so apparently at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, it is still a fact that environmental policy is a subject of ongoing debate. ”
LOL. The debate is not first of all about questioning human causes of climate change. It is whether or not humans will cause catastrophic warming or catastrophic climate change such that it is imperative to reduce CO2 emissions to avoid disaster. Nor is there any evidence that scientists are skeptical at the behest of the fossil fuel industry.
It seems readily apparent that inbred administrators and the ring nosed school board members they attract are everywhere, and ubiquitously bent on making horrid decisions about children that boggle the mind and violate even the most basic tenets of administrative common sense. This is yet another example. If their decision about lead in drinking water is a window into their general knowledge of science Portland parents should be very very afraid.
At least in the U.S., school boards are elected. Now the residents of Portland got what they elected!
If the shoe fits wear it!
If it were just Portland, we could simply scoff and laugh about it.
When are the book burning events scheduled in Portland? They would make for great video moments.
Not once has anyone mentioned UNESCO. Is this not the body that brought common core.
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/education-for-sustainable-development/climate-change-education/
Red herring. Common Core States Standards mention climate change exactly 0 times. The Science Standards, which are not in the body of CCSS and was not developed by the group that set forth CCSS, is the set of documents you want to tar and feather.
Agreed. But looking at how much the U.N. is imbedded into our scholastic system seems to be problematic.
thank you for all your insights.
Pamela Gray
June 7, 2016 at 8:05 am
“Red herring. Common Core States Standards mention climate change exactly 0 times”.
This may be the usual inertia and lag between what is current and what was. The first intrusion of Agenda 21 is, of course, sugar coated. When you are testing new raw materials in industry, say, for making glass, you start with 100% of your tried and true ingredients. Then you add a few percent and than 10 and so on until you reach 100% new raw material. You can then test resulting finished products throughout the period of the test (they don’t bother with the second half of the test which is to reverse the steps and end up with the old material, a way of not interrupting full production). The first ed stuff is rather benign, but once established it will grow to the limit of credibility in meeting the ‘desired’ goal if it is indeed the propaganda exercise that it looks like.
I made it a priority to inculcate critical thinking into my children (now grandchildren) as best I could by arguing some of the catechisms they were learning in science, history, and social studies. I hated that I had to tell them that they had to learn the stuff the way it was taught so they wouldn’t get a failing grade, but reserve your judgements on it and discuss it outside the classroom.
I know Pam would be happy to entertain a variety of views from her students , but this isn’t the norm today. New teachers coming up will whittle away more and more of questioning minds. These folks are probably both ignorant and forceful. They can await the older teachers retirements.
Eric Worrall asks a leading question embedded with a wrong assumption:
“Why does the Portland Public School Board feel the need to protect their indoctrination of students with alarmist climate dogma, using the same harsh, anti-freedom censorship techniques which pseudoscientists use to defend their untruths?”
He said just before that:
“In my opinion, the reason Creationists and other pseudoscientists frequently try to suppress viewpoints which do not conform to their dogma,”
CAGW advocates do not value truth since they are operating towards an end that cares little of the means to it. To them, the free speech argument is a tool they can use or discard at will, not like what it is to us, a fundamental freedom worth defending. So Eric, your frame of reference is oblique and skewed with a flawed assumption about the rules of the game, so to speak.
2) I am not comfortable with you use of “Creationist” as a pejorative label to isolate a group. I am not sure what you mean by it and you can use some other of the 400,000 words in the english language to make your point. Do you mean people who accept that the Big Bang started everything? Do you mean people who believe that the universe was created? or created 5000 years ago? Do you mean people who are unhappy with classical dawinianism? or those who believe that darwinianism = natural selection = common descent = mutation = evolution? What ever you mean by it I doubt that everyone else agrees with your flavor of it.
Or do you simply mean narrow-minded people?
To label a person as a Creationist is a conversation stopper… just like McCarthyism. These are tricks of the leftist anti-reason mob.
People use these terms without saying what they mean and that is undisciplined.
About 25 centuries ago the Chinese General Sun Tzu wrote “The Art of War”, which is used to this day as a fundamental treatise on warfare and competition. Understand what Sun Tzu wrote and you can understand the “hows” and “whys” of military victories and defeats throughout history. He stressed the importance of understanding what the other side is thinking, as well as having your own thoughts in order.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
To follow this advice is to be prepared for every confrontation with the other side, and to ignore it is to be vulnerable with no defense of viable counter assault.
This is probably the most important reason to NEVER suppress ideas that you may not agree with.
Activists are not affected by such criticisms – particularly Portlanders. You only need look at the half-hypnotized sheen in their eyes – the exultance of a higher cause. They take it as a badge of honor.
yup.
I agree with the NCAC on this one. As it says in the article:
“These include as a “disciplinary core idea” the role of human activity in global warming: “Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).”
Since they have adopted this as an established disciplinary core idea there is no need to further restrict books, but simply to ensure that the core idea is taught.
How big of you. Yes, as long as they continue to pound home the core ideology, it’s safe to “allow” other viewpoints. Just as long as they are marginalized, put in the “right light”, and context. That way, you can continue pretending that you are offering both sides.
seaice1
June 7, 2016 at 9:16 am
“I agree with the NCAC on this one.”
I agree that it is proper to include an examination of the role of human activity in climate that could stimulate discussion and even give consideration of the CO2 greening of the planet and positive effect on crop harvests to make it interesting. I don’t think a core idea should should include a dogmatic negative conclusion about “major factors” when the jury is definitely still out – mention two decades of no significant warming when over 30% of the increase in CO2 since the advent of the industrial revolution occurred. That would be simply dishonest.
So what your are saying is the activist lobbying is to no effect?
The “core idea” is that human activities are major factors in recent rise in global temperatures. It seems to me that as long as the core is taught responsibly there is plenty of scope for discussion of social and economic effects of that rise in temperature and what steps we should take to mitigate or reduce it. The greening effects you describe are not the core idea.
The real enemy is all the less than useless so called green movement. Windmills ,solar, electric cars (where are all those dead batteries going to go?) Endless gov overreach and unrealistic regulations, the war on coal, gas and oil. How do these nimwits expect to heat their homes? Building regulations which make homes so tight they are unhealthful according to the very people who make the regulations. Lying to kids to make them beloeve agw is destroying the earth. GO TRUMP!
If hillary gets in we are cooked.rant over, for now
Both the President and Dean of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University have stated that promoting the narrative of global climate alarmists is one of their major responsibilities. Which explains in part the departure of George Taylor and the arrival of Philip Mote.
And, as one of the larger colleges of education in the state, bodes poorly for the yutes of tomorrow.
.
Gee, surely the Dean of “Liberal” Sciences should be asked to stick his neck out first rather than be led by interior designers, psychologists and English majors. This is the trouble with all this smoke and steam.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice.
Then He made school boards.
— Mark Twain
“In my opinion, the reason Creationists and other pseudoscientists frequently try to suppress viewpoints which do not conform to their dogma, is because learning about evidence based science is like a mental vaccine – it tends to inoculate the minds of students against nonsensical alternatives.”
Most creatonists are not pseudoscientists. Their dogma is purely religious.. Some creationists have tried to argue based on science that creationism is supported by science. However, IMO, they have consistently lost those arguments. I’ve not seen anything in the last 30 years or more where a creationist tried to suppress other viewpoints. Rather many religious people have tried to get “creation” presented in school along with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Personally, I am not religious and agree for the most part with Darwin’s theory. I think it is find if views on creation are presented with Darwin’s theories. It is something that is almost guaranteed to spark debate and thought in young people.
Alarmists are different from creationists. Most alarmists believe in alarmist viewpoints due to philosophical views that are almost religious in nature. Alarmists think that the science is on their side because they have been told this over and over. Only a few alarmists know even the basics about climate change. Alarmists want to suppress other viewpoints because they realize that they are not winning the debate with the average person. Many believe the reason that they are not winning the debate is due to skeptics who they think must be well organized and funded by corporations that sell fossil fuels. They don’t know this is true, they just have heard it in the press. Since alarmists think that science is on their side, but they are not winning with the average person, the only conclusion that they can believe is that skeptics well funded by the fossil fuel industry are lying. The solution – put them in jail and prevent them from being able to present their arguments.