Science Teachers Say: No Global Warming Video, Thanks.

[Doug]

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.


In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.



Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

And corporate sponsorship of the glories of the status quo works beautifully because kids tend to accept the status quo as "right" - and the way "it's 'sposed to be". When I was teaching I spent several weeks on an "alternate energy" unit. The test was an essay - describe society with no petroleum. I was fully prepared to give an A for something as short as "not particularly different from the way it is now except for using different fuel" but I didn't get that answer in any form. What I got was 175 versions of '3rd world poverty with maybe horse & buggy if you were one of the wealthy'. This was in the late 1980s.

I hope the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" didn't stop with the facer from the NSTA, and checked out other ways to get those DVDs into the classroom.

[Hogeye]

I can see how the biased, alarmist flick "An Inconvenient Truth" would be rejected. Especially with its ridiculous predictions of oceans rising 30 feet and similar ridiculous scare tactics.

It would make more sense in a science class to present both the alarmist and the skeptic sides of the story. I.e. Show both "Inconvenient Truth" and "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled" to get some balance.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Wonder where Hogeye thinks the water from the melting glaciers is going to go? (Not the sea ice, which will make no more difference in sea level than melting ice cubes do in a glass of iced tea, but the land glaciers on Greenland, Iceland, the Scandinavian Fiordlands, and Antarctica.)

[Hogeye]

I wonder how Barbara explains why the sea level was not 30 feet higher during the Medieval Warm Period, when Greenland had less ice cover than even the most alarmist preditions?

Alarmists can't explain why their predicted catastrophies didn't happen during the MWP, which is why they evade and ignore that period.

[Dardedar]

I wonder how Barbara explains why the sea level was not 30 feet higher during the Medieval Warm Period,

DAR
Oh that's an easy one. The MWP is exaggerated by deeply religious GW skeptics, and whatever warming there was didn't last long enough. The little non-global MWP is completely irrelevant to today's problems.

when Greenland had less ice cover than even the most alarmist preditions?

DAR
If this was the case, it was not due to the influence of mankind, as it is now, as shown by hundreds of lines of evidence, accepted by all except the religious GW skeptics. So it's irrelevant.

Alarmists can't explain why their predicted catastrophies didn't happen during the MWP,

DAR
Unfortunately you don't have firm numbers for your little MWP to back up your wishful thinking. Mostly ancedotes passed along by sea captains.

which is why they evade and ignore that period.

DAR
No, there are very good reasons for ignoring the GW skeptic's red herrings and smoke on this issue. Mainly because it isn't at all relevant to the evidence for human caused warming today, it's speed, and the skyrocketing millenium record setting levels for gases like methane. Etc. All well covered of course.

D.

[Hogeye]

See? They avoid and evade the MWP, despite ample evidence from both ice bores and recorded Viking history. Might I recommend "Collapse" by Jared Diamond as a good overview of the Viking settlement of Greenland?

(Note the smokescreen about human influence; as if water doesn't rise unless the melting is man-made!)

[Dardedar]

DAR
I have a fine lecture by Jared Diamond discussing that book. As always you ignore information when it doesn't fit your emotional attachments to anarchy and are constantly looking for little tid bits you can cherry pick out of any sensible context to add to you steaming pile of poo. Any sensible consideration of Diamond would need to have you considering him an "alarmist" and him considering you a buffoon.

July '05
"During a public lecture in San Francisco last month, Jared Diamond, the mega-selling author of Guns, Germs and Steel, became the latest and most prominent environmental intellectual to endorse nuclear power as a necessary response to global warming.

Addressing an overflow crowd at the Cowell Theater about why some societies fail and others don't (the theme of his most recent book, Collapse), Diamond three times cited global warming as a threat that could ruin modern civilization." --link

D.
---------------------
In his most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Diamond examines what caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin and considers what contemporary society can learn from their fates.... He cites five factors that often contributed to a collapse, but shows how the one factor that all had in common was mismanagement of natural resources.

[Hogeye]

Whatever Diamond's opinion is about global warming, his history of Greenland presented in "Collapse" indicates that there was significantly less ice than today during the MWP. And the oceans were not 30 feet higher. (You might want to read the book rather than cherry-picking one opinion of the author that happens to agree with you.)

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The Greenland Ice Sheet is only one of the many land ice masses melting today. (And at a faster rate than originally predicted, showing GW is not only real, the situation is worse - meaning we have less time to mitigate - than originally thought.) The MWP did not last long enough to melt significant amounts of land ice, and again, melting sea ice does not raise the sea level.

[Hogeye]

The MWP lasted 3-4 centuries, a lot longer than the modern late 20th century blip. No one knows the rate of temp increase during the MWP. Greenland had a lot less ice cover during the MWP than it does today. No doubt many other places did too. If 90% of the world's glaciers melted, it may be comparable to the peak of the MWP. So why didn't the oceans rise drastically back then? (Or other ridiculous alarmist scenerios occur?)

[Dardedar]

Whatever Diamond's opinion is about global warming,...

DAR
His opinion is that however Greenland was modified by your little MWP, it is insignificant to the fact that "global warming [is] a threat that could ruin modern civilization." You set, I spike.

his history of Greenland presented in "Collapse" indicates that there was significantly less ice than today during the MWP.

DAR
I don't believe you. Define "significantly."

And the oceans were not 30 feet higher.

DAR
No one says they were and no one suggests they should have been, other than you. Stop making things up.

(You might want to read the book rather than cherry-picking one opinion of the author that happens to agree with you.)

DAR
Hypocrite. That's exactly what you are trying, unsuccessfully, to do.

The MWP lasted 3-4 centuries, a lot longer than the modern late 20th century blip.

DAR
Irrelevant. Not global.

No one knows the rate of temp increase during the MWP.

DAR
Irrelevant. Not global. We know the rate today and we know the rate of increase and amount of gases (such methane) are unprecedented in a multi-million year context. And we know who did it.

Greenland had a lot less ice cover during the MWP than it does today.

DAR
Define "a lot" and then back the claim up with something other than anecdotes from sea captains and medieval Greenland salesman.

No doubt many other places did too. If 90% of the world's glaciers melted, it may be comparable to the peak of the MWP.

DAR
Total utter and complete horseshit. This one is real deep from some unsuspecting horse's colon. Can you find any numbskull on the planet that would agree with you on this absolutely absurd and idiotic claim? I doubt that you can. And there are a lot of numbskulls you have access to.

So why didn't the oceans rise drastically back then?

DAR
Here is why, pay attention (just kidding, I know you have no interest whatsoever in the truth of the matter).

***
"Medieval Warm Period was a time of unusually warm weather during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented.

It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying: "…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".

link

To address the theme of this thread (unfortunately I spend so much time swatting absurd insane material this takes away time I could spend speaking intelligently as with adults), I have some sympathy with the teachers on this issue. They don't want another war in the classrooms. This country is filled with so many uninformed, misinformed rightwing crackpots that it is unfortunately true that this show and it's straightforward scientific claims would stir up controversy. This is afterall a country where FOX news is a popular source and Limbaugh reaches (supposedly) 20 million vacant heads per week. Hogeye case is special. He didn't get this lost and confused on this issue without a great deal of study and careful indoctrination with the most ridiculous material available. He feeds his mind with this crap constantly, thus it bubbles up hear constantly. I call it Studied-Stupid and see it in the occasional devoted religious fundie.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Like the continent of Antarctica, Greenland has, for most of human history, appeared much larger than it actually is terrestrially because of large icesheets attached to it. Greenland, like Antarctica, can lose a full third of it's "ice cover" and not cause sea level rise because the ice in question is actually sea ice. Once all the sea ice is gone, the land ice starts melting/sliding into the sea. That is what raises the sea level. While Hogeye says there was "a lot less" ice in Greenland during his MWP, he admits there was ice. The 30 or more foot rise in sea level is predicated on the melting of half or more of the land ice. There is, unfortunately, a possibility for ALL the land ice sheets melting over the course of the next 50 years (or less - Glacier National Park will be "out of glaciers" in about 20 years). The melting of all land ice sheets is where the potential for an 80 foot rise comes from.

[Dardedar]

There is, unfortunately, a possibility for ALL the land ice sheets melting over the course of the next 50 years.

DAR
Worldwatch Institute has this:

"Scientists predict that up to a quarter of global mountain glacier mass could disappear by 2050, and up to one-half by 2100-leaving large patches only in Alaska, Patagonia, and the Himalayas. Within the next 35 years, the Himalayan glacial area alone is expected to shrink by one-fifth, to 100,000 square kilometers."

Melting of Earth's Ice Cover Reaches New High

See a list of the major glaciers and their rate of decrease on the last half of the page.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

When you realize how many populations depend on glacier melt for their water (think L.A. and most of southern California), you can see we are going to be in even more trouble from water shortage - and sooner - than any of the other global warming-caused disasters. Thanks to the overuse of petroleum, we are going to run out of potable water before we run out of oil. How's that for irony?