Last year a major poll revealed that among high and middle school science teachers, at least a third are skeptical of global warming alarmism. They are teaching the real scientific debate.
Good news indeed!
The poll was sponsored by the National Center for Science Education. They are a mad dog climate alarmist group, so I suspect they were very unhappy with the results, which makes the results that much more reliable. Of course it would be much better if all teachers taught the truth about the climate debate, but given the pressures to teach alarmism a third is a significant fraction.
These pressures are substantial. For example, the liberal media universally reported these poll results as bad news. The Washington Post headline was “How teachers are getting it wrong on climate change.” Telling teachers that they are “getting it wrong” when they teach about the real climate change debate is an absurd bias. It is the ones teaching alarmism that are getting it wrong.
Unfortunately this alarmist bias is not confined to newspapers. The major teacher organizations also share it. The bias came out recently when the Heartland Institute began sending a report — Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming — to science teachers. Their efforts to provide much needed information were denounced by several leading education groups, led by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).
These groups actually sent a joint letter to their members, calling the Heartland information campaign an “attack on reason.” Clearly, given that something like a third of their members share Heartland’s skeptical view, it is this letter that is unreasonable. How can a membership organization attack a position that a third of its members hold? This can only happen if zealots are in charge, for they are well aware of these poll results.
NSTA is also high on my list of 33 websites peddling alarmist classroom materials. Even worse, the enormous National Education Association (NEA) has a site pushing alarmist content to teachers. NEA’s primary function is to lobby for public school teachers and it has over three million members. That it should take the alarmist position on climate change is ludicrous, given that many teachers disagree.
Unfortunately NEA’s website — Climate Change Education: Essential Information for Educators — is completely alarmist. It begins with this false claim: “The effects of human-caused climate change can already be seen.” They also repeatedly use the term climate change to mean human-caused climate change, as though natural climate change did not exist, which is nonsense.
The NEA site provides links to a variety of alarmist teaching materials, going all the way down to 4th grade. It is also worth noting that many of these incorrect classroom materials are provided by Federal agencies, including NOAA, NASA, NSF, USDA and DOE. When it comes to teaching climate alarmism, the Feds are in the forefront.
Given all these pressures it is impressive that many teachers sill want to teach the entire climate change debate, not just alarmism. They need all the help we can give them. Moreover, those who are promoting alarmism need to be called to account. It is time to stand up for skepticism in the schools.
I’m not sure when I said : you can either teach physics or you can teach AlGoreWarming ; you can’t teach both .
Which is somewhat akin to Cork Hayden’s : climate alarmists are willing to do anything for the cause — except take a physics class .
In fact , you can either teach physics or you can teach the notion that some spectral “green house gas” effect is what causes the bottoms of atmospheres to be hotter than their tops ; you can’t teach both .
Finally, somebody has begun to pay attention and realize that the AGW movement turned the scientific method on its head. Manipulate the data to fit your conclusion does not do it. Calling something “settled Science” does not do it unless it meets the standard of a law of science. AGW is “settled science” only in the minds of those who wish to control and it has nothing to do with science at all.
Teach critical, independent thinking skills. Very important.
Teach quantitative , experimentally demonstrated physics like the PSSC curriculum I had half a century ago . The critical thinking comes from having to warp your mind til it matches classical proven reality .
Bob, as I explain above, climate science is typically not taught in high school physics, and most students do not take physics. The challenge of teaching the climate debate is far more difficult than this.
“most students do not take physics” too bad. The climate nonsense IS pushed in public school classes, physics or not. They manage to wheedle it in any subject they can. The UN gives money to schools, and universities signed an agreement with them that they are not allowed to waver from. There’s a piece on it called “Trendy Demons” that explains it all. Like this article implies, it’s a political thing not a scientific one. That’s why they use non-scientists like Bill Nye the non-scientist guy to promote their nonsense and flim flam.
Had to search for “PSSC curriculum” to find out what it was, exactly. Was not disappointed, several of the films online at archive dot org for free. I remember these dusty (yet fulfilling and interesting as well as educational) films and the fantastic books from my early childhood- then, the dumbing down of US public schools awaited me in later high school years. What a dichotomy- I was introduced to the new, limited education of American schools during “the change” early ’80s and onward. I feel sorry for today’s schoolchildren. They are being ripped off of a good education.
Thanks . PSSC was like post-grad Mr Wizard who also presented brilliantly simple demonstrations of reality . Take a look at http://www.cosy.com/BobA/vita.htm . You’ll see what that did for/to me . I wasn’t a good student because I doing and observing the experiments but hated writing them up . Ironically my adult life has been largely focused on creating the most effective computational “notebook” I could to artificially aid my intelligence .
Bob, to begin with most US high school students do not take physics. They typically have to take 2 out of 4 courses — physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences. Physics and chemistry are the least popular, being the hardest.
Second, the greenhouse effect will typically not be taught in physics, as that is an earth science topic. (Also, you seem to be referring to the lapse rate, which is not part of the greenhouse effect.) Note too that climate change gets only a few hours of class time a year. The curriculum is specified by state standards and it is very crowded. I call it a marathon of sprints.
Alarmism is very common in both biology and earth sciences. That is where skepticism needs to focus. Especially since these students often do not take physics, so the physics cannot be argued.
Climate science is a fascinatingly difficult topic to teach.
The major point I’m making is that they should be teaching basic classic experimentally demonstrable quantitative physics like they did half a century ago . That would kill this nonscience . That is why I’m promoting a “Ritchie Prize” , http://cosy.com/Science/ComputationalEarthPhysics.html#YouTubePhysicsDemoFund , for “the best “YouTube” quantitative experimental test of any of the non-optional classical physical computations necessary to get from the Sun’s output to our mean surface temperature .”
The “green house effect” is not intrinsically “earth science” . It is a statement that some spectral filtering phenomenon can “trap” kinetic energy , ie : heat , in excess of that determined by object and source and sink spectra . It is absolutely a question of physics and absolutely capable of being handled at the level of , and with the rigor of the PSSC course I had in 1962 .
And what needs to be equally understood is that the force and it’s energy which causes and maintains the “lapse rate” is gravity , nothing to do with spectrum . And that can be computed , and the mathematics requiring a total energy balance presented even at the college prep high school level . Perhaps take some time from orbital mechanics which was a focus in the sixties .
James Hansen’s claim that Venus’s extreme surface temperature is due to a spectral effect should have been laughed out of the room . Yet it has retarded “earth science” , indeed made it a fairy tale , for a generation .
You teach your AP physics classes , and let them experience the experimental demonstration of the validity of the equations , and they will spread the truth , perhaps in a rather condescending way , to their lesser classmates .
At this point tho , the understanding of the physics has become so derelict that the teachers themselves need to learn it .
You seem to have missed my point, Bob. Most high school students do not take physics, and most who do do not take AP physics. It is very important to understand the science curriculum as it is. It is in fact a regulatory regime, determined by state standards. This is the system that skepticism needs to deal with.
I must admit that I went to elite private Culver Military Academy so the average student was above average .
And I’m certainly not denying that the battle is political — at all scales . And must be fought on all .
But I am pointing out that a solid physics curriculum needs to be restored . Yes it’s an enormous task because even the physics teachers have been duped .
And it’s not just at the high school level . I think perhaps the most appalling effects of this fraud is that kids graduate the 8th grade fearing the molecule out of which they are made .
One of my mantras is that the journeyman “climate scientist” literally doesn’t know how to calculate the temperature of a billiard ball under a sun lamp and yet they presume to impoverish the world on predictions of planetary temperature .
Somehow they must be embarrassed enticed demanded —
whatever works — into demonstrating they at least know how to do that .
At which point this AlGoreWarming fraud officially will have been relegated to the ash heap of history .
Bob Armstrong wrote:
“I think perhaps the most appalling effects of this fraud is that kids graduate the 8th grade fearing the molecule out of which they are made .”
People aren’t made of CO2.
Dumb!
Actually they are so made. CO2 is the global food supply. Watching a child grow is watching processed CO2 be reprocessed. I have seen estimates that 97% of the dry mass of a typical plant comes from CO2, that is the C and the O. Only the H and various trace elements come from other sources. And all meat is derived from plants.
Sorry, no — people aren’t made of CO2. They are made of carbon-based compounds — very different.
And nothing in the human body *creates* carbon. It all comes from the environment, and goes back into the environment. People — and all other animals — are carbon neutral, unless they dig up ancient carbon and put it into the atmosphere.
My understanding is that over 90% of the dry mass of most plants comes from CO2. Thus everything we eat comes mostly from CO2. It is the global food supply for almost all living things.
There is even research indicating that a significant fraction of the increase in agricultural productivity that feeds the world comes from the CO2 increase. This needs to be factored into pointless proposals to reduce CO2 levels.
I’ve looked into Bob Armstrong’s “calculations” about a colored ball more than any other person on the planet. They are a joke — and not just because the planet isn’t a colored ball. Armstrong misunderstands Kirchhoff’s law, writes down equations whose units don’t even balance, and applies blackbody equations to objects he explicitly says are not blackbodies.
His “science” is laughable. It’s so bad he’s afraid to even address questions about it.
David: I’ve looked into Bob Armstrong’s “calculations” about a colored ball more than any other person on the planet. They are a joke — and not just because the planet isn’t a colored ball. Armstrong misunderstands Kirchhoff’s law, writes down equations whose units don’t even balance, and applies blackbody equations to objects he explicitly says are not blackbodies.
His “science” is laughable. It’s so bad he’s afraid to even address questions about it.
Not sure why you addressed this to me, David. I do think that many students are being mistaught alarmism, using simple minded physics.
You just lied about the LT warming up to 1997.
Doesn’t lying bother you?
The lower troposphere (which I did not refer to) has indeed warmed during the period 1978-1997, but the total atmosphere has not, so this is just an internal redistribution of heat, not global warming. The amount of heat did not increase.