The Spectacle Blog
Mass Climate Disobedience in Texas?
The self-descriptive online propaganda tool SolveClimate selectively "reports" that despite a new rule implemented last year by the Texas Board of Education, which would allegedly require "teachers to cast doubt on human contributions to climate change," that students and educators are largely ignoring it.
The self-descriptive online propaganda tool SolveClimate selectively "reports" that despite a new rule implemented last year by the Texas Board of Education, which would allegedly require "teachers to cast doubt on human contributions to climate change," that students and educators are largely ignoring it:
In fact, dozens of inquiries failed to turn up one science teacher in Texas whose approach to the subject of climate change has been at all affected by the amendment to the state science curriculum. The standard has also done nothing to turn students against the consensus view of man-made global warming, according to educators.
As proof ClimateSolver Julia Harte interviewed three science teachers -- one of which was not subject to the new rule because he teaches at a private Catholic school in Houston -- who testify that their teaching, and students' views, haven't changed much:
Some even said that their students are more receptive than ever to the established science.
"It's too 'in the news' for it to go away," said Paul Caggiano, an environmental science teacher at St. Pius X High School in Houston. "When I ask a kid to do a current events report, they're not going to come up with a skeptical view of climate change. They're going to see it for what it is."
Wonder why that is?
Nor does Caggiano think spending more class time on climate change skepticism would change students' ultimate conclusions on the topic. The evidence for dangerously quick climate change is too ubiquitous for students to ignore, he said.
After teaching the basic principles that govern Earth's climate and the various ways humans have affected the environment, Caggiano shows his students two documentaries about man-made climate change, An Inconvenient Truth and The Eleventh Hour, and asks them to take pro or con sides on the messages in the films.
Even in Houston, "a big oil and gas town, and very much entrenched in that mentality," 95 percent of his students agree that human activity is the cause of the current rapid changes in the climate by the end of the course, Caggiano said.
I guess he shows DiCaprio's film to balance out Gore's film, and then he bludgeons the students into submission in the pro-or-con debate. See? One man can change an oil town!
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Nobama| 6.4.10 @ 3:58PM
Progressives are Propaganda specialists and they've been at it for a long time--what else did we expect?
JP| 6.4.10 @ 4:45PM
What is astonishing is that HS science teachers can easily (using basic college algebra and 1st year college physics) demonstrate the earth's heat budget. Most of the difficult (and to most people, dull) legwork has already been done. The complex ideas of Professor Linzen of MIT are available both in book form and online, and can demonstrate how little CO2 adds or subtracts to the total heat budget (as measured in Watts/m^2). One can also find online how some physicists and engineers calculated how much total heat humans actually contribute to the total heat budget of our atmosphere. Just last month this was calculated to less .002 Watts/m^2.
This isn't the kind of science that makes headlines, casues the masses to storm the gates, or change the laws of nations. But then again, the truth rarely does.
owyheewine| 6.7.10 @ 9:50AM
Right on with your comments, but a small correction is needed. The more appropriate name is heat balance, not budget. Just one of those quirks that we Chemical Engineers have.
Temperature change is determined by the difference between total heat input and total heat dissipation, i.e. a balance.
irish19| 6.4.10 @ 5:26PM
JP,
You got a link for that? I hope to be teaching HS science in the fall and would love to be able to use Linzen's material.
Missy| 6.4.10 @ 5:44PM
Good luck and God bless you, Irish.
hm| 6.4.10 @ 8:24PM
It's Prof. Richard Lindzen at MIT.
JP| 6.5.10 @ 11:39AM
Irish19,
Here's a summary of the Lindzen paper from Dr Roy Spenscer of NASA:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Li.....L-2009.pdf
and Dr Lubos Motl (fomerly of Harvard) offers some interesting pros and cons of Lindzen's paper and climate feedbacks in general.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009.....-choi.html
There are more papers, but most of them (AGU and AMS) are available for paying members only. Real Climate offers critiques, but you can take them for what they're worth.
For more information, Google Lindzen Choi 2009. There's a lot of blog posts. But these are usually long on invective and short on science. Anthony Watts has links at his site as well.
AGW aside, there are certainly good online sources that cover our major circulation systems (the Hadely and Walker Cells, etc...). Remember that our climate system is a couplet between the atmosphere and oceans, with the tropics being the key (esp the Pacific). The main thermostat of our climate is the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), but other oscillations play a part as well (the AMO, AO, NAO). It is through these teleconnections that the radiative balance is kept, as tropical air masses continously attempt to move poleward. And it is the ocean which advect excess heat energy from the sun and transport it poleward. It is a frightfully complex system, which our climate modelers cannot accurately get a handle on.
Fuzzlenutter| 6.4.10 @ 7:31PM
Just mindless little vessels waiting to be filled with the liberal "touchy/feely" crap of the day...
ACynic| 6.5.10 @ 12:15PM
I am a AGW skeptic. Why?
Because science is incapable of explaining the historical climate.
What caused the ice ages?
What caused the Medieval Warming Period and the numerous other warm periods?
How come many warming periods ended in ice ages?
If you do not UNDERSTAND the historical climate, you cannot predict the climate 50 or 100 years hence.
Nobama| 6.5.10 @ 1:27PM
I'm a skeptic because the scientists pushing AGW have a Leftist agenda that's got NOTHING to do with saving the earth.
TomSwift| 6.5.10 @ 4:37PM
Well, I believe that AGW is real (in the sense that adding gigatons of CO2 probably warms the atmosphere slightly, not the doom and gloom scenarios)
The real problem is that our teachers take it out context. Agriculture does more damage to the environment then anything else, therefor the people with the biggest "environmental footprint" are 3rd world farmers since our agriculture is much more efficient than Africa's. Somehow I doubt this makes the lectures.
BP| 6.5.10 @ 7:32PM
The technology of the 19th century is good enough. Why look around for options?
All that business about climate change is a big hoax.
You know it's not true because so many scientists say it's so.
See, whenever there's a "consensus," it means real science isn't being done, because real science consists in dissenting from what the majority of other scientists believe. If there weren't a consensus, then you'd have to be worried about AGW.
As for drilling. Trust us. We know what we're doing.
Jeremiah| 6.7.10 @ 12:44AM
Too bad Obama and his hacks didn't do their REAL job and inspect your shoddy operations--Palin did!
Big Government is even worse than Big Business--at least Big Business never slaughtered millions of people in concentration camps and slave labor camps.
Yosemeti Sam| 6.5.10 @ 11:15PM
" ... The standard has also done nothing to turn students against the consensus view of man-made global warming, according to educators...."
Ha,ha - and these same astute minds are gonna pay off the trillions and trillions of future debt
with fairy quarters from teeth they lose?
Mike M| 6.5.10 @ 11:39PM
Hold on... wasn't it Houston that was invaded with New Orleans residents after Katrina.
I can't speak for the rest of Texas, But the ignorance in Houston is easy to explain!
mike licavoli| 6.7.10 @ 8:37AM
Why do we need a class in climate change? Seems like we are looking for ways to shoot ourselves in the foot.