Fighting Climate Disinformation in the Classroom
Denver, Colorado
Last night, our neighborhood association held a forum featuring the two candidates for southeast Denver for the school board. Since I’m the association president (I was “drafted” – no one else wanted the job), I had to go to the meeting anyway. My partner, Judy, didn’t want to go. “I don’t have kids, so why should I care who is on the school board?” she reasoned. I understand that line of thinking and until recently I figured that school boards were an issue for parents and grandparents of school age children to worry about but not me.
Lately, I’ve changed my mind after learning that people with extremist political, social, and religious views have been getting elected to school boards around the country. They and their supporters’ objective is to control what is being taught in schools making sure that it conforms to their ideologies. They hope to shape the thinking of school kids on a variety of issues with troubling implications for rational thinking by future generations of the voting public. One of their “pet” issues is climate change. They want to sow seeds of doubt about this crisis and its causes.
For example, state legislatures in Florida and Oklahoma have given the green light to school boards to use videos produced by PragerU as part of the school curriculums. These include a video dismissing the climate catastrophe implying:
- Drought is not an
issue because overall volume of rainfall across the planet hasn’t changed. That may be true but it ignores the fact that
some areas have been suffering from increases in rainfall and more intense
storms causing flooding while others have become parched from decreased precipitation.
- There are fewer
deaths due to natural disasters than in the past because of improved disaster
response, communications, etc. Yes, but
in the future these gains will be offset by the increasing number of
climate-related disasters which will overwhelm emergency response systems.
- Sea ice around
Antarctica has increased slightly in recent years. OK, but the dramatic reductions in Arctic sea
ice have more than offset any gains at the “bottom” of the globe.
So what is PragerU? It was founded in 2009 by a group led by Dennis Prager, a radio talk-show host, and was originally funded by two oil and gas billionaires, Dan and Farris Wilks. PragerU was originally envisioned as an actually university but, to save money, they took the idea on line and now specialize in professional-looking videos full of oversimplification and misinformation like the examples I cited above. Their stuff is such B.S. that it’s been censored by YouTube prompting a law suit claiming that the organization’s freedom of speech has been violated. In 2022, 100,000 donors gave $65 million in donations to enable PragerU to keep churning out its nonsense. There are articles about PragerU at: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-prageru-missing-context-cli/fact-check-video-presents-climate-change-statements-that-lack-key-context-idUSKBN2712EY and https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/09/05/what-is-prageru-controversial-conservative-platform-entering-classrooms-in-florida-and-oklahoma/?sh=5f35eef82921
Then there is the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based “think tank” that reinforces what “climate-deniers” want to believe. A few years ago, they sent out a packet on climate change to every science teacher in America. In included a book titled, Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming (actually 97% of climate scientists agree that the present climate catastrophe has been caused by human activities – many of the 3% who don’t agree are funded by the oil and gas industry). Also included was a video called “Unstoppable Solar Cycles” claiming without evidence that the climate is changing because of solar cycles.
If you want to learn more about the disinformation campaign to spread belief in pseudo-science regarding climate change in schools, there is a 2022 book, Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America by Katie Worth, a former investigative journalist at PBS’s “Frontline”. There is an interview with Ms. Worth at: https://19thnews.org/2022/01/climate-change-education-schools/
What can YOU do to
ensure that the anti-science forces are not poisoning the minds of our young
people?
- Make sure you know who
is running for your school board and their positions on teaching accurate
science and VOTE!
- Vigorously protest
any attempts to introduce anti-science propaganda into your school’s
curriculum.
The author and paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, said:
Fundamentalism
is rigorously and systematically used to indoctrinate and subjugate young
minds. It is a contraceptive designed to prevent intellectual fertilization.
Unless and until the anti-fossil fuel extremists accept the environmental damage caused by Lithium mining, the bird and whale deaths caused by wind turbines, the visual pollution caused by power pylons, and most importantly, the security risks posed to the USA (and Europe) through being dependent on Chinese or Russian sources of fuel, their extremist demands will never gain acceptance by the fully educated members of the community.
ReplyDeleteHaving been to Antarctica to witness personally the INCREASE in ice (which you admit), the purpose of such research is not to deny global warming but to exemplify that it is NOT caused by CO2. Please research the Vostok Ice Cores to see evidence that CO2 is a lagging indicator.
Extreme weather events are being used by eco-nazis to gain control of the population....the destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest should concern them way more than any other issue.
Phil
Denver area
Will,
DeleteClimate change is a crisis depending on what time frames are used. Dramatic changes over a few hundred years may seem drastic, but earth climate is a long-term affair. What is the “science?”
The geological science looks at longer terms, say the last 540 million years or so. Our best estimates of prior conditions, according to recent summaries (Torsvik, Trond H. and Cocks, Robin M, 2017, Earth History and Palaeogeography, Cambridge University Press) indicate:
1. We are living in an unusually cold period in Earh history, starting around 40 MY ago and peaking since about 2.7 MY. The only comparable periods to the present were in the Permian-Carboniferous (280-330 MY) and Late Ordovician (450-460 MY). For the last 2.7 MY, we have experienced up to 17 episodic glacier-producing epochs. It is likely that the current interglacial epoch will be succeeded by another cold period. Contrary to common belief, glaciation and, especially, polar ice caps are uncommon and generally restricted to the episodic cold periods noted.
2. For most of the last half billion years, the “generally accepted science” (which, the farther back we go, is largely based on modeling) suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been generally higher, occasionally much higher (15 to 20 times or more current levels), which correlates well with the temperature history. Compared to the last glacial maximum at 20,000 years BP (approximately 250 ppm CO2) current levels (about 400 ppm) seem very high. Compared to estimated levels at around 55 MY (around 1,000 ppm), not so much. During much of the Paleozoic Era, CO2 levels may have exceeded 3,000 ppm. And the earth was certainly warmer.
3. Sea levels have been rising as the Earth has exited the last glacial maximum, long before anthropogenic effects. In the past 10,000-15,000 years, global sea level appears to have risen something like 180 meters (almost 600 feet). It is not hard to assume some continuing level of rise as we continue exiting the glacial epoch. What is not commonly understood is that we are living in an era of extremely low global sea levels. With the exception of the continental ice sheet-caused recent drop, global sea levels have not been this low since the early Triassic Period (245 MY). Over much of the last half billion years, global sea levels have been 100-200 meters higher than present.
Is the climate changing? Of course. Climate, and everything else, is constantly changing. Change is the nature of the universe. Whether it is a catastrophe is a matter of opinion.
Advocatus Diabolus
Interesting blog! Fake news and propaganda are very relevant to climate change. I subscribe to the Guardian, and thought this article is relevant to the topic: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/human-rights-experts-warn-against-european-crackdown-on-climate-protesters
ReplyDeleteClimate protest is being outlawed, particularly in Britain. There aren't enough prison cells in Britain for all the protestors, but they'll make room for eco-terrorists if they set a few rapists and murderers free! The oil lobby is very busy putting pressure on politicians.
Hugh
Dublin, Ireland