The National Research Council issued a report this week establishing K-12 education endpoints for climate change.
The endpoints are:
By the end of grade 2. Intentionally left blank.
By the end of grade 5. If Earth’s global mean temperature continues to rise, the lives of humans and other organisms will be affected in many different ways.
By the end of grade 8. Human activities, such as the release of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in global warming. Reducing the level of climate change and reducing human vulnerability to whatever climate changes do occur depend on the understanding of climate science, engineering capabilities, and other kinds of knowledge, such as understanding of human behavior and on applying that knowledge wisely in decisions and activities.
By the end of grade 12. Because global climate changes usually happen too slowly for individuals to recognize them directly, scientific and engineering research—much of it based on studying and modeling past climate patterns—is essential. The current situation is novel, not only because the magnitudes of humans’ impacts are significant on a global scale but also because humans’ abilities to model, predict, and manage future impacts are greater than ever before. Through computer simulations and other studies, important discoveries are still being made about how the ocean, the atmosphere, and the biosphere interact and are modified in response to human activities, as well as to changes in human activities. Thus science and
engineering will be essential both to understanding the possible impacts of global climate change and to informing decisions about how to slow its rate and consequences—for humanity as well as for the rest of the planet.
The curriculum is great through Grade 2 (i.e., no alarmist brainwashing), but after that students will be required to embrace the entirely bogus concept of “mean global temperature” — a metric of something that does not exist. By 8th grade, students will learn something that has yet to be demonstrated — i.e., that human GHG emissions matter.
By 12th grade, students must abandon science, which is observation-based, and embrace climate modeling — which, to date,has been 100% wrong. High school seniors will also graduate knowing that the quest is on for the new Holy Grail — a global thermostat.
What students ought to be taught, however, is the process of science — the acme of the Enlightenment. Dogma memorization will be the pathway back to the Dark Ages.
We have one thing going for us (other than the truth). Lilberals have been in charge of education now for over 50 years, and yet some of us manage to escape relatively unscathed. That is a testament to the failure of liberal education. Do you really think they are going to get any better even with a new dogma to teach?
We are having problems with today’s young people mastering the foundations backing science–mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology. Now we occupy their time with propaganda from the climate alarmist community. What is more important–the Periodic Table or Climate Modeling? This direction is very harmful for the country. The National Research Council and other National Academies should be paddled for this behavior. James H. Rust
Like a five year old playing with a loaded handgun, so is “science” in the hands of the political ideologue.
“The mission of the National Research Council is to improve government decision making and public policy, …”
In this case, research is not about the truth, but about finding a way to make government happen. Science does not exist to support government programs. As that distinction is lost, so is science.