NOTE THE ACTION ITEM FOR TODAY AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE.
On Wednesday Jan. 14, global warming activists will try to excise balance from West Virginia’s the K-12 climate science curriculum.
But the debate over global warming science is not settled — for example, everyone agrees that the climate models have been wrong.
The models’ failure shows that precisely how increasing CO2 may or may not impact the climate is unknown.
Scientists are still working on trying to explain the pause in global temperatures for the past 18+ years. There are some 52 explanations for the 18-year long pause that have been offered by climate scientists.
No prediction (e.g., extreme weather or global temperature change) by advocates of climate gloom-and-doom has yet come to fruition.
So the science is, obviously, very much open.
Because the science is open, it is wrong to teach children that the science is settled or that debate is over.
In any event, the field of science is not about received wisdom. Science is a process for studying our natural world. It is not about being compelled to learn politically correct dogma.
Children should be thought to think, analyze and reason. Children should be taught to question and debate. These are the hallmarks of science. Here are five hallmarks of non-science:
- Galileo was punished by the Inquisition for not accepting the received wisdom that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
- One-sided teaching of science happened in the Soviet Union — it was called Lysenkoism.
- The Nazis only taught German physics, rejecting the so called “Jewish physics” of Einstein.
- Premature closure of scientific inquiry led to the embarrassing Supreme Court-embraced consensus on eugenics in the early 20th century.
- The 45 million deaths that occurred during the Mao’s Great Leap Forward resulted in part from central planners being condemned to think dogmatically as opposed to scientifically.
Science is not about politically contrived consensus. It is the unending search for the truth about the natural world.
The notion that children can only be instructed in one side of the global warming controversy is a form of ideological child abuse.
Children should be taught HOW to think, not WHAT to think.
ACTION ITEM: Please e-mail your support for balance in the West Virgina climate science K-12 curriculum to Virginia Harris (vharris@k12.wv.us). E-MAILS MUST BE SENT BY 9AM, Jan. 14, 2015.
My home state is the most beautiful of all “57”. My fear is that the history, since Roosevelt, of “high taxes and low spending” had depleted her working class and mentality. I wish you well, but don’t count upon a lot of solid thought in the West Virginia educational system.
Agree that science is about facts not opinions.
When 3 coincidences of the Earth’s orbit occur mankind if we’re still here will be praying for global warming!
How do we measure mankind’s miniscule CO2 output against natures in comparison brobdingnagian amount?
We had some seasonal snow today in UK.
Anyway my vote would be to put all CO2 AGW monies away from PhDs towards Near Earth Object detection and plastic pollution clearance.
Every few years, scientists make new discoveries about dinosaurs, early mankind, old civilizations, and the like.
Should we tell them to stop so we don’t have to change our science courses? That is what the global warming crowd wants – to end scientific enquiry.
A scientist and an educator would require constant evaluation of facts and use of reason. This is something else entirely and it is extremely threatening that so-called educators – supposedly scientific educators no less – would even conceive it.