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Global Warming Only a Theory, Says School Board
BendingSpoons writes "A Seattle school board has placed a moratorium on screenings of 'An Inconvenient Truth', having found its subject matter too controversial. Echoing the language of the evolution debate, the school board found that students must be told that global warming is only a theory and presented with an opposing viewpoint. The ban was prompted by the complaints of a parent: '"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."'"
...the /. crowd all cry out at this horrific violation of free speech and the rising power of "the religious nutjobs".
Setting aside the multiple times that the "Inconvenient Truth" has been revealed to be Junk Science (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/), why is it so objectionable that something be presented with contrasting viewpoints?
(Setting aside my suspicions that most of these same people wouldn't see anything wrong with showing Fahrenheit 9/11 as 'factual' either...)
And yes, the fanatics will immediately reply that "oh, then you're going to have to allow Flat-Earthers to present 'contrary viewpoints' about the Earth being round and all sorts of other stupid theories!" Well, no. There is no real debate about the earth being round. And the only way that you could possibly imagine there ISN'T a debate on global warming is if you are able to wave your hand and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as simply staggeringly incompetent.
Oh wait, that's how eco-nuts DO work.
-Styopa
Intellectuals are known to be the easiest people to hypnotise. A hypnotists greatest asset is an authoritarian manner because people are conditioned to suspend their own critical factors and take suggestions from authority figures. Wide spread belief in anthropogenic global warming is a good example of hypnosis among educated people. An uneducated farmer would not be fooled by Al Gore (who is obviously demented) but a lot of egg heads will be. Ice ages have ended have they not? Was there pollution at the time? It's clear we have been in a warming trend in some areas. To think people created it and can reverse it is ego psychosis.
... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."
With reagrds to the article, it's plain to see the author wanted to portray all the dissenters as rubes and a lot of people here fell into it as if that was the whole story.
Bill Gray has things right in this paragraph:
"The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.
Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.
"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."
Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.
"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change.
Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?
"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."
http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807
Snap out of it!
Religion, ruining the world, one idiot at a time.