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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."'"
Federal Way is almost 26 miles south of Seattle, and the only thing in common both cities have is that they both share the same county. It's like saying San Jose is San Francisco, because they both have "San" in their names.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
On the other hand, apart from your post I also agree with Richard Dawkins' line of thought that moderate christians are those that allow fundamentalist to exist by supplying the ideological background.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
http://politeindian.wordpress.com/2006/10/03/is-is lam-violent/ ... ...
Well, there are 6236 verses in Quran and according to one website there are 337 verses with violent passages. The article has an excellent comparision of the violent passges in both bible and quran. Bible has 853 violent passages. Now does that make it more violent than Quran? If you do a percentage comparison then Bible has 2.74% violent passages and Quran has 5.4%.
Christianity
"When your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying 'Let us go and serve other gods,' . . . you shall kill him, your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God. . . " (Deuteronomy 13: 6-10)
My personal favorite... (first read when I did a paper on organized religion back in college)
"Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But spare for yourselves all virgin maidens" (Numbers 31:17-18).
Islam
"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war; but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and pay Zakat, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft- forgiving, Most Merciful." (Surah 9:5)
Sura (8:12) - I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them
Judism
Jews are Divine, Sanhedrin 58b. If a heathen (Gentile) hits a Jew, the Gentile must be killed. Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God.
Jews May Lie to Non-Jews, Baba Kamma 113a. Jews may use lies ("subterfuges") to circumvent a Gentile. (Islam has this too- as far as I know Christianity doesn't so you can trust them a bit more at their word).
(There is some distinction between the talmud and the torah that I miss here tho).
It goes on for many other religions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The word you are looking for is Hypothesis. That's when it's well reasoned but not thoroughly analyzed. Lower than that you have hunches and guesses. Where it just seems like it could make sense but you haven't worked out the details yet. Above Ordinary theories are "Natural Laws". Those are the theories that have been analyzed to death and tested extensively and still hold up. Newton's Law of Gravity is such a theory.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
The fact that the parent is modded "Funny" gives me kind of an uneasy feeling, as it is closer to the truth than you'd think. For example, in some countries (I know Sweden is one) kids are given comprehensive sex education, unlike the US. They receive much less biased and much more complete information on things like condoms, STDs, and all the other info young adults need in order to make informed, safe choices about sex. They also start sex ed much earlier, I believe at 7 or 8 years old.
Since most Slashdotters are US'ian, compare this with the mandatory public-school "sex" "education" classes you took. Then compare statistics like "teen pregnancy" and "age that kids start having sex". In countries with comprehensive sex education, there is less teen pregnancy, and kids start having sex later[1].
[1] "The Naked Truth About Sex", Dr. Roger W. Libby (2006)
Global warming is a lot weaker than the examples you cited though, because we have can't repeat a lab experiment that involves earth, there's no controlled environment, no control group. Models are made based on historic data that may or may not be representative for future data. There's been plenty examples of formulas that have closely followed a system for a shorter time, but turns out to be spurious, or limited in some way.
One of the key questions should be whether we're actually damaging the planet - or if we're just temporarily throwing the curve a little of, mostly creating problems for ourselves. I mean, we know there's been ice ages and warm periods before, are we just doing in a century what'd normally take a few thousand years or are we fundamentally screwing with Earth's ecosystem and risk breaking the whole thing?
Take a look at the 500mio year perspective
Then the closer picture 65mio year perspective
Then the closer picture 5mio year perspective
Then the closer picture 450k year perspective
Then the closer picture 12k year perspective
Then the closer picture 2000 year perspective
Then the closer picture 150 year perspective
Yes, if you look at the last graph it looks like it's going up, up and away. In fact, as far back as the last ice age it'll seem that way. Then you start looking at the big picture - earth has been getting colder on the 450k graph, the 5mio graph, the 65mio graph and the 500mio graph. Earth was much warmer than it's likely to be even with global warming about 120000 years ago. And historicly, earth has been a much warmer place than that again. Yes, I'm sure we'll create a big fuzz over global warming, but I don't see it showing up as more than a blip in the ecosystem.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Due to the volume of interest in this matter I am using auto-reply to get
you the quickest reply possible because your concerns about what we did
are important. I write this intending to express my own views and not the
views of other board members. I will not be replying to your replies.
Some of the media has not reported this matter accurately and I wanted to
make sure the issues and our decision were clear to you. Feel free to
share this with others who are concerned.
1. We did not make the decision based upon Mr. Hardison's religious or
other beliefs. The decision was made because a teacher was going to show
the movie and it did not appear she was following policy. It turned out
that she was not following policy. There was also an offer last week by
the proponents of the movie to give 50,000 copies to teachers across the
country to use as curriculum, which would have increased the chance that
the movie would be used. There was more than one complaint/concern
expressed about this issue based upon that alone.
2. We did not ban or censor the movie and have no intent to do so.
Teachers can use it as they see fit if they follow policy on movies and
controversial issues, but because there was some misunderstanding on the
policy we asked that the Superintendent be involved in making sure policy
was being followed. One of our high schools has already used the movie.
The students were asked to take a side, research the issues, and then
debate the issues from that standpoint. What they did goes above and
beyond the policy in my opinion.
3. We are not banning the teaching of global warming.
4. The debate on global warming is crucial to society and limiting the
debate to only one side's view of the facts and science would not be good
for anyone even if they believe the debate is over.
5. Our policies are designed to make sure that the door is open for more
debate on issues, not less, but it does not mean as some allege that any
wacko theory can be taught in our schools.
6. The decision was made upon existing policy. It was not based on
anyone's direct belief regarding politics, science, religion, or when the
earth was formed or when it will end.
7. Policy 2331 and 2331P is intended to prevent one-sided views of
controversial issues.
8. There was more than one complaint/concern expressed about this issue.
9. The policy should be equally enforced regardless of what side of the
spectrum any controversial issue falls upon. This protects the integrity
of the education process. We would have made the same decision if the
movie was about the Iraq war or some other issue and was narrated by
George W. Bush or some other partisan, even if the proponents felt the
debate was over on the topic they were presenting.
10. Using a partisan to present issues affecting contested public policy
matters makes it controversial per se. The media attention to our
decision is also evidence of the controversial nature of this film.
11. Science and politics have been merged on this issue by persons beyond
our control. The political aspect of this is what makes it the most
controversial, especially when a political partisan makes the
presentation. With that in mind, there are many other ways to teach
global warming instead of using a feature film by a political partisan
(see links below from NOAA and NASA that have references to skeptics), but
despite that we did not vote to "ban" the movie even though we could have.
We also had the power to compel specific sources be used instead of the
movie and did not do that either. Some have raised the issue of us not
watching the movie first, but we did not ban the movie or that would have
been crucial. We did feel it was controversial based upon the above
reasons which is all we needed to know based upon our policy.
12. On the issue of how final the debate is, Galileo and other out of the
box thinkers com
"I love deadlines. I love the "whooshing" sound they make as they pass by." - Douglas Adams.
No scientist was predicting "freezing to death", nor were any peer-reviewed journals publishing articles to this effect. The "1970's prediction of an iceage" myth is based on two media articles by National Geographic and Newsweek where the journalists got their science wrong (more so in Newsweek.)
a better explination is here
This is myth is keept alive by the likes of George Will (a fairly respectable conservative on most other topics) and that "expert" Michael Crichton. The only thing close was the discovery in the 1970's of teperature variations with a periodicity of 20000 years. Well below the time scale of anthropogenic warming (on order of decades to 100s of years.)
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
Either (1) They stopped looking after 1000 years, which is bad science in a billion-year cyclic environment, or (2) 1000 years ago, it was hotter. That's a simplistic assessment. First, due to fluctuations in temperature, there can be years which are unusually hot, but what is more important is what the climate trend is doing. Second, of course there are periods of time in the Earth's past that were hotter than it is today — try the Cretaceous. But it didn't get that way all of a sudden — that's why it's more relevant to compare the climate today to what the climate was doing relatively recently, not to what it was doing at some random time in the past. The issue with global warming is that there is a unprecedentedly sudden and high rate of warming which coincides in both timing and magnitude with industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. That warming is not because some billion-year cycle just happened to be due right now, and in fact the paleoclimate record does not imply that we are in for natural climate change that looks anything like what's happening now. Finally, noone seems to really pay attention to the impact of ocean currents on atmospheric heat... they all seem to think that atmosphere is the only factor. You are joking, right? There is a huge industry of oceanic climatologists. Ever hear of an "atmosphere-ocean general circulation model" (AOGCM)? Namely... the impact of the Atlantic Conveyor on atmospheric heat, and the impact of freshwater on the Atlantic Conveyor. Uh... that is a huge industry in climatology too. See the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. A shutdown of the Atlantic Conveyor is thought to be responsible for the last ice age (the Younger Dryas. You may also recall a (greatly exaggerated) movie on the topic a few years back: "The Day After Tomorrow".