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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."'"
I just want to say sorry from all us normal Christians.
You are all a bunch of idots.
But what do other opposing sources say?
The Koran?
Hindu beliefs?
Various Native (North and South) American legends?
Buddhist Teachings?
If you are going to provide one opposing viewpoint, you better be ready to provide many others as well.
This space unintentionally left blank.
In other words ...
We have records that prove the climate is warming up, the debate is weather (sic) climate change is due to environmental pollution or just part of some natural cycle.
No I didn't RTFA and don't care if it was just the submitter being a dork.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I'm getting disgusted with these people whose minds are so narrow that they are oblivious to the world around them. I am a Christian myself and people making comments like the ones in the article only make all of us look ridiculous.
Hard Hat Area: Sig Construction Zone
Kids are often surprisingly smart, if you just tell them the real deal. A critical missing element of public education is teaching kids to adjudicate competing claims. This topic is a wonderful opportunity to teach science, civics, critical thinking, and world religions in a single issue, without being dry.
It would be a shame for us to simply demand that the school board decide that global warming is the truth, and miss a great teaching opportunity. I hope we don't do that.
I could be wrong here, but it seems like the problem is not with global warming, but AlGore's movie and the theories as to what is causing global warming. I know that it is currently vogue to point out how stupid people are that disagree with the current group-think, but that's not what is going on here. Parents complained because their kids were forced to watch AlGore's movie and 100% of it was presented as fact. Man may be causing global warming, he may not. People much smarter than any of us argue both sides of that debate. It is conceited to think that just because something is happening, it must be our doing. Man didn't cause the global warming that ended the last ice-age, it's possible we have nothing or little to do with it this time around.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I can just smell it--the thread is about to turn into a big old "let's bash the religious right" flamefest. Been there, done that. Let's move on. The aptly-named global warming denier, Frosty Hardison, may be ridiculous, but that doesn't mean this isn't a great opportunity to teach kids about how science.
Consider--the school board says kids must be presented with both sides. Great--this is how science works. Global warming is probably the most controversial scientific subject today, so let's show kids the research on both sides, the rebuttals, the propaganda, etc. Turn it into the theme for an entire school year. In English, have them read and write reports on a few peer-reviewed global warming research papers or books about global warming. Analyze the rhetoric and the logic. In math, teach them how to interpret graphs using examples from those research papers. In physics, teach them about blackbody radiation, thermodynamics, and everything else you need to understand the basic principles of the greenhouse effect. In biology, cover photosynthesis and the carbon cycle.
Do everything right and the kids will not only get a much, much better picture of what's happening with global warming, they'll also understand the scientific method and learn how to spot junk science. Maybe the parents will even learn something from their kids.
I cringe every time I hear "global warming". It has become a political code word rather than something that conveys scientific meaning or even any meaning at all.
1) We need to distinguish between long term climate change and short term climate change.
2) We need to distinguish between human-causes and natural causes.
3) Skeptics must be heard and not shouted down and ridiculed.
It is almost as though "global warming" has been voted into existence. I feel we need more info on theories on how solar output might change over time (chaotic in some ways, but maybe predicatble in other ways). We need more info on why the mini ice age happened. We need more info on where we are in terms of coming out of the "big" ice age. We need to be careful to distinguish direct temperature measurements of the last 125 years versus indirect measurements.
Finally, we need every news story about climate, weather, geography, evolution, extinction, and health to have some shifty-eyed reference to "global warming". Predictions about "this will be the warmest..." have happened since 2002. Most wrong. Remember the hurricane predictions for 2006? Nope, even those prediction which were "linked to global warming" were dismissed due the "effects of global warming." This stuff is in the news almost every day.
I feel that there is a real possibility that in 100 years, humanity may look back at this topic as something even more group-think than the typical "tulip bulb" group-think that happened on a much smaller scale years ago. The earth is getting warmer because we are leaving both a mini and a big ice age. I learned that in freakin' catholic school in the 1970's when Time magainze heralded the coming new ice age again and again.
I am certainly an environmentalist. I practice what I preach. But, I'm so disappointed at how the "global warming" thing has been completely misappropriated. Both sides of the political spectrum need to be ashamed at how science is twisted to make their case.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
If you RTFA you'll notice that teachers are still free to use the movie in their classes, all they need to do is present an opposing viewpoint. That is consistent with the school's position on all controversial topics, and yes, global warming (and especially its causes) is controversial.
If the theory behind global warming is so strong, then surely it will hold up under debate and scrutiny. Global warming advocates should welcome this opportunity to confront their skeptics head on.
Instead, they attempt to shout down and silence their critics (which seems to be a liberal trend). That doesn't strike me as being confident in your position.
I respect your religion -- and all religions -- but I am one of those people who loathes fundamentalism and bandies about terms like "religious nuts" and "religious fascists." It is not the "religious" side of the equation which I find loathesome, but the "nut" side of it.
Religion does not belong in politics. America fought a revolution to support the idea of brotherhood and equality between humans, and rid the world of archaic notions about some humans being more worthy than other humans, such as so-called "kings" (who, it must be remembered, were thought to derive their political power from divine power).
There is so much about Christianity (and other religions) which is patently un-American, including its references to this dude who died 2,000 years ago as some kind of currently existing "Prince" or a "Lord" or "King" to be "worshipped." Attributing divinity and specialness to certain humans but not others is a slippery path which desensitizes us to tyranny and allows for the hateful mullahs and popes and all the rest of the religious rabble who claim to speak from some special tyrannical authority from on high, instead of from persuasion and reason.
All that said, again, I respect yours or anyone's personal thoughts. If you want to bow down to a green tomato in your own house and predict that one day that green tomato will come flying through the heavens and rapturize people, so be it. But I hope you can understand that in a pluralistic world, many of us have very different faiths about how spirituality and creation and all the rest work, and the most sensible course of action seems to be to respect all faiths.
Take the Moslems and their "infidel" epithet, for example. Poll after poll consistently shows that 96% of the American people believe in God. You would think reasonable people could rejoice in the things they have in common (God) than always fighting over the minutae (whose prophet is the "right" one?)
Denying global warming because your religion makes you think, through faith instead of evidence, that the world is only 14,000 years old is like standing in front of a speeding car and daring it to hit you. The philosopher David Hume tried that with a horse, got clobbered, and realized that reality is actually, in fact, real, and it hurts! Reason is not at all incompatible with faith, but a supplantation of reason by faith is ludicrous and ultimately, evil and tyrannical, leading to concepts like, "Because I believe watching soccer on TV is un-Islamic, I'm going to kill you. Never mind what YOU believe."
It's easy enough for a non-Christian Deist like me (I love God - I hate religion) to denounce guys like this fellow in Washington State. But I really think it is incumbent on the religious who are not "nuts," as you characterize yourself, to do a better job at shouting him down. If the non-tyrannical Christians, Moslems, Jews etcetera don't start stepping up and putting the nut/fascist types of religious folk down, then all that we godly albeit non-religious folk will be able to conclude is that you stand with them, too. If the world needs anything returned or supplanted, it is the replacement of religious nuts by the "normal" religious. Is there such a thing any more, in 2006? Or are you all fascists?
They are? They sure aren't breeding me!
Oh, you meant outbreeding? Then say so, cause the space makes a whole lot of difference in meaning.
Anyhow, yes, you don't have to be smart to beget children. You only need a dick, a woman and three tries.
And I very rarely learn anything new on these threads, since I started reading RealClimate; and even the entertaining troll posts about not wanting to go back to living in caves, and anyway it's all a scam by the Chinese to destroy American industry have died back in the last year or so.
So how's the weather back there in the States? Pretty miserable in the NE this time of year, I bet.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Technically speaking they're 100% correct.
Scientists have taken historic and current data and combined it with mathematical tools to make projections of the climate and have theorized that we are undergoing long term man made climate change. Whether you believe the theory or not largely depends on whether you support the premises that the theory is based on.
We don't really have spare planets to test the theory out on so it can not be claimed that it is proven.
"only a theory"...
All science ever can be is "just" theories. Some moron will always say that something is "only" a theory and expect that means its probably wrong. Yes atomic theory is "just" a theory, therefore nuclear bombs don't exist. Medical knowledge is all just "guess'" about what people see, medicine must be the hand of god otherwise it wouldn't work. No reputable scientist will back up the last 2 claims but i used to same lines of logic that lead people to believe that global warming does not exist.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
The real implication of the mandate that Hardison got is that if the video is shown, the "opposing theory" that gets presented is his a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.
I think the Supreme Court has already made it clear that that kind of fundamentalist BS posing as "science" doesn't cut it. No, I think a good starting point for the "opposing theory" would be Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist . Show "An Inconvenient Truth", then make the kids read Lomborg's book. Randomly assign half the kids to the "pro" side and half to the "con" side, then have a debate or have them write reports or whatever.
No, no, not at all. Try to look at both sides of the argument. AFTER you have seen and carefully analyzed BOTH sides of this argument you will realize that the aren't equal at all. One is the result of extensive research done by impartial scientists. The other side is a political argument artificially created by the order of a president whose family fortune happens to come from companies exploring fossil fuels.
The parent may not be a teacher, but the parent is still the parent and has a say in his/her child's education. Al Gore, in this matter, is nobody.
I don't think the person's religious beliefs are really an issue here. Global warming is happening, but why it is happening is what is under serious debate. The looney crowd shouting "they sky is falling" uses a scientific study that completely ignores long term historical trends. From what it looks like, the earth is in a NORMAL warming cycle and there's not a damn thing humans can do anything about it. What we should be doing is getting decent theories on the extent of the warming trend and taking measures if necessary, e.g. if crop growth is going to plummet, we need to stockpile food with long shelf-lifes to prevent world wide famine. MREs anyone?
Unfortunately, the "end of the world" crowd has decided that it's all man's fault and refuse to discuss/debate anything else except how much the U.S. (and only the U.S.) will destroy our own economy to save the world.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It's because we've stopped teaching Latin in schools.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
We didn't have the ability to gather up enough mass to see if gravity could bend light back in 1919 either, but we still managed to test Einstein's theory of general relativity.
You do not need to actively create an experiment to test a theory. All you need is to make a prediction of what will happen given a certain set of conditions. If the theory is valid, the prediction will be correct. In the case of global warming, the conditions are a marked change in atmospheric composition (mostly increased CO2) and the prediction is an overall increase in global temperatiure. Time will tell.
Regardless, I don't think global warming can be lab-tested and "proven" in a sense that you can prove most other theories. The real question here, though: Can we really afford to ignore the possability it may be right?
=Smidge=
You'd also have to regulate tuition, among other things. One of the main objections to the voucher programs that have been implemented is that if all the worthwhile private schools cost, say, $10,000 a year, a voucher for $3000 is essentially no more than a handout to rich families who can afford to make up the difference from their own pockets. Poor families would have no choice but to keep sending their kid to public school, but that school would be even worse than it was before, because all the rich kids took their funding with them to private school.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Hey, that's almost Pascal's Wager!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I own An Inconvenient Truth (the movie not the book). And I would like to say that although some people still consider the effects that are predicted by that movie to be "a theory," they are hard to disprove.
Dude, when you're arguing with someone that thinks the Earth is 14,000 years old, they're completely oblivious to anything called evidence. Your evidence is wrong, because the Holy Book says I'm right. QED. Then they'll throw in your basic FUD about the unenlightened mind, not seeing the truth and so you can quote scientific evidence by the metric ton, and it will not make any difference at all.
People can hear all the evidence they want, but without religion their life would be emptier. There's noone to watch over you, there's no higher purpose, there's no afterlife, humans are just a slightly more advanced animal, there's noone to pray to, there's noone to right injustices, noone to thank or beg for help - it's all rolls of a dice and you stand alone. Religion is adults' version of an imaginary friend.
Let me play along, and assume ex facto that there is a god (as in any, Jesus' dad, Allah, Jahve, Jehova etc.) That still means at least 2/3rd of the world's population are worshipping a false god (depending on who's right). Let's also assume he's very tolerant of other religions, none of that "you shall have no other gods before me" but clearly worshipping the wrong god shouldn't "work". Then how come every religion seems to "work" for their worshippers? Because they create it themselves, their imaginary friend. Either that, or you have those who claim they're all the same by which I can only conclude that god is schizophrenic, given the number of conflicting teachings.
I think all evidence suggest religious people are wrong, particularly when they try to contradict science like this. And even if one creation myth is right, most of them have to be wrong. However, clearly it is everyone else that is wrong...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I can't be certain, but somehow I doubt the bible says anything specific about vasectomies. Condoms probably don't get much play either though.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Can you name the scientists? Also do you have link to a study from respected peer review science journal(nature etc) that the sun is getting hotter?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Wrong, and your statement itself is ad hominem. Go read the definition, please. Example, from wikipedia:
"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") is a logical fallacy consisting of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."
Any time your retort's subject matter is your opponent in the debate, that is ad hominem.
Ahhh, but in this case, it wasn't the person that was being attacked. It was a filter that that person had chosen to apply to their perception with demonstrable effects on his ability to draw logical conclusions *in certain situations* which was being attacked.
His stated belief that the earth is 14,000 years old demonstrates this filter applied to his ability to deal with many sciences such as geology, paleontology, etc.
Therefore, his chosen belief system does have a bearing "on his own ability to objectively evaluate the evidence concerning global warming," as the OP said, since that evidence is science-based as well.
That's a perfectly valid argument.
How many people has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
How many Americans has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
Bush has stated that God has told him what to do. He'd be less dangerous and more Americans would be alive today if Mr. Chimp had just stuck to the cocaine and the booze.
There is consensus that the earth is getting warmer. Al Gore's theories about the cause do not meet with the same consensus. I am willing to keep an open mind to this issue but I would like to hear about potential remedies that will actually do something. IMO, Kyoto appears to have been designed more to damage the US economy that to do anything about the environment.
From the article... 'that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented,"'
Talking about a pocket banning... Is there such a thing as a credible, legitimate opposing view that has been peer reviewed in a scientific journal?
Good point. So is there a term or scale or something to quickly convey the soundness of a particular theory?
For example... how would one communicate to the maturity and support for two theories say giant impact theory which suggests that the moon was formed by a large body colliding with earth while it was still relatively young and the theory of gravity (which I hope we're all familiar with). Even theories about the causes of global warming are less proven and tested then the theory of gravity... and of course there are many theories that have been proven wrong or are still very immature and generally untested.
An Inconvenient Truth is politically charged propaganda. There are much more straightforward, less politically charged videos that use better science and fewer dishonest tactics. Teachers ought to be showing something like "Global Warming: What you need to know" with Tom Brokaw, which gets the point across without being deceptive, plus it spends a lot more time talking about practical solutions than Gore's movie. Additionally, Gore's movie is politically charged, so right wing students are going to ignore it just because of the (unnecessary) politics Gore put into the movie, and some left wing students are going to take it for gospel regardless of the science behind it. Brokaw's special is straightforward, unpolitical, and talks about a solution.
While we may not be entirely responsible and there may very well be natural forces causing the Earth's weather to act in a drunken manner, that does not mean we can not change it!
Doesn't this seem awfuly contradictory to you? If we're not causing "global warming" you're suggesting that we should attempt to change the natural process of the earth. What about all that jazz about humans fucking up the environment? If we're not causing global warming then we should try to cause global cooling? That seems like it would have a lot of unintended consequences.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I agree that we need to be better at pointing out that fundamentalists are still at the crude basics of the faith and often completely misunderstand important things. Having them as the figureheads of their religions is like having a kindergardener setup your college curriculum.
We are all just people.
Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old.
...
The fundamentalist Christians
The article's constant harping on the other beliefs of the person who filed the initial complaint is an attempt to use an ad-hominem to discredit all opposition to Gore's controversial position. That is a transparent piece of propaganda, and it saddens me to see so many Slashdot posters echoing it.
Though the first one to complain may have other beliefs with which you disagree, those beliefs are apparently not what drove the school board's decision.
Regardless of your opinion of the veracity of the several claims made in the film, it is clear that the film itself is a propaganda piece promoting one side of a partisan political argument - the side taken by the Democratic party and its spoksman on the issue: the losing candidate in a national election where the country was almost exactly split.
Hardison's complaint was that showing such a partisan piece in a public school (where attendance is mandatory), with no voice from any of the opposing views, constitutes propaganda and indoctrination. It gives the children who view it the impression that all the claims are settled fact - and he presents his own child's experience as evidence of this. Thus he claims it is not proper to present this in such a stand-alone manner in the public schools.
This issue, not his other beliefs, is what he presented, and what the school board ruled on.
Bringing up his other beliefs - and by implication attributing them to ALL who disagree with any of the films claims or its presentation in this manner - is itself another piece of partisan propaganda.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't think it's the fundamentalist christians who we need to worry about here. They are in a fairly small minority, and while they may be uninformed, their viewpoints rarely kill people, except for the occasional whackos who bomb abortionists or some such. For the most part they're calm, and the vast majority of them condemn those who do real harm to other people.
One of the problems facing the world however is that the smartest and most elite are reproducing the least. The poor and impoverished tend to have more children than the well educated. . . kind of reverse darwinism. The best and brightest of the world aren't having as many children as the rest. Western europe doesn't have a high enough birth rate to sustain itself currently, and has a shrinking native population. Western ideas are bringing about the downfall of much of the western culture.
On top of it you have one group of people in the world who have high birthrates, and poor education. Additionally many of their church leaders believe that it is alright to strap a bomb to yourself and blow up the heathens of the world. If you think fundamentalist christians are bad, take a look at the fundamentalist islamic groups out there. And they're expanding, just take a look at france, and the turmoil that already occurred in Paris. Do you really think this is an isolated occurrence? While the rest of the countries population is shrinking the Islamic population is growing, and many in the group have no interest in following the ideals and tolerance that the western world preaches. If you think that the christian fundamentalists are bad, you haven't seen anything. At least most of them have some education and sanity. Just watch when in 50 years the majority of the population of european countries is Muslim. Watch what open borders and tolerance of others does when people elected are no longer tolerant of the rest of the country. It could be quite the disaster, and possibly the collapse of western civilization.
I just find it amusing how people love attacking fundamentalist christians whose views are actually fairly moderate when compared to many other religious groups. It's all in perspective.
As I am currently in the Middle East as part of the US military, I could say that I am way past the point to be considered an adult, and after 20 years in the military, I know when someone is lying about intelligence and is using it to make a political point.
There is nothing at all wrong with showing political films in school so long as your students are not being indoctrinated via presenting the film as fact. I welcome discussion of global warming even though as of now I haven't been shown (though I admit to not having looked in detail for a while now) evidence that convinces me that global warming is and issue or that humans are the cause of it. The key (as with evolution vs creation) is teaching the children to be critical thinkers and giving them the skills to take information from various sources and weigh and measure it before synthesizing it into thier view of reality. If more people were capable of this many of the silly yet world shaking arguments would melt away.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
It does not have a 100% chance of coming true as presented by Al Gore et al (in my opinion, the probability is 95%). Therefore it is not fact, but a theory. So, if you had a 95% chance of dying from a poison you drank, wouldn't you refrain from the trouble of going to the hospital on the basis of the 5% chance that you'd be ok?
Be reasonable, people.
Newton's Law of Gravity
Funny you should mention that one, as it was eventually proven to be incorrect. That's was Einstein's claim to fame.
In other words, even the most rigously tested theories are still just theories.
Cheers.
Wrong
Science is not about making experiments, it's about making predictions.
It doesn't matter if the prediction is right about past or future events. What matters is that if the hypothethis correctly predicted the outcome, it gains credence.
So, he's against teaching kids about safe sex, and quite obviously doesn't use it himself. He's also obviously some kind of literalist Christian. I mean, no self-respecting science journal would EVER claim the Earth was 14,000 years old. We Humans have been around a lot longer than that (despite being no more than a mere blip on the time line of the Earth), and we have skeletal remains, carbon dating, sedimentary layers, etc. etc. etc. to back it up. Unless just about every form of archeology is ridiculously wrong in every conceivable way (or you go with that "God put that there to trick us" logic, which is a whole other can of worms), there is no way in Hell that can be right.
So, why is it that a man who is obviously not very well versed in the realms of science trying to have so much say in what takes place in a science class?
Are "fundamentalist" Christians really bigger morons then other Christians? Consider these standard beliefs that your average Christian considers foundational to their faith:
-- A man was born to a virgin
-- that man was the "son" of a (THE) god, but is simultaneously part of the god
-- that man had god-like powers
-- that man died in order that, through his own mutilation and murder, others might have the potential to extirpate their own ancestral shamefulness associated with disobedience to his father
-- that man's corpse came back to life
-- that man moved to another dimension where he was reunited with his god father
-- that man will visit us again, initiating the end of the world
-- the most important thing you can do is to believe in this man and his father
-- if you believe in this man and his father, and ask for help from him, he will hear you and change the world around you to assist you with your problems.
Hmmmm....
Yet this one "fundamentalist" is mocked for believing that the Earth is only 14,000 years old?
If we really want to teach something useful, it would be to stop treating religious belief as untouchable and worthy of special respect. The opposite is true.
> 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
but then so are we as a species. so maybe it's in our best interest to keep what you're calling the blip in a stable equilibrium unless you want us all to go extinct and wait till the next ice age to roll around for it to then get just warm enough for our survival to be possible again. i'm all for stabilizing the environment, if possible, regardless of weather or not it's part of some grand design that make the earth go through hot-flashes and chills cycle as if it were menopausal.
how about you?
Funny how their actions put the lie to the very concept that there's an all-seeing, all-knowing God ...
Wow... can you explain that one... it doesn't seem to follow that a persons mistakes or hypocrisy has anything to really do with the character of God. And then while you're happy to cite a few people who are either hypocrites or made mistakes you fail to mention the millions of Christians who treat their fellow men with love and respect, work for the poor and helpless, and give of their money and time.
If you don't like Christians just come out and say it... but don't go and sully logic with a weak ass argument like that.
Falsifiability is the measure of a sound theory.
But this probably needs to be looked at in the right context.
The point of a theory is to allow you to predict future results, based first on the current state of the universe, and future actions.
Falsifiability is what makes a sound theory; what this means is that you can predict something using it, and then measure the results of an experiment based on that prediction, and decide categorically, based on the outcome of the experiment, whether the theory is true or false. If it's false, then it's no longer a theory, and we throw it away -- or, if it still gives useful approximations, like Newtonian mechanisc, then we keep it around, but constrain the circumstances in which it should be used as a tool.
Any theory that's not falsifiable is not a theory - it's a hypothesis at best, and at worst, it's a conjecture.
So, for example, creationism isn't a sound theory, and it's not even a reasonable hypothesis, since it's not falsifiable. To falsify it, you would have to be able to come up with a repeatable laboratory experiment that could prove, one way or the other, whether or not there is a creator. Since the conjecture that there's a creator is a tautology, it's impossible to do this. So the next best thing is Occam's Razor, which, to paraphrase into plain English, states that "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one".
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Global warming, at this point, is a theory (based on observation, without contradiction), but it's not a very good one. It's falsifiable, but not in our lifetimes, and not under laboratory conditions.
Human activity being the root cause of the currently observed global warming is, at this point, a hypothesis.
And the movies idea of what will happen if human activity continues in the current direction is merely conjecture.
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So to get back to your question: the more ways, and the easier, and the more controlled the conditions under which you can falsify a theory, the higher the quality of the theory.
As to soundness of a particular thory, the more ways that can (and have been attempted to) falsify it, and failed to do so, the more sound the theory.
-- Terry
Excellent. Now the question is why these so called educators feel that a hypothesis isn't worth discussing on its own. If the opposing "theory" or "hypothesis" is creationism and they want equal time for it, then maybe they should move their kids to a private (religious) school. I can't think of any objective observations made by any scientists that would support creationism as a possible theory or hypothesis explaining the world as we know it.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
I can't think of any objective observations made by any scientists that would support creationism as a possible theory or hypothesis explaining the world as we know it.
I can't think of any scientific theories that explain why there is something and not nothing... science is limited in the scope of what it can test and prove. Philosophy takes over the rest.
That said... the discussion is about global warming, and the ridiculed man from the article makes a valid point that opposing evidence should be presented, particularly for controversial issues that have weak/young theories where there is contradicting scientific evidence and/or theories. His recommendation to present evidence from the Bible in this case isn't a good one, the theological issues alone would question whether prophecies about the end of the world should be applied to this subject... and there is plenty of scientific evidence worth discussing anyway, no need to try and integrate to different disciplines on this one.
Ok, I'll bite. You have at least are registered, not some AC.
Let me dissect your post a little, and vary between philosophy and science...
'But Global warming is far from fact...'
Let me first define 'Global warming' : global warming is a theory, supported by the majority of the scientific community.
Central to the theory are the following observations:
- Ice caps and glaciers are becoming smaller.
- The Tree-line is creeping north and upwards.
- The perma frost line is going north.
- The artic and antartic ice-caps are getting smaller
- The Sahel (region below the Sahara) is getting dryer (average annual rain fall).
- year over year averages of weather stations show an increase in average temperature (since 1830).
- year over year averages of sea-water temperature are going up.
The theory explains these observations as the result of human activity. Specifically the increase in CO2 and Methane which have been identified as so called 'greenhouse' gasses.
So back to 'But Global warming is far from fact.' What is your statement here, do you deny the observations or do you deny the proposed theory?
Let me assume that you deny the link between CO2 and other greenhouse gasses as causes of increasing temperatures. Would you be so kind as to propose an alternative theory that explains these phenomenon? Please use of Occam's razor.
The 'war on drugs' and 'war of terror' are artifacts of American policies, they only live in the US (but with devastating global effects). Global warming is supported by a much larger group of countries world wide, a group which went as far to sign and ratify the Kyoto treaty.
'They are a creation by some entity to gain power and take money.'... please be specific, who would benefit and why?
'There are a lot of specious claims about what the truth is, but no one knows for sure.' True, such is the nature of debate. But human discourse is a way to contrast such opposing view points, investigate their supporting evidence and move to a new level in rational discourse. It is called learning. "Eppure si muove," (Galileo)
'There are more than a few studies that endorse global warming. There are just as many (though not as well publicized or funded) that dispute it.'
There are many studies that report on observations supporting an increase in temperature, CO2 concentration, greenhouse gas increase or albedo reduction. There are also many studies that link these observations together into a comprehensive theory named 'Global warming'. There are not many studies that dispute these observations, there are not many studies that dispute the trends presented. There are a few studies that present alternatives to the CO2/Greenhouse gas model of Global warming. Where many studies differ is in their predictions on how bad the situation is, in other words some believe we have already crossed the threshold, others believe it will take many years. None of these latter studies advocate doing nothing.
'There is no proof, but let's pretend.' Here you are plain wrong... go visit a glacier. The debate is NOT on the rising temperature, the debate is if this is a cyclical pattern in the earth's long term climate and what role humanity has.
etc...
'there is evidence to support his position.' Cherry picking goes two ways, you are accusing the leading scientific establishment of cherry picking their way into global warming. Crichton is cherry picking his way as a critic...
Having been to the Columbia ice-fields, Glacier national park, and some more glaciers around the world, I can tell you for a fact. They are retreating. Whatever is heating up the earth is doing so fast and it will have consequences for humanity.
Now I believe that the observations I mentioned above are most comprehensively explained by the theory of global warming that links the concentration of CO2 and Greenhouse gasses to the average temperature of the planet. I also believe that human activity is a major producer of
Its simple - if they REALLY believed that God knows, and that punishment is certain, they wouldn't be doing the crap they do. Same as if yu really believe someone is going to pull the trigger on that loaded gun pointed at your head if you eat that twinkie, you'll ignore your craving for junk food.
BTW, as for those "millions of christians doing good" - if someone is doing something good because they're trying to please their god, their actions are worthless, according to the bible.
If people want to believe in a harmless superstition, that's fine - however, christianity is no longer harmless (if it ever was). Using it as a shield to ignore global warming is the halmark of ignorance by assholes who are engaging in wilful "don't-want-to-know", because, like the fat person with the twinkie, they'd have to modify their behaviour, and they're too full of themselves to consider that they might be wrong, that they may have to take some personal responsibility for what is going on in the world by cutting back on fossil fuels, and that god isn't going to pull their fat out of the fire if "that global warmin' thang really does happen."
Even if the weather is abnormally stable for the past centuries, it's not very clever to play with the curve before understanding the system more thoroughly.
We can always look at Venus to get reminded how a runaway greenhouse effect ends.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Why should we view Christianity this way? All the evidence points to the opposite - that it's a massively organized big business based largely on telling people how they should act. Just because it's a personal relationship for you, doesn't change the reality of what Christianity is today.
In fact, rather then keeping the Jesus relationship personal and private, you came here to tell us how we should think about Christianity. Doesn't that directly contradict what you said about it being a personal relationship? Why would you care what we think of Christianity if it's such a personal thing?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Same as if yu really believe someone is going to pull the trigger on that loaded gun pointed at your head if you eat that twinkie, you'll ignore your craving for junk food.
Yeah, like all of those smokers who know it's bad for them but don't want to stop... or overeaters... or every other person who has an addiction of one type or another.
BTW, as for those "millions of christians doing good" - if someone is doing something good because they're trying to please their god, their actions are worthless, according to the bible.
You've misunderstood or have been misled on this one. Jesus talks a lot about doing good deeds for show in Mark 12, but he also makes it very clear that his followers should demonstrate their love for him by following his teachings.
Of course your last paragraph betrays your true feelings. Look, I believe the earth is getting warmer... the evidence is pretty overwhelming. I, and MANY individuals who are not Christians, aren't convinced that it's a man made problem that is fixable by cutting down on fossil fuel consumption in the US (although I'm also very interested in looking for cleaner safer fuel sources).
You're interesting because you have a particular belief, that man is causing global warming and man must change in order to stop it, and can change enough to actually stop it at this point and you're now going to belittle anyone who disagrees with you and work to push your ideology down their throats.
You don't need to be so biggoted. You could very easily have said... "You know, I don't believe in the Bible as a source for scientific evidence or policy making... so this guys argument means nothing to me and I think it probably doesn't mean much to a lot of other people too... he's going to have to do better."
My final point... trotting this guy out as the example of an expert on alternative theories to global warming or a Christian theologian is equivalent to me citing some space-looney who believes in cosmic rays and alien abductions and that life started on Earth when the aliens created the pyramids as a leading naturalist. It's a strawman argument.
Maybe I should change it to: Poverty enables terrorism. But I also believe that poverty enables religion so I guess I'm stuck in a loop. And yes, it is a broad trollish statement. I guess the day I wrote it I felt like using a two-by-four to whack some sense into people. I seem to have more and more days like that.
Damn kids, get off my lawn!
But that thanks for the reply Ingolfke, it's well taken.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Thats exactly it. The world is getting warmer. I doubt anyone is disputing that. The thing in question is what is the driving forces for it and wether man plays a significant role in those forces and whether or not it is a natural occurance as science has proved it happened before man was around.
But if you object to any of the leading theories today. Many of them being spouted by people not really qualified to make those asumption, they you are the kook, crackpot whatever. Even if you come up with the dumbest "we are walking on thin ice" theory that show man as the cause you are hailed why anyone who objects is shunned.
Yes, It has become about politics, funding, and multinational redistribution of wealth. If just one of those (and you can guess wich one) was missing from the equasion, i would be more inclined to belive whats being thrown at us without questioning it. But when the only solutions offered boil down to "get certain parties' candidates elected" and "tax the rich nations to give to the poor" or "stiffle the rich nations so the poor nations can catch up" there seems to be an underlying motive that has nothing to do with actual science or solving global warming. And often when you question any one of these solutions, you are labeled the most. You are called insane, uneducated, a cook, and anything else to discredit you. Just look at those evil republicans who questioned the legitimacy of only the rich nations being held to the emisions limits while others could sell credits to the rich countries who couldn't meet the insane requirments.
So yes, that's exaclty it. And even the UN has admited that Kyoto doesn't work as it was advertised to have. But if someoen even brings that up they are again labeled. This movie by algore isn't supposed to educate as much as it is supposed to indoctinate people into some semi religious experience. It is as if they are trying to turn every public school into a catholic school and mother earth is marry! And yes it is perfectly fair to draw conclusion about science becoming a religion when the people defending it are acting in the exact same unbendible ways.
Relativity is "just a theory" as well, but your GPS system would fail totally if both the special and general theories of relativity were not taken into account. Too many laymen think that "theory" means "tentative hypothesis" when in fact many theories are about as well established as any claim about the physical world could possibly be.
Now, opposed to that, we have a collection of reaaaaaally old books written by some goat-tenders, well, and a former tax collector, about 2000 to 3000 years ago. Now, they never saw an X-box, and they didn't even have light bulbs or refrigerators, but the stories they wrote back then say that global warming probably isn't happening. Actually, the stories don't say that, not that we can find, but Billy's dad, who reads the stories a lot, is a Republican, and he's really really sure that being a Republican and believing in those old stories means that global warming is all just made up phoney icky stories. Okay, so who do you vote for? Science (holds up laser and a toy rocket ship), or these stories (holds up fake-leather bible and an 8x10 photo of Roy Moore hugging John Ashcroft)?
Now that would be the balanced, equable presentation you were thinking of. Good luck with that. But you know that the zealot in question doesn't want that. He just wants global warming (and evolution, and the age of the Grand Canyon, etc) to be brushed aside, because he thinks doing so will make America a more "Godly Country." We need to stop pretending that the global-warming naysayers are just raising honest objections out of a conscientious sense of intellectual honesty. It's a cultural battle between their side, who they think are "God's People/Joel's Army/whatever" and the people who live in the modern world, who they call "secularists/evil/minions of Satan." If you think I'm exaggerating for effect, you might be mistaken.
Thanks for the link, but don't go getting optimistic. Just google "evolution" and "second law of thermodynamics" and you'll see the most resilient chestnut in the history of all chestnuts. It's like a Platonic, ideal chestnut, the one on which all others are modeled, however imperfectly. It will never die, and it mocks its own falsehood and absurdity with a chuckle of disdain.
Is that an ad-hominem? Could there be, perhaps, very firm reasons to dismiss and even ridicule Hardison while taking Gore seriously?
Reasons like dozens of climate models and as close to unanimity as you ever get from scientists (especially when some are paid to say otherwise)?
It is a "political argument" in the same way that "condoms prevent unwanted pregnancy and STD's", "abortion does not cause breast cancer", "HIV causes AIDS" and "Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory" are political arguments.
That last one is particularly appropriate, because it's been forced on science and scientists in opposition to the same anti-science, go-back-to-before-the-enlightenment crowd behind the "GW is a political controversy" position.
"Global warming and oil depletion mean we should abandon technological civilization and go back to dirt farming with animals" is a political argument. Politics is about policy. When people take the position that a statement of fact is a political position when it can be proven right or wrong, they are stretching the definition of "political" beyond its breaking point. They are doing exactly what the Roman Church did when it demanded that Galileo recant his position that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
Someone as intelligent as you - and believe me, unless you've taken a blow to the head recently (or taken up heavy drinking, you teetotaler you) I know what that is - also knows that science education at the K-12 level is drastically simplified. It has to be; HS biology doesn't have time to deal with matters like introns and RNA interference and all the non-trivial elements of genetics, to list just one thing in one class. Given the enormous complexity of the body of knowledge and the slow pace of education in public schools, it can hardly be otherwise.
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a scientifically relevant presentation on matters of current interest. I would hardly say that a science class wouldn't be complete without it, but it is not out of place in K-12. In an AP-level class, it would ideally be used as an introduction to one-dimensional atmospheric modelling, perhaps with a tie-in to integral calculus.
His other beliefs are quite relevant, as they have been tied politically to denial of anthropogenic global warming. Anti-science views in general are strongly associated with religious fundamentalism, and it cannot be wrong to say so unless Hardison has dissociated himself from same.
Geez. Of all the people I'd expect to adopt a relativist position on matters of science, you are the last I'd think of. Has moving to the Bay Area finally affected your mind, or is it just reaction to all the fruitcakes around you?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Gravity is a theory, too. So is the theory of evolution. Yet, both are seen as true by almost every modern scientist. The word theory has a certain meaning when used in science.
[sig]
Geez. Of all the people I'd expect to adopt a relativist position on matters of science, you are the last I'd think of. Has moving to the Bay Area finally affected your mind, or is it just reaction to all the fruitcakes around you?
That's because you misunderstand my point.
I'm not taking a relativist position on matters of science. (Nor was the original complainant, nor was the school board.)
I'm pointing out that the issue was the suppresion of one side of a political debate in a government-funded, mandatory-attendance, school.
I'm pointing out that, as such, the particular opinions of the complainant, no matter how ill-grounded they may be, DON'T MATTER.
And I'm pointing out that the reportage of his opinions is ITSELF propaganda directed against those who don't believe that public schools should be government-run political indoctrination mills.
To the extent that I'm taking a position of my own on this, it's against mandatory government indoctrination of youth in politically correct thinking and against propaganda in the press disguised as unbiased reporting.
Does that fit better with your opinion of my thinking based on my other postings? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First of all, it's not ad hominem to examine the beliefs of someone who is claiming authority in a subject. For example, it would be perfectly legitmate to put in a story "Dr. J. Smith, who believes in the healing powers of crystals and smoked banana peels, etc."
Second, the only ad hominem argument being made here is yours. You are dismissing all arguments and evidence in "An Inconvenient Truth" because it is narrated by Al Gore. This in itself is enough, in your mind, to label the entire movie "partisan", though you neglect to include any examples of partisanship. It's been my experience that the word "partisan" is the last refuge of those who really, desperately want to ignore an argument for which they can not form a counter.
Science isn't Democratic or Republican. Thinking so is dangerous and foolish. The current climate in American reminds me of German authorities earlier in the century rejecting "Jewish science" in favour of "Aryan science". That worked out really well, didn't it?
Yes. We'll have to, because people won't think they should do anything about X until X starts to affect them negatively.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Iraq Body Count says about 55,000 people have died because of DIRECT violence caused by the U.S. government. However, that does not count the people who died because of indirect causes. Iraq Body Count is defending itself against criticism that it is undercounting the deaths due to U.S. government violence; you can read the discussions on the site.
An estimated 150,000 Iraqis died because of the first U.S. government-Iraq war. So, the Bush family has killed about 205,000 Iraqis, even using estimates that are low because they count only direct violence.
The total number of people killed in the 24 countries that the U.S. government has invaded since the 2nd world war is, sensibly, I think, estimated at 11,000,000. This counts the number of people who died because of the violence that violence causes.
The U.S. government has started a civil war in Iraq, as well as starting its own war. The people who die in the civil war must be considered to have died because of Cheney - Rumsfeld - G.W. Bush violence. The U.S. government violence did not create a peaceful democracy. It created an even more unstable country; that's exactly to be expected; violence breeds violence.
You are half right.
The difference between the IBC's 55,000 figure and the Lancet's 650,000 is partly due to the fact that the IBC excludes indirectly caused deaths (for which Bush is liable under international law), but mostly due to the fact that the IBC is an estimate of the deaths reported in English-language media, whereas the Lancet is an estimate of all deaths.
Since reporters in war zones generally have the ability to report no more than 10% of the casualties that occur, the two figures do not conflict significantly.
No, Newton's law is quite correct in its own domain: non-relativistic speeds and not very massive objects. Einstein determined boundary conditions for Newton's laws.
"P.S. I believe the Bible is right as long as it is translated Correctly."
Isn't that the same as saying "the bible is right as long as it's translated the way I translate it".
How can your take on it be the definitive one?
Look, there's no need to defend Newton... his theories are still applicable to nearly all physics situations. But the fact that Einstein found previously unknown boundaries is proof that the original theory was wrong. It was incomplete, like all scientific theories, because they are models of the world, not the world itself. That doesn't diminish their importance at all. In fact, it is the acceptance that all scientific theories are incomplete that separates science from religion. True science has no dogma. And that honesty of its own limitations is why I can trust it.
Cheers.
People who talk about the "big picture" over thousands of years (including pre-human periods). What does this have to do with us? Do you have no survival instinct? Global warming is fine if it kills off the human race but the cockroaches live?
The goal here for some of us is avoid the total destruction and/or collapse of the global civilization that we have now and to prevent our sons/daughters/nieces/nephews from having to live agonizing, suffering-laden, possibly abbreviated lives on a planet undergoing a massive change toward not supporting our species at its current population level.
It seems to me such a moot point whether the earth was hotter XX thousand years ago before modern humans existed. So fucking what? We are modern humans and and I fail to see how it's rational to include in any human-framed definition of "normal Earth" an Earth in which humans can no longer survive. It just blows my mind whenever I see people talking as if the goal is anything other than to avoid pain and suffering for ourselves.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The trouble with school vouchers ... is then you start to argue over what constitutes a school. If public money is paying for it, can it go to a madrassa? Or a Catholic school? Or Joe's School and Lube? Or Russ's "We teach computers ... and only computers" school for nerds? And then there's health and safety mandates. Don't want kids to play on monkey bars!!! They'll all die like we did when we played on them!! Don't want kids to eat trans-fats for Gosh's sake! Remember, catsup is a vegetable.
There are *multiple* tarpits here that can't be avoided because of the very nature of public funding.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The Hardisons and the school board either really love irony or simply don't get it.
Galileo defended scientific fact in the face of theocratic authorities who based their views on the matter on religion and denial, and forced him to acquiesce to their view.
Here we have a theocratic authority which opposes scientific fact with unmentioned "opposing viewpoints", and forces advocates of over 30 years of ecological research to acquiesce to the idea that it might not be true, at the behest of a family whose religiously-defined geological beliefs contradict some of the most fundamentally accepted, researched, and demonstrated Earth science.
Larson (and Hardison) believe they are Galileo -- not the theocrats which insisted that Galileo was wrong for no other reason than they weren't willing to accept it.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
But to suggest that philosophy "takes over" the rest implies that anything useful could ever come of it, and this is so far from the case that it's ridiculous. I would argue that there is no possible answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing - what kind of answer could possibly satisfy us? Any answer would necessarily be of the form "Something exists rather than nothing because of X," which presupposes that X exists and that the truthhood of the chain of logic leading to X exists, thus begging the question. God is no way out, either, and when people claim that their philosophy or religion allows them to investigate things which science "is not able to," they are being disingenuous since they can do no better. The best you can do in that direction is to assert that we exist because of God (or a higher power, or whatever you want to call it), and God exists because of Himself. That's all well and good, and trivially consistent, but it doesn't tell us anything useful. It's like suggesting the insertion of an axiom into a system purported to represent reality that says "This axiom is true" (maybe a closer analogy to religion would be "This axiom is true because this axiom is true") - it might be true, and it might be false, but either way it's neither falsifiable or very enlightening, and certainly not worthy of more than an amused chuckle, let alone a massive investigation on the scale of modern scientific research.
Back on point, though: a question that by virtue of its content can have no meaningful answer is a bad question, end of story. And it is true, science cannot answer bad questions that don't have answers. But this is not a limitation; rather, it is an indication that scientists are not stupid enough to get bogged down thinking about things that will never amount to anything useful. To me, that is what makes science great, not what leaves it lacking...the philosophers are more than welcome to hole up with these bad questions and argue over them until they are blue in the face. But I can tell you for sure that whatever they "discover," it just won't be all that interesting.
"Isn't this usually called consensus science? Hence peer-review, etc. etc? Last I checked the overwhelming majority, no wait, the entire scientific community is in agreement on "global warming". Read this as 2,500+ scientists from over 130 countries agreeing over the basis of the IPCC. Note that the opposition is comprised of a lot of the same crack team of "scientists" that defended the tobacco industry in the '70s. Their integrity notwithstanding, their arguments are still just about as transparent as their lives."
There are scientists who disagree and claim that this 'consensus' group has not proven that CO2 is the cause of our recent warming trend. I have look at the evidence, and I agree with these scientists. The correlation has not been proven to be causation.
There are scientists who make the claim that there are good reasons to question the temperature trend data that underlies the global warming hypothesis. I have read their arguments, read the counter-arguments, and find myself agreeing that there are good reasons to question the data.
There are scientists make the point that climate is inherently non-linear, and thus not amenable to computer modeling. They also point out that such models have been unable to reliably reproduce past climate trends with known data sets. Additionally they point out the fact that these models have many input parameters that are essentially unknown. The modelers take a best guess and see what happens - these parameters are thus subject to the bias of the modeler - don't like the results, tweak the unknown parameters until you get something you like. Having written computer models myself, I find this argument to be compelling.
I do not find these arguments transparent. I've read the counterarguments, and still think that proponents of the Global Warming hypothesis have a lot of work to do to prove their case. Also, are you seriously claiming that the people who are making these arguments were paid scientific shills for the tobacco industry in the 70s? Care to back that up with some evidence?
'Consensus' has nothing whatsoever to do with science. The fact that thousands of experts, or the majority of experts agree on one thing should play zero role in whether or not you agree as well. There are just too many examples in the past where such consensus was wrong. Helio-centrism, and continental drift come to mind as good examples of theories that were once opposed by the vast majority of scientists.
Consensus is political. Consensus actively suppresses debate on opposing theories. Consensus opinions can, and do, change over very short periods of time.
It's close, but there are a few major differences.
First and foremost, the supposed existence of global warming has a pretty big collection of evidence to support it, and is based on many well established and testable scientific principles. The supposed existence of God is based only on fear of the unknown, rhetoric drilled into one's head since childhood and a pile of moldy books from "simpler times" to put it nicely.
Second, believing in a possible God only to save your own ass from a possible punishment is, at least from what I've been told, completely contrary to the whole point of believing in God. In other words, if God does exist but you only believe in Him because of the wrong reasons, then you're still screwed.
Lastly, whether or not I believe in God for *any* reason bears no influence on you and vice versa. If I choose not to believe in God and turn out to be wrong, that doesn't effect you in the slightest. If I choose to ignore the possibility of global warming and turn out to be wrong, that effects everyone else on the planet.
To sum up, here are the choices:
1) Believe in a God that may or may not exist so you might not spend an afterlife that may or may not exist in a hell that may or may not exist, or
2) Don't believe in a God that may or may not exist so you might not spend an afterlife that may or may not exist in a hell that may or may not exist.
Compare to:
1) Heed the possible threat of global warming and possibly avoid a very very bad thing that may or may not happen
2) Do nothing and risk the long-term survivability of six billion people.
I don't think the stakes in these wagers are quite the same...
=Smidge=
That's what I've seen here in Germany. I looked up the abortion rates; MUCH lower than the US, as are the teen pregnancy rates. German kids know precisely how further German kids come about and how they can avoid this happening ahead of schedule.
Young Germans are also far less religious than their American peers, so I doubt the majority think premarital sex is wrong.
Grüß Gott aus Bayern!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And I was taught that electricity took the shortest path in my highschool physics class. Several of us argued with the teacher and said that electricity took the path of least resistance, but the teacher pointed to the textbook, and that settled it.
Don't confuse highschool science with actual science. I taught highschool science for two years, and for the second year, I actually did not have them use the textbook as it had way too many factual errors. Instead we used the Cartoon Guide to Physics. (I recommened they buy it, and there were enough after that to share.) No errors in that book, and much easier to read. Also, it covered all of the topics in the thicker book plus a few additional ones.
Your teacher probably read the National Geographic or Newsweek article and decided that she needed to "educate" her class. Not a bad idea, but unfortunately misguided. However, even during that time period, climatology had already developed their theories that predicted global warming.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You forget, Bush was in power for almost a year by the time 9/11 happened. He also ignored the warnings. He also made sure all his Saudi friends were able to leave the country by air while all other air traffic was grounded. Bin Ladenis Saudi. If you're going to play connect-the-dots, they lead to Bush, not Clinton.
We have different definitions of 'wrong' :)
By 'wrong' I mean that theory does not work in any domain, for example, law F=G*m1*m2*r^2 is wrong in any domain. Newton's laws, however, are just a special case of more general theory.
And of course, every theory is probably incomplete and that's the most exciting thing with science.
Honest people label estimates with "# (est)" or "approx #", or if the value is bounded, they say "at least #". My point being here that honesty is not the goal. Propaganda is. I dislike Bush as much as the next guy, but I won't lie to bring out the truth about him, if ya know what I mean.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist