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Wyoming Is First State To Reject Science Standards Over Climate Change
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Time Magazine reports that Wyoming, the nation's top coal-producing state, has become the first state to reject new K-12 science standards proposed by national education groups mainly because of global warming components. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a set of science standards developed by leading scientists and science educators from 26 states and built on a framework developed by the National Academy of Sciences. The Wyoming science standards revision committee made up entirely of Wyoming educators unanimously recommended adoption of these standards to the state Board of Education not once but twice and twelve states have already adopted the standards since they were released in April 2013. But opponents argue the standards incorrectly assert that man-made emissions are the main cause of global warming and shouldn't be taught in a state that ranks first among all states in coal production, fifth in natural gas production and eighth in crude oil production deriving much of its school funding from the energy industry.
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards. 'I think Wyoming can do far better.' Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a 'war on coal' and has said that he's skeptical about man-made climate change. Supporters of the NGSS say science standards for Wyoming schools haven't been updated since 2003 and are six years overdue. 'If you want the best science education for your children and grandchildren and you don't want any group to speak for you, then make yourselves heard loud and clear,' says Cate Cabot. 'Otherwise you will watch the best interests of Wyoming students get washed away in the hysteria of a small anti-science minority driven by a national right wing group – and political manipulation.'"
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards. 'I think Wyoming can do far better.' Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a 'war on coal' and has said that he's skeptical about man-made climate change. Supporters of the NGSS say science standards for Wyoming schools haven't been updated since 2003 and are six years overdue. 'If you want the best science education for your children and grandchildren and you don't want any group to speak for you, then make yourselves heard loud and clear,' says Cate Cabot. 'Otherwise you will watch the best interests of Wyoming students get washed away in the hysteria of a small anti-science minority driven by a national right wing group – and political manipulation.'"
Standards? Politically-specified truth? In science?
Good luck, USA. The rest of the world has already seen through the scam...
It's called 'motivated reasoning', but I doubt these idiots have ever heard of it.
Must be a conservative state, because this peculiar strain of stupidity is generally right-wing in nature. It's all about me! me!! me!! and screw the consequences, especially for the environment, our grandkids, or poor people.
Or is it the money that rules?
no, I don't have a sig
...should a lawyer get to determine the science curriculum? Shouldn't it be, you know, people who are educated in science that decide the science curriculum? (yes, that was rhetorical, I know damn well what the answer is)
I think Wyoming can do far better.
I agree!
As someone who believes in climate change, I'm growing very uneasy with the language being used by both sides to describe dissenting opinions. It feels like the biggest threat we'll face in the future is not a changing environment, but one another.
Yes, in particular, language like the word "believe" being used for scientific theories.
On a per-person basis, Wyoming emits more carbon dioxide than any other state or any other country
Yep .. that's what you get when you let corporations pay for the politicians bills. .. which they are not. .. rather .. it never existed. All an illusion.
They are owned by industry and will never side with the People they are supposedly there to represent
Democracy is dead in the US
it's not happening.
if it is happening, it's a good thing.
ok, it's happening, but it's not man-made.
ok, it's not good, but it's still not man-made.
jesus would fix it if we had prayer in school.
Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching 'one view of what is not settled science about global warming' is just one of a number of problems with the standards.
It's may be "one of a number of problems", but for some reason it's also the only "problem" mentioned.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The main skeptic with whom I dialogue holds the following beliefs:
1. Warming is happening.
2. CO2 concentration is atypically high.
3. CO2 concentration is atypically high due to man-made emissions.
4. CO2 concentration has some upward effect on global temperature.
However, he also holds these beliefs:
1. The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.
2. There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming.
3. Even if warming happens at the predicted rate, we can't really know what the impact will be in terms of human suffering.
4. From #1 and #2, the dire predictions on future warming can't be trusted.
5. Even if warming were going to happen at the predicted rate and the consequences would be as dire as predicted, the economic cost of transitioning of fossil fuels on a global level would induce a huge amount of human suffering on its own,
6. Given the cost, there's no way the various world governments are going to come to an agreement and actually make a significant dent in fossil fuel usage anyway. So the whole discussion is academic.
You got one thing right. The state is evil. And by state I mean the government itself, not Wyoming per se.
If, in order to solve this problem, the liberty and freedom of the people in Wyoming to run their own lives and government needs to be sacrificed, then I will never agree with your "solution" to this problem.
If we must give our liberty in order to survive, then count me as your enemy. What good is life without liberty?
Oh and your all powerful government you require to solve this problem, if it's at all like all the all powerful governments that have come before, it'll have to destroy the environment in order to save it.
But natural causes is...and if you are not teaching children that the warming could very well be simply natural warming than you are not teaching them the scientific method
Luckily for us, there's an organisation dedicated to reviewing the best data that scientific studies have to offer, with contributions from thousands of practising scientists all over the world collected over more than 25 years. Let's see what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to say:
Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.
...
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes (see [data citations]). This evidence for human influence has grown since [the previous IPCC Assessment Report]. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
...
Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
— IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Just to be clear, those quotations are directly from the highlighted key points in the sections about attributing the detected changes in the climate and what will happen in the future. The emphasis was retained from the original publication.
I'll leave you with one more quote, from a slightly less heavyweight source but no less valid:
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Curiously, your friend believes "The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.", but is certain that "There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming."
This seems like wishful thinking. If we really don't have a good handle on the severity of global warming then it is just as likely that the impacts will be much greater than anticipated.
Regarding the costs of mitigating, all published economists agree that it is cheaper to mitigate than to accept the impacts of climate change, and the sooner we start mitigating the cheaper it will be.
This bullshit again? What do you call the adaptation of climate models over time to better fit recorded data again? I suggest you pay attention yourself instead of regurgitating shit vomited up by some intern in a political office. I'd say you already know more about the topic than that court jester who kicked off the "testing part is missing" as a talking point based on some half remembered high school science class.
We are supposed to be the sort of people that look around at the world and think for ourselves. Don't let the side down by polluting this place with political propaganda.
1. The earth's climate is too complex to accurately model and predict.
Argument from disbelief.
2. There are feedback mechanisms that mute the severity of CO2-induced warming.
If he believes that (1) is true how can he know that (2) is true.
3. Even if warming happens at the predicted rate, we can't really know what the impact will be in terms of human suffering.
Argument from disbelief again.
4. From #1 and #2, the dire predictions on future warming can't be trusted.
But 1 and 2 are contradictory
5. Even if warming were going to happen at the predicted rate and the consequences would be as dire as predicted, the economic cost of transitioning of fossil fuels on a global level would induce a huge amount of human suffering on its own,
The real point - he doesn't want to do something, so it's impossible to do anything, so there is nothing that need to be done.
6. Given the cost, there's no way the various world governments are going to come to an agreement and actually make a significant dent in fossil fuel usage anyway. So the whole discussion is academic.
The final proof that he is arguing backwards from what he wants to happen (or not happen) to what he wants to be true.
Deniers! Start from the science! Don't start from your personal feelings and work back to the science, that's not how it's done.
"The testing part is missing; the repeatable testability by independent parties of an hypothesis."
Say what? All of the scientists/science teams studying this issue are independent parties testing the hypothesis - that's what science is and how it works. It is a process of continual repeatable testing of the hypothesis.
What is your concept of this "missing outside party"? A new "super science" that mysteriously needs to be created to address this one issue because, as you admit, it is politically inconvenient for Wyoming?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The question isn't whether "CO2 causes warming" but whether a change from 290 to 330 ppm in the troposphere can be the cause of a measurable change in the heat content of troposphere.
Well, we blew past 330 ppm in the 1960's and are now at 400 ppm. That causes a direct forcing (not including feedbacks) of 5.35*ln(400/280)W/m^2 or about 1.9 W/m^2. For comparison, the output from the sun fluctuates by as much as 1 W/m^2 every 11 years. CO2 is now causing a forcing that is double the increase in solar forcing - but the CO2 forcing is constant while the solar forcing only peaks once every 11 years.
I'm curious whether your undergraduate text explains why increased CO2 concentration in the stratosphere causes the stratosphere to loose heat.
Here is what the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry says: "Greenhouse gases (CO2, O3, CFC) absorb infra-red radiation from the surface of the Earth and trap the heat in the troposphere. If this absorption is really strong, the greenhouse gas blocks most of the outgoing infra-red radiation close to the Earth's surface. This means that only a small amount of outgoing infra-red radiation reaches carbon dioxide in the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. On the other hand, carbon dioxide emits heat radiation, which is lost from the stratosphere into space. In the stratosphere, this emission of heat becomes larger than the energy received from below by absorption and, as a result, there is a net energy loss from the stratosphere and a resulting cooling." - http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/e...
Wyoming may not be "politically correct" on the issue, but they are correct that "global warming" being caused primarily by man-made emissions isn't settled science. (And no, computer scientists are not the correct scientists. ;) )
You have *no* idea of what you're talking about. Computer scientists don't run climate models, climate researchers do.
The rest of your post is full of baloney that is readily refuted, but it's a tedious and probably hopeless job so I'll just pick on one statement: "The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998."
This is outright dishonest. 1998 was, at the time, the hottest year ever in the instrumental record by a *long* shot. It remains the third hottest year in the instrumental record. And this is the year you (or the people you listen to) have chosen to ask whether the climate has gotten warmer "since then". This is exactly analogous to this reasoning. In 1991 Carl Lewis ran 100 m in 9.86 seconds. Of the eleven world championships held since then, six have been won at slower times. Therefore, the average speed of a 100 m sprinter hasn't been getting any faster since 1991. You see what I've done? I've taken an exceptional performance (Lewis' record shattering 100 m sprint) and pretended it was "representative".
Honest people in the climate debate don't use outlier years as their baseline. They use decades (e.g. 1990-2000) or longer (1900-2000) as their baseline.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not really. More argument from example. He likes to point out how virtually every climate model has fallen down, badly, during the current warming pause.
He believes #2 for the same reason he admits that CO2 likely has a warming effect. Scientists can both explain theoretically and demonstrate the mechanisms by which they occur.