After First Round of Corrections, New Texas Textbooks Still Deny Climate Change

Subnx

Read some of Jay Lehr's articles debunking the human induced climate change advocates. Oh, I forgot, he's not a real scientist since he's with the Heartland Institute. Actually, he was the best science professor I had in college.

RTGolden1 topcommenter

This is a case where the 'pro-science' group is parading itself as "The Science".

"....what scientists have known for decades: Humans are causing climate change," Josh Rosenau, policy director of the NCSE said." And therin lies the rub. NCSE wants only anthropogenic climate change taught. Since the science is inconclusive, and the historical record absolutely slaps anthropogenic causes down (several climate changes before science tells us humans even existed), NCSE wants to forcefully indoctrinate the theory into reality. That isn't science. That is religious fanaticism.

I don't deny climate change or even human contribution to it. We contribute to it by doing this thing called living, working, making the things we eat, clothe ourselves with, shelter, transportation, etc. The only way to cease human contribution to climate change is to kill off all the humans. I don't support that option.

The extent of human contribution is debateable, with one volcanic eruption contributing more than decades of human pollution. There should be debate and discussion, and scientific investigation (different from politically or economically guided 'science'). We need answers, not slogans.

ThePosterFormerlyKnownasPaul topcommenter

In my opinion, the focus of the climate change debate is more on economic dislocation rather than a living habitat.

In the geologic past there have been eras where the climate is vastly different than it is today. In some instances the different climates are not all that long ago.

Let's go ahead and assume that sea level rises 10 feet. Does humanity disappear? Or do we merely have to relocate hundreds of millions of people and various economic activities to higher ground?

If the earth becomes warmer, does the "breadbasket" in the American Plains disappear, or does it move northward into Canada? Again, economic dislocation instead of human survivability.

Don't get me wrong, the climate could shift such that the planet does become uninhabitable for human life. However, if this would occur, there would be threats to all life, just not human life.

everlastingphelps topcommenter

Please note what is being ignored by the so-called-rational community:

There is no mention in the article of any specific falsehood in the textbooks. In fact, the article seems to actively avoid talking about what is actually wrong with the textbooks. All they do is cite hard-partisan activist groups, who also avoid any specifics.

This isn't an article about science. This is article designed to explain why it is ok for those priests to be so angry at that obviously wrong Copernicus.

"Students in school today will graduate into a world shaped by climate change"

No, they won't. Even the SCIENCE! crowd admits now that we are looking at a worst case scenario of 2C of warming in the next hundred years. The world won't be significantly shaped until after most of them are dead, even if the SCIENCE! crowd is right, which they haven't been at any point in the debate so far.

Montemalone topcommenter

At the moment, the temperature in Anchorage is the same as in Dallas.

Nothing odd about that at all.

Myrna.Minkoff-Katz topcommenter

Here is an interesting slide show from the Consensus Project:

http://theconsensusproject.com/

kduble

What will get the state BOE's attention is when universities cease to accept science credits from Texas graduates.

holmantx topcommenter

"Textbooks Still Deny Climate Change"

this is not an accurate statement.

"Several books allude to supposed disagreements within the scientific community about the causes of climate change, and include academic citations from conservative, denialist groups such as the Heartland Institute."

getting warmer here. You have gone from "Textbooks Still Deny Climate Change", to "disagreements within the scientific community about the causes of climate change".

then you slipped back into it:

"climate change denialism."

Then the Big Finish!

"convey the sense that climate change is debatable"

What? It's like, being debated planet-wide!

I do not know how you expect to be taken seriously if you are not going to recognize there is a societal and scientific debate going on regarding the causes of climate change and what Man can (or cannot) do about it.

Making up a straw man argument (global warming deniers) out of thin air to shadow-box with is a little unnerving. Who does that? You then immediately undercut yourself by admitting there is a debate going on, then you pull the kid right back out and exclaim, "Suddddupp! It's settled. We are not going to debate it!".

I mean, do you understand how you are viewed by adults who care about the environment? Which is basically all of us? Essentially, there are those who have a utilitarian view and those who demand an abolitionist approach. But to denigrate. obfuscate and childishly admonish the majority of adults who are rationally trying to decide which way to go is, well, silly.

To question is Heresy?

Your way is no different than the Aztec high priest ritualists bleeding out virgins on stone alters atop the pyramids. You might as well say it's God Will.

jakkwagon

this isn't a republican thing - it's an intelligence thing.... I look for facts and see none. Why do you think they changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change ?? Because their contention that the Earth is warming wasn't supported by facts so they changed the name to fit their agenda ....do you have any factual information to support Climate Change ? Please shows us - I will at least give people the benefit of the doubt if you have ANY substantiated factual information - not opinions because opinions are like assholes....everybody has one.....

jakkwagon

How can you believe there is man made Climate Change versus NORMAL Mother Nature Climate Change ?? Science has proved there in no such change - do your own research please....look at the predictions Al Gore made back in the day and tell me if they have come true - the simple answer is no: judge for yourself

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/19069-al-gore-s-climate-calculations-prove-wrong-again

Myrna.Minkoff-Katz topcommenter

Senator James Inhofe (R,OK), who is almost certainly the next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

Inhofe: "Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

Myrna.Minkoff-Katz topcommenter

We can believe Republicans about climate change, because after all, they're not scientists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAuWztI1Eec#t=163

dingo

' "It is unethical to lie to kids to begin with, but to lie to them about an issue that so deeply will affect our schoolchildren's future is simply reckless."'

So the rep is alleging that the kids are being Grubered?

WhiteWhale

What denial? The green position is that climate change is not natural and that there is an optimal climate that can be controlled by regulating man made CO2.

TheRuddSki topcommenter

it may be time to call in the Blue Helmets.

jc00

Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists
http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/16/eight-pseudo-scientific-climate-claims-debunked-by-real-scientists/

Global Warming Hoax Errors: 5 Skeptics Proven Wrong
http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/global-warming-hoax/2014/10/23/id/602743/

Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

ColonelAngus

"Teachers are even encouraged, in some instructor companion guides, to spark a discussion among students on the very existence, rather than any proposed solutions, to climate change."

Discussion and debate of a theory that is not provable, many of whose proponents are discredited liars? Horrors!

Everyone knows that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Wait, no, Eastasia! Stop denying, you Deniers!

holmantx topcommenter

@RTGolden1

I think those who advocate the Abolitionist Approach could be convinced Earth should reduce the current population of around 7 Billion to, say, 3.5 Billion.

We start with them.

Guest

@everlastingphelps Hurrr hurrr 2 is a small number so we'll be fine durrrr

2 degrees centigrade would be catastrophic. I also question your assertion that the scientific groups (Well over 90% of climate scientists are in agreement about anthropogenic global climate change) cited are "hard-partisan activist groups".

RTGolden1 topcommenter

@Montemalone Actually, single-day temperatures lower in Dallas than in Anchorage aren't odd at all. If we go a whole winter where temps in Dallas are lower than temps in Anchorage, that might be cause for concern.

holmantx topcommenter

@kduble

The only thing that will get the universities' attention is whether the students don't pay them with government guaranteed loans they don't pay back.

The problem with all this "science" is the very kind of approved group-think you seem to favor - punish anyone who differs with East Anglia's doped science. The science community has yelled long and loud about the federal government threatening to cut off funding to any university that allows debate on the subject. You can't get published without funding. It thwarts the Scientific Method.

What are you so scared of?

Guest

@holmantx The scientific debate has been settled. We are talking about science books.

Guesty

@holmantx There is a societal debate, but it is not an honest debate because the climate change deniers want to obscure the science rather than confront the policy debate that necessarily follows from what we know.

On one side, you have scientists, who believe but cannot prove with certainty that man is causing global warming. They may be wrong (science almost never excludes the possibility), but are about as certain about climate change as they are about any other subject in the known physical world.

On the other side, you have oil and other business interests trying to buy talking points to blur the line between the societal debate (balancing the costs and benefits of carbon producing activities) and the scientific debate (where there is approaching universal agreement that man causes global warming). Mind you, the business interests do not care if they are right about global warming. They just want to win the argument because they have hundreds of billions of dollars that depend on it.

I think we can and should have a serious discussion about global warming. But text books should be honest about what really is science, what really is policy debate.

DonkeyHotay topcommenter

@holmantx ... Superstitious Nonsense -- aka Religion -- is being "debated" worldwide.

Doesn't make it any less absurd and laughably false.

hth

kduble

@holmantx There's a difference between a societal debate (ongoing) and a scientific debate (largely concluded). There continues to be a societal debate regarding the theory of evolution in many rural parts of the country, particularly in the Deep South. Scientific debates belong in science textbooks. The other kind can go in social studies textbooks.

Guesty

@jakkwagon I would take the collective IQs of climate scientists who have studied the issue and concluded that the earth is warming over almost any other identifiable group of humans in the world. The math alone is mind blowing. I'd place the over/under at 145, and I would probably take the over (not that I would expect you understand how high that is, or that it is 3 standard deviations from mean, or what a standard deviation is, etc.). And I generally would not attack the intelligence of a poster, even if it clearly is sub-par, because that does not negate the contribution that might have been made on the subject. But you suggest that this is "an intelligence thing." I agree. But you are on the wrong side of it.

kduble

@jakkwagon The planet is indeed warming. Climate change, and even global climate disruption, better explain a host of consequences we're trying to predict as the warming continues.

kduble

@Myrna.Minkoff-Katz That's just the point. "He" isn't whose doing it.

ColonelAngus

@dingo POW!

kduble

@ColonelAngus A theory is provable. It is, in fact, a workable model that has been shown to be reliable time and time again. The only way to unseat a scientific theory is by coming up with a superior model.

Be it evolution, relativity or plate tectonics, once a theory is widely accepted, pedagogy goes from debating the theory itself, and it moves on to implications and application.

TheRuddSki topcommenter

@ColonelAngus

After our masterful negotiations with the Chinese which has us doing everything and them doing nothing, the problem is solved, the science is settled, the debate is over - so encouraging children to question ultimate truth and authority is akin to forcing them to pray.

everlastingphelps topcommenter

@Guest @everlastingphelps I rest my case.

holmantx topcommenter

@Guest @holmantx

It cannot be settled since East Anglia phonied up the data and thus suppressed the Scientific Method. Skepticism. Testing the data to see if independent research comes up with the same conclusions.

You're people lied.

Add to this is the denial of public funding by politicians who stand to benefit (obtain power) from environmental regulation resulting from "settled" science that the planet is cooling (the assertion made in the 1970s).

holmantx topcommenter

@Guesty @holmantx

The Heidelberg Appeal is a statement decrying "an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development." Issued to coincide with the opening of the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Appeal stated that its signers "share the objectives of the 'Earth Summit'" but advised "the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data. ... The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology and Industry."

A version of the Heidelberg Appeal was published in the June 1, 1992, Wall Street Journal over the signatures of 46 prominent scientists and other intellectuals. It has subsequently been endorsed by some 4,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize winners. The Appeal was for an anthropocentric assessment of the world's resources and a utilitarian as opposed to abolitionist approach to hazardous substances used or created by technology. It targeted as irrational, by implication, if not explicitly, both a vision of a "Natural State" with intrinsic rights to impede the activities of man, and hysterical fears of environmental poisons, disproportionate to the threat and dismissive of their associated benefits. - Wiki

Voot

@kduble @holmantx The science was also "settled" on the cause and treatment of stomach ulcers until, within the lifetimes of many here, it suddenly wasn't anymore and the once-"settled" paradigm was completely repudiated.

Incidentally, "settled" scientific opinion is, scientifically, an oxymoron. What it describes instead is the ideological social consensus that happens to have precipitated for the moment - like it once did for a while among the millions who used to purchase antacids to treat their stomach ulcers.

And climatology is a hell of a lot less accessible for testing than the inside of a human stomach.

WhiteWhale

@kduble @holmantx If the scientific debate has been largely concluded then why do the scientists continue to demand more money to study the issue? Why the frantic effort to explain the pause in warming? Why the effort to fix the failed climate models?

holmantx topcommenter

@kduble @holmantx

nonsensical blather designed to make the writer look good.

it failed..

Cliffhanger

@kduble @jakkwagon Scientists still call it global warming. Climate change was actually coined by a Republican political consultant named Frank Lutz.

WhiteWhale

@kduble @ColonelAngus Too bad the climate models don't work in spite of the huge amount of money spent on them.

kduble

@TheRuddSki So, your position is:

1) The problem doesn't exist

2) The Chinese aren't doing their share to fix it

ColonelAngus

@TheRuddSki "After our masterful negotiations with the Chinese which has us doing everything and them doing nothing, the problem is solved,"

Which tactic was key to the victory? The fancy Chairman Mao outfit? The way he "pivoted?" Did he prostrate, kneel or merely bow?

Guesty

@holmantx @Guesty The vast majority of signatories to the Heidelberg Appeal also signed the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ucs-statement.txt

Among the many statements included in the warning is the following:

"Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still uncertain -- with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe -- but the potential risks are very great. Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life -- coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change -- could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand. Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threat."

Guesty

@holmantx @Guesty And nothing in the Heidelberg Appeal states that global warming is not happening or that it is not caused by man. The entire text of the Heidelberg Appeal is as follows:

"We want to make our full contribution to the preservation of our common heritage, the Earth.

"We are, however, worried at the dawn of the twenty-first century, at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development.

"We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to look towards the past, does not exist and has probably never existed since man's first appearance in the biosphere, insofar as humanity has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs and not the reverse.

"We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of, monitored and preserved. But we herewith demand that this stock-taking, monitoring and preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on irrational pre-conceptions.

"We stress that many essential human activities are carried out either by manipulating hazardous substances or in their proximity, and that progress and development have always involved increasing control over hostile forces, to the benefit of mankind. We therefore consider that scientific ecology is no more than an extension of this continual progress toward the improved life of future generations. We intend to assert science's responsibility and duty towards society as a whole. We do however forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.

"We draw everybody's attention to the absolute necessity of helping poor countries attain a level of sustainable development which matches that of the rest of the planet, protecting them from troubles and dangers stemming from developed nations, and avoiding their entanglement in a web of unrealistic obligations which would compromise both their independence and their dignity.

"The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology and Industry whose instruments, when adequately managed, are indispensable tools of a future shaped by Humanity, by itself and for itself, overcoming major problems like overpopulation, starvation and worldwide diseases."

CraigT42

@holmantx @kduble That sounds like a description of your comment, not the article.

The science on climate change is settled. No one outside of a political "think tank" , those funded by them, or the pathetic sheep that listen to them say anything otherwise. This isn't about stifling a difference of opinion. You can hide your head in the sand and say your opinion is that you can breathe sand, you will still choke to death.

Cliffhanger

@WhiteWhale @kduble @ColonelAngus They do if you aggregate them, which is what actual scientists do.

TheRuddSki topcommenter

@kduble

My position is based on the footnotes in many of these studies which basically say

* we're not totally sure

* its too late anyway.

and the known fact that since earth has formed, climate insists on changing.

TheRuddSki topcommenter

@CololnelAngus

He held hands and sang the Chinese version of Kumbaya, then he probably told a lie - judging by past experience.

Hillary Clinton traveled 956,733 miles during her tenure as Secretary of State, Lurch Kerry has clocked up about 519,136 miles, and His Excellency has flown God only knows how many miles. Then there's the UN muckety-mucks flying here there and everywhere to talk about the crisis.

As one noted professor puts it: "I'll start believing it's a God-damed crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start behaving like its a crisis"

As a stupid voter, I do my part by wandering aimlessly around the country, burning petrol like there's no tomorrow. That's why its so damn cold.

Take that Gaia!

holmantx topcommenter

@Guesty @holmantx

So you are willing to lose the denier blather and agree to entertain a discussion on: "The Appeal was for an anthropocentric assessment of the world's resources and a utilitarian as opposed to abolitionist approach to hazardous substances used or created by technology. It targeted as irrational, by implication, if not explicitly, both a vision of a "Natural State" with intrinsic rights to impede the activities of man, and hysterical fears of environmental poisons, disproportionate to the threat and dismissive of their associated benefits. "

The Appealers will necessarily touch upon probabilities, methods, assertions, statistical and climatological data that may bring that which the Abolitionists consider heresy, or "settled". And that's just the Utilitarian segment.

There are thousands who have done the research that the true culprit is our waning Red Dwarf. That evidence clearly indicate all the planets in this solar system are heating and cooling at the same rate. That we are subject to a pulsing (slowly dying) sun. Do they get a voice in your newly expanded universe?