Left & Right | Dogma Dominates Climate Science

Trust me when I say that I am far more a NYTimes readers than a FOX News one. Yet, I try to follow the facts. Searching for new updates on climate change just now, I found Let’s Talk About It: Discussing the Science and Politics of Global Warming, published yesterday.

For one moment, I understand why conservatives hate the NYTimes. This lesson plan on climate change is indoctrination at its worst, and one of the most biased documents I’ve ever seen.

Warm-up | Prior to class, put a strip of masking tape across the floor, and mark one end with the words “strongly agree,” the other “strongly disagree” and the midpoint “neutral or unsure.” At the beginning of class, tell students they will now be asked to literally and figuratively take a stand on climate change.

First, tell students to stand in a line along the masking tape. Explain and show them that the line is an opinion spectrum. Then, tell students that you will read a series of statements out loud. After each statement, students should rearrange themselves on the line depending on how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement. via NYTimes

via dkuropatwa on FlickrAt a time when Congress and the nation are polarized in opinion and not facts on a multitude of issues; when the rational pursuit of scientific inquiry is subordinated to religion, the NYTimes writes a lesson plan educating children about climate change that now asks students to stand in position on the masking tape line, showing their support (or lack of support) for a series of statements on climate change. (Note, I think I find the above photo disturbing, reinforcing what’s wrong, not right, with learning today.)

This action occurs before any discussion or learning takes place.

Knowing that 65% of people (and presumably kids, but I can’t confirm this moment) do not change their beliefs and have brains that shut down to new information that contradicts their stated positions, the NYTimes tells students to ‘take a stand’ on the masking tape line, before discussing the facts.

We won’t ask if the popular kids influence the not-so-popular ones on where to stand. Dogma doesn’t include concerns like mine. The amount of material in a 45-60 minute class is impossible to digest. Do the writers really believe that kids 12 and up know what proposed cap-and-trade legislation is?

This school lesson plan is no different from the indoctrination that kids receive in a Fundamentalist Bible school.

Read the following statements out loud, asking the students to line up:

• Future generations will look back on ours as having ignored clear warnings about the harmful effects of climate change.
• The unusually heavy snowfalls and cold weather this winter in the Northeast are a sign that global warming is an illusion.
• Despite the discovery of at least two mistakes in scientific work published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming is happening and is caused by the actions of humans.
• The government does not need to do anything drastic right now to curtail climate change.
• A cap-and-trade approach has the best chance of success in reducing carbon emissions.

After the activity, explain that the statements were taken or adapted from Vice President Al Gore’s recent Op-Ed article published by ’ The New York Times’.

Frankly, I had big issues with the lack of any science in Al Gore’s Op Ed piece and I found it totally out of touch with both the anti-climate-change regulation reality emerging in Congress and the legitimate challenge to global warming science.

I’m trying to be helpful to readers, advancing both sides of the climate change arguments as best I can, almost as a public service gesture, because this is such an important topic for civilization and future generations.

Now I read one of the most dogmatic ‘science lessons’ I’ve ever come across in life, on the NYTimes, a newspaper I respect for rigorous journalism. 

If this is enlightened teaching on climate change for our kids, I just lost all confidence in education. The tenor of this lesson plan promotes not scientific inquiry but scientific dogma. Rather than discussing a legitimate question of the science, the lesson tries to indoctrinate.

The NYTimes should be embarassed that they published this document under their brand name.

I understand fully why growing numbers of people believe that a liberal agenda has disregarded any sincerely independent intelligent inquiry that says: what is the scientific argument; how did you arrive at the scientific conclusions; what are the counter-arguments to your conclusions.

I have yet to read such a document on climate science, being constantly told that the science is now self-evident.

Al Gore’s op-ed piece from Sunday’s NYTimes did nothing to make me feel better about the scientific process and analysis that supports his conclusions. To see it become the base of the NYTimes lesson plan for an article Let’s Talk About It: Discussing the Science and Politics of Global Warming leaves me speechless and concerned about America’s lack of intellectual rigor on all sides.

If I were a parent with kids being taught this lesson plan, I would be in the principal’s office. What a totally sad state of affairs exists around science in America and around the world. Rational thought and unbiased investigation have been totally replaced by op ed science at every turn.

Liberals and Conservatives, media and talk radio (for starters) are equally to blame for the decline of intelligent thought in America and in the world.

I feel we’re entering a new Dark Ages and what a sad day for the NYTimes. Anne

Side note:

On Tuesday, we published FOX News | ‘Archaic’ Network Provides Climate Data. I was astonished, considering that the main science data for global warming is coming from individuals around the world, filling out data cards with little supervision.

I assumed global satelites were conducting the scientific data tracking. My friends said ‘impossible’, when I mentioned the FOX News story. Now I fear it is correct.

Yesterday I read NIST, NASA Launch Joint Effort to Improve Climate Data. Newswise — The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have launched a joint effort to gather enhanced climate data from spaceborne climate observation instruments planned for a group of satellites now under development.

Comments

[Anthony H]

This seems like a rational intelligent video about climate change for anyone who is sincerely interested in learning something besides political dogma.

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/01/catastrophe-denied-the-science-of-the-skeptics-position.html?gclid=CNWN0-DkpaECFQRbbQodmRxnFQ

[Anthony H]

Many of the temperature readings were taken from sites that were distorted by buildings and blacktop which raised temperatures as much as 7 degrees F. This borders on fraud or total incompetence by our government agencies.

[Anne]

Hi Anthony, we posted that story of the temperature in Green Tracker, just a small read. probably off the front page. I prefer to think the problem is incompetence, but you're right. As a person who is devoted to detail and serious science, the primitive nature of some of the data collection is astonishing in today's world.

To flip over the issue, America hasn't funded serious scientific inquiry into environmental issues, because we've denied the problem. Still thermometers on the backs of buildings next to hot air blowers, or not amending results with the facts that what was once a rural area is now a suburb -- which of course affects temperature levels -- is inexcusable in a debate where the stakes are so high.

Thanks for your comments.