U.S. Science Teachers Disregard Unproven Global-warming Theory

Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Much to the dismay of the global-warming lobby, a recent survey of 1,500 public middle-school and high-school science teachers from all 50 states revealed that only 30 percent of middle school and 45 percent of high-school teachers think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities. The study showed that about 15 percent believe climate change is “mostly driven by natural causes,” while another 15 percent think “human and natural causes are equally important.”

The study was conducted by Penn State and the National Center for Science Education and was reported in the February 12, 2016 issue of Science, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The language used in both Science and other publications reporting on the study, including International Business Times, Pacific Standard, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the Ottawa Sun, and Slate, were quick to condemn the teachers surveyed. The publicans asserted that the teachers “disseminate incorrect information,” they have “an insufficient grasp of the science of climate change,” are “conveying messages that are contradictory,” and that “their insufficient grasp of the science may hinder effective teaching.”

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The report in Science stated: “The combination of limited training and uncertainty about the scientific consensus affects teachers’ acceptance of anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change.”

Not one of the reports we read considered that perhaps the reason that many teachers do not accept anthropogenic climate change is because neither do many scientists.

For example, in an interview with The New American after his presentation debunking “ocean acidification” hysteria at the Heartland Institute’s “Day of Examining the Data” summit conference December (held to offer an alternative voice to the UN climate conference in Paris known as COP-21) Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore said that the real agenda behind the UN climate summit and those pushing the “global warming” apocalyptic scenario is not just about “climate,” it is about “the destruction of modern civilization.”

The excuse for the agenda — the anthropogenic global-warming theory — is becoming increasingly discredited, he added. “I actually do not believe that humans are driving a catastrophic change in the global climate,” he said. “There is no evidence of it, there is no proof of it.”

A report in Investors Business Daily for December 31, 2015, noted:

A peer-reviewed paper showing that only 36% of 1,077 geoscientists and engineers surveyed believe in the man-made global warming crisis as defined by the United Nations’ Kyoto model.

According to the paper, the Kyoto position expresses “the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”

Thirty-six percent is not insignificant. But it certainly is a long way from the oft-cited 97% “consensus” among scientists that man is causing temperatures to change.

Researchers behind “Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change,” which appeared in Organization Studies, also found “the proportion of papers” collected from a science database “that explicitly endorsed anthropogenic climate change has fallen from 75%” between 1993 and 2003 “to 45% from 2004 to 2008.”

The Heartland Institute’s James Taylor reminds us in Forbes that “survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.”

In addition to the fact that human activity may have no direct effect on global warming, some scientists maintain that global warming (whatever its causes may be) has ceased. Another speaker at the “Day of Examining the Data” conference, University of Virginia Professor Emeritus Dr. Fred Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, told the attendees: “There has been no statistically significant warming in 18 years.”

Showing a slide comparing observed temperatures with the various bogus predictions made by “climate models” relied upon by the UN, all of which predicted warming as CO₂ increased, Singer continued: “The models don’t work. We should not use them to make policy.” He also noted that carbon dioxide — “the original plant food,” as he called it — is very valuable. “Plants are starving. They want more CO2.”

If space permitted, many pages of statements from environmental and meteorological scientists who disagree with the widely publicized claim that the Earth is in peril from anthropogenic climate change could be presented. Suffice it to say, that the charges leveled against the teachers surveyed by Penn State and the National Center for Science Education (a headline in the Huffington Post described them as “misinformed” and the article claimed, “that nearly two-thirds of educators are not relying on scientifically sound information when teaching students about climate change”) are unjustified.

The tone for these negatives views about the teachers was set initially by Eric Plutzer, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study, and several collaborators from the Wright State University and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). “Thirty percent of teachers emphasize that recent global warming is likely due to natural causes, and 12 percent do not emphasize human causes,” complained the survey’s authors.

“Ideally, colleges that educate large numbers of science teachers would develop curricula that would ensure all future teachers receive foundational instruction in climate science,” Plutzer was quoted by the Huffington Post.

A key question, the impartial observer might ask, is who will be charged with developing these curricula and how might it be ensured that a fair balance of views on climate science be included? From the statements made by Plutzer and others, it appears that they favor one-sided curricula that present only the anthropogenic climate change side of the debate.

This prejudice was revealed by Plutzer’s response to the survey’s findings that 31 percent of teachers said that they include both the “scientific consensus” position — that global warming is human-caused — and also a “natural causes” position that contradicts that position, thus presenting “both sides” of the debate, in the study’s words. “We think any amount of legitimization of nonscientific perspectives sends a message to students that this may be a matter of opinion and values, and not one that can be adjudicated by evidence,” said Plutzer, making it obvious that he dismisses the opinions of those who do not accept manmade global warming (which include many distinguished scientists) as “nonscientific.”

As we concluded this report, we noticed a weather report from ABC News that carried a headline some might find amusing, considering the ongoing debate over “global warming”: “Arctic Outbreak to Set Records for Valentine’s Day Weekend.”

The report read, in part:

A major arctic outbreak could bring subzero temperatures to 65 million Americans this Valentine’s Day weekend. Twenty states in the Midwest and Northeast are bracing for record cold and dangerous, possibly life-threatening wind chills….

Record cold is possible Saturday across the Great Lakes region as afternoon temperatures stay in the single digits and teens for much of the day. A record-low maximum temperature is forecasted for Saturday afternoon in Buffalo, New York.

The forecasted high is zero, and the record is 5 degrees, set back in 1899….

A few record lows are possible Sunday morning in the Northeast. Boston, Philadelphia and Roanoke, Virginia, are some cities that could see record lows. New York City could break a 100-year-old record if they drop below 2 degrees. In addition, the high temperatures Sunday will stay in the teens, and could break cold records from Washington to Boston.

Overall, this will likely be the coldest Valentine’s Day on record for much of the Northeast. [Emphasis added.]

The question remains: If manmade activity is making our climate warmer, then why are temperatures threatening to break low records set back in 1899?

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