True North

Today, like many other school days, the Junior Logician came home from school with a loaded backpack. Unlike most days, he was quite eager to tell me about his day. It seems that CLIMB Theater was at their school today to give a demonstration on.....GLOBAL WARMING! Apparently, their discussion was based on the "fact" that anthoprogenic global warming was real. They told the kids that oceans were rising and would flood the coastal areas, that it will kill the elderly, damage crops...all the usual scare tactics. Oh and it was all their fault because they watch TV and play video games. They were told that "everyone believes in man made global warming". Well, maybe not everyone...

Perhaps the folks at the CLIMB Theater would like to meet John Coleman. Mr. Coleman is a meteorologist who just happens to be the founder of a little known entity called "The Weather Channel". Mr. Coleman called anthropogenic global warming the "greatest scam in history!" Then, perhaps we could move on to Fred Godomski and Paul Knight, Senior Lecturers at Penn State University. They believe that the data is not all in and may actually have been misinterpreted. After that, we can go meet with NASA administrator Michael Griffin who said "I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists, I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with". Then we can go on to meet many other folks who are not so certain that anthropogenic global warming is "fact".

Many of the "facts" that CLIMB threw out at the kids have been questioned, starting with the biggie....if man is the cause of global warming, what did man do in the Stone Age the cause the ice that covered most of this great state to melt away (forming our beautiful 10,000 lakes)? How many emissions spewing SUV's and factories existed in the 1400's to cause the Midieval Warm Period?

The real facts....facts that should be what our schools are teaching, is that scientists just don't know what is causing the climate to change. They THINK it could be solar activity, they THINK it could be a lot of things including human activity.

More importantly, this is all the more reason why parents need to be fully involved in what the schools are teaching their kids. Don't take it for granted that their science classes are teaching scientific meathod and curiosity.

I think maybe I will have a chat with the Junior Logician's science teacher tomorrow.

Cross posted at Ladie Logic where your comments are always welcome.