How will Common Core/National Science Standards Address Climate Change?

A recent post by MEW reported on a parent's delight about the forthcoming national science standards and her belief they would teach climate change is primarily due to humans.  She wrote:


Federal science standards coming later this month will recommend that public schools educate students about climate change. Once students understand, they may just educate their parents. 


 Oops. From HotAir and The Economist's findings on climate change:

The Economist has been pretty reliable about beating the climate-alarmist drum for years on end now, often peddling the urgent need for an overarching global climate treaty to combat the threat. In a piece this week, however, the British publication took a much more moderate approach and hashed out some of the different studies suggesting that the planet actually might not be quite as sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide levels as the global-warming scaremongers have long been insisting.

OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years. …

If, however, temperatures are likely to rise by only 2°C in response to a doubling of carbon emissions (and if the likelihood of a 6°C increase is trivial), the calculation might change. Perhaps the world should seek to adjust to (rather than stop) the greenhouse-gas splurge. There is no point buying earthquake insurance if you do not live in an earthquake zone. In this case more adaptation rather than more mitigation might be the right policy at the margin. …

  How will climate change be addressed in nationalized science standards? Do you think once we have a nationalized set of standards in education, will it matter when/if research/data proves Al Gore incorrect?

Maybe 12 year old children don't know everything after all.

 

National Science Standards Are Needed for Stupid Parents

From Mother Nature Network, mnn.com and Climate change education in new federal standards:

 

Federal science standards coming later this month will recommend that public schools educate students about climate change. Once students understand, they may just educate their parents.

What little my boys know about climate change, they know from me or their own reading, not from school. While I believe climate change is happening and I believe that humans have a hand in it, I don’t know much about the science behind it. So, I was glad to read on NPR that climate change education will be coming to classrooms. The sweeping changes that a report on climate change literacy recommends for K-12 classrooms are voluntary; schools will not have to implement them, but they should.

They should because it’s important science to know and understand. Older students who are capable of making decisions on what they buy and how they get from point A to point B will be able to make informed decisions. Younger students will begin to learn facts that will help them make choices in the future.

There’s something else good that could come out of climate change education in schools. Many students will pass the information they learn on to their parents, and some of them just may make changes because of it.

How would this writer feel if the prevailing science theory was something different than what she believed?  Would she be so excited if her child was taught one theory (in opposition to her own research as a parent) and came home and told her how clueless and wrong she was?  Would she be so excited about national science standards funded by private organizations such as big oil companies touting the wonders of oil as the best energy resource if she believed in green energy as the answer to America's energy issues?

Silly parents.  They need to be educated by national standards because their views are now determined to be antiquated and clueless and their assumptions are obviously wrong. 

Al Gore must be mighty proud.  Remember when he said to 12 year old children about global warming (now renamed climate change), "you know things older people don't know"?    It is up to knowledgeable 12 year children educated by scientists like Al Gore to educate their parents about global warming or climate change or whatever the current crisis is in America.  You can listen to his speech here. 

 

Al Gore, Ethanol, and Science Curriculum Exposed as Fraudulent?

This is a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal about Al Gore and his about-face on the wisdom of supporting ethanol subsidies:

Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

No kidding, and Mr. Gore said he knows from experience: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."

We recently wrote about the EPA's involvement in setting educational policy, which includes teaching about the benefits/drawbacks of using ethanol. I pulled up some Internet information on the EPA, its stance on ethanol and how it was being taught in the public school setting. Searching "EPA and public school curriculum", this appeared from from The NEED Project (National Energy Environmental Development Project), page 9:

Using ethanol as a fuel helps farmers by providing additional uses for their crops. Ethanol is a cleaner fuel than gasoline; it makes the air healthier to breathe. Using ethanol also means we don't have to import as much petroleum from other countries; Ethanol is good for the economy, the environment, and the country.

What is NEED? This is from its website:

In 1980, the NEED Project began as a one-day celebration of energy education. A Joint Congressional Resolution established National Energy Education Day. A Presidential Proclamation from President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the need for comprehensive energy education in our nation’s schools, a reduction of our dependence on fossil fuels, and increasing use of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency. As NEED celebrates its 30^th Anniversary, it continues to make an impact on energy knowledge of students, teachers, and the public. NEED is successful. The vision and goals established by the Board of Directors ask that the NEED staff, teachers, students, partners and sponsors work to provide energy education curriculum and training to every appropriate classroom in the nation.

The curriculum on the website is dated 2008-09 so it is probably the most up to date information teachers use to teach about ethanol. Do you think the curriculum will be amended and denote a current philosophy about ethanol as noted by the WSJ?.....

Meanwhile, the greens have slowly turned against corn ethanol, thanks to the growing scientific evidence that biofuels increase carbon emissions more than fossil fuels do.

Maybe not. Review the NEED National Sponsors and Partners (pg 24). The vast majority are lobbying groups. Let's revisit Gore's words:

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

Do you think the educational programs funded by the lobbyists for NEED will change anytime soon? Why are lobbyists helping to form educational policies? Perhaps this needs to be in the revised ethanol curriculum:

Mr. Gore's mea culpa underscores the degree to which ethanol has become a purely political machine: It serves no purpose other than re-electing incumbents and transferring wealth to farm states and ethanol producers. Nothing proves this better than the coincident trajectories of ethanol and Mr. Gore's career.