The film 'An Inconvenient Truth' to be sent to all secondary schools.

[worldgonewild]

Announced here on David Miliband's blog . Good idea or not, you can let him know direct!

Perhaps I used "quickly" wrongly here. I meant to say it is very likely to run out without a replacement in place. It takes a long time to switch, even longer if you don't want a huge recession at the same time.
Thus I mean "quickly" as in "the supertanker heading towards the rocks 1 mile away". They take a long time to turn...

I have no problem with "American" sourced educational programmes, especially since the BBC "science" progs these days are so crap
Spacetime
and the good ones are actually American anyway with British voice overs.

BBC Abandons Science

Americans are good at making things that convey messages simply. Note the "involvement" of N.American networks in David Attenboroughs epic wildlife programmes.

I have no problem with them per se, but the impression I get is that BBC "science" coverage is approxiamtely
60% Cute Animals, so frequently endangered that DS probalby thinks all animals are endangered including cows and rabbits.
10% Misunderstood health scare based upon "what people feel".
5% Pictures of the "mysterious thing" that scientists have found without any real
explanation.
15% Saying that Apple Computers are great.
10% Saying stuff that Apples PR firm would find a bit over the top.

interesting that none of the scientists opposed to the theory of man made global warming listed in wikpedia are climate specialists....

Excuse me? What are the climatologists and meteorlogists on the list if not climate specialists?

Geographers and gelogists can also be specialists in the field - there are many differenct vairabel involved in climate change.

Interesting though that David Bellamy isn't mentioned in this list, althugh he is in the more general list of sceptics - as he is not a specialist in the field!

from wikpedia:
'This article lists scientists, not necessarily involved in climate research, who have expressed doubt regarding the current scientific opinion on global warming.'
As far as i could see most listed were not specialists in climate research. Anyway i agree with you on one level prettybird, whatever the cause we better bloody well try to curb our pollution levels. Don't quite understand how anyone could argue [not saying you are] that chucking out such vast quantities of carbon dioxide into out atmosphere without any restraint can not harm our environment.

Prettybird raises a valid point. The credentials of doubters are attacked, but those who follow the consensus are seen as wise.

David Bellamy was a proper scientist before he became a media luvvie. Indeed I hear stories that his university treated him shabbily out of jealousy.
But he is no more a climatologist than I am.

As someone who works on highly numerical models I have deep scepticism on their predictions. Almost all sophisticated models of everything, including uncontroversial things like air passing over a wing, or heat convection in a liquid often produce really amazingly wrong results. One reason you need smart people doing this is that extreme values may be either a limitation of the model, or a good prediction of a scary result.
For instance, the first models of large scale climate produced such crazy results that what we now know as Chaos theory was largely invented to work out WTF was going on.
The next generation was more stable, with many models showing that the "stable" long term state was "White Earth", ie totally frozen.
The BBC of course doesn't report this problem.

Of course, I'm not a climatologist, thus I'm a bit like a car engineer talking about ships. Lots of common principles, but big differences as well.

It will scare my 14 y/old DS shitless.. and he is already very envionmentally aware and worries a lot about global warming.

I suppose the same can't be said of most of them though.. Bit much for Y7s...

You seem to be reading a different list to me Ruty.

By my assessment, of the 23 names mentioned, George V. Chilingar, professor of civil and petroleum engineering, Zbigniew Jaworowski, who is chair of the Scientific Council at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw: (but who does ahve a legitiamte interest as he beleives that there is separate correlation relted to his onw field - "The atmospheric temperature variations do not follow the changes in the concentrations of CO2 ... climate change fluctuations comes ... from cosmic radiation"), Frederick Seitz, former solid-state physicist, Nir Shaviv, astrophysicist (can't see more aobut his background - but the other astrophysicist is a specialist in Climate Change and Solar behaviour) and Sherwood Idso, former research physicist.

That's 5 out of 23 5 who are not obvioulsy specialists in the field - but may well be working in closely related fields - I don't know enough about it.

DC - you might be interested in this article about a statsitican who challenged the statisitical basis of some of the research.

Shiny has a point. Kids are being fed propaganda, rather than an understanding of what's going on. I recall that Schindler's List was also sent to all schools. To me that's different, since it's OK to assert that murdering people by the million is a bad thing.

Climate change is more ambiguous, and requires a sophisticated response.

DS kept on at me to do "car sharing", something his arty teachers are big on. Saw us as bad people because we didn't. Thing is of course he usually goes to school by tube... Apparently no one had told him that this was better for the environment.

as far as i know geology professors and astrophysicists are not necessarily specialists in climate change. I may be wrong though.
'Of course, I'm not a climatologist, thus I'm a bit like a car engineer talking about ships. Lots of common principles, but big differences as well.' I agree with you entirely DC.

But I quite like it when left wing teachers give the children a particular view and then the children start arguing with the teachers and you get great debates in class and then the children come home and you discuss things again. It's really good. I don't think schools can really mould children's views because they have other influences on them too. Obviously I would prefer if we weren't teaching creationism and that small dinosaurs went into an ark or holocaust denial.

That Saudi school in London today has agreed to tear out half of a page of one of the textbooks it uses which said Jews were pigs and Christians monkeys I think. I just had visions of teachers sitting there with pairs of scissors going through every copy

I was taught pretty offensive things about protestants at school. Even with the low political sophistication of a 10yo I could spot crap when it was being spouted.

A problem with censoring "bad" ideas is that we don't help kids deal with subtle issues.

Holocaust denial is a good case in point. It is instructive to listen to their arguments which are consistent in ideas if not specifics.

David Irving being an arts grad simply can't do numbers, and thus has asserted that the Germans simply could not have moved that many Jews, and that the camps couldn't have handled them anayway.
This is risible bollocks. A well educated 10yo should be able to kick holes in that.

Also they rarely actually deny the existence of the holocaust, merely saying it's "exaggerated". There they are on safer ground since their has been a sad degree of competitive victimhood between those who claim to speak for Jews, Gypsies, Gays et al, and it's not too hard to suspect the precise numbers.
Also they have intersected with mainstream Christian group who have long cliamed that we bombed the fuckers too much in Dresden, Hiroshima et al. Thus Germans have managed to weasel their way into nice fuzzy victimhood.

But their argument implies that there is some acceptable number of Jews et al that they could have gassed so that it was OK. Typically theses claims saythe exaggeration is anywhere between 50 and 500%, implying that that if they'd only killed 1 or 2 million that would have been right and proper.

Miliband's blog intro on the idea of sending 'The Inconvenient Truth' to secondary schools;

'Many people say that Al Gore's film has changed their view of climate change. That is why we have agreed with the producers of the film that we will be the first country in Europe (possibly the world) to send the film to all schools, with extra material to promote debate among pupils and parents.'

So, 'with extra materials to promote debate' suggests the govt isn't looking to brainwash secondary school children. Simply create discussion. No there's an idea.

The debate on Miliband's blog is not as polite as on here.

I'm 100% behind promoting debate.
Anyone know what these materials are ?

Will the government offer good counter arguments in the material, or just include occasional disclaimers of the form "but some oil companies who get rich on oil have paid people to disagree". ?

Also, the film attacks Bush. I have no problem with that in general, but am uncomfortable with overtly political propaganda being included in schools, especially without a rebuttal.

That's not Al Gore's fault, but he is the bloke who stopped him being president, not going to be friends are they ?

DC. Ask Miliband on the blog link below. He does actually check it. I was also wondering this. Completely agree that political propaganda is not helpful.

Of course! That is why David Irving is a Holocaust denier. Because he is an Arts grad!

I'm on a shortish contract at the biggest environment centre in Europe at the moment, with experts who have spent their careers studying climate change and they aren't arguing about the knub of it. Scientists dot all the i's and cross all the t's they can before even opening their mouths, so the fact that it's even in the public arena means that we should probably multiply what they say by 10. I studied biological sciences for longer than pure env sci, but I've been following the debate seriously since the mid 80's and to say that the planet is in a lot of trouble is putting it mildly.

Very good point Droile. Scientists are conservative in their approach; a point not so far highlighted but adding weight I believe to the assertion that manmade CC is significant and has to be tackled properly.

thank god for your input Droile.

I've just found this thread and am amazed at how many people are joining the discussion without seeing the film. There is one bit which I can't quote accurately but is about the difficulty of convincing someone whose salary depends on them not understanding. People don't want to give up an unsustainable lifestyle therefore they'll find any argument they can not to do so.

Last time there was an international look at this a few scientists dissented about whether humans were causing the problem. The science has got better. Well informed dissenters now are the ones who are paid to put that point of view.

The main contributors to CO2 gases per head of population are not the developing countries. The worst culprit is America and the film is firmly aimed at Americans - but Europe doesn't come out too well either.

At my kids secondary school the film was shown at lunchtime to an invited audience, although you could ask for an invitation. We have just watched it at home together. I'm happy to encourage my kids to look at the opposition. We can then have a discussion about the difficulties of evaluating conflicting comments and of convincing people of something they don't want to believe.

The film reports some quite frightening scientific studies and includes some lovely pictures. It's worth watching.