"The Sky is Falling" Coming to a School Near You

I had the misfortune of sitting through a one-hour PowerPoint presentation that was a distillation of Al Gore's  movie The Inconvenient Truth.  Keith Bergman, Town Administrator of Littleton, is affiliated with The Climate Project (TCP).  He was trained by Al Gore himself!  Bergman made the presentation at an environmental engineering firm west of Boston last week, and it's being shown in Framingham, MA next week.  On May 6th, eighth graders in Malden, MA get the treatment. 

All that the show is missing in the theme music from Jaws.  It was alarmist and chock full of bad science (some examples are given below).  The presenter himself made a number of digs against Republicans, people from red states, and anybody who questions the supposed consensus about global warming, its causes and solutions.  Comrade, no questions allowed!  Mr. Bergman and TCP's show exemplified all that is so pathetic and counterproductive about environmentalism.  I fully support the development of alternative energy sources to fossil fuels, but I'm opposed to dogma masquerading as science. I'm dismayed that this blatant propaganda is being shown to middle schools and high schools around the country.  As a scientist recently said about the hysteria of so many global warming activists, "Catastrophe is not the language of science."  Hysteria just turns people off and allows us to throw our hands up in the air.  Sorry, nothing we can do about it.  We're screwed. 

There's a showing of the TCP slide show this coming Wednesday, April 30 at 7 PM at the Framingham High School in Framingham, MA.  It's free and open to the public.  I encourage people to attend the show next week, bring your critical faculties, and ask some hard questions.  Please forward this blogpost to any people - especially teachers - you know in Framingham. 

Now for just a handful of the junk science from the TCP slide show:

Dead bodies are shown floating in a pool from Hurricane Katrina.  Global warming is blamed for an increase in hurricanes, when there is no agreement among climate scientists and meteorlogists about what relationship exists between global warming and hurricanes. As tempting as it is to enviro-zealots, it is not possible to make the simple link between hurricane activity and global warming. 

A stranded polar bear mother and cub are shown on an ice floe.  Global warming will cause polar bears to go extinct.  Really?  Then what explains the tripling of the polar bear population in the past 20 years?  A Canadian study reports that polar bears in Canada's eastern Arctic are thriving, not declining.  And "contrary to concern over a celebrated photograph of a bear and its cub floating on a tiny iceberg, the animals often travel in that way."

Global warming is causing the Antarctic ice sheet to melt and break off.  Yes,  ice is breaking off from peninulas in the western portion of the Antarctic ice sheet, but that ice shelf is actually increasing in thickness everywhere else.  Volcanic activity may be the cause of the ice break in late March.  "Numerous active under-sea hydrothermal vents and volcanoes are being discovered." 

Retreating glaciers are shown from Mount Kilimanjaro and other mountain tops and glacier fields.  Pictures are shown contrasting the glaciers from 20 years ago and today.  TCP's show leaves out the fact that glaciers have been retreating for many decades, some since the 19th century, and scientists don't know why.

Then there's that projected 20 foot rise of sea level, shown swamping Manhattan, Cape Cod, Indonesia, Denmark, etc.  Yes, that might happen over millenia if all of Artic ice shelf and Greenland melt.  But the slide show leaves out these details and timeframe.

These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the scientific illiteracy behind the CPT slide show.  And the CPT solutions? Signing up for the Kyoto Treaty, biofuels, carbon credit trading, etc.  Not nuclear power, of course. 

There's a reason so many Americans aren't buying into "The Sky is Falling" message of the CPT.   Americans aren't pessimists and we're not brain dead. We're creative and we solve problems. We've heard the shrill cries of doom-and-gloom from environmentalists for decades now, and it's old and uninspiring, not to mention often wrong (global freezing, population bomb, etc.).  There are lots of reasons to promote alternative energy sources, including national security, reduced air pollution and increased public health.  But the CPT's global warming alarmism  - and their costly, limited and ineffective solutions - don't sway me. 

Want to do something to to promote alternatives to our reliance on petroleum? Here's a few things to write to your congressman about:

• Ask Congress to require increased gas mileage for trucks and SUVs. 
• Ask Congress to promote the siting and construction of nuclear power plants.
• Ask Congress to stop subsidizing growing corn for ethanol in the midwest. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem."
• Ask Congress to enf the tariff for the import of sugar cane-based ethanol.

Comments

[RobCra]

Good article, Miss Kelly.

I'm a global-warming alarmist, but misinformation is a real problem in making the case. Skeptics just have to pick off the examples of bad science to strengthen their side.

I'm not sure what's going on with polar bears. Maybe what's happening is that they're moving toward populated areas because of losing habitat, so more of them are being seen. But if polar bears were the only concern we'd probably just write them off as one more of many species we've exterminated.

But, back to the topic. Your article makes the case well that people have to ask tough questions. And the suggestions you offer for minimizing global warming are exactly right.

Good job.
Red

[miss kelly]

Thanks, Red, I checked out your website, very good info there. Completely rational! No pictures of dead bodies. I found it an excellent summary of what is a complex subject.

http://gwperplexed.niof.org