The CO2 Coalition has reviewed the National Science Teaching Association’s Position Statement on Climate Change and has found that it has serious problems, which we address in this assessment. Our objections to this document are many but can be separated into two major categories. Our detailed rebuttal, Challenging NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change, was published March 23, 2023.
• Reliance on “consensus” science and a rejection of critical thinking skills and the scientific method.
• NSTA’s embrace of the hypothesis of “harmful man-made warming” despite its basis in flawed science and government opinions and its rejection of all contradictory science.
A primary role for the NSTA should be to develop critical thinking skills for students and to instill in them knowledge and use of the scientific method. Students should be encouraged to review all facts on a subject (in this case climate change) and make up their own minds rather than be indoctrinated into an established political agenda.
Unfortunately, the NSTA has taken a strong position that is antithetical to the scientific method, critical thinking and open scientific debate. Its position is one of censorship of any scientist or science that does not support the NSTA-approved “science.” The NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change fails to delineate between real science and political science.
Background
In early 2021, a group of CO2 Coalition members decided to act on their concerns about the state of science education in America. They recognized that the teaching of science had strayed from the 400-plus-year-old scientific method and was less inclined to encourage inquisitiveness in students and more prone to require conformity to the opinions of teachers. At present, much of the instruction on climate
change resembles an indoctrination into a political agenda rather than the provision of necessary tools for critical thinking.
It is our knowledge of science and commitment to the scientific method – not political narratives – that make the CO2 Coalition uniquely qualified to lead in the development of a fact-based program of climate-science education.
Read the Complete Report Here:
Challenging NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change
The CO2 Coalition is attending and exhibiting our findings at the National Science Teaching Association’s Annual Convention in Atlanta, GA (March 23 to 25, 2023). We are proudly promoting the teaching of sound science and the scientific method to those who wish to indoctrinate our children and grandchildren.
This commentary was first published by the CO2 Coalition March 23, 2023.
They have definitely proved that climate change effects are man-made. You only have to look at the millions of children who have been indoctrinated by them and developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!
Well done CO2 Coalition on taking this stand and I wish you well in Atlanta. In Russia, Putin has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian schoolchildren and put them into ‘re-education’ camps; we criticise this indoctrination but fail to recognise the indoctrination going on right under our noses.
Critical thinking is essential for schoolchildren and university students.There is evidence that it is under threat – and not just in the USA. Here in the U.K. our university students are increasingly ‘woke’ in their views, a result of the inability to think critically. This week a university debating society ‘disinvited’ a speaker because it discovered that she had laughed at a Ricky Gervaise sketch about trans people. The irony of this action being taken by a DEBATING society is apparently lost on these young people.
So go to it CO2 Coalition with our grateful thanks. Indoctrination is for communists.
If indoctrination doesn’t work, there is always that old-time favorite: burning at the stake.
That creates too much CO2.
In Russia, Putin has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian schoolchildren and put them into ‘re-education’ camps; we criticise this indoctrination but fail to recognise the indoctrination going on right under our noses.
Complete BS
In reality. three million Ukrainians fled to Russia to avoid the battles in Ukraine.
About 1/3 of Ukrainians in the Donbas region have wanted to be an independent nation since 2014, but were never allowed a vote, which they would have lost.
Eastern Ukrainians wanted the 2014 to 2022 Ukranian geno cide to end after eight years, with 11,000 dead by early 2022, but did not want to be part of Russia, which they have become. They have only fled to Russia (and Poland, and elsewhere) to prevent becoming collateral damage.
In reality there is MUCH more brainwashing in US schools and colleges (leftism and climate change malarkey) than in Russian schools
You are misleading readers here with completely clueless false statements.
In many nations there are regions which would like to break off- but there isn’t any rule that says a nation has to give those regions the option. In 2014 RUSSIAN troops entered the Donbas and THAT triggered heavy fighting- so it’s their fault- because Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire and be remembered as Putin The Great. How can you not understand this? He has said- long before this war- that Ukraine isn’t a real country and that the worst thing to happen in the 20th century was the break up of the Soviet Union. You didn’t notice that? You have a right to be a Russo-file if you want but give up with Putin’s propaganda. He’s even said that the former Warsaw Pact nations must get out of NATO. I suppose you like that? You forget the cold war? And now in America we have been whining that there should be a “national divorce”- split the nation into 2 nations or more. Should we have a vote on that? Sheesh!
More lies about Russia
WE CAN DEBATE WHETHER OR NOT IT MADE SENSE FOR RUSSIA TO TRY TO STOP A UKRANIAN GENO CIDE IN EARLY 2022, BUT i WILL NOT TOLERATE DELIBERATE LIES.
No Russians in uniiorm entered Ukraine before early 2022.
In 2014 they should have entered Donbas to stop the geno cide that began in 2014 and eventually killed 11,000 Ukrainian civilians. But they just watched.
When a portion of a nation wants to be independent and the leaders KNOW in advance the vote will be two to one against independence, a smart politician allows the vote to happen
In the US, some states wanted to be independent in the 1800s. To prevent that, the worst president in American history, v far (maybe Biden will beat him) was Abe Lincoln, who allowed 700,000 Americans to kill each other. All to eliminate slavery, which every other nation in the world did without violence, except for Haiti, where White English and Black Haitian slaves worked together to get ris of the French and slavery at the same time
Ukraine was ruled by a vicious and corrupt anti-Russia politician — installed with the help of a lot of American money in what could be called a coup in 2014 — who chose to deny the Donbas independence vote with artillery shells and gunfire that eventually killed 11,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians.
11,000 Russin speaking Ukrainians murdered was a geno cide. Many nations in the world had pledged to stop all geno cidesi 1948, after the worst geno cide in modern history. They signed the 1948 Genocide Convention.
In the following years not one geno cide was stopped by the US, UK, Russia or any other signers. That included about one million deaths in the Uganda geno cide. In fact. the US committed a geno cide in Iraq the second time we attacked.
Russia was the first nation to attempt to stop a genocide — in Ukraine — but they acted too late, and probably regret acting at all
Putin is not attempting to take over Ukraine.
There is no evidence he was, or is.
You are lying.
In fact, no Ukrainian civilian infrastructure was damaged in the first six months of the war You don’t spare civilian infrastructure if you want to take over a nation. The US, for example, viciously attacked civilian infrastructure in Iraq in early 2000s to implement regime change there.
Putin was not responsible for the cold war. He became President in 2000 — the cold war was over by then.
What I understand is the truth. What you believe is anti-Russia propaganda unrelated to the truth.
It is also my opinion that the US is heading for a NATIONAL DIVORCE. The rapid decent to totalitarianism since the 2020 Covid lockdowns, and 2020 election, if continued, will lead to a civil war. Not just with words, but with guns. It might take a decade to get there, but some Americans still prize personal freedom enough to fight for it, Hopefully before all Americans are disarmed.
Yes the US should eventually have a vote om becoming two nations before we become one nation that half the population can not tolerate.
If the US EVENTUALLY BREAKS INTO TWO SEPARATE NATIONS, THEN SO WHAT?
You seem to be on the side of the government, while I am on the side of personal freedom. And our personal freedoms are slipping away at a fast rate. Doing nothing is not an option.
I’ll let you soak in your superiority. It must be fun.
Why not just post the following sentence (in BOLD font, below), instead of a childish character attack — the “debate” style of leftists?
You should have posted:
” I don’t know enough about the subjects you commented on in detail to refute anything you wrote”
Retired General Jack Keane said a couple of days ago that about 100,000 Ukranian children had been abducted by Putin and sent to Russia. General Keane called it a war crime. I agree.
I don’t believe General Keane is making false statments. He is one of the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to the Ukraine war.
General Keane also says if Putin wins in Ukraine, then the Chicoms win, and if Putin loses in Ukraine, then the Chicoms lose. I agree with that, too.
If you want to believe Putin’s propaganda, that is your perogative.
Keane is lying or misinformed
Russia does not want or need any Ukrainians
Three million Ukrainians voluntarily escaped to Russia to get away from the war. Millions of other Ukrainians went to Poland and other nations. No children were kidnapped by Russia.
Complete BS
I assume you come to this website because you do not believe government claims about climate change and Nut Zero
But at the same time you seem to believe all government claims about Russia and Ukraine as if they must be honest and unbiased?
That is insane, contradictory behavior
If a government is not honest about climate change, Covid, Covid vaccines etc., only a fool would believe the same government is honest about Russia and Ukraine.
You can insult me all you want to, but you are spewing anti-Russia lies and failing to refute any facts I have presented.
“Keane is lying or misinformed”
He doesn’t agree with your take on the subject so he’s lying or misinformed? That’s ridiculous.
In all things, war and climate change included, one has to be able to pick out the experts that really are experts, from the liars and misinformed, and you have failed this test when it comes to the Ukraine war. Putin is your go-to guy.
You are not alone. There are several otherwise smart people on this website who have your same attitude, soaking up the Putin propaganda. They are wrong, too.
Just because a person is smart, doesn’t mean they are not wrong on occasion. The facts of the matter say you are wrong about the Ukraine war.
I don’t see Putin making much progress with his new attacks. It appears the poor Russian troops are dying in droves just like they did in the last attack.
The Putin supporters here thought Putin was really going to make progress this time.
When you are wrong time after time, it is time to reexamine your position.
I do not soak up Putin propaganda. That is a smarmy childish character attack that fails to refute anything I wrote in previous comments.
Below are four false claims about Russia, and you probably believe every one of them, because you are a pro-government useful idiot who does not think independently:
(1) Putin kidnapped children
FALSE
(2) Russia wants to take over all of Ukraine
FALSE
(3) Russians destroyed their own gas pipelines
FALSE
(4) Ukrainian have killed 100,000 Russians and will win the war
FALSE
How many lies have to be told before you start recognizing they are lies? Apparently, the number is infinite.
“‘disinvited’ a speaker because it discovered that she had laughed at a Ricky Gervaise sketch about trans people”
That’s mind blowing.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of consensus science. What else do you expect to teach school students except facts that everyone agrees on. Which is why evolution is taught and not creationism or the latest nonsense of intelligent design.
High school students aren’t taught string theory or loop quantum gravity instead they get taught Newtonian gavity despite the fact that we know it is wrong. High school is not the place to teach the cutting edge of science instead you get taught the bits of science that most people agree on, i.e. consensus science.
The problem is that most people who are science based do not ‘believe in man made climate change’
Newtonian gavity (sic) ?
It’s a shame your school didn’t teach you about spelling or the importance of attention to detail. Otherwise you might realise that consensus is politics, and has no place in science.
So, Izaak, you would have been in favor of the consensus science of teaching the sun revolves around the earth? And you would have told that pesky Giordano Bruno to get with the consensus?
and to think- Bruno was converted mostly to CO2!
“There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young” – Thomas Sowell
The laws of thermodynamics are hardly cutting edge.
Kids are taught the that the atmosphere “traps heat”.
Is that consensus science, or dogma and ignorance?
Traps heat is close enough to the truth to be considered true
And that has nothing to do with violating any of the laws of thermodynamics.
Greenhouse gases impede cooling
Trapping heat would be a layman’s view of that effect.
Just like the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with real greenhouses.
Climate language is often not precise.
Who decides “close enough to the truth”? Perhaps impending Climate Catastrophe is close enough to the truth. The NSTA believes so.
Stefan Boltzmann, Beer Lambert, 420 ppm measurements: these are precise. Are the principles involved so difficult to understand that we shouldn’t bother trying to teach them to our children?
it’s not about principles- it’s about predictions
Do you believe that high school students should skip Newtonian physics and go straight to Einsteinian physics?
After all, at the speeds and weights used in most high school level physics, Einsteinian physics gives results that are a few parts per million more accurate.
That CO2 impedes the flow of heat is not in doubt, that this has nothing to do with thermodynamics is also not in doubt.
I think teaching children all of the factors involved in climate are fine. The problem is, they will only get half truths. They leave out evaporation, energy transport and condensation process which cancels out all of the warming.
If some of the upwelling heat from our planet trying to cool itself does not reach the infinite heat sink of space, then claiming it was “trapped” is not a lie. Deflected would be a better word but trapped is okay. It does not mislead anyone.
“If some of the upwelling heat from our planet trying to cool itself does not reach the infinite heat sink of space, then claiming it was “trapped” is not a lie.”
Did you proof-read this before posting it?
If some of the heat input to the system is not released then the system will continue to heat. It’s why a metal rod can be heated from one end all the way to the other using an acetylene torch. It will heat until the rod droops – i.e. the molecular bonding changes. It simply cannot radiate away enough heat to keep it from happening.
The system we know as earth is no different than the metal rod. Keep adding heat that can’t be radiated away and it will turn the Earth into a cinder sooner or later. Or an airless rock like the moon as the atmosphere burns away.
Consider why Tmax is not going up but Tmin is. The Earth continues to radiate away heat even during the day. If it didn’t we would see Tmax go up as well as Tmin. As Tmin goes up the heat radiated away during the day goes up, at least at sunrise, by T^4. So the heat radiated away during the day starts off higher than it would if Tmin were lower.
It’s part of why I find most radiation budget analyses somewhat lacking. The use of averages misses out on what is happening with the entire radiation profile. It’s just like (Tmax+Tmin)/2 doesn’t tell you anything about the actual temperature profile.
No gas can “trap” heat, all gases, and indeed all fluids, dissipate heat, it is why we put radiators in ICE cars. Even if CO2 does have this magical property, you will not find it easy to convince me that 0.042% of the atmosphere can contain, project or re-radiate enough heat energy to overwhelm the capacity of the remaining 99.958% to dissipate that heat.
“Climate language is often not precise.”
Or indeed accurate..
How did the heat that is dissipated get into the fluid?
There are two forms of heat. One is vibrational energy of atoms and molecules. The other is photons.
Obviously CO2 does nothing to impede the transfering of vibrational energy from one molecule to another. CO2 does impede the flow of energy in the form of photons.
One mole of N2 at 300 K has mass of 28.01g and Cp of 1.039 J/g K so it takes 29.01 J to raise 1 K.
One mole of CO2 at 300 K has mass of 44.01 g and Cp of .846 J/g K so it takes 37.23 J to raise one K. CO2 when added seems to be a coolant.
Every mole of CO2 that enters the atmosphere will require more energy to get back to the same temperature. The only source we have is the sun and we are told it is constant.
Using standard physics you can calculate the number of CO2 molecules per cubic meter and the amount of J they can emit at 15 micro at any one time. I get 5.565E-15 J which I think is less than required.
If CO2 reacted with IR to cause warming then there would be multiple columns in specific heat tables to show energy required with and without IR. But there isn’t.
You can’t know the density of a gas without knowing the pressure as well as the temperature.
The sun is close enough to a constant that most of the time, you can ignore its changes. Everything else varies.
Are you honestly trying to claim that you have proven that CO2 does not absorb IR?
I won’t try to convince you of anything because your mind is closed and you suffer from confirmation bias.
No it’s not. It doesn’t trap anything.
The notion that it does is utter nonsense.
How about “reflect”, at least for the layman?
I like “impedes cooling”: and I would never have used the phrase greenhouse effect.
Eunice Foote to a top US science conference in 1856. She describes filling glass jars with water vapour, carbon dioxide and air, and comparing how much they heated up in the sun.
Swedish physicist and physical chemist Svante Arrhenius is credited with the origins of the term greenhouse effect in 1896, with the publication of the first plausible climate model that explained how gases in Earth’s atmosphere trap heat.
.But those imprecise words are unimportant arguments.
The right words to attack are “Climate Emergency”.
I think you know the argument I would like to see in the press. The affect of CO2 on the environment is saturated. There can only be about one degree future warming directly from increased CO2 in the atmosphere, and that will take about 150 years to happen. And better than that the IPCC agrees with that statement.
It “traps” a small amount heat that would have left the atmosphere
Do you want to debate how much or just attack the word trap like a child?
I left you another message on the same subject.
What happens to a metal rod that is heated with an acetylene torch at one end? What causes the rod to change color? What ultimately happens to the rod? Why does it happen? Trapped heat inside the rod perhaps?
Why is the earth any different?
In science it is often instructive to test ones theory by using the null hypothesis. In this case ask what would happen if there was no trapped heat and all of the thermal radiation leaving the surface radiated to space? In that case the planet would become an ice ball because the Sun alone could not maintain the planet’s average temperature of about 60 F.
The heat that is trapped and returned to the surface is required to maintain our current pleasant average temperature
The problem with using “traps” is that it implies that the radiant energy is trapped in the atmosphere and heats the atmosphere. Somewhere in the description the fact should be included that the trapped heat is returned to the surface.
I wish it weren’t so, RG, but there is a contingent here who simply refuse to believe spectroscopic measurements. In all fairness, however, transport through an active medium is not simple stuff.
Kevin, can you elaborate?
As a layman I struggle with the the things we’re pretty certain of, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for instance, and the uncertainties like transport through an active medium.
This may be the reason the alarmism continues. It is evident from the comments at WUWT that there is no consensus among the ‘deniers’. To add to this the”greenhouse”image that most laymen have in their heads is certainly incorrect.
Mechanical engineers deal with systems that contain atmospheres that result from combustion — ovens, furnaces, etc. So they contain CO2, H2O and and residual air. Both CO2 and H2O have energy levels within the IR and microwave bands which are also within the bulk of a thermal spectrum at typical temperatures of boilers, ovens, and furnaces. Thus, just from spectroscopic data we know, without doubt, that these gases will impede the flow of energy from sources (burners, or surface of the Earth) to sinks (walls of oven, or atmosphere and space). An engineer will never calculate heat transfer within combustion devices correctly without allowing for this and the atmosphere of the Earth is no different. When RG says that “CO2 trapping heat is close enough to be considered truth” he isn’t wrong. The word trapping may be the real issue, but the constant re-radiation that goes back and forth between the warm ground and the wet/CO2 ladden and warm air above is certainly trapped in a sense.
You can substitute the word impede for trap, and be marginally closer to the truth.
To expand on what I said earlier.
There are two ways in which energy is transported. One is by the transfer of vibrational energy from one molecule to the next. This is what most people think of as heat.
Energy is also transported via photons. Molecules both emit and absorb photons. I’m not going to get into the details of how individual molecules can only emit and absorb photons of certain wavelength/energy levels, or how pressure and temperature can impact these energy levels.
When a molecule absorbs a photon, its vibrational energy increases. When it emits a photon, its vibrational energy decreases.
When a molecule of CO2 absorbs a photon of the correct energy level, it vibrational energy increases. When that molecule is located in the lower atmosphere, the odds are that molecule will collide with another molecule, and transfer that vibrational energy before it has a chance to re-emit that energy in the form of a photon.
Oddly enough, in the upper atmosphere, when a CO2 molecule acquires vibrational energy via a collision, the odds are it will emit a photon before it has a chance to transfer that energy to another molecule via collision. This is because the atmospheric density is lower in the upper atmosphere.
As a result of this, a molecule of CO2 can either heat or cool, depending on where in the atmosphere it is located.
No, lower molecules also radiate energy they get by kinetic collision, thus “cooling” but this term is inapplicable at the molecular level.
They can, however the average time between collisions is so much lower than the average time before emission, that it rarely happens.
Agreed.
My issue is with the simplified image that the greenhouse analogy puts into people’s heads.
Here’s John Kerry, explaining in 2014
“The science [of Climate Change] is something that we absolutely understand.
Some aspects of physics can be tough- chemistry.
But this is not tough.
This is simple.
Kids at the earliest age can understand this.
Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is.
It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere.
And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature…
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact…“
.
You are a man of few words
However, he is very punctual.
The two climate relalted phases I least prefer are:
(1) “Consensus climate science”
I prefer Climate Howler Global Whiners
(2) “Climate computer models”
I prefer Climate Confuser Games.
I never treat leftists with respect because they never respect conservatives. In fact, insulting a leftist every day has lowered my blood pressure for the first tie in 16 years.
“Trapping” is indeed the issue. Trapping means preventing free movement, impeding is simply slowing the movement. Trapping is a term used to misinform and contribute to the lie of catastrophic global warming. It is a term of propaganda – not an accurate description of physical properties.
Hottel showed that the emissivity of CO2 is almost zero at normal temperature and pressure so how could it do the warming that is claimed?
Pick up any engineering textbook on radiation heat transfer which has a chapter on transfer in presense of an active atmophere. There will be graphs that are constructed from measurements of the effectiveness of CO2 and H2O to absorb/emit thermal radiation. All of those graphs show that the effective emissivity of a path of CO2 or H2O is higher as temperature is lowered.
KK I fear you have stirred up the hornet’s nest of CO2 deniers even before I read any other comments.
I decided in early 2023 that some conservatives were harming the failing effort to refute CAGW by claiming 100% of consensus climate science is wrong. That means no greenhouse effect and no AGW, which they sometimes think is only CO2 emissions. They seem to forget other AGW causes of global warming (or cooling, such as air pollution, UHI, land use changes and deliberate revisions to temperature data to create more global warming out of thin air.
So far my effort to refute the AGW deniers is revealing a lot of then exist. That is bad news.
I try to say that you can deny CAGW without denying AGW. In fact, denying AGW makes denying CAGW almost impossible. Because when denying AGW you can honestly be called a science denier.
If conservatives want to claim “climate change” is 90% politics (junk science) and 10% real science … that’s what I say. I used to say 99% politics for over 20 years but that ws an exaggeration.
One can not be taken seriously if one claims climate change is 100% politics. That turns off half the potential audience immediately. Including me.
90% politics = predictions of climate doom that have been consistently wrong for the past 50 years
10% science = humans can have a small, harmless effect on the climate, although exactly how much is just a rough estimate
It’s that simple
“Greenhouse gases impede cooling”
No, they don’t. They merely change the mechanisms internal to the heat engine known as Earth. As temperature goes up radiation goes up as does conduction and convection also. Different mechanisms. As more radiation is absorbed more collisions occur, etc.
If they “trapped heat” we would have long ago turned into a cinder.
Even laymen understand that if you put a piece of cardboard in front of your cars radiator thus impeding the cooling the engine will sooner or later overheat and burn up.
Whether the car overheats depends on many factors, the biggest of which is how big is the piece of cardboard.
A very small piece will impede the ability of the radiator to exchange heat with the atmosphere, but not by much. After all, leaves and other debris are constantly getting trapped in radiators.
CO2 is a very small piece of cardboard.
Except the car doesn’t have the positive feedback that H2O supposedly provides.
Cardboard in front of a radiator is not exactly a scientific experiment for CO2 effects.
Added CO2 emissions “traps” slightly more heat than not . increasing the CO2 level. So what?
Even 4000ppm CO2 did not turn Earth into a cinder.
Because CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas above 400ppm and not very important as a climate change cause.
Even the IPCC admits CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, but then claims an imaginary strong water vapor positive feedback that triples the relatively small effect from CO2 alone (2x to 4x amplification, over 200 to 400 years), changing CO2 from a minor climate change variable into major climate change variable. Which I believe is malarkey.
What happens to an object that “traps” heat? What happens to a metal rod being heated by an acetylene torch at one end when it can’t radiate all the heat away?
Does the “trapped” heat in the rod continue to increase as the torch continues to heat the rod?
not precise but it’s a science we must believe to the extent of spending hundreds of trillions of dollars to revolutionize everything about our civilization in the very short term?
You mean its intentionally misleading and created as marketing-speak not rational description of truth.
Any Climate Realists who wastes time criticizing the accuracy of the words “traps heat” and “greenhouse effect” is a fool.
If we can not focus on the right target of “climate emergency”, then we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.
“Traps heat” is just one part of a complex process. You need to understand the big picture. Increases in CO2 generated IR towards the surface from low in the atmosphere also enhances evaporation. This cools the surface. All you did with the trapped heat is balance out the cooling effect.
The extra latent energy is carried high in the troposphere and would cause warming there except you also get increased condensation which reduces high altitude water vapor. You get less heat trapped and once again the result is balanced out..
The better layman’s view is added CO2 enhances precipitation slightly and that is all.
Almost all spoken language is imprecise. Attempts to reach ‘precision’ usually tangles the sentences with so many adjectives and phrases that the words become meaningless gibberish. precision is usually left for PhD theses and technical reports, and most of them are also meaningless gibberish, but to a few zealots.
Not nearly close enough. No heat is trapped, it just leaves the atmosphere for space at a slower rate. It is far enough away from the truth to cause confusions and misunderstanding.
If thermodynamics is so easy why don’t most people commenting here know why the GHE directs more radiated energy back to the surface than out toward space?
It doesn’t, it doesn’t need to, and nobody said it did.
Like I said.
It’s a simplification. Though an accurate one.
What is wrong with Newton’s laws of motion? That they aren’t couched in quantum mechanic terms? First, Newton’s laws are *testable* and “verifiable” using K-12 equipment. Second, they can be used with both algebra and calculus at the high school level.
Would you rather that they not be taught anything until they are advanced enough with their math skills to handle quantum mechanics?
You have to learn to walk before you can run. Except in your world I guess.
I think Newton’s laws of motion should be taught as “not complete” with the rest spelled out by the General Theory of Relativity.
At the masses and speeds used in your average high school physics experiment, the difference between Newton’s equations and Einstein’s equations is just a few parts per million. So far below the measurement errors of the type of equipment used in high school physics experiments, that it simply isn’t worth the teacher’s time discussing.
I agree with DWM that the teacher probably should mention Einstein’s equations and explain why they are using Newton’s instead.
I agree with this. But it should probably be pointed out that Einstein’s equations have problems of their own as well. “Science is never settled”.
But it should probably be pointed out that Einstein’s equations have problems
Not many problems. I think HS students should at least understand the implications of General Relativity.
They should know gravity bends light waves.
Gravity slows time.
Gravity bends space-time
They should be exposed to the twin paradox
Always wrong wild guesses of the future climate ARE NOT SCIENCE
If I could reach you, Dizzy Izzy. I’d smack you upside the head with a rolled up New York Times Sunday newspaper, so that fact would sink in.
I doubt that even that would be enough.
You couldn’t be more wrong. I taught high school physics for 37 years. Taught using a historical approach and the ideals of the scientific method, students understood from numerous historical examples that consensus is not science. Limited only by time and mathematical limitations, everything you mentioned was discussed. The only arguments I had were not with fellow science teachers but with social studies teachers who believed consensus was fact. That the NYTimes was gospel. Richard Feynman said “if your prediction is wrong, then your hypothesis is wrong. PERIOD! Either alarmists don’t understand that or they conveniently ignore it.
Sometimes a scientists consensus is right and sometimes wrong. I don’t have statistics but it seems like a consensus has more often been wrong than right throughout history. It seems to me that breakthroughs in science are usually by a genius or small team that REFUTES the current consensus.
Sometimes a science consensus is just slightly wrong, and other times it is completely wrong. The most important fact one could teach about science is the correct answer to many questions is
”We don’t know that yet”.
Einstein claimed t’s impossible to travel faster than light. I am confident the current consensus on that will eventually be proven wrong, even if it takes hundreds of years. I believe Einstein may have already been proven wrong. The many UFOs visiting this planet, especially noticed since the 1940s, probably came here from far away planets — actual distance unknown, It would seem that they must have traveled here faster than light, or the trip would not have been made — nothing here of value to them. (This is a serious post. I do not joke about UFOs.)
Warp drives are theoretically possible, unfortunately using current theories, they would take as the output of a small star to power one.
If you could have demonstrated a smart phone to scientists back in the 1700s, they would have thought it was trick.
Three hundred years from now, Einstein’s theories may be considered old, obsolete science. I would be surprised if his work was still treasured 300 years from now.
That is called a Paradigm Shift.
“everyone agrees on” oh really? everyone?
Evolution is different because the science really is pretty close to being settled- supported by all other sciencies. There are few scientists who don’t agree with it. It’s mostly fundamentalist bible thumpers who don’t. Newtonian science isn’t wrong- it’s correct within a limited frame of reference. You are really showing your ignorance with that post.
I took an advanced physics course in high school. The teacher discussed Einstein’s equations and showed how they were derived and used.
In one demonstration that stuck with me, he showed how when you started with Einstein’s equations, and limited them for large and slow objects, you could derive Newton’s equations.
Evolution is different because the science really is pretty close to being settled
Except for the beginning of life and where did all the energy and matter all around us come from. Strictly speaking I guess evolution begins after life begins.
Yuh, the start of life is the big mystery but I believe biologists are making progress on this. As for cosmic origins- not much progress there- but a lot of people working on it. One concept is that the total of positive mass + energy equals the total of negative energy (dark energy) so the total of everything adds up to zero- which makes for the ultimate koan.
I certainly agree with some of your post, but this, “Newtonian gavity despite the fact that we know it is wrong” is too much. Newtonian gravity is not just a perfectly good approximation to general relativity but is essential for any practical purpose except corrections to the GPS system. No one in their right mind would begin with GR rather than Newton’s laws even for something as demanding as orbital mechanics for space flight between planets. It would be wrong to use it in a very few instances, and gawd-awful stupid to not use it elsewhere.
Or, as a famous philosopher once said, “You have to know when to hold ’em, and when to fold ’em.”
I believe in the Fig Newton Theory
Newtonian physics is not wrong. It is incomplete. It doesn’t cover the very small or the very fast.
High School students are taught Newtonian physics, not because it is the consensus but because it is the basis for understanding the rest of physics.
High School students are taught Newtonian physics, not because it is the consensus but because it has been tested for several centuries and proven to provide accurate predictions.
Your eagerness to defend consensus science just proves that you are no scientist.
I have to reply once more…
What is the role of consensus? It often describes a cult, you know. What do we expect to teach high school students? How about process because that where the “facts” of science come from.
From what I have read of Einstein, he would be the last person to declare that his equations could never be questioned.
Nobody can prove String Theory, and worse, it isn’t a falsifiable hypothesis. It is a conjecture that has no known practical application. Therefore, it shouldn’t be ‘taught’ at any level of formal education. What young people need is to be taught how to critically analyze ideas and data, and be exposed to the rudimentary paradigms that have been shown to be useful. Newtonian physics isn’t wrong. It is a simplification that is easier to calculate, and acceptable for the low-speed world that we live in.
Einstein famously said that a consensus of 100 scientists was nullified by a single person who could prove him or the 100 to be wrong.
“This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of consensus science.”
Yes I agree that your comment is a complete misunderstanding. There is no such thing as consensus science. Consensus is about popularity of ideas, not scientific validity. We don’t teach science concepts in school because they are popular but because they have consistently withstood the repeated testing of the scientific method. And by the way there are NO FACTS that EVERYONE agrees on because most people are not habitually thinking critically. Teaching consensus would be teaching the trailing edge of fashion rather than the leading edge of understanding.
“Unfortunately, the NSTA has taken a strong position that is antithetical to the scientific method, critical thinking and open scientific debate. Its position is one of censorship of any scientist or science that does not support the NSTA-approved “science.” The NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change fails to delineate between real science and political science.”
What supposed scientific organization pushing the alarmist line could that not be said about?
Sometimes it is enough for me to wish the AMO would hurry up and go deep into negative territory so I could start hearing the same liars telling us again that we’re going into an ice age.
Be careful what you wish for there Rah, You can rest assured the Climate Alarmist will certainly blame global cooling and the upcoming risk of another ice age, on man made climate change centred on CO2 emittance.
That is what they do. They are determined to stop the free market model championed by the Western societies from evolving into global prosperity. Their method is to restrict energy availability. to all but the favoured few or the elite, as we refer to them nowadays.
We have to keep reminding people science is science. There is no such thing as good science or bad science. The willingness of the media to champion the advancement of ‘correct thinking’ i.e. the establishments preferred vision of things must be challenged in the name of science.
Comment such as that from Izaak earlier only serves to endorse the flawed policies of climate ignorance/indoctrination being acceptable in teaching. Very sad.
But the little kids now that are being indoctrinated with the climate change propaganda and told they are going to burn in hell will be middle age adults by then and remember. Or at least many of them will.
You forgot “AND that our descent into an ice age is ALSO our fault, and ALSO because of our fossil fuel use.”
You know, just like last time (see the Global Cooling crisis).
Adjust the “Mannsplaining” of the intervening mechanism, rinse and repeat. “Climate nirvana” was apparently the prevailing conditions in about 1945, any departure from which in any direction constitutes a human induced catastrophe.
Yeah, I remember that last bit of global cooling. It didn’t go on forever, instead the temperatures warmed up all the way to the present from the 1970’s. If it does start cooling again like it did in the 1940’s, I don’t think it will cool any more than it did then, and then it will probably start warming again, if the climate is cyclical in nature, as it appears to be, going by the written, historic temperature record.
It cools for a few decades and then it warms for a few decades and then the process repeats, at least since the end of the Little Ice Age. We had high temperature points in the 1880’s and the 1930’s and 1998/2016, and cool temperature points in the 1910’s and the 1970’s, and it looks to me like we are due for another cool period in the future based on this cycle.
What causes these cycles is yet to be discovered, but these cycles are there, going by the written temperature record.
So I’m expecting more cooling. But I’ll be governed by the temperature readings whether it warms or cools (UAH anyway). In other words, I’ll be governed by the evidence.
Story tip
Talking of indoctrination, here is the BBC’s latest abysmal attempt at brainwashing a largely compliant U.K. audience.
The headline is ‘Climate change: a really simple guide’. Well, they got THAT bit right, at least.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24021772
The garbage that’s in there is simultaneously depressing and delighting
I went to look for their explanation of the GHGE – which was so garbled and wrong it actually was correct.
Their ‘Trenberth’ graphic actually said that The Sun Heats The Atmosphere.
Absolutely spot on, yet one of TheBiggestLies in all of climate science says that the atmosphere is perfectly transparent.
(cannot immediatly find it)
Sorry BoysAndGirls, no it is not and anyone can see that it’s not by visiting any one of 10,000+ personal weather-stations maintained by Wunderground.
Just watch the dry-bulb temperature graph, of 5 minute intervals, from the very instant that the sun peeps over the horizon on spring/summer/fall mornings with a clear sky
I did find this tho – please someone do some sums around it on a Cost per Tonne of CO2…
Quote:“A council’s target to become carbon neutral by the end of the decade is being altered after it was revealed it would cost over £4bn.
The actual figure was £4.7bn and that was to avert the release of 2,500 tonnes per year, by The Council, between now and 2030
here
Just where did they imagine the money was coming from and what world do they live in to not know that once approved, the cost will at least double and take 5 years longer than planned.
Nothing but lies lies lies & wrong wrong wrong
It says the page is 6 days old and that’s totally untrue
Its been there a long time – I quoted it here weeks ago
Story tip
It gets worse. Lefty barristers in the U.K. now say that they will not support the prosecution of lawbreakers who have been arrested for causing disruption as part of a climate change protest. So much for the rule of law. So much for fairness and equity. So much for professionalism.
The climate insanity has reached a new low.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11896725/Fury-woke-barristers-refusing-prosecute-eco-warriors.html
“Lefty barristers in the U.K. now say that they will not support the prosecution of lawbreakers who have been arrested for causing disruption as part of a climate change protest.”
No Supreme Court in the UK to test that?
What could a Supreme Court do when a Barrister (or DA) refuses to press charges?
Lawyers are free to accept or reject any client they please, pretty much for any reason.
DA’s are also free to choose who they will charge and who they won’t.
In the US, a government can be sued if a DA can be proven to be making such decisions for a racial or sexual orientation, but it is up to the plaintiff to prove the case.
a private lawyer can accept or reject any client- but the attorneys working for the government I presume are suppossed to do their job enforcing laws- they can’t just completely be arbitrary- maybe that’s how it works out- but I’d think the public could complain about it or at least whoever is victimized – of course, the above is about the UK and we Yanks have no clue about that 🙂
DAs have always had the discretion to choose which cases get prosecuted, which get negotiated and which ones are just ignored.
They also have the discretion to choose what charges to bring on those cases they chose to prosecute.
The SC would only get involved if the DA was making choices on a racial, sexual or other “protected” category grounds.
That a DA is abusing their discretionary powers is a political matter and will have to be solved by a political, not a judicial process.
Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail” comes to mind.
A very good rundown and a nice narrow scope on just CO2. After all, the whole narrative depends on the effect of increasing CO2.
Was there anything missing? How ’bout changes and deletion of climate data on the internet? Documents, charts and web pages that are at odds with the narrative just disappear.
For instance:
NASA changes the historical data in their Land Ocean Temperature Index LOTI every month. In 2022 they made 501 changes to the ~1700 monthly entries. The only way to make that determination is to find the old data on the Way Back Machine.
Us Forest Figure 16-1 is only found on the Way Back Machine.
The EPA’s Heat wave Index is gone.
1984
Well, obviously this is all racist. I mean, where are the People of Color?
“”the National Science Teaching Association””
21st Century dogmatists
I read the Climate Coalition full report, trying to refute National Science Teachers Association guidelines for climate change propaganda, which they call science.
This is yet another pitiful attempt by Climate Realists to “talk science”, when climate change is mainly leftist propaganda, not science.
After 40 years of Climate Realists trying to refute Climate Alarmism with a “science debate”, and failing, it’s obvious that strategy is hopeless. This report is a good example of why. Debating “the science” for the past 40 years has not worked. It is insane to use that same strategy again and again while expecting different results,
Here’s why: A belief in a coming climate crisis is not based on facts, data and logic (science), so can not be refuted with facts, data and logic (science). Climate change is predictions of doom not based on data, and most important, 100% wrong predictions since the early 1970s. Wrong for 50 years in a row. We have hundreds of wrong predictions that can be thrown in the face of Climate Howlers — our best weapon — yet often not used.
I am not saying the facts in the Climate Coalition report are wrong, except for an implication that most of the warming since the 1990s was due to two El Nino heat releases, in 1998 and late 2015 / early 2016. That is claptrap. You can eliminate whole year of temperature data centered on the peak heat month of those two El Ninos (April 1998 and February 2016) and even without the two El Nino years, there is still a rising global average temperature trend since 1979 in UAH satellite data.
This report missed all the important points about the climate change religion that need to be made. It is sad that many Climate Realists still think climate change is about science. Climate change is effective leftist data-free propaganda used to create fear. Fear causes people to accept the false claim that governments must do something about the climate. Do something means more power and control for leftist governments — the primary leftist goal for over a century.
Primary targets to attack Climate Howler Global Whiner climate change propaganda:
Predictions of the future climate are not science, especially because those predictions have been wrong for the past 50 years.
The past eight years had the largest eight years of manmade CO2 emissions in history, but there was no global warming, contradicting every prediction..
The rise of CO2 from 1940 to 1975 also happened with no global warming
More CO2 in the atmosphere makes 85% of plants grow better.
The global warming from 1975 to 2015 was mainly in colder nations, mainly in the coldest six months of the year, and mainly at night. Very pleasant warming for people living in Alaska, Canada and Siberia. Not much change in daytime high temperatures in the tropics. And no melting of the ice on Antarctica.
The lack of Antarctica melting is reflected in by seeing acceleration of sea level rise, even as the planet got slightly warmer from 1975 to 2015, based on US government NOAA tide gauge data from all around the world.
Conclusion:
Climate change is a prediction that has been wrong for 50 years. There is no logical reason to believe that humans have any ability to predict the future climate. Or that the future climate must get worse in the next 50 years, and could not get better, as it has actually done in the past 50 years.
The climate has changed in every year of your life. The changes are so small that few people noticed. Scary predictions of climate doom are unrelated to actual small changes of the climate, that have been pleasant for people living in colder nations. Including England and the northern US states.
It is common for children to be frightened by scary fairy tales. It is sad when adults can be tricked into believing that harmless CO2 is a boogeyman, when in fact, CO2 is the staff of almost all life on our planet. And the current CO2 level is much too low for optimum plant growth. More CO2 in the air makes our planet greener. What’s wrong with that?
And no melting of the ice on Antarctica.
Greenland isn’t “Melting” either.
The lack of Antarctica melting is reflected in by seeing acceleration
of sea level rise…based on US government NOAA tide gauge data
from all around the world.
Huh? Did you mean NO acceleration?
If I ever type a comment without an error, it will be a miracle.
I have a severe vision disability, so my world is always blurry.
Also, my dog ate my papers.
And none of my faults are my fault.
You are liable to get in trouble for plagiarizing Biden.
Correction:
“The lack of Antarctica melting is reflected by seeing NO acceleration of sea level rise, even as the planet got slightly warmer from 1975 to 2015, based on US government NOAA tide gauge data from all around the world.”
“The NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change fails to delineate between real science and political science.”.
Correction:
The NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change fails to delineate between science and politics.
Correct. 42 upticks.
Science + Politics = Politics
To my own embarrassment, I did not even know about the NSTA or their position statement. But I do now.
https://www.nsta.org/overview
“It takes a village to advance change.” Sounds like a movement with an agenda.
But also this: “We believe that science learning never stops.”
If so, then don’t stop learning. SHOW THE CHILDREN the animated visualization images from space by which we learn that the static radiative warming effect of CO2 experienced at the surface does NOT control the longwave emission to space. The end result does not look like a “trap” but a huge array of variable emitter elements, in which the formation and dissipation of clouds has a lot to do with it. And the openly evident overturning motion at local to global scale changes everything about where to expect the energy involved in the incremental “greenhouse effect” to end up.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=16&length=12
Science teachers take note that the color scale is such that the radiance at a brightness temperature of 30C on the scale (yellow) is ten times the radiance at -90C (white.)
There. Evidence from space. Science.
The technical content of K-12 science is our basic understanding of the natural world. Most of it is 100 years old or more. The climate debate does not meet this standard of long standing acceptance. In fact there is no general acceptance of climate alarmism. So teaching alarmism is purely political and wrong.
The basic myth is that when scientists predict the future climate, that prediction becomes science.
The truth is those predictions are not science, and are consistently wrong.
The basic myth is that science is what scientists “SAY” it is – and then, only if it’s the “scientists” whose point of view is favored by those funding the “science.”
Whereas in reality science is comparing a developed hypothesis regarding how things work and why with REALITY, and discarding or modifying any hypothesis that is shown to be incorrect by this “method.”
Even if the predictions were right, a scientist recognizes that one could be right, for the wrong reason.
The science is so biased by left wing politics that almost every climate prediction is wrong. Only the Russan INM model seems close to reality — probably just a lucky guess when there is only one model out of dozens that appears in the ballpark of being correct.
That’s why I call them Climate Confuser Games
The nonsense they are pushing lately about race and sexual orientation is barely a couple of years old, and is only accepted by the far left. There are quite a few leftists who recognize it as the junk it is.
The CO2 Coalition critique may be a bit off the mark. Students are already taught critical thinking and the scientific method. The problem is that in some cases climate alarmism is taught as established fact, not as a hotly debated hypothesis.
Really? Then why are so many urban school districts seeing NO students passing grade level reading and math assessment tests?
If you can’t read you will *never* learn critical thinking skills. If you can’t do math how will you judge anything having to do with the scientific method?
Black students are taught not to trust White people, and it seems that White people are the climate change malarkey leaders.
I bet a higher percentage of Black students don’t trust climate scaremongering than White students.
That was true of Covid vaccines claims made by White people.
The core question is:
“How much do you trust the government (which includes your teachers)?
I don’t think they’re taught much critical thinking these days, and therein lies the problem.
You can’t really teach both “critical thinking” and “climate crisis = fact” at the same time. Critical thinking would require the notion that science is advanced by skepticism, not acceptance of pseudo-scientific dogma as “fact.”
These kind of deep level manipulations often backfire as newer generations look for ways to rebel against the parental generation and inadvertently stumble upon the truth.
But what is truth?
It would be good if there were a link to the NSTA statement in question.
This CO2 Coalition statement is strange: “A primary role for the NSTA should be to develop critical thinking skills for students and to instill in them knowledge and use of the scientific method.” NSTA is a trade association for science teachers. It has nothing to do with instilling students.what the students learn is up to the states, schools and teachers.
This statement is a scientific claim: “At present, much of the instruction on climate
change resembles an indoctrination into a political agenda rather than the provision of necessary tools for critical thinking.” I doubt the CO2 Coalition has actual data to support it. No state standards (which say what will be taught at each grade level) mandate teaching climate alarmism. In fact a NSTA poll found that many teachers teach the climate debate.
Teach “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” if you’re a teacher. Buy copies for them yourself if you have to, and if you don’t get yourselves fired, you’ll have done something.
There are two things that will counter the green indoctrinational idiocy. One is that the teacher who is pushing the stuff comes across as too nerdy and kids just think it’s funny.
The other is that real, unbiassed teachers take the jobs and teach the actual changing world in geology through its many climates, the factual rhetoric and mathematical facts and the scientific principles, the physical realities in the natural world, the effects of changing climate throughout history..,
The parents’ movement to claw back bad curriculi passed in the house, but it won’t in the senate. Parents won attention for wanting to be “in” on their kids’ education. But whether they’ve sparked any kind of lasting effect is dubious. The anti-reality movement is going forwad on a national level.