Extra Curricula
Real Climate, the global warming blog authored and maintained by climate researchers, has posted a message to science teachers everywhere, urging them to get their free copy of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. This after the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down an offer of 50,000 free DVDs for its membership to use in the classroom. Wondering what was up, someone at Real Climate looked a little deeper at the NSTA's online resources and found that: 
Doing a search on "Global Warming" on the NSTA site turns up only a paltry supply of useful educational material. It is also illuminating to go into their "recommendations" section and type in "global warming." That will turn up this recommended book by Kenneth Green, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute whose article Clouds of Global-Warming Hysteria in the National Review endorsed Michael Crichton's view of global warming and called supporters of climate change action "One-worlders and other socialist sorts." Needless to say, the NSTA recommendations (as of today) did not turn up "An Inconvenient Truth" either in its DVD or book form. Nor did it turn up [New York Times science correspondent Andrew] Revkin's book directed at juveniles The North Pole Was Here, nor any of the other scientifically respectable introductions of which we are aware.Sigh. Well, if nothing else, it may help to explain this.
5 Comments:
For what it's worth, the NSTA (and Childrenns Book Council) did put The North Pole Was Here on their list of Outstanding Science Books of 2006.
First chapter online here: www.nytimes.com/learning/globalwarming
Andy R.
Okay, Andy. Thanks for the info.
Many schools are declining the film, afraid that Mr. Gore's participation may be viewed as "political" by some parents. Sadly, the message of global warming may be lost to those...
My 9 year old's geography/history teacher drives a Hummer. My daughter gets a kids brochure (name escapes me) that frequently mentions climate change, but won't tell kids that families with more than 2 kids, the 14mpg SUV your mom/dad drive and all the taxiing they do for your long distance travel sports teams is a big part of the problem.
The NSTA stance is a discrace that deserves to be widely exposed. Since they seem to be beholden to big oil, I have an idea. ExxonMobile recently announced that it would stop funding junk science, like the crap reports put out by the American Enterprise Institute (after having spent $17 million on such activities, see the Union of Concerned Scientists report here http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/investigation-reveals-0007.html ). So what is ExxonMobile doing to set the record straight? It should offer to spend $17 million for copies of the Gore film to be distributed by the NSTA for free to schools. ExxonMobile gets to do penance; NSTA gets to distribute the films; and schools get to accept them as suddenly OK.
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