She’s heavily involved in raising awareness of global warming as an important environmental issue, and her strategy worked. Her omission of information resulted in a huge buzz being created around the issue, which provided even more exposure for Al Gore’s movie.

As a marketer myself, I’m impressed, though I don’t appreciate the deception. Honesty is very important to me, and I strive to be honest in all my efforts to raise awareness around important environmental topics. However, I’m still impressed the David’s strategy worked so well!

Nathan

Carbon cycle people volcanoes release on average (taking volcanic sporadicity into account) about 150 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Humans emit (through direct emission and suppression of sequestering) a net of seven billion tons of carbon per year. That is over an order of magnitude difference between the sources.

And if you don’t believe the researchers, just pick up a chart of the CO2 record over the past half century. If volcanoes were the primary atmospheric carbon source, you would see spikes in the carbon record every year a major eruption fired. 1991, for Pinatubo. 1982, for El Chichon. No such spikes exist. The volcanic contribution to the carbon concentration increase are almost negligibly small.

You are right about sulfur, though. One good volcanic shot can overwhelm the carbon signal for a couple of years. However, aerosols only hang around for a couple of years, so continuous aerosol emissions (like from factories) are not completely irrelevant, either – see global dimming.

http://www.nsta.org/pressroom&news_story_ID=52977

Nah, I tossed that out just to see if anyone nibbled. How’s that hook feel?

And my skepticism cuts three ways: long, deep and frequently.

dre said: “hee hee. heh.”

Very cogent. I stand defeated in the blaze of your intellectual arguments.

gengar Says: “Au contraire: I seriously doubt that youve found many climate scientists appealing to Thor….”

Silly rabbit! Thor is a thunder god! Appealing to him would be dumb!

How about Amaterasu? I think she’s a sun goddess if I can trust my Japanese mythology taught to me by video games.

Besides, all this political hand wringing is pointless. Global warming is caused by nuclear lava trolls deep in the Earth’s crust. Crude oil is their sweat, and their minions, the Evil Oil Companies [tm] pump it and refine it into global warming juice (AKA gasoline).

One can present material for review and if positive it will be listed here. Someone needs to present Gore’s DVD for review.

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=49954

I kept getting the 404 error msg and narrowed it down to the 1/2 sentence in the last two posts.

Yet the post went through when I split it in half.

And, yes, I tried retyping it and reloading the page. I think this is the third time for this blog entry oddity. But, hey, there wasn’t that whole page of errors you had to go back and refresh to get past.

So maybe we can remind them that instead

We’d all be better served if the NSTA worked to influence corporate America rather than the other way around.

I think it’s a good thing that corporate America would be partnering with schools. And as I said before, the NSTA leaders seemed for all intents to be just dedicated science teachers.

I hear often that we can’t expect corporations to be concerned with anything except the bottom line and the stockholder’s earnings. But I don’t agree. Corporations are made up of human beings.

[half the post deleted to bypass 404 error]

Those corporate executives don’t have to be like the Ken Lays, Jeff Skillings, and Dennis Kozlowskis (Enron and Tyco). They could just as easily be like the Ben Cohens and Jerry Greenfields (Ben and Jerrys). The NSTA should be a partner, but they could be one with influence, rather than one which cow tows to some grant money or service award.

[url]http://www.lickglobalwarming.org/[/url]

Do check out the link. Very interesting considering I found it by coincidence looking for the last names of the execs.

This isn’t in the press release any longer… where did it go?

Why would that paragraph disappear? In my mind, it’s the most important part of the statement. And if they do distribute materials from supporters, well, that looks pretty bad. I’ll look into this further.

I too am bothered by the phrase about “certain targeted supporters.” But to me it could be a ham-fisted way of saying they don’t want to distribute something by Al Gore for fear of looking like they are supporting a political party. Al Gore is something of a name in the Democratic party, you may recall. It could be construed that this is Democratic propaganda because of that, exclusive of the science content, right or wrong.

And yes, they could have used a better phrase than “sound science” perhaps. But it must be admitted that there is wacko science on both sides of the issue.
There is wacko science a lot of places. In fact, that’s the main reason for Phil’s website! I think all they were trying to say then was that they were excluding people who write that UFOs are causing global warming, or Planet X is, or like that. Unfortunately, it can and is taken for censorship and selectivity. Sigh.

I also find that to be disengenous, when they distribute other materials, such as the “Search for Solutions” video series produced by ConocoPhillips.

However, if NSTA did offer to share the mailing lists or in other ways facilitate the distribution of the CD’s, then it seems odd that Laurie David did not mention that or explain why that wasn’t sufficient.

I also wonder about the relative appropriateness of sharing the list vs. distributing directly. I’m not sure I’d want a group I voluntarily am a member of handing out my information. I’d prefer they either send me the stuff themselves or info on how to contact the distributor and let me decide what to do. I find the offer of sharing the membership list more intrusive. But then I hate junk mail – the spam of the physical world.

I followed the link from the response on “environmental policy education”.
http://www.nsta.org/positionstatement&psid=9

Interesting statements:

NSTA strongly supports environmental education as a way to instill environmental literacy in our nation’s pre-K-16 students. It should be a part of the school curriculum because student knowledge of environmental concepts establishes a foundation for their future understandings and actions as citizens. Central to environmental literacy is the ability of students to master critical-thinking skills that will prepare them to evaluate issues and make informed decisions regarding stewardship of the planet.

Environmental education programs and curricula should address student outcomes as specified in the National Science Education Standards, be grounded in sound research, and reflect the most current information and understandings in the field.

All learners are expected to achieve environmental literacy and an appreciation for and knowledge of a range of environmental issues, perspectives, and positions.

All learners should be taught how to think through an issue using critical-thinking skills, while avoiding instructor or media bias regarding what to think about the issue.

Developers of environmental education programs should strive to present a balance of environmental, economic, and social perspectives.

I find nothing in this policy to be concerned over, and much to applaud. If they are complying with this policy, then good for them.

I’m a little more skeptical of the “Search for Solutions” material. They make some odd statements in defending the “Climate Cycles” proponents, particularly this one.

Climate cycle believers say the amount of carbon dioxide has reached the present levels before and that compared to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere during the time of the formation of the Earth, the level is inconsequential.

The formation of the Earth? I don’t think humans were particularly worried about what to breath at the formation of the Earth, much less the mean surface temperature or climatic conditions. Yeah, conditions were different then, the Earth was also molten at one time. Let’s compare to something that is a bit more meaningful with regards to living conditions.

I also note this citation for the program:

Bell, Art and Strieber, Whitley. The Coming Global Superstorm. Pocket Books. 2000.

I also agree that the use of the phrase “sound science” was a regrettable case of the buzzword that sounds benign being used without understanding the background on that buzzword.

IF the NSTA is to continue provding sound science education, they must have sponsers. That Shell, Mobil, etc provide such sponsorship, despite the possibility that someone so educated may disagree with them on their level of culpability, says a great deal for the management of those companies. Obviously, we are all in this together. The children of Shell executives breath the same air as the rest of us and if the planet experiences severe turmoil due to environmental change brought on by the burning of oil, no one will escape unscathed.

That said, we must still argue with all participants and try to come to some agreement.

GAry 7

My current vote is still for the Sun.

Am I to take that to mean that you think the observed warming is due to solar forcings? Do you have any evidence for that position, bearing in mind that solar forcings are fairly well understood and show no trend which could account for the observed warming? Or does your skepticism only cut one way?

hee hee.

heh.

Au contraire: I seriously doubt that youve found many climate scientists appealing to Thor….

I’m also tired of “If you don’t agree with us, you are ignorant and stooooopid!” Sorry, but I’m a s*k*e*p*t*i*c, remember? And I’m skeptical about your pet issue, Mr or Ms Climate Activist, so deal with it, and convince me otherwise. This is supposed to be SCIENCE, remember? Cries of “Oh noes! We is all gonna dies!” isn’t evidence of anything.

The whole thing is just too politicized, and I actually don’t trust EITHER side, so the heck with it. I gonna go find me a Wii.

This article says 20,000 were given away for free. It doesn’t say who distributed them though.
http://www.nsta.org/pressroom&news_story_ID=48208

Here‘s a teaching guide for the dvd:
http://www.teachingtools.com/solutions/Episode10climate.htm

The point of contrarian propaganda is to create the illusion that there is no scientific consensus so I find this dvd suspicious. I’ve never heard of any “climate cycle believer” climatologists or peer reviewed reports. Their sources don’t include anything on it either (though some links are dead; this page is from ‘03-‘04).

It’s slightly ironic that I’m procrastinating on my thermodynamics homework due tomorrow in order to post this stuff…