So how did An Inconvenient Truth become required classroom viewing?

[The Unabomber]

Originally Posted by Azure

Strangely enough, I was shown that movie in my social class.

But my teacher gave us all the viewpoints, from every different direction. We read MANY articles from the NRA, and had debates over what they had to say, versus what some anti-gun people had to say.

It's great if these movies are being showed to students for the right reasons, like debating the issue at hand, that's education. But if the movie is being shown to kill time or to say that it's the gospel then they might as well introduce religion into the public school system.

I don't disagree that they show it, it's how they show it and the follow up discusion that should be talked about.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by The Unabomber

They should start showing Bowling For Columbine in classes too, that's an educational film for students and might prevent a death or two.

That issue is a funny one because as is pointed out in the film, its not like America is the only violent society out there nor is it the only society with access to guns, yet the gun deaths are totally out of control on a proportion basis.

[Juventus3]

Originally Posted by Azure

Strangely enough, I was shown that movie in my social class.

But my teacher gave us all the viewpoints, from every different direction. We read MANY articles from the NRA, and had debates over what they had to say, versus what some anti-gun people had to say.

Did you get that for the global warming debate? (the various theories)

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Juventus3

Did you get that for the global warming debate? (the various theories)

Global warming wasn't a big deal while I was still in high school.

Outside of the earth warming up...which they knew by then, my science teacher never said much else.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by The Unabomber

It's great if these movies are being showed to students for the right reasons, like debating the issue at hand, that's education. But if the movie is being shown to kill time or to say that it's the gospel then they might as well introduce religion into the public school system.

I don't disagree that they show it, it's how they show it and the follow up discusion that should be talked about.

I agree--to the extent that teachers shouldn't treat films, particularly dogmatic ones, as though they were merely teaching tools. One of my gripes is that young people aren't being taught to think critically about the things that they get told. Too often schools teach a fixed curriculum rather than giving students the tools they'll need to become lifelong learners on their own--to inform themselves about issues, to distinguish reputable from non-reputable sources of information, and to create their own well-informed ideas about things. Not to say that there aren't teachers out there who are doing this--there are. But I feel like they're the mavericks in a system designed to make young people into compliant receptacles for received knowledge rather than producers of knowledge in their own right.

/rant.

On the other hand, schools shouldn't treat every debate as though all sides were equally valid. There is such a thing as objective truth--and it is possible to assign different value to different ways of knowing. This is the problem with intelligent design in the science classroom--it's not science, and if we teach our children that it is, we do society a disservice.

But teaching the debates in a class where the context justifies it? A great idea, something there isn't enough of.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally Posted by Lanny_MacDonald

"Gore is probably the most dangerous propagandist and opportunist in the western world."

Comments like this just show how desperate and uneducated some people are.

Dangerous? Cleaning up the environment and trying to shift our energy needs from dirty finite sources to clean renewable sources is dangerous? Opportunitist? Based on the creation of the above management firm, most definitely. But I think it is completely lost on people that Gore has been doing this same presentation for a very long time. He did not JUST jump on this bandwagon, this has been a long belief.

"Let's waste billions of dollars, cripple the world economy in order to prevent something that is not even happening."

Yup, no fear mongering there. I must have missed the part where Gore says we have to "cripple" the world economy. How exactly is that going to happen? Finding ways to generate energy in a more environmentally friendly way and better managing the finite resources we have is going to "cripple" the world economy? Funny, but every corporation I have ever worked for has taken the exact same stance in operations. Find better ways of doing things, and get the most our of what resources we have. What a terrible concept to promote. Gore and co. are obviously off their rockers.

What's ironic is that some people make rediculous comments like the one quoted and think they are saying something intelligent. In a world where the a certain individual (and his puppet masters) has lied and cajoled his way into war, where BILLIONS of dollars a month ARE being wasted, and tens or hundreds of thousands of people are dead of the result, where a select few are making MASSIVE profits as a result, the comment just rings of demagoguery. But isn't that what this issue has shifted into? A chance for the monkeys to hurl their fecies and beat their chests rather than focusing on the base issue; our species doing what it can to halt the negative impact it is having on our biosphere.

Oh yeah, the bitter old man with superiority complex (unsubstantiated, unfortunately) strikes again, hurling feces on his own. I wonder why did you not even touch the quoted excerpt from the article, oh educated one? Because you have no idea how to explain it, that’s why. You give us the usual verbal ballast instead, empty words, no substance.

Gore is trying to clean up the environment? Or is he? Gore, among others, is trying to impose wide-range restrictions and regulations not because they will help the environment, but simply because it looks good him – clean, easy to understand solution that is not a solution in the first place – because it does lead to promised results. But the simple fact that it looks like a no-brainer solution to the masses is good enough. It gives him a dangerous, populist wave to ride on. Every step taken to further regulate western economy (of course, while India, China and Russia laugh and pollute left and right) the way they do it now – huge negative economic impact, almost no positive environmental impact is irreversible.

You would spend billions of dollars (not yours, naturally) to allegedly prevent global warming. OK in the best case scenario, if you succeed, the temperature drops by how much? Do you have a reliable scenario to show the drop in temperature that would directly result from reduced CO2 emissions? And even if you do (which I doubt, somehow) how do you justify spending so much money when the result will be, lets say 0,1 degree Celsius in hundred years?

PS Outstanding posts Azure, one of the best I have ever read on the off topic board.

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

Oh yeah, the bitter old man with superiority complex (unsubstantiated, unfortunately) strikes again, hurling feces on his own. I wonder why did you not even touch the quoted excerpt from the article, oh educated one? Because you have no idea how to explain it, that’s why. You give us the usual verbal ballast instead, empty words, no substance.

There was nothing worthy of commenting on. Tim Patterson has been exposed as a fraud and oil industry lacky in the past. His comments on climate change hold about as much weight as Bush's on the constitution, or your views on economics. The only thing worthy of commenting on was your fear mongering, which you do so well, and so often.

[worth]

Everyone should just sit back, relax and enjoy the taxes you are about to receive for driving too much or driving a car with an engine too big.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally Posted by Lanny_MacDonald

There was nothing worthy of commenting on. Tim Patterson has been exposed as a fraud and oil industry lacky in the past.

Care to link some articles?

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

Gore is trying to clean up the environment? Or is he? Gore, among others, is trying to impose wide-range restrictions and regulations not because they will help the environment, but simply because it looks good him – clean, easy to understand solution that is not a solution in the first place – because it does lead to promised results. But the simple fact that it looks like a no-brainer solution to the masses is good enough. It gives him a dangerous, populist wave to ride on. Every step taken to further regulate western economy (of course, while India, China and Russia laugh and pollute left and right) the way they do it now – huge negative economic impact, almost no positive environmental impact is irreversible.

I assuming what you meant there was that, everything he doing currently is to make himself look good? He is some sort of insecure person on a giant ego trip to vindicate his lost presidency?

You would spend billions of dollars (not yours, naturally) to allegedly prevent global warming. OK in the best case scenario, if you succeed, the temperature drops by how much? Do you have a reliable scenario to show the drop in temperature that would directly result from reduced CO2 emissions? And even if you do (which I doubt, somehow) how do you justify spending so much money when the result will be, lets say 0,1 degree Celsius in hundred years?

So we can't solve the problem in one swoop or easily, so we should just abandon it and carry on with our current course? How is this a better long term solution? We can't solve it 100% so we should just give up?

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

Care to link some articles?

Certainly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Patterson
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...=Tim_Patterson

Tim Patterson bio and association information, including Freinds of Science and Natural Resources Stewardship Project.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/

"The Denial Machine investigates the roots of the campaign to negate the science and the threat of global warming. It tracks the activities of a group of scientists, some of whom previously consulted for for Big Tobacco, and who are now receiving donations from major coal and oil companies."

"A footnote: a few days after Prime Minister Harper received that letter, he had another, from 90 of Canada's most senior climate scientists and oceanographers. This second letter cited "an increasing urgency to act on the threat of climate change", and called upon the government to develop a national policy on climate change and strategies to adapt to what it said was "the inevitable changes that will affect us all"."

http://www.viewmag.com/viewstory.php...id=4924&page=1

“Where did this group get its funding?” Mark Holland, Liberal
MP for Ajax–Pickering, rhetorically asked last fall during Question
Period. “The funding was set up by an individual by the name of
Barry Cooper, a very close associate of the prime minister. The
objective was to funnel oil money through a system of hiding
where it came from to allow it to get to Friends of Science so they
could try to create doubt among the population that climate
change is real.”

“The campaigns can be fairly successful at fooling people
because they’ve become increasingly sophisticated over the years
at disguising it,” Rampton says. “A lot of effort will go into making
it look like this is just a grassroots initiative and concealing the
identity of the corporate sponsor who’s actually paying for the
whole effort.”

http://www.thestar.com/article/175673

The Friends of Science get oil industry funding. It's welcome, but "they're not overly generous," Leahy says. The industry contributes about one-third of the group's annual budget, or some $35,000.

The source of Cooper's funding isn't clear. He is, however, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank and lobby group, which got $120,000 in two instalments from Exxon Mobil. Cooper didn't return phone calls from the Toronto Star.

http://www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html

"But they may not realize that by quietly backing the movement behind maverick figures such as Prof. Ball, the fuel industry - with its close ties to the party that brought Prime Minister Stephen Harper to power - is succeeding, bit by bit, in influencing both public opinion and Canadian policy on global warming, including the international Kyoto Accord."

And here's a few more that provide evidence of linkage.

http://www.desmogblog.com/search/nod...nds+of+science

http://www.desmogblog.com/news-alert...nds-of-science
http://www.dobmagazine.nickles.com/c...06_UC0000.html
http://www.desmogblog.com/friends-of...entific-clique
http://www.desmogblog.com/good-enoug...-philip-morris
http://www.desmogblog.com/another-qu...nds-of-science

I can keep going.

[transplant99]

Does that ^^^ prove he is an oil industry lackey though Lanny?

Edit to add this from wikpedia...again no idea if true or not.

However, Patterson is exclusively funded by Canadian Government sources, specifically NSERC and CFCAS.[2]
Patterson states that he "has never received any funding whatsoever from any non-governmental agency". [3]

I dont know why he is discounted so blatently, even though he has written extensively on the subject and is a well respected scientist that has been studying climate change his whole career.

If he was being paid by oil companies etc, then yes he would likely be seen as having a bias, and rightfully so. I just dont see any proof of that though.

I just happened upon this article the other day, which I thought was well researched and put together. Dont know if its accurate or not myself as i am not knowledgable about his field, but it makes some sense if it is accurate.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/010405M.html

[troutman]

"Friends of Science" - don't get me started. I met one of the members, and he was proud to tell me about the "quick response team". The team immediately attacks any position or paper that is different from their own, sight unseen. What could be more unscientific than that?

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Does that ^^^ prove he is an oil industry lackey though Lanny?

He's connected with TWO bodies who recieve money from oil. His cronies from those same bodies receive money from oil. He presents at oil symposiums. He writes for oil journals. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck... I guess that isn't enough?

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by troutman

"Friends of Science" - don't get me started. I met one of the members, and he was proud to tell me about the "quick response team". The team immediately attacks any position or paper that is different from their own, sight unseen. What could be more unscientific than that?

welcome to the world of science.
if you have evidence that suggests something other than the prevailing theory - it takes years and lots of verbal abuse to get anyone in the majority to pay attention or to stop calling you a "crackpot"....


Also Lanny everyone who is anti or not convinced of climate change in your mind is funded Oil - Even if they are legit climate scientists..heck wikipedia is a good source in your mind. lol.

You truly are the poster boy for the left.
________
YAMAHA YM2151 SPECIFICATIONS

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

welcome to the world of science.
if you have evidence that suggests something other than the prevailing theory - it takes years and lots of verbal abuse to get anyone in the majority to pay attention or to stop calling you a "crackpot"....


Also Lanny everyone who is anti or not convinced of climate change in your mind is funded Oil - Even if they are legit climate scientists..heck wikipedia is a good source in your mind. lol.

You truly are the poster boy for the left.

Well its good we've got people rock-solid in the centre to come along and point this out... kudos on your objectivity.

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

welcome to the world of science.
if you have evidence that suggests something other than the prevailing theory - it takes years and lots of verbal abuse to get anyone in the majority to pay attention or to stop calling you a "crackpot"....

You mean like those who proposed the global warming theory and put up with decades of abuse from their "peers"?

Also Lanny everyone who is anti or not convinced of climate change in your mind is funded Oil - Even if they are legit climate scientists..heck wikipedia is a good source in your mind. lol.

You truly are the poster boy for the left.

Not true. There are many scientists who are "unsure" of climate change who are not funded by the fossil fuel lobby, many of which contributed to the UN report on climate change. I am unsure of whether climate change is actually happening, but the evidence presented is very compelling. Certainly more compelling than the counter argument.

Also, Wiki is nothing but a starting point, as is any encyclopedia. It is the cross referencing of data from multiple independent sources that establishes the facts. Maybe you should try it sometime. It isn't as hard as some would lead you to believe.

[Flame Of Liberty]

All you have is sourcewatch, some blog and accusation that he is funded by the evil oil industry. Well, if the government refuses to fund projects that are not in line with their agenda, private sector has to step up and I applaud it for doing it.

So I am sure you will understand when I say that you have exposed nothing, certainly not Tim Patterson as a fraud.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

welcome to the world of science.
if you have evidence that suggests something other than the prevailing theory - it takes years and lots of verbal abuse to get anyone in the majority to pay attention or to stop calling you a "crackpot"....

No, the scientific thing to do would be to repeat the experiment and test the hypothesis. Not attack it out of hand, without even reading it.

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Flame Of Liberty

All you have is sourcewatch, some blog and accusation that he is funded by the evil oil industry. Well, if the government refuses to fund projects that are not in line with their agenda, private sector has to step up and I applaud it for doing it.

So I am sure you will understand when I say that you have exposed nothing, certainly not Tim Patterson as a fraud.

Right, and OJ Simpson didn't kill his wife.

Now, back to reading your highly scientific data... bought and paid for by those bastions of balance and reasons, the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.