By Paul Rogers, Mercury News
Reading, writing and global warming? Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require “climate change” to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught. The measure, by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public schools include climate change. “You can’t have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn’t deal with the science behind climate change,” Simitian said. “This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon.”
The state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, Jan. 30 by a 26-13 vote. It heads now to the state Assembly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken numerous actions to reduce global warming, but he has yet to weigh in on Simitian’s bill. Other Republicans in the Capitol, however, are not happy about the proposal. Some say the science on global warming isn’t clear, while others worry the bill would inject environmental propaganda into classrooms. “I find it disturbing that this mandate to teach this theory is not accompanied by a requirement that the discussion be science-based and include a critical analysis of all sides of the subject,” said Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, during the Senate debate. One of the opponents, Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Modesto, said he wants guarantees that the views of global warming skeptics will be taught. “Some wouldn’t view them as skeptics. Some would view them as the right side of the issue,” said Denham, an Atwater almond farmer who also runs a plastics recycling business. Read more here.
By J. Sccott Armstrong
On June 19, 2007, Professor Armstrong proposed the Global Warming Challenge to Mr. Gore in an effort to stimulate a scientific approach to forecasting climate change. The Challenge asked that Armstrong and Gore each put $10,000 into a Charitable Trust Fund on December 1, 2007. Armstrong bet that over the next ten years he could forecast temperature change more accurately than any climate model that Mr. Gore might nominate. (Armstrong’s forecast would be that global mean temperature would not change over the ten years.)
On July 6, Mr. Gore sent a cordial reply stating that he was too busy. In response, on November 28, 2007, Dr. Armstrong extended the deadline to March 26, 2008, and made the task easier: Mr. Gore was asked merely to provide a checkmark beside a leading climate model and to sign his name. Mr. Gore’s spokesperson replied on Armstrong’s answering phone on around February 5. The caller apologized for being so late for responding to the November 28 letter. She said, “Senator Gore declines.” No reason was given.
See Green & Armstrong’s paper ”Global Warming: Forecasts By Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts,” Energy & Environment 18 (2007), 995-1019. Armstrong said that this is a scientific issue, not a political issue. Opinion polls do not provide a scientific approach in this situation, even when some of the respondents are climate experts. However, procedures do exist that would allow us to make scientific forecasts. Read more here.
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
Time for an Australia New Zealand Royal Commission on Global Warming. A group of Australian and New Zealand organisations and scientists today called on the governments of Australia and New Zealand to set up an Australia New Zealand Royal Commission on the Science of Global Warming (to be known as “the ANZIG Royal Commission” - the Australia New Zealand Inquiry into Global Warming).
The chairman of Australia’s Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr. Viv Forbes, said that many groups and individuals in Australia and New Zealand had listened with alarm and disbelief to plans of both governments to saddle their people and industries with the burdens of carbon taxes and the risks of carbon trading which he described as “an open invitation to massive fraud”.
“We also fear the enormous costs of taxing and decimating our backbone industries of farming, mining, power generation, cement making, forestry, mineral processing and tourism and subsidising many expensive and ineffective alternate energy proposals. The very high costs to society of the actions being proposed require that we settle the science before forcing the whole ANZ community into a futile and expensive exercise to solve a problem that may not exist. ‘Do it just in case’ is not an option. “ Read more here.