Carbon Dioxide is Generally Regarded as a Safe and Non-toxic, Inert Gas

While convenient to use the term 'carbon emissions', it's not accurate to conflate it with 'CO2', carbon dioxide. CO2 is a vaporous (invisible) gas, NOT soot or dust or grit -- in other words, not an air pollutant. The Supreme Court, under the Clean Air Act, made a huge mistake in allowing the EPA to control it, and it needs to be reversed. The enormous hoax, promulgated by the anti-capitalist, that we can manage climate by keeping fossil fuels 'in the ground' is so heavily entrenched in the dogma of our public schools that the little skulls of 'mush' are already seriously tainted.  It'll take generations to straighten this mess out.

The term ‘carbon pollution’ is unscientific and misleading

February 20, 2014

JustFactsDaily - “Language is power,” and “with careful selection of and modification to language,” wrote Evie Loveband in the journal Idiom, any one person “has the power to control the debate and rewrite history.” This truism spurs endless debates over terminology in the political arena: Are we talking about an “unborn child” or a “fetus”? Is he “gay” or “homosexual”? Are we eating “lean finely textured beef” or “pink slime”? Should we “give amnesty to illegal immigrants” or “legalize undocumented workers”?

Ultimately, many language choices are subjective, but some cross the line from preference to deceitfulness. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote about people who use words “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”

Such is the case with purveyors of the term “carbon pollution,” a phrase that conflates carbon dioxide with noxious chemicals like carbon monoxide and black carbon. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is the primary man-made greenhouse gas, but it is also a natural substance that is essential for life. Additionally, it is colorless, odorless, and nontoxic at many times the concentration in earth’s atmosphere. In fact, nature produces considerably more CO2 than man.

Thus, for reasons detailed below, referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution” is highly misleading.

First, the phrase “carbon pollution” is scientifically inaccurate because there are more than ten million different carbon compounds, and the word “carbon” could refer to any of them. Some of the more notorious of these compounds are highly poisonous, such as carbon monoxide (a deadly gas) and black carbon (the primary ingredient of cancerous and mutagenic soot). Using a phrase that does not distinguish between such drastically different substances is a sure way to misinform people.

Second, the term “pollution” conjures up images of smoke pouring from smokestacks and sewage flowing into rivers, which are markedly different from CO2 emissions. Those who use the word “pollution” for CO2 draw no distinction between these scenarios, which again encourages a false impression.

Some of the more prominent users of this verbiage go even further to foster the idea of CO2 as a toxic contaminant. For example, while referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution,” President Obama criticizes “polluters” who “emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air that we breathe.” In stark contrast, the academic book Carbon Dioxide Capture for Storage in Deep Geologic Formations explains that:

Carbon dioxide is generally regarded as a safe and non-toxic, inert gas. It is an essential part of the fundamental biological processes of all living things. It does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans.

Fueling the deceitful impression advanced by Obama and others, major media outlets, such as Politico, NBC News, and the New York Times, publish articles and commentaries that refer to CO2 as “carbon pollution” with pictures of billowing smokestacks, such as these:

 
The fact is that none of the smoke in these pictures is CO2, because CO2 is invisible except under extreme pressures and temperatures that cause it to transition from a gas to a liquid or solid. Such conditions are far outside the range of anything found in smokestacks.

Some argue that it is acceptable to call CO2 a pollutant because of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that allowed the EPA to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act’s expansive definition of pollution. Such rationale, however, is not a license to use these words in ways that create misleading impressions.

Furthermore, why would anyone who honestly wants to inform people employ an ambiguous and unscientific phrase like “carbon pollution” in favor of a clear and scientifically accurate term like “greenhouse gas”? Only those who simply echo what they hear or those wantonly pushing global warming-related taxes, regulations or similar polices would use such verbiage.

In sum, those who refer to carbon dioxide as “pollution” blur a critical distinction between noxious pollutants and greenhouse gases. Moreover, media outlets that consciously engage in this practice blur a critical distinction between journalism and activism.

Media Smearing Teachers Who Don't Follow the Script to Indoctrinate Our Youth

Hey US science teachers, leave those climate myths alone

As most readers are aware, and stated in posts a few hours after (ClimateGate) CG broke out, Mike’s Nature trick was first uncovered by UC here. [Source]


February 11, 2016

Michael Mann, New Scientist - Are US schools doing a good job teaching climate change? That’s a crucial question, given that children now in classrooms will be the ones dealing with the serious impacts of a warming world as adults.

The answer, according to a report out today, is distressing. Based on a comprehensive survey of science teachers at middle and high schools across the US, the report’s authors find that we are failing students when it comes to both the quantity and quality of climate change education.

The report found teachers generally devote no more than 1 or 2 hours of time to cover the topic, far less than recommended by leading science educators. And despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused, many teachers continue to “teach the controversy”, suggesting that there is far less certainty or consensus about its existence and causes.

The authors offer several explanations for this sorry state of affairs. Only 4.4 per cent of teachers reported explicit pressure to downplay or ignore the subject. That is irrelevant, however, if many are self-censoring, fearing push-back from parents and others in their community who are active and vocal climate change deniers.

More important may be the “consensus gap” – the mismatch between those who think the science isn’t settled and the reality that it is. While there is a 97 per cent consensus among experts that climate change is primarily human caused, seven in 10 teachers put the figure at less than 80 per cent.

As the authors note: “If a majority of science teachers believe that more than 20 per cent of climate scientists disagree that human activities are the primary cause, it is understandable that many would teach ‘both sides’ by conveying to students that there is legitimate scientific debate instead of deep consensus.”

Who is to blame? In one of my books, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I describe how those with financial interests in fossil fuels have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades to create the consensus gap, orchestrating a public relations campaign aimed at attacking the science and the scientists, and confusing the public about the reality and threat of climate change. They have also created today’s partisan political divide on the issue, most evident in the US, turning rank and file conservatives into the foot soldiers in the war on carbon regulation.

It would be nice if schoolteachers were immune to all this. Alas, it appears they are not.

Our educational system is a microcosm of wider society. If we are to restore objectivity to how we teach our children about topics like climate change, we must restore objectivity to our broader public discourse. Fortunately, there is a growing willingness among opinion leaders and US media to name and shame those acting in bad faith, like the billionaire Koch brothers, who fund groups intent on misleading the public.

Our children will bear the brunt of the climate crisis, battling coastal inundation, the damage done by more extreme weather, increasingly withering droughts and devastating floods. We owe it to them not only to give them the facts, but to help them begin to clean up the mess that we created.

Editor's Note:




Despite the fact that Penn State professor Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph was long ago discredited, it still continues to be cited in study after study. In fact, it’s still the basis for the IPCC’s global warming hysteria.

Unfortunately, there’s a damning comment in one of the ClimateGate emails that says: 

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

What does that mean? Well, here are two graphs that demonstrate the results of that “trick.” The top one shows Michael Mann’s original “hockey stick” chart complete with his tricks that hide the decline. The bottom one, known as the Briffa Reconstruction, removes the tricks and shows that global warming is, in fact, global cooling.

From now on, let’s just refer to it as “Mann-made” global warming.

How teachers are getting it wrong on climate change

February 11, 2016

The Washington Post - A major new survey of U.S. middle school and high school science teachers has found that across the country, a majority are teaching about climate change in their classrooms — but a significant percentage are also including incorrect ideas, such as the notion that today’s warming of the globe is a “natural” process.

The study, published in Science Thursday by Eric Plutzer of Penn State University and a number of collaborators from Wright State University and the National Center for Science Education — which supports the teaching of evolution and climate change in schools — consisted of a mail survey of 1,500 teachers nationwide. They included both middle school science teachers and also high school biology, chemistry, physics and Earth sciences teachers, since it wasn’t entirely clear which classes might cover the subject (unlike evolution, which clearly belongs in biology class, climate change stretches across many disciplines).

One of the most striking findings: 30 percent of teachers said in the survey that they tell students that the current warming “is likely due to natural causes” — contradicting major scientific assessments of the matter. Thirty-one percent of teachers also said that they include both the scientific consensus position — that global warming is human-caused — but then also a “natural causes” position that contradicts it, thus presenting “both sides,” in the study’s words.

“We think any amount of legitimization of nonscientific perspectives sends a message to students that this may be a matter of opinion and values, and not one that can be adjudicated by evidence,” says Plutzer, who has also conducted research on the prevalence of the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in high school science classes.

The issues, says Plutzer, are “actually pretty comparable” in some respects, such as when teachers present the topic as “controversial” and air “both sides” rather than clearly guiding students to where the weight of evidence lies. When it comes to the teaching of climate change, Plutzer says, “the percentage of teachers giving mixed messages is somewhat less, but we also have a substantial number of teachers who are not covering the topic at all.”

The study also found that most teachers are unaware of the strength of the scientific consensus about the human causes of climate change. The survey asked them “what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?” For middle school teachers, 30 percent chose the option “81 to 100%,” which the researchers identified as the correct answer. High school teachers were only a little better, at 45 percent.

In addition, many teachers seemed misinformed about the subject matter. When asked what they would include in their courses on climate change, almost half selected off-topic items like “pesticides, ozone layer, or impacts of rocket launches.”

Teachers themselves showed much skepticism in their personal beliefs, too — while just 2 percent were in total denial of climate change, around 30 percent either said they believed it came from natural causes or that natural and man-made causes were equal contributors.

But David Evans, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, said he actually found it positive that the study suggests that teachers were interrogating climate science on their own. He pointed out that even if teachers struggled when asked to state how many scientists support the scientific consensus, 68 percent themselves said that global warming is “mostly caused by human activities.”

“It seems to me that the teachers are actually evaluating the data, and drawing their own conclusions, rather than relying on somebody else’s opinion,” Evans said to the Post after reviewing the study. “I think that’s a really strong signal.”

Evans said that there are reasons to be “disappointed” about some of the study’s results, but added that this is a new subject for many teachers. He said he feels that teachers have a hunger to know more about climate science, something the research itself underscored in finding that teachers want continuing education on the subject.

“When we have climate scientists speak at our conferences, it’s standing room only,” Evans said.

The study also found that most teachers are unaware of the strength of the scientific consensus about the human causes of climate change. The survey asked them “what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?” For middle school teachers, 30 percent chose the option “81 to 100%,” which the researchers identified as the correct answer. High school teachers were only a little better, at 45 percent.

In addition, many teachers seemed misinformed about the subject matter. When asked what they would include in their courses on climate change, almost half selected off-topic items like “pesticides, ozone layer, or impacts of rocket launches.”

Teachers themselves showed much skepticism in their personal beliefs, too — while just 2 percent were in total denial of climate change, around 30 percent either said they believed it came from natural causes or that natural and man-made causes were equal contributors.

But David Evans, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, said he actually found it positive that the study suggests that teachers were interrogating climate science on their own. He pointed out that even if teachers struggled when asked to state how many scientists support the scientific consensus, 68 percent themselves said that global warming is “mostly caused by human activities.”

“It seems to me that the teachers are actually evaluating the data, and drawing their own conclusions, rather than relying on somebody else’s opinion,” Evans said to the Post after reviewing the study. “I think that’s a really strong signal.”

Evans said that there are reasons to be “disappointed” about some of the study’s results, but added that this is a new subject for many teachers. He said he feels that teachers have a hunger to know more about climate science, something the research itself underscored in finding that teachers want continuing education on the subject.

“When we have climate scientists speak at our conferences, it’s standing room only,” Evans said.

Overwhelming Percentage of Science Teachers Confused About Climate Change

February 11, 2016

Newsweek - You may want to talk with your child about climate change. His or her teacher may be among the 1 in 3 American middle school and high school teachers bringing climate change denial into the classroom.

Fewer than half of U.S. adults—the lowest percentage among 20 nations polled in 2014—agree with the 95 percent of climate scientists who attribute recent global warming to human causes. The first nationwide survey of climate change education set out to see if there was hope for today’s students, who will grow up in a world shaped by climate change. Policy directors from the National Center for Science Education and researchers from the nonpartisan Penn State Survey Research Center who conducted the study were not reassured. Instead, the answers shocked them.

It’s unlikely a student would miss out on climate change teaching altogether, a paper on the survey that will appear in the February 12 issue of Science shows. Only 3 to 4 percent of students receive no teaching on the subject. The sort-of good news ends there, because what those who are taught about climate change receive—and the amount they receive—is shaky at best. The survey grilled 1,500 public middle and high school science teachers across all 50 U.S. states; they are representative of America’s 175,000 science teachers in terms of school size, student socioeconomic status and community economic and political characteristics.

Although most students will hear something about climate change in a science class, the average teacher devotes only one to two hours to the topic per year. Nearly one-third of teachers emphasize that recent global warming is likely due to natural causes—and tell their students that many scientists say the same thing. The researchers speculate that some teachers may wish to teach “both sides” out of respect for the individual values and opinions their students bring to the classroom.

Half of the surveyed teachers have allowed the students to discuss the supposed “controversy” over climate change without guiding students to the scientifically supported conclusion. Three of five surveyed teachers admit to being unaware of, or actively misinformed about, the near total consensus among scientists that climate change is man-made. Even among teachers who agree that human activities are mainly to blame for climate change, only just over half could name the percentage of scientists (81 to 100 percent) who share their view.

This came as the biggest shock to Eric Plutzer, a professor of political science at Penn State, who designed and implemented the survey.

“This is very different from evolution, for example, where even those who reject the scientific consensus know that scientists have accepted natural selection as the principle explanation for the diversity of species,” he says.

Minda Berbeco, the programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education, acknowledges that there’s a general lack of professional development training available for teachers to keep up with rapid advances in climate science.

“We hear often that they don’t have enough time to prepare either. This is something that both administrators and community members could help them with, if they are teaching about climate change or anything else,” Berbeco says.

Plutzer suggests systemic changes to the way the country educates and prepares its teachers.

“Colleges that educate science teachers can modify their courses so that all future science teachers get sound background; states and districts can implement specific and cumulative learning goals for students; teachers can be supported to receive professional development on both the content and pedagogy of climate change,”
Once they have a classroom, teachers should work climate science into their curricula in a more holistic manner, says Berbeco.

“Some teachers think that there is an expectation that they drop everything to teach climate change, but what we find most successful is when teachers integrate climate change into what they are already teaching. Whether they are teaching about energy or ecosystems or the carbon cycle or even health, climate change fits into all of those topics,” Berbeco says. She recommends locating vetted teacher resources from organizations such as the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, or CLEAN.

Plutzer says,

“When today’s students grow up, they will live in a world shaped by climate change, and, as citizens, they will need to make choices concerning national policies, local mitigation efforts and so on. It will be critical for them to be informed when considering such things as a carbon tax. That debate will be more democratic if more citizens are informed on the science.”

30 percent of science teachers give misinformation about climate change

February 11, 2016

ars technica - Though roughly 95 percent of scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans, you might not know it if you were learning about the environment in middle school or high school. In a recent randomized study of thousands of science teachers, a group of US researchers found that nearly a third of teachers tell students that the current observed trends in global climate change are "natural."

Published today in the journal Science, the results of the study reveal that science education on the subject is unevenly distributed. Teachers are all over the map when it comes to what they're teaching about climate change, with 30 percent telling students that "recent global warming 'is likely due to natural causes,'" and another 12 percent not emphasizing potential human causes of climate change. Additionally, 31 percent of teachers appeared to be giving students "mixed messages," teaching that Earth's climate changes could be caused by humans or by natural processes.

Making this scenario even more dismal is the fact that the average teacher only devotes one or two hours to climate change in their lesson plans. That means many students will graduate from high school having been exposed to perhaps only a single hour of teaching about climate change, which is arguably one of the most important drivers of both economic and scientific transformation in our time.

Given that the vast majority of scientists have found that human industrial processes and agriculture are driving climate change, why are middle-school and high-school teachers lagging so far behind the curve? A very tiny percentage (two percent) told the researchers that they personally don't believe in climate change. A few said they felt pressured to teach both sides. But most simply seemed unaware of current evidence for anthropogenic climate change. Write the researchers:

When asked "What proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?"—only 30 percent of middle-school and 45 percent of high-school science teachers selected the correct option of “81 to 100 percent."  Even among teachers who agree that human activities are the main cause of global warming (a large majority of all science teachers), only 52% know the percentage of scientists who share their view. If a majority of science teachers believe that more than 20% of climate scientist disagree that human activities are the primary cause, it is understandable that many would teach “both sides."

Even science teachers who believe in anthropogenic climate change don't realize that they share the overwhelming scientific consensus. This, more than anything, may be hindering the next generation when it comes to understanding what's happening to climates all across the globe.

Climate Change's Unseen Consensus

An alarming number of teachers aren't aware of the consensus on human-caused climate change and teach instead a false debate. 

February 18, 2016

US News & World Report - In the history of science, there have been few instances in which almost all experts in a particular field were in complete agreement. Climate change is one of those instances. Nearly two decades of research has converged on the following fact: Over 97 percent of climate scientists have independently concluded that human-caused global warming is happening.

In a new study published in Science magazine last week, Eric Plutzer and colleagues report a finding that should alarm the nation: Only 30 percent of middle-school and 45 percent of high-school science teachers in the U.S. are aware of the fact that nearly all climate scientists are convinced that global warming is caused mostly by human activities.

Here's the kicker: The authors explain that although many science teachers themselves believe that climate change is happening, because most are not aware of the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change many opt to teach "both sides" of the so-called climate debate, mistakenly giving students the impression that the basic facts are still contested, rather than conveying the fact that there is a deep and well-established consensus among climate scientists.

A great deal of our own research, as well as that of many other researchers, has identified the importance of communicating the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.

In particular, we find that people's perception of the degree of scientific consensus acts as an important "gateway belief." Many people's thoughts and feelings about climate change ­– for example, that climate change is happening, human-caused and a serious threat that requires better climate policy ­– are influenced by their understanding of the scientific consensus. To put it simply, educating – or failing to educate – people about the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change has important consequences for building public will to limit global warming, as America and 195 other nations pledged to do last December.

In their new study, Plutzer and colleagues report another important finding: Political ideology plays an important role in how teachers present the evidence on climate change. Importantly, our research has shown that one of the few facts that speaks to both conservatives and liberals in a powerful way is information about the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. In our experiments, we repeatedly find that conservatives are especially receptive to information about the consensus. In our latest national study (involving over 6,000 Americans), we actually found that communicating the scientific consensus directly strengthens other important key beliefs that people hold about climate change, among conservatives, moderates and liberals alike.

This is not only true for climate science – perceived expert consensus also plays an important role in shaping public attitudes toward other scientific issues, such as vaccine safety. For example, conveying the high level of medical consensus on vaccine safety helps to correct influential misperceptions, such as public belief in fraudulent reports of a link between vaccines and autism. There is something unique and important about the notion of expert consensus that sets it apart from other type of facts. For one, experts are a nonpartisan group, they come from all walks of life – conservative, moderate, liberal – and their message is simply scientific, not political. In fact, scientific consensus describes the level of agreement among the set of experts who are in the best position to know the science. Second, group consensus is something we can all intuitively understand, and we use consensus as a heuristic to inform our decision-making because we know from experience that relying on expert consensus often leads to positive outcomes. For example, if nine out of 10 doctors told you that you need urgent medical treatment, your beliefs about what to do are likely guided by your perception of the consensus (and for good reason!).

At present, only about one out of 10 Americans understand the level of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes points out that vested interest groups have spent millions of dollars on orchestrating disinformation campaigns with the explicit aim of undermining public understanding of the scientific consensus. Before climate change, the same happened in the debate over the link between smoking and lung cancer. Tobacco companies have long understood the psychological consequences of sowing doubt: As long as people think there is disagreement among the experts, most won't act.

American children are currently being presented with a false debate. This needs to end: We urge secondary school science teachers to set the record straight by educating their students about the overwhelming degree of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Teaching this simple fact will help groom the next generation of American leaders to make decisions based on sound science – decisions that are in the best interest of the United States, other nations and our entire planet, including the crucial life support systems on which we all depend.

• Dr. Sander van der Linden is a social-psychologist based in Princeton University's Department of Psychology with joint appointments in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
• Dr. Edward Maibach is a professor at George Mason University and director of Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication.  
• Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz is a research scientist at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.