I do not consider the Law of Conservation of Energy to be difficult to understand. And I was taught the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics in high school physics and chemistry courses.
Understanding why adding a greenhouse gas would cause warming is more basic than understanding the thermodynamics of a car rusting.
Jim Z
<. I do know actual science which you continually struggle at such every time you try to delve into it. e.g. geology.>
What does geology have to do with the price of tea in China? Climatology deals with the atmosphere, not rocks.
Your to Trevor and pegminer –
Planetary orbits, gravity, and plate tectonics are also complex issues. There is no need to understand the science to be introduced to them. Your condition applies to most adults.
I will not belabor the point now – but, you have never objected to any Denier opinions on climate change even though many of them are so outrageously ignorant of what science is – not to mention how it works – that would be hard pressed to hold their own in a conversation about science with a classroom of 12-year old kids.
=====
Lee –
>>She should be teaching the scientific method, the same way that my dad and I learned it (back in the dark ages). Throw in some fun experiments to keep them interested.<<
I believe the part about your knowledge of the scientific method being Medieval.
So let's get this straight: you are comparing the opinion of a Science teacher to a poll?
With that logic AIDS and cancer are not important because public polls have shown that people are less worried about these issues.
In the Real World public perception does not overrule or deny neither basic nor advanced Science.
It is the job of scientists to get the Science right; it is the job of the media to inform the public correctly. If the latter does a lousy job (for a good example, take the 'liberal' US media as a whole), public perception of important issues will be (severely) distorted which can (and has had; ie Iraq War) have disastrous consequences.
I Global Command gave my Triple Output solution to a hostile country that once fired on my Global Team's from all walks of life while running experiments for me, so we could delete Global Warming, that only the RUSSIAN DRONES actually found to begin with in the RUSSIAN FARMS=(hostile continent). ( They did'nt know they found it, because they did'nt have anyone in any of the ICES areas on earth). So I pulled my teams out, but they confirmed that the cause of Global Warming was a ALIEN Organism. Years later I came up with my Triple Output solution/ after it was implemented. IT ended Global Warming, confirmed by OUR Satelite reports 11/28/2012. The ALIEN'S are still here/ low in number, but what their waiting for/ was destroyed in deep space 13 years from earth, dubbed THE BIG BANG. Their here to destroy as many species as they can, even if it means useing their telepathy on the very young and innocent and the leaders here, there and everywhere. ( A video will be coming out with all information from 1998 to date by me GLOBAL COMMAND.) Global Command
Holy crap are you messed up. The answer to the question "Why is the sky blue?" is in fact so complicated it is the subject of anecdotal stories of people failing Ph.D. physics dissertations because they could not, in fact, answer it correctly when pressed for the details. But we still teach children the sky is blue because of scattered light, not because Jesus wants it to be so. Your rationalization that climate change is too complicated for grade school kids is pathetic.
Mike,
Climate change is science, science should be taught to all kids. It should be taught responsibly and impartially. When it comes to climate science they should be taught facts, and facts only, not the personal opinions of the teacher, school, educational authority etc.
Education isn’t limited to the issues that people currently consider important and nor should it be restricted on the basis that it might cause concern. Kids should be educationally prepared for when they go on to higher education or out into the wider world.
- - - - - - - - -
EDIT: RE YOUR ADDED DETAILS
It’s not necessary to delve into the physics of climate change in order to get an understanding of it. Early school education is about laying the foundations, giving kids a basic comprehension and knowledge in a wide range of subjects. If they want to delve deeper then they’ll choose the appropriate subjects in their later years at school and go on from there.
I would guess that of all the frequent contributors to this section of Answers, there are no more than three or four who understand Navier-Stokes equations, blackbody radiation and Stefan–Boltzmann's law. Many times more understand the basics of climate change even though they’re not conversant with the physics involved. It’s the same with just about any subject.
If we **** in the ocean it causes sea level rise. Should we have teachers teach that too. In fact, as Lee stated, it is about indoctrination into the things the state wants them to believe. My wife just retired as a teacher (but she still looks 30, and I'm not just saying that) and I remember her bringing home second grade science questions about changing climate. I realize that the Trevors and the Pegs don't mind indoctrination since they seem thoroughly indoctrinated already. What is sad and admittedly somewhat puzzling to me is both seem perfectly able to learn yet both refuse.
Peg, since I don't belong to your cult, of course, I don't know as much about it. I do know actual science which you continually struggle at such every time you try to delve into it. e.g. geology. I know you have no problem feeding propaganda to 2nd graders because you don't mind pushing your stupid cult on the uninformed. You are a wacko leftist who likes to pretend to be a moderate. Why don't you just admit it for God's sake? You are so ignorant of the real world and politics, I suppose you may not even realize what you are.
They wish to try and implant propaganda to kid at a young age, to get them to act toward liberal policy goals. When I was in school, I was told the planet was warming by degrees/decade, and the skyscrapers would be flooded. People started to see that the reality wasn't the scare story they were told.
because this is where the science is at. It might be different in a social class.
we're not about to teach the two sides of evolution or the two sides of gravity.
Human activity has and is causing climate change, so I don't have any problem with teachers teaching that.
People constantly complain about what children are taught in school, just look at all the whining about the "common core". Meanwhile we're raising generations that are incompetent in math and science, and can't read or write. Just look at this group, we have people that barely literate, that believe the Earth is 6000 years old, that think the poles are cold because they're farther from the sun! Nobody knows how much water vapor there is in the atmosphere or even what it is. There are colleges out there that teach the Biblical flood as if it were natural history! How many questions and answers have we had recently about "anomalies", which would be a controversial subject only if you failed to understand grade school arithmetic. It's not just the obviously crazy people in here that espouse such nonsense, it's the "statisticians" and the "geologists".
If I were deciding on a curriculum for school, I would be happy to teach people reading, writing, math and science, but if a teacher wants to illustrate science by using man-made climate change I don't have a problem with that--at least she's teaching something that's based on science, and not religious mythology.
EDIT for Ottawa Mike: What do you call science, is it just a bunch of equations? Personally, my background in science started in elementary school, reading the "All About..." books. I also started reading books on meteorology and geology in elementary school. My 4th grade teacher even taught us one of Kepler's laws! You don't have to know Rayleigh's Law of Scattering to be taught why the sky is blue and you don't need to know either the Navier-Stokes equations or Stefan's Law to understand anthropogenic global warming.
While you have doubts about whether the science will be taught correctly, that is not a reason not to teach it--it is instead a reason to have better teachers. Certainly if Jim Z's wife's knowledge is as poor as his is, then she shouldn't be teaching it, but I suspect she's more up to date on subjects than he his. He pretty much admits he has cracked open a textbook since college.
Unfortunately we are raising a nation of science illiterates. Something needs to counterbalance the idiocy of deniers. It's much harder to unlearn something that you've learned incorrectly than to learn something correctly in the first place, we know that people like Sagebrush, Zippi62, Maxx, Jim Z, Kano and yourself may very well have children, and if you do have children you are consciously or unconsciously teaching them nonsense. If they don't get exposed to real science before they get to college they will have been "indoctrinated" into a world of falsehoods and mysticism. Let's face it, children are bombarded with information anyway, at least we could TRY to give some correct information, we know people like you can't be trusted to do it.
Another EDIT: I'm glad you taught him those values and skills, but as I have mentioned before, I don't find you to be honest. I would show you respect if I found you to be honest. I'm sure if you look back at my earliest dealings with you in this forum you'll see that I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Years of seeing your disingenuous questions and answers has caused my respect for you to ebb.
Colorado science teacher Cheryl Manning. "I want my students to come away understanding that human activity has caused global warming." http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/what-are-they-teaching-your-kids-about-global-warming-20140626
If your answer is because this an important issue then take a look at this US Gallup Poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/167843/climate-change-not-top-worry.aspx
If you want to teach children about adult worries, aren't there a ton of other issues on that list that are more worrisome than climate change?
Is there time in the class to cover all of them and still teach the basics of learning and knowledge?
Because some people are stupid, whether global warming is true or false it is #1 a political problem mostly and to some like her a religion. #2 it is a complexes science that grade school students would not understand. In my opinion and in the opinion of alot of others she should be stopped discussing politics with children and if she can't she should be fired.
If you want to indoctrinate, start early.
She should be teaching the scientific method, the same way that my dad and I learned it (back in the dark ages). Throw in some fun experiments to keep them interested.
I would teach both sides of the argument without bias, fill in with what evidence we have so far, and let the children discuss it and decide for themselves.
no
making the environment unlivable is the worst possible thing we can do.
it's like impregnating your mother then punching her in the stomach to abort the baby
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirica...
