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Shooting the messenger of alternative climate science views

Let everyone, especially students, hear the whole story about climate science

Shooting the messenger of alternative climate science views not constructive – students can only decide who to believe if they are permitted to hear all rational arguments

Mike De Souza’s piece, “Climate-change skeptics target kids”, published in various versions in mainstream newspapers across Canada, is a classic example of how the climate debate has mostly been reduced to a war of emotive, and politically loaded, words. 

Thanks to environmental lobbyists untrained in science, the grandiose proclamations of politicians who don’t care about science, and, most importantly, a ratings-obsessed media, we are on the verge of wasting yet billions more trying to ‘stop climate change’, a physical impossibility in a world where climate was changing eons before we were even here to think about it. 
 
While most adults in society feel they have no alternative but to succumb to the overwhelming forces of political correctness of one form or another simply to earn a living, our educational institutions must resist this tendency in what they teach students.  Teachers should encourage young people to learn all they can about the world around them and then, independently, make up their own minds as to who, or what, to believe, or whether they believe anyone at all.  Mainstream media can help, instead of hinder, this process if they would address crucially important issues such as climate change in an unbiased fashion, instead of so often giving preference to climate alarmism and employing phraseology that hinders rational thought. 
 
“An American think tank has sent out …” – these first words in De Souza’s piece about the distribution to schools of alternative views in the climate debate seem chosen to elicit a negative emotional reaction from Canadians proud of our country, its independence and our desire to make our own decisions without undue interference from the United States.  The fact that the poll distributed by the Heartland Institute originates with two German environmental scientists - Dennis Bray (GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Geesthacht) and Hans von Storch (climatology professor - University of Hamburg) - who conducted the poll entirely independently of Heartland, isn’t mentioned by De Souza.  He also doesn’t reveal that Heartland merely summarized the results after the fact in an easy to read format (see www.heartland.org/pdf/2086111.pdf), for which teachers interested in giving their students a full view of this important field are undoubtedly grateful.
 
Next De Souza writes that the mail-out is “urging [teachers] to teach their students that scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming.”  He references “scientists” as if they were some sort of a homogenous group with a single opinion – this is part of the consensus myth permeating this debate, a myth De Souza allows to be repeated by Ottawa science teacher Eric Betteridge, without critique.  “Scientists” say lots of things about climate change – very few agree with the sensational assertions of The World Nuclear Society, The Sierra Club of Canada, David Suzuki, Al Gore, Elizabeth May, and current Environment Minister John Baird, and many say they are flat wrong.  Most climate scientists are, quite sensibly, unsure about future climate.  There is obviously no consensus and this fact, uncomfortable though it may be for climate campaigners and governments, should not be hidden from students.
 
De Souza quotes the Sierra Club as asserting that the mail-out from the “American think tank [mentioned again, in case readers missed the U.S. connection a few paragraphs earlier] … distributing misinformation” isn’t balanced and that it creates the “illusion” of a scientific debate.  De Souza doesn’t point out that Sierra’s climate campaign materials are anything but balanced or that the science debate is, in reality, intense.
 
Next referenced is “the conclusions reached by governments and scientists from around the world in their 2007 assessment of the latest peer-reviewed research on climate change”.  What De Souza conveniently ignores is the fact that many of the scientists involved in this study disagreed with many of these “conclusions” and that much of the most recent “peer-reviewed research” was entirely ignored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN body which coordinated the reports).
 
De Souza reports that Betteridge is upset that “someone would try to promote this material to children in the classroom.”  Are Betteridge and De Souza unaware that climate campaigners, including Suzuki and the Canadian government, have been promoting their material in the classroom for years, even highlighting absurd Suzuki quotes in Grade 8 science text books?  Or are they simply hoping readers don’t look at their children’s school books or the walls of their classrooms?
 
Finally, De Souza brings up a complete red herring - Heartland at one time or another supposedly received funding from an oil company.  But the company in question also dedicates millions of dollars to their “Educating Women and Girls Initiative”, programs to encourage minorities and women to pursue math and science-related degrees, and basic education and literacy programs in the developing world.  Does De Souza consider those educational activities similarly tainted and so inappropriate?  How about Heartland’s most vocal critic, DeSmogBlog, a group operated by a communications firm whose head just happens to be the Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, a group which lists oil and gas companies among their donors.  When the Sierra Club representative said “It looks like they’re [the Canadian government] listening to the Heartland Institute and other oil-industry-sponsored think tanks”, why did De Souza not ask if she was referring to the David Suzuki Foundation, a group the current Conservative government is clearly afraid of?  
 
Canadian government spokesperson Chisholm Pothier rounds out the propaganda by making a politically convenient, but meaningless assertion in De Souza’s piece that, “the government is not taking advice from people who question climate change.”  The government, and anyone even remotely familiar with the topic, know full well that neither Heartland, nor any of the scientists they are helping communicate with students, “question climate change”.  They simply question the degree to which humans contribute to climate change, a question no one, outside of politicians and activists who apparently consider an understanding of science immaterial to the topic, yet knows the answer to. 
 
De Souza’s piece should be entirely discounted by thinking Canadians, especially teachers who understand the importance of exposing students to what researchers in the field are actually discovering, independent of political correctness.  That environmental lobby groups, politicians and many media want to restrict what young people are allowed to hear about climate science should be all the more reason students and their parents must insist that teachers have sufficient respect for their pupils to expose them to the real world, not merely material carefully fabricated by activists to foster a compliant population, too uninformed, and too frightened, to think for themselves.
 
 
Tom Harris is an Ottawa-based mechanical engineer and Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition - see http://www.climatescienceinternational.org.