NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Posted on 03/23/2007 10:23:01 AM PDT by eyedigress
LONGMONT — Humans don’t cause global warming, a jury of sixth graders at Trail Ridge Middle School concluded Thursday after hearing opposing arguments from their peers. “They’re pretty young for this kind of thinking. They did great,” paleontology teacher Ken Poppe said after the 40-minute “trial” in his classroom With Earth’s warming accepted as a tenet, pre-teen “lawyers” and “scientists” debated whether humans have caused it.
Eleven jurors listened intently as prosecutors and defendants flashed contradictory graphs tracking global temperatures, carbon dioxide levels, polar ice cap statistics, volcanic activity and sea surface temperatures — all of which were found Wednesday in the school’s computer lab. “The earth has warmed and cooled over many years. If it’s caused by CO2, why haven’t the charts shot up?” Poppe’s son and lead prosecutor Caleb argued during a rebuttal. In a climax that sent half the class to its feet and forced the judge to call for order, opponent Monique Nem slapped a contradictory graph onto the prosecution’s table. “We’ve proven you wrong! The CO2 levels have shot up,” she said. The jury responded more warmly, however, to Caleb Poppe’s response: The graphic cited a Hawaiian source; Hawaii has volcanoes; volcanoes emit CO2. In closing arguments, Alexia Hegy said global temperatures actually decreased in the 1960’s, while the global population rose. Humans cannot be at fault, she concluded.
With the final word, defense attorney Sarah Steed countered: “It all comes back to us, the people — not the sun, not the weather. We need to turn off lights when we don’t need them. Bikes can work. The environment can be richer.” Seven of 11 jurors decided humans are not to blame, but everyone agreed classroom debates make for fun learning. “It was a hard decision, because both sides made good points,” said student Samantha Roberts. Ken Poppe said he let students choose which side of the debate to argue. Poppe personally believes global warming is cyclical and not affected by humans, while his Colorado State University student aide David Richards believes the opposite. Both, however, said they presented both sides equally to the students leading up to Thursday’s debate. “What I think is not the issue. It’s what the students dig up and how they present the case,” Poppe said. Only one parent questioned Poppe’s decision to hold a global warming debate. That mother expected him to present Al Gore’s global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth” as indisputable facts, Poppe said. After he explained his neutrality in the classroom, the mom allowed her child to participate in the debate, he said. “You don’t understand someone’s position until you can argue it to their satisfaction,” Poppe said, quoting a famous physicist. “I don’t believe in Darwinism either, but I can argue it as well as any Darwinist.”
All smarter than every single global warming alarmist. Including the one who criticized Gore for not going after the "special interests" who are causing GW.
New TV show. "Is Al Gore smarter than a 6th Grader?"
Duplicate
Children are smarter than demoncRATS, political and non-political, environmentalists, etc. I definitely find humor in this situation.
If Bush had half a brain, he'd have a good PR firm design and manage a visit to that class room and award the teacher and students medals to help put an end to this "global warming" attack on his party and values.
Where?
What impresses me is not the "trial" outcome but that a teacher actually stimulated a class to look and evaluate at all the evidence. That should be the teacher of the year.
Oh. The post is a duplicate.
"Humans don’t cause global warming, a jury of sixth graders concluded "
How did they escape the left's propaganda net?
I agree.
My oops. I looked up 6th.
That is the question. Colorado has started to lean left for many years. I see these kids are getting a good start on debating the issues.
Scooter Libby could have used this sensible jury!!!!
Another instance of lousy science education in this country.
Encouraging the kids to do their own research and debate their findings is "lousy science education?" How is that?
Christmas Island CO2 concentration plot (PDF)
Christmas Island is not volcanically active.
Because they learned bad science. Volcanic emissions of CO2 don't affect atmospheric concentrations of CO2, and the emissions of Mauna Loa at the Mauna Loa observational site are subject to quality analysis and quality control such that such spikes are filtered out of the record. See my post above this one to show a different record that wouldn't have allowed the rebuttal "response" to work.
Science does not work like a jury trial. So that's another reason this was an exercise in the art of creating mistaken impressions and false conceptions. If anything, there should have been follow-up to address some of the mistaken conceptions presented at "trial" -- THAT might have helped the kids to distinguish effective scientific argument from advocacy.
They're 12 years old.
And how do you spin the fact that CO2 levels dramatically increased from 1940-1970, while "global" temperatures decreased? How is that possible, given the "consensus" view that CO2 causes global warming? Well sir, because it's not "global warming," it's SOLAR warming.
Please. If that were the case, nobody would mention the word "consensus" in the same breath as "science." Still drinking the IPCC Kool-aide, huh?
I can't get too excited. It was only 7-5. One more little feller switching his vote and the jury would have deadlocked 6-6.
There IS hope for us after all.
LOLOLOL It rose a whole 54 ppm!!! Woo hoo.
Thankfully most of America's 12 yr olds are smart enough to do the math on that.
There a New TV Show on called "Are You Smarter than a 5TH Grader" - which more often than not has the adults loosing to the Children on the show. This trial shows that these kids are smarter than a former VP.
NOTE: Carbon Dioxide is such a small component of Earth's atmosphere (368 ppmv) that the "slice" it represents in this chart is really only a "line" about 1/2 as thick as the line shown. Compared to former geologic times, Earth's atmosphere is "CO2 impoverished."
Gee, how original.
"Most of this post has been about the science of 30 years ago. From the point of view of todays science, and with extra data available:
1. The cooling trend from the 40's to the 70's now looks more like a slight interruption of an upward trend (e.g. here). It turns out that the northern hemisphere cooling was larger than the southern (consistent with the nowadays accepted interpretation that the cooling was largely caused by sulphate aerosols); at first, only NH records were available.
2. Sulphate aerosols have not increased as much as once feared (partly through efforts to combat acid rain); CO2 forcing is greater. Indeed IPCC projections of future temperature inceases went up from the 1995 SAR to the 2001 TAR because estimates of future sulphate aerosol levels were lowered (SPM).
3. Interpretations of future changes in the Earth's orbit have changed somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger, Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the current interglacial, based purely on natural forcing, would last for an exceptionally long time: perhaps 50,000 years."
And unfortunately there are probably very few science teachers who might also explain that this value is 2/3 of the total rise in CO2 seen in the ice core records between peak glacial conditions and peak interglacial conditions. And I'm working on point #5 in my profile to explain why atmospheric CO2 is the main driver of global temperatures in glacial-interglacial cycles.
The Religion of Global Warming violates separation of Church and State. Pastor "spotted owl gore" should know this.
"Now let's look at the geologic record. I only want you to look at a couple of things on this diagram. First of all, please note in the top chart the varying amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years. At times in the past CO2 levels have been up to 16 times higher than at present."
"The bottom chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present."
"Let's move to a little bit more recent geological history. There have been about 33 glacial advances and retreats through the last two million years or so. Through the last 10,000 years we have been in the Holocene interglacial, a warm episode between the last glaciation and the next one that will begin in the relatively near, geologically speaking, future. The last glaciation peaked about 18,000 years ago with the ice sheets retreating rapidly over just a few thousand years. Before that there was another interglacial that began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 10,000 years. In Europe that interglacial is known as the Eemian. Here in North America it is known as the Sangamon. As one goes back in time these intervals of about 10,000 years of interglacial interspersed with episodes of about 100,000 years of glaciation continue."
"What I would like to draw your attention to is the level of CO2 levels, as preserved in prehistoric air bubbles, from very high quality ice core records from Antarctica. When researchers first looked at the results from these cores they observed a repeating correlation between CO2 and temperature through several glacial/interglacial cycles. However, when they began to look at higher resolution cycles they say something different. They observed that temperature would go up first comes up first, with CO2 coming up later. This correlation indicates that as one might expect as temperatures warm biological productivity increases resulting in more CO2 in the atmosphere. The lag between CO2 and rising or falling CO2 levels is something like 800 years."
Regarding longer-term CO2 effects on climate (you have to consider the "State of the Earth" in deep time, too):
And yes, this is beyond the capability of most 12-year olds to understand, unless they're really into plate tectonics.
Well, I asked for SPIN, and that's what I got. If the data doesn't support your hypothesis, invent a new hypothesis to fit the data.
I read that stuff on your profile. It's such a mishmash of illogic no one could even begin to respond to it. Of course an 800 year lag in CO2 levels doesn't mean anything. /s
TigersEye - I've had the displeasure of debating this topic with Cogitator in the past. He refused to answer my question about his ties to the IPCC. That, combined with his dogmatic belief that whatever the IPCC publishes is Gospel, leads me to believe that he has a financial stake in the global warming swindle. Take away capitalism-induced climate change, and you're taking away his paycheck.
"The general circulation model we employed had 20 layers in the ocean and 19 for the atmosphere. The experiments simulate the climate back to 1860 (which is when the global records of surface temperature became reliable), and they are projected forward to 2050. We found that the greenhouse-gas forcing increased slowly from 1860-1960, but then accelerated markedly. After 1970 our model with greenhouse gases alone begins to depart significantly from the observations. However, when we included sulphate aerosols, which have a cooling effect, the model agreed with the data from the 1930s and onwards. The rapid warming that has taken place since 1970 is, according to the model, attributable to a heating effect from greenhouse gases and a cooling effect from sulphate aerosols. Fundamentally we showed that climate models cannot simulate the observations unless forcing factors additional to greenhouse gases are included."
It certainly means something.
Sorry about the mishmash of illogic; I'm led to wonder if you just didn't agree with it and therefore decided not to bother and just cast aspersions. Sometimes intellectual understanding requires work. I've added my carbon cycle references now; I invite you to read some to them instead of my mishmash of illogic. I'll be summmarizing them next week.
I have none.
leads me to believe that he has a financial stake in the global warming swindle.
I have none. Except I bought a hybrid car recently and have installed more compact fluorescent light bulbs in my home. And I recycle -- production of aluminum uses prodigious amounts of electricity.
Smug alert!
I recycle too - not to save the planet, but because I get a discount on my garbage bill. I'm not self-centered enough to believe I can actually impact the planet - it was here before me, and it will be here long after we're gone. I also drive a gas-guzzling V-8 truck and an SUV. I'm afraid the hybrids aren't good for hauling my gas-guzzling RV's and the wood I chop down to burn during the winter.
How much of your hybrid car was manufactured using "prodigious amounts of electricity?" Do you heat your home with solar, nuclear, or wind power? Is your home made out of wood, and if so, how do you reconcile that trees (which, via photosynthesis, cleanse the air of CO2) were chopped down in the manufacturing of your home? Do you buy carbon credits?
And finally, how do you reconcile your conservative views (I'm assuming you have them, since you post on FR) with those of people at the IPCC who wish to tax your energy consumption and implement controls over your lifestyle and purchasing decisions? It must be very confusing for you.
I am quite capable of following a clearly stated treatise even if I don't understand all of the principles involved or the technical details. FWIW I am capable of understanding quite a bit of that too in most cases. What is evident is that you cannot clearly impart the chain of logic you infer exists in your writing and that you simply expect your final point to be taken as proved. Someone who is truly fluent in a given field of science and has a coherent theory or thesis can easily distill it into language and structure that the layperson can grasp. The article I linked to is a good example.
The essence of your remark about 12 yr olds not understanding it is that "only a scientist can understand this." That is the excuse used by those who intentionally create a great chimera of logical fallacies in order to disguise the emptiness of their claims. "Dazzle them with BS" is the way that's usually put.
Another sure sign that it's baloney is that you never directly address the completely contraditory evidence produced to rebut you. highimpact didn't need to tell me about your posting history. I've read lot's of your posts and seen the evasions for myself.
And finally, how do you reconcile your conservative views (I'm assuming you have them, since you post on FR) with those of people at the IPCC who wish to tax your energy consumption and implement controls over your lifestyle and purchasing decisions?
Prohibition didn't work for drinking; taxing won't work for carbon. I reconcile my views by noting repeatedly that, putting environmental considerations aside, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly foreign imports, is becoming increasingly necessary from a national security and economic standpoint. Our economy is vulnerable to disruption of the energy supply by natural causes (remember the aftermath of Katrina and Rita?) or by malevolence (remember the suicide bombers that went after the main Saudi production site?)
How's that?
I have been recycling everything that will be taken for recycling since 1972. So what? It's good for the economy and good for the air and water but it doesn't do diddly squat to effect climate.
I'd be interested in an example.
I'm trying two things in my profile on point #5. One was the analogy that shows the initiating factor is not the driving factor. Agreed? (You turn the ignition key in your car to get it started. Is that the power that drives it 70 mph?) The other thing I'm providing is the current scientific understanding of what drives atmospheric CO2 concentrations in glacial-interglacial cycles. It's very complex and I wouldn't expect a 12-year old to understand it. I'd invite any interested 12-year-olds to try, though.
Lately, its been working like a Kangaroo trial where "deniers will to be silenced" and stripped of their funding and certifications.
There is nothing wrong with this sort of teaching in a 6th grade science class. I think it's great. The kids had to do their research and then present their thesis and evidence for review by their peers.
That's is much closer to the scientific process than what Michael Mann did with his bogus Hockey Stick where he treated both his data and his methods as proprietary information and only released it for review in dribbles when pressured. That is the antithesis of the scientific process.
Now this came down to a 7-4 vote by the peer review committee, and I will agree that a majority vote is not how the scientific process should work, but how is that any different than the so-called "consensus" that the Global Warming crowd proclaims to mislead layman and intimidate critics? If you believe in your finding and think they are strong, you should welcome critics. That they don't is very telling.
Good on this teacher. He got the kids to not only research a timely scientific topic, but to also understand it well enough to defend their positions. That's a hell of a lot better than the typical cut and past 6th grade reports where the kids retain absolutely nothing.
I went back and examined that in context. The apparent reason for the short-lived (geologically) Ordovician glaciation was that Gondwanaland was located where Antarctica is now. This continental configuration allowed propagation of continental ice sheets in a high-CO2 atmosphere due to alteration of atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns.
If a 12-year-old understands that continents move, that they don't look like they do now, that where they are influences climate -- then they'll get the explanation.
It's inconsistent with arguing your case from the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause global warming. If national security and economic vitality in relation to dependence on fossil fuels is your concern then, logically, you would argue those issues on their merits and not rest it on a peripheral issue.
Yep.....thats a great IDEA!!!!
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