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Federal Way got all the press, but more than one school in Washington can ban An Inconvenient Truth. Yakima was in on it too. The Associated Press is reporting that a panel of teachers, parents, administrators and right-thinking people have decided that the film can be shown to a Yakima school's Environmental Club. Environmental Club? At least in Federal Way it was a science class. The Environmental Club? What kind of environmental club worth it's charter hasn't already screened Inconvenient Truth. The kind in Yakima is apparently the answer.
To really understand what happened in Federal Way and Yakima you have to understand the opposition that there is to Gore and his environmental message. While Al Gore has never achieved the kind of cult hate that he may have if he had a "Clinton" in his name somewhere, a lot of people are vehemently opposed to both him and his thoughts on the environment and the science behind what he's saying. And that's just plain not understandable. Who hates science?
Here's an example of how the case is made against the movie:
It is a sign of how politicized global warming has become when a father's push for his daughter's junior high school science class to present both sides of the global warming controversy becomes a national story -- with the father being portrayed as the villain.To recap, Frosty Hardison, the parent of a seventh-grader who attends school in Federal Way, Wash., was troubled to learn that science teacher Kay Walls had planned on showing her class Al Gore's global-warming pic "An Inconvenient Truth" -- without presenting any contrary information.
Hardison is an evangelical Christian who, as The Washington Post reported, sees global warming as "one of the signs" of Judgment Day. That is, Hardison fits the sort of stereotype bound to attract national media attention under the rubric: religious zealot fights science in schools.
Oh, the other side of the global warming "controversy." Shit, we didn't think of that. Here we were respecting the science when we just plain forgot all about the fact that global warming is one of the signs of Judgment Day. We better step to repenting instead of worrying about our way of life changing the temperature of the Earth.
Anway, the environmental club at Eisenhower High was supposed to wait for a council of elders to convene in February sometime to discern the dictates of principal Stacey Locke with regards to An Inconvenient Truth, but they met earlier and got it done yesterday.
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As a passionate independent who enjoys NPR, Jon Stewart, and Talk Radio, it is important to me that all advocates, left and right, tell the truth and not spin the facts in order to prove their point. You’ve done that in regard to what I understand to be the school board’s decision regarding the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It seems the school board required the teacher to show the other side of the issue. What’s so unreasonable about that?
Did they say that she had to show Frosty’s view? Which I would strongly agree does not belong in a science classroom. If not, then they meant that she had to show another scientific view.
It disturbs me that on the Jon Stewart show she said that she looked for another view and couldn’t find it; that she could only find a Newsweek article that was 30-years old. If this wasn’t a lie, it speaks very poorly for her ability to do proper research and therefore her ability to teach proper science. There are many Internet sources for other scientific views; here’s just three:
1) The entire subject is well covered in Wikipedia and includes most major opposing and agreeing views regarding the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. Search "Global Warming Controversy"
2) Amazon’s page for the book, Global Crises, Global Solutions, which makes a very good case for ignoring global warming and focusing on other, more pressing, societal issues. Search the title in Amazon
The Great Global Warming Swindle - Documentary Film. This film is an excellent scientific explanation of the other view and points out very clearly many of the misstatements in Gore’s film. This would have been a perfect opposing view film for her to use in her classroom. On Google Video, this film, produced in Britain, has had 71,500 views since it was posted. In addition, it can be downloaded for free--there's no excuse for not using it. Search the title in Google Videos
Now, the question is, do you have the intellectual honesty to consider seriously that there just might be some opposing views that must be looked at seriously?
Brad Fregger
I'll tell you what's most frustrating Brad: that so many have bought into the language of "the opposing view" in the first place. When a scientist is researching something, it is not the responsibility of other scientists to suddenly rush out, define the opposing view, and then try desperately to prove it. Science, like so many other things we refuse to acknowledge as such, works primarily in grey areas and cares not a whit about opposition per se. We have been given this horrible concept by lawyers and politicians, and personally I think we should have kicked it to the curb as soon as it was presented to us. We need to understand natural phenomena and scientific results in all their complexity: we do not need to drop them into a cage match inspired by the World Wide Wrestling federation.