global debate

ERAU professor seeks balance in global warming debate By MARK HARPER Education Writer
DAYTONA BEACH --

Nick Shipley, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University freshman, had just spent a week of classes watching two films with polar-opposite conclusions about global warming.
"After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth,' I was relatively convinced," Shipley said one day last month in class. "(Al Gore) did a good job in presenting his points very methodically one after the other. They all build up to essentially prove his point.
"After watching 'The Great Global Warming Swindle,' my thinking completely changed," he said. "I kind of did a complete flip-flop."
College students aren't the only ones being confronted with climate change, its causes and what -- if anything -- can be done about it.
A Democratic Congress, an Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth" and continuing United Nations' proclamations have all contributed to the drumbeat for reducing carbon dioxide emissions as a strategy for fighting global warming. Some scientists are concerned the forces that are shaping debate and making policy decisions are not based on truths -- convenient or not.
James Wanliss, a space physicist who teaches at Embry-Riddle, showed students the two films in an honors course titled "The Politics and Science of Fear" because he said more and more the public is being sold one side of an issue with many dimensions.
"I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals," he wrote in an e-mail. "Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself. The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science."
"An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary starring Gore and a lot of graphs, makes the case that humans have contributed mightily to a 1-degree rise in the Earth's temperature in the last 50 years. It uses images of melting ice caps and dying polar bears to nudge viewers toward action for reasons of morality.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle," an anti-Gore documentary, doesn't question the Earth's temperature increase but takes to task the questions of why and what's next. For example, it suggests solar activity may have more to do with the planet's warming than carbon dioxideemissions.
Wanliss said he doesn't necessarily subscribe to either film, but believes his students -- and the public -- should remain skeptical of theories such as Gore's explanation of global warming.
Other Embry-Riddle scientists are less outspoken than Wanliss, but one -- John Olivero, professor and chairman of the department of physical science -- allowed that skepticism is an essential tool of the scientific method.
"Science lives with internal conflict all the time," Olivero said. "Part of what we have to do is continually challenge each other."
That process, they say, leads scientists closer to truths that may be elusive for lifetimes.
The truths of global warming are, if not inconvenient, incomprehensible, Wanliss argues.
"The atmosphere is incredibly complicated, and we know very little about it," he said. "We are studying a system which is so big . . . we don't know what all the variables are."
Pointing to quotes in magazine articles, Wanliss says Gore and the producers of the "Swindle" film are purposefully overstating their science as a means to a political end.
His views are certainly controversial.
Penelope Canan, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida, leans toward Gore's way of thinking.
"There's really no doubt that human activities have altered the global carbon cycle and the natural balances that have thickened the blanket of greenhouse gases that have kept our planet like Baby Bear's soup for thousands of years," she said in an e-mail. "I am certain that the data presented by Al Gore was digested by hundreds of thousands of research hours and peer-reviewed data by the world's leading scientists."
Sam Rabin, a freshman activist at Stetson University who helped screen "An Inconvenient Truth" on his campus, said many policymakers avoid difficult decisions that may come from carbon dioxide emission limitations, while journalists ramp up the skeptics' arguments in the name of balance.
"This is horribly misguided and counterproductive," Rabin wrote in an e-mail. "There is virtually no scientific debate about global warming or its cause."
But Wanliss' students at Embry-Riddle leaned toward the skeptical. The professor said that is an important lesson about science.
"You want certainty, but it's hard to get that," he said. "Science isn't about certainty."
mark.harper@news-jrnl.com

Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims
By LAURA CLARK - 2nd April 2007


Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. (!)
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.
The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools. It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class. The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'. It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils. "But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."
A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'. The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."
But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."
The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'. Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils.