School Requires Balance to Science

It's getting late, and I wasn't planning on blogging, but ... I was just checking the blogs, and ... I have to put this one up here.

This is from the town of Federal Way, Washington. Turns out I've spent a little time in Federal Way. There's not much to say about it, just a little place in the woods outside Tacoma.

I knew an opera singer there who could imitate Jimi Hendrix's guitar with his voice. He'd sing Purple Haze dew-dew-DAH-dew and you'd think it was an upside-down Strat through a Marshall stack with a Fuzz Face ... ahem ... but ...

(This was a while ago, you might say.)

So they showed "An Inconvenient Truth" in some schools there. This is mind-boggling.

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.

Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD." Federal Way schools restrict Gore film: 'Inconvenient Truth' called too controversial

Hmm, Hardison, Hardiman, Hardiberg, Harrison ... that name sounds familiar ...

Yeah, if it doesn't quote the book of Revelations directly, it doesn't belong in the schools. Of course.

Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.

"Somebody could say you're killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we're encouraging free speech," said Larson, a lawyer. "The beauty of our society is we allow debate."

Except we're talking about schools. You could debate all day about what if two plus two was five, but you don't. Schools in some places are for learning.

Can you imagine, first of all, the insanity of making science like this political? How did this happen? Who decided that global warming isn't happening? You've got, on one side, scientists, PhD experts in geology and meteorology. And on the other side, some capitalists and some nuts.

And you're supposed to "balance" them.

These are some wacky times we live in.

Of course, you know what I think. America is in danger of totally losing respect for learning, for critical thinking, for reasoning based on facts and logic. This is what we're fighting in our little county, and this is what the folks over in Federal Way had better wake up to. Our society is coming to worship ignorance.

The school board went along with it.

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."

Ooh. My forehead just left an impression in the table-top.

Just in case there's any doubt, the story goes on:

"In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations," states a 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which advises policymakers.

"Furthermore, it is very likely that the 20th-century warming has contributed significantly to the observed sea level rise, through thermal expansion of seawater and widespread loss of land ice."

The basics of that position are backed by the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

But what about PFOX? What do they think? Maybe the earth is warming because so many people discriminate against ex-gays.

Laurie David, a co-producer of the movie, said that this is the first incident of its kind relating to the film.

"I am shocked that a school district would come to this decision," David said in a prepared statement. "There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now."

Look, knowledge can change, no doubt. But right now the best knowledge in the world says that people are causing global warming. Why would you bet against that?

The Federal Way incident started when Hardison learned that his daughter would see the movie in class. He objected.

Hardison and his wife, Gayla, said they would prefer that the movie not be shown at all in schools.

"From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of 'bad America, bad America,' I don't think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown."

Scientists say that Americans, with about 5 percent of the world's population, emit about 25 percent of the globe-warming gases.

Ah, maybe that's it, that's why global warming is political -- because it'd be us, Americans, who'd have to do something about it.

Well, we can easily readjust the facts to prevent that.