Indoctrination at the second grade level

I live in a small Midwestern town of not quite 12,000 people, and there are about 35,000 people in our entire county. So it is safe to say that I do not live in a metropolis. Until a recent article in our local newspaper, I thought that indoctrination in our schools was something I needn’t worry about. WRONG.

A couple of days ago there was an article titled, “North [grade school] students study facts about polar bears.” Now the words “polar” and “bear” caught my eye and I immediately feared the worst. As I read it explained how the students “found a website” that told them the polar bears are endangered. That we need to recycle to help them because that reduces global warming. And that the bears need ice to get their food. Directly from the article:

Students in Tammy Reindl’s second grade class have learned how recycling efforts in Taylorville can have an impact on global warming which can lead directly to the plight of the polar bears who live in the circumpolar north.

The main threat to polar bears today is the loss of their icy habitat due to climate change. Polar bears depend on the sea ice for hunting, breeding, and in some cases to den. The summer ice loss in the Arctic is now equal to an area the size of Alaska, Texas and Washington combined.

Scientists predict that, if current warming trends continue in the Arctic, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear by 2050.

I sat down and penned a letter to the editor, we shall see if they publish it, but here it is for our loyal CH 2.0 readers:

Dear Editor,

This is in response to an article that appeared in the Breeze Courier on Feb 22. It explained how second grade students at North School studied polar bears, their dwindling population and the effects of global warming on Arctic ice. I believe that in the interest of being fair, the other side of the global warming debate should be presented.

First of all, the polar bear population is not decreasing; in fact, their numbers have greatly increased in the last decade. Some estimates have their numbers as doubling. In Canada’s Nunavut Territory, Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit is on record saying the polar bear population there has doubled in the last 10 years. He doubts the figures put forth by global warming alarmists who rely on helicopter surveys.

“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the polar bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says.

Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director of wildlife for Nunavut Tuungavik Inc. also doubts the reliability of helicopter surveys. “Helicopters have many limitations, including fuel capacity. They can’t go far out into the open water,” he says. Hunters crisscrossing the area by snowmobiles, sled dog teams or boats “are seeing polar bears where scientists and helicopters are not traveling.” He said that old timers living in the area rarely saw the bears forty years ago, but “now there are bears living as far south as James Bay.”

Both men ridicule the claims by alarmists that polar bears are threatened or in danger of becoming extinct. “Polar bears are very intelligent…they have adapted through many climate changes for thousands of years. They are not going to wait around for the ice to freeze to start hunting. They live on more than just seals,” says Nirlungayuk.

And Flaherty adds that, “at the end of the day, the King of the North will always be here. When we hear that polar bears are headed towards extinction, we just kind of smile at ourselves.”

Now the second graders at North school also were told that the Artic ice is melting because of global warming. According to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and our own University of Illinois, Arctic ice was 30% greater from 2007 to 2008. In one year, the Arctic ice grew, it did not shrink. This is not to say that the Arctic hasn’t experienced some warming trends. Greenland has shown to be warmer as of late, but the reality of the situation is that this isn’t anything new. The earth warms and cools in cycles; that is called climate. In fact, the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops in temperatures that were much higher than those of today.

NASA published a study that determined that the thinning Artic ice in 2007 was the result of “unusual winds” that had blown the “older, thicker” ice out into the warmer southern waters. So it would seem that any ice loss was to be blamed on differing wind patterns and not CO2 or man made global warming.

Dr. Phil Jones, the former head of the CRU (Climatic Research Unit) in East Anglia, UK recently told the BBC in an interview that the earth has not warmed in the last 15 years. For clarification, the CRU provides the main body of research to the United Nations for their IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

I think it is wonderful that our school children are learning about polar bears, but I think that it should not be taught that man made global warming is a foregone conclusion. It is unfair to let second graders think that the polar bears are dying out of existence when they simply are not. The debate on global warming is most usually centered on rhetoric and emotion. It is easy to feel all warm and fuzzy about a polar bear and therefore when a child is told that they are in danger of becoming extinct it is easy to lead them to the conclusion that there is man made global warming. When the global warming alarmists say that the debate is over, there is a consensus, well that is faulty thinking. Science by its very nature is the attempt to prove the null hypothesis, or in other words, prove something wrong, not right. Dissenting opinions are the key to good science. As British scientist and mathematician, Jacob Bronowski said, “Dissent is the native activity of the scientist…” and if you remove dissent, “what is left will not be a scientist.”