Portland school board bans climate change-denying materials

Anthropogenic global warming isn't anywhere nearly as well established as the moon not being made of cheese.

In fact, the the only thing we really know right now is that the existing models are all wrong. All of them. Wrong. Not one matches the observed data for the last 20 years.

So, no, the science isn't "settled".

> This isn't the government compelling a viewpoint.

Care to elaborate on that ? Administrators, who are very much part of the government (and thus, in the end, ordered around by the executive) are forcing teachers, textbooks and ... to comply with a specific view they're defending politically ...

I might understand that they do this up to the point where they present the facts (ie. historical temperature changes) and present a few different ways to extrapolate into the future. Since statistical models are what climate science uses, because first principles don't work for a system as complex as earth, I would very much like to see them teach a very simple climate model, and have them tweak the parameters to get whatever outcome they like, to show that this can be done. Then get some standard parameters in and show the IPCC position.

This would show both the strengths and the weaknesses of climate change theory, and teach kids very useful data science skills in the process. It may also teach kids the valuable lesson that standards of proof in different sciences are very, very different, and ideally have them think a bit about what that means for the amount of confidence we should have in various sciences.

Ambiguity about co2 -> warming, or ambiguity about morality of transfer payments from rich to poor nations related to climate change?

By analogy, evolution is an established scientific fact. But a public school curriculum that promote eugenics on the grounds that it is supported by evolution would be inappropriate.

I would accept one that cited the IPCC report noting a warming hiatus for the last 15 years :)

I'd support that.

Elememtary textbooks contain almost exclusively the seminal theories that we are very sure about. If we expressed our certianty there, kids might get the idea that all of science is similarly so.

In science, "the evidence suggests..." is a very high seal of approval. I'd place more emphasis on making them understand that than I would on adding a few nines to their certianty that the earth is round.

Any other formulation is disingenuous. We don't know that the Earth is the center of the universe. Hell, even Elon Musk said we might be in a simulation a few days ago!

Ideally, you should also tell the kids which evidence suggests a theory.

Elon Musk: The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is 'one in billions'

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

Are we not the center of the observable universe?

These people are not scientists.

They conveniently forget that real scientists study independently what these people's own 'God' created. Rather than confront the truth, they retreat to insane (literally: non-sane) ideas about the universe.

Disclaimer: I teach computing in a creationist school in London, UK. I refrain from expressing my utter disgust that such places exist.

I must have missed that section where Kuhn explains that fallible evidence is worthless and that everyone should just believe what they want.

We all do strange things. I find it incredible that taxpayer funds provide a substantial portion of the budget for the Catholic Church in many countries, for example.

I think he was referring to "A People’s Curriculum for the Earth", the book published by the person spearheading the measure, which it does look like they're going to be buying. The reporter seems to have asked Bigelow if the school would be buying it now and he talked around the question in a way that seemed to suggest the answer was yes.

Reality -- or our understanding of it -- also is rarely a sure thing. Knowledge can often be imperfect. Attempting to deny that the skeptics have any good points at all often serves to embolden them.

Semmelweis essentially discovered germ theory (or something close to it) but everyone knew he was wrong and as a result it took another 30 years or so before "unpreventable" deaths became preventable. How many people died because folks in charge just knew they were right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

The point here isn't that climate deniers are somehow right and that history will vindicate them, it's that pretending to know something absolutely often (frequently? nearly always?) makes you a charlatan.

Maybe this http://www.greenes.com/html/feynman.html

EDIT: or this directly from his biography http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. ... I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen. For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision. One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results. ... http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/ The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are. [But] you teachers, who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, can maybe doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?”

It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.

In a field which is so complicated [as education] that true science is not yet able to get anywhere, we have to rely on a kind of old-fashioned wisdom, a kind of definite straightforwardness. I am trying to inspire the teacher at the bottom to have some hope and some self-confidence in common sense and natural intelligence. The experts who are leading you may be wrong.

I have probably ruined the system, and the students that are coming into Caltech no longer will be any good. I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television–words, books, and so on–are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name.