Oh man, so much to talk about so little space. First off I showed my class An Inconvenient Truth a couple weeks ago. I was given permission by my principal to show it and had also received an email from the Diocese of Monterey encouraging teachers to get a free copy of AIT for their classrooms. We watched it stopping here and there to clarify and discuss things. It was like I lit a match under their 11 year old butts. They are appalled at the state of today's world and were amped up to do something about it. We spent another class period the following day discussing what we and specifically they could do. One student suggested that they write letters to politicians voicing their concern over global warming and encouraging U.S support for the Kyoto Protocal. The letters they produced were quite eloquent for kids so young and some even took it upon themselves to write personal letters to the President, Speaker Pelosi, and Al Gore in addition to the class produced letters.
Global warming has become a personal cause for many of them...all but one. Two weeks after we watched the film I received the following email from a parent...
Dear Ladies,
Alec and Adam told me they viewed Al Gore's movie as titled above. If there is anyone more biased than he about what government's role in effecting human behavior related to climate change, I, frankly, can think of none other. Certainly, there has to be better, objective sources about the impacts of human activity on climate change than a hack politician who once told his constituents he was "Pro-Live", then "adjusted" his views to conform to Democrat party orthodoxy to "Pro-Choice" when it was politically expedient. Books have been written about Al Gore's political flip-flops and hypocrisy. Is he really a valid source of objective scientific information?
Here's an inconvenient truth Al Gore fails to render: more people die of the cold than of the heat according to The Potential Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Temperature Related Morbidity and Mortality in the United States by Michael A. McGeehan and Maria Mirabelli from he Center for Disease Control.
This is just one point that actually refutes the Chicken Little hysteria of Al Gore. In other words, Global Warming for far more people would actually be a good thing, an inconvenient truth Al Gore doesn't mention.
Read from the link below.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-6765%28200105%29109%3C185%3ATPIOCV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8&size=LARGE
I've also attached below another study that Al Gore may actually have used as a source confirming the number of deaths due to hot weather.
Extreme heat and cold
a. Impacts
Extremes of temperature have well-known impacts
on human health. There are indications that the num-
ber of heat-related deaths in the United States have
been increasing in recent years (Changnon et al.
1996a), but heat-related death tallies are suspect (cf.
Donoghue et al. 1997). Ellis (1972) showed that the
hot summers of 1952–55 each resulted in more than
500 deaths, with > 5000 heat deaths estimated in 1963
and 6700 in 1966 (Avery 1985). More than 15 000
heat-related deaths are estimated to have occurred in
the heat waves of 1980 (U.S. Senate Special Commit-
tee on Aging 1983). Unfortunately, statistics on human deaths caused by heat can be biased by many fac-
tors and accurate numbers are usually not available
except under isolated circumstances of major heat
extremes and when special studies are conducted.
Statistics based on identification of heat as the cause
of death by a medical examiner are usually much lower
than statistics based on comparison of overall death
rates. For example, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports 1678 deaths in 1980 (Parish 1997),
based on medical examiner identification; far fewer
than the 15 000 reported in congressional hearings.
The number of deaths due to extreme cold during
the 1979–94 period varied from 267 deaths in 1992
to a high of 524 deaths in 1989, based on statistics from
the CDC. The time distribution over this brief period
does not suggest any obvious trend.
Well, well, no obvious trend.
Furthermore, there is absolutely not disagreement in the scientific community that global climate changes have occurred throughout the existence of the planet before Adam and Eve made their appearance in the Garden of Eden. Climate change has always occurred and caused behavioral changes in humans. They move.
So now you are having the kids send letters to legislators to support the Kyoto Agreement. This is stepping beyond the line of educating. This is propagating opinions that are political in nature. Why not just give the kids registration cards to send home so parents can register in the Green Party?
The Kyoto Agreement actually excuses China and India from spewing coal burning. China is building 10 coal burning plants a week I've heard. When is the last time our country built a coal burning plant?
Finally, my last reading of Catholicism is that humanity is the crown of creation. How many people dying of cold due to lack of availability of petroleum-based fuels are worth a polar bear?
If you want to educate our kids to think, why not have them view alternative viewpoints such as John Stossel from ABC http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1739076 for a balanced view of the what climate change is all about.
Please cease and desist political advocacy and offer our children the WHOLE TRUTH they deserve!
Tom XXXXXXXX
Unlike Al Gore, who just refused to debate the issue recently (Chicken Little), I will gladly debate anyone about Al Gore's movie for Junipero Serra School and enlighten your student body about the wonders of enlightened capitalism and why it would have been terribly unwise to agree to the Kyoto prescriptions
Oh yeah there is just so much comedy gold here it's ridiculous. My principal wrote him back and read him the riot act about following protocol and such since the parent CC'd the email to the pastor and other random people. I think what pissed him off was that his older son watched it in his class a couple weeks after we did and brought up some issues at home. Why the dad mailed me and not the other teacher is beyond me. Either way he can fucking suck it because I had permission from my principal and the Catholic Church.
Friday four students brought in current events about global warming. "Blowbag's" (principal's name for him) son raised his hand and said his parents didn't like him talking about global warming and that his mom said it was "bull". Oh yeah nice talk there. He went on and on about how "my whole family is republican" and how global warming is "political". The other kids looked at him like he was a loon. They couldn't understand (and said so) how global warming was a political issue when it had to do with the sustainability of the earth. I told the student that I didn't know what to tell him except while he was free to express his opinion and feel differently, I had permission to speak of such things and was not going to stop.
As of Monday night no email from his irate parent about that. Dude needs to take a look at the Catholic Church's stance on global warming and how the Church feels that we are stewards of God's creation of earth.
From 2001: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/globalclimate.htm
Or: http://www.osjspm.org/globalwarming
Sure they aren't as liberal as I like, far from it, but they aren't saying, "fuck the polar bears, humans are the best thing EVA!"
The whole situation has just filled my little liberal heart with glee. I especially love that Al Gore was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Bring it home baby. If only to rub it in the nose of the naysayers and polar bear haters.
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