Teaching Climate Change

What is often portrayed as a debate is, and always has been, no debate at all. There are not two legitimate sides on the issue of climate change. There is the truth and there are people that want to ignore the truth. I have not yet heard an argument that refutes human caused climate change that stands up to scientific scrutiny.

I wonder what people are so scared of in admitting there is a problem, and then working towards solutions. I just happen to be glad that those people are not teaching science classes here in Alberta, at least they had better not be.

Here is a nice breakdown of the actual science behind the theory of human caused climate change called the Climate Change Skeptic Comic.

If a comic about climate change isn't good enough for you then please read on for a variety of sources on the  reality of human caused climate change.


I want to challenge teachers to teach the theory of human caused climate change in their classrooms. Not as a debate with two equally legitimate sides, but as the best understanding that science has to offer. The equivalent would be teaching in the sixties about the civil rights movement in the U.S. and segregation and placing the Ku Klux Klan as an equal and valid argument next to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.





There were many many people aligned with the guy on the right making strong arguments in favour of their point of view, but they were bloody wrong, and I don't think teachers working in critical thinking classes should have been presenting both points of view as equally legitimate out of some misplaced sense of being balanced and allowing students to "think for themselves" or to "tolerate conflicting points of view."

Take a look at what the deniers of human caused climate change are saying (these are arguments that people  have made to me in person, you have heard most of them, and my response to those arguments):

1. The Scientists are in it for themselves - This argument should be stricken as utterly ridiculous as soon as it is heard. The idea that there is some kind of global conspiracy where Al Gore has the IPCC and other independent climatologists in his back pocket is downright absurd. Sure there are political opportunists, and some people trying to make money, but the reality is, if there is any kind of payout to  scientists to distribute non-truths it is not coming from climate change scientists. The possibility of conspiracy is definitely there, but it is big oil paying PR firms to legitimize the skeptics. When Exxon Mobil pays authors to write that climate change isn't real then there is a conspiracy to prevent the truth from coming to light, "nine of the ten most prolific authors cited have links to organisations funded by ExxonMobil"



If you aren't convinced, then ask your self this simple questions. What  exactly do the overwhelming majority of climate change scientists have to gain from publishing their findings? How do the scientists benefit from "lying" about human caused climate change? Is Al Gore sending them a check? Is Greenpeace so powerful an organization that it can manipulate the scholastic fortitude of top universities around the world? The argument is profoundly absurd.

2. The Climate is always changing - That is true, but it has not been this warm in over 650,000 years. The evidence from NASA's (NASA isn't exactly a liberal media tool) site on climate change is overwhelming. If we were cooling and entering another mini-ice age it could easily be argued that the climate is behaving normally, but there isn't evidence of this kind of global warming in any geophysical historical record. NASA - Climate Change Evidence. The science states: "In the last 650,000 years there has been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat. Most of these changes were due to small shifts in the Earth's orbit.... the evidence for rapid climate change in modern times is compelling." The best argument that I like to use to counter this ignorance is the FACT that even the U.S. Navy is planning how to navigate and control the arctic sea once the ice there is gone. By around 2030 the US NAVY is planning to have an arctic free of ice.

The signature at the bottom of this actual report about how the US NAVY will handle climate change is J.W. Greenert Admiral in the U.S. Navy

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3. The Economy will be hurt - Only if we are not smart about this, yes there will be risks to changing from a fossil fuel economy to one that is driven by alternative energy, but the economy, or the society, that steps up first will be able to make money in the transition. There will be jobs, there will be energy exports, and we, as a species, are intelligent enough to continue finding work are experiencing prosperity without fossil fuels. Will manufacturing disappear? Will resource extraction and refinement be completely dismantled? Of course not. The new information economy will grow and develop, creative efforts will find new economic space, and the innovation sector will allow for growth, opportunity and prosperity. The truth of the matter is that ignoring climate change will be more costly than anything else in human history. This NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) report paints a bleak, but all too real warning about, The Cost of Climate Change. Granted they are an interest group, but their findings are well referenced and properly researched. Warnings that we have all heard, but choose to ignore are reported on. From the impact on agriculture - a sector that has built and continues to maintain both North American and European global economic superiority - to the cost of rising sea levels and a look at playing catch-up in the global energy market.

How much will losing our agricultural strength hurt our economy? 

Teachers, it is your duty to educate students on the truth behind Human Caused Climate Change. I hope the ideas, arguments and links above will help you to fulfill that moral and ethical responsibility. This is not a debate, in the same way that slavery was never a debate, and that segregation was never really a debate and that women's equality was never really a debate. There is truth and there is ignorance, it is your duty to help reveal the truth and expose the ignorance.