In the past several weeks, I have gathered document after document from FR articles - which I have supplied to my boss at work who also saw the movie and declared it was "scary" and he's over 50.
Just use the search bar in FR and try several key words - like global, warming, cooling, environment, etc. and you should have a great many really good articles which totally refute everything Gore says in his movie.
When you have your information - confront the teacher with your information - and demand equal time. Or, contact other parents in your daughter's class and distribute the articles you find - or call a meeting at your home and discuss a plan to overwhelm the school - and force the school admin to STOP SHOWING THAT GARBAGE!
Nobody is going to do it for you - you parents are going to have to get together and stop this junk being foisted upon your children.
Er, I mean, global WARMing.
The tough part about rebutting man made global warming is where to start--there's a ton of material. The church of the global warming would like you to think their side has an overwhelming consensus, and only the fringe or scientists paid by big oil disagree with them, but it's not so. It is a lot easier to get reporters to beat down your door for a story if you postulate a bigger and scarier disaster scenario than the last guy though, than if you are a skeptic trying to refute that junk.
Basically, you have to rebut them point by point, and search for material for that specific point. It helps if you've read enough to know the catch-phrases. For instance, if you've seen that global temperature graph that takes off like a rocket in the last hundred years, and wonder if it's really true, you'd google for words like "global warming hockey stick". Also, looks for names of the scientists involved, and see what other people have to say (because the issue is so polarizing, if you want to get opposing view, add words like "fraud" to the search). For instance like "Michael Mann global warming fraud", or "James Hansen..."--or cut right to it and go for IPCC (and find out that a thorough review by various world GOVERNMENT organizations is part of their "scientific" review process).
For some plain common sense, read some of Michael Crichton's speeches:
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/
If you have to read just one, try HIS "Aliens Cause Global Warming" speech, if not for the title alone.
Here are a few links for starters:
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
The senate EPW site has several papers, including this:
http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/ClimateChangeWebuse.pdf
http://epw.senate.gov/w_papers.cfm?party=rep
In general, be suspect is someone tells you it's the hottest ever, most hurricanes, the ice caps are melting as an unprecedented rate, the polar bears are drowning for lack of ice, etc. (During the medeival warm period, England grew grapes and had a thriving wine business, and vikings settled Greenland and raised cattle. We've just had the mildest hurricane season in a decade. The polar bear population is stable. Antartica's ice cap is growing.)
The bottom line is that we are coming out of the coldest period in modern history--the brutal little ice age--so expect a bit of thawing here and there and thank goodness for it.
It's sad that children are being dragging into the propaganda. If you really want to see something sad about this mess, look at what the UN is pushing to the kiddies:
http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265811
Boycott the NEA. They're all Democrats. It's time to put an end to the relationship between the Democratic Party and these supposed educators.
"Any links to printable material would be greatly appreciated." ~ Nachum
There is more useful ammo in the speeches below than your daughter could ever hope for.
Michael Crichton Speeches
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/index.html
"Fear, Complexity, Environmental Management in the 21st Century"
Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, Washington, D.C.
November 6, 2005
"Testimony of Michael Crichton before the United States Senate"
Committee on Environment and Public Works, Washington, D.C.
September 28, 2005
"The Impossibility of Prediction"
National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Janaury 25, 2005
"Science Policy in the 21st Century"
Joint Session AEI-Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
January 25, 2005
"Environmentalism as Religion"
Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, CA
September 15, 2003
"Aliens Cause Global Warming"
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
January 17, 2003
"Why Speculate?"
International Leadership Forum, La Jolla, CA
April 26, 2002
"Ritual Abuse, Hot Air, and Missed Opportunities: Science Views Media"
American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, Anaheim, CA
January 25, 1999
"Mediasaurus: The Decline of Conventional Media"
National Press Club, Washington D.C.
April 7, 1993
Bio:
CRICHTON, (John) Michael.
American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942.
Educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa).
Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65.
Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965.
Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970.
Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.
More: http://www.crichton-official.com/aboutmc/biography.html
bttt
Innocent subversion, my friend, if she can fake sincerity, and not everyone can. Dig up Paul Ehrlich's nuclear winter nonsense and have her tell the teacher that her parents believe that. Why shouldn't they? Fashion?
This is the BEST thing that could have happened to her. Why? Because now is her chance to do some research of her own and figure out just how BIASED the media is and how people try to manipulate and indoctrinate with misinformation. NOW is the best time for her to learn not to believe what she is told by the MSM or by politicians or junk scientists...but to be SMARTER THAN THAT and search for the truth on her own. See this as an opportunity to teach her about looking for the truth and refusing to be a sheeple!!!
One corollary that should be explored is that if we have the ability to precipitate warming are we capable of deferring the onset of another ice age?
I took a college biology class this past summer and the movie was offered as an extra credit. We had to show a ticket stub to get the extra credit.
Needless to say, it wasn't worth it to me.
You and your wife are really taking a chance by having the State educate your child. It's really not that much of a financial burden to homeschool her.
Thanks for posting the thread. My church actually is showing An Inconvenient Truth. They're off on a Rick Warren tangent. The information in the replies should be helpful.
I would also suggest that she ask "What was the topic of Doctor Gore's doctoral dissertation, in which scientific specialties does Doctor Gore have advanced degrees, and how many peer-reviewed scientific papers has Doctor Gore authored?"
It might be helpful if somebody summarized for her Gore's scientific background and academic achievements.
Last year, I taught Science and Religion at a middle school level. Invariably our discussions crossed over into areas of interest in things such as global warming, overpopulation, bio-ethics and free inquiry.
One of the things that I tried to illustrate to my classes when we got onto the issue of global warming and use of natural resources was some of the materials that I had been given to study in college; such as books by Paul Ehrlich, (there was another environmental book, I believe called "The White Book?") in which particularly bold predictions were made about the future of the planet.
The way that I engaged my class on this topic was a bit of fun for me; I would simply use the same method that was put forth to me in college by predicting the various forms of wildlife and resources that I KNOW would disappear from the planet in the next 5 to 10 years. The mass death and starvation that were to come as a manifestation of the misuse of the planet's water and food supplies (by the evil human beings, I might add). I would make a point of terrifying my students with this information until some of the young girls were near tears and the boys were wide eyed with anxiety.
I would run down the list of natural resources that we had run out of 5 years ago: gold, tin and uranium. I would list the animals that are now extinct; the African Elephant, the American Eagle, the Giant Panda - while the students incredulously looked around at each other, then indignantly countered that we have NOT run out of any of these elements, nor have we killed off any of these animals. I would end this particular lecture by stating that according to these predictions we would run out of water on the planet TODAY. Then I would go over to the water tap and pour myself a glass of water and drink it. I would then inform the kids that these predictions were made between 1980 and 1985. Voila! Smiles and sighs of relief, followed by agitation at being played in a scam.
I then asked my students what they would think of the creditability of a scientist that would make such predictions which would later be proven wrong. They would tell me that they felt he would basically be a laughing stock. I would then run down Paul Ehrlich's list of awards and achievements, including being the head of a department at of the country's most prestigious universities (Stanford).
Well, now the kids got indignant! They wouldn't believe me. This lecture was always a fun intellectual exercise with my students. Really it's more about thinking - true Liberal Arts - than it was about science.
I'm really not all that certain about some of the data about global warming. In some ways I suppose that I'm biased because I really don't trust a lot of the people who have put forth the research - certainly I would not believe a word that comes out of Albert Gore's mouth - but there's a lot of data out there that would seem to suggest something may be happening; the possible extinction of the North American Hemlock, that photograph of Mt. Hood.
What, how severe, how quickly and the cause of shifts in climate,....? I honestly don't know. I try not to discount it out of hand, but I don't necessarily believe some of the scientists that have made this issue their Holy Grail.
One thing that I always told my students; question authority (be polite about it), try to examine a scientist's true motivation and, of course, and in all things, follow the money trail.
Hmmm, try any one of those standards against Al Gore.
Good luck with your daughter.
Following a bread crumbs via the links provided by rottndog, here's a collection of pdfs that refute point made in the movie:
http://www.cei.org/pages/ait_response-book.cfm
I couldn't bring myself to pay actual money to see Gore's movie, despite morbid curiosity (I figured I wouldn't last through it anyway--the trailer alone makes me clutch my head), so the rebuttals are helpful.
What is it about Catholic Schools and these liberal movies. I was a Senior and was in American Government and the teacher showed us Legal Eagles. I guess she wanted us to look at a court case. I did not have much interest in the movie. I would have rather have seen The Breakfast Club to be honest especially in those days. A classic if I do say so myself.
Nothing wrong with seeing it if they're free to critique it.
My son's class had to read the DaVinci Code and write a paper on it. My son ripped it to shreds.
I'm so proud.