Progressives No Longer Burn Books; They ‘Recycle’ Them

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Mike Szydlowski, science coordinator for the Columbia, Missouri, Public Schools district, knew exactly what to do with a copy of an unwanted book he received in the mail. According to the Columbia Missourian, he “promptly recycled it.”

Szydlowski had no hesitation sharing this information with the local newspaper for the reason that Columbia is a university town. He could safely presume that most people in town, certainly all of its thinking people, thought the way he did.

Not content to recycle his own copy, Szydlowski boasted to Missourian reporter Olivia DeSmit, “I immediately took a photo of the book and sent it to the rest of the department telling them to also recycle it.” In this context, of course, “recycle” means “throw away.” In an age less sensitive to climate change, he would have simply burned it. In either case, the intent is to stamp out the heresy before it spreads.

The plan seems to be working. Szydlowski posted the article on Facebook and highlighted the “recycle” quote. “Great quote!” said one friend. “Great job,” said another. “Hahaha! I recycled my copy, too!” said a third friend, this woman also a science teacher in mid-Missouri.

To be sure, the book in question is a heretical one. Titled Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming, it was sent by the Heartland Institute to some 300,000 teachers across the country, including Szydlowski. From its promotional materials, the book seems fairly sophisticated. One of its co-authors is S. Fred Singer, the “Dean of American atmospheric science” and regular AT contributor. It addresses what would seem to be the fundamental question of “whether the human global signal is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change outside the range of natural variability?”

In Columbia, those questions have long ago been answered. Three years ago, the Columbia schools adopted the Next Generation Science Standards. These standards subject students to the progressive dogma “that human activities are largely responsible for global warming and that global warming and climate change is real and requires solutions to reduce human impact on the earth.”

Said Szydlowski, “We didn’t want to wait for Missouri. We took a leap of faith.” In Columbia, the faithful feel no need to run an irony check on their own utterances. Szydlowski could not have chosen a more appropriate phrase to describe the blind acceptance of climate orthodoxy. He and his colleagues begin the indoctrination in the fifth grade, double down in the seventh grade, and catechize across the science curriculum in high school. One can imagine the reception Columbia students would get if they dared to question the accepted wisdom.

Szydlowski and colleagues can indulge their book-burning impulses confident the local media will back them, especially the Missourian. No ordinary daily, the Missourian is the incubator of the next generation of journalists being produced by MU’s celebrated journalism school.

Ms. DeSmit is an aspiring journalist. She received editorial guidance on this article from an associate professor in the J-School named Katherine Reed. Szydlowski likely can make an argument for his point of view, however one-sided, but Reed and DeSmit embrace the progressive half-truths du jour as if they came from a burning bush.

The two journalists fail to challenge the science educator for trashing the Heartland book unread, make a woefully amateurish defense of the “settled science” argument, and then insinuate the Heartland Institute is on the take in that it accepts money from “fossil fuel companies” even if it amounts to less than five percent of its revenue. This isn’t journalism. This is propaganda, and it seems to be the style of reporting in vogue at J-Schools across the country.

What happens in Columbia usually stays in Columbia, but not always. Two years ago, MU professor Melissa Click, who taught classes at the J-School, had the misfortune of being caught on video grabbing a student’s camera and shouting, “I need some muscle over here.” The student was committing the crime of real journalism on the MU campus during a public protest, and Click would have none of it.

No amount of media spin from Missourian reporters or their big-city fellow travelers could persuade the Show-Me Staters that Click and her protesters were anything but absurd. MU is paying the price for its folly. Freshman enrollment is down 35 percent from over two years ago. At least five dorms had to be closed and 400 employees laid off.

Read more at American Thinker

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June 22, 2017 at 08:56AM

With Summer Heat, Climate Alarmism Boils Over

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As heat waves move across the U.S. from the northeast to the southwest and in much of western Europe, climate alarmists are responding predictably by blaming hot temperatures not on true meteorological causes but on the nebulous bogeyman of “climate change.”

The lazy person’s answer to explaining weather phenomena is to forego the grueling task of trying to assess the virtually limitless variables involved in climatological events and to attribute everything instead to the all-encompassing catchall of global warming. Whereas past generations spoke of an “act of God” to explain extraordinary weather occurrences, now we point to the more scientific-sounding but equally vague notion of “climate change.”

Convincing people that “climate change” threatens the world as we know it becomes all the easier when hot summer days play into the narrative that the world is getting inexorably warmer. Thirty or forty or a hundred years ago, hot summers were just hot summers and people understood that. Now they are an omen of something huge and scary and out of control.

“Deadly heat waves are going to be a much bigger problem in the coming decades,” warns CNN, “becoming more frequent and occurring over a much greater portion of the planet.”

“Extreme heat waves,” CNN continues, “are frequently cited as one of the most direct effects of man-made climate change.”

Some climate change alarmists go further still, predicting with astounding precision the effects that global warming will supposedly have on future generations decades from now. A new study from Nature Magazine, for instance, makes the remarkable claim that by the year 2100 exactly 74 percent of the world’s population will be exposed to climatic conditions exceeding a “deadly threshold” for at least 20 days a year if we don’t drastically cut back on fossil fuel emissions.

If sociologists, biologists, or scientists in other fields attempted to make such ridiculously precise predictions for events eighty years in the future, they would be laughed out of the academy. But somehow, climate “scientists” get a pass. They can say almost anything they please and expect only respectful nods from their colleagues and adoring adulation from the mainstream media.

One supposes that the authors of such studies can rest easy, knowing that when their dire predictions fail to materialize they will already be dead and buried and no one will care that they terrified people with theories concocted in laboratories with radically fallible climate models.

For the record, the hottest temperature ever measured on the planet was 134 degrees Fahrenheit, in Death Valley National Park. This record was set on July 10, 1913—more than 100 years ago. Manmade global warming? Nope.

Then there was the 1936 heat wave that killed some 5,000 people in the midwestern United States and elsewhere in the nation. In Springfield, Illinois, temperatures reached triple digits on 29 days that year, including 12 consecutive days from July 4 through 14. This was before the days of air conditioning.

Some of the more recent climate frenzies is, of course, a knee-jerk reaction to President Trump’s commonsense decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. It is simply the nearest convenient stick with which to attempt to beat the sitting leader of the free world.

“Even if humans aggressively cut back on fossil fuel emissions, such as outlined in the Paris climate agreement,” CNN warns, “rising temperatures and humidity levels will combine to increase the intensity and frequency of deadly heat waves.”

For now, the summer is hot, as summers often are. If it makes people feel better or more responsible to link their sweat and lethargy to a major “ethical issue” of global dimensions, that’s fine.

Read more at Breitbart

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June 22, 2017 at 08:56AM

With Summer Heat, Climate Alarmism Boils Over

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As heat waves move across the U.S. from the northeast to the southwest and in much of western Europe, climate alarmists are responding predictably by blaming hot temperatures not on true meteorological causes but on the nebulous bogeyman of “climate change.” The lazy person’s answer to explaining weather phenomena is to forego the grueling task […]

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June 22, 2017 at 08:45AM

Rare US total solar eclipse excites Americans coast-to-coast

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For the first time in almost a century the United States is preparing for a coast-to-coast solar eclipse, a rare celestial event millions of Americans, with caution, will be able to observe. During the eclipse on August 21—the first of its kind since 1918—the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, casting a dark […]

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June 22, 2017 at 08:30AM