Opinion by Kip Hansen — 5 December 2024

One of the many social controversies that are getting more and more coverage in the U.S. mass media is the so-called issue of Banned Books.

From the outset, let me make it absolutely clear:

There are NO BOOKS BANNED in the United States.

Not a single one.

Now, I mean this quite literally.  And I urge you to do your own research on this:  I would be pleased if readers could find a single book that is on any list anywhere as forbidden to be sold, imported, or read in the United States. ^{[see end note  [i]]}

So, you may well ask, “How can Banned Books be an ongoing social controversy if there are no banned books?”

I just love good questions.

The long and short of it is:

1. Some people think that some books are not appropriate for school children of various ages. 

2. Other people, specifically the American Library Association, the trade group of librarians in the United States, and PEN America, a writers advocacy organization, hold the position that ALL books should be made available to all people in all libraries and if there are to be any exceptions, only librarians or the books’ authors are qualified to make those decisions. 

Now, let’s get real. 

I’m sure that any reader here can think of at least one book that should not be shelved in a kindergarten library and  maybe one other book that should be not be offered in any library of any school with children under the age of 10, 12 or even 18.  

Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember the release of “Sex” [a 1992 coffee table book written by American singer Madonna, which takes a provocative look at sexual fantasies in photographs and words, with the erotic imaginings highlighted by a series of photographs using innovative special effects].  Maybe we could all agree that such explicitly sexually photographs, text and themes should stay out of the hands of little children until they are old enough to develop standards and values of their own.

So, if we can agree on one book, perhaps there are sensible thoughtful people that can reasonably object to some titles, some books, some subjects, some language and some topics that they feel are not appropriate for shelving and display in grade schools and maybe others that might not be appropriate in middle or even high schools.

The real story is that the American Library Association (ALA) label  any challenge, any questioning of librarian’s choices about which books to include in which sections of any library: Book Banning.  

In this we see the propagandist’s favorite weapon being wielded with tremendous  power: Redefining of basic words to mean something other than their original, generally accepted meanings.   The words the ALA and PEN redefine are “ban”, “book banning” and “censor”.

Here’s their latest propaganda:

American Library Association reveals preliminary data on 2024 book challenges

In their own words:  “Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged.”   They are reporting about “challenges” but call it “attempts to censor”. 

What is a challenge in the eyes of the ALA? : “a challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.”

You can see the twisting of language in the official ALA statement.  What is being challenged is the librarian’s choice:  nothing more and nothing less.  When a person, such as a parent or community member, questions the decision of a librarian to place a book with explicit sexual content, or controversial material that could be considered racist, on a shelf in one of the children’s sections in a library, the ALA claims it is a “threat to freedom of speech”.  Whose speech? The Librarian’s speech! 

Every single book in every library is there because a librarian decided it should be.  Most libraries do not have the problem of ‘not enough books’.  Most libraries, like my local town library housed in a lovely, tastefully expanded Carnegie library, have a problem of too little space for books.  Thus, their book sales tables are loaded with copies of last year’s best sellers, damaged books and odd bits and bobs that are seldom or never checked out.  Librarians regularly weed out books and dispose of them to make room for new or other books.  If a book is in the library, the local librarian decided to buy it or decided to keep it shelved. 

The location of each book in the library is also the decision of the librarian.  There are generally agreed upon systems for placement of non-fiction books, including the famous Dewy Decimal System.  However, non-fiction books are usually shelved alphabetically by author’s name. 

Almost all libraries also have sections of books they recommend for children of various ages and reading abilities:

Board books: For children aged 0–3, these books are mostly pictures with a few words and are designed to teach basic language skills. 

Picture books: For children aged 2–8. 

Early readers: For children aged 4–8. 

Chapter books: For children aged 7–9, these books are usually 4,000–15,000 words long. 

Middle-grade novels: For children aged 8–12, these books are more complex than other children’s books, with more in-depth characters and multiple subplots. 

Young adult (YA) novels: For children aged 12–18

The thing that is causing all the Banned Books brouhaha is this:

Which books are being shelved in which sections of which libraries?

It would be safe to say that nearly every book challenge involves books that have been included in library sections intended for children. 

Of course, libraries in our public schools are universally intended for the use of children.  Public school libraries are usually arranged in sections that are considered age-appropriate/grade appropriate.  As above and as any parent knows, some of the decisions are based on reading ability, others on content.   There are libraries in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.  In addition, individual classrooms also have small libraries of books or dedicated bookshelves of books that the teacher makes available to the children.

According to the American Library Association (ALA):

“Often challenges are motivated by a desire to protect children from “inappropriate” sexual content or “offensive” language. The following were the top three reasons cited for challenging materials as reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom:

1. the material was considered to be “sexually explicit”
2. the material contained “offensive language”
3. the material was “unsuited to any age group”

The ALA leaves out that many books, further down the list of reasons, are challenged because they actively push radical social and racial agendas, which includes books that may make some children feel upset by the color of their own skins: books that might make black/brown children feel bad about their skin color or ethnicity and, in today’s social/racial climate, books that might make white children feel bad about being white.

The ALA further takes the position that “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources.” 

While that sounds like a reasonable approach, it ignores the simple fact that children are not always accompanied by their own parents when in a library and almost never in a school or classroom library.  The very existence of a book in a public library children’s section, a school or classroom library can reasonably be considered, especially by a child, to be a recommendation that the children should read  that book. 

Yet, expecting the child to know how to properly choose which of those equally colorful recommended books to read next – and still be in keeping with his family’s social, ethical, moral and religious values – is an unreal expectation.  Both the child and its parents expect that the teacher or the librarian will have made only generally appropriate books available to the children. 

Who owns the library?

Here is a hint:   The Librarian(s) do not own the libraries.  Librarians are employees.  Employees take direction from the employers. The same is true of teachers, who act as librarians of their classroom bookshelves.

Your public school district is the owner of your public school and thus your public school libraries.  It is a public school, thus the public, you, the body of the public, the taxpayers, are the real owners of your schools and the employers of the librarians. 

Therefore, it is a simple ordinary everyday relationship.  The Owners properly direct the actions, and have authority over the decisions of the Employees, and Owners have every right to ask employees to  modify the employee’s decisions.  

Now, not all school districts in all parts of the country have exactly the same administrative structures. There will be commissioners  and school boards and such.  But the ownership issue is not in question.  Your public tax-supported library will have some corporate structure as well, a Library Board, maybe a Board of Trustees,  and a Library Director or Administrator, and, of course, one or more librarians.

Nonetheless, in the end, YOU are the owners of the school’s libraries and of the Public Library.  And you have every right to make your wishes and views known and demand changes in the shelving decisions of your employees, the librarians. 

If you do so, you will be labelled a Book Banner, an Underminer of Democracy and a vicious Censor.

Not in the real world, you think?  Think again.  Here, for your consideration, is the opinion of the Editors of Scientific American magazine.  It is only 1000 words, a quick read.  It reads like a “talking points” list from an ALA “Banned Books Week” flyer, offers no substantive arguments, offers no evidence, misrepresents facts about the issues, uses links which do not make the point claimed,  and, as in most propaganda, almost nothing in it is strictly true.

“Book Bans Harm Kids — Censoring what children read deprives them of reality and the chance to feed their curiosity and develop empathy”

The Editors of SciAm again step into areas outside their remit – to the questions of moral values, social standards, and ethics.  They did the same with politics, endorsing a candidate running for President of the United States in the most recent election.   

When they challenge a book, what are the parents and concerned citizens  protecting elementary school kids from?  Things like this:

Generally, explicit sexual content (both hetero- and homosexual) and promotion of racism (anti-white, anti-black, anti-Asian, and everything in between). 

I provide this one paragraph of example:  

““Gender Queer,” an illustrated memoir, contains explicit illustrations of oral sex and masturbation. The novel “Lawn Boy” contains graphic descriptions of sex between men and children. Both books were previous winners of the American Library Association’s Alex Awards, which each year recognize “ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.”   And worse…..

It is easy to find web pages that will quote and show the parts of the books to which some people and parents object to finding in the children’s sections of libraries and in their children’s classrooms. Below are a couple sample links:

City Journal

Heritage Foundation

Bottom Lines:

1.  There are no banned books in the United States.  The Banned Books movement is stealth radical social/political activism masquerading as a free speech movement.  

2.  There are well-meaning, reasonable people who have moral values, ethics, and standards that demand watch care over what books the school-aged children in their communities are exposed to in their school and public libraries.

3.  Those libraries belong to the Public and to the Parents.

3.  It is a Good Thing for parents and community members to be concerned about the content of the books given to children.

4.  Not all books are good, not all written words have a positive value, not all topics and issues are appropriate for children at various ages.

5.  It is a Bad Thing for activists to promote various radical social, racial and sexual ideas using your school and public libraries to indoctrinate children contrary to the wishes and standards of the communities which own the schools and libraries.

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Author’s Comment:

The ALA and PEN are out of touch with the majority of the American people.  They support and promote radical social ideas – along the lines of what Conservatives colloquially call “radical liberal progressivism” and “the WOKE agenda”. 

If you want to prove to yourself that the Banned Books movement is a HOAX, go to your local library and ask for any of the Banned Books. They will have them.   If you go during Banned Books Week, they will be prominently on display.  If they have them, and display them, they are not, have not been banned, nor censored.

But, if your community is on the ball, willing to protect its children, the worst of the books will not be in the children’s section.

Thanks for reading.

# # # # #

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[i] There may be some exceptions, as there always are to anything so general.    One such is child pornography. “Images of child pornography are not protected under First Amendment rights, and are illegal contraband under federal law.”   There were one or two cases where  books were written that violated  National Security, exposed national secrets, or endangered intelligence assets in the field resulting in the books being withdrawn from publication.

One of my interests is in understanding how and why the climate is so stable, for sure it has been over the last several thousand years.    Where I live, on the Tropic of Capricorn, daily atmospheric temperatures may fluctuate by 30C, yet the seasonal variation in sea temperatures is less than 10C and if there has been any warming over the last 100 years it is probably less than 2C.    For sure the global temperature changes and that is especially the case at the higher latitudes towards the north and south poles.   On these points of fact, I am very much in agreement with meteorologist William Kininmonth.   We also agree that it is tropical convection, in particular the funnelling of energy from the boundary layer sometimes 13 kilometres straight up to the top of the troposphere that stops the tropical oceans from overheating.

I hosted a first two-hour zoom meeting about these things last night; we are working together towards a new paradigm for understanding weather and climate change.

One hundred registered, the maximum capacity given my zoom subscription, and there were 48 who joined to listening-in, mostly to Bill outline his model of tropical convection and how this is critical to understanding how energy moves within the troposphere and to the north and south poles.

William studied under Herbert Riehl at Colorado State University in the 1960s, and he acknowledges that he is building on the work of Riehl and also Joanne Simpson.

The meeting was at a time that suited William, and an Australian audience.   I understand that this time was completely inappropriate for 60% of my Mailchimp subscribers who lives in places like Houston, Texas.   I am hoping that I can host William again by Zoom all over again in the New Year and at a time that works for those in Texas.

In the meantime, following is a summary of our first Zoom meeting.  This summary was compiled by Zoom’s AI and then I made some additions and edits.

After that there is a link to a Dropbox folder with an unedited audio file and the slides from the presentation.

None of this is tidy – especially not the audio, but it is authentic.  And we will improve.

Indeed, we will have to work through the current mess that is climate change science if we are to get to something coherent that has integrity because for sure the climate is not chaotic.  For sure it is possible to get closer to the truth, and to develop a paradigm consistent with the data and the laws of physics.

For sure I am tired of the many voices, especially on the right side of politics, that just make stuff-up because they want to be a part of a winning story for their team.   Much of what they have written and said will soon become irrelevant.

In the meantime, I am very grateful to the B. Macfie Family Foundation for financial support over a long period of time.

SUMMARY OF ZOOM MEETING DECEMBER 5, 2024

1.Earth’s Climate System and Convection

In the meeting, William Kininmonth presented a model of the Earth’s climate system emphasising the role of convection by air rising within cumulonimbus clouds in the tropical convergence zone straddling the equator.  He explained that in the tropics, atmospheric temperatures lag ocean temperatures and that the ocean is regulating the temperature of the atmosphere.   Questions were raised about the role of carbon dioxide in the model, William contends that greenhouse gases emit more radiation than they absorb, and that greenhouse gases tend to cool the atmosphere.   He stated that this is not contentious within traditional meteorology.

2. Arctic Warming Rates and Seasonal Variations

In the meeting, William discussed the varying rates of temperature change across different latitude bands over the past 45 years. He highlighted that the rate of warming is significantly higher in the Arctic compared to the Southern Ocean, with the Arctic experiencing 6.6 degrees per century and the Southern Ocean experiencing only 0.1 degrees per century.  I questioned the data source, to which William clarified that the data is from the National Center for Environment Prediction in the US, combining satellite and surface temperature data. We also discussed the seasonal variation in warming, with the greatest warming occurring in the wintertime in the Arctic and the Antarctic. William emphasised that this is not due to the greenhouse effect, but rather the transport of heat from the tropics. He also noted that the longer growing season due to earlier thaws and later freezes could be beneficial for high-latitude regions like Canada and Russia.

 3.Carbon Dioxide’s Role in Climate Change

In the meeting, William discussed the role of carbon dioxide in climate change, presenting a chart that showed minimal increase in radiation absorption at the surface due to carbon dioxide concentration. He suggested that other factors, such as the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, could be responsible for the observed warming trends.  Interest was expressed in understanding the physical mechanisms behind these changes and the discrepancy between the model output and the IPCC’s global warming projections.

4. New Climate Change Paradigm Discussion

There was discussion on the concept of a new paradigm for understanding climate change, referencing the work of Thomas Kuhn and the importance of having a clear language and testable theories to move forward. William Kininmonth shared his perspective on the existing climate change theories, emphasising the importance of understanding energy flow and the role of the Equatorial Trough Zone.  Christopher Game raised concerns about the use of shorthand in scientific discussions particularly with respect to the word  ‘heat’, arguing that it hinders clarity of thought. The group also discussed the Real and Simpson paper from 1979, and I suggesting it as a starting point for further discussions.

DROPBOX FOLDER WITH AUDIO

The meeting ran for two hours.  The unedited audio, accompanying PowerPoint slides, an essay by William, and relevant technical paper (Riehl and Simpson 1979) can be downloaded from Dropbox here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/c7pqbu0pk97gxjp6gd9w5/ADvqHvL5vNANVPmH9JTtTE8?rlkey=6ntt0dxgn6u88kkiowj7wcjy5&st=cwbvr7bc&dl=0

About Heat, Comment from Christopher Game

There is a difficulty with seventeenth century thinking that makes heat a property of a body, thinking in terms of heat as a sort of substance called ‘caloric’, is incompatible with heat as a mode of transfer between two bodies, which is built around the 1850 discovery of the notion of internal energy, further clarified substantially by G.H. Bryan in 1907.

The caloric theory way of thinking is widely and deeply ingrained and may be hard to dislodge. This is a truly Kuhnian change of paradigm.

The main defining formulas for clarity:

total body energy = whole body gravitational potential energy + whole body kinetic energy + internal energy.

Thermodynamics is focused on internal energy. The internal energy of a body can change in situ (1) by transfer of matter (evaporation); (2) thermodynamic work; (3) heat (conduction, radiation, friction). The internal energy of a body can be transported in convective circulation, loading up somewhere and unloading somewhere else.

Comments in Conclusion

I emphasised in the meeting that this was just the beginning of the conversation.  That my objective is a new paradigm from which to understand weather, climate and how and why it changes and sometimes not at all.

I consider William’s model of tropical convection, with an emphasis on energy transfer from the tropical oceans to the poles critical to understanding weather and climate and why the Earth’s climate is fundamentally stable within limits and especially in the tropics.

I don’t agree with everything that William presented: the measurements that he relies upon to come to his conclusions about temperature trends, or his presentation of temperatures as per century linear trends.   I do agree with his emphasis on latitudinal gradients and seasonal trends.  I admire how he puts numbers around this, even if I don’t agree with them exactly because I see significant cooling at least in the northern hemisphere from 1940 to at least 1975.

If you would like to listen in to future Zoom meetings with different guest lecturers, consider subscribing to my irregular email news and be sure to tick the box ‘New theory of climate change’.

https://jennifermarohasy.com/subscribe/