How to Stop Global Warming

It seems that the petrochemical industry has hit on an effective strategy to end global warming as we know it -- education.

By slicing off a teeny portion of their record profits and picking up a small portion of the government's failure to fund education, the industry has managed to bribe science teachers into adopting curricula designed to confuse young minds about the reality of global warming. Through financial support of the National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA), ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, and American Petroleum Institute (API).

In today's Washington Post, Laurie David, a producer of An Inconvienent Truth, and founder of StopGlobalWarming.org, tells us that the NSTA rejected an offer of 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth for use by their members. According to David, the NTSA said it was rejecting the offer because, among other things, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters."

'Targeted supporters' -- meaning Exxon & friends from the API. As David explains in Science a La Joe Camel in today's WaPo:

In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school. . . . [T]he oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox. NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence. . . . John Borowski, a science teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free corporate lesson plans.

Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto. . . . An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: "Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future."

Brilliant strategy. Defeat global warming by spending millions in faux educational materials designed to grease the slide for their faux science designed to deny the existence or human causes for global warming. Effective, also. How often do we hear people referring to "common sense", the cycle of ice ages, and the canard about volcanoes spewing out carbon dioxide? Talking points straight out of API propaganda and huge number of people who were in public school at anytime from the 90s onward were likely introduced to skewed science.

Fight back. Here's a great holiday gift idea.