Late yesterday afternoon, the phone on my desk at work rang. Answering it I found my son on the line, seething in barely suppressed anger.
Apparently one of his teachers had assigned a paper dealing with global warming and its effects on coral reefs. In and of itself, that was not why he was angry. What pissed him off was the paper had to be written using only the information in a packet given to each student in his class.
It was as if Al Gore had handed him a copy of An Inconvenient Truth along with background materials and other propaganda pamphlets. The 'data' was that biased.
He wasn't sure about what to do. I pointed him to a number of information sources including NOAA, MIT, and NASA, and let him do the digging. In the end he decided he would do the assignment, but add a counterpoint to the original assignment.
Like me, he is a skeptic about AGW, but his skepticism comes from a source that is not me. While I am naturally a skeptic about anything grandiose that demands that we "do something NOW before we all DIE!!!", he comes into his AGW skepticism by way of his employer, Farmer Andy.
I haven't come across another profession that is more in tune to weather and its cycles and patterns than farmers and, of course, meteorologists. Weather can make or break a farmer, so they tend to be far more aware of it than the rest of us. Farmer Andy has weather records going back decades and those records make him skeptical about the dire claims about global warming.
Seeing BeezleBub's dismay at having to write about something he knew was bogus only confirmed my belief that our local school system is more interested in indoctrination - teaching kids what to think - rather than education - teaching them critical thinking. Fortunately BeezleBub has had plenty of examples and help from family to learn how to think critically, to take apart statements, claims, and "settled science" and look at it dispassionately and discover the truth or falsehoods behind them. That could be why some of his teachers see him as troublesome because he questions them and others see him as bright.
I told him this time, as I have many times in the past, that I would have his back should any of his less open-minded teachers decide he was "too disruptive" or "contrary" or "too much of a smart ass". Better that he speak out and contradict things he knows to be in error (or just outright wrong) than go along to get along and become nothing but another drone.
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