Tag: Gramsci

Categories
Agnotology United States of America

April 9, 2008 – US school student vs dodgy (lying) text books

Fifteen years ago, on this day, April 9, 2008, a US student saw that his text books were full of crap about climate change….

Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and experts say the teen’s criticism is well-founded…. 

LaClair said he was particularly upset about the book’s treatment of global warming. James Hansen, the director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, recently heard about LaClair’s concerns and has lent him some support.

Hansen has sent Houghton Mifflin a letter stating that the book’s discussion on global warming contained “a large number of clearly erroneous statements” that give students “the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain.”

The edition of the textbook published in 2005, which is in high school classrooms now, states that “science doesn’t know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all.”

Student sees political bias in high school text https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24018762

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The US has seen a particularly strong and virulent business obsession with schools for decades, not just back to the Powell memorandum, but back to the early days of the twentieth century (and earlier!).  One good book on this was Alex Carey “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty

What I think we can learn from this

Hegemony is a thing. Capture young minds, miseducate them, undereducate them and the battle is largely won… (Clears throat because about to shout) – THEY WANT US TO BE STUPID BECAUSE STUPID PEOPLE ARE EASIER TO CONTROL AND MISLEAD.

What happened next

The war on the public mind continues. It has to.

See also this from 22nd December 2022-   College Biology Textbooks Make Little Mention of Climate Change, Study Shows https://e360.yale.edu/digest/climate-change-college-textbooks

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Denial United States of America

March 28, 2017 – Heartland Institute spamming science teachers

Six years ago, on this day, March 28, 2017, PBSs report on the denialist Heartland Institute spamming science teachers with ludicrous “NIPPC” nonsense.

Climate Change Skeptic Group Seeks to Influence 200,000 Teachers

“Twenty-five thousand science teachers opened their mailboxes this month and found a package from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. It contained the organization’s book “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming,” as well as a DVD rejecting the human role in climate change and arguing instead that rising temperatures have been caused primarily by natural phenomena. The material will be sent to an additional 25,000 teachers every two weeks until every public-school science teacher in the nation has a copy, Heartland president and CEO Joseph Bast said in an interview last week. If so, the campaign would reach more than 200,000 K-12 science teachers.”

Climate Change Skeptic Group Seeks to Influence 200,000 Teachers

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 407.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was  that the culture war never ends. The Heartland Institute had suffered reverses because of its attempt to smear environmentalists with the Unabomber; it was all considered a bit much (see May 4th, 2012 – The Heartland Institute tries the Unabomber smear. It, er, blows up in their face). And so low profile stuff, like sending science teachers loads of crap was more likely to keep them afloat and feeling important.

What I think we can learn from this

As per the blog post about the school student, and the textbooks, which we come to in April, controlling what children are able to learn about climate change the way it is framed is a major goal of denialists organisations. And unfortunately, they have been very successful in this. Here we are 35 years into public knowledge of a climate emergency and most people are not taught or are mis-taught this stuff as they grow up. And then that sets the anchoring for them (see the anchoring heuristic). 

What happened next

Heartland has kept going on this stuff I think and most textbooks are crap on this as per December 22 2022 report.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs

Categories
Australia Denial

August 18, 1996, Ex-CSIRO #climate boss shows he has lost the plot

On this day, August 18 in 1996, Brian Tucker, who had headed up the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, and attended some important scientific meetings, reveals himself incapable of understanding that the world does not conform to how you would wish it to be.

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 361.55 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

“Brian Tucker, previous Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, is now  a Senior Fellow at the IPA where he trades on his scientific credentials to push an ideological agenda. In 1996 in a talk on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor he stated that ‘unchallenged climatic disaster hyperbole has induced something akin to a panic reaction from policy makers both national and international”

[From a Sharon Beder article in 1999]

Tucker, B. 1996. A Rational Consideration of Global Warming. Ockham’s Razor, ABC Radio National, 18 August.

Tucker was also busy writing screeds in the IPA’s magazine that, looking back, were frankly an embarrassment

Why this matters. 

Beder notes that

Tucker’s article The Greenhouse Panic was reprinted in Engineering World a magazine aimed at engineers. The article, introduced by the magazine editor as “a balanced assessment,” argues that “alarmist prejudices of insecure people have been boosted by those who have something to gain from widespread public concern.”[42] This article, which would have been more easily dismissed as an IPA publication, has been quoted by Australian engineers at conferences as if it was an authoritative source.”

And thus is a counter-common sense “engineered.” Once bullshit is republished in other venues, it gains a halo effect from those other places, and gets repeated again, until finally it seems a solid piece of fact.

The CIA used to call it ‘surfacing’ (maybe still do?). Plant stories in local newspapers in the countries you’re trying to subvert, then quote those as “evidence” when trying to get more money out of the US government…

What happened next?

We kept digging up and exporting coal. Of course we did.

Categories
Australia Denial

August 5, 1997 – Australian politician calls for “official figures” on #climate to be suspended because they are rubbery af

On this day, August 5  1997 Australian Democrat Senator Kernot called for the Federal Government to 

“suspend use of the dubious ABARE greenhouse models until the completion of a full Ombudsman’s investigation.”

(Duncan, 1997:75)

The context is this – the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics had spent the previous seven years producing dubious “reports” based on a ludicrous economic model called MEGABARE which always magically proved that any attempt to tax carbon dioxide/coal would be cataclysmic.

The development of the MEGABARE “model” was paid for by oil, gas and coal companies. Of course it was. [See August 7th post on this site…]

And the Minister would trot these numbers out, it would get reported by journalists and become received wisdom.

AND THIS HAPPENED UNDER KEATING BEFORE IT HAPPENED UNDER HOWARD.

Sorry for shouting, but the catastrophe that has been Australian climate and energy policy has been bipartisan. Labor has a faction that doesn’t want to cook the planet, that’s all.

On this day the PPM was 362.4. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

Ah, official reports, with their big sounding numbers. Gramsci. Hegemony. Weaponised Common Sense. Et cetera. Et Cetera.

What happened next?

The Ombudsman’s report (forced to happen by Australian Conservation Foundation action) came out in January 1998. You can read it here.

.ABARE’s numbers kept getting used by the Howard government. Too useful not to.

There’s great stuff about this in Clive Hamilton’s two books – “Running from the Storm” and “Scorcher” and also in Guy Pearse’s “High and Dry.”