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Behind the Controversy, an Effort to Rewrite Curriculum on Climate Change

By LESLIE KAUFMAN
February 23, 2012, 5:04 pm

Focus on the contents of the internal documents leaked last week from the Heartland Institute [ http://heartland.org/ ], a Chicago-based nonprofit known for attacking climate science, has been largely lost in the wake of the revelation of the leaker’s identity: Peter Gleick, a scientist.

But beyond the controversy and the confession [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/earth/activist-says-heartland-climate-papers-obtained-by-deceit.html ] is the fact that Heartland does not deny what the two authentic documents obtained by Dr. Gleick reveal: that the institute is working to influence climate education in the schools.

In its 2012 fund-raising plan, Heartland said that an “anonymous donor” had pledged the first $100,000 toward this end and that it hoped to use that gift to develop matching funds.

Heartland is soliciting contributors for a “global warming curriculum” developed by a part-time Department of Energy consultant, David Wojick, which in Heartland’s estimation “appears to have great potential for success.”

Heartland described its plan this way: “Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Dr. Wojick confirmed via e-mail that he did make the proposals and explained his reasons. In doing his work for the Department of Energy, he said, he was exposed to lots of curriculums on the subject and found it all slanted toward the alarmist anthropogenic global warming view.

“My research field is the logic of complex issues and I have studied the climate debate for 20 years,” Dr. Wojick, who has a doctorate in the philosophy of science, wrote in the e-mail. “There are many elementary debates in the science that need to be understood. Of course if you do not believe this then we have nothing to discuss.”

Asked to specify what those points of debate are, Dr. Wojick wrote at length:

“Regarding the warming issue, it is scientifically fascinating. There are 5 different systems for estimating global temperatures, with a 6th in development. The problem is that these systems contradict one another. While all show some warming it occurs in different amounts and most importantly at very different times. Science needs something specific to explain but we just do not have that with warming. For example, HadCRU, UAH and RSS show no warming for the last 10-15 years, while GISS and BEST show steady warming,” he said, referring to the systems.

“So has it warmed or not, we do not know. It is a grand challenge. This is scientifically fascinating and should be taught,” he concluded.

But climate scientists who looked at Dr. Wojick’s evaluation of the data say that he is willfully misreading the findings. “You have to be specially trained to be so blind,” said Gavin Schmidt [ http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/gschmidt/ ], a climate scientist with Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Dr. Schmidt says that the climate records are actually all in agreement about long-term warming trends. This is clearest in data that has been adjusted for variations in El Nino and volcanoes. If the El Nino effects are included, there was a big spike in 1998 which models don’t necessarily have. But to say that we have not warmed is to ignore the underlying trend line up, he explained. The models and observations all agree, for example, that the last decade was the warmest on record [ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/2011-temperature-roundup/ ].

“The big issue with creating curricula is cutting through the details to find what is important,” said Dr. Schmidt, “Instead, he is using details to obscure.”

© 2012 The New York Times Company

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