Fun with Global Warming

Being a teacher's assistant carries some interesting perks.  Aside from the opportunity to help teach geology, which is very fun, I get to grade tests and papers, which is mostly not so fun.  The perk here, though, is the occasional outrageous statements I run across.  Actually, they're not as occasional as they should be. I'm going to share the best of two semesters here.

Some quick background:  These are almost all papers written by Elementary Education majors, which is kind of frightening when you think about it.  So many of these people aren't very bright. When I have school-age kids, I will very carefully pay attention to what they're being taught at school, especially as I remember the crap they taught me.  We try to keep these future school-teachers on top of current issues that are likely to come up as they teach, but that they know next to nothing about.  In this case, they were required to watch *shudder* "An Inconvenient Truth" by the former next president of the United States, Algore. This is not a scientific film, but it somehow got him a Nobel Prize, and it's what everyone refers to. Then they watched the BBC's "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which is a well thought-out response to Algore's lies.

I worry, because it's like a straw-man argument, and I wonder what will happen when these people are confronted for the first time and have to defend their new opinion that anthropogenic global warming is false, based on a movie they were forced to see once years ago.  They'll probably start to doubt themselves, then go back to the irrational emotional argument and be convinced stronger than they used to be that driving SUVs is bad.

Oh, well, I'll stop boring you.  They had to write a two-page paper of their opinion after having watched these two movies, and here is a sample of the best excerpts from their papers:

“Global Warming:  Are Humans the cause, or is Al Gore just dumb?” [the title of a paper]

“Global warming often focuses on the temperature.”

“The Bronze Age happened three millennium ago and is called epsitherminals.”

“Clouds are controlled by climatic rays.  Climatic rays are controlled by the sun.”

“Astriphisisits.”

“For example, I live in an environment where the winters can be excruciating one year, and the next it could be completely normal.  Yes, we are going to get those hot and wicked summer days, but there will be a point when it will be nice and wonderful.”  [not all are badly-written or ignorant comments, just ones you'd only hear in Rexburg]

“Every day we have new technology that is being created us.  Some of those creations are cars, factories, trains, etc… There is smoke that is coming out of those things.  That smoke that is called man-made is dioxide.  Carbon dioxide is surrounding our earth and possibly the atmosphere today.”

“Now, thanks to education, I know my own opinion on global warming.” [I'm glad we could inform you what you think!]

“As it’s obviously to see….”

“bag wagon” [I assume they meant band wagon.]

“President Gore also offers us the compelling testimony of the world renowned climate scientist ‘My Friend’ to support his opinion.” [I really like this statement; however this student made a very serious mistake.... see if you can catch it.]

“what did we ever do to the sun to make it want to kill us?” [In response to the fact that the sun causes global warming, not CO₂]

“There was the halocene maximum, the medieval warming period, and then the little ice age.  That shows that even when people weren’t on the earth, the climate was changing." 

“mosquitoes are disappearing off into different regions.  This would be bad since some villages depend on the mosquitoes.”

“inexistent” [Another fun new word.]

“There is much debate about this subject.  The politicians are debating widely about this heated subjected.”

“Most of the warming that has occurred was before the 1940s when industrial production was relatively insufficient.”

“Maybe Al Gore should try to cool down hell so it’s more comfortable when he gets there!” [The opening statement of a paper.]

“Al Gore is going to hell!!!” [The closing statement of the same paper]

“Algore” [I use this spelling as a joke, taken from Rush Limbaugh.  I don't know if this student was doing the same or not.]

“the PTCC, or the International Governmental Panel of Climate Change”

“In the words of my father […] ‘I suspect the sequel will be “An Inconvenient Edge.”  It’ll be all about how the earth is really flat.’”

“It’s been prophesied that New York would someday be wiped out along with other wicked cities.  Who knows, san Francisco and New York could get destroyed like this in the last days.” [A statement you'd only hear at an LDS school.]

"The 'mid-evil' period of earth”

“So if CO2 does not affect the temperature, then what does?  Well even before I watched this movie, I knew, duh!  The sun!  The sun drives the climate change.”

“The sun is, to us, a life giving star that is bright and full of light.  But, at a closer look, as scientists have seen, it really is a raging ball of fire and explosion.”

“If humans cause CO2 levels to rise that much, we must be blowing out tops off like volcanoes.” [I think they meant that if volcanoes cause more pollution than humans, we must be causing volcanic eruptions if it's our fault.]

“The information always shows that the temperature rise began 1940; before cars.”

“When the Ozone layer is being broken down, that means more radiation is getting in.  Consequently that means the higher risk for cancer, which is already terrorizing the world.”

So those are the best of the quotes.  There are more, but they're not as funny.  Remember, these people may teach your kids someday!  Until then, we can have some fun with them.  For the record, there were a few good papers, but none of them were what should be expected from college students.