NSTA likes Exxon better than Gore

[mburbank]

Science a la Joe Camel
By Laurie David
The Washington Post

Sunday 26 November 2006

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

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.

And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the 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.

The education organization also hosts an annual convention - which is described on Exxon Mobil's Web site as featuring "more than 450 companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching enhancements." The company "regularly displays" its "many ... education materials" at the exhibition. 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.

"The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission," Borowski says. "The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts."

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."

So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy.

It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day.

As for Exxon Mobil - which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions - this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years.

While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework.

[Preechr]

What a load of crap.

I know for a fact that back in the eighties Global Warming was taught as fact in schools, because I was in school and it was taught to me. I'm 100% positive that it still is. If large corporations that are involved in scientific research wish to contribute money to science education, I have no problem with that. What, are they only supposed to accept money from companies that don't make money?

She's pissed because they wouldn't take her DVDs? I have not and will not see that movie. I refuse to believe that if there is an end-all be-all of anything, Al Gore has anything to do with it. "An Inconvenient Truth" seems to be trying to be the end of the discussion on the matter. It is more political than scientific, just like the whole Climate Change debate.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

And lol @ "Al Gore isn't running for office"

I enjoyed the film, but it was as much a campaign spot as it was a doc.

"My daddy grew tobaca"

[mburbank]

Okay, if NSTA wants to take money from Exxon (and pre-printed 'educational pap, which I assume they chuck into recycling) I'm fine with that. I work for a science museum, you wouldn't believe some of the people we happily take money from, and we've been VERY cosy with an administration which to my mind is openly anti science. Makes me sick, but that's another story. As far as the Museum is concerned, it pays the bills, and I'm sure NSTA feels the same way. What I object to here, is the idea that they can't take Gore's films because they have a political agenda. NSTA sucks up buckets of cash from huge corps with huge political agendas. They don't want Gores product because A.) It isn't coming with money and B.) It's likely to piss off the political agendas of people who do give money.

I haven't seen the Gore film either, because I don't need a lot of education on the current science on Global warming.

The only questions NSTA should be asking are, is the science good? Does it teach well? I don't have an opinion on either of those things since I haven't seen it. But it makes me kind of queasy that during a period of time where the scientiffic method is under political assault, I wish to hell science education institutions (mine included especially) would show a little more sack.

[Preechr]

Goddamn it, fine...

I'll go rent the freakin movie. You have to, too, Max. You want pap, let's go spend five bucks on some, and then we can talk intelligently, more or less, about the subject. I readily admit my bias: I figure there's no way your "open assault" has had any effect whatsoever on how climate change is taught in public schools, and I'll bet there's SO many holes in the movie's "science" that you won't be defending this as heartily once you've seen it.

It's easy to SAY that "corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox," but let's see where those words are coming from, since all we have to go on is Geggy-ish leaps of faith with your article. I see no proof in there, just a bunch of hyperbole based in nothing. (I'm willing to bet that's gonna be the nutshell of my review of the movie, too...)

[Ant10708]

Think of the children!

[mburbank]

I don't know if I can go for this Preech. Your request is perfectly reasonable, but I've turned down the opportunity to see this film free twice now. I find the subject very, very depressing. I also don't go see documentaries on world poverty, nor have I ever seen Schindlers list.

I'm reasonably up on climate change science (or global warming or however you want to put it). If the movie moves people to actually be more concerned, swell. They might even vote as if it were a more serious concern than say, gay marriage, but I doubt they will until serious consequences are far more widespread. Anything no matter how severe that can be assigned to random natural occurences or natural patterns won't get people to change the way they live, lord knows I haven't changed much.

I think at least in America, the point to pound is that there's money to be made here. Huge piles of it, and the country that takes the lead is going to be rich. A megahurricane here, an epidemic there, famine in some far off dark skinned country, nobdoy cares for long and you can't prove any sort of link. If however, every coastal city in America starts loosing several valuable blocks of real estate, suddenly everybody will be motivated to do something.

What we'll do? I don't know. What's causing this? I have pretty solid beliefs about that, but I don't really care if climate change has been provoked by man or is part of a natural cycle, or if the two can even be called different. It's going to make it harder to live, and mostly when that happens people start killing each other to blow off steam. So here's my stock tip. Invest heavily in weapons systems and green tech. Diversify in both. If I had two pennies to slap together, that's what I'd do.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by mburbank

If the movie moves people to actually be more concerned, swell. They might even vote as if it were a more serious concern than say, gay marriage, but I doubt they will until serious consequences are far more widespread.

Well, if the movie is based on junk science, then is it still Ok? Even if there's only a few lies? Do the ends always justify the means? If so, then you might as well be a Conservative Christian, as we all know that gay marriages and illegal aliens are gonna cause Fire and Brimstone to rain from the Heavens. War on Christmas, War on Some Drugs, War on Marriage, War on the Environment, War on Poverty... it all comes from the same place.

I'm not going to argue with you very hard about watching that movie. I have no interest in seeing it at all...

I have a question for you, though, since you are the Science Guy... What's up with Polar Shift? I read some stuff about that a few years ago, and it seems to me we should be right in the beginnings of that cycle, yet nobody seems to be talking about it. Everybody's getting all hot and bothered over tenths of a degree in temperature, yet ignoring the idea that the poles could be in the process of flip-flopping. I've heard about every asteroid or comet that might be coming within our airspace in the next thousand years, but nothing about an event that could leave this planet looking like Mars...

[Sethomas]

Having seen the movie, I failed to see any of what could be called "junk science". The only questionable figures were economic, not environmental. By this I'm referring to the point that the best-selling vehicle models are those that are more environmentally sound than those built by America's lack of standards. While this seems to be true, it probably just has more to do with their respective markets than their love of low CO2 emissions.

A great part of the movie is spent debunking the idea that there is a large amount of scientific debate on the subject. Something like 740 academic journal articles were chosen at random. 740 showed unequivocal support of the global warming theory, 0 opposed. I've read articles elsewhere supporting the idea that "scientists are AFRAID to write against what's taken as fact by the stupid bullying of everyone else!!", but that's pretty naive. If there was any sign of a large-standing fraud that represents the greatest scientific error since aether or even geocentrism, every grad student in the world would want to be on top of it. This was conveyed in contrast with virtually every media outlet covering the subject as if it had no foundation whatsoever, or was part of a natural cycle (which the movie debunks).

The evidence is presented in two stages. First, they establish that in global history, elevated CO2 levels are always coupled with raising temperatures. Secondly, they tie this to human influence in the modern era by showing that CO2 levels have never in history accelerated as rapidly as they are right now. Plus, proponents of the "natural cycle" theory have absolutely nothing to say why their models based on the past millennium of the medieval ice age and so on correspond not in the slightest bit to what we are actually seeing.