Logicalscience

Free Inconvenient Truth DVDs for Teachers

Up to 50,000 US science teachers can receive a free copy of the Inconvenient Truth DVD by filling out a simple request form here . (link to FREE DVD) The deadline is January 18th so if you are a teacher please act promptly.

The Background:

The NSTA consists of 55,000 science teachers, science supervisors, administrators, scientists, business and industry representatives which are involved in science education. Membership is not free and typically costs a teacher $74 each year. In otherwords, the NSTA is not a lightweight organization. In fact their website self describes the NSTA as the "largest organization in the world committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. "

Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, has a environmentally conscious wife that decided to donate 50,000 DVDs of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). Despite the fact that the documentary received "five stars for accuracy" by scientists, the Washington Post is now reporting that the NSTA has refused to accept the DVDs:

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. …

[T]here 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.”

As it turns out those special interests include Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil, and the American Petroleum Institute. To take matters one step farther the NSTA has distributed videos produced by the American Petroleum Institute. This video claims that one "can't be cool without fuel". In this case fuel is natural gas and oil.

Feel free to spend a few minutes watching the video. (Link to video). The Washington post article continues:

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."

Laurie David described her correspondence with the NSTA in a Washington Post Op-Ed, where she notes that an email sent to her by NSTA invoked not only the product endorsement issue, but also a fear that distributing the film would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." David goes on to point out that one of these supporters is in fact ExxonMobil (whose efforts to spread confusion about climate change are described in a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.)

Doing a search on "Global Warming" on the NSTA site turns up only a paltry supply of useful educational material. It is also illuminating to go into their "recommendations" section and type in "global warming." That will turn up this recommended book by Kenneth Green, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute whose article Clouds of Global-Warming Hysteria in the National Review endorsed Michael Crichton's view of global warming and called supporters of climate change action "One-worlders and other socialist sorts."

The information war knows no boundaries.

regurgitation hat tip: Thinkprogress & Real Climate
source
Washington Post, Science a la Joe Camel Sunday, November 26, 2006; B01
RC