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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 19268
[Environmental]
Date Posted:
1/19/2008
8:06:26 am EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 13,071
RSS: 14,518
Comments: 20
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Mont. Superintendent Cancels Speech By Climate Scientist
Author: The Associated Press Source: First Amendment Center
Title: MONT. SUPERINTENDENT CANCELS SPEECH BY CLIMATE SCIENTIST
  A climate scientist's speech to high school students was canceled because members of the rural community were concerned the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's message on climate change would be "anti-agriculture," the superintendent said.
Choteau schools Superintendent Kevin St. John said yesterday that school board members pressured him to bring in someone with an opposing viewpoint to speak to the school's 130 students, and he thought canceling the speech was the reasonable and neutral option.
"Nobody wants to believe in science and promote science more than we do," said St. John, who is in his first year running the school district. "It was my decision to bring him in and it was my decision (to cancel his speech.)"
University of Montana scientist Steve Running said he had never before been canceled in any venue, by any organization. "I think there's a faction of society that is willfully ignorant, that they just don't want to know the facts about this," he said.
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Community Thoughts: There are 20 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Double Speak | Jan 20th. at 3:41:05 pm EST
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booley (Saint Louis, Missouri) - Email Me
"Nobody wants to believe in science and promote science more than we do," said St. John...
We just don't want to believe in any science that tells us stuff we don't like.
The idea that a discussion or action on Climate Change is "anti-agriculture" is absurd. Just because something needs reform doesn't mean the reformers are against it. Usually it's just the opposite.
Climate Change or not, we all still have to eat. But if Climate Change does have the effects that it could, wouldn't that be anti-agriculture? Don't farmers depend on a stable climate?
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| Clean Up And Be Sustainable | Jan 20th. at 2:57:25 am EST
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Shadowbear (Hillsboro, Oregon) - Email Me
My belief in no global warming will have no effect on what nature gives us by way of temperatures. Nor does a belief in global warming have an effect.
However, we must clean up our act. We are living in a garbage dump of our own creation. Cleaning up our world and making it sustainable is an absolute necessity no matter what you think about carbon dioxide.
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| ... | Jan 20th. at 12:17:26 am EST
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Dragonbear (Meriden, Connecticut) - Email Me
Doesn't matter which you believe... Global Warming... Global Cooling... nothing... the least we can agree on is the polution and overuse of our resources. If nothing else, THAT should wake people up to the fact that things need to change.
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| How Sad | Jan 19th. at 9:53:05 pm EST
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WitchPoet (Claremont, California) - Email Me - Web
I love all the strong comments in favor of science by people who would not know it if it bit them!
In the real world a warmer Earth has always meant a WETTER Earth.
A warmer Earth means a little (even with the fantasy propaganda sea level figures) loss of coastal land and huge gains in arable land in now dry and desert places.
OOh, the hyper Liberal cries, How dare the Sun and Earth..umm I mean evil mankind, cause such a horrible thing! All the thousands of desert species will be decimated and the millions of wet land species will take over their teritory! Lets form a mission to save them!
Bah!
If I were the sort to choose religion by politics I would never be a bloody Pagan.
Climate Change Happens
Unless you are historically ignorant and looking for excuses to blame instead of solve.
Find More info -- HERE
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| Hmm | Jan 19th. at 9:42:41 pm EST
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WitchPoet (Claremont, California) - Email Me - Web
Lets see, this political movement masking as science has claimed total victory yet..
"..pressured him to bring in someone with an opposing viewpoint to speak to the school's 130 students, and he thought canceling the speech was the reasonable and neutral option."
Rather than present an opposing view this champion of "free" thought feels the "neutral" thing to do is just cancel the speech. Why?
And then at the end we have the obligatory passionate Ignoramus.
"Choteau High School senior Kip Barhaugh questioned school officials for "spoon-feeding" students information on climate change.
"With this single act, some members of the Choteau School Board not only denied its students access to valuable information about the future of our planet, but they demonstrated their short-sightedness," Barhaugh wrote to the Great Falls Tribune."
I agree Kip ole buddy, I just disagree on what information they are not getting. By cancelling the speech with no opposition voice the staus quo..believing the lie..stands.
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| Nobody HAS To Believe Global Warming Is True | Jan 19th. at 7:10:47 pm EST
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Medea (Somewhere, Massachusetts) - Email Me
But don't people have the right to hear what the man has to say about it and make the choice for themselves? People have the right to disagree with anything they hear, but they should be able to HEAR it.
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| Perhaps They Heard About Zimbabwe | Jan 19th. at 4:31:09 pm EST
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Shadowbear (Hillsboro, Oregon) - Email Me
Where the electricity for the irrigation pumps disappeared due to "global warming" measures and now they have no bread due to total failure of the wheat crop. May have also had some government glitch but it could be scary.
By the way, the link to Australia's drought is a bit old, they are not having one anymore. La Nina brings rain - and, of course snow and record cold temperatures.
Find More info -- HERE
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| Careful People, Careful.... | Jan 19th. at 4:15:51 pm EST
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Owlfeather (Battle Ground, Washington) - Email Me
"Nobody wants to believe in science and promote science more than we do," Except when it might lead to students thinking and stuff.
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| Dry Down Under | Jan 19th. at 2:59:33 pm EST
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genexs (Newburgh, New York) - Email Me - Web
One of the countries hit worst by global warming is Australia (see link) . They are now not in a "century" drought, but in a "thousand year" one! In the recent election, the global warming deniers were shown the door--en mass!
So, take heart people. Our coming elections should at least bring some progress. It's sad the rest of the educated world has to drag the USA kicking and screaming into enlightenment, but that's the way it is.
Find More info -- HERE
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| His Speech Shouldn't Have Been Cancelled | Jan 19th. at 1:31:42 pm EST
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Moonlight Wolf (Bradford, England) - Email Me
Is this world so bent on the phrase. "Business and trade wins?'
I do not believe this man was out to indoctrinate anyone. He was going to speak with high school students, not little kids. I believe he was simply going to give them something to think about for when they grow up.
Anti-agriculture? Typical traders pushing out environmental causes for money.
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| Oh Well, | Jan 19th. at 12:12:59 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
Those who choose not to listen are likely to pay dearest for their own mistakes. One would think that- if agriculture is their greatest concern that they would want to know how best to preserve or change what they could while they could.
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| I | Jan 19th. at 11:56:04 am EST
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Leonine Star (Billings, Montana) - Email Me
I am a pagan living in Montana and I grew up on a ranch. You would think that a group of people who are still connected to the land by their daily living would be the first to raise their hands in agreement with global warming. But they ARE "willfully ignorant". I think it comes down to two things, fundamentalist brainwashing and lack of education (and fear of education) and in my opinion a surprising lack of understanding in how the natural world including more practical farming methods, (example: overworking the land, losing top soil and not being aware of ways to keep it ,etc.)
Many of these people are in the 16% (or whatever- it is now 20%ish) that still think Little Shrub and the gang are doing a super job, God's punishing America for being tolerant to gays, and anything that comes out of the mouth of a liberal is a conspiracy to corrupt American values & take away Jesus. That's why home schooling is so popular here. Education, especially science is not of great value and many rural people never venture beyond their own backyard. They very rarely get outside news other than local channels and local newspapers except--talk radio! Every year at the fair there is this guy who has dinosaur bones and he explains how the world is only 6,000 years old and how dinosaurs died in the flood, etc. They believe what they are told and not what they see with their own eyes. And its not hard to see right now. Montana is in SEVERE drought.
I escaped by attending college, the first ever in my family to attend, and coming from a town of 70 people I faced a few years of culture shock. When I go back home (and I can't do it very often) I get so incredibly sad. Lack of education, poverty, domestic abuse, animal abuse. Many problems. Yet rural Montanans can be the kindest and hospitable people you will ever meet in the wold. They are great people. I think the change will lie in the younger generations who are leaving for colleges and cities and bringing home a little education when they return home. I've always wanted to start a program that tries to get more computers into rural classrooms, get them better educational tools and better college opportunities. That's on the To Do List in the next couple of years.
BB,
Leonine
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| Our Way Of Living | Jan 19th. at 11:26:44 am EST
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Lys W.D. (Gunnison, Colorado) - Email Me
Being an Anthropologist myself, I have come across a great majority of people in my field who think that agriculture was in fact the BIGGEST mistake mankind ever made. On the other hand, now that we have grown used to this manner of living on the back of agriculture, there are too many of us now to be sustained by going back to hunting/gathering.
Unfortunately, our population is growing more and more as we speak, and even agriculture, that allowed it to become so big in the first place, will not sustain our numbers for long.
These people have much more going against them than the threat of global warming anymore. They have the entire human population closing in on them and demanding food, when, as a previous poster said, there are even more disaster harvests because of freak weather conditions than there were before.
Something's gotta give, and I'll bet anything that it won't just be global warming that undermines the system, but all the starving people in the world coming to the many farming communities for help.
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| Actually... | Jan 19th. at 10:41:58 am EST
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Lora (Leominster, Massachusetts) - Email Me
It's the other way round. Which the farming communities all over the country are NOW finding out. Not, their grandkids MAY find out, farmers are finding this out NOW, and their grandparents who remember the Dust Bowl are saying, "I told you so."
Water is getting more expensive. Farming land without water rights is getting nigh on impossible. Monocropping, once merely a risky investment for a farmer (putting all your eggs in one basket, as it were, and hoping that ADM or Con-Agra will give you a good price come harvest) , is fast becoming a disaster as there are more and more "freak" storms, late frosts, flooding and then drought that wipe out crops. Instead of having a freak storm resulting in a bad harvest perhaps once a decade, those "freak" occurrences are happening more and more often. Farmers have less and less time to recover from a bad year, because bad years are now happening once every three years instead of once every ten. Whether the farmers think this is because of global warming or because the sky-fairies are warring against them or because Jeebus has abandoned them for their wicked ways is not especially relevant: It's still happening.
Climate scientists consider it their job to help folks survive this as best they can. They can advise farmers to plant a variety of crops instead of monocropping, they can work on crops with good drought/flood resistance characteristics, they can advise on how to amend the soil without expensive petrochemicals. Does this hurt agriculture? I don't know, it hurts ConAgra's bottom line for sure when they can't get corn for $0.05/bushel, but hurting ConAgra isn't quite the same thing as hurting all of agriculture. I would argue that it's quite good for agriculture when all our food doesn't come from ADM and ConAgra and isn't chock-full of petrochemicals, insecticides, hormones, multidrug resistant bacteria, and when small farmers and agricultural workers make a living wage. But that sure does hurt Monsanto et al. There's a big difference between agriculture and industry lobbyists.
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| It's Either One Extreme Or The Other... | Jan 19th. at 10:36:46 am EST
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Aritimi Morgana (RotterdamJct/Schdy/Scotia, New York) - Email Me
whether it's religion or global warming. Although you could say global warming is a sort of dogma as mentioned by a previous poster. It's a shame people don't want to look at things objectively, hearing both sides and then making their own conclusions.
It's truly unfortunate that creationists have such a death grip on the country, going above and beyond to intimidate educators that their views and intelligent design is what should be taught in schools rather than science.
Maybe I'm getting a little off-topic, but bear with me, folks. When only one point of view is being forced on students, school ceases to be a place of learning and becomes a Fundamentalist Christian madrassa. I apologize for using that term and I mean no offense to Muslims, but it does fit. Sometimes I feel kids are better off being home schooled rather than be subjected to the mindless drivel of religious fanatics.
of course everyone here in the US has the right to believe in what they want, but when one point of view is being forced down everyone's throats, it ceases to be a free country. It's ashame that the speech was canceled, because it just proves to all that independent thought is not welcome. I pity the poor, ignorant fools.
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