Science Museum Declines To Show Climate Change Film 398
sciencehabit writes "A premier science museum in North Carolina has sparked controversy by refusing to show an hour long film about climate change and rising sea levels. The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position. It is part of a state agency, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The state government has been perceived as hostile to action on climate change; last year, the legislature passed a bill forbidding the state coastal commission from defining rates of sea-level rise for regulation before 2016."
Fixed summary for you (Score:5, Insightful)
"A premier science museum in North Carolina has sparked controversy by refusing to show an hour long film about climate change and rising sea levels and 'mocks North Carolina politicians'. The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position because residents of a state don't enjoy having their state made fun of."
Sea levels used to be much higher (Score:2, Insightful)
About 7000 years ago:
"The Older Peron... throughout the period, global sea levels were 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) higher than the twentieth-century average."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Older_Peron
Re:understandable (Score:2, Insightful)
"The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on Saturday, Nov. 30, had the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982" (source: NOAA).
But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good movie - right?
Corrupt Religious Luddites (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether it is corporate shills in climate change denial or religionists diluting science with creationism and imaginary divinity, the inescapable conclusion is that the willful ignorance and in-grained avarice of politicians will surely be the death of us all.
Re:understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, they seem to be fewer and farther between than ever. Hard to deny the evidence for global warming right in front of you, developing year after year.
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:5, Insightful)
The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position because residents of a state don't enjoy having their state made fun of."
Oh, because the politicians are "the state"? We shouldn't question our elites? Nice servitude attitude you got going on there.
Maybe it being banned has something to do with those same politicians having their hand in the till of the yearly multi-million dollar campaign to sell climate science denial [rtcc.org]. Forget facts. Forget science. Yay for forum shills, newspaper and television paid climate science denial.
At least we will know who to persecute with extreme prejudice if (when?) climate chaos ends up killing millions [democracynow.org].
Re:understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
"But ... But Florida will be under water!" cry the anti-climate change zealots. I can live with that. There's nothing but retirees, crazies, and scientologists down there anyway.
Um, won't they all leave Florida and go to live near you...?
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:3, Insightful)
what would appear to be a political movie masquerading as a scientific documentary.
Anything related to climate change is labeled "political" by the large well funded anti-science, pro climate science denial lobbies.
Re:Science museum declines alarmist propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this the same science museum that refused to show "The population Bomb: The Movie", "Ice Age: Year 2010" and all the other variations of were all going to be dead 30 years from now unless we are all forced to adopt whatever leftist ideology is popular at the time?
Why are you asking us? Surely if you want to understand the films content, you could look at TFA yourself, and study the history of the museum.
The environmentalists have taken a page from Harold Camping and all other doomsday cults. Make a prediction that mankind will all be dead, or facing an apocalyptic scenario 30 years from now, and when that 30 years have passed and nothing terrible has happened still insist you are still right and make another prediction for the apocalypse 30 years from now, but this time its real!
Your understanding of the predictions made by climate models is completely off the wall insane, and laughably wrong. You need to get a handle on the basic facts before presuming to criticise either the science of the actions of others in response to that science.
Re:understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
There are STILL people pushing this butthurt deflection? Warmer more humid air makes for more powerful storms, and warmer, drier air makes for record drought conditions. So yeah, denialists, record tornado seasons, massive forest fires months before fire season, record heat waves of months of 100+ degree heat and the most powerful hurricanes/typhoons in a century/of all time are evidence of global warming.
Re:Let me guess (Score:2, Insightful)
No, that would imply an equal hatred of democrats. They are just as bad, just in slightly different ways. It would be more accurate and appropriate to hate all politicians.
Re:Is it science? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why it's a Science Cafe - which is about outreach and discussion - and not a university lecture.
OK, so rule #1 of outreach - don't mock the people you're trying to reach. Check out an IMAX film for an idea of how to do entertainment and science at the same time. There's a reason they're so popular at science centers (I mean real IMAX...).
Sounds like the museum director made the right call here.
Re:understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
So.. AGW is not real because you don't like the proposed courses of action that might help counter it. Got it.
Everybody can see that you're twisting his meaning, which just gives more ammo to those who do not believe the AGW models. "See, they can't even engage in honest debate!".
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:4, Insightful)
We should question our elites and we should feel free to mock our politicians. Expecting them to pay the costs and provide the venue for us to do it is a bit much. Nobody is saying that they can't play the film in a private venue. They are only saying that the state owned and operated museum isn't going to do it.
State run institutions have a very treacherous tightrope to walk on things like this. If they play the movie and offend a bunch of office holders they could find their funding in jeopardy or invite office holders to start actively attacking the institution. I don't blame the administrators for wanting no part of this. Biting the hand that feeds you is a dangerous game.
alteration =/= correction (Score:4, Insightful)
"A premier science museum in North Carolina has sparked controversy by refusing to show an hour long film about climate change and rising sea levels and 'mocks North Carolina politicians'. The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position because residents of a state don't enjoy having their state made fun of."
In that case, so much for an academic center's freedom to purport controversy and satire independent of the state's political POVs and the current temperament of the plebe.
You bold that part out as if that was a valid reason for the museum to decline the exhibition of said film. How much more stupid could that statement get? You are equating the state with the residents whereas I can assure you a substantial number of NC's residents would disagree with you.
And if the state, and academia for that matter, were completely subject to whatever the popular mood might be (which in this case, your statement is completely debatable to begin with), then we would still be living with segregation laws.
The whole point of state-sponsored academic institutions in the developed free world is to present information, examine controversy, and why not, satirize and challenge the status quo independently of what state officials, and even residents think.
I could see how the Nazis sponsored Aryan science as opposed to "corrupted Jewish thinking" proposed by the likes of Einstein.
I could understand Soviet academies forced to abandon research deemed counter-revolutionary which brought us stuff like Lynsenkoism [wikipedia.org]... and even then the Soviets were wise enough to give Soviet intelligentsia a great degree of freedom.
But to whiff the smell of such thinking in a developed, free/capitalist country, in America of all places, man, that is a sad day for humanity.
Re:In the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Weather isn't climate.
That being said, any fantasy about humanity being at risk for significant biological hardship is ludicrous considering that we can eat almost anything, live almost anywhere, are more resistant and adaptive to toxins and pathogens than most other large animals, and we have this thing called "technology" that allows us to move anything anywhere, radically adjust our environments, etc. etc.
We really need to get over the conceit that we developed in the one true immutable biosphere. 99% of previously extant species are extinct, and that's going to keep happening regardless of what we do because the environment has never been static. Without mass extinctions like what occurred during the Oxygen Catastrophe, animal life wouldn't even exist.
Re:In the USA (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how when anti-global warming types point at a big snow storm or what-have-you and say 'look, global warming can't be real!' and the pro-global warming crowd points out, rightly, 'weather isn't climate' ... but then when there is a big wind storm or what-have-you the pro-global warming types start crying 'look what global warming is doing! waaaaa!'
It's called Loading the Dice [nytimes.com]. Big snowstorms acn actually be evidence for global warming (if it's warmer but still below freezing that means more snow in wet areas and less snow in dry areas). But when we start seeing events which probably could not have occurred under previous climate conditions, those individual extreme events may be actually evidence that the baseline has shifted due to global warming. Hot days aren't evidence for global warming, but record-breaking heatwaves and droughts? They probably are.
That being said, any fantasy about humanity being at risk for significant biological hardship is ludicrous considering that we can eat almost anything, live almost anywhere, are more resistant and adaptive to toxins and pathogens than most other large animals, and we have this thing called "technology" that allows us to move anything anywhere, radically adjust our environments, etc. etc.
Actually, the list of domesticated plants [wikipedia.org] and domesticated animals [wikipedia.org] isn't actually that long. If we had significant reductions in the production of just a few staple crops, we could face famine at a level the modern world has never seen. For example, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, maize and wheat alone make up close to two-thirds of the world’s food energy intake [fao.org]. One of the long term consequences of global warming is expected to be reductions in our crop production. Which may leave us dependent on bio-engineering firms like Monsanto to provide us with newly engineered versions of our crops that are adapated to the new climate. Knowing Monsanto, that could get very expensive.
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that is why everyone in Somalia is so free and happy.
That sort of braindead ideology deserves to be mocked.
Re:In the USA (Score:2, Insightful)
Citation needed. Actually, don't bother — I'll offer evidence to the contrary. In 2005 US was hit with 14 hurricanes, 10 in 2012. The average for period between 1944 and 2005 is 6 [weatherstreet.com]. Is there a rise? Hardly — between 1885 and 1889 there were 26...
Though attempts are made regularly to tie a particular weather-event to the evil human-caused climate change, they are routinely debunked [climatedepot.com] and never repeated — until the next such event.
None of the dire predictions made 40, 30, 20, or 10 years ago came to life. Over the years, we moved from the threat of "Global Cooling" [wikipedia.org] (temperatures, supposedly, falling), to "Global Warming" (temperatures, supposedly, rising) to "Climate Change" (direction-neutral term finally, so brochures don't need to reprinted as often) to, indeed, "Extreme Weather".
The label may be different, but the proposed "action" is always the same — citizens are urged to surrender more and more control over their lives to their governments, while the governments in turn are asked to surrender to the United Nations — because those omniscient and benevolent bureaucrats just know better than the poor little people, bless their little hearts.
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple formula applies everywhere: the higher the taxes, the less freedom.
Go look at wikipedia's list of countries by tax rate [wikipedia.org], and find all the countries where you have significant freedoms, and then look at their tax rates.
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:4, Insightful)
NC has earned all this derision.
Re:Fixed summary for you (Score:3, Insightful)
After WWII, taxes were very high for decades to pay it off. So I guess we didn't get free again 'til, what, the 80's? Ah, yes, Reagan's tax-busting. My taxes and my friends taxes went up, but we were young and just starting out, so we didn't count. Millionaires did well, and that's what counts.