and then they decided that the world was flat

[Guest guest]

Gore's 'Truth' given cold reception in Seattle

Father gets schools to demand balance on global warming

Blaine Harden, Washington Post

 

Friday, January 26, 2007

 

 

 

(01-26) 04:00 PST Federal Way, Wash. -- Frosty Hardison is neither impressed nor

surprised that " An Inconvenient Truth, " the global warming movie narrated by

former Vice President Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination this week for best

documentary.

 

" Liberal left is all over Hollywood, " he grumbled after the nomination was

announced.

 

Hardison, a parent of seven in the southern suburbs of Seattle, has himself

roiled the global warming waters. It happened early this month, when he learned

that one of his daughters would be watching " An Inconvenient Truth " in her

seventh-grade science class.

 

" No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child,

blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for

global warming, " Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board.

 

The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he

believes that a warming planet is " one of the signs " of Jesus Christ's imminent

return for Judgment Day.

 

His angry e-mail, along with complaints from a few other parents, stopped the

film from being shown to Hardison's daughter.

 

The teacher in the science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardison's e-mail,

she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for

not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to

present " controversial " materials in class.

 

The e-mail also pressured the school board to impose a ban on screenings of the

film for the district's 22,500 students.

 

The ban, which the school board says was merely a " moratorium, " was lifted

Tuesday night, subject to rigorous conditions. Still, the action has appalled

the film's producers and triggered a ferocious national backlash.

 

Members of the school board say they have been bombarded by thousands of e-mails

and phone calls, many of them hurtful and obscene, accusing them of scientific

ignorance, pandering to religion, and imposing prior restraint on free speech.

 

It has been a terrible ordeal, school board member David Larson said during a

long, emotional speech at the board meeting.

 

" I am here to foster healing in our community, " he said, while noting with

sadness that " civility and honest discourse are dying in our country. "

 

What the school board had really intended to do, Larson and school board members

insisted, was not to stop schools from teaching the science of global warming,

but merely to follow long-standing school board rules that require students to

be exposed to " other perspectives " when they view a film like " An Inconvenient

Truth. "

 

" We do not need to lose balance in order to save the Earth, " Larson said.

 

Exactly what " balance " might amount to, however, was not spelled out.

 

The National Academy of Sciences, together with nearly all of the world's

leading climate experts, have agreed that there is conclusive evidence that

human activity is causing the Earth to warm and that there is an urgent need to

reduce the amount of carbon being released into the air.

 

In public comments at the board meeting, several riled-up Federal Way residents

argued that " An Inconvenient Truth " was, indeed, scientifically true and that

saying otherwise is " deliberate obfuscation. "

 

These residents derisively compared the search for " balance " in the

global-warming issue to decades of phony claims by cigarette companies about the

lack of " proof " that smoking is harmful to human health.

 

Before the board meeting started Tuesday night, several residents buttonholed

Larson and asked him if there should be a " balanced " presentation of the Nazi

Holocaust, because there are many who deny that it occurred.

 

" The Holocaust happened, " Larson said. " We have evidence and photos. The

difference between the Holocaust and the global warming is we don't have photos

of what will happen 50 years from now. "

 

Sitting in on this conversation was Walls, the seventh-grade science teacher

whose class includes Frosty Hardison's daughter.

 

" We do have photos of snow melting off Kilimanjaro, " Walls said, hopefully.

 

In the end, though, the board opted for an abundance of balance.

 

That means that " An Inconvenient Truth " may be shown only with the written

permission of a principal -- and only when it is balanced by alternative views

that are approved by both a principal and the superintendent of schools.

 

Hardison was pleased.

 

" I am happy they are giving the kids as much information as possible, " he said.

 

His daughter's science teacher, meanwhile, said she is struggling to find

authoritative articles to counter the information in the Gore documentary.

 

" The only thing I have found so far is an article in Newsweek called 'The

Cooling World,' " Walls said.

 

It was written 32 years ago.

 

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in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are

cold and are not clothed. "

-- Dwight Eisenhower