Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen — 17 January 2024 — 600 words/6 minutes
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., who writes at The Honest Broker on substack, gets a great big Hat Tip from me for bringing this NASA web page to my attention: Climate Kids: Planet Health Report: SEA LEVEL. [ see his post here – I am writing about the issue of Landification shortly ]
Climate Kids presents itself as an educational tool to teach children, at the grade school level, about Climate Change. It is produced by the Earth Science Communications Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology. The Program Manager is Heather Doyle, who can be contacted at climatekids@jpl.nasa.gov.
Here is their Sea Level page graphic:
Here’s the text, a little easier for you to read:
“SEA LEVEL:
What if it keeps rising this fast?
The global average sea level has risen over 7 inches in the past 100 years. A few inches may not seem like much, but every inch of sea level rise covers 50-100 inches of beach. If the ice keeps melting, global sea level could rise more than 20 feet. That would put a lot of coastlines under water. Whole islands could disappear!”
Now, please, imagine that you are a 4th grader – 9 or 10 years old — living in Miami. You are told explicitly that if things keep going as they have been going, you, you family, your friends, your school and your entire city are going to die by being submerged under 20 feet of water.
That, my dear friends, is blatant child abuse according to the definitions of child abuse of the U.S. CDC which says of child abuse and neglect:
“This issue includes all types of abuse and neglect of a child under the age of 18 by a parent, caregiver, or another person in a custodial role (such as a religious leader, a coach, a teacher) that results in harm, the potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child.”
For a Miami Beach school district teacher in a 4th grade class to teach 9 and 10 year-olds that they are under a death sentence from climate change due to present rate of sea level rise:
1. Is a lie. The question is “What if it keeps rising this fast?” The true answer is “In 100 more years, the sea level will rise another 7 inches.” The more correct answer, according to our present understanding of global sea level rise, is about 8-12 inches in the next century.
2. It is also a lie to imply that the answer to the question is “the sea could rise more than 20 feet” and submerge Miami.
3. It is not just a lie – not just Climate Crisis propaganda – it is by definition child abuse.
I would correct this page as follows:
The corrected text reads:
“The global average sea level has risen over 7 inches in the past 100 years.
Depending on the slope of a beach, one inch of sea level rise can cover more
than an inch of beach. If sea level keeps rising this fast – 7 or 8 inches per century
then in another 100 years, sea level will rise another 7 or 8 inches. For low lying
areas, this can cause problems. To reach the level shown in red in the map
below, it would take 34 centuries or 3,400 years.”
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Author’s Comment:
Absolutely appalling. It is this type of thing, which has been ongoing for years, that leads to the emotionally anxious and dysfunctional children who have grown up and now attend universities around the world. Some of these dysfunctional children now teach in those universities and our public schools. This is the opposite of education, it is dumbification – making our children less educated and less well-informed.
If you are a reader of James Lee Burke’s novels, imagine him describing how I feel about people who would do such a thing as write and publish that sea level page for grade school kids. Now, I’m a peaceful man, but they really got to me with the above.
And yes, I have written to Heather Doyle, the Program Manager responsible, and expressed my displeasure. You can write to her too at climatekids@jpl.nasa.gov .
Thanks for reading.
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