July 2015 - Page 11 of 24 - Schwartzreport

Friday, July 17th, 2015

Warming of oceans due to climate change is unstoppable, say US scientists

Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. Environment Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)

Stephan: This is the second report making it clear we have passed the tipping point on climate change. No matter what we do the ocean warming trend will continue and its effects on the ecosystem of the world ocean will be profound and that, in turn, will have a huge negative impact on human civilization. It is no longer if, but now how much and when. Each year from now on the effects of climate change will be more and more pronounced. Sea rise, for instance, which will be one of the first things to really impact civilization will accelerate ever more dramatically.

Globally 90% of the excess heat caused by the rise in greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed by the oceans.
Credit: Alamy

The warming of the oceans due to climate change is now unstoppable after record temperatures last year, bringing additional sea-level rise, and raising the risks of severe storms, US government climate scientists said on Thursday. (emphasis added)

The annual State of the Climate in 2014 report, based on research from 413 scientists from 58 countries, found record warming on the surface and upper levels of the oceans, especially in the North Pacific, in line with earlier findings of 2014 as the hottest year on record.

Global sea-level also reached a record high, with the expansion of those warming waters, keeping pace with the 3.2 ± 0.4 mm per year trend in sea level growth over the past two decades, the report […]

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Senate Rejects Effort To Teach Kids About Climate Change In School

Emily Atkin, - Think Progress

Stephan: The Corporate Theocratic Right, which is to say the dominant portion of the Republican Party has become a threat to humanity. This story, about the Senate Republicans blocking Federal encouragement of Climate Change education is one of many examples illustrating why I say this. We should be teaching children about Climate Change with the best factual information we have. And the instruction should be uniform, the same way math or physics is taught. This subject is only controversial to Deniers. We owe this to these children. They are the ones who are going to live in the world we have created for them, and it is not going to be easy.

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) tried to see children were instructed on a fact-based basis about climate change. Senate Republicans blocked it.
Credit: Wikipedia

A effort to increase kids’ scientific knowledge of climate change failed in the Senate on Wednesday, after one senator expressed concern that the measure would result in a lot of “wasted paper.” (emphasis added)

Put forth by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the measure would have created a competitive grant program for public school districts to “develop or improve” climate change education curricula. It was put forward as an amendment to a bill to reform No Child Left Behind, the controversial federal education policy implemented under former President George W. Bush.

Markey argued that the grant program would help equip the next generation to deal with the effects of human-caused climate change, a burden they are likely to bear.

“The children of our country deserve the best scientific education they can get on this topic,” he said. “They […]

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Arne Duncan’s Legacy

Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education, New York University - The Huffington Post

Stephan: The decline of American public school education to a point where American children score at embarrassing low levels in reading, math, geography and other subjects compared with the children of other countries is, or at least should be, a matter of national shame. Much of this has happened on the watch of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and here is an good essay on what has happened.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post has written a sympathetic article about Arne Duncan and the waning of his powers as Secretary of Education. He is a nice guy. He is a close friend of the president. He cares about individual children that he met along the way. The pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will prohibit him and future Secretaries from interfering in state decisions about standards, curriculum and assessment. His family has already moved back to Chicago. But he will stay on the job to the very end.

When Obama was elected, many educators and parents thought that Obama would bring a new vision of the federal role in education, one that freed schools from the test-and-punish mindset of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. But Arne Duncan and Barack Obama had a vision no different from George W. Bush and doubled down on the importance of testing, while encouraging privatization and undermining the teaching profession with […]

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The calamity of the disappearing school libraries

Debra Kachel, Professor of School Library and Information Technologies Program at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania - The Conversation

Stephan: All my life I have loved libraries. In fact it would probably be accurate to say that most of my education came from what I read in libraries. The idea that public school libraries are being closed or abandoned strikes me as a deliberate program to create an ignorant electorate. Or maybe it is just ignorant politicians who only care about money, and libraries are an unnecessary expense. Or maybe it is part of a long range plan to privatize public school education in the U.S. Whatever the reason it is a disaster. Luckily this is a problem you can do something about. School boards are local. If schools in your area are closing their libraries as is happening across the country get involved, and oppose these schemes. The alternative is very sad, and could do great damage to the country.

Typical public school library

From coast to coast, elementary and high school libraries are being neglected, defunded, repurposed, abandoned and closed.

The kindest thing that can be said about this is that it’s curious; the more accurate explanation is that it’s just wrong and very foolish.

A 2011 survey conducted with my graduate students of 25 separate statewide studies shows that students who attend schools with libraries that are staffed by certified librarians score better on reading and writing tests than students in schools without library services. And it is lower-income students who benefit the most.

This clear empirical evidence has had little impact on budget cutters, however. They act – mistakenly – as though there is no link between libraries and educational achievement.

Here are the numbers and the arguments to which they need to pay attention.

A dramatic decline in school libraries and librarians

The number of school libraries in New York City has dropped from nearly 1,500 in 2005 to around 700 in 2014.

Over a recent five-year period, 43% of school librarian positions […]

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