Sunday
Feb272011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Natural Histrionics Museum
Feb 27, 2011 Bureaucrats Greens The Natural History Museum has set up a climate change quiz, which has to been seen to be believed.
See it here, (but be warned, you will need a strong stomach).
Reader Comments (73)
@nonsceptic
I will listen to all sides on this issue, however I have my own morals and I will choose who educates my son and what techniques they use to teach. I will also check what he is being taught, for all i know he could be taught 1|+1=5, unless I know what they are teaching then I am blind.
I think that you will find that a lot of parents are now taking a similar attitude and that no amount of propaganda from Councils nor schools is carrying any weight.
I object to the indoctrination of children and I hope that you do to. Should they not be allowed to access the information provided by the experts from each side of any argument or debate? Is this not what learning is about?
I object, STRONGLY, that this test has been produced to deliberately target kids.
There is a counter view nonsceptic, that states that kids should not be indoctrinated is actually law, Education Act, Human Rights blah blah.
But let us look at basics. My home is where my child learns everything, his school is an "academy" (when he goes), by using terminology to infer status is a falsehood, an academy is still a school. The term academy was used to dupe Mr Bloggs into thinking his son/daughter had gone to the best teaching establishment possible. FALSE.
I refuse to look at this test after Q5, it is infantile and false.
Why are you guys taking this quiz? It is a game for kids.
I got 15 btw. Too many questions, and some trick questions too (like, 'don't tell me you did not think this was the answer').
After I missed 2 at the start I tried to answer the way they wanted. I got 23/30 and they said not bad but I needed some education(training). The delusional belief system that these people operate under is hard to believe.
I pretended to be a malfunctioning computer program, so I clicked 'Fiction' for all the questions. I got 14 answers right. It says that's a good score.
The question about volcanoes (Q 17?) shows the image of a volcano spitting fire. If I were a 12-year-old, I might well have been misled into thinking this was how volcanic eruptions 'warmed' the planet.
Question 26 asks "The Sahara Desert could become a tropical forest under climate change..." I honestly didn't know the answer to this one.
The answer is, "In fact, The Sahara is one of the driest places on the planet. Between 1973 and 1976, almost no rain at all fell there. It is possible the margins of the desert could get more rain due to climate change - potentially making these areas more fertile."
I used to think (when I was 12 year-old perhaps) forests would just sprout out of nothing in the middle of the desert if enough rain were to fall on it.
Feb 28, 2011 at 2:56 AM | sHx:
I feel ashamed.
I played and received a score of 9 out of 30 which the very intelligent computer program praised me for.
I know that, being too quick, I pressed the wrong button at least twice.
That would take my real score down to a more respecable 7.
I felt that there were a number of trick questions, which more or less forced me to say fact, not fiction.
But I was trying to give honest answers, Your Honour.
Would I lie to yur worshipful self?
Some of the questions demanded more knowledge of the UK, than I have.
So I guess, my real, normalised, homogenised, gridded, adjusted score would have been 3 or 4.
(But anybody getting zero is a lying, fanatical dog in the manger, flat earth denier).
I'm sure I'm not like that.
I'm just a regular guy, a critical searcher for the truth.
I promise, your honour, never to take that test again, if you'll just let me off with a caution.
BANG - BANG -case dismissed.
Next sucker?
Move along, move along.
Holy cow! It is hard to imagine any more worthless piece of trash. They got a couple of the answers right, but given all the wrong answers and pure propaganda, it looks like they lucked into getting a couple right.
Especially appalling is the question that asserts there is an absolute consensus -- no papers doubt the climate change narrative.
Unbelievable . . .
I've copied down all the questions and answers in a text-file, if you want it.
Well I got a score of 7/30 so apparently my understanding is excellent...
Sea-levels are currently rising dangerously quickly. FICTION.
Global warming appears to have stopped. FACT.
CO2 can increase crop yield to feed a growing global population. FACT
Windfarms are expensive, inefficient and are driving many people into fuel poverty. FACT
Sir Paul Nurse is a climate scientist. FICTION
ETS schemes are eminently scammable and the taxpayer gets robbed. FACT.
ClimateGate showed that climate science was riddled with bad scientific practice. FACT
The ClimateGate enquiries were models of objectivity. FICTION.
Climate scientists and greens emit fewer greenhouse gases than normal people. FICTION.
The oceans could rise by 220 ft. STOP MAKING FOOLS OF YOURSELVES
Changing your lightbulbs will help save the planet. STOP MAKING FOOLS OF US.
One could go on ...
What a fantastic opportunity for a parent/child educational session. It does have it's benefits if you go through the questions together.
1.) It gives you the chance to formulate thinking through a question rather than being led by it.
2.) You can discuss how to argue your case for an answer rather than follow an expected consensus.
3.) You can discuss how forms of media are not always representative of fact such as the internet.
4.) You can provide the opportunity of research to gain the answers to those questions that are not immediately obvious.
5.) You can explain why propaganda is used and why you should be wary of it.
Ooh 27/30. It says I must report immediately to the communications director at the Grantham Research Institute. Come on, honestly it’s true. You people are just sceptical about everything! Humph.
Gah!
Here I was, aiming for a perfect score of 0/30, and then got 8 answers right ... I'm ashamed ...
What an awful piece of propaganda this quiz is - and any parents here who are going to use this quiz to tech their children differently: you might also wish to point out that even the 'bad' scores, i.e. below 10/30, get praised. Typical example of 'all kids must have prizes'.
How many kids in Africa could have been given pencils and paper with the money used to set tis quiz up, and keep it running?
The OPAL useful climate links page includes this:
http://www.flightradar24.com/
Nothing to do with climate but great fun. (I see the 11:15 to Malaga is late again.)
“One person can’t make a difference to climate change” - false.
“Anything you do to reduce your CO2 emissions will help tackle climate change. It may only be a small difference, but the more people who do their bit - the bigger the difference will be”.
This isn’t just bad science and bad logic, it’s incitation to megalomania. It’s as if the entire middle class woke up one day believing that they were Napoleon, and that the only way they could save the world was to instigate a global campaign to shrink the size of their hats.
You can write to the museum at
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/contact-enquiries/forms/
Well, I got 30 out of 30 correct*
* This was after some minor adjustments to my score, using a sophisticated algorithm to compensate for poor eyesight and complete indifference to both the questions and their answers.
Following standard climate science practice, I will not be releasing either my "raw" (ie unadjusted) score, or the algorithm I used. I've got absolutely nothing to hide, denier scum - but if you want them you're going to have FOI me.
lapogus --
On the previous page of comments, you pointed out this report which amazingly states that:
"In the past few decades, North Shields (in Newcastle) and Sheerness (in Kent) have seen the largest rises in sea level, compared to 1920 levels. Since 1998, an increase of at least 2 metres compared with 1920 was seen at both these sites. In fact since 2002, sea levels in North Shields have been higher than the 1980-1989 average by at least 60 cm."
This was due to an error in which, as you surmised, DECC interpreted the sea level measures (in mm) as being in cm, and all their figures were high by a factor of 10 consequently. It appears that DECC have corrected their error. Although for some reason they didn't remove the erroneous report, there's a replacement one here. [There's no date given in the file, but I'm assuming the file name is indicative of the date, 11 May 2010 for the corrected report vs. 19 March 2010 for the erroneous one.]
The report still contains the following surprising language: "Between 2006-2008 sea levels [at Aberdeen] have been higher than 1920 by more than 100 mm, with a 55 mm increase from 2005 to 2006 alone." [My italics.] The 55mm increase year-on-year is absolutely meaningless; for whatever reason, the annual mean sea level has a large amount of natural variation. Here are the values from 2000 through 2008 (in mm relative to 1920 level): 60, 62, 92, 87, 82, 67, 122, 106, 105. So citing any one-year change makes no sense at all scientifically. By even mentioning that value, it seems as though DECC are encouraging readers to make a faulty extrapolation. The document does not attempt to give averaged sea level rise rates (either over the full period of the records, or over a more recent interval), which surely are the figures of interest. [Recent global sea-level rise rates are on the order of 3 mm/year, and these stations presumably are not much different.]
Sorry, could not stomach the stupidity after question 11. Perhaps someone can sue these MET folks for false advertising????
Feb 27, 2011 at 9:52 PM | Joe Prins
That's a shame Joe, it means you missed out on Q19 where they try to imply that co2 is responsible for 30c of warming by conflating the effects of co2 with All greenhouse gases. What fun.
The most annoying aspect of the quiz was there was only two choices, fact or fiction.
What was needed was a further two buttons marked "assumption" and "unproven theory".
10/30; and the on final page (do you wish to play again?) the "FACT" link takes you back to question 1, while the "FICTION" link leads to (appropriately) the MET Office website.
"Check back regularly to see if scientists have answered your question"
Or PR numbskulls...
Wow,
You're right. My stomach wasn't strong enough.
First question: "In future there is more chance of winter flooding in the UK".
Since the peer-reviewed Muir-Wood report said that there is not statistical evidence that extreme weather events are more frequent than in the past, I answered NO.
But the correct answer is, apparently, YES. It is YES because "Under climate change more rain is predicted to fall in winter".
Predicted to fall? By whom? By Mystic Meg? The Natural History Museum don't explain (Very wise - probably the Met.Office of barbeque summer prediction fame).
In my life, I have heard lots of predictions, like the world will end the year 2000, or more recently ( since that didn't happen) in the year 2012, but predictions are not evidence. I could make a prediction here (and I do) that there will be less flooding, then it would be true for someone to say that floods have been predicted to decrease in future.
This is not Science, this is the brainwashing of young children at the taxpayers' expense (i.e mine)
Needless to say, I didn't score to highly in their quiz.
That OPAL site has a nice link to pose your own questions. Do you think I will get an answer to 'where is your empirical evidence ?'