Climate scandal more widespread

Thursday, January 28, 2010

To the Editor:

The recent scandal involving leaked e-mails from the IPCC, showed there was a deliberate attempt to prevent scientific data on global warming from being released. There were also attempts to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request and attempts to silence “man-made” global warming skeptics. It looks like this scandal goes even further.

The New York Times ran an article titled: “U.N. Admits Error in Overstating Himalayan Glacier Melt.” According to the Times article “…the IPCC, the U.N. body charged with investigating climate change, retracted that claim after it emerged that its predictions of a sudden melt weren’t based on peer-reviewed evidence, but instead on an article that appeared in the popular science magazine New Scientist in 1999.” More evidence that the U.N. based its political agenda for cap-and-trade on junk science.

Peter Foster writing in Canada’s National posts goes on to say, “the error showed how the IPCC’s task has always been not objectively to examine science but to make the case for man-made climate change by any means available.”

According to the International Baccalaureate’s official Web site, the 2011 Geography syllabus states that it is designed to encompass the U.N.’s millennium development goals. Global warming is listed as one of those goals.

This is the problem that occurs when a school decides to adopt a program that’s riddled with an agenda from a political organization.

It seems to me that if we seek to graduate students who are proficient in science, it would be worthwhile to leave the U.N. junk science out of the equation. Why push a political agenda at the expense of authentic science?

Forty-three percent of 11th-grade students scored proficient on the NECAP science assessment in 2009. More than half of our high school’s students are not considered proficient in science. At what point do we decide that a quality academic program is more important than a political indoctrination program?

Bedford needs to get back to the art of educating students.

While the Bedford School Board continues to deny the U.N. connection to the IB program, all one has to do is visit the IB Web site: www.ibo.org and read it for yourself.

As a taxpayer, I’m angry that I’m being forced to fund a program that encompasses a political agenda at the expense of offering our students an authentic academic education.

ANN MARIE BANFIELD

Bedford