Remember when NASA was all about sending men into space? Remember the moon landings and how proud we all were of what the United States could accomplish when we put our minds to it? Well, those days are long past, and now Elon Musk appears to be showing NASA cards and spades when it comes to low earth orbit, which is the farthest into space anyone has been for many years now.
Now, NASA is worried about climate change. I'm not sure why NASA is worried about this; one would think that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would have as their primary concern, you know, aeronautics and space. It's not at all clear how hand-wringing over America's carbon footprint furthers that mission.
But hand-wringing they are, even to the point where they are now propagandizing kindergartners. An editorial last week at Issues & Insights has the details.
Following the get-’em-while-they’re-young school of thought, the climate agitators are targeting kindergarteners. NASA’s Climate Kids webpage, for instance, says “global warming will affect everyone on Earth.” While admitting that “fossil fuels have changed the course of human history,” NASA also says “these good things come at a cost. The cost is pollution, the destruction of landscapes and natural habitats, oil spills in the ocean, and nasty fracking chemicals in the ground. Global warming will be the biggest problem of all.”
On another of the “Kids” pages, NASA claims that in an era of “rising” global temperatures, “almost all climate scientists agree that a big cause of that is the burning of fossil fuels. The warming could lead to rising sea levels, droughts, flooding, and more severe weather. It is a challenge that we will have to deal with in the coming years.”
It sure seems like NASA is following the "give us the boy and we'll give you the man" approach here - but they aren't the only ones to do so. The
Remember, this proselytizing is intended to program kindergarteners. And it’s only the beginning. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also dedicated to “educating” kids about “human-induced climate change” and making sure that they are afraid to burn fossil fuels.
This is the same NOAA that, according to the Daily Caller, “House Republicans are pressing … for answers about a signature dataset frequently cited as evidence that climate change is intensifying.”
A quick look at both sites reveals that neither presents any opposing views. Granted, we shouldn't expect an outpouring of data and methodology on a page intended for children, but a simple look at opposing views - there are many, whether NASA and NOAA like it or now - would certainly be in order.
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Issues & Insights, in this piece, presents a laundry list of evidence to the contrary of NASA and NOAA's propaganda. One example:
Rather than being “swallowed by an ever-expanding Sahara, with desertification” posing “the ‘greatest environmental’ challenge of our time,” Earth is actually turning greener. Of course this has the alarmist community making an on-the-fly adjustment, telling us that a carbon dioxide rich environment that produces the greening will harm desert plants and animals, and warning that “the extra vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.”
As you can see, the good folks at Issues & Insights don't just assert. They bring receipts.
While the presentation of both sides of a contentious issue would be preferable to the climate-change hand-wringing that NASA and NOAA are presently engaged in, one wonders why they feel the need to engage in propagandizing kids at all. It's not in the purview of either of these taxpayer-funded agencies to do anything of the sort; this is, again, just one more item added to the long, long list of things that the federal government is wasting our money on.
If you have young children, and if they are in the public school system, here's some advice: Pay attention to what they are being fed. Be prepared to make up any gaps, omissions, or inconsistencies in their education yourselves. Our younger kids went through high school in the early teens, and I was frustrated to learn that, while they took a class called "Social Studies" that seemed to encompass what we called "Civics" when I was in school, they never once were assigned to read the Constitution.
We rectified that. People now have another item in their kids' education to rectify.
Kids shouldn't be propagandized. If NASA and NOAA are going to insist on setting up kids' climate change pages, they could at least acknowledge that there is disagreement on the idea that we should destroy our modern technological lifestyle in the name of reducing our carbon footprint. That's not too much to ask.
This seems appropriate.
