Regarding “An Arctic Tale”

The following was written to my daughter’s  second grade teacher who was currently showing the film “An Arctic Tale” to her class.

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It has come to my attention that you have been teaching (the extent is uncertain) the pseudo-science of global warming while talking about arctic regions and polar bears. While the discussion of this topic may be appropriate for high school or college students, it is inappropriate for second graders who do not possess the abstract reasoning to separate factual data from false or politically manipulated data.

This clue was found buried in a crossword puzzle: “the primary threat facing polar bears” (is) and the students were dutifully instructed to fill in “global warming”. This out-of-place question was at the very center of the crossword puzzle with no mention of it on the front page. The “primary threat”? – Are you not aware of the inconvenient truth that the polar bear population is not endangered but rather, is actually increasing? The polar bears are apparently unaware of their “primary threat” but, of course, this would falsify the loaded intention of the question.

On March 22, you played the first half of a highly manipulative docudrama “An Arctic Tale” – a lush, Disney-like, quasi-scientific, agenda driven film produced to indoctrinate children into believing the deceit of man-made global warming. Throughout the film, narrator/entertainer Queen Latifah, actress, and “polar bear expert” makes repeated allusions to how the rising temperature is affecting the animals in the “ice kingdom”. Here is a one-sided view that fails to recognize that warmer weather actually makes it easier for animals, including polar bears, who can eat whatever they want, to find food and produce more healthy offspring. The movie gives the animals names and humanizes them to stir up an emotional response to their Hollywood manufactured plight. The unbalanced movie fails to teach how all animals, in all environments, throughout all time, have struggled with changing environments and climates. (Remember the dinosaurs? -where was Queen Latifah when they needed her?) Those animals that adapt, survive, and those that do not, become extinct, and none of this has anything to do with evil polluting capitalists or humans. This scientific truth was not taught, but apparently, what was taught was a simplistic half-truth using cute fuzzy polar bears in order to engender the proper emotional response to advance this enviro-statist hoax.

Honest scientists are in complete disagreement as to the existence of global warming, which is why it is now referred to as “climate change” (note how this 2007 movie’s propaganda slogan is already out of date) so the deception can be universally applied to all changes in weather. And this “science” of global-whatever is as reliable as a meteorologist’s ability, with all the complex computer models and well known meteorological facts, to correctly predict the weather even a week ahead of time. They are in disagreement as to the effects of global warming, and even more so, to the cause of global warming. Many scientists have portended that the current warming is actually part of a larger cooling trend and that the earth is slowly heading toward another ice age. But of course, according to the underlying message throughout the movie, mankind is always the implied culprit. This begs the question of how we can have all this historical data, from the same scientists, showing how the earth cools and warms almost continuously on a regular basis and how we have supposedly moved in and out of some 14 ice ages in the geological past all without the aid of mankind burning fossil fuels.

Did you know that while the ice is apparently melting and the temperature rising in the north polar region, it is also getting colder and the ice layer is increasing at the south polar region (which averages 43 degrees colder than the north)? Did you know that the same, perfectly righteous, scientists, -with no political or personal agenda of their own of course- studied for years and concluded that “global cooling” was the greatest threat to polar bears, and the world at large, only 30 years ago? But whether cooling or warming, it is always humans who are to blame; that is, all the humans who are not Queen Latifah or National Geographic movie producers/scientists or educators or politicians who are busy exposing the other evil humans: these are the good humans. But all this deceit is inappropriate for second graders.

The real scientific truth is that the earth is so big and so powerful that it does whatever it wants regardless of human activity. Ask your class if they, or Queen Latifah, or National Geographic can control the weather. If you really plan to stop all this heating and cooling, you’ll need to figure out how to control the output of the sun, control water vapor, plug up the volcanos, and stop all animals from flatulating. Can you do that?   Perhaps you would see fit to tell your class about the many people – “scientists”, entertainers, magazines, rouge nations and politicians (such as Al Gore)- that plan to reap much financial gain by advancing this myth? Will you tell them about the wonderful scientists who have been caught doctoring data and misleading the public in order to support their righteous and self-important work? Probably not, because it wouldn’t be appropriate for second graders to view scientists as anything but noble and good, and this is why the entire subject is fraught with deception and has no place in your classroom.

But the most despicable thing about this film is the exploitation of children at the end who discuss how they feel about the state approved drivel that they’ve just seen. This fascistic tactic is most detestable; it should sicken us all and have no place in a classroom of second graders. Sadly, this brings discredit to your otherwise conscientious teaching. Hopefully, you will stop the film at this point and not show this ending. Their only saving grace is that most children tune out enough to prevent these myths from implanting and propagating – unless they are told repeatedly enough, and at a younger and younger age.  Impressionable children lack the reasoning ability to comprehend such scientific complexities, as well as the political maneuverings with which this subject is so entangled. When you teach “global warming”, you are not advancing science, but rather a political/religious belief -hence the new term “global-warming deniers”. You may have personal religious beliefs, or be a “true believer”, in such things which you are free to hold, but these beliefs should not be taught to second grade children.

Bill Ward