Today's Guest - Prof. Holly Fretwell - Posted by Morgan Mandel

Prof. Holly Fretwell is a natural
policy expert on natural resources, an adjunct professor at Montana State University, and is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center. You can visit her publisher's website at http://www.worldahead.com/titles/sky.php.

Holly Fretwell, adjunct professor at Montana State University, mom of 2, natural resources allocation expert and author of The Sky's NOT Falling! Why It's OK To Chill About Global Warming (ISBN 0976726947, Kids Ahead, for ages 8-12, September 2007) knows that kids are getting an earful in school about global warming. Unfortunately, all too much of that information is misleading or just plain wrong.

The Sky's NOT Falling! is the product of her concern not just for the environment, but for the millions of kids being handed an environmental bill of goods in class. As an educator, a mom and an optimist, Ms. Fretwell envisions a world that is wealthier, and so healthier for all. To get there, however, our kids need to become critical thinkers. And too much of what is passing for "truth" when it comes to the issue of global warming is anything but.

THE SKY'S NOT FALLING SYNOPSIS:

School has started. Unfortunately, right along with it comes the usual indoctrination about the "threat" of global warming. Perhaps your kids are already saying…

"I'm scared that every time I ride in the car, I'm hurting polar bears and other animals."

"I'm afraid that people just like me are causing global warming."


A recent question posed to Prof. Holly Fretwell:

Holly, you say that kids are getting an earful in school about global warming and much of that information is misleading or just plain wrong. Can you give us an example?

Holly's answer:
"Many students are being asked to watch Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." This has been a real inconvenience because, as the High British Court has stated, they are many non-truths and misleading statements in the movie. One of the most brazen examples is demonstrated with the graph that shows atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature change. The two variables are correlated; they move together. Gore and one of his producers Laurie David who just wrote a children's book on global warming, both assert that increases in CO2 levels cause temperature to increase. They have missed something really important here, one correlation does not mean causation, and two the data show that on average temperature changes 800 years before CO2 levels. Yes, read that again, temperature changes lead the changes in CO2 over the last 650,000 years."

For more, check out Holly Fretwell's book, The Sky's Not Falling.