Before anyone starts accusing me of "denying global warming" or anything of the sort, that is not my position.  I've specialised in the environment since secondary school and was convinced of climate change long before it became the "must-talk-about" trendy political cause it now is.

My concern is that a great deal of what is no more than pure speculation and conjecture is being presented as scientific fact - forecasting is not factual, it is pure guesswork disguised as "modelling" just to make it sound more valid.

Take the BBC programme last night on how climate change will affect the UK.  It was - as usual - presented as scientific fact and yet there were huge imponderables brushed aside.  Three examples:

• It assumed (and here they did admit that this was not likely) that emissions would continue increasing exponentially into the next century.  That is actually unlikely to happen.

• It asserted that climate change would continue to make the UK hotter.  In fact, there is a large body of scientific opinion that suggests that melting of polar ice fields will divert the gulf stream and make the UK very much colder.

• And the third assertion that is dubious at best is to assume that globally, climate change means never-ending global warming (vis the scientist who claimed that ice field melt would mean never-ending warming because no reflection of heat and also the melting of the Siberian peat bogs): far more convincing - not least because we actually have historical precedent for it (the last ice age) - is that climate change will lead to a natural rebalance (the underlying premise of the film 'The Day after tomorrow') - in itself that will have catastrophic potential.

Yes, absolutely it is: and this is what should be taught; alongside teaching pupils that there is no known outcome here and that all avenues - including, for example, the theory that solar flaring is a substantial contributor to the phenomenon (and even the views of, for example, the Sceptical Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg which is that there are more achievable significant environmental challenges we could be investing in - like ensuring everyone in the world has access to clean water into the future before wasting mega-billions on something we potentially cannot affect).

Al Gore's film is fine in so far as it is a documentary on what has happened to date; but insofar as it expresses an opinion on the future then it becomes no more - or less - valid than any other on climate change.

My position is simply that science is about questioning and exploring all possibilities objectively and with due rigour until they can be conclusively proved or disproved - and not imposing beliefs disguised as facts onto children.

That is the politicisation of science and is indistinguishable in motivation from those whose religious opinions demand that Intelligent Design is given equal status to evolution in our classrooms.  If you're against the latter, great - so am I - but have some philosophical consistency, please and treat those theories you have more sympathy for with equal objectivity before imposing them on our kids.

[ Parent ]

I think that young students seeing the film will be instrumental in stimulating debate and in helping to bring important messages on issues such as energy efficiency and climate change into substantially more homes.

[ Parent ]

I am all for engaging kids with documentaries in class. Recalling my time wasted in Social Education there is much scope to engage young minds with the big issues and construct some balanced discussion afterwards. I dont think there is a Citizenship course on the Scottish curriculum however my own choice of subjects meant that I had full exposure to a range of civic and moral issues across politics and religion. Shame the sort of imaginative teaching I benefited from wont work on the myspace generation.

[ Parent ]

I mean compulsive - I think the film will help compel young people into action and that can only be a good thing.

[ Parent ]