Christopher Booker flunks general studies
- 26 Sep 2012, 12:00
- Chris Peters
A-Level General Studies
may not have the best reputation, (I enjoyed it - Ed) but even
the harshest critics of the subject haven't generally levelled the
charge that it's merely a tool for brainwashing
teenagers.
Not so Christopher Booker, whose latest column takes a swipe at
what he calls
"vacuous, one-sided propaganda" in an A-Level question about
climate change.
Booker argues that eleven pages of "pre-release material" exam
board AQA provided to students "shamelessly [promotes] global
warming alarmism". He also - more tangibly - claims it contains
inaccurate figures which make climate change sound worse than it
is.
The question and supporting material are taken from a General
Studies A-level paper AQA set in June 2012. A quick check of
the paper suggests that, in fact, Booker has misread the material
in at least two important ways.
Getting the numbers wrong: Exaggerating the source
material
Booker argues the material contains alarmist statements about
extinction rates associated with climate change. He says:
"One document from the Met Office
solemnly predicted that 'even if global temperatures only rise by 2
degrees C, 30-40 per cent of species could face extinction'."
Given that Booker is accusing AQA and the Met Office of
alarmism, it is unfortunate that he has inaccurately reported the
numbers contained in the exam paper. The section in question,
reproduced below, suggests a figure of 20-30 per cent, not the
30-40 per cent Booker quotes. Actually, that figure doesn't appear
in the paper at all:
This is reproduced from the Met Office guide:
'Warming: Climate change - the facts', and sourced from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change fourth assessment report, which details it
further:
"There is medium confidence that
approximately 20-30 per cent of species assessed so far are likely
to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global
average warming exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius (relative to
1980-1999)."
Alarming, perhaps, but well sourced, and not the over-inflated
figures that Booker criticises.
Getting the numbers wrong: "F" is for
Fahrenheit
The second issue Booker has with the material is that he believes
it gets the amount of warming the planet has experienced over the
past century wrong:
"A graph from the US Environmental
Protection Agency showed temperatures having soared in the past 100
years by 1.4 degrees - exactly twice the generally accepted
figure."
A mistake like this would be an absolute howler on the part of
the examiners - or if you buy Booker's thesis, a blatant piece of
propaganda. However, a look at the exam pack reveals a more
prosaic explanation:
As you can see, the EPA figure indicates temperatures have risen
by roughly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100
years.
The "generally accepted figure" Booker is talking about is in
degrees Celsius. To be precise,
0.75 degrees Celsius. He has failed to spot the distinction,
and instead assumed that more sinister forces are at work.
One-sided propaganda?
Booker's overall argument is that AQA expects students to produce
an answer that agrees with the mainstream view of climate
science.
He says:
"If it were still a purpose of education
to teach people to examine evidence and think rationally, any
bright A-Level candidate might have had a field day, showing how
all this 'source material' was no more than vacuous, one-sided
propaganda. But today one fears they would have been marked down so
severely for not coming up with the desired answers that they would
have been among the tiny handful of candidates given an unequivocal
'fail'."
We asked AQA whether it tolerated answers that disagreed with
the source material. A spokesperson told us:
"Whilst a student might refer to
evidence from the articles they don't have to agree with it to gain
marks."
Obviously, this is exactly what they
would say.
We also asked AQA whether a student would be penalised for making
the kind of mistakes we identified in the Sunday Telegraph piece.
It helpfully replied:
...whilst we would expect students to
read the data correctly, they would not be unduly penalised re the
Fahrenheit/Celsius issue
Depending on your point of view, that's either remarkable
tolerance, or a lamentable decline in standards.