Why Would You Believe This? (7 of 8): 'Children born today will not be in a position of influence for 40 years, and by then it will be too late. The inertia in the climate system means that without action from us, by the time they can change the world, catastrophic warming will almost certainly be factored into the system.'

I look at this dismal piece of hypocrisy and gobbledeygook in three parts below.  The quote came from a now defunct site determined to enrol children in the pursuit of their green agenda, and who used their own irrational fears to justify passing them on to those too young to spot their nonsense.  More on that site here: (1).

(1) 'Children born today will not be in a position of influence for 40 years, and by then it will be too late.'

The claimed lack of influence of children is belied by the efforts of Schools Low Carbon Day to make them into political and commercial actors, influencing their parents and others to change lifestyles, and purchase so-called 'green energy tariff' electricity from a particular company.

I have found several more such sites. They are intent on indoctrinating children to toe the 'party line' on the environment. Children old enough to be scared, old enough to be influenced, but too young to fight back against the propaganda.

Here is one EU-funded boondoggle explaining itself:

'The main idea is to enable the pupils to learn about the challenges of global climate change and sustainable energy use and, at the same time, acquire the competences necessary to develop and subsequently apply adequate solutions.'

by means of:

'The European project “Schools at University for Climate & Energy (SAUCE)” offers a series of one-week on-campus education programmes for pupils ages 10-13 on the topics of energy efficient behaviour, renewable energies and climate change.'
Source: (2).

They were at it in London in June, where they set out to:

'develop education in climate awareness, offer smart energy choices for 10 to 13 year olds'

Too young to answer back, old enough to hassle their parents.  Does that explain this sinister choice of target group?
For more see: (3)

Here is a site which is quite blatantly majoring on fundraising via children:

'School children across the world have made an incredible difference to rainforest protection by fundraising for Cool Earth.'

and they note: 'Schools play a really important part in raising awareness about climate change'
Source: (4).

Here is another site not so convinced that 'children will not be in a position of influence for 40 years'.  They ask:

'What do you think will happen if one million of us marched, each in our own home towns, to send a message to the “ruling generation” that is so powerful that it actually causes a real shift in our world?  Sign up to be an organizer, leader or marcher!'
Source: (5).

Here is the Pew Centre, a prosperous-looking lobbying organisation by Washington DC, getting in on the game:

'To help more kids better understand global warming, the Pew Center recently collaborated with Nickelodeon to research children's and parents' attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. Nickelodeon is using the information for an interactive campaign called The Big Green Help.  There's a lot you can learn about global warming. To help, this page provides answers to six key questions about global warming, how it occurs, and how you can help to stop the process.'
Source: (6).

Or how about this anonymous site, probably in the UK, and aimed at 5 to 11 year olds:

'If your parents must use the car, ask them to avoid using it for very short journeys if possible, as this creates unnecessary pollution. Try to encourage them to share their journeys with other people, for example when they go to work or go shopping. Also encourage them to drive more slowly as this produces less pollution and less carbon dioxide.'
Source: (7).

What kind of results are such sites and initiatives getting?  I only have some 'for-instances'.  These folks are pleased:

'Because children are such strong catalysts for social change, the program has had wonderful results.'
This quote from a campaigning site aimed at children by a couple who were convinced by, of all things, 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
Source: (8).

And in the news this week from Boston:

'Totalitarians throughout history have understood the power of co-opting youth, and here is an organization advocating what can only be called the indoctrination of a generation of students in our country's public schools, beginning in kindergarten, into radical environmentalism and advocacy for "equitable social systems" -- at the expense of reading, writing and arithmetic! Similarly, the physics teacher quoted above states: "Our goal as educators is to help students understand how to get to a sustainable world." Isn't your goal as a physics teacher teaching physics? The disregard for the essential purpose of education -- -imparting knowledge -- is aggressively blatant.'
Source: (9).

Not so recent, but alarming all the same is the set of often illiterate letters from pupils organised by a teacher in a Californian school, to berate the Heartland Institute for not taking the correct line on climate.  They include such gems as:

'In the past couple of months, we have read articles about Global Warming and we know facts about G.W.  The 1st article is Diesel traffic makes asthma worse.  The article explains that diesel traffic can worsen lung function in people with asthma.  The 2nd article is Air pollution shrinks fetus size.  This means that if mothers have higher exposure to air pollution, the child's fetus will shrink.  The 3rd article is World Must Fix Climate in Less than 10 years.  This means that if we don't fix the climate, everything will be destroyed and we won't be able to survive.  Those are all the important articles we read.'
 The anonymised letters can be downloaded from: (10).

I leave the last word on this misuse of schools and exploitation of children, to an American journalist offended by some climate change ads using children for scaremongering.  I'd extend his remark to include all those initiatives in and around schools on climate scaremongering:

'I don't know about you, but irrespective of my position on this issue, I find using children in this fashion to be indefensible and way over the line of decency.'
Source: (11).  .

(2) 'The inertia in the climate system ...'

The 'inertia of the climate system' is not defined, but it may refer to remarks by James Hansen in 2009.

From the climategate emails, we read a message from Trenberth, on 12th October 2009, cc'd to, amongst others, Hansen:
 'The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.'
Source: (12).

Hansen speaking about two weeks later in over-the-top demented alarmist terms well-suited for the Club of Rome, has found somewhere to hide the missing heat: in a pipeline, aka a timebomb.  His talk was entitled 'Global Warming Time Bomb', and his slides included one with the device 'Climate Inertia -> Warming in Pipeline'.
Source: (13).

A more temperate scientist, Roger Pielke Snr writes in January 2010:

'But unless observations document that significant heat is accumulating deeper in the ocean, there are no major amounts of unaccounted for Joules in the climate system. There is therefore no “unrealized heat” and, thus, no “heating in the pipeline”.'
Source: (14).

I'm more convinced by the analysis of Pielke, than by the conjecture of Hansen.

No pipeline, no timebomb, no scary headlines.

(3) '... means that without action from us, by the time they can change the world, catastrophic warming will almost certainly be factored into the system.'

Why would that be?  The 'almost certainly', as we have seen in earlier posts in this series, ought to read 'almost certainly not' given the complete lack of evidence of any extraordinary cause for concern, in particular from CO2.  Many scientists accept that CO2 alone could change average temperatures anywhere between a modest decrease to an increase of around 1C.  No grounds for catastrophe there.  Any such changes would scarcely be detectable against the background variation which is part and parcel of our climate.  So, it comes back to the computer models.  The Club of Rome had such an impact with their now widely ridiculed modeling, that I can't help but feel the plotters behind the IPCC were keen to make the most of the climate modellers' arts.  Especially those who invented a positive feedback mechanism that allowed the modest impact of CO2 to be converted into a dramatic effect due to water vapour.  They might well have hoped to rely on the same lack of critical review which the media gave to the Club of Rome, and if so they were surely right.  No one expects high standards from the media, but once upon a time, we expected it from science. Scientists once revered as objective seekers after truth have been transformed into jobsworths seeking security of tenure and larger research grants, both of which were jeopardised by going against the received wisdom on climate.

But hope springs eternal: the recent rebellion by fellows of the Royal Society was one bright spark, and here is another from a journalist recognising failings in her profession:

'These are desperate days for global warming advocates, and they should be. The two groups we rely on the most to be skeptical and detail-oriented, scientists and reporters, have continued to badly fail us.'
Source: (15).

In my more charitable moments, I suppose that the founders of 'Schools' Low Carbon Day'  were merely badly failed by scientists and reporters.  At other times, I wonder at their enthusiasm for scaring schoolkids in order to advance their 'green agenda'.

References
(1) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-concerned.html
(2) http://www.schools-at-university.eu  
(3) http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/latest-news/july-2009/local-school-children-get-to-the-sauce-of-climate-change.cfm
(4)  http://www.coolearth.org/421/category/get-involved-176.html
(5) http://kids-vs-global-warming.com/Home.html
(6) http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/kidspage.cfm
 (7) http://www.clean-air-kids.org.uk/index.html
(8) http://www.cancelacar.org/who-we-are/.
(9) http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/avantgarde_sustainability_curr.html
(10) http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22921/California_Teacher_Encourages_Political_Activism_by_Elementary_School_Students.html
(11) http://newsbusters.org/node/19907
(12) http://thefinalredoubt.blogspot.com/2009/11/christmas-has-come-early-for-climate.html
(13) www.clubofrome.at/2009/amsterdam/p/hansen.pdf
(14) http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/my-view-of-the-terminolgy-heating-in-the-pipeline/
(15) http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/A-Journolist-for-climate-change-99317999.html