Three New Books for the Climate Classroom - and maybe even for the Staffroom if you dare

(1)  The Delinquent Teenager, by Donna Laframboise

(2) How to Get Expelled from School, by Ian Plimer

(3) Don't Sell Your Coat, by Harold Ambler

      (1) The Delinquent Teenager 

An investigative journalist digging behind the fancy PR and slick politics of the climate alarm industry is a very rare beast indeed.  In the UK, environment and science correspondents have proliferated in print and broadcast media, but they have proliferated, and behave, in the way that missionaries might have done in an era of religious excitement and evangelism, one coupled with generous funding for their work and for the faith which sustains them.  In other words, they do not ‘investigate’ so much as ‘pontificate’, and they do not, and in some cases, dare not since it is against their bosses’ explicit guidance, venture out of line.  Donna Laframboise is not one of them.  She is free and fearless.  Her faith is in the power of daylight, of examination of the facts, of publicising the bigger picture and the details overlooked by others in their haste to be part of the crowd and push the new doom-laden religion which has scientists and computer programmers as the high priests, the IPCC as writer and keeper of the gospels, and such as the Royal Society as one of many Bishoprics in search of power not enjoyed by ecclesiasticals since the Middle Ages.

Her focus in this book is on the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  She is not primarily concerned with the science.  She is concerned with mismatches between what the leaders of the IPCC say, what they do, and what they have failed to do in terms of taking valid opinions and expertise into account.  The organisation presents itself as worthy of trust, but it is not worthy of trust.  It presents itself as an aggregator and reviewer of all relevant science, but it is not – it is a purveyor of a narrow view, a suppressor of debate, and a means by which dissenting voices are ignored.  It tells us it is policy-neutral, to which one can only comment ‘aye, right’ – a double positive which in Scotland conveys a very negative view of the veracity of some assertion.

Why does this matter for schools?  It matters because some materials aimed at children justify their stance by reference to the IPCC.  Consensus.  The UN.  Leading scientists.  Deep research.  Good data.  Great integrity.  Aye, right.  This book is a very useful expose of corruption, conniving, hypocrisy, and deceit.  'But we want to save the planet! So give us a break!'  I don’t think they deserve one, and if you read this book, you won’t either, and in particular, any materials which include the phrase ‘the IPCC says’ will be held by you on the end of tongs while you check them out yourself using more independent sources.  I have helped buy a couple of hundred copies of this book in pdf to email to all the MPs, MSPs, and MEPs in Scotland.

  

(2)  How to Get Expelled from School

A muscular piece of writing from a professor clearly exasperated by the antics and influence of climate alarmists in education and in the media.  I think it perhaps too intense, too sustained and unrelenting to be a hit with most school pupils.  But Plimer has done the heavy lifting here, and provides structure, focus and core content for perhaps as many as 30 to 40 shorter, more heavily illustrated school-level books at various levels.  I hope teachers with a writing bent will pick up from here, and write those lighter books.  They will be needed as part of the long clearing-up operation we face in our schools long after the political foolishness and superficial science of climate alarm has been well and truly consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history.  New books will be required.  In the meantime, and this meantime may last a year or a decade, pupils and parents have to cope as best they can with modern dogma about climate change.  Plimer clearly has his sights on the ‘activist teacher’, and often guides the reader to questions that might expose their real agendas, which are not the education of the young so much as the recruitment of them for ‘the cause’.  I have bought two copies, thanks to a relative carrying them over from Australia – the shipping cost for even a single book being a bit off-putting for me.  This is one for the sympathetic teacher, a reference work for class projects, and a succinct overview of many topics for the keenest of pupils in senior classes.  However, I hope that a great many more books will flow from it, or be inspired by it.  And in that 'meantime', climate realists everywhere could find this book a handy reference.  It is also now available as a pdf, and one group in Australia bought 300 copies to make available to schools there free of charge. [edit 28 Feb - I was wrong about there being a pdf version]
Note added 07 May 2012.

The Australian government has issued a rejoinder to Plimer's book.  As Delingpole has observed, you get most flak when you are over the target.  This looks like an attempted barrage; pdf available here: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/response-to-prof-plimer.aspx  Commentary on it here: http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/07/dept-of-climate-change-rebuts-plimers-book-for-sceptic-kids/

(3)  Don’t Sell Your Coat

‘As I’ve explained already, I was predisposed by birth

and upbringing to concede the high moral ground to

Al Gore and anybody else who told me that they were

fighting on behalf of Mother Earth.

I was wrong.’

This is a beautiful book in many ways.  First of all, in terms of attracting the attention of whoever may pick it up, it is beautifully laid out, typeset, and illustrated.  You might well buy the Kindle version, but I’ll bet you’ll soon come to wish you had something more tangible for the coffee table.  Second, it is extremely well written.  Friendly, fluent, flowing prose, and although dealing with very contentious issues, civil and coherent throughout.  Third, it provides candid glimpses into the life and the intellectual and political development of boy, youth, and grown man, one who is alive to the world of nature and to the world of ideas, and who thought on both deeply enough to shake off the left-wing (= ‘liberal’ in US-speak) conditioning all around him about climate change, and to think through his own thoughts and seek out data himself.  All of this is edifying, and very helpful and informative.  He does not ignore charts and numbers, but he slips them in so that your number-phobe won’t mind much if at all.  Overall, the book is mostly text, with some superb black and white pictures.  I am going to buy a good few copies to send to my friends and family, hoping this will help them see me and my similar views in a better light.  I tell them I am not the one with radical, controversial views ill-supported by theory and observations – that’s the other ‘side’.  I think this book could ensure that they’ll not sell their coats.  And maybe more of them will keep their hats on when the topic of climate comes up!