Tracking sources of climate alarmism in school curricula - Tallbloke on the trail of the lonesome pine

'Tallbloke' has recently published extracts from a document 'from a UK 'science based' agency' obviously intended to provide guidance for school teachers in the UK. In a series of 3 posts, he has highlighted the existence of this document, promised to critically review it, and published several sections.  Here are parts of one of them from his first post:

'Scientific experts from around the world agree that, whatever we do now, significant climate change is now unavoidable.

It will take decades to reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even then, because natural systems take time to readjust, global warming is a phenomenon that will figure prominently throughout the lives of children presently at school. This assumes that a concerted international effort will help reduce the effects of climate change. Early signs are not encouraging! If we do nothing, timescales will be reduced and the detrimental effects will be magnified. Sea levels may continue rising for centuries.

 ...

Consequences – general
Climate change will seriously disrupt our lives. While, on average, the globe will get warmer and receive more precipitation, individual regions will experience different climatic changes, with different consequences for the local environment. Among the most severe are:

• a faster rise in sea level;
• more heat-waves and droughts, resulting in more and more conflicts over water resources;
• more extreme weather events, producing floods and property destruction;
• a greater potential for heat-related illnesses and deaths, as well as the wider spread of infectious diseases carried by insects and rodents into areas previously free from them.

If climatic trends continue unabated, global warming will threaten our health, cities, farms and forests, beaches and wetlands, and other natural habitats.'

Here is another extract, clearly revealing activism and alarmism in a few sentences:

'Be part of the solution
Clearly, global warming is a grave problem. It will take everyone – governments, industry, communities, and individuals – working together to make a real difference. These are solutions that will help reduce global warming, and you can be a part of them.

But
• ‘Americans are driving more in less-efficient vehicles. Sales of sports utility vehicles and pick-up trucks have been amazingly strong considering the recession, and low pump prices are keeping people on the roads’ – Mike Lucky, analyst for John S Herold Inc, December 2001
• ‘One person flying in an airplane for one hour is responsible for the same greenhouse gas emissions as a typical Bangladeshi in a whole year.’ – Beatrice Schell, European Federation for Transport and Environment, November 2001
• ‘The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated [within 50 years] unless much more substantial reductions in emissions are made than those envisaged’ – Jonathan Gregory, climatologist at the University of Reading, April 2004, commenting on the fact that, upon melting, the world’s second largest icecap could raise sea levels by seven metres, flooding most coastal regions. Plot this on an OS Map of your nearest coastal area.'

Here is part of another extract from his second post:

' We are learning to …
Understand what climate change is and how it can be prevented.

Phase 1 Overview
Assess the children’s prior knowledge by asking the following questions:
• What is climate change?
• Why is it sometimes called ‘The Greenhouse Effect’/‘Global warming’?
• How can we prevent it?'

 And part of one from his third post:

' Place the two thermometers beneath a sun lamp or in the sun. Wait three minutes for the temperature to adjust, then record it on the paper. Turn the jar upside down and place one of the thermometers inside. Use the stopwatch to measure the temperature on each thermometer every minute for ten minutes. Record the measurements on the paper.
The air around the exposed thermometer is constantly changing, being replaced with cooler air throughout the experiment. The air surrounding the other thermometer, however, is trapped and becomes warmer and warmer. This is similar to what happens on the earth’s surface. The sunlight passes through the atmosphere and warms the earth’s surface. The heat radiating from the surface is trapped by greenhouse gases.'

Tallbloke has suggested readers contribute comments on these posts, and notes that  'the whole thing needs a thorough debunking, which we’ll undertake over a series of posts. When we’ve completed it, with references to scientific papers and the on the record statements of scientists, we’ll deliver this to the agency involved and report their response.'

Good.  If this shoddy material can be stopped in its tracks, that would be something very worthwhile.

Note added 8 November 2012.  A commenter at the Tallbloke site gives a link to the document on an educational site run by the Royal Meteorological Society (http://www.metlink.org/pdf/science_weather/climatechange.pdf).  The document is suspiciously anonymous - no dates, no names of authors on it for example.  I'm hoping it got planted there unofficially and that it will be removed in due course.  Josh has some informative cartoons from a conference held jointly by the RMS yesterday (http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/11/8/rmets-communicating-climate-science-cartoon-notes-by-josh.html).

Note added 20 November 2012.  Even alarmists are embarassed by some of the 'science experiments' used in schools to explain the so-called greenhouse effect: http://climatechangeeducation.org/hands-on/difficulties/heating_greenhouse_gases/ 


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An Intellectually-Corrupt Climate-Curriculum for Children Would Produce Results Like This

Bishop Hill draws attention to a newspaper article by the seasoned journalist Christopher Booker.  He published this in the Daily Telegraph on 6th October (scroll down in the article to reach it):

"Debunking climate propaganda earns you a 'fail’
Two weeks ago I described one of this year’s A-level General Studies papers which asked candidates to discuss various “source materials” on climate change. Drawn from propaganda documents wholly biased in favour of climate alarmism, these contained a plethora of scientific errors. I suggested that, if any clued-up students tore these “sources” apart as they deserved, they might have been given a “fail”.
Sure enough, an email from the mother of just such a student confirmed my fears. Her son is “an excellent scientist” who got “straight As” on his other science papers, but he is also “very knowledgeable about climate change and very sceptical about man-made global warming”. His questioning of the sources earned an “E”, the lowest possible score. His mother then paid £60 for his paper to be re-marked. It was judged to be “articulate, well-structured” and clearly well-informed, but again he was marked down with “E” for fail.
This young man’s experience speaks volumes about the way the official global-warming religion has so corrupted our education system that it has parted company with proper scientific principles. In his efforts to reform our dysfunctional exam system, Michael Gove should ask for this bizarre episode to be investigated."

The earlier article to which he refers is reproduced in my Climate Curricula page on this website, and it can also be directly reached here - again with a requirement to scroll down to find the relevant paragraphs.

Let us hope that this is investigated further by the relevant minister, Michael Gove, and by any others who could provide chapter and verse on this and possibly other examples of intellectual corruption in our climate curriculum in the UK.  The possibility of moral and political corruption is also present here, since it is clear that fear and anxiety can be generated by alarming tales involving CO2, and furthermore that particular political perspectives and actions are often tagged on.