Pages of Reference Materials

Friday 30 August 2019

Children becoming 'the brainwashed front for the climate religion'

Sanjeev Sabhlok has written an excellent piece for the Times of India entitled

'Climate hysteria is a great opportunity to teach children to ask questions'


Here are the introductory paragraphs:

'Most adults have little or no time to investigate the claims about climate change. They either accept them, assuming that “authority figures” have done their homework, or sit on the fence.
Some consider that only scientists are supposed to understand science. But everyone has an equal place at the table of science and if our questions are not answered or the evidence doesn’t stack up, we are free to reject that “science”.
Climate alarm has long given up the pretence of any link to science. Millions have been successfully “converted” – and they get duly worked up if their belief is questioned: “have you been outside recently?”, “erratic climate events are everywhere!”, “rainfall is getting less every year!”, “flash floods, including in Rajasthan are clear proof!”.
Some of them have gone to the next stage and become missionaries. They go about distributing their religious pamphlets in schools, indoctrinating innocent lower-IQ children. Hopelessly confused children like Greta Thunberg are being churned out as a result. At an age when children like her should be learning to ask questions, they have become the brainwashed front for the climate religion. There is little difference between such “committed” youth and Hitler’s Youth or the youth churned out by ISIS’s madrassas.
In my view, if anyone tells a child that climate change is man-made just because someone says so (such as a missionary “scientist” but now increasingly, “royals” and “celebrities”), that person has committed a sin against the enlightenment, against human progress.
I would personally have been supportive of Greta Thunberg if she had been a prodigally intelligent child who dazzled her teachers with amazing questions, then found the answers and was now promoting a view that she thoroughly understood. It would not matter to me that she had come to the wrong conclusion. After all, no one can be right on everything all the time. But she suffers, sadly, from mental issues and speaks as a missionary – she cannot answer a single question about the science.
We are very prone as a species to superstitions, panics, delusions, manias and hysterias. We have gone through thousands of them (many still underway), such as religion, alchemy, witchcraft, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, the Y2K bug, the SARS panic, much of Ayurveda and Chinese traditional medicine and all of homeopathy.
The climate hysteria will ultimately pass, but to avoid such hysterias in the future we need to get our children to start thinking and stop believing. Climate change is a superb topic for teachers and students to explore.'
Sabhlok is proposing something positive to help prevent such madness again.  His notion of incorporating regular 'question-asking' into school curricula seems well worthy of consideration.  But it may also be useful in the shorter-term for helping children and young adults recover from the scaremongering about climate which they have been exposed to.  See the full article for examples of the questions Sabhlok thinks would be relevant on climate.

Note added later 30/8/19.   Here is an example of what we are up against - teachers wanting to encourage even more children to 'strike' over 'climate disruption'.  I doubt if a single one of these children can make a coherent case for alarm, or get beyond the shallow slogans of the zealots.  After all, I daresay neither can most of the adult zealots.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/30/climate-strike-teachers-students-greta-thunberg

Thursday 29 August 2019

CFACT: The UN’s cadre of misled youth

Picture: CFACT
'Sustainability' is UN-Speak for 'Suppressed Development', but it is also the latest 'Cloak of Green'* under which ambitious political and financial operators act in pursuit of their goals.   It sounds such a nice and harmless concept, sustainability, but it is not.  One organisation which clearly realises this is CFACT - see for example the book called 'Sustainability' available in their bookstore.  See also this new post by Craig Rucker on their blog:

'The UN is employing a disturbing tactic to push its “sustainability” agenda at its Civil Society Conference in Salt Lake City.
CFACT’s undercover reporter is on the ground in Salt Lake City, exposing how the UN heavily indoctrinates young people with talking points, then presents them on stage to regurgitate them.  “Look at the wisdom these young people have come to impart,” the rest of us are supposed to conclude.
Disney Channel’s Luke Mullen, told us, “I do believe that [school] strikes for the climate are just as important as education. Why should we be studying and preparing for a future that might not come?”  Watch CFACT Undercover’s full interview with Luke Mullen at CFACT.org.
Mullen told CFACT that he is following in the wake of poor Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish girl who has been so traumatized by the narrative of impending doom she’s been fed, that she walked out of school to become a propaganda poster child.  She’s encouraging kids like Luke Mullen to walk out too.  Greta just arrived in New York City on a carbon fiber yacht sponsored by the royal family of Monaco.  That she is protesting fossil fuels on an elite yacht made from oil and propane is lost on her.  She lacks the education and context to know.
Skip learning and just repeat the line’s you’ve been fed — These poor, exploited young people.  Think the mainstream media will expose this shameless trick?  Fear not.  CFACT’s on the job.
We interviewed Nicolette Templier, aka “Miss New York Earth USA.”  Her answers are simply a regurgitation of UN climate change alarmist talking points on everything from polar ice to polar bears, that fall to pieces when confronted with the facts.  Watch CFACT undercover’s full interview at CFACT.org.
The climate and “sustainability” crowd don’t like it when the facts are introduced into the UN proceedings one bit.  When the facts that debunk the UN’s dangerous agenda show up, the UN’s youth cadres drop their smiles and bare their claws.  You may remember CFACT’s coverage at UN COP 24 in Poland last fall.  The UN formally authorized an angry mob of left-wing youth to interrupt and shout down the Trump Administration’s energy presentation.  Shouting over instead of listening and responding?  How’s that for UN “civil society?”
CFACT is tackling this challenge on multiple fronts.  We expose the Green-Left’s exploitation of youth.  We inject facts into UN proceedings like the “sustainability” conference in Salt Lake.  We fairly present all sides of these important issues to thousands of young people through our CFACT Collegians program and challenge them  to think for themselves.
Facts and education are the antidote to propaganda and ignorance.'

* 'Cloak of Green' is the title of an important book by Elaine Dewar.

Tuesday 27 August 2019

Eco-Porn designed to terrify children was used at a BBC concert 'for all the family'


'When buying tickets for a classical music concert based on the lost words of nature, parents may have expected a simple, poetic celebration of bluebells, conkers and otters.  Families who attended the BBC Proms  this weekend were instead confronted with catastrophic warnings from climate change campaigners.

BBC Proms, a celebration of classical music intended to be non-political, opened its 49th Prom of the season with a new composition based on the words of Greta Thunberg warning: “We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.”’

She goes on to report a scathing review of this shocking event:
It’s unfortunate that the supposedly impartial BBC turned a promising event into an opportunity for eco-propaganda,” he said, in a two-star review, accusing the BBC of the “blatant politicising of an event aimed at children”.'

(hat-tip Greenie Watch)

'Unfortunate' to say  the least.  Well let us hope that this disgraceful abuse of a much-loved annual musical event will open up many more eyes to the corruption of the BBC, an organisation in thrall to eco-fanatics, and up to its neck in the moral and intellectual slops of hyperbolic climate alarmism.