Children recall what they have been taught about climate change: mostly nonsense

Passing though a Scottish village earlier this week, I bought the local newsletter.  I was, and remain, dismayed to find the above piece in amongst more worthy and more cheerful stuff about museum visits and celebrating the royal wedding.  The uncorrected English errors in this, and other pupil reports, suggest that perhaps neither teacher nor editor checked the texts before publication.  But I understand that it is not fashionable to point out such errors these days, and so I am inclined to think that the pieces were reviewed at least for factual accuracy before being submitted.  If so, the climate change report shown above is evidence that this phase of the war on children's minds may well have been won by those using CO2-alarm to gain political and financial advantages for their various causes.  The children, and their teachers, are the immediate casualties, and they have my sympathies.  But this propaganda war is not over while we still have the freedom and determination to comment, ask questions, criticise, and point out errors and misleading advice.  A lot more of such activity is clearly required.

[Note: 'P7' stands for Primary 7 - the final year of primary school, when pupils are typically 11 years old]

Back to work here soon

There has been quite a gap in posting here, and as one commenter noted, that makes a blog a less interesting place to visit!  I cannot see managing daily posts myself, but I have some ideas to encourage others to take part here and will post these shortly.

My reflection on this blog's value so far, is that the main beneficiary has been me - it has been a lively way to get back into climate politics and science.  From the comments on the last post, and also from a few emails prompted by it, I know that at least some people have found value in exactly the ways I hope for this blog:

        # help them protect their own children from the worst of the Climate Alarm Industry's excesses, by getting some early warning of them
       # keeping an eye on policies and curricula in this area (and I hope the blog will also help those actively campaigning for reform or removal of some of them)
       # as a source of useful information, and reference



I think the topic of climate-alarm-based propaganda in schools, which may be increasingly disguised by talk of 'sustainability' - the AGW foundation being treated as a given - is too important to walk away from.  This blog does not have a large readership, but it does appear quite prominently in some Google or other searches on relevant topics and so I always have hope of some happy happenstance encounter by someone who can make good use of the content here. 

Thank you to all those who commented, or emailed me.  Your remarks are very encouraging, and I will be carrying on with the blog.

Climate Lessons Pausing for a Break: meantime, comments invited on this blog’s past and future.

When I get back early in May, it will be close to this blog’s first birthday, and I plan to review what use this blog has been to me or anyone else, and what it might do over a further year. 

For me, it has been one means of getting back to some familiarity with climate theories and observations, after a gap of more than thirty years, and perhaps more importantly, with climate politics and school curricula.  I remain more convinced than ever that there has been a deliberate and gross exaggeration of the role of rising CO2 levels on climate, and a grossly irresponsible and melodramatic promotion of this rather weak theory outside of the walls of universities and other places of research - the only places where it really belongs.  A new headache tablet would have been subjected to far more rigorous review, and yet have been capable of far less harm without it, than the overblown declarations of settled science concerning the impact of CO2 on the very complex climate system.  That it is has been accepted with such confidence by policy makers points to some profound weakness at least in our political if not in our psychological make up.  That it is being pushed on to children in our schools remains a great concern over the potential for harm to their spirits, their attitude to science and technology, and indeed to society itself.

But has the blog been of much use to others?  It seems to get 20 to 60 new unique visitors most days, with an all-time high of  607 on one day this year, and it is now achieving 4 to 5,000 pageviews each month.  Far fewer than some climate blogs get every day!  I had hopes that it could serve as a convenient repository of ideas, arguments, and links for others engaging in more direct calls or campaigns for reform of school curricula and of the kinds of people, organisations, and materials allowed in or near schools to promote their causes under the guise of ‘climate change’.  The widespread dissemination of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ to schools in the UK remains, in my view, a sad disgrace.  It may be relatively rarely used nowadays (?), but I presume we remain vulnerable to more like it from the efforts of zealots for whom threatening the emotional wellbeing of children is not so much an obstacle as an objective in their drive for more political influence or power.

So, whether you are in the select band of frequent visitors which I hope exists, or you have just stumbled upon this place, please let me know what you think about it.  What kind of purpose might it serve for you, and what might be done differently to make it better for that purpose? 

Ten-Minute Trainer on the Quality of Climate Alarmism: UNEP people exposed as shoddy, superficial, sly, sneaky, supercilious, and seriously stupid.

Shoddy: '50 million climate refugees by 2010'  Good soundbite, great for the headlines, good for the funding.  Pity about the lack of substance.  Here is a graphic they used with that title:

(Thanks toDonna Laframboise, here: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/04/16/the-missing-map/)

More use is made of the soundbite here, in 2008: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=27094&Cr=refugee&Cr1
Extract: 'In a related development, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a statement today that a new kind of casualty was being created by climate change: the environmental refugee.

“Rising sea levels, increasing desertification, weather-induced flooding, and more frequent natural disasters have, and will increasingly become, a major cause of population displacement in several parts of the world,” the statement said.

Citing a report from the UN University, UNEP said that there were now more than 19 million people officially recognized as “persons of concern” – people who are likely to be displaced because of environmental disasters. UNEP said that figure is expected to grow to about 50 million by the end of 2010.'


Superficial: there was and is no substance to it, merely a highlighting of aspects of climate with a casual leap to those millions of 'climate refugees'.  Gavin Atkins spotted it, here: http://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/   Extract: 'However, a very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world.'

Sly, Sneaky: The original claim was pure spin on the part of UNEP, and now they are trying to airbrush it out of their online records.  Anthony Watts has their number, here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/


Supercilious: try clicking on the UNEP location of the above map and 'story', and you'll get this on part of your screen:

Seriously stupid: they have provided more straws for the camel's back of public credulity.  And they have provided an informative '10-minute trainer' for any class investigating manipulation and moral turpitude in the area of climate politics.

And, talking of straws, one to clutch in these dark days of intellectual and political oppression in climate science and policy is the fact that the wrong 'side' of this 'debate' has so many people of such low calibre.  In fact, I cannot think of any that I would class as being of high calibre.  But they have certainly been influential.

(Hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/4/16/unexposed.html )


UPDATE.  WUWT has an update, explaining it was not just UNEP, but the UN itself taking us for that particular ride of ridiculousness:

'UPDATE3: Reader Andrew30 provides the linkage of this farce to the main body of the UN, not just the UNEP as some have complained.

General Assembly, 8 July 2008
GA/10725
Sixty-second General Assembly
Informal Meeting on Climate Change and Most Vulnerable Countries (AM)

Statements
SRGJAN KERIM, President of the General Assembly, opened the discussion by saying that 11 of the last 12 years had ranked among the 12 warmest since the keeping of global temperature records had begun in 1850. Two points were significant: that climate change was inherently a sustainable-development challenge; and that more efforts than ever before must be exerted to enable poor countries to prepare for impacts because it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010.

Panel Discussion
The Assembly then held a panel discussion moderated by author and journalist Eugene Linden. The panellists were Reid Basher, Senior Coordinator at the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction; Ian Noble, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank; and Veerle Vandeweerd, Director of the Environment and Energy Group at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Source: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10725.doc.htm'

They had no shame, no sense, no science.

Not Just Another Brick in the Wall: hey! teachers! leave them kids alone! – a climate change activist and psychotherapist has second thoughts about pushing her beliefs on to children

Ro Randall, who describes herself as ' psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist researching, writing and blogging on climate change', has posted some good thoughts on why climate activists pick on children, and why they might want to stop doing so:

‘There is a real risk of raising levels of anxiety amongst children that will not only cause distress in the immediate term but will in the long term lead to those children turning against the environmental causes we hoped they might espouse.’

[She is right there.  I have collected links to examples of such anxieties here] .  

Later in the same post, she writes:

‘But the deeper question is – why are adults so keen to focus on children? Why concentrate on the weakest, least influential members of society and ask them to act? The answer I think lies in the process psychoanalysis calls projection where unwanted feelings or parts of the self are split off and attributed to somebody else. “I’m not angry/selfish/mean/neglectful – you are/he is/she is/they are.”

Climate change makes most adults working on it feel powerless. We compare the actions we are capable of with the scale of the problem and feel weak. We look at the extent of our influence and feel helpless. We struggle to combat our contrary desires to consume and feel shame. We feel like children. Children – who are actually socially and politically powerless – are an ideal receptacle for the projection of these uncomfortable and unacceptable feelings.

By focusing on the weakest members of society and influencing them, the not-very-powerful adults make themselves feel better at the expense of the absolutely-not-powerful children. By making them act, we prove that we are not as powerless as we feel.’

I welcome this essay as a step in the right direction.  But the writer clearly assumes that the arguments for ‘climate change’ (used here in the political, 'it is a crisis due to us' sense) are convincing.  But at least she is digging into things, and raising questions about the value of targeting children for the sake of the 'cause'.

When will we see a psychiatric investigation into what has driven so many people to be so agitated about a weak theory, unsupported by observational evidence of weather, sea levels, ice extents, etc?  Part of it is due to the slick PR of such as the IPCC, WWF, and many other groups who have found great advantage in campaigning on this topic.  But yet, what about these things:

# the lack of observational support for CO2 as a major driver of climate, and a long list of failed ‘projections’ and doomsayings (1) [this number links to illustrative References, below]

# the cogent criticisms of the alarmism made by distinguished scientists and others with valid insights to contribute (2)

# the shoddy sub-culture of a few dozen scientists and computer modellers revealed by Climategate and by investigations into the IPCC – the false claims of consensus, the misleading talk of ‘thousands of scientists’, the sneaky deviousness of ‘hide the decline’, the speciousness of the hockey stick and other suppressions of the Medieval Warm Period, and much more. (3)

# the clearly vested interests of many campaigners, whether it be to attract investment into carbon trading, alternative energy, or merely financial donations to political bodies and fake charities.  There is a great deal of money sloshing around out there promoting 'climate change, the crisis'. (4)

# the occasional glimpses into an ugly, totalitarian impulse in some climate campaigners  (5)

# the fatuous ‘solutions’ put forward which even proponents admit they have neither costed nor estimated the efficacy of, or they concede that the possible effects of which will be rather hard to detect for a thousand years or so (6)

Given all this, why are so few journalists, or psychologists for that matter, having a field day with exposing it all?  I can only think of 2 doing so at all frequently in the UK (Booker, Delingpole).  Why are so few politicians enraged by the nonsense policies being foisted upon them, of which the UK's Climate Change Act must be the front-runner in madness. 

I hope that Ro Randall will one day turn her talents in this direction: to help us understand this worldwide  ‘madness of crowds’ that has so poisoned discourse about climate and the future, and caused a yet-to-be-reckoned harm to the spirits and attitudes of young people across the world, and a more easily reckoned harm to the physical wellbeing and prospects of, in particular, the poorest people in a wide range of countries.

References (these are just illustrative - the tips of various information icebergs)

(1) Examples using one web site alone: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=predictions

(2) Examples of scientists objecting to climate alarmism, using one web site alone:

http://climatephysics.com/2010/10/08/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/

http://climatephysics.com/2010/09/19/open-letter-to-the-secretary-general-of-the-united-nations-by-101-scientists/

http://climatephysics.com/2010/09/19/open-letter-to-the-chancellor-of-germany-by-130-scientists/

http://climatephysics.com/2010/09/22/senator-inhofes-senate-minority-report-on-climate-change/

(3) Donna Laframboise has led the way on researching into the practices of the IPCC:

http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/category/ipcc/

(4) Jo Nova has identified some financial heavyweights in the climate alarmism sector:

http://joannenova.com.au/tag/money/

This pdf copy of her SPPI report is worth getting:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf

(5) Where to begin?  Use the search box here with ‘No Pressure’: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/

(6) Andrew Bolt has exposed much of the climate nonsense in Australian politics:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/it-pays-to-check-out-flannerys-predictions-about-climate-change-says-andrew-bolt/story-e6frfhqf-1226004644818

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tim_1000_years_flannery_gives_the_government_a_millennium_bug

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100079237/aussie-sceptics-destroy-eu-carbon-commissioner/ (follow link given to hear Bolt interviewing a hapless EU apparatchik)