Monckton from the Conference in Rio: scaring children with climate propaganda is child abuse, and parents should not tolerate it.

Scotland, and in particular Edinburgh has accumulated much to be ashamed about in the sorry saga of climate scaremongering of the past 30 years or so.  The University for sustaining alarmism, the Royal Society for its supine conformance to establishment views, and even the town council for giving an award to an intemperate leader of climate alarm.  But on the credit side of the ledger we do have some entries, and one of the most notable of these is the work of Lord Monckton.  His deep study of the subject from the outside, but with mathematical and logical assurance, has been impressive, as has been his willingness to engage in debate and make presentations on what is known, and what is not known or has been deliberately misleading about the causes and extent of climate variation.

The YouTube video below contains a report by Monckton from the UN conference which took place this month in Rio, a conference which seems to have well-reflected the moral and intellectual turpitude of the UN's handling of climate matters in so much as it was a failure on a grand and shaming scale.  His report contains many useful insights into what took place in Rio.  But of most interest for this blog, is when he notes in particular how the young have been exploited to take part in the conference, and addresses the question of children being deliberately scared about climate by teachers in public schools in the States, and how they may also be being taught to regard humanity, and therefore themselves, with loathing.

The report is part of an interview conducted by Alex Jones, who himself refers to young children (in 1st grade, and in kindergarten) in Austin, Texas, being reduced to tears by their teachers around climate and human impact on it.

Monckton urges parents to gather the best evidence they can find on what is actually being taught in their childrens' schools, and to consider, if no reforms are made, taking legal action against any teachers who seem guilty of propagandising children in and around climate.  He notes this is illegal in Britain, and expects that it may well be in the USA as well. 

His advice to parents who suspect their children are being abused by extremist teachers, is to try to get hard evidence on what is actually being taught.  As Monckton notes, 'little children are being taught by left-wing extremists that humans are a poison on the planet and should be wiped out' .  Jones describes such people, such extremists, as the scum of the earth.  Monckton notes that help with investigations into what is being taught in schools may be found in homeschooling organisations.

If parents find hard evidence of mental abuse of their children, and get no progress from the head teacher, then they should go to the police.  He maintains that even if only one or two abusive teachers get imprisoned, then the rest will 'run for cover' and stop their propagandising.

There is certainly a lot of climate material out there for children which is scary, and which denigrates humanity.  There are certainly 'activist teachers', and many who would encourage and facilitate such activism on climate.  There are certainly many reports of fear and anxiety amongst the young.  It would be a salutory thing if someone somewhere could bring all this together and achieve a successful prosecution on a charge of child-abuse.  That would surely help clean up climate curricula and help protect future generations from deliberate scaremongering aimed at producing 'little activists'.  It may even help reduce the damage that has been done to those childen who have already been harmed.
 
Added 30 June 2012.
The CFACT site has examples of posters and other images from the Rio conference,  Here is one from which one might well conclude that humans are being seen as a poison on the planet:

Added 10 November 2012
Re Edinburgh University and alarmism.  This video of a recent tv panel discussion of climate includes the participation of a very hot-headed young man who is actually a lecturer at that university: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf1a94SyNmg&feature=youtu.be

Added 11 November 2012 
Re Edinburgh University and alarmism.  This tv clips sees Edi lecturer David Reay report a child's question asked at one of his climate talks "When will I die?".  Sounds like he is quite impressive, at least to children.
  http://programmes.stv.tv/the-hour/showbiz/celebs-on-the-sofa/103085-superheroes-help-inspire-kids-to-learn-about-the-environment/

Posting here will be lighter than usual in June

Many distractions underway will be taking up most of my limited attention.  Hoping to get back to at least weekly posts by the end of the month.

Cry Wolf! about climate and watch how the money rolls in. Scare 'em and snare 'em, kids and all.

Charities 'spread scare stories on climate change to boost public donations'

The headline is from an article in The Telegraph way back in 2004.  Well worth reading the article in full, and well worth reading the academic paper it was triggered by.  The problem is still with us in 2012, as evidenced by this post on WUWT.  Anyone wanting to trace how, why, and where scaremongering materials for schoolchildren about climate change have been produced in recent years, will surely want to investigate the deliberate promotion of scare stories by fund-raisers as one contributing factor.

Here is how the Telegraph article begins:

'Environmental charities are exaggerating the threat of climate change in an attempt to raise more money from public donations, according to a report by Oxford University academics.

The charities, including WWF-UK, the world's biggest independent conservation organisation, claim that a quarter of the world's species are facing extinction by 2050.
 

However, the report says that this is a "woeful misrepresentation of the underlying science".

Many species said to be at risk - including the red kite and the Scottish crossbill - are not facing imminent extinction, according to the report by four academics from the biodiversity research group at Oxford's school of geography and the environment.'

Here is how the article ends:

'Dr Richard Ladle, a theoretical ecologist at Oxford University who also contributed to the report, said that most species cited as being in danger of extinction by 2050 "probably won't be".

Dr Ladle said that WWF's response to criticism of the claims was that the ends justified the means.
"Our argument is that we don't think the ends do justify the means because if you are hyping something to that extent, you are going to have the equivalent of 'compassion fatigue' in the charity sector.

"Biodiversity is declining worldwide, but if you keep telling people that we're on the verge of a global disaster, and then the process takes longer than people think it's going to take, we are going to be in trouble and the non-governmental organisations are going to be in trouble in terms of their funding.
"Change in diversity takes a long time. My gut feeling is it will take a lot longer than 2050."

However, a spokesman for WWF-UK insisted that it was unfair to judge fundraising in the same way as academic research. "Climate change is real and it endangers species," he said.  "But you have to simplify issues for appeals. There is no way you can cover all the science. Fundraising appeals are very emotional."

Bryony Worthington, a climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "The biodiversity research group cannot really claim that it constituted crying wolf, as there is potential for the worst-case scenarios to be realised." '

The moral turpitude of the campaigners is nicely revealed by that last quote: since there is always potential for fire in a crowded theatre, shouting 'Fire!' there is not an unreasonable thing to do - just think of all the lives you might save.  This young woman went on to be a key labourer in the rushed drafting of the UK's Climate Change Act, passed in 2008, a chore for which a grateful government elevated her to the House of Lords as a baroness.  The careless ignorance of that government is illustrated not just by the appalling nonsense of that Act, but also by its drive to scare the public and push climate alarmism into schools through, for example, distributing copies of Al Gore's drama 'An Inconvenient Truth' within which 'truth' is rather hard to find.  Their scary tv ad features in this dismal catalogue of propaganda efforts collated by the Washington Post.

The WWF was once held in high esteem for trying to do good works for wildlife around the world.  Now it is not so regarded by those who have seen the harm it has done through its relentless campaigning around climate.  It became a vehicle for the politically ambitious, providing what are now huge budgets for interfering in the affairs of many countries without being accountable to their electorates.  A recent report in Der Spiegel, highlighted here by Donna Laframboise, suggests that its reputation is about to fall even further or more widely:

Laframboise begins her comments with this:
'A splendid and disturbing investigative feature in Der Spiegel explains why the WWF doesn’t deserve your charitable donations.'


I completely agree.  It has, in my view, done a great deal of harm to society - not least through contributing to the scaring of children - and, incidentally, it has harmed wildlife too according to the Der Spiegel report (quote 'Undermining its own standards seems to be a specialty of the WWF.')

Meanwhile, one of the chief agents of the WWF's fundraising strategy, one Robert Napier, went on to become, in 2006, Chairman of the UK's Met Office.  Why would he do that?  Why would anyone hire him to do it?  What, in others words, were they thinking?  And what, of late, has been happening to the reputation of the Met Office?  Here is a tv clip highlighting their 'lamentable performance' with some vigour on, of all places, the BBC in 2010.  Here is an article in the printed media from 2011.  Extract: 'First it was a national joke. Then its professional failings became a national disaster. Now, the dishonesty of its attempts to fight off a barrage of criticism has become a real national scandal. I am talking yet again of that sad organisation the UK Met Office, as it now defends its bizarre record with claims as embarrassingly absurd as any which can ever have been made by highly-paid government officials.'   Here is a blog post from 2012: 'Met Office forecasting produces another epic failure.'

Meanwhile, in 2009,  a blogger wrote this on the BuyTheTruth site:
'The UK Meteorological Office, whose Hadley Centre runs the IPCC scientific assessment (“Working Group 1”), is now a department of the UK Ministry of Defence [as of 2011, it is no longer there]. And its Chairman is none other than Robert Napier, a green activist and alarmist with tentacles into some of the world’s most powerful drivers of climate alarmism and social control.'  [please see the rest of that post for chapter and verse on this.]


Climate alarmists, and those who can see advantage in such alarm, are embedded in 'the establishment' and in many major 'charities'.  We ought to be dismayed at what this has led to in terms of actions and materials designed to scare the young and recruit them to a political cause, but we no longer need be surprised by it.

To end on a more positive note, here are some words by Richard Lindzen in 2001 (as quoted here):
“The question of where do we go from here is an obvious and important one. From my provincial perspective, an important priority should be given to figuring out how to support and encourage science (and basic science underlying climate in particular) while removing incentives to promote alarmism. The benefits of leaving future generations a better understanding of nature would far outweigh the benefits (if any) of ill thought out attempts to regulate nature in the absence of such understanding.” 

 [Note added 20 October 2012:  The puzzling appointment of Robert Napier as Chairman of the UK's Met Office came to an end in September after six years.  A self-serving reflection on his time there can be found here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/barometer/people/2012-07/ready-steady.]

Some Grist for the Millers of a Calmer Curriculum on Climate for Schools

It may seem harsh, but my supposition of what the reasoning process inside the minds of many people who have been successfully convinced by the climate scaremongering of the last 30 years or so is something like this:

'Gosh, the climate is changing.  Gosh, humans have an impact on climate.  Gosh, CO2 is called a greenhouse gas - and greenhouses quickly get very hot and unpleasant.   Gosh, we are releasing huge amounts of CO2.'

Each one of these insights bar one will be new to most people, since they will not have not studied the climate system, nor even given it much thought.   I included the 'gosh's to reflect this..  This novelty makes them vulnerable to the big conclusion:

'Gosh, we are in big trouble!'

Yet the evidence from climate records, both ancient and modern, does not suggest that the additional CO2 will have a dramatic effect, nor possibly even a readily detectable effect as a driver of climate change.  Furthermore, calmer analysts than the handful most culpable for the acute alarm about CO2 we now have to endure, have argued that the impact on climate (including temperatures) of a further doubling of ambient levels of that gas will range from negligible up to 'quite hard to detect'.

Unfortunately the alarming view has won far greater political and financial support than the calming one, and it may well take many a long year for the educational system to turn its back with contempt and outrage at some of the materials that have been produced for young people.  The seriously misleading movie called 'An Inconvenient Truth' is bad enough, but it has helped trigger a wave of materials no better or even worse than it.

The alarm has been sounded, the fear is widespread, and a great many individuals and organisations now have a vested interest in what it has led to in terms of government and other well-funded initiatives, including educational ones.  So what is to be said to current and former pupils once the tide of alarm has clearly turned?  It will not do merely to declare that some scientists and others were too easily scared by their computers and too willing to abandon their basic adult responsibility of avoiding ill-founded scaremongering.  They shouted fire in our theatre, and it will take a lot of time before many of the audience can relax enough to get back without this extra anxiety to more or even to less important matters, including a basic enjoyment of the great successes of the human play to date.

One approach is to show the relative importance of factors other than CO2.  An article posted on the GWPF site today reports on the work of one Nicola Scafetta, who argues that some 60% of the global warming observed since 1970 can be explained by cycles he has looked for in the system.  From this point of view, the modest warming observed over that period (similar in size and duration to a warming observed earlier in the 20th century and not blamed on CO2) is largely 'natural' and to be expected.  This of course diminishes the presumed importance of CO2 increases over this time, and thereby might help calm things down a bit with regard to that gas.  Note that he presents his work as just a theory, and he is awaiting critical review from his peers.  Just as he should.  I suspect he is not part of a cabal intent on concealment of data and methods, and other manipulations to protect and promote their theory at almost any cost in terms of their integrity as men and as scientists.  I daresay there will be no Climategate revelations to shock us about his groups of coworkers and colleagues.

His method is based on identifying cycles in climate records, and using them to make hindcasts and forecasts, both with some appreciable success according to his account.  He identifies three major mechanisms behind these cycles:

'There are three major mechanisms acting together: gravity, nuclear fusion - luminosity production, magnetism.

1) The planets act on the sun mostly via gravitational tidal forcings that are characterized by the astronomical harmonics in the same way that the tides on the Earth are regulated by lunar/solar gravitational harmonics.

2) The sun is in a state of almost perfect balance between gravitational forces and nuclear fusion luminosity production. This balance is very sensitive to gravitational or luminosity changes.   If, for example, gravitational forces make some additional work (relative to a given average) on the sun, the sun responds by increasing its luminosity production to restore the balance, and vice-versa.  The planetary tides slightly modulate the gravitational work balance inside the sun, and the sun responds by modulating its luminosity production. Because the luminosity production is energetically around 1,000,000 times the gravitational work released into the star, the solar core should work as a great amplifier of the planetary gravitational tidal energy.  Thus, solar luminosity and all dynamical solar processes end up oscillating with a set of frequencies related to the planetary frequencies. This is the theory I propose in my last published paper, just last week.

3) The oscillating sun induces equivalent magnetic oscillations in the heliosphere. Magnetic oscillations have numerous effects: they modulate the incoming cosmic ray flux and modulate other electric currents in the heliosphere, that is, they regulate the space weather which is mostly made of electric phenomena. These phenomena occur together with the luminosity oscillations.

The Earth system is very sensitive to these electric changes because they cause ionization of the upper atmosphere and regulate cloud formation. Thus, the cloud formation will approximately follow the astronomical harmonics and make the albedo oscillate by about 1-3% . An oscillating albedo causes oscillations in the amount of light reaching the surface of the Earth, which is what causes the oscillations observed in the surface temperature.

Of course at the moment not all single physical mechanisms are understood, quantified or modeled.

Point 1 has can be easily quantified

Point 2 has been quantified, at least I made a proposal,  but a full model also needs empirical modeling because solar physics is not so advanced.

Point 3 needs the understanding of how clouds form in details and the relation with cosmic ray etc. that is still under study. The modeling can be empirically done.'

Now it strikes me that these could be diluted and enlarged upon and illustrated in ways which could make it interesting and accessible to high school pupils, and perhaps even pictorially for younger children since even they have been the target of alarmists intent on recruitment for their dubious cause.  We can partially counter their scaremongering with the presentation and enjoyment of broader theories, promoting a proper respect for observations and scientific method, and for the wonderful ability we have of using them to make more sense of things, and to make more and more progress in industry and agriculture.

(hat-tip for GWPF piece linked to above: Tom Nelson)

More Materials on Climate for the Conscientious Teacher

The Australian Carbon Sense Coalition has published a presentation by H. Leighton Steward which could serve as useful illustrated compendium of arguments against alarm about CO2 in the air.  It is 90 pages, mostly graphical, in a pdf.  Hat-tip: Tom Nelson.

Here is a montage I made of a few of the graphics (each one occupies a page to itself in the original):

I have spotted a few typos so far (I rather crudely corrected one above - see red u for nitrous oxide!), some parts say 'modified' or 'adapted' from source materials,  and some of the information does not have sources given, so some checking would be in order before using it, but overall my impression is hugely favorable.  This looks like a very handy document to have around, and to make use of for projects and illustrations on the classroom wall.  A lot of interesting exercises might follow merely from sharing out a selection of pages and challenging your pupils to check them out to see what further support, or criticism, they can devise or discover from other sources.

The Carbon Coalition encourages widespread use of their materials e.g. from their 'About' page:
'Material on this site is protected by copyright. However we encourage people to copy, print, resend or make links to any article providing the source, including web address, is acknowledged. We would appreciate notification of use.'

They provide more downloadable pdfs here: http://carbon-sense.com/carbon-sense/