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.

Not much chance of posting until mid-September

My hopes of getting back to regular posting in July were dashed, as are they for August.  I am now looking to mid-September before getting back into the swing of it.  In the meantime, I am working on climate materials again, and I look forward to adding my tuppence worth to help resist the foolishness, and sometimes inhumanity, that characterises so much of the outpourings in and around the attribution of climate variation to human actions.  I hope that some previous posts and the various 'Pages' and links provided here will prove to be useful and informative for others engaged in the same struggle.

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.