Good! In the USA, 18-29 year-olds seriously divided about 'climate change'.

Picture source

Tales of youngsters at school growing weary of relentless 'global warming' alarmism appear occasionally, but are the brainwashing efforts of immoral, ill-informed, or irresponsible campaigners nevertheless succeeding?

Not as much as they might like.  At least in the USA, according to a recently published survey from the Harvard Institute of Politics.

This was a survey of people 18 to 29 years old - in other words those who have spent their entire lives under the shadow of the CO2 Frenzy, and during almost all of whose lives, the overall global warming trend has been around a distinctly un-alarming 1 deg C per century, and sometimes with no rising trend at all for many years at a time.

The summarised responses to each question can be found here: http://iop.harvard.edu/sites/default/files_new/IOPSpring15%20PollTopline.pdf

Four of them mention climate change, and these results are reproduced below:

20-24 Now thinking specifically about Barack Obama, do you approve or disapprove of the way he is handling: 

20. Climate change.
Approve........................................................... 50%
Disapprove ..................................................... 48%
Decline to answer............................................. 2%

85. Government should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth. 
Strongly agree ................................................. 12%
Somewhat agree .............................................. 20%
Neither agree nor disagree .............................. 44%
Somewhat disagree ......................................... 12%
Strongly disagree ............................................. 11%
Decline to answer............................................... 1%

96. Hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ is a process used to more easily extract natural gas and oil by injecting a highly pressurized mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground. Supporters say that using this technique on American natural gas deposits can boost the country’s energy independence, can lower energy costs and create jobs. Opponents say that the technique can contaminate drinking water and air, can cause small earthquakes and contribute to climate change. Based on what you know at this time, do you support or oppose the use of fracking in America? 
Strongly support............................................. 9%
Somewhat support........................................ 31%
Somewhat oppose ....................................... 35%
Strongly oppose ........................................... 23%
Decline to answer........................................... 2%

97. Which of the following statements comes closer to your point of view? 
The United States should take action to address climate change, regardless of whether or not other nations have agreed to it....... 67%

The United States should only take action to address climate change if most other nations agree to take action as well............ 31%

Decline to answer............................. 2%

What are we to make of this?  Well, once again 'climate change' in the survey is not adequately defined, and this may well be deliberate.  The term is, after all, a neutral one when taken at face value.  But we know that CO2 Alarm campaigners do not use it that way - they use it as short-hand for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (cagw).  How different might the responses have been if this had been used instead, especially if preceded by 'the conjecture of'?

So we must take the results with a large pinch of salt since they will depend on just how the ostensibly neutral and un-alarming phrase 'climate change' was interpreted.

But what is clear, is that opinion (about something called 'climate change') is very divided indeed.  Some  48% don't approve of President Obama's approach (and he bigs it up big-time as a planetary crisis).  Some 57% fail to even just 'somewhat agree' that 'government should do more to curb climate change', whatever it was taken to be.  40% support or strongly support fracking, an activity widely detested by CO2 Alarmers.  These alarmers might well be pleased, however, that about two-thirds of the survey respondents think that the United States should 'take action' to address whatever it is.  But since that could include wanting the government to encourage more fossil-fuel power stations to help citizens cope with climate variation, it is not by any means conclusive!

The full-time Alarm campaigners will be pleased that there is still work for them to do, still a need to jet around the world to exotic places for glamorous conferences, still plenty need to make portentous speeches about the end of the world, still a need to raise funds for their chosen way of life.  But others may be pleased that the brainwashing does not seem to have overwhelmed young people, and that this is encouraging.

Now to help develop a scientifically appropriate view on all of this, I commend the following words from Richard Lindzen, whom I regard as the world's most distinguished climate scientist:

'The implausibility or even outright silliness through which global warming became global warming catastrophism is so extensive that one hardly knows where to begin. It is crucial to emphasise catastrophism because the situation is made even more incoherent by the intentional conflation of simple basic results that are widely agreed upon, but which have no catastrophic implications, with catastrophism itself. Currently, there really is quite a lot of basic agreement within the climate science world: 

• climate change exists 

• there has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended around the beginning of the 19th century (well before emissions are regarded as contributing significantly) 

• human emissions can contribute to climate change 

• levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been increasing. 

None of this is controversial and none of this actually implies alarm.'

This is from a lecture given in 2015.  The text is here, and well worth reading in full: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/03/Lindzen.pdf

In fact, why not print it out and give copies to any 18 to 29 year-olds of your acquaintance?

Oh Mothers, Tell Your Children: don't trust museums on climate change

Picture: The Guardian

Mothers, and fathers concerned about your children getting a fair and balanced view of climate variation, please read this article by John Tierney from which the following is an extract:

'A few years ago, I went to the museum and gave a quiz to a class of high-school students who had just toured it. I asked about two long-term trends in the United States: Was air pollution getting better or worse, and was the amount of forestland increasing or decreasing? None of the students—nor their teacher—got both questions right. Most had no idea that air pollution has been declining for decades while the amount of forestland has been increasing.

You can’t blame them, given what they’d just seen at the Hall of Biodiversity. The message is unrelentingly gloomy, and sometimes just outdated or wrong. There’s an image of a forest supposedly decimated by acid rain, which was a much-proclaimed eco-catastrophe three decades ago—until an extensive federal study concluded that there was ‘”no evidence of widespread forest damage.” There are warnings of resource shortages and admonitions to “reduce, reuse, recycle—and rethink.” One exhibit panel claims that “global warming has already resulted in more frequent and severe coastal storms as hurricanes,” which is contradicted by both data and theory. There has been no upward trend in hurricanes over the past half century (the last decade has been especially calm), and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictsthat “future changes in storms are likely to be small.” A video shows much of Florida and Long Island disappearing under the rising ocean—representing a sea-level rise far beyond what IPCC projects.

The hype was even worse when the museum presented a special show on climate change in 2008. The exhibition, which toured other science museums in the United States and abroad, displayed a model of lower Manhattan under 16 feet of water, while the rest of the world was ravaged by storms, droughts, fires, and plagues. In a review of the exhibition for the New York Times, Edward Rothstein criticized it for being concerned less with science than with frightening visitors. “What we need from a museum is not proselytizing but a more reflective analysis,” he wrote, complaining that the exhibition “made me feel like an agnostic attending church and listening to sermons about damnation.” '

So, the message is that parents need to be ready to protect their children from museum exhibits about climate.  The reality is that the world has been improving in just about every environmental measure you might think of.  Furthermore, evidence continues to accumulate about the gross hype and scaremongering in some scientific circles on climate: the reality of the benign warming trend is ignored, the fantasy of incompetent computer models is preferred.   A quick check of the blogosphere right now, supplies these examples within seconds: (1), (2) , (3), (4) and (5). 

Several posts have raised concerns about museums on this blog in previous years:

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/three-ways-to-get-at-young-about.html

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/p/climate-wisdom-open-letters-and.html

(scroll down to '2015 Open Reply to US Museums ')

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/p/climate-sites-aimed-at-children-or.html

(use Ctrl-f to find at least 3 'museum' mentions)

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/p/climate-curricula-school-curricula.html

(use Ctrl-f to find at least 3 'museum' mentions)

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/president-obamas-last-resort-new.html

http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/scaring-children-about-climate-some.html

The basic message is: children are at risk of being seriously misled by museums about climate and other environmental matters.

Children asking about Earth Hour? Give them a copy of this.

Earth Hour: A Dissent by Ross McKitrick 

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here is my response. 

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water. Many of the world's poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that's how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonises electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don't want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in "nature" meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don't want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilisation with all its trade-offs is something to be ashamed of.


Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

Source: http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/earthhour.pdf

Note added 20 March 2016.  The advice in the title would be better to have been 'Read this before talking with them about it again.'  Since the text is likely to be hard for young children.
Note added 23 March 2016.  Here is an excellent essay on Earth Hour:  http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-dangerous-narcissism-of-earth-hour/18165  'No, the problem with Earth Hour is that it makes a villain out of electricity provision, the very thing that’s allowed humanity to rise out of abject poverty and reach the standard of living we enjoy today. So, since you probably won’t hear it anywhere else, here are just a few of the tremendous benefits of cheap, reliable electricity: ...'

CO2 Scare Campaigners Plumb Newish Depths by Pushing Children to the Frontline

Photo: Clayton Aldern

How low will they sink?  CO2 Scare campaigners use children to push their case in an American court.  They have been building up to this for a while.

It is long since past time that I got this blog up and running with posts again.

  This disturbing news item will spur me to do just that.

The harm that such campaigners have already helped bring to children includes starvation, energy poverty, suppressed economic development, and of course a terrible fear of the future.

Meanwhile, the climate system continues to act just as it might if the rising CO2 levels, from whatever source, were of little consequence.   Where these increasing levels have had a noticeable impact, however, has been in helping increase food supplies by virtue of boosting plant growth.

Note added 22 March 2016.  More on this shameful business here:  http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/03/09/us-youth-take-climate-fight-to-oregon-courthouse/
Note added 12 April 2016.  A judge has ruled that the case can go ahead:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/10/federal-court-rules-in-favour-of-plaintiffs-demanding-climate-action/

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to All Who Like Coming Here

https://sites.google.com/site/susansharpsongs//home/sheet-music-1/suantrai

The beautiful music and sentiments generated by people inspired by Christianity are wonderful to behold.  A non-religious person like me can still be bowled over by them.  This is a good time of year to note that while so many people take a break from their routine to have joyful celebrations.

Shameful for Oz: the AAS goes Full Recruiting Sergeant for CO2 Derangement Activism in Schools

Picture credit

Jo Nova has a guest post up from Tony Thomas on the materials being provided for Australian schools by the Australian Academy of Science.  You might have thought that the Royal Society in London had been scraping the bottom of the barrel on climate, but they are being left behind down-under in getting to the children.  Jo introduces her own comments on the post with
'Wow. Just wow. Tony Thomas has uncovered the material the AAS provides to thousands of Australian teachers and students under the guise of science education resources.  As far as climate science goes, they might as well have hired Greenpeace. '

Here are some extracts from Thomas' work, under headings which I have added in bold:

Blatant Recruitment

There’s a special Activity 6.6 Climate change and Politics. “Lesson outcomes: At the end of this activity students will …  appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.”

The young climate zealots are  to pester politicians: “Encourage students to engage with a local MP or councillor about science policy, environmental concerns and action. Do they have a voice? How would they vote in light of current policy and action?”

And yet more. Teens are to invite local community environmental campaigners and champions into the class, “with your teacher’s permission”, to “discuss their cause and the science behind their campaign.” 

The   Climate Change Champions guide for teachers explains,

“Step 1: Start with a broad discussion on local champions and heroes – who are they?”

And   “Students learn more about climate change action by studying environmental champions and campaigns in their local areas. What cause would you stand up for?” 

Occupy Highpoint Shopping Centre, perhaps?

Junk Science

To really catch the teenagers’ interest, the Academy transposes climate instruction into song bymelodysheep,   “A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov.”

The song’s lyrics go:

Climates all start in the sky/

When the C02 is high/

the temperature is high/

Moving together in lock step/

When the C02 is low/

the temperature is low/

Moving together/

We can change the world.

(The song  is wrong. Even the orthodox climate crowd  accepts ice core evidence that CO2 has lagged  temperature by 800 years or so.).

“Hottest summer EVER” shouts a sign about Australia’s 2012-13 summer, a big fib to children doing the “Big Scale” module as the Academy has no idea what temperatures got to in the pre-1900 millenia. Indeed the 1890s peak could well have been hotter than any in the 2000s – the Met Bureau  trashed all of its temperature data  pre-1910. Also odd is the Academy claim here that “climate” involves a 20 year span of weather[7]; the convention is 30 years. That’s an own-goal: the warming halt is now nearly 20 years and hence significant on the Academy’s definition of climate.

Irresponsible Stupidity

In “The Experts Speak”, 16 year old students are advised to “Click here to hear some scientific points of view.” What they get is videos of conspiracist Naomi Oreskes  (warming sceptics = tobacco lobbyists); Greenpeace Australia/Pacific ex-CEO and Gore-worshipper Linda Selvey; US alarmist teacher Greg Craven (caution: not our ACU vice-chancellor Greg Craven); and a producer of alarmist videos James Balog. Alongside them is a suffering earth-globe holding a sign, “Act Now”.

Oreskes should be the  front-running joke with her fiction about a mass climate extinction of kittens and puppies in 2023 (not cited in any Academy material). But Craven takes the cake:

“The worst case – this is sea level rising 10-20ft, entire countries disappearing, hundreds of millions of people displaced, crowding in their neighbours causing widespread warfare over scarce resources and longstanding hatreds. Entire forests dying … a world that makes Al Gore look like a sissy Pollyanna with no guts, sugar coating the bad news.”

The Teachers’ Guide says:   “As a class watch the video by Greg Craven and have a class vote on whether action is warranted.“

Fanaticism

Other videos feature  Gore himself in another of his error-riddled rants. This time (2009), he  claims that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted,  and agonises about polar ice shrinkage –the Academy does not alert kids that Arctic sea ice has recovered strongly and global sea ice trends show nothing abnormal.  ( Arctic sea ice extent is now at its highest level for November since at least 2005). The Antarctic, Gore says, “is now in negative ice balance” –   it’s actually positive,  says NASA .

In yet more  inaccuracy, Gore claims weather disasters “have been increasing at an absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented rate.”

Fantasy

At the end of term, students are invited to select a (green) world conference  to hypothetically attend, including (by backward time travel) the June 2012 Rio+20 Agenda-21-touting jamboree. Links lead them to the preliminary conference on “Degrowth in the Americas” in May 2012 in Montreal, run by and for  certifiable  eco-lunatics. Aiming for a  “post growth healing earth” they want to send Western economies backwards to “avert ecological collapse while enhancing social justice and improving life’s prospects… and build towards a truly prosperous world.” A click away, kids can browse  a paper on eco-friendly and humane policies of the Cuban government.

Nonsense 

At Year 9 (age 15) level, kids are shown an ABC video about Arctic sea ice disappearing, with plenty of spooky music and shots of melting ice. An unnamed scientist intones, “There is a group that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we will have an ice-free Arctic – as soon as that!” Reality: the 2013 minimum  figure was about  5.1 million square km of ice. Have science teachers been pointing that out – or might such objectivity hurt their careers?

Excuses?

It may seem  a  wonder that none of 9000 high school science teachers (let alone Academicians of integrity) has had the wit or integrity to complain to the Academy about force-feeding climate-activism to students. Those with qualms may be relying on the Nuremberg defence – “I was following union orders”. The all-powerful teachers’ unions have not only endorsed  “action on climate change” and “lobbying in support of a sustainable low carbon economy” but proffered to teachers their own “Environment Resources and Action kit” and backed a Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) climate campaign based on “a union perspective”.

Note added 17 Dec: Tony Thomas has done a lot of research this year into those who wish to recruit children as footsoldiers for their cause.  As well as the post linked to above, there are these:

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/05/attack-climate-cult-kiddies/

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/05/climate-cult-kiddies-part-ii/

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/08/merchants-of-doubt-insidious-propaganda-in-schools/#more-44028

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/09/oxfam-running-climate-propaganda-into-classrooms/

Britain's schools are force-feeding pupils politically correct dogma about sexuality, climate change and British history

The title is from a typically lively and hard-hitting article by James Delingpole, concerning the extent of brainwashing in British schools.

Brainwashing techniques included removing previous sources of support for an individual, and for children this generally means parents and close family members.  By rubbishing them through rubbishing our history, blaming them for global warming, and causing utter confusion about sexuality, the children are made more vulnerable to the imposition of the preferred dogmas.  The addition of scaremongering brings another technique into play, that of fear - fear of the future, fear of what happen if these preferred dogmas are not adopted.

"Nowhere, perhaps, is the march of the Mind Police more evident than in the way virtually the whole curriculum has been hijacked by environmental issues.

A popular revision guide for GCSE English gives this example of a ‘boring’ sentence that may receive ‘zero marks’: ‘Global warming is a bad thing.’ And this as a ‘much better sentence’: ‘Global warming is a very serious and worrying issue.’

Even foreign languages are not immune. A Heinemann textbook for A-level French invited pupils to study an open letter by a French environmentalist warning schoolchildren that on global warming ‘scientists are unanimous’, and ‘never in the history of humanity have the dangers been so great’.

Then there’s the Climate Cops initiative in schools — sponsored by energy supplier npower — in which children were given police officer-style notebooks so that they could ‘book’ themselves, their friends or family members if they saw them wasting energy or performing ‘climate unfriendly’ acts."

He ends with these words:

"Some people might think I am overstating the case. But there is a deadly serious point to all this, and I passionately believe that the way our children are being inculcated should give us all pause for thought.

If every child leaves school believing that Britain’s imperial history is evil, that open-ended human rights must be extended to everyone, including the wicked and the criminal, and that the world is getting catastrophically hotter, then eventually everyone in Britain will hold those views.

And, crucially, anyone who dares to challenge them will be a social outcast. If that happens, with every passing year a country with a long and proud history of liberalism will, ironically enough, become a bastion of intolerance."

The disgraceful promotion of climate scaremongering in our schools seems to be but a part of a far wider campaign to wreck our society.  Well done James Delingpole for giving us so many powerful examples of this.

Good News! Another Blog to Resist Entrenched CO2-Alarmism

A small group of solo-bloggers on climate topics in or from the UK has launched a new blog called 'Climate Scepticism':

Yours truly played a minor role in this, mainly just encouraging the others and promising to do more in the future.  Theirs was the original idea, and theirs the energy that got it launched.

Earlier this year (27 April post), I said I was going to post less often here, but that I would maintain the blog - especially the reference Pages - when I came across relevant material.  I also mentioned a couple of posts I had mind to publish soon.  I have not done those yet, but instead I have put up a few easier-to-do reactions to or reports on other people's work.  I still hope to do the promised posts, and others from time to time.

This new blog suits me, and the others behind it, in that by sharing the work, we hope to keep it lively and frequently updated so that it becomes a popular place to visit.  How dull, after all, is a blog where new posts are few and far between.

From the 'About' page of the new blog, some further explanation:

'The climate sceptic blogosphere is becoming crowded to the point that it’s difficult to keep up. Several of us (all British or UK based so far), are getting weary of the effort of grinding out several articles a month simply in order to remain visible. It’s not that we haven’t got something to say – rather that we’d like to take the time to say it as audibly and as clearly as possible.

Our thinking in launching this new blog (called – very originally – Climate Scepticism) is that a joint site, with more frequent and more varied articles, would be more visible and possibly more useful. 
We don’t aim to compete with Bishop Hill or WattsUpWithThat on the news-gathering front, but to assemble a number of disparate voices in a joint venture. There’s no “party line” or rulebook, and certainly no 97% consensus about anything.'

I hope that those who drop-in on Climate Lessons will find Climate Scepticism a congenial and informative and lively blog to visit, and that they will consider posting comments there to help keep the ball rolling.  Guest posts are also welcome - one has appeared there already.

If you are a blogger yourself, please also consider adding http://cliscep.com/ to your list of links.

Researching the Scares and the Spins: what made one man change his mind about rising CO2 being a crisis

The harm being caused by so many people's naive acceptance of the crisis-PR put out by the IPPC, sundry 'academics', and no end of financially-interested NGOs, is dreadful.  Their spins have dominated the press and airwaves and school and university curricula for decades.  It is likely that most of the general public have never actually read or listened to the counter-arguments. When major institutions such as the BBC and the Royal Society have been corrupted by their leaderships to promote climate alarm as unassailable dogma, who can blame that public for knowing no better?

One man has recently written about his journey from 'true-believer' to having a calmer and more balanced view of CO2 and climate (hat-tip: WUWT).  He is David Siegel:

'Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.
Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I’ll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.'

Here are his 10 points:

1Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.

2Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.

3There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.

4New research shows fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, better than CO2 levels.

5CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much.

6There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.

7Sea level will probably continue to rise, naturally and slowly. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.

8The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.

9No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people, who eat them.

10The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface.'



His blog contains a great deal of material to back up his claims, and he is also intent on campaigning to 'educate influential liberals'.  The term 'liberal' in the United States is used these days to denote 'leftwing', and that may well include the majority of schoolteachers and academics.  Here on this blog we hope that in due course there will be massive efforts to help repair the damage that has been done to the minds and spirits of wave after wave of schoolchildren from recent decades.  David Siegel's campaign may well be a crucial early step towards such a pastoral effort actually taking place.

PS Paul Matthews has compiled a list of relatively prominent people who have 'recovered their senses' about climate:  https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/converts-to-scepticism/

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: resisting the demonisation of CO2

While the search for a cure-all for CO2 alarmism continues, we shall, in the meantime, have to make do with piecemeal treatments to help young people cope with the deluge of woefully inadequate information relating to climate.

The problem is sometimes the information is wrong, but perhaps more common is a severe lack of balance.

The fact that the gentle overall warming of the last 150 years or so is generally very beneficial is not acknowledged,  whatever combination of factors has caused it.  Nor is the positive impact of higher ambient CO2 levels on agricultural productivity often recognised.

When your goal is to scare people to get their attention, I guess you don't want to dilute your messaging.  But we who don't care for their tactics nor their cause, need to be ready to respond to them, or at least help reduce the harm they must cause.

A new report from the GWPF provides parents and teachers with help to do that by providing an excellent background briefing on the benefits of CO2.

Image: GWPF

From their press release:

'... former IPCC delegate Dr Indur Goklany calls for a reassessment of carbon dioxide, which he says has many benefits for the natural world and for humankind.

Dr Goklany said: “Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature”.'

There is also an excellent foreword from the extremely distinguished physicist, Freeman Dyson, who concludes (my italics, bolding and layout):

'Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. 

First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. 

Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. 

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonising carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. Goklany and I do not claim to be infallible. Like the climate-model experts, we have also evolved recently from the culture of the cave-children. Like them, we have inherited our own set of prejudices and blindnesses. Truth emerges when different groups of explorers listen to each other’s stories and correct each other’s mistakes.'

 

The report can be downloaded free of charge from this link:  http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

PS
For those who may want to keep up to date on this topic, or to find out more from the scientific literature about it, this site is invaluable: CO2 Science.

Note added 15 Oct 2015.  The reformed ex-Greenpeace leader, Patrick Moore gave the GWPF Annual Lecture last night arguing we should 'celebrate CO2'.  Details via this link: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/15/should-we-celebrate-co2-cartoon-notes-by-josh.html

Can It Be This Easy? Helping young people learn about climate reality

Screenshot from the video

'Watch the double take students do when confronted with the straight facts that there has been no dramatic global warming as they’ve been led to believe.

The good news?  Students got it.  Some were upset. Virtually all were surprised. The only thing they needed was access to the truth.

You’ll be heartened to see these bright youngsters casting aside the politically-correct hype they’ve been fed and forming valid conclusions based on sound scientific data.'
Source: http://www.cfact.org/2015/08/20/watch-students-wake-up-about-warming/

Here is the video from CFACT: 

Note added later on 28 Aug. I think it likely that the young people in the video are amongst the brightest of recent high school leavers, and probably typical in their condition of being very poorly informed about climate change.  An official, well-designed sample-survey of senior high school pupils is long overdue to estimate the scale of the damage being inflicted upon them by climate scaremongers.

Second note on 28 Aug.  Here is a copy of the temperature plot shown in the video.  Why not print out your own copy and try it out on your friends and acquaintances, especially if they happen to be parents of high school pupils?

Source details and further commentary can be found here:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/06/the-pause-draws-blood-a-new-record-pause-length-no-warming-for-18-years-7-months/

Alarming Climate Predictions: an informative cartoon for the classroom wall

(Ht: http://www.weatheraction.com/)

One thing anyone concerned about the harm being done to schoolchildren by climate alarmism must do is help them see how incompetent so many of the prominent pushers of alarm are when it comes to science.  The above cartoon would help encourage the youngsters to take the fear-mongers' confident assertions with a pinch of salt, and perhaps just a hint of amused contempt.

Some resources for project work by pupils, parents, or teachers , on the inability of the climate alarm 'community'* to give useful guidance about the future:

1. http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/25-years-of-predicting-the-global-warming-tipping-point/
2. http://climatechangepredictions.org/
3. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-climate-predictions/
4. http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=predictions
5. http://notrickszone.com/climate-scandals/
6. http://notrickszone.com/category/stupid-predictions/
7. http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/01/warmists-take-hardest-hits/
8. http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/24/laughing-stock-met-office-2007-peer-reviewed-global-temperature-forecast-a-staggering-failure/
9. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/only-bourgeois-science-compares-facts.html
10. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/background-briefing-for-climate.html
11. https://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/james-hansen-1986-within-15-years-temps-will-be-hotter-than-past-100000-years/
12. http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/30/robust-science-more-than-30-contradictory-pairs-of-peer-reviewed-papers/,
13. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/ten_major_failures_of_so_called_consensus_science/
14. http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/global-warming-audit
15. http://www.kestencgreen.com/statedeptclimate2010.pdf
16. http://www.climatedepot.com/2010/05/05/team-of-scientists-counter-us-govt-report-global-warming-alarm-will-prove-false-climate-fears-based-on-faulty-forecasting-procedures/
17. http://www.thegwpf.com/climate-forecasting-models-arent-pretty-and-they-arent-smart/
18. http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
19. http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
20. http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/tag/predictions-that-failed/
21. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-73-un-climate-models-wrong-no-global-warming-17

*Note added 26 August: I think 'industry' would have been better.  It is a very lucrative sector - with fear and alarm essential for continued income.

Note added 26 August: the emotive mess and fatuous prophecies of alarmist personalities is exemplified by the Australian climate clown Tim Flannery.  In 2005, he expected the Warragamba catchment and Dam would suffer permanent drought.  Then what happened?  In 2012, it overflowed.  In 2015, it has just overflowed again.  See: http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/australia-s-chief-climate-alarmist-fails-in-another-of-his-predictions-after-just-7-10-years.html

Note added 28 August: trying to ride on the back of destructive weather is a hallmark of junk scientists and their followers intent on climate scaremongering, so their claims about hurricanes provide a rich seam of their machinations:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/27/throwback-thursday-5-failed-global-warming-driven-hurricane-predictions-10-years-after-katrina/

Note added 01 September: the UK Met Office has long been a prominent rider on the scaryglobalwarming bandwagon, and has a correspondingly poor record when it comes to forecasting the implications of it for the UK:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/01/another-bbq-summer-fiasco-met-office-gets-it-wrong-again/

Note added 31 October.  A handy compilation of 'last chance' forecasts on 'saving the climate' on the Climate Predictions site: :

2001, Bonn    2005, Montreal   2007, Bali    2008, Poznan
2009, Copenhagen   2010, Cancun    2011, Durban     2012, Doha 
2013, Warsaw    2014, Lima     2015, Paris

Typical drivel ahead of each of these meetings: 'The scientists are telling us that this is the world’s last shot at avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.'
(hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/30/the-last-chance-saloons.html )

Note added 13 November.  Anthony Watts has noted that The Independent newspaper has removed their report of the notorious David Viner's ex cathedra prediction that children would not know what snow was: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/12/one-of-the-longest-running-climate-prediction-blunders-has-disappeared-from-the-internet/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent/
He had, fortunately for benefit of the record of all this sort of drivel over the years, kept a copy of the original article: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent.pdf