Climate 'Striking' Schools: "having children demonstrate on school time was the Soviet way"

Two extracts from an article in the New York Post: 

The ‘Climate Strike’ is a crock that exploits kids

By Karol Markowicz

September 17, 2019 | 8:08pm

{With my emphases added:}

'This Friday, in advance of the United Nations Climate Summit, students across the country will walk out of their schools as part of a Climate Strike. In New York City, the Department of Education has given its stamp of approval to the walk-out and won’t mark it as an absence, making it less “a strike” and more a coordinated effort by the school system to force political action on children.'

and

'In my Russian-speaking community, people took to Facebook to discuss the similarities they saw to their time in the Soviet Union. One mom posted that the strike is “Soviet-style brainwashing and propaganda” Another mom wrote that the particular issue doesn’t matter; “having children demonstrate on school time was the Soviet way.”

One Park Slope elementary school sent parents a note that the entire school will be walking out for the strike. A mother of a 6-year-old told me, in response: “I am all for people supporting causes they believe in, but do not force your causes and beliefs on my first-grader.”

Another mom told me she believes in climate change and thinks the government should take action but finds the strike absurd. She’s afraid to single her kid out by making him skip it and isn’t speaking up.'

Read the whole article here:  https://nypost.com/2019/09/17/the-climate-strike-is-a-crock-that-exploits-kids/

Note added 19 Sep 2019.  The kids stand on thin ice, as do all the eco-zealots who have been pushing the children to 'strike'.  Delingpole has exposed a goodly selection of their nonsenses and deceptions:   https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/18/delingpole-fact-checking-alarmist-kids-false-claims-at-climate-crisis-hearing/

Poor Greta was scared by fake news from CO2 alarmists about polar bears

Susan Crockford has a new post up about the deceptive, political goal-driven propaganda based on polar bears:

'These starving polar bears falsely blamed on climate change have scared kids to death'

Can anyone get through to Greta Thunberg about these and other deceptions which she has accepted as gospel?  Or to any of the probably many tens of thousands of youngsters similarly scared by what they have been told.  Or by what they have been duped into believing.

Here is a paragraph from the Crockford post:

'Here I summarize the truth about all four of these starving polar bear images that have been used since 2009 to emotionally manipulate the public (especially young girls), into getting on board the climate change band wagon. Rational people have seen through the rhetoric and come to realize that climate change is virtually never the cause of starvation. However, some poor kids have been scared to death by these images and the stories of climate change catastrophe they inspired – they are very real victims of climate change messaging at its worst.'

Click the link by the picture above to read the rest.  And try to protect any children you know from this sort of abuse.  The polar bears are generally doing OK.  But Greta and the others are most certainly not.

Note added 27 Sep 2019.  Poor Greta flounders when she does not have a script provided for her:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bwLt_5t73g   Who does provide her scripts?
Note added 29 Sep 2019.  More details of those behind the abusive exploitation of this poor child:   https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/gretas-soros-connections/
and more here on their lack of imagination:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/greta_thunbergs_speech_to_un_strangely_resembles_a_1992_un_speech_by_12yearold_severn_cullissuzuki.html

Climate-scared pupils and teachers take note:- a calmer mind leads the World Meteorological Organisation

'London, 6 September: The General-Secretary of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the alarmist narrative on climate change has gone off the rails and criticised the news media for provoking unjustified anxiety.

Speaking to Finland's financial newspaper Talouselämä (“The Journal”) on 6 September 2019, Petteri Taalas called for cooler heads to prevail, saying that he does not accept arguments of climate alarmists that the end of the world is at hand.'

See this GWPF press release:  https://www.thegwpf.com/wmo-secretary-general-warns-against-climate-doomsters-and-extremists/

It is not much by itself, but such sanity and sense is all too rare in the fervid mass media and in politics (see the lunacy at the recent 'Climate Townhall'* for presidential candidates in the USA for example).  Thanks to the shameful exploitation of Greta Thunberg, many schoolchildren are also being drawn into the madness and despair, some with the active support of teachers and administrators.  So, any calming voice in the midst of this intemperate, hyperbolic, and baseless panic is welcome.  Well done that man!

*Here are some reports of this sorry event:
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/05/climate-change-hysteria-dangerous/
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/cnns-7-hour-climate-change-townhall-was-a-man-made-disaster-for-democrat-presidential-candidates/
https://pjmedia.com/election/cnns-climatetownhall-does-the-nation-a-great-service/

Note added 13 Sep 2019.  Sigh ... Powerful forces at work I guess.  The WMO chappie has somewhat backtracked:  
'Today, Taalas appears to have backtracked from this robust position, saying he had been wrongly portrayed as “questioning the international focus on the need for robust climate action”.'
As Benny Peiser points out (see link below), no one seems to have ever made such a portrayal.  It seems the poor man has been forced into a declaration of faith in the fanatical religion of the CO2 Doomsday Cult. 
https://www.thegwpf.com/wmo-secretary-general-denies-climate-heresy/

Pushing the CO2 Scare by 'Abusing Children : Abusing Science'

From the RealClimateScience blog:

'Climate alarmists have intentionally targeted children - to push their political objectives. Instead of holding an honest debate with adults, they have chosen to terrorize young people with their lies and propaganda. They are destroying science while simultaneously destroying the mental health of children.'

This new video from Tony Heller includes a clip from the vile propaganda movie made by the climate scaremongerers who called themselves '10:10'. His main point, other than to draw attention to the turpitude of the climate alarmists, is that in the United States, far worse weather has been seen in the past than in recent decades, and that there is no justification in scaring children about losing energy sources vital to modern life in the States and elsewhere. The United States could shut down completely and it would not impede the continued growth in global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels and other man-made interventions.

He notes that the alarmers generally refuse to debate knowledgeable people like him, and far prefer to scare children as a source of leverage for their political ambitions. While demonising, and marginalising informed critics of the weak and sloppy science the alarmers claim as a foundation for their emotive campaigns.

Tony Heller's blog, Real Climate Science, is, amongst other merits, an invaluable resource for historical records of weather events gleaned from newspaper archives - the alarmists have not (yet?) found a way to adjust these the way they have been adjusting temperature records.

What about newspapers and other mass media today? Well, many of them cannot resist spinning weather events to support the Big Scare narrative. Paul Homewood's blog, Not a Lot of People Know That, is an excellent resource for refutation of such propaganda pieces in modern newspapers and mass media websites such as that of the BBC.

Children becoming 'the brainwashed front for the climate religion'

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

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

Here are the introductory paragraphs:

'Most adults have little or no time to investigate the claims about climate change. They either accept them, assuming that “authority figures” have done their homework, or sit on the fence.

Some consider that only scientists are supposed to understand science. But everyone has an equal place at the table of science and if our questions are not answered or the evidence doesn’t stack up, we are free to reject that “science”.

Climate alarm has long given up the pretence of any link to science. Millions have been successfully “converted” – and they get duly worked up if their belief is questioned: “have you been outside recently?”, “erratic climate events are everywhere!”, “rainfall is getting less every year!”, “flash floods, including in Rajasthan are clear proof!”.

Some of them have gone to the next stage and become missionaries. They go about distributing their religious pamphlets in schools, indoctrinating innocent lower-IQ children. Hopelessly confused children like Greta Thunberg are being churned out as a result. At an age when children like her should be learning to ask questions, they have become the brainwashed front for the climate religion. There is little difference between such “committed” youth and Hitler’s Youth or the youth churned out by ISIS’s madrassas.

In my view, if anyone tells a child that climate change is man-made just because someone says so (such as a missionary “scientist” but now increasingly, “royals” and “celebrities”), that person has committed a sin against the enlightenment, against human progress.

I would personally have been supportive of Greta Thunberg if she had been a prodigally intelligent child who dazzled her teachers with amazing questions, then found the answers and was now promoting a view that she thoroughly understood. It would not matter to me that she had come to the wrong conclusion. After all, no one can be right on everything all the time. But she suffers, sadly, from mental issues and speaks as a missionary – she cannot answer a single question about the science.

We are very prone as a species to superstitions, panics, delusions, manias and hysterias. We have gone through thousands of them (many still underway), such as religion, alchemy, witchcraft, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, the Y2K bug, the SARS panic, much of Ayurveda and Chinese traditional medicine and all of homeopathy.

The climate hysteria will ultimately pass, but to avoid such hysterias in the future we need to get our children to start thinking and stop believing. Climate change is a superb topic for teachers and students to explore.'

See the full article here:   https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-the-invisible/climate-hysteria-is-a-great-opportunity-to-teach-children-to-ask-questions/

(hat-tip: GWPF Newsletter 29/8/19 )

Sabhlok is proposing something positive to help prevent such madness again.  His notion of incorporating regular 'question-asking' into school curricula seems well worthy of consideration.  But it may also be useful in the shorter-term for helping children and young adults recover from the scaremongering about climate which they have been exposed to.  See the full article for examples of the questions Sabhlok thinks would be relevant on climate.

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

CFACT: The UN’s cadre of misled youth

Picture: CFACT

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

'The UN is employing a disturbing tactic to push its “sustainability” agenda at its Civil Society Conference in Salt Lake City.

CFACT’s undercover reporter is on the ground in Salt Lake City, exposing how the UN heavily indoctrinates young people with talking points, then presents them on stage to regurgitate them.  “Look at the wisdom these young people have come to impart,” the rest of us are supposed to conclude.

Disney Channel’s Luke Mullen, told us, “I do believe that [school] strikes for the climate are just as important as education. Why should we be studying and preparing for a future that might not come?”  Watch CFACT Undercover’s full interview with Luke Mullen at CFACT.org.

Mullen told CFACT that he is following in the wake of poor Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish girl who has been so traumatized by the narrative of impending doom she’s been fed, that she walked out of school to become a propaganda poster child.  She’s encouraging kids like Luke Mullen to walk out too.  Greta just arrived in New York City on a carbon fiber yacht sponsored by the royal family of Monaco.  That she is protesting fossil fuels on an elite yacht made from oil and propane is lost on her.  She lacks the education and context to know.

Skip learning and just repeat the line’s you’ve been fed — These poor, exploited young people.  Think the mainstream media will expose this shameless trick?  Fear not.  CFACT’s on the job.

We interviewed Nicolette Templier, aka “Miss New York Earth USA.”  Her answers are simply a regurgitation of UN climate change alarmist talking points on everything from polar ice to polar bears, that fall to pieces when confronted with the facts.  Watch CFACT undercover’s full interview at CFACT.org.

The climate and “sustainability” crowd don’t like it when the facts are introduced into the UN proceedings one bit.  When the facts that debunk the UN’s dangerous agenda show up, the UN’s youth cadres drop their smiles and bare their claws.  You may remember CFACT’s coverage at UN COP 24 in Poland last fall.  The UN formally authorized an angry mob of left-wing youth to interrupt and shout down the Trump Administration’s energy presentation.  Shouting over instead of listening and responding?  How’s that for UN “civil society?”

CFACT is tackling this challenge on multiple fronts.  We expose the Green-Left’s exploitation of youth.  We inject facts into UN proceedings like the “sustainability” conference in Salt Lake.  We fairly present all sides of these important issues to thousands of young people through our CFACT Collegians program and challenge them  to think for themselves.

Thank you to everyone whose support makes this important work possible.

Facts and education are the antidote to propaganda and ignorance.'

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

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

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

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

HannahFurness, Daily Telegraph Arts Correspondent, 26th August2019.

She goes on to report a scathing review of this shocking event:

'Ivan Hewett, Telegraph reviewer, said the concert was instead a “statement of the most extreme form of eco-catastrophism, designed to terrify and intimidate the mostly young audience, who clearly lacked the maturity to challenge it”. 

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

(hat-tip Greenie Watch)

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

Eco-Extremism Promoted in an English Primary School

Guido has this dismal news:

'Primary School Pushing 'Extinction Rebellion' Propaganda to 7-year-olds'

He writes:
'Voters in Kent will be pleased to discover that their hard-earned taxes have been going on promoting extremist group Extinction Rebellion to children as young as 7. Here’s Ramsgate Arts Primary School asking parents and teachers to take part in a “climate justice” printing session with their new art teacher, who will teach pupils how to decorate their clothes with slogans and symbols from a radical far-leftdoomsday cult hell-bent on the wholesale destruction of the global economy. Even the new eco-Gove would think twice before putting that in the National Curriculum…

“Our new art teacher Karen Vost will be printing Extinction Rebellion climate justice symbols and messages on clothes if you or your children would like to learn to print and learn more about climate change please pop along and meet Karen.”

An art teacher indoctrinating children into a radical cult making claims about human extinction too extreme for even climate scientists to support. All paid for by you…'

Dreadful.

Even Young Germans are Seeing Through the Climate Scaremongering

As published on Pierre Gosselin's site No Tricks Zone

He writes about it as follows:

'What follows today is really quite cool, and highly encouraging in a country known for lockstep thought.

Over the past months we’ve seen great media hype in Germany surrounding climate alarmist youngsters like Greta, FFF and more recently Rezo, who have played major roles in stirring up a lot of climate hysteria, all aided and abetted by the established media.

But apparently in Germany there are a few young, hip persons pushing back on all the climate hype and hysteria with their own videos that have since gone viral.

“Join the Skeptical Movement”

The latest video comes from young German teen Naomi Seibt, who has decided to think for herself and check what’s really behind the climate “science” and hysteria.'

That's her video above, at the start of this post.  Pierre also reports on another young person striking back against the scaremongers' dogma:

Pierre: 'Another spectacularly successful climate hysteria skeptical video was recently produced by German JasonHD on May 24th. In it he takes down climate alarmist and leftist political agitator Rezo (mentioned above) point by point.

JasonHD dismantles the “manipulations and untruths concerning climate change”.'

See the original post for more details of each video.  They are encouraging for those of us concerned about the indoctrination and brainwashing of youngsters.  Every confirmation that the climate scare brainwashing does not fool all of them all of the time is good news.

Teachers! - please don't teach climate alarm fallacies. Arctic Sea Ice and Polar Bears Section

Susan Crockford is one scientific specialist who has hit back at the Climate Crisis Science Establishment with many excellent posts, papers, and books.  Recently, she published:

'10 fallacies about Arctic sea ice & polar bear survival: teachers & parents take note'

Here are the 10 - see her post for more details on each:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. ‘Sea ice is to the Arctic as soil is to a forest‘. False: this all-or-nothing analogy is a specious comparison. 

2. Polar bears need summer sea ice to survive.  False: polar bears that have fed adequately on young seals in the early spring can live off their fat for five months or more until the fall, whether they spend the summer on land or the Arctic pack ice.

3. Ice algae is the basis for all Arctic life. Only partially true: plankton also thrives in open water during the Arctic summer, which ultimately provides food for the fish species that ringed and bearded seals depend upon to fatten up before the long Arctic winter.

4. Open water in early spring as well as summer ice melt since 1979 are unnatural and detrimental to polar bear survival. False: melting ice is a normal part of the seasonal changes in the Arctic.

5. Climate models do a good job of predicting future polar bear habitat. False: My recent book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, explains that the almost 50% decline in summer sea ice that was not expected until 2050 actually arrived in 2007, where it has been ever since (yet polar bears are thriving).

6. Sea ice is getting thinner and that’s a problem for polar bears.  False: First year ice (less than about 2 metres thick) is the best habit for polar bears because it is also the best habitat for Arctic seals.

7. Polar bears in Western and Southern Hudson Bay are most at risk of extinction due to global warming. False: Ice decline in Hudson Bay has been among the lowest across the Arctic.

8. Breakup of sea ice in Western Hudson Bay now occurs three weeks earlier than it did in the 1980s. False: Breakup now occurs about 2 weeks earlier in summer than it did in the 1980s.

9. Winter sea ice has been declining since 1979, putting polar bear survival at risk. Only partially true: while sea ice in winter (i.e. March) has been declining gradually since 1979 (see graph below from NOAA), there is no evidence to suggest this has negatively impacted polar bear health or survival, as the decline has been quite minimal.

10. Experts say that with 19 different polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic, there are “19 sea ice scenarios playing out“ (see also here), implying this is what they predicted all along. False: In order to predict the future survival of polar bears, biologists at the US Geological Survey in 2007 grouped polar bear subpopulations with similar sea ice types (which they called ‘polar bear ecoregions,’ see map below).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Given that polar bears have been promoted as being under acute threat from our CO2 emissions, there will be many teachers using them as attention-getters in lessons on climate change.  Here's hoping that they would not want to mislead their pupils.  After all, many are being scared witless as it is, and if that is due to duff (or probably more commonly, inadequate) information that would be quite a shameful thing.  As Crockford notes in her title, parents should also be keeping their eyes on this.

Helping teachers challenge climate-scare propaganda

Graphic: http://thepeoplescube.com/

Helping school teachers cope with the onslaught of climate-scare propaganda is an important task.  It seems very unlikely that that propaganda will go away for many more years to come - there being too many vested interests benefitting from it.  So it is a question of mitigation.

Paul Driessen reports on an initiative aimed at helping with this:

'It’s time to challenge the steady diet of bias, false information and alarmism on climate change that students are fed in and outside of their classrooms. Science and public policy analyst Dr. David Wojick has launched an important new project to do exactly that.

From kindergarten onward, our young people are repeatedly told that they, our wildlife and our planet face unprecedented cataclysms from manmade climate change, resulting from our fossil fuel use. The science is settled, they are constantly hoodwinked, and little or no discussion is allowed in classrooms.'

Dr Wojick has so far compiled a list of nearly 200 video clips of talks or other material by people who have not lost their minds over the CO2 panic, and whose expositions could help youngsters realise, at the very least, that there are strong scientific, social, economic, and political grounds for calling halt to the madness.  For example, here is his list of videos featuring Prof Lindzen:   https://ccdedu.blogspot.com/2019/05/videos-by-richard-lindzen.html

He has also been working on what he calls 'gatebreakers', and has produced these three:

1) Are hurricanes getting worse or not?  

2) Are we coming out of the Little Ice Age?

3) Is the sun causing global warming?

These are brief posts apparently aimed at encouraging people to pause before presuming the Panic Position on a topic is immune from rational criticism.  He also provides, in sister posts, links to topic searches on Google Scholar to back this up.  These are in spirit a bit like the '10-minute trainers' I have posted on this blog. 

He is seeking funding for developing this project further.  Donations can be made on this crowdfunding link:   https://www.gofundme.com/climate-change-debate-education

Looks very worthwhile to me, and I hope he has great success with it.  Here is an extract from his appeal for funds:

'Help me build a skeptical climate education portal

Students and teachers need skeptical science and we plan to deliver it.

There are many on-line sources of alarmist climate change education materials (see my listing of 33 ) but none for the realistic skeptical view. A recent poll says that many teachers want to teach about the real climate debate, not just alarmist side. But skeptical teaching materials are scarce, so we propose to build a climate change debate education website, with your help.

On the content side we are collecting classroom material that is suitable for high school or lower grades, which means it has to be relatively non-technical and non-political (no bashing). I myself have five lesson plans to put in, on solar activity, the little ice age, ocean circulation, etc. Our team plans to write more.'

RIP Christopher Booker, your climate writings will inform and help teachers & pupils for many years to come

The GWPF has reported the passing of the journalist Christopher Booker

'Everyone at the GWPF was saddened to hear of the passing of our friend and colleague Christopher Booker, one of the doughtiest campaigners against global warming hysteria and vested interests in the climate debates. 

Booker’s Sunday Telegraph columns never failed to question orthodoxies and to ask awkward questions about global warming dogmatism.

He wrote two highly successful reports for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The first, in 2011, looked at the BBC’s biased coverage of climate change, while the more recent paper on groupthink has been one of GWPF’s most successful.

An archive of Booker’s enormous contribution to climate sceptical thought and critical analysis over the last ten years can be found on the GWPF website. 

Christopher will be fondly remembered by all at the GWPF for his erudition, bravery, integrity and his endless good humour.'



My thoughts

His books 'Scared to Death: from BSE to Global Warming, why scares are costing us the Earth' (co-authored with Richard North) and 'The Real Global Warming Disaster' deserve to be in every high school library, along with his GWPF publications listed at a link above, in anticipation of the day when senior pupils will do projects trying to make sense of the CO2-driven lunacy.  They will benefit from his lucid writing, his ability to spot foolish and ill-informed actions and beliefs, and his detailed tracking of who did what and where and when, all backed up by references.  As well as helping them get their projects done, he will also provide reassurance that not everyone engaged by the hyperbole around rising CO2 was credulous, or venal, or malevolent, or self-centred, or destructive of society and progress during these past few decades of the madness.