What we are up against in schools: a GCSE study guide on climate is brainwashing propaganda

'The whole chapter reads as little more than a propaganda sheet, filled with inaccuracies, half truths, emotive slogans, subliminal messages and a total lack of historical perspective.'

Paul Homewood has just reviewed a GCSE Study Guide used in Wales at least for the period 2010 to 2015.  He is not impressed by the section on climate change - see the above quote.  Extract:

'Just to pick up on a few points:

1) They mention the retreat of glaciers over the last 150 years, yet there is no mention at all of the Little Ice Age, or the fact that the very same glaciers expanded massively during that era.

Ironically, the chapter unwittingly contradicts itself on the final page, when it shows graphs for global temperatures and CO2 – note how CO2 levels began increasing from 1860, yet temperatures only began rising after 1900. Also the rise from then until 1940 was comparable to recent decades, despite the rise in CO2 being much smaller then. This of course suggests that simply blaming warming on CO2 is over simplistic.

2) They claim that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. There is zero evidence to support this claim, as even the IPCC accept. In particular, the reference to increase in tropical storms is without foundation.

3) The claim that the UK has experienced some of the wettest, windiest and driest weather is also contradicted by the data. Indeed, as far as the last two are concerned the opposite is the case.

4) They claim that CO2 levels have never been as high as they are now. This is quite an astonishing claim, given that they have been much higher than now for most of the Earth’s history.

5) The next section called “What are the alternative futures”, is nothing more than an indulgence in scaremongering, with little basis in fact. Encouraging kids to imagine apocalyptic futures is not education.

6) Then we come to the case study in sea levels. Notice how they have gone from the previous claim of “up to 1 metre” to a map drawn at 5 metres above sea level.

7) If that lot was not bad enough, we finish with the spider diagram, specifically intended to get children to imagine the likely impacts of global warming.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, mass extinctions, plague, Greenland melting, nuclear war, refugees. Note also the subliminal messaging – Stern Report and Act Now.

Whoever has written this guide clearly has little knowledge about the subject, and has simply picked up a few talking points and applied a large dose of alarmism.'

As Paul notes at the end of his post, this sort of material can be used to brainwash young minds.  As he says, 'It is little wonder that the younger generation have become so paranoid about climate change.'

We must hope that one day, a great many parents will be able to refute such materials as and when they come across them, and be able to reassure their children that there are no grounds for alarm.  And that they may go on to request that their children's school drop such materials forthwith.  

Get prepared to deprogram your kids from climate scare ideology every day after school

'Be prepared to budget some extra time in your already busy day to deprogram your kids when they come home from school, unless you spend a lot of money for private education and home schooling.'

This is a sensible response from a New Jersey radio station talkshow host called Dennis Malloy to the news that New Jersey is going to push 'climate crisis' into early schooling, beginning in kindergarten.

Thank goodness for some sanity in the face of this still escalating madness as reported by CNN:

'(CNN)New Jersey students will start learning about climate change in kindergarten and keep studying the crisis through graduation

 under the state's new education standards.

The State Board of Education adopted the new guidelines on Wednesday --which outline what will be taught to New Jersey's 1.4 million students.

Greta Thunberg: 'Our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others'

It's the first state to include climate change education in it's K-12 learning standards, officials said in a statement.

New Jersey's first lady Tammy Murphy pushed for the new standards and met with 130 educators statewide.'

Marc Morano has a special report on this sorry development at his blog Climate Depot.  This includes a succinct reaction from Tom Nelson:

'Crazy bullshit: "New Jersey's first lady Tammy Murphy pushed for the new standards".

She says kids need to "understand the climate crisis", which is completely imaginary.'

Tammy Murphy gets to feel good, the kids get to feel bad.  Not a good deal.  Parents everywhere should take heed, and get prepared to protect their children from the fatuous, ideologically-driven eco-scaremongering that others want to impose on them.

Relentlessly misleading the young: CO2 Scare campaigners send propaganda to parents during lockdown

Paul Homewood's blog 'Notalotofpeopleknowthat' has exposed some shocking materials sent to  a parent in England for use in homeschooling their children on Earth Day.  This may well be a glimpse into the kind of junk being fed to our children week after week when they attend their schools.  The lockdown has helped bring this out for adult review, and it does not look good.

Here is one of the Powerpoint slides provided in the materials:

'Global warming isn't good for our Earth'  Since when has that been true during the Holocene?  Warmer periods have generally been far preferable to cooler ones, and not just for people.  Most forms of life thrive in warmer rather than cooler conditions, and more warmth means more moisture can be carried in the air.  The gentle warming of the last 150 years or so has taken us out of the Little Ice Age, and closer to the more congenial temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, and the Roman Climate Optimum.  Here is a 2018 post which provides some background on this:   https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/the-holocene-climate-optimum/

'It means that ice is starting to melt in the Antarctic and this could cause floods in other parts of the world.'   Just starting to melt is it?  What kind of a misleading impression does that sentence make on a 7-year old (the apparent target age group)?  Here is an overview reflecting some of the complexities of climate and ice accumulation in that continent:   http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/antarctic-ice-sheet-surface-mass-balance/ , and how it was warmer there in the Medieval Warm Period: https://notrickszone.com/2019/07/06/medieval-climate-anomaly-now-confirmed-in-southern-hemisphere-on-all-four-continents/.  And with examples of  'Unfortunately, the media would rather scare the public to promote a climate crisis, than honestly educate them about the causes of natural climate variability.':   https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/09/medias-horribly-dishonest-antarctica-propaganda/  [taken from this archive at WUWT]

The stuff on turtles and the so-called 'Fact' about developing countries are left as exercises for the reader to pursue.

Read the Blog Post for more details
See the blog post at:    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/climate-change-propaganda-for-7-year-olds/
for more extracts from the materials, a link to the entire Powerpoint presentation, and for these concluding words:

'The whole thing is nothing but pure propaganda. It most certainly is not factual, nor does it explain to kids the real implications of the policies proposed by the likes of Greta.

Indeed, the suggestions of “how we can help” are infantile and risk making children think think that is all they need to do.

They may be seven year olds, but they should be treated with more respect and honesty.

I don’t know who produced this presentation or if it is officially approved. If anyone has any more info, please let me know.'

Please get in touch (send a comment at his blog) with Paul if you have 'more info'.  Pushing 'nothing but pure propaganda' at young children is a disgraceful thing to do, and the more we know about where it is coming from the better.

Note added 30 April 2020
See the lively comments at the blogpost.  Commenter 'Joe Public' has tracked the distributor of the above material to a UK outfit called Twinkl.  This seems to be a very successful provider of materials for teachers around the world.  It was started at home by one couple in England in 2010 and has grown into a big business, with a subscription service for the materials, and a long list of sponsors or partners.  That's an impressive achievement.  But such a pity that the example above of their climate materials is so dire and damaging to young minds.  Here is a link to this 'Earth Day' propaganda:   https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/earth-day-differentiated-reading-comprehension-activity-t2-e-5247  Note that it comes under the heading of 'English Activities'.  As Andrew Montford and I noted some years ago, no area of the school curriculum seems safe from such political infiltration.

Re the Antarctic 'starting to melt', here is another recent post, from 3 days ago, with lots of useful info:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/27/no-antarctica-is-not-rapidly-melting/

Poor Old Scotland: compulsory climate propaganda for students is being mooted

Mandatory climate change classes plan for Scottish leaders

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18404742.mandatory-climate-change-classes-plan-scottish-leaders/  (hat-tip: https://www.samizdata.net/2020/04/the-return-of-the-test-acts/)

The joys of controlling everyone's behaviour during the virus lockdown has gone to their heads:

' The man behind the idea, RSGS chief executive Mike Robinson, said a number of business leaders have already committed to undertake the course along with the Scottish Government, with further discussions to ensure new university students and MSPs can take part well-underway.'

What is the 'idea'?  Well, nothing less than a mandatory course on climate panic propaganda for every university student who wishes to graduate, and for other people too:

'MSPs, busineess leaders and newly enrolled university students may be asked to take mandatory climate change studies if plans currently under consideration are adopted.

The studies would help arm them with facts and knowledge to make urgent changes to society as it emerges from COVID-19 lockdown. The Scottish Government has already committed to enrolling at least 100 senior officials to the Climate Solutions course.'

The RSGS is the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and its leader Mike Robinson seems to be a a kind of grown-up version of Greta Thurnberg.  Here he is in 2019:

'We will need to waste less, drive less, fly less, use renewable electricity and heat, use electric cars and trains, buy less tat, eat differently and repair and restore materials more than we do. We will need to remind ourselves of the value of community, society, environment, nature and place, and record more than just GDP. And we will urgently need to start building the future we want – properly creating houses, businesses, infrastructure that we need for a net zero carbon life, and not settling for the cheapest, least imaginative versions which are out of date before they are built and will look ridiculous in 10, 20, or 30 years’ time.  In short, we need to start treating this Climate Emergency like an emergency. And having these targets now in place is a welcome and significant first step.'

(source: https://www.rsgs.org/blog/taking-a-step-in-the-right-direction)

In other words, a radical who wants to wreck our society.  And based on what?  The flimsy conjecture that our CO2 emissions are doing what CO2 has never done before and dominating the climate system.  Not a plausible claim, and nor is it being supported by observations.  The climate system is behaving just as it might if our actions are of minor importance on the global scale.

It is some consolation that the comments below the Herald article are almost all hostile to the proposal.  So far.  The legions of the faithful will no doubt be being mobilised to change that.

It is also a consolation that genuine science research continues to undermine the case for such alarm over our emissions.  Readers are urged to check our these recent posts:

https://notrickszone.com/2020/04/27/new-northern-hemisphere-temperature-reconstructions-are-devoid-of-michael-mann-like-hockey-sticks/

https://notrickszone.com/2020/04/26/new-video-by-german-geologist-casts-doubt-over-exclusively-man-made-global-warming/

And on the third-rate advice that is so easily cobbled together on climate, and so easily refuted:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/24/four-twenty-sevens-error-strewn-report/

Sadly, it seems likely that the Scottish government will continue to support this shameful proposal to undermine what tertiary education should stand for, and furthermore that this kind of authoritarianism will in due course serve to make climate teaching in high schools even worse.  

Parents can not rely on schools to give a balanced perspective on climate variation, and to avoid needlessly scaring children and undermining their future.  Parents will have to look elsewhere.

Enlighten Your Kids About Earth Day: that virtual monument to panic and irrationality

Earth Day arrives again, with nothing to commend it, no good having come from it, and indeed a lot of harm instead.  Harm to children's minds and spirits.  Harm to developing countries having to suppress their development.  Harm to industrialised counties having to waste resources on the follies of 'renewables'.  Harm to all the better things that could have been done with all the conferences, resolutions, and bloated budgets of eco-this that and the other.

Josh sums it all up rather well:

Parents who want to enlighten their older children could start by giving them a copy of Josh's cartoon.  And that by itself could trigger lots of useful online research projects to dig deeper.  There are more specific ideas for such projects here.  And more background on the failure of Earth Day here.

One thing seems clear.  You cannot rely on schools to do this for you.  

Turn All Your Lights On for Earth Hour 2020 (or just ignore it)

The annual ritual of Earth Hour is upon us once again.  Turning off lights is indeed an informative gesture because that kind of darkness - avoidable, unnecessary, silly virtue-signalling - will be commonplace if the eco-extremists continue to exert so much influence on governments.

Anthony Watts, at WUWT has a stronger suggestion:

TURN ON ALL YOUR LIGHTS! At 8:30PM local time for an hour.

CELEBRATE LIGHT, HEALTH AND HAPPINESS!

And as always, a reminder that every hour in North Korea is “Earth Hour”.

I would add: also read or re-read the classic essay by Ross McKitrick:

https://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-abhor-earth-hour-abundant-cheap.html

Helping Children Cope with the CO2 Scare - a new resource

The articles I've seen on helping children cope with the CO2 Scaremongering are mostly along the lines of 'tell them they are not helpless, get them out on demonstrations, encourage them to walk to school and turn off lights'.  In other words, 'take the scare seriously, and fuss over it'.  I doubt that is going to help, and it may even make things worse for the young victims.  Better by far is to help them see that have been duped, and even well-intentioned adults have been duped.

This will take time, and lots of study and persistence.  Many parents and high-schoolers can dig deeper for themselves into alarming claims about climate, and those who do so can help those who have not done or cannot do such work on their own.

A new website has just started up and it could be a great resource for this:

Here is the link to it:  http://climaterealism.com/

As well as feature articles, there is a reference section currently with the following topics:

Allergies, Alpine glaciers, 

Carbon tax, Cleaner air, Climate change impacts,

Climate models, Climate record, Consensus, Coral Reefs, Crop nutrition, Crop production,

Disease/Virus,Drought,

Economic harm, Economics and policy, Emissions by country, Emissions Impact,Extreme cold, Extreme heat, Extreme Weather,

Floods,

Great Lakes, Green New Deal,Greenland ice melt,

Health impacts, Heavy Rainfall, Historical CO2 levels, Hottest Year,Hurricanes,

Insurance policy,

Jobs created,

Little Ice Age,

Meat and Agriculture,Medieval Warm Period, Migration, Mortality,

National security, Natural climate change,

Ocean currents, Oceanic conveyor belt,

Pine beetles, Polar bears, Polar ice caps,

Renewable Energy, Republican proposals,

Sea level, Snow, Snowpack, Social cost of carbon,

Solar impact, Species Impacts, Subsidies,

Terms of debate, Tipping points, Tornadoes,

U.S. temperatures, Underlying Science,

Vulnerable populations,

Water levels, Wildfires, Wine.

So that's plenty to be getting on with!

(Hat-tip: WUWT )

Note added 21 Mar 2020.  There's more!  An apparently sister-site called Climate at a Glance is also well worth a visit.  It has short summaries on a range of topics:     https://climateataglance.com/

'Climate At A Glance puts frequently argued climate issues into short, concise, summaries that provide the most important, accurate, powerful information. The summaries are designed to provide a library of solid yet simple rebuttals so that legislators, teachers, students, and laymen can easily refute the exaggerations of the so-called “climate crisis.”

Excellent!  Just what is needed.

(Hat-tip: NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat )

A Young Survivor of the Tsunami of CO2 Scare Propaganda: Naomi Seibt, Climate Realist

What a refreshing change from the facile alarmism acquired by Greta Thunberg and her followers.  This video has Naomi Seibt speaking while often juxtaposed beside clips of youngsters demonstrating climate alarmism, and my goodness, she comes across as a calm voice in favour of science, and of discussion, and indeed of 'climate realism'.  A very impressive young woman.  Let us hope she can help a good many of those still floundering in, and no doubt often genuinely upset by, the scaremongering over CO2.  And may she, and Greta alike, go on to have careers free from all this unjustified and distracting alarmism some day soon.

(hat-tip: Climate Depot)

P.S. Further insight into Seibt's views and plans, and some threats she has received because of them, can be found here:
https://www.thegwpf.com/meet-the-19-year-old-anti-greta-who-warns-thunbergs-alarmism-must-be-stopped/

One in five in a sample of UK children report nightmares about climate change

One in five in a sample of UK children 
report nightmares about climate change

The Jakarta Times , and others e.g. the London Metro, have published a Reuters piece on the results of a survey of UK children (hat-tip GWPF Newsletter 04/03/20).  These results, if correct - and they do seem plausible, are a sharp indictment of schools and the mass media for all they have done, and are doing, to scare children  about climate without good reason:

'One in five children are having nightmares about climate change, according to a British survey on Tuesday, as students globally stage protests over a lack of action to curb global warming. 

About 17 percent of children in Britain said worries about climate change were disturbing their sleep while 19 percent said these fears were giving them nightmares. 

The survey of 2,000 children aged eight to 16, conducted by pollster Savanta-ComRes for BBC Newsround, also found that two in five, or 41 percent, did not trust adults to tackle the climate crisis.'

Children, listen to this: Don't Be Afraid of Climate Change!

Writer Melissa Nichols has done children a great favour by writing this little book - 'Don't Be Afraid of Climate Change'.  It classes 'Climate Change' as a big, bad wolf, and takes the young readers through several of the ways this beast has been trying to scare or mislead them:

'But like all big, bad wolves, Climate Change doesn’t like telling  the truth. Let’s look at what he’s been saying, and see if he’s  been truthful or if he is just trying to scare you. '

She then goes through the topics, one by one and points out how wrong they are.  Here is how she handles the first topic:

'Polar bears are starving, and soon there won’t be any more  of them.  

Sorry, Climate Change, polar bears are doing just fine. Their  numbers were down in the past, but not because of you. They  were widely hunted, but thanks to polar bears becoming a  protected species, there are more of them running around now  than 70 years ago - around 25,000 more! That’s a lot of polar  bears.' 

Here are the headings for the other topics she covers:

Get ready to go for a swim. The ice is melting! 

The oceans are rising. We’re all going to be underwater. 

Hurricanes are getting stronger, and there are more of them.

Drink plenty of water while you can. Droughts are getting  worse. 

Climate Change used to be called Global Warming. And it’s  still getting hotter. 

Wind power is just about as good as it gets for helping the  environment. 

Solar power is a clean energy that everyone should have to  use. 

Nuclear power is evil. 

Pipelines are bad. The more pipelines that are built, the  more natural gas people will use. 

Cow farts and fossil fuels are producing enough methane to  knock us all out. 

CO2 levels are going to kill the earth. They must be stopped  right now! 

Ban fracking. It’s bad. 

She concludes (my italics):

'Climate change is not something to be afraid of. The world has  been changing since its beginning. It will always will. This is  not a bad thing. You have been changing from your very  beginning as well. This earth has been hot, and it has been cold.  We have always adapted to its changes and learned to enjoy  each day as it comes. '

At the end of the book, she provides a selection of references for further reading on each of the topics.  These will help older children and adults to dig a little deeper.

This is a wonderful book, one that deserves to be in every home, and in every school library.  The book is brief, simply-themed, very readable and with attractive illustrations.  There is surely scope for a hundred books like this, covering more ground, more topics, and with a range of content-levels.  We need books for 5, 10, 15 year-olds, and 20 and 25 and 30 year-olds as well.  All have been exposed all their lives to the scaremongering about CO2 and climate variation, and surely most could do with some help to get a calmer, better-balanced view of it.   In the meantime, I strongly recommend this book for all age levels.  It makes a great start on what will be a big, and kind, and truthful, task: helping victims of the CO2 Scaremongering recover from it.

[Hat-tip: Climate Depot]

Descent of a Man: famous David Attenborough has helped mislead, and frighten, children about climate

The GWPF has just released an indictment of David Attenborough, the much-admired populariser of wildlife studies.  His emotive voice-overs in misleading documentaries have surely been one of the drivers of the current high levels of climate anxiety in young people:

'London, 27 January: A new video documenting Sir David Attenborough’s inaccurate claims about climate change and Arctic wildlife blames his apocalyptic language and misleading narrative for the dramatic rise in eco anxiety among young people.

The video published today by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) and written by Dr. Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, shows that increasing climate angst felt by many young people around the world started with Attenborough’s films that blamed starving polar bears on human-caused global warming.

The parents and teachers of these youngsters trusted Attenborough’s BBC productions to be accurate portrayals of the effects of climate change but that trust has been betrayed.

David Attenborough’s claims that ‘the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon’ have captured international media attention but it is now apparent he has failed to ensure that the scripts he reads for his Arctic documentaries and the messages they contain are true reflections of the natural world.

"Misleading narratives about starving polar bears and fabricated stories of dying walrus, used to support an escalating message of doom about the Arctic, are not supported by facts," Dr Crockford said.

"Attenborough did not verify any facts contained in the scripts he was paid to narrate and passed along misinformation to naïve viewers, including many young children," she added.

One of these children was Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who said she was shown images of starving polar bears in school when she was 8 or 9 years old. The timing and nature of the material suggests the film she saw was Attenborough’s ‘On Thin Ice’ documentary from the ‘Frozen Planet’ series released in 2011.

"David Attenborough bears the brunt of responsibility for the recent epidemic of ‘eco-anxiety’ among children and young adults. Much of their misguidedly negative sense of how Arctic animals are fairing and their bleak outlook on the world come from the heart-wrenching but unverified stories found in Attenborough’s documentaries,| Dr Crockford said.

It is the responsibility of teachers and parents to reassure these worried youngsters that polar bears and walrus are not suffering because of sea ice loss blamed on climate change. Children need to be told the truth: that whatever scary stories some biologists come up with about what might happen in the future, Arctic species have demonstrated that they are much more resilient to changes in sea ice than Attenborough’s films suggest.

The GWPF is sending copies of this video to all head teachers of UK schools together with a letter, telling them that they are responsible for the mental health of their pupils and that they have a responsibility to provide their pupils with accurate information about the state of wildlife in the Arctic.

Watch: Attenborough's Arctic Betrayal (13 min)'

Key points from the letter can be read here, along with links in support of the case made: GWPF letter support

Well done Susan Crockford for this work, and well done the GWPF for promoting it.  

Terrifying Children to gain Recruits for the Climate Cult Continues

A bout of illness has delayed my next post aimed at helping those who want to protect children from the excesses of the CO2 fanatics, but in the meantime here is some motivation for doing just that - a good piece in the Mail on Sunday:

DOUGLAS MURRAY: Terrifying our children with doom mongering propaganda on climate change is nothing less than abuse

Well worth reading in full here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7902895/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Terrifying-children-propaganda-climate-change-abuse.html  (hat-tip: Climate Science)

The article ends with these words:

'Natural phenomena, including disasters such as the recent fires in Australia, are presented as though they have never happened before and they are presented as though they are solely the result of this ‘climate emergency’.

It is a cynical and dangerous trend. And so the hyping-up of a generation continues, all encouraged by adults.

Caroline Hickman, a teaching fellow at the University of Bath, recently claimed that eco-anxiety had increased massively in the past year.

‘We’ve been talking to teachers and head teachers about how to help children and young people,’ she said. Some children have reported waking up with eco-nightmares. Her response? ‘Parents can’t just say, “Everything will be all right” as it won’t be.’

And there we get a glimpse into the real project here: a new generation is being terrified into agreeing with a specific and fringe eco-lobby. 

This lobby does not care if it damages the mental health of a generation because it seeks to recruit that generation as foot-soldiers.

It is time we called this what it is: an abuse of children on a massive and unforgivable scale. Something that the generations that will succeed us will look upon with shame.'

Well, parents, it is perfectly reasonable to assure your children that 'Everything will be all right' because there is no good reason to doubt that it will be as far as CO2 and climate variation are concerned.  But what an effort is going to be needed to overcome the decades of scaremongering propaganda!