Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.
How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.
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.'
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]
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: Anew videodocumenting 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.
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
'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!
Looking Back
2019 was remarkable for those of us interested in the extensive, and utterly unjustifiable, panic over climate variation and our impact on it. Two features stand out to me:
(1) The exploitation of Greta Thunberg, a troubled youngster whose troubles were increased when she was misled by a schoolteacher who told her that polar bears were dying out. Of course, that 'fact' is not at all true - the polar bears have been doing relatively well for decades now, and their numbers have increased quite dramatically. But truth does not really matter much in the CO2 Scare - speculation, naive extrapolation, avoidance of inconvenient facts, and the dominance of emotive catch-phrases are all far more important. Greta was but one of countless victims of decades of propaganda in schools, and elsewhere. She went on to be pushed out front as a figurehead to produce even more such victims. Ben Pile and Jaime Jessop have each written penetrating essays on what has been happening these past 12 months:
Ben https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/12/30/2019-the-year-of-peak-green-bullsht/
'The only truly new thing that has emerged over the past year or so has been the phenomenon of Greta Thunberg and her school-strike movement. For years, the ‘green blob’ network of campaigning organisations, corporations, academics and UN agencies has fantasised about mobilising the young as a political force. After pumping billions of children full of green propaganda, a climate avatar has arrived in the form of the Swedish truant-cum-activist. There could be no doubting the sincerity of the teen who bore the emotional scars inflicted on her by the movement that she was to lead – she had been so traumatised by green propaganda that she had not spoken, not eaten and had refused to go to school. Environmentalism is nothing if not a cult of self-harm.
Political, cultural and religious leaders fell over themselves to be seen being scolded by the child. Unlike Harry and Meghan, Greta refused to fly. Instead of private jets, European royalty, millionaires and superstars loaned her their sailing yachts and Teslas. To keep her own personal carbon footprint down, sailing crews and her entourage had to fly across the Atlantic.
Politicians and campaigning organisations may have found it useful to hide their political ambitions behind children. But to many people, the emotional manipulation of impressionable minds is unconscionable. It has now emerged that the false stories that many of the children have fallen victim to – such as the claims that charismatic creatures like walruses and polar bears face extinction or that the world’s rainforests face imminent collapse – are distressing young children and causing real harm.'
'2019 – The End of a Decade When Climate Change Alarmism Tipped Abruptly Into Climate Crisis Hysteria
In the final days of 2019, there is much to reflect upon events of the past year and, with the closing of the second decade of the 21st Century, much to reflect upon how climate change alarmism has itself alarmingly morphed into something much more dangerous, visceral, urgent, ideologically driven and immediate as regards public perception and societal impact. A decade during which global warming faded into obscurity (on account of the fact that there wasn’t any from 1998-2013) to be replaced almost universally by the more politically correct term of ‘climate change’, which has itself now been largely displaced in activist circles and the media by the terms ‘climate emergency’ and ‘climate crisis’. Ironically so, because, bereft of an actual climate crisis, alarmist scientists and activists have proceeded to invent one, linguistically, as in the case of the Guardian’s newly introduced style guide and by co-opting extreme weather events and their impacts into the general narrative.'
(2) An increase in scientific papers, and many excellent blog posts with a scientific focus, that undermine the climate panic, and the dreadful, degrading corruption of schools, universities, media, and governments. Kenneth Richard and Pierre Gosselin have perhaps done more than most to collate and summarise these 'contrarian papers':
Need to make a presentation showing there is no climate alarm? The following findings we reported on in 2019 will put many concerns to rest.
Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers ignored by media
What follows are some selected top science-based posts we published here at NoTricksZone in 2019. These new findings show there is absolutely no climate alarm.
Hundreds of new peer-reviewed papers, charts, findings, etc – which the IPCC, activists and media ignore and even conceal. No wonder they’ve gotten so shrill.'
Looking Forward
There is a clear need for calmer voices to be heard, and for a wider appreciation of just how flimsy the case is for alarm over our CO2 and our other impacts on climate. Roughly speaking, more of item (2) above and less of item (1) are needed.
I am planning a series of posts that will be aimed at adults who want to help themselves and their children develop informed, apolitical, non emotive, fact based perspectives on climate variation that they can call their own thanks to their own efforts to learn more about what all the fuss is about.
There is plenty of evidence for the harm being done to young people thanks to their accepting 'off-the-shelf' scary opinions as if they were gospel truths. Donna Laframboise has written of a recent example:
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2019/12/16/young-people-distressed-about-climate-change/ 'A few days ago, a 20-year-old who resides in the UK sent an e-mail to American climate scientist Judith Curry. This young person describes themselves as miserable, fearful, and petrified. Frequently sick to their stomach, unable to eat or sleep, they’re genuinely worried that “climate change is going to kill me and all my family.” Donna wants to help such youngsters: 'If you are a young person in distress about the climate, please read one or more of the three books listed below. I promise you, your world will be different by the time you finish any of them. If you read all three, I guarantee you’ll see the universe with completely new eyes.' See the link for more details of these excellent books.
Wonderful hymns are part of the beauty of Christianity. This one, in the video, sings of the beauties of nature, of weather, and of farming. All good in these days of a continued growth in world food production, We can also note and appreciate the dramatic reduction in poverty and starvation over the last 30 years or so. Truly, things have never been better for so many people, and there is no good reason to doubt further great progress is within our reach.
Here's another video, by an expert in CO2 and its effects. This would make good holiday viewing for any youngster, or indeed adult, badly troubled by all the shameless, mindless scaremongering about CO2 and climate:
And here is some reinforcement from an extremely distinguished physicist who has specialised in the interaction of radiation with matter:
'It takes layers of incompetence to wind up an atmospheric spectral change into Death To Billions. Mass delusion and catastrophic hyperbole just doesn’t come from nowhere — it’s starts with incompetent scientists who never ask each other hard questions, not even in the tea rooms. They tell journalists ambiguously phrased, cherry picked lines which are then amped up by the media, who also ask no hard questions and go on to misquote and exaggerate. By then it’s a junkyard of science communication, and that’s when attention-seeking zealots get hold of what they thought were scientific pronouncements and turn them into bumper stickers of enviro-biblical jello.' Jo Nova, http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/takes-layers-of-incompetence-to-create-mindless-catastrophic-hyperbole/
What a neat summary of this dreadful, destructive fiasco. How much longer can it continue? Alarmism science is bankrupt, but the political alarmism forces may yet cause even more massive damage than they have already done before their momentum and their madness is stopped.
Here is a real scientist dismissing the climate alarmism:
'Only 9% of 15-year-olds can tell the difference between fact and opinion'
'In the US, 13.5% of 15-year-olds can distinguish between fact and opinion when trying to interpret a complex reading task. In the UK, it’s just 11.5%.
Those results are both better than the OECD average of 9%, according to the latest results of PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, an international test of math, science, and reading which is administered by the OECD every three years.'
No wonder, then, that youngsters are so vulnerable to CO2 Scare propaganda! As well as pointing to failings in education, this also points to the value of good teachers and parents who help their children make better sense of the world. The recent waves of publicity for Extinction Rebellion's and Greta Thunberg's ill-informed opinions add some more urgency to finding ways to help parents and teachers, and to help the children themselves, see the lack of substance in the CO2 Scare.
Josh's calendar for 2020 may be his best yet, and that is saying something. Glorious colours, great wit, and lots of insights, and reminders of stuff and nonsense from afflicted (aka 'anointed') ones of the CO2 Scare.
For the classroom wall, or the staff-room wall, or your kitchen wall - several conversation pieces each month - all with charm and even compassion, not least for the afflicted ones and their self-anointed leaders.
It also makes for a good gift, as does Josh's new book: 'All You Need to Know About Climate Change - in cartoons'
Here is Matt Ridley, writing in his foreword to this book:
'Nobody does a better job of exposing with wit the shaky foundations on which these predictions of doom are built than Josh. In these pages are real scientific, economic and political arguments expressed in ingenious cartoons, their background explained in paragraphs of pithy text.'
Couldn't have said it better myself.
A great present for young and old, and it could especially help any teenagers you know at high school who may be deeply troubled thanks to the wicked propaganda they have been subjected to all their days.
Lots of ideas for high school projects on the CO2 Scare could be plucked from this video by discerning teachers: three penetrating thinkers and analysts on climate variation (and the current alarmism around it) - Ross McKitrick, Steve McIntyre, and Anthony Watts talking good sense, aided and abetted by Mark Steyn, a penetrating thinker and analyst of current affairs - as well as a lively chairman of this discussion:
And to mark the recent passing of Clive James, here is a relevant poem of his:
Imminent Catastrophe
The imminent catastrophe goes on Not showing many signs of happening. The ice at the North Pole that should be gone By now, is awkwardly still lingering, And though sometimes the weather is extreme It seems no more so than when we were young Who soon will hear no more of this grim theme Reiterated in the special tongue Of manufactured fright. Sea Level Rise Will be here soon and could do such-and-such, Say tenured pundits with unblinking eyes. Continuing to not go up by much, The sea supports the sceptics, but they, too, Lapse into oratory when they predict The sure collapse of the alarmist view Like a house of cards, for they could not have picked A metaphor less suited to their wish. A house of cards subsides with just a sigh And all the cards are still there. Feverish Talk of apocalypse might, by and by, Die down, but the deep anguish will persist. His death, and not the Earth’s, is the true fear That motivates the doomsday fantasist: There can be no world if he is not here. -- Clive James, The Times, 17 March 2016
That invaluable blog, 'Not a Lot of People Know That', has an embedded video of an Australian politician making some telling points about a climate emergency which has become as fashionable as it is unfounded:
More of this please. Will schoolteachers dare use this short video clip in class? Let us hope there are still some in that profession who value reality over ideology, and dislike scaremongering about CO2.
'By perpetuating bogus claims of a world ending in 12 years, the Chicken Littles are doing far more harm than blinding children to scientific evidence that many species, from polar bears to Adelie penguins, are thriving. Our children miss the “important lesson” that a “climate crisis” is only a theory supported by scary narratives, not facts. So how do we protect our children from Chicken Littles who seek to enroll vulnerable minds into their doomsday cults? How do we motivate our children to be good critical thinkers, and not blind group thinkers mesmerized by fear and ‘end of the earth’ scenarios?
Foxy Loxy invites Chicken Little into the "safety" of his den
We tell children fairy tales to alert them to the real dangers, such as Crying Wolf. In the original Chicken Little tale, Foxy Loxy offered Chicken Little and friends the shelter of his den so they would be safe from the falling sky. Once inside Foxy's den, they were never heard from again!'
But in view of poor Greta's impact on young, and other vulnerable or poorly informed people, I think it deserves a post of its own. Some extracts follow:
An Open Letter to Greta Thunberg
You are not a moral leader. But I will tell you what you are.
You have declared yourself a leader and said that your generation will start a revolution. You have comported yourself as a credentialed adult and climate change activist who has fearlessly addressed politicians and world leaders. You have dropped out of school and declared that there isn’t any reason to attend, or any reason for you to study since there will be no future for you to inherit. You have, rather than attend your classes, been leading Friday Climate Strikes for all students in your generation across the globe. Your attendance at oil pipelines has been striking. There, you unequivocally declare that all oil needs to remain in the ground where it belongs.
I shall, therefore, against the backdrop of your activism, address you as an adult rather than as a child.
...
There are a few things that we, the rational adults of the world who are not bowing to you like guilt-ridden obsequious Babbitts need to say to you, Greta.
First, we did not rob you of your childhood or of your dreams. You are the legatee of a magnificent technological civilization which my generation and the one before it and several others preceding it all the way to the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, bequeathed to you. That growth-driven, capitalist technological civilization has created the conditions for you to harangue us over our betrayal. It is a civilization that eradicated diseases such as small pox from the word, and that lifted millions out of abject poverty in a universe you think is dying and decaying. It assured you a life expectancy that exceeded that of your ancestors. Most likely by focusing on economic growth which you demonize, and scientific advancement, that civilization will further enhance a robust quality of life and health for your descendants.
Here is a hard truth to ponder, Greta: if the great producers of this world whom you excoriate were to withdraw their productivity, wealth and talents—in short—their minds from the world today, your generation would simply perish. Why? Because as children you have done nothing as yet, with your lives besides being born. This is what we expect of children until such time as they can be producers by learning from their elders. You are understandably social and ecological ballast. You are not yet cognitively advanced to replicate the structures of survival of which you are the beneficiaries.
Children are important installments on the future. We have invested in you. It is you and your smug generation which think they have nothing to learn from the older ones who are failing themselves. Whom do you expect to employ the majority of you if you have neither the job credentials or life competency skills to navigate the world? The future unemployable-skipping- school-on-Friday obstreperous children?
The truth, as one anonymous blogger aptly put it, is that your generation is unable to work up to forty hours per week without being chronically depressed and anxious. Its members cannot even decide if they want to be a boy or a girl, or both, or neither, or a “they.” They cannot eat meat without crying. I might add that your generation needs “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” as pre-conditions for learning in school. Its members have a pathological need to be coddled and protected from the challenging realities of life. Your generation is the biggest demander and consumer of carbon spewing technological gadgets and devices. An hour without any of them and too many of you succumb to paralyzing lethargy. Your generation is the least curious and most insular set of individuals one has ever encountered. Your hubris extends so far that you think you have nothing to learn from your elders.
Yes, we have betrayed you: by capitulating the world of leadership to bored, attention-deficit children who spout bromides, platitudes and slogans that a rudderless and morally relativistic culture accepts because a significant number of its denizens have become intellectually bankrupt and morally lazy.
'On Nov. 20-21, 2019, in schools around the world, for ages down to kindergarten, Al Gore's "Climate Reality" group plans to give presentations based on Gore's highly fraudulent "Truth in 10" slideshow. ' Tom Nelson is drawing attention to a new threat to the well-being of children around the world - a new Gore-developed presentation designed to alarm and to upset. Here is some of the promotion for it on Al Gore's own blog: 'The climate crisis affects all of us. And it’s up to all of us to solve it.
That is why Al Gore created the Truth in 10 slideshow, a 10-minute presentation that will help you spread a simple message to your community: the climate crisis is urgent, but the solutions are at hand.
Download the presentation, personalize it, practice it at home, and then go out and deliver it. Start with your friends, your family, your school, your house of worship, your business or community center.'
Tom's reaction: 'I think as many skeptics as possible should check out the map here. If a presentation is scheduled at a local school, please take the time to write a complaint letter. (Please let me know via DM, email, or comment here if you do some pushback).'
Given Al Gore's poor track record on climate, this is not good news. I daresay he may be hoping to ride on the new waves of publicity being generated by Extinction Rebellion. These are political initiatives employing blatant scaremongering, and as such should have no place in schools.
