Maths, Science, Ego - what are we doing re 'climate' in our schools?

Cartoon source: http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/23251

I think ego-building is a part of what is going on, but that is to be optimistic.  Telling children that they are to 'save the planet' is perhaps good for their egos.  But telling them, based pretty much on computer models that are not fit to be let out of the groves of academe, that the planet, which for the young means their family and friends and pets, is in imminent danger, is surely bad for their spirits.  And bad for their intellects too, since there is precious little good science behind CO2-alarmism and an awful lot of goal-motivated speculation.  What that goal, or goals are, is worthy of debate, but handing over more taxes and more power to governments seems an intrinsic part of it.  Destroying industrial progress seems another.  Mostly, though, it seems to feed on the joy of controlling others - what they eat, drink, and smoke; how they light, heat, and build their houses; what opinions they may hold on this that and the other; what transport systems they are allowed to use; and how far away their trading partners are permitted to be.  All based on fear.  Irrational, spirit-sapping, mind-numbing, truth-obscuring fear.  What a way to prepare the young for the future.  Let us hope that in China and in India, and in other powerhouses of the developing world, they will choose instead to pursue maths, and science, and independent thought, even as the US and Europe and other places wreck themselves and their young with dismal, pessimistic foolishness on a grand scale.  These Chinese and Indian and other children will not just take the 1st and 2nd places on such podia suggested by the cartoon above, but soon the 3rd and 4th and ... nth as well.  Good luck to them.  Our future generations may yet learn from them in turn.

Contempt for Parliament - an effect or an enabler of CO2 alarmism?

A Lord Marland disgraces the House of Lords with his blatant contempt for a fellow peer.  But it is a sign not merely of yobbishness on his part, but of the absurdity and indefensibility of the Climate Change Act.  It is out of the question that it can be complied with, and this particular exchange merely serves, as did the climategate revelations, to reveal the low calibre of some of those who create, or collaborate with, alarm about CO2 in the atmosphere.  This vacuity at government level is unsettling but not surprising - there being so little substance to the case for such alarm. An alarm that is now part of the curriculum in our schools.  

(Photo: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/about/lord_marland/lord_marland.aspx)

Extract from the proceedings of the House of Lords, 20th October 2010
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101020-0001.htm#10102041000398)

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chairman of the Government’s own Green Investment Bank commission has authoritatively stated that the cost of meeting our current carbon reduction commitments in this country is somewhere between £800 billion and £1 trillion? Does he not agree that, with the best will in the world, this mind-boggling cost cannot be justified except in the context of a binding global carbon reduction agreement? Therefore, in the absence of such an agreement being secured at Cancun, does he not agree that it is only commonsense to suspend the Climate Change Act until such time as a binding global agreement is secured?

Lord Marland: My Lords, when I bumped into my noble friend in the Corridor and he said that he was catching the train to York I was rather relieved. Sadly, he will be catching a slightly later train than I was hoping for. I have now forgotten entirely what his question was.

Hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/10/21/lord-marland-shames-parliament.html