CO2-Conjecture Causes Contempt: scared children used as an argument for scaring more of them over the global warming that has not taken place in their lifetimes.

An article in The Guardian today reports on a UNICEF commissioned sample survey being used as an argument for no-change to the treatment of ‘climate change’ in school curricula for under-14s in England.

The sampling (the details of which are omitted from the article – that by itself is unimpressive to say the least) found 3 out of 4 children aged 11 to 16 years (no other details given other than they are British) claiming to be ‘deeply concerned about the impact of climate change’, and  ‘worried about how global warming will change the world’. 

This is at a time when there has been no ‘global warming’ during the lifetimes of these children, when melo-dramatic speculation over the importance of CO2 is under wider and deeper attack than ever before, and when there has been nothing at all extraordinary taking place in weather, in sea level, in ice variation, and in sea temperatures.

The results of the poll should, you would think, have caused outrage in any objective observer.  Who has been messing with the minds of these youngsters?  How can they get away with doing that?  How can it be stopped?

But no.  The article, and the organisation which commissioned the survey, UNICEF, are taking the view that the results mean the indoctrination and scaremongering in schools should continue.  In this perversion of logic and morality, they wish to resist the very modest proposals that would increases the chances of under-14s being left alone to concentrate on their basic studies rather than be exposed to climate campaigns in the classroom.

Like other short-sighted NGOs, Unicef have not hesitated to exploit the climate scare to raise funds.  Look at this for example, part of a screenshot from their website here.

Children in developing countries are among those hardest hit by 'climate change'?  Is that right?  First, we might ask, what 'climate change'?

Is it the change that has brought record crops to India?  The change producing record harvests in Kenya?  The change producing record harvests in South America?  Perhaps it is the change that has brought record coffee harvests to Indonesia?  Or the record grain harvests in China?

Is it the change that has seen reduced hurricane activity?  It can't be the climate change known as 'global warming' because we know that one has not been happening for nearly two decades now.  And it won't be good enough to dig out examples of local floods, or droughts, or other burdens unless they can be shown to be extraordinary.  Everywhere experiences climate variation, and in general, the wealthier the country, the more able it is to cope.  The wealth of many developing countries has been increasing quite dramatically.  Good news, eh?  I wonder if these points are in the desired curriculum for 'climate change'?  I fear not.  They would distract from the message of alarm which is so highly-valued by those who wish to indoctrinate the young by such means.

Paging David A, the polar bears are doing OK - talk of their decline was just cheap propaganda to scare kids about climate.

The idea that polar bears are disappearing has been widely used in order to win the attention of children and scare them about their own future by claiming the polar bears are already suffering badly from 'climate change' and so in due course will they.  Even the world-class narrator of nature documentaries, David Attenborough, has been taken in, and he really ought to know better.

An open-letter has been published, ostensibly to Attenborough, but actually it could apply to any teachers who have made use of the notion that polar bears have been suffering from the effects of global warming and that it is all due to humanity.  In fact, the polar bears have been doing fine, and of course the idea that humanity is driving the climate system is a far-fetched notion that more and more people can see is so unhinged from reality that they will question the morality, as well as the intellectual integrity, of anyone who pushes it.

The letter was published today in Quadrant Online.  It is from a Dr John Happs, who is described as a science educator.  He is also president of an interesting discussion group in Western Australia - the WA Skeptics.  They set out to encourage 'a responsible view of curious and unlikely claims (including medical claims) by providing regular meetings open to all'.

John Happs

His letter is quite a long one, with a great deal of well-referenced information in it to back up his conclusions:

 “There is no evidence that the planet is warming dangerously. Nor is there any evidence that Arctic ice and polar bears are about to vanish. There is ample evidence to show that polar bears are not under threat.  What is under threat is scientific integrity and the public’s access to accurate scientific information. The media must shoulder some of the responsibility for the misinformation and exaggeration that has been promoted about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and a bleak future for polar bears.”

 

Examples of Exploitation of Polar Bears for Propaganda

I did a quick Google for 'polar bears and climate change for kids'.  Over 6 million hits, of which the following three were but some early examples:

(1) WWF: “The effects of climate change are already being felt by local wildlife and habitats in polar regions.

For example, polar bears and Emperor penguins, at the north and south pole respectively, are already declining in number as sea ice retreats for many months of the year.”

(2) Twiggle Magazine: “Children will learn that climate change is causing ice caps to melt and makes it harder for the polar bears to find food.”

 (3) An eco-activist produced this in 2006: 

Sad to say, it is the sort of nonsense that could all too readily be found in classrooms and school materials today.  

Teachers can tell their pupils that the polar bears are mostly doing OK, and far better now than a few decades ago. They can also tell them we're mostly doing OK as well, at least better than a few decades ago.  Global warming attributed to human intervention is not a threat to us, nor to the bears, nor to anything else.  If anything, we would all benefit from more global warming, not less. Somehow speculation about  largely beneficial and modest temperature rises in the 20th century has been used to demonise carbon dioxide and our industrial and agricultural progress.  So far, the rising carbon dioxide levels' only demonstrable effect on us has been to contribute to an appreciable rise in agricultural productivity on the one hand, and a hideous rise in irrational and destructive scaremongering and climate-linked policy-making on the other.  

Note added 16 April 2013: Relevant thoughts and links in this Spiked article: http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13462/