Back in 1949, the songwriters of the musical 'South Pacific' were on to this type of problem in a different context (that of racism):
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught
This is highly relevant to the climate-alarm based scaremongering in schools around the world today. This awful phenomenon brings shame on our institutions, and our political leaders, for their generally supine gullibility over decades of absurdly hyped climate alarm. That is bad enough by itself, but the deliberate recruitment, by frightening them, of young children to be vehicles for putting pressure on their parents, and on politicians is particularly disgraceful.
Moral outrage is surely the perspective of those of us who find the case for any level of alarm over CO2 to be an unconvincing one. But even those who believe that some alarm is in order can be appalled by the harm being done to children by eco-zealots of one kind or another. The statistician and economist Bjorn Lomborg is one such. Below are some extract from an article he published today with this headline:
'Decades of climate-change exaggeration in the West have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and unrealistic political promises'
Extract 1
'Although the students’ passion is admirable, their focus is misguided. This is largely the fault of adults, who must take responsibility for frightening children unnecessarily about climate change. It is little wonder that kids are scared when grown-ups paint such a horrific picture of global warming.'
Extract 2
'And some prominent politicians, as well as many activists, have taken the latest reportfrom the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to suggest the world will come to an end in just 12 years.
This normalization of extreme language reflects decades of climate-change alarmism. The most famous clip from Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth showed how a 20-foot rise in sea level would flood Florida, New York, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and Shanghai – omitting the fact that this was seven times worse than the worst-case scenario.
A separate report that year described how such alarmism “might even become secretly thrilling – effectively a form of ‘climate porn.’” And in 2007, The Washington Post reported that “for many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today.”
When the language stops being scary, it gets ramped up again. British environmental campaigner George Monbiot, for example, has suggested that the term “climate change” is no longer adequate and should be replaced by “catastrophic climate breakdown.”
Educational materials often don’t help, either. One officially endorsed geography textbook in the United Kingdom suggests that global warming will be worse than famine, plague, or nuclear war, while Education Scotland has recommended The Day After Tomorrow as suitable for climate-change education. This is the film, remember, in which climate change leads to a global freeze and a 50-foot wall of water flooding New York, man-eating wolves escape from the zoo, and – spoiler alert – Queen Elizabeth II’s frozen helicopter falls from the sky.'
Journalists are Taking Notice.
Here is a headline from the Washington Times online yesterday:
'Motivated or manipulated? Rise of youth climate activism fuels alarm over exploitation'
The article draws attention to the deliberate plotting that has been going on to make use of children:
'Kids are fast becoming the face of the climate change movement as teenagers, ‘tweens and even younger children file lawsuits, stage walkouts and lobby lawmakers. But newly released documents have raised questions about whether the students are being motivated or manipulated.
A cache of emails released Wednesday on Climate Litigation Watch showed that top climate activists at the 2012 La Jolla strategy session sought to involve children in a legal and civil offensive against the fossil fuel industry, which would include worldwide marches from the “youth climate movement.”
Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christopher C. Horner, who obtained the emails via an open-records request with the University of Oregon, said the presentation contained in the email is more evidence that students have been used as props.
“It turns out that the frenzied street theater of children’s marches and schoolkids’ strikes was laid out behind closed doors years ago, at the organizational meeting of what became a climate litigation industry,” Mr. Horner said in an email.'
See the Washington Times link for more details. See also this WUWT piece from yesterday.
Candles in the Gloom.Suggestions on how people can, and ought, to help these children, and adults who have been through the education system in the last 30 years or so will be the focus for more posts on this blog in the near future. But in the meantime here are three good efforts already in place. The first is a video produced by Friends of Science, and is directly aimed at children involved in the climate protests:
(YouTube video, hat-tip: https://cliscep.com/2019/03/08/educating-greta/#comment-34676 )
The second is from the Climate Conversation Group, and is in the form of an open letter, and is a bit more pointed. It begins with these words:
'...You currently ignore reason, evidence and science and the global political system is on the brink of a catastrophe. The devastating effects of your ignorance are felt by millions of people around the globe for we are far from reaching a common understanding of the climate. Yet this can change.
Young people make up more than half the global population. Your generation have never known global warming, which has barely occurred since the late 1990s.
Almost nobody is included in the local or global decision-making process. That is the nature of democracy and the reason we elect a representative.
We will no longer tolerate your failure to learn how the world works. We demand you pay attention to science, for there is no evidence of a climate crisis. '
The third, is at that most excellent blog, Climate Scepticism. Richard Drake has sympathetically raised the prospect of 'Educating Greta', the adolescent who has recently been the focus of much publicity on climate alarm. Here's a taster:
'Since 17th February I’ve been thinking about how I would educate Greta. Finally, I think I do have something to say. There are four stages in her possible enlightenment for me now:
- The Guenier
- The Gates
- The Drake
- The Ring
As you’ll see these are going to be sketchy and category-based, to get the precocious youngster to think. And I hope the materials I point to in the process may even stimulate the grey cells of other readers.'
Note added 15 March 2019. Here is a fourth good effort, re-published today at WUWT. Also in the form of an open letter:
'By Brian Dingwall, New Zealand
Hi Kids,
Many of you will be marching today, demonstrating for an issue you believe to be very important.
Many years ago, I was young, well informed, and absolutely convinced I knew enough to make good decisions for the future of the world, and couldn’t understand just how obtuse all the oldies were, how they just didn’t know the stuff I had just learned.'
He goes to make many excellent points, e.g.
'The world has many historic consensuses that have turned out to not be so. So far, I don’t mind sharing with you, I have yet to be persuaded.
My background is in science, with a smattering of economics, and statistics and I well understand the case for catastrophic climate change. I find it unconvincing.
As do a raft of well qualified experts in many fields, even Nobel prize winners, and I urge you to find out who they are, and why they have reservations.
There are two sides to this debate, but only one is well resourced, so you have to work a bit harder to find the arguments of the sceptical scientists.'
