Climate Scaremongering Antidote: resisting the demonisation of CO2

While the search for a cure-all for CO2 alarmism continues, we shall, in the meantime, have to make do with piecemeal treatments to help young people cope with the deluge of woefully inadequate information relating to climate.

The problem is sometimes the information is wrong, but perhaps more common is a severe lack of balance.

The fact that the gentle overall warming of the last 150 years or so is generally very beneficial is not acknowledged,  whatever combination of factors has caused it.  Nor is the positive impact of higher ambient CO2 levels on agricultural productivity often recognised.

When your goal is to scare people to get their attention, I guess you don't want to dilute your messaging.  But we who don't care for their tactics nor their cause, need to be ready to respond to them, or at least help reduce the harm they must cause.

A new report from the GWPF provides parents and teachers with help to do that by providing an excellent background briefing on the benefits of CO2.

Image: GWPF

From their press release:

'... former IPCC delegate Dr Indur Goklany calls for a reassessment of carbon dioxide, which he says has many benefits for the natural world and for humankind.

Dr Goklany said: “Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature”.'

There is also an excellent foreword from the extremely distinguished physicist, Freeman Dyson, who concludes (my italics, bolding and layout):

'Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. 

First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. 

Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. 

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonising carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. Goklany and I do not claim to be infallible. Like the climate-model experts, we have also evolved recently from the culture of the cave-children. Like them, we have inherited our own set of prejudices and blindnesses. Truth emerges when different groups of explorers listen to each other’s stories and correct each other’s mistakes.'

 

The report can be downloaded free of charge from this link:  http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

PS
For those who may want to keep up to date on this topic, or to find out more from the scientific literature about it, this site is invaluable: CO2 Science.

Note added 15 Oct 2015.  The reformed ex-Greenpeace leader, Patrick Moore gave the GWPF Annual Lecture last night arguing we should 'celebrate CO2'.  Details via this link: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/15/should-we-celebrate-co2-cartoon-notes-by-josh.html

Can It Be This Easy? Helping young people learn about climate reality

Screenshot from the video

'Watch the double take students do when confronted with the straight facts that there has been no dramatic global warming as they’ve been led to believe.

The good news?  Students got it.  Some were upset. Virtually all were surprised. The only thing they needed was access to the truth.

You’ll be heartened to see these bright youngsters casting aside the politically-correct hype they’ve been fed and forming valid conclusions based on sound scientific data.'
Source: http://www.cfact.org/2015/08/20/watch-students-wake-up-about-warming/

Here is the video from CFACT: 

Note added later on 28 Aug. I think it likely that the young people in the video are amongst the brightest of recent high school leavers, and probably typical in their condition of being very poorly informed about climate change.  An official, well-designed sample-survey of senior high school pupils is long overdue to estimate the scale of the damage being inflicted upon them by climate scaremongers.

Second note on 28 Aug.  Here is a copy of the temperature plot shown in the video.  Why not print out your own copy and try it out on your friends and acquaintances, especially if they happen to be parents of high school pupils?

Source details and further commentary can be found here:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/06/the-pause-draws-blood-a-new-record-pause-length-no-warming-for-18-years-7-months/

Alarming Climate Predictions: an informative cartoon for the classroom wall

(Ht: http://www.weatheraction.com/)

One thing anyone concerned about the harm being done to schoolchildren by climate alarmism must do is help them see how incompetent so many of the prominent pushers of alarm are when it comes to science.  The above cartoon would help encourage the youngsters to take the fear-mongers' confident assertions with a pinch of salt, and perhaps just a hint of amused contempt.

Some resources for project work by pupils, parents, or teachers , on the inability of the climate alarm 'community'* to give useful guidance about the future:

1. http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/25-years-of-predicting-the-global-warming-tipping-point/
2. http://climatechangepredictions.org/
3. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-climate-predictions/
4. http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=predictions
5. http://notrickszone.com/climate-scandals/
6. http://notrickszone.com/category/stupid-predictions/
7. http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/01/warmists-take-hardest-hits/
8. http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/24/laughing-stock-met-office-2007-peer-reviewed-global-temperature-forecast-a-staggering-failure/
9. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/only-bourgeois-science-compares-facts.html
10. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/background-briefing-for-climate.html
11. https://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/james-hansen-1986-within-15-years-temps-will-be-hotter-than-past-100000-years/
12. http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/30/robust-science-more-than-30-contradictory-pairs-of-peer-reviewed-papers/,
13. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/ten_major_failures_of_so_called_consensus_science/
14. http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/global-warming-audit
15. http://www.kestencgreen.com/statedeptclimate2010.pdf
16. http://www.climatedepot.com/2010/05/05/team-of-scientists-counter-us-govt-report-global-warming-alarm-will-prove-false-climate-fears-based-on-faulty-forecasting-procedures/
17. http://www.thegwpf.com/climate-forecasting-models-arent-pretty-and-they-arent-smart/
18. http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
19. http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
20. http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/tag/predictions-that-failed/
21. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-73-un-climate-models-wrong-no-global-warming-17

*Note added 26 August: I think 'industry' would have been better.  It is a very lucrative sector - with fear and alarm essential for continued income.

Note added 26 August: the emotive mess and fatuous prophecies of alarmist personalities is exemplified by the Australian climate clown Tim Flannery.  In 2005, he expected the Warragamba catchment and Dam would suffer permanent drought.  Then what happened?  In 2012, it overflowed.  In 2015, it has just overflowed again.  See: http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/australia-s-chief-climate-alarmist-fails-in-another-of-his-predictions-after-just-7-10-years.html

Note added 28 August: trying to ride on the back of destructive weather is a hallmark of junk scientists and their followers intent on climate scaremongering, so their claims about hurricanes provide a rich seam of their machinations:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/27/throwback-thursday-5-failed-global-warming-driven-hurricane-predictions-10-years-after-katrina/

Note added 01 September: the UK Met Office has long been a prominent rider on the scaryglobalwarming bandwagon, and has a correspondingly poor record when it comes to forecasting the implications of it for the UK:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/01/another-bbq-summer-fiasco-met-office-gets-it-wrong-again/

Note added 31 October.  A handy compilation of 'last chance' forecasts on 'saving the climate' on the Climate Predictions site: :

2001, Bonn    2005, Montreal   2007, Bali    2008, Poznan
2009, Copenhagen   2010, Cancun    2011, Durban     2012, Doha 
2013, Warsaw    2014, Lima     2015, Paris

Typical drivel ahead of each of these meetings: 'The scientists are telling us that this is the world’s last shot at avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.'
(hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/30/the-last-chance-saloons.html )

Note added 13 November.  Anthony Watts has noted that The Independent newspaper has removed their report of the notorious David Viner's ex cathedra prediction that children would not know what snow was: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/12/one-of-the-longest-running-climate-prediction-blunders-has-disappeared-from-the-internet/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent/
He had, fortunately for benefit of the record of all this sort of drivel over the years, kept a copy of the original article: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent.pdf