Good news: a new weapon in the war against climate nonsense - a climate app for the iPhone

Jo Nova has yet more good news for all those on the side of the angels.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/our-climate-the-iphone-ap-for-climate-realists/

An 'app' on climate has been published for the iPhone.

Created by honest scientists and commentators, this may well reach lots of people not likely to be reached by the blogs and the books and the movies.

The official site is here: http://www.ourclimate.info/

Just look at all this on offer:

'Our Climate features a number of “bite-size” climate information nuggets that you can absorb without needing a PhD in climate science! These information nuggets offer you rapid insight to some of the most interesting aspects of our climate, both today and in the past.

Try your hand at our fun climate quiz, where the answers are never really what you think at first!  See if you can get your score up to that of a professional climate scientist…

With literally dozens of built-in tutorials, Our Climate will help you understand how basic climate science operates and, most importantly, help you distinguish between climate facts, climate theories and popular misconceptions. 

Once you feel familiar with the basics, why not participate in our anonymous global poll on attitudes towards Global Warming?  When you have expressed your views, you can then see by region how the rest of the world’s users of Our Climate have voted.

Since climate issues do feature heavily in the news, you also have a climate-centric news feed directly on the App.  This offers you quick access to some of the top climate stories of the day.

Finally, Our Climate comes packed with a large number of very recent climate datasets that you can browse at your own pace, or perhaps use to settle a debate with friends!  Each dataset comes with a detailed set of comments to help you understand what the data is all about.'

Why Would You Believe This? (7 of 8): 'Children born today will not be in a position of influence for 40 years, and by then it will be too late. The inertia in the climate system means that without action from us, by the time they can change the world, catastrophic warming will almost certainly be factored into the system.'

I look at this dismal piece of hypocrisy and gobbledeygook in three parts below.  The quote came from a now defunct site determined to enrol children in the pursuit of their green agenda, and who used their own irrational fears to justify passing them on to those too young to spot their nonsense.  More on that site here: (1).

(1) 'Children born today will not be in a position of influence for 40 years, and by then it will be too late.'

The claimed lack of influence of children is belied by the efforts of Schools Low Carbon Day to make them into political and commercial actors, influencing their parents and others to change lifestyles, and purchase so-called 'green energy tariff' electricity from a particular company.

I have found several more such sites. They are intent on indoctrinating children to toe the 'party line' on the environment. Children old enough to be scared, old enough to be influenced, but too young to fight back against the propaganda.

Here is one EU-funded boondoggle explaining itself:

'The main idea is to enable the pupils to learn about the challenges of global climate change and sustainable energy use and, at the same time, acquire the competences necessary to develop and subsequently apply adequate solutions.'

by means of:

'The European project “Schools at University for Climate & Energy (SAUCE)” offers a series of one-week on-campus education programmes for pupils ages 10-13 on the topics of energy efficient behaviour, renewable energies and climate change.'
Source: (2).

They were at it in London in June, where they set out to:

'develop education in climate awareness, offer smart energy choices for 10 to 13 year olds'

Too young to answer back, old enough to hassle their parents.  Does that explain this sinister choice of target group?
For more see: (3)

Here is a site which is quite blatantly majoring on fundraising via children:

'School children across the world have made an incredible difference to rainforest protection by fundraising for Cool Earth.'

and they note: 'Schools play a really important part in raising awareness about climate change'
Source: (4).

Here is another site not so convinced that 'children will not be in a position of influence for 40 years'.  They ask:

'What do you think will happen if one million of us marched, each in our own home towns, to send a message to the “ruling generation” that is so powerful that it actually causes a real shift in our world?  Sign up to be an organizer, leader or marcher!'
Source: (5).

Here is the Pew Centre, a prosperous-looking lobbying organisation by Washington DC, getting in on the game:

'To help more kids better understand global warming, the Pew Center recently collaborated with Nickelodeon to research children's and parents' attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. Nickelodeon is using the information for an interactive campaign called The Big Green Help.  There's a lot you can learn about global warming. To help, this page provides answers to six key questions about global warming, how it occurs, and how you can help to stop the process.'
Source: (6).

Or how about this anonymous site, probably in the UK, and aimed at 5 to 11 year olds:

'If your parents must use the car, ask them to avoid using it for very short journeys if possible, as this creates unnecessary pollution. Try to encourage them to share their journeys with other people, for example when they go to work or go shopping. Also encourage them to drive more slowly as this produces less pollution and less carbon dioxide.'
Source: (7).

What kind of results are such sites and initiatives getting?  I only have some 'for-instances'.  These folks are pleased:

'Because children are such strong catalysts for social change, the program has had wonderful results.'
This quote from a campaigning site aimed at children by a couple who were convinced by, of all things, 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
Source: (8).

And in the news this week from Boston:

'Totalitarians throughout history have understood the power of co-opting youth, and here is an organization advocating what can only be called the indoctrination of a generation of students in our country's public schools, beginning in kindergarten, into radical environmentalism and advocacy for "equitable social systems" -- at the expense of reading, writing and arithmetic! Similarly, the physics teacher quoted above states: "Our goal as educators is to help students understand how to get to a sustainable world." Isn't your goal as a physics teacher teaching physics? The disregard for the essential purpose of education -- -imparting knowledge -- is aggressively blatant.'
Source: (9).

Not so recent, but alarming all the same is the set of often illiterate letters from pupils organised by a teacher in a Californian school, to berate the Heartland Institute for not taking the correct line on climate.  They include such gems as:

'In the past couple of months, we have read articles about Global Warming and we know facts about G.W.  The 1st article is Diesel traffic makes asthma worse.  The article explains that diesel traffic can worsen lung function in people with asthma.  The 2nd article is Air pollution shrinks fetus size.  This means that if mothers have higher exposure to air pollution, the child's fetus will shrink.  The 3rd article is World Must Fix Climate in Less than 10 years.  This means that if we don't fix the climate, everything will be destroyed and we won't be able to survive.  Those are all the important articles we read.'
 The anonymised letters can be downloaded from: (10).

I leave the last word on this misuse of schools and exploitation of children, to an American journalist offended by some climate change ads using children for scaremongering.  I'd extend his remark to include all those initiatives in and around schools on climate scaremongering:

'I don't know about you, but irrespective of my position on this issue, I find using children in this fashion to be indefensible and way over the line of decency.'
Source: (11).  .

(2) 'The inertia in the climate system ...'

The 'inertia of the climate system' is not defined, but it may refer to remarks by James Hansen in 2009.

From the climategate emails, we read a message from Trenberth, on 12th October 2009, cc'd to, amongst others, Hansen:
 'The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.'
Source: (12).

Hansen speaking about two weeks later in over-the-top demented alarmist terms well-suited for the Club of Rome, has found somewhere to hide the missing heat: in a pipeline, aka a timebomb.  His talk was entitled 'Global Warming Time Bomb', and his slides included one with the device 'Climate Inertia -> Warming in Pipeline'.
Source: (13).

A more temperate scientist, Roger Pielke Snr writes in January 2010:

'But unless observations document that significant heat is accumulating deeper in the ocean, there are no major amounts of unaccounted for Joules in the climate system. There is therefore no “unrealized heat” and, thus, no “heating in the pipeline”.'
Source: (14).

I'm more convinced by the analysis of Pielke, than by the conjecture of Hansen.

No pipeline, no timebomb, no scary headlines.

(3) '... means that without action from us, by the time they can change the world, catastrophic warming will almost certainly be factored into the system.'

Why would that be?  The 'almost certainly', as we have seen in earlier posts in this series, ought to read 'almost certainly not' given the complete lack of evidence of any extraordinary cause for concern, in particular from CO2.  Many scientists accept that CO2 alone could change average temperatures anywhere between a modest decrease to an increase of around 1C.  No grounds for catastrophe there.  Any such changes would scarcely be detectable against the background variation which is part and parcel of our climate.  So, it comes back to the computer models.  The Club of Rome had such an impact with their now widely ridiculed modeling, that I can't help but feel the plotters behind the IPCC were keen to make the most of the climate modellers' arts.  Especially those who invented a positive feedback mechanism that allowed the modest impact of CO2 to be converted into a dramatic effect due to water vapour.  They might well have hoped to rely on the same lack of critical review which the media gave to the Club of Rome, and if so they were surely right.  No one expects high standards from the media, but once upon a time, we expected it from science. Scientists once revered as objective seekers after truth have been transformed into jobsworths seeking security of tenure and larger research grants, both of which were jeopardised by going against the received wisdom on climate.

But hope springs eternal: the recent rebellion by fellows of the Royal Society was one bright spark, and here is another from a journalist recognising failings in her profession:

'These are desperate days for global warming advocates, and they should be. The two groups we rely on the most to be skeptical and detail-oriented, scientists and reporters, have continued to badly fail us.'
Source: (15).

In my more charitable moments, I suppose that the founders of 'Schools' Low Carbon Day'  were merely badly failed by scientists and reporters.  At other times, I wonder at their enthusiasm for scaring schoolkids in order to advance their 'green agenda'.

References
(1) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-concerned.html
(2) http://www.schools-at-university.eu  
(3) http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/latest-news/july-2009/local-school-children-get-to-the-sauce-of-climate-change.cfm
(4)  http://www.coolearth.org/421/category/get-involved-176.html
(5) http://kids-vs-global-warming.com/Home.html
(6) http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/kidspage.cfm
 (7) http://www.clean-air-kids.org.uk/index.html
(8) http://www.cancelacar.org/who-we-are/.
(9) http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/avantgarde_sustainability_curr.html
(10) http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22921/California_Teacher_Encourages_Political_Activism_by_Elementary_School_Students.html
(11) http://newsbusters.org/node/19907
(12) http://thefinalredoubt.blogspot.com/2009/11/christmas-has-come-early-for-climate.html
(13) www.clubofrome.at/2009/amsterdam/p/hansen.pdf
(14) http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/my-view-of-the-terminolgy-heating-in-the-pipeline/
(15) http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/A-Journolist-for-climate-change-99317999.html

USA Draft Framework for Science Education: an opportunity for Americans to comment - deadline 2nd August.

There are those who want to recruit children as agents to hassle their parents into conforming to the green religion's dictates on lifestyle, taxation, and government control. The manipulation of school curricula is one direct route for this indoctrination, an indoctrination based on taking cAGW for granted, and on treating the projections of inadequate computer models as gospel.

Norman MacLeod of Climate Science (a Google Group) is drawing attention to an opportunity for Americans to provide input into a review of 'K-12 science education for the nation's children':

'We are living in interesting times . . . 

The federal government is developing the next generation standards for K-12 science education for the nation's children.  Below I've provided a link to the announcement of the preliminary public draft of A Framework for Science Education.
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/Standards_Framework_Homepage.html

As the announcement notes, this document is the first step in revising existing K-12 standards.  It is now open for public comment until August 2nd.  The authors will review your comments and then make "appropriate" revisions.

This stage of the process is taking place at the National Academies of 

Science, and has been convened by the National Research Council.  The next 

stage is going to be conducted by a non-profit organization, Achieve (

 http://www.achieve.org/ ) , which will work with the states to develop 

standards. 

The draft framework and access to the online comment submission and a PDF comment version are available by clicking on these links: 

View the Conceptual Framework Draft for Public Input: 

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/Standards_Framework_Preliminary_Public_Draft.pdf

Click here to access the online survey and provide feedback:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/323359/5oxeo

Click here to view the survey questions in PDF format:

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/Standards_Framework_Feedback_Survey.pdf

This is your opportunity to weigh in on what and how our children and grandchildren learn in their science courses in school.  We have our concerns about the quality of their education in all subject areas.  Please take part in this process while you can. 

Please also forward this message to anyone you know who might be interested in providing input to the process that's determining how science will be taught in American schools. 

            Norm 


24th July, 2010.


I imagine that inputs received and decisions taken there will be of interest around the world.  If there are any readers engaged with this, perhaps they would like to keep us informed of any developments with respect to climate topics in science education in the States.

Why Would You Believe This ? (6 of 8): 'The truth is the worst will probably not happen in our lifetime. But it will happen in our children's lifetime. And it will happen big time during their children's lifetimes.'

Three sentences taken from a statement issued to justify spreading alarm about climate into schools, and which I am steadily working my way through in a Fisking exercise which I hope might prove useful for reviewing other such statements (1):

'The truth is the worst will probably not happen in our lifetime. But it will happen in our children's lifetime. And it will happen big time during their children's lifetimes.'

I'll not dwell on the 'worst' somehow becoming 'not the worst' a generation later.  I guess they mean 'the worst so far', and want to convey the horror of 'things' just getting worse and worse.  But I do want to dwell on the confidence in the assertions, the 'it will happen' and the 'it will happen big time'.

The truth is we are not in a position to make such confident claims. Our knowledge is patchy.  Our computer models are recognised as inadequate for such forecasts, even by their builders.  They prefer to use the term 'projections' instead, but that is merely playing with words, a 'game' exploited successfully by those who facilitated and did the final edits of IPCC summary reports for policy makers, perhaps anxious that those policy makers (who partook in some editing of the reports, see (2)), be not too distracted by the primitive condition of climate science.

I make my counter-case in four chunks below.


(i) Some of the assertions underpinning the climate models are simplistic, speculative, and wrong.  
The application of a 'greenhouse effect' which does not explain why greenhouses get hot, the use of radiation budgets which seem to defy the laws of thermodynamics by displaying a relatively cool body (the troposphere) transferring heat to a relatively warm one (the Earth's surface) , and the insertion of a speculative feedback mechanism involving water vapour.  Previous posts in this series have materials relevant to this.


'The scientific method requires that a scientific hypothesis be judged by its ability to produce correct predictions. The scientific hypothesis of human-caused climate change has failed this test of science. To paraphrase the eloquent statement of Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics, it does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.'
Source: (3).  


In the 2001 report they [the IPCC]  said, “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate state is not possible.” James Lovelock, Gaia hypothesis speculator said, “It’s almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think that we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it’s wrong to do it.”  Kevin Trenberth, IPCC author and CRU associate said, “It’s very clear we do not have a climate observing system… This may be a shock to many people who assume that we do know adequately what’s going on with the climate, but we don’t.”
Source: (4).  


More leads on the limitations of climate models can be found by using the tag 'model_limitations' at: http://delicious.com/ClimateLessons


(ii) The forecasting methodologies, or rather lack of them, deployed to raise alarm are grossly  unsatisfactory. 
Experts in forecasting methodology, Green and Armstrong have this to say:

'The IPCC WG1 Report was regarded as providing the most credible long-term forecasts of global average temperatures by 31 of the 51 scientists and others involved in forecasting climate change who responded to our survey. We found no references in the 1056-page Report to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods despite the fact these are conveniently available in books, articles, and websites. We audited the forecasting processes described in Chapter 8 of the IPCCs WG1 Report to assess the extent to which they complied with forecasting principles. We found enough information to make judgments on 89 out of a total of 140 forecasting principles. The forecasting procedures that were described violated 72 principles.
Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical.  The forecasts in the Report were not the outcome of scientific procedures. In effect, they were the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing. Research on forecasting has shown that experts predictions are not useful in situations involving uncertainly and complexity. We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder.' 
Source: (5).

(iii) Many of the IPCC-projected temperatures over the next 100 years might be troublesome, may not be unprecedented, and could be mainly beneficial.  
In which case, even for those naive enought to believe these forecasts, there is no need for alarm, only the sensible anticipation of challenges.  In particular, we can prepare schoolchildren, rather than scare schoolchildren.  A popular article mentioning some of the benefits of a warmer climate is to be found here: (6).  More on benefits, with further links here: (7).  It should be noted that warmer air temperatures of a few degrees on average will not raise air temperatures over the major icecaps and glaciers above freezing - they may in fact grow due to increased snowfall according to some warming scenarios.  The headline-generating scare of massive rises in sea-level is probably one of the least credible of all the assertions of the doomsters.

(iv) A cooler world would present enormously larger problems and challenges than a warmer one.
Yet this possibility is apparently dismissed by the IPCC, despite the strong evidence from the historical records that a new glaciation will arrive due course to end our rather pleasantly warm interglacial period, and that there are good reasons to take seriously the possibility of a briefer cooling spell over the next 20 to 30 years.  The assurance with which assertions are made about warming has served to weaken our ability to deal with cooling, for example by wasting money on extravagant and unreliable energy sources instead of building more coal and nuclear power stations, and encouraging research in both technologies.  A website dedicated to cooling, with many links on the topic, is here: (8).

Overview
The confidence in climate predictions is misplaced.  The alarms about warming are over the top.  Cooling is a far bigger concern.  But note the phrase ‘the worst will probably not happened in our lifetime’.  This has immense value in freeing the proponent from having to produce convincing evidence.  ‘The worst is yet to come!’ they can cry without fear of refutation.  Like the High Street placard bearers sometimes seen in cartoons and in reality, with their  ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ warnings, they can if they wish define‘Nigh’ to mean '50 to 100 years from now’ and continue their pacing without fear of contradiction.  But while we'd chuckle at their harmless eccentricity, the IPCC has found a more sophisticated way of doing the same thing, and has been taken so seriously by many governments that they are threatening to devastate their own economies in response, and of course harm the physical and mental wellbeings of their citizens on the way.

References
(1) First of a series of related posts: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-concerned.html
(2) A peek into part of the preparation of Summary Reports: http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12319e.html
(3) http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5929
(4) http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25387
(5) The Green & Armstrong paper quoted can be downloaded from here: http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=129
(6) http://newsbusters.org/node/12628
(7) http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5600
(8) http://www.climatecooling.org/

Schools' Movie Project on Climate - appeal from Oz for donations to get it underway later this year

With Jo Nova as head of the script, and other distinguished contributors ready to go, this could be a breakthrough in the worldwide search for an antidote to the toxic 'An Inconvenient Truth' which has been force-fed to children, and to their teachers, for far too long.

In England & Wales, they are partly protected by a law against political indoctrination in schools, and by a court judgement making it clear that this odious movie must not be shown without health warnings.

But a full-strength antidote would be better.  Such a thing could hasten the end of the pandemic of fear, of fatuous thinking, and of foolish policy-making still gripping so many countries.  


If they do a decent job of it, it should be shown in every school that used Gore's movie, in order to help repair the damage that would have done to young minds.  A campaigning opportunity for the end of 2010?

Here is an extract from the appeal:

Climate Science: The Movie

....

A suggestion was made during the Monckton Tour that a movie be made, aimed specifically at young people, to give them the real facts. This suggestion has been widely supported and has grown to a proposal to make a series of short movies that could be made into one documentary covering the science, economics and the morality of the “global warming” hypothesis. The bulk of the Australian filming is planned for Lord Monckton’s next visit to Australia in September/October 2010. Some more information about the movie is given in the dedicated web site: http://climatesciencerevealed.com/www.climatesciencerevealed.com/Home.html

The North American Directors for this proposed movie are Susan Kucera and Gawain Bantle of Cinepartners. The budget amounts to about $300,000, which is very low for the quality of product we have planned given it must contain only incontrovertible facts and be professional enough to have credibility yet sassy enough to outdo “An Inconvenient Truth” in its appeal to youth. Joanne Nova, an experienced science communicator, will be the principal script writer and the anchor person. The documentary will feature Lord Monckton, Prof. Ian Plimer, Prof. Peter Ridd, numerous other Australian and overseas experts as well as some teenagers and older “young” people. We will use animated graphics and humour to keep young viewers interested. 

The intention is to distribute this movie to schools and to make it available on the internet.

....

Full text here: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/07/climate-science-the-movie

Note: I put up a similar post to this a couple of days ago, but deleted it shortly after posting because I got cold feet about the lack of corroboration I could find about the movie project.  I have since received convincing reassurances that it is genuine, and I plan to make a donation myself shortly {if only they'd get rid of that gloomy music on their homepage!).