What 'every schoolchild knows' ... a stack of deceptions and myths about climate

From an article in the Washington Times, by Roger Helmer (an MEP with a blog here: http://www.rogerhelmer.com/) :

'The East Midlands region of the United Kingdom, which I represent in theEuropean Parliament, has just committed $1.5 million to "climate change skills training" (read "propaganda").

And the propaganda works. Every schoolchild knows about dangerous sea-level rise. But the children don't know that it's simply a projection of a virtual-reality computer model. They don't know that in the real world, sea-level rise (at around six to seven inches in 100 years) is the same as it has been for centuries, that the Maldives and Tuvalu aren't sinking beneath the waves. They don't know that successive IPCC reports have consistently reduced their alarmist estimates for sea-level rise by 2100.

Every schoolchild knows that the ice caps are melting - but glaciers and ice fields accumulate snow (which compacts to ice) at high levels, while chunks of ice break off at the margin. Vast blocks of ice tumbling into the sea make great video footage, but they say nothing about warming or cooling. That's simply what ice sheets do.

There has been some retreat of glaciers since about 1800 (long before CO2 became an issue), but geological evidence shows that glaciers regularly advance and retreat with the Earth's climate cycles. We are simply seeing a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age. And global ice mass is broadly constant.

In 1942, six Lockheed P-38F Lightning fighters were lost in Greenland. In 1988, they were rediscovered under 270 feet of solid ice. That's an ice buildup of nearly six feet a year.

Every schoolchild knows about the plight of the polar bear (the alarmists' pinup species), threatened by climate change. But how many know that polar bear numbers have increased substantially in recent decades and that polar bears are thriving?

In each of these cases, the alarmists put the projections of virtual-reality computer models ahead of real-world observation. Yet these models are programmed with a wide range of estimates and assumptions - including the assumption that CO2 is a major cause of warming. Little surprise, then, that they predict that outcome.

The models are seeking to make predictions about climate, which is a complex, chaotic nonlinear system. Yet a key feature of such systems is that they are hugely sensitive to initial conditions and therefore simply cannot be predicted in the long term.

But all the models make one clear prediction - that with a CO2 greenhouse effect, the maximum warming will occur high in the atmosphere and over the tropics. Here at least we have a prediction we can test. And the models fail the test. Observation shows the greatest warming at ground level and in the Northern Hemisphere. Because science moves forward by falsifying predictions, this one fact refutes AGW theory.'

But what do our teachers teach on this subject?  Is it even possible for state-funded teachers to teach sense and science in this area?  I plan a post on climate propaganda aimed at teachers in Scotland next week, after I have completed a long overdue post 8 of 8 on Schools' Low Carbon Day.

I have done a quick search for the East Midlands story alluded to in the Washington Times piece.  It could be this (which gives a glimpse into one small corner of the massive indoctrination effort underway in the EU on climate alarmism, and the associated rush to ludicrous and extravagant energy sources such as windfarms): 

'21st August 2010

On 23rd July, CLG confirmed the package of measures worth £9.75 million nationally to build skills and capacity across the range of local authority responsibilities needed to tackle climate change. Of this sum, £950k has been received by EM IEP.

Broadly, the funding is to support the decentralisation of power to the local level by enhancing the skills and knowledge planners need, including in planning for increased renewable energy supply, and encouraging local communities to take positive action on climate change. It may be used to support local authorities for the following purposes:

• Facilitating the delivery of increased renewable energy supply through the activities of local authority planning departments
• Helping local authorities more broadly, including training for members and on adaptation
• Allowing planning departments to promote better community engagement in the planning process, including on renewables.'

See: http://www.climate-em.org.uk/news/item/950k-announced-for-regional-climate-change-skills-fund

Teaching resource: 94 shoddy-gates to help your pupils see through climate alarmism

Dipl.-Ing. Pierre L. Gosselin publishes and regularly updates a list of climate-gates, currently 94 long.  This is a list which should be of great interest for those teachers willing to help their pupils challenge the establishment line on climate.

Science, economics, journalism, politics, geography – teachers in any of these areas will find examples with which to entertain, inform, and caution their classes about the trickery and subterfuges out there in the big bad world of climate alarmism.  

 Here are the first 10 (see source below for the rest, and for links for each one):

1. Acceleration of sea level rise-gate  
Claims of accelerating sea level rise are misleading.
2. African agriculture claim-gate
IPCC wrongly claims that in some African countries yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
3. AIT-gate and British High Court
35 errors or gross exaggerations are found in Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
4. NEW! Alaskan glaciers-gate
Loss of glaciers in Alaska was grossly exaggerated.
5. Amazon rainforest-gate and  here (NEW!) and here (NEW!)  
IPCC cites “robust” source: green activist organisation WWF. WWF’s source was merely an anonymous brief on forest fire risks posted in 1999 and taken down four years later.
6. Antarctic sea ice-gate
Antarctic sea ice underestimated by 50%.
7. NEW! Authoritarian science-gate
The science says… Science is increasingly used as an instrument of authority to impose public policy.
8. NEW! Australia-gate Australia temperature adjusted upwards to show more warming.
9. Bangladesh-gate
IPCC inflates Bangladesh doomsday forecasts in 2007 4AR.
10. NEW! Biofuel-gate
Efforts to save the planet by using bio-fuels are in fact rapidly destroying it.

http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/climate-scandals-list-of-94-climate-gates/

The Carbon Bonanza. More government work for the UEA: not only CRU but LCIC too.

Like the Royal Society of London, which has turned itself into little more than an agent of government, some parts of our universities seem to be going the same way on board the 'CO2 is bad' bandwagon.

Despite the inconvenient lack of a climate signal due to human-released CO2, the carbon campaign unleashed by the IPCC trundles on, with fabulous sums of money being assigned to it.  One participant enjoying the bonanza is the University of East Anglia (UEA).  We have all heard more than was edifying about CRU, but there is a newer kid on their block: the Low Carbon Innovation Centre (LCIC).

The LCIC could easily be part of a government department under the previous administration, the major climate-related follies of which seem set to be continued by the new one.  And like government departments involved in the CO2 madness, they have no hesitation in peddling their wares to schoolchildren, despite the law against political indoctrination in education.

  

The LCIC website has (at the time of this posting) a banner with a sequence of 8 pictures, at least 2 of which show government ministers from the previous Labour government of the UK: Benn, Clark, and Miliband (Ed).  The picture of Benn could have been modelled on Soviet agitprop from the 1930s: his fist in the air, behind rows of happy children also with their arms in the air in gestures of solidarity.  Truly the people are marching forward to the sunlit uplands under the guidance of their wise masters.  (They will of course need all the sun they can get if renewable energy continues to divert resources from more sensible methods of mass energy production such as coal, gas, and nuclear.)

  

They describe three areas of activity (Source: http://www.lcic.com/index.php), where I have added some emboldening:

(1) CRed

The CRed System is the perfect tool to engage large communities of residents and workforces to reduce their carbon emissions and is ideally suited to address the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, NI 185 and NI186 and other National Indicators as well as more informal community-based commitments. It therefore meets the low carbon intentions of both public and private sector organisations with over 70 carbon reduction pledges to assist behaviour change. Each pledge pathway addresses aspects of domestic and business emissions including transport, energy consumption, food, waste and water offering efficiency advice on giving accurate savings figures.

(2) Innovation Funds

East of England Low Carbon Venture Capital Fund

In June 2009, UEA, through the Low Carbon Innovation Centre (LCIC), was provisionally appointed as Fund Operator for an exciting new investment fund in the East of England. This appointment, which follows UEA’s success in running the Carbon Connections programme has now been formalised and since the summer, the UEA team, led by LCIC’s Chief Executive Dr Chris Harrison, has been working hard with EEDA to obtain government approval for the Fund.  With approval in place, the next stage was to appoint a Fund Manager who will be responsible for raising private money for co-investment into innovative, regional SMEs alongside investments from the £8M pot from the European Regional Development Funds.  The fund will have a broad low-carbon remit and be capable of supporting a wide range of new and established companies in their low carbon activities and products through equity investments. 

Carbon Connections Fund

Designed specifically to stimulate and support the transfer of knowledge from the university research sector into public and private sector organisations, the Carbon Connections fund supports innovative projects involving technology or services development, proof-of-concept, prototyping or testing. From August 2009, projects will typically be supported up to a maximum of £50,000 subject to agreement of terms.  The Carbon Connections fund is operated by LCIC in collaboration with Carbon Connections UK Limited. 

[Carbon Connections UK Limited is a company registered in England, Company no.5906083 whose registered office is at The University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom.  See: http://www.carbon-connections.org/, where they assert 'Climate change affects us all and we need to act now to drastically reduce our carbon output.'  - a banality followed by a non-sequitur.  Dontcha just love higher education!]

(3) Carbon Consulting

Our services include; organisational and management reviews of carbon reduction potential; carbon footprinting for your organisation and its products; climate change mitigation and adaptation planning; long and short term staff and community engagement programmes designed to deliver and measure impact; evaluation for both technological and behavioural carbon reduction initiatives; and technology evaluation and options appraisal.

Here they are at work, doing some 'behavioural change' stuff for some local schools in Norfolk (Hat tip: thanks for this to reader Dave Ward):

Norfolk Evening News, 27 July 2010.

Dave comments:

'We have 2 local daily papers here in Norfolk - the Evening News, and the Eastern Daily Press (EDP). Both come under the Archant umbrella, and are edited in the same offices in the centre of the city. They are also printed in the same building on the outskirts .... The interesting thing is the rather different editorial policies - the EDP has a much wider coverage and is traditionally Tory supporting, as is most of Norfolk/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire. The EEN as we call it (used to be the Eastern Evening News) is aimed primarily at the City and suburbs, which are largely Labour territory, although that changed at the last election.  If you only read the EEN you would know little of the UEA CRU "leak" ... The EDP, by contrast, has featured the saga in quite a bit more detail...'

I imagine the faithful run these outreach missions to schools, armed with their computer outputs showing terrible times ahead, and able to pick, like a Thought for the Day speaker, on some recent disaster such as a flood or a famine to drive home the relevance of their message.  
The immediate result is that the youngsters go home wanting to monitor energy use, but the real impact involves their being told what to do, what to believe, and to take it for granted that energy consumption must be reduced.  Despite our potential abundance of energy from many sources, energy which is not only important for our way of life, and our industrial competitiveness, but which also strengthens our ability to respond to whatever the climate may bring.  Including, in particular, the possibility of appreciably cooler weather.  This readiness is put at risk by fatuous talk of humans controlling the climate itself. 

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