'...the philosophy that is taught every day to our children in their schools: the world is fragile; human beings are a blot on the landscape...'

Delingpole in the Daily Telegraph Blogs has some accurate reflections to share, triggered by the recent death of eco-activist James Lee:

'What’s really depressing is that the philosophy expressed in James Lee’s (and the Unabomber’s) manifesto – which is also, incidentally, the philosophy expressed in Al Gore’s The Earth In Balance – is also the philosophy that is taught every day to our children in their schools: the world is fragile; human beings are a blot on the landscape; through our greed and selfishness we make everything worse; really it would be better if we vanished altogether and let all the lovely pure noble animals take over.

...

Not only do our schools teach our children this misanthropic – and deeply ahistoric – rot, but so also do broadcasters like the Discovery Channel. Their sister station, Animal Planet, for example, broadcasts a series called Whale Wars celebrating the real-life adventures of animal rights extremist Paul Watson. (H/T: MSher)

It’s time we woke up to the threat posed by this mass brainwashing of the younger generation. We worry, rightly, about those Muslim children who are being indoctrinated with the extreme Wahaabist version of their faith. Yet we seem astonishingly complacent that every day, in schools of every kind throughout the Western world, our children are being taught by well-meaning teachers to view their world and culture through exactly the same anti-capitalist, anti-human, anti-growth eyes as James Lee and the Unabomber.'

Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100052207/james-lee-is-al-gore-is-prince-charles-is-the-unabomber/

Al Gore's film - poisoning the children's minds

'I can't begin to count the number of people who have contacted me regarding how their children have been frightened to the core by Gore's film.  I have a stack of communiqués from parents describing the nightmares their kids have experienced regarding floods, hurricanes, sea-level rise, polar bears drowning-all caused by cars, air-conditioning and fireplaces, and all supported with junk science, clever writing, and slick Hollywood graphics.'

Brian Sussman is a former television meteorologist and the author of Climategate: a veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam.

See the rest of his essay here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/al_gores_poison.html

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.