More Gore in the Classroom - Australian Educators Pushing Propaganda

Bob Carter exposes a sorry development in Australian education:

'AL Gore's flawed climate change film is to be included in the new English curriculum.

IN 2006, former US vice-president Al Gore made a movie and companion book about global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. Gore undertook many speaking tours to publicise his film, and his PowerPoint slide show has been shown by thousands of his acolytes spreading a relentless message of warming alarmism across the globe.

But while audiences reacted positively and emotionally to the film's message - which was that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming - some independent scientists pointed out that An Inconvenient Truth represented well-made propaganda for the warming cause and presented an unreliable, biased account of climate science.

For nowhere in his film does Gore say that the phenomena he describes falls within the natural range of environmental change on our planet. Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.

In early February 2007, the Department for Education and Skills in Britain, apparently ignorant that the film was scientifically defective, announced that all secondary schools were to be provided with a climate change information pack that contained a copy of Gore's by then notorious film. Many parents were scandalised at this attempt to propagandise their children on such an important environmental issue.

One parent, school governor Stuart Dimmock who had two sons at a state school in southern England, took legal action against the secretary for education in the High Court, and sought the film's withdrawal from schools.

In a famous judgment in October 2007, Justice Burton, discerning that Gore was on a "crusade", commented that "the claimant substantially won this case", and ruled that the science in the film had been used "to make a political statement and to support a political program" and that the film contained nine fundamental errors of fact out of the 35 listed by Dimmock's scientific advisers. Justice Burton required that these errors be summarised in new guidance notes for screenings.

In effect, the High Court judgment typed Gore and his supporters as evangelistic proselytisers for an environmental cause.

Fast forward to this month and many Australian parents have been surprised to learn Gore's film "will be incorporated in the [new] national [English] curriculum ), as part of a bid to teach students on environmental sustainability across all subjects".'

The complete article is here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/inconvenient-nonsense-infiltrates-the-classroom/story-e6frg6zo-1225951336015

I hope that the Australian legal system will permit a challenge to this.  'Shoddy science and politicians on the make' is one thing, blatant indoctrination of children is quite another.  Not only will they be misled, they risk being mentally abused by the scaremongering.  Unfortunately, the Australian Psychology Society is collaborating in this by failing to study the science, and devising instead ways to make the promotion of pseudo-science and alarmism a little more palatable.  See:  http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/tip_sheets/climate/

Or actually listen to what I can only describe as a speaker from the Pollyanna school of psychology, the Australian Susie Burke, during this radio programme: http://www.rnw.nl/english/radioshow/kids-and-climate-change-enlightened-or-frightened

Climate campaigners' classroom turpitude captured for future studies of depravity at work

'Why did they think ruthlessly killing children was funny? –

because in their heads, they weren’t killing children,

…they were killing deniers.'

Jo Nova has done sterling work in documenting and providing insight into what led to the 10:10 video in which the producers fantasise about utterly destroying, at the press of a button, those who show the slightest reluctance to toe the party line on climate.  Including young children in a classroom.  

The whole thing deserves deep study.  The paper by Jo Nova has been published by the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), and can be downloaded as a pdf from here: (1) 

Kudos to the SPPI for publishing this.  Kudos to Jo Nova for creating it.  She gives a summary and background at her own blog (2).

It provides some provocative speculations as to what led to the creation of the video, speculations which deserve to be shared widely and investigated further.  Given that the scientific case for alarm about CO2 in the atmosphere is so shoddy, the motivation for such an arrogant, aggressive, and deeply malevolent video must come from elsewhere.  Is it the same motivation that drove Maurice Strong to call for the destruction of industrial civilisation? (more background on Strong here: refs (3) below).  Is it the same motivation that led James Lee to terrorise the employees of a broadcasting company  in the States?  (4).   Or, at the milder end of this sorry spectrum, was it what led three women to barge their way into the offices of a newspaper whose editorials they happened to disagree with? (5)  

Meanwhile, and more in the background, there seems no end to the initiatives aimed at pushing children into conformance to the party line on climate.  Here is a recent report of one in the States called ACE (6).  Links to many more can be found on the Page on climate sites aimed at schools (7).  Many of them do not hesitate to use scary imagery and doomladen notions to win attention and obedience.  


This is a veritable moral swamp that needs to be drained.  Standing at the edges of it, we can see unpleasantness, scaremongering, arrogance, ignorance, intolerance, brutality, destructiveness, and terrorism.  Quite a result to follow from the speculative insertion of a dramatic effect for CO2 into computer models of the climate!  Fortunately the real climate has displayed no such role for this beneficial gas.  In our world, the dramatic role for CO2 is found in its impact on plant growth.

References

(1) http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/mystery_solved.html

(2) http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/mystery-solved-why-the-pr-hacks-exploded-their-credibility/

(3)  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250789,00.html, and here: http://www.taxtyranny.ca/images/HTML/Maurice-Strong/article1.html

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

(5) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/oct/11/climate-rush-daily-express

(6) http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2030099,00.html?xid=rss-topstories


(7) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/p/climate-sites-aimed-at.html

Gore out the door in one school, but Nye clouds the sky in his place

What's in a name?  That which we call Al Gore
By any other name would be more discreet
And thus by stratagem we may play our part
And let our children Bill Nye to meet.

In England a court of law found that
The Inconvenient Truth has many lies
And must be shown with caution
Lest it mislead about our skies.

In the New World some teachers have decided
That Gore is not good news
But they found a ready substitute
To promulgate his views.

Extract (I put it in italics, and bolded one paragraph) from a post by Jeff Wiita on the site Minnesotans for Global Warming           :
'My daughter's 8th grade Earth Science teacher showed her class a video on man-made global warming by Bill Nye, The Science Guy, and kids consider him a science guru; thanks to PBS.

I wrote a letter to the teacher and specifically addressed climate history, including the 1975 Newsweek article, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the Holocene Climate Optimum. I even addressed the Roman Warm Period and the Dark Ages Cold Period.

At the parent/teacher conferences, I asked the teacher if she was going to show Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." She shook her head "no" and said, "We wouldn't do that." She told me that she was not supposed to interject any bias in the science class. I then told her that was exactly what she did when she showed the video of Bill Nye, The Science Guy.

Bill Nye is part of Repower America (Alliance for Climate Protection). Here is a short video.

Repower America - Bill Nye, The Science Guy

During the video, Bill Nye turns man-made global warming into a generational war. Categorizing global warming skeptics as old and intellectually challenged while believers are young and intellectually enlightened.

The founder and chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection is Al Gore. Bill Nye is clearly acting as a surrogate for Al Gore in the public schools system. The public school teachers are still promoting man-made global warming, but they understand that Al Gore's movie is radioactive; so, they have reverted to covert warfare with Bill Nye, The Science Guy.

We must not confuse our kids with science fiction in a science class that is supposed to teach scientific fact. How are they supposed be able to distinguish between the differences? Their future relies on their trust, and their trust is fragile.

I have requested some time to present an opposing point of view to the Earth Science class based entirely on scientific fact. I am still waiting for the teacher's response.'

Source: http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/2010/10/bill-nye-the-global-warming-guy.html#more

The Tangled Web they weave as they practise to deceive children on climate

There are dozens of sites, possibly hundreds, that are pushing out information and grounds for alarm to children and young people in and around our climate.  The variability of this climate poses problems, not least from the inevitable 'extreme values' that must occur from time to time in any particular characteristic subject to this variability, such as temperature or rainfall.  But these sites are not so much about climate as about 'blame' and political action, often using frightening images or language to engage with their targets and persuade them to hassle their parents, to change their lifestyles, and generally be scared witless about the future.  The complete lack of observational evidence to justify such treatment of the young does not deter them.  They have been told by the IPCC that the world is doomed unless we act soon, and they believe it.  The 'evidence', such as it is, is entirely based on the projections of computer models of climate specifically designed to give CO2 a large, indeed driving effect, a role which it steadfastly refuses to adopt in the real atmosphere.  Very commonly, these sites compare the atmosphere to a greenhouse - an all but entirely fatuous analogy, but one which has caught on very widely.  One day, pupils will laugh at any teacher who tries to explain why greenhouses get hot through 'trapping infra-red'.  But Miss, they will chuckle, greenhouses almost transparent to infrared would get just as hot as ordinary glass ones.  And unless 'Miss' has a red button on her desk, she will have some explaining to do.

I have put a partial listing of such sites on this blog.  It can be found as a 'Page', and can be reached via the link near the top right corner of the homepage.  Dave W has provided further information on some of these sites, and I am most grateful for his help.

If anyone out there would like to help with this, please email me (JSclimatelessonsatgmaildotcom) with the name of the site you plan to check out, so that we may reduce the chances of people working on the same one at the same time.

Please also email me with any errors or omissions you come across on the Page.  Thanks!

Maths, Science, Ego - what are we doing re 'climate' in our schools?

Cartoon source: http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/23251

I think ego-building is a part of what is going on, but that is to be optimistic.  Telling children that they are to 'save the planet' is perhaps good for their egos.  But telling them, based pretty much on computer models that are not fit to be let out of the groves of academe, that the planet, which for the young means their family and friends and pets, is in imminent danger, is surely bad for their spirits.  And bad for their intellects too, since there is precious little good science behind CO2-alarmism and an awful lot of goal-motivated speculation.  What that goal, or goals are, is worthy of debate, but handing over more taxes and more power to governments seems an intrinsic part of it.  Destroying industrial progress seems another.  Mostly, though, it seems to feed on the joy of controlling others - what they eat, drink, and smoke; how they light, heat, and build their houses; what opinions they may hold on this that and the other; what transport systems they are allowed to use; and how far away their trading partners are permitted to be.  All based on fear.  Irrational, spirit-sapping, mind-numbing, truth-obscuring fear.  What a way to prepare the young for the future.  Let us hope that in China and in India, and in other powerhouses of the developing world, they will choose instead to pursue maths, and science, and independent thought, even as the US and Europe and other places wreck themselves and their young with dismal, pessimistic foolishness on a grand scale.  These Chinese and Indian and other children will not just take the 1st and 2nd places on such podia suggested by the cartoon above, but soon the 3rd and 4th and ... nth as well.  Good luck to them.  Our future generations may yet learn from them in turn.