Another straw in the wind - here is a teacher who has had enough of 'climate porn'

Bishop Hill has extracted this comment posted below a piece in the Daily Telegraph (a piece written by their WWF Spokesperson Louise Gray):

"This article is the last straw. For six years I have had to bit my tongue while force-feeding this climate anthropogenic global warming nonsense into the increasingly sceptical minds of my science school learners. They all know it's a scam. I know it's a scam. They all know that we will be notionally 1010ed if we don't all toe the party line, give the "government approved" answer in the exams, fill in the approved plans, but carry on as normal. I cannot seriously go into a school next term and carry on like this.

Consequently I hereby declare that, metaphorically, the next parent, head of science, head teacher, school governor, local education authority jobsworth, central government apparatchik, or UK energy minister who tells me have to teach this climate porn to under-16s or lose my job will be kebabed on a hockey stick and fed to the polar bear packs currently massing under my window seeking warmth. And any kid who dares to submit an assignment consisting of material cut'n'pasted from these Louise Gray's WWF press releases will be spreadeagled on a stationary wind turbine in the North Sea.

I call upon all teachers to join me in this declaration, and to organise a welcome back party to all UK attendees from Cancun"

And in the comments beneath the Bishop's post, a commenter called Trefor Jones writes:

"I concur totally with the sentiment. During the latter years of my long career as a head of geography I became totally disillussioned with the nonsense that I was supposed to teach and examine. The students, staff members ( apart from the young and ambitious) privately shared the doubts, especially mathematics teachers who understood that you cannot predict a chaotic system. It came to a head when I ignored an opportunity to take a group of children to see "An Inconvenient Truth", and was promptly sent a copy of this eco-nonsense by courier directly to my classroom. Unfortunately, following a very nasty accident I have had to finish teaching. However, I do not miss the climate change elements of the course which had morphed over the past decade from geography to environmnetally inaccurate propaganda. The Green lobby which has invaded so many of our national institutions are in my eyes nothing less than rather dangerous totalitarian fascists."

 And 'JohnOfEnfield' also appears again (see my previous post) with this comment:

"Yipee!
From my own experience: -
1. Teachers are beginning to coach children on this rather than just spout the propaganda. "What is the most common gas in the atmosphere?", "CO2, it is a toxic gas Miss". "What does toxic mean?". ...."So CO2 is NOT toxic then?". etc.
2. Head of sixth form "I can't get teachers to teach this c**p!".
And I thought I was a lone voice, crying in the wilderness."

Hope and change spring eternal!

A straw in the wind - are UK teachers revolting against the teaching of global warming propaganda?

Here is a comment on a thread published recently on WUWT :

"JohnOfEnfield says:

November 22, 2010 at 12:04 pm

I am very heartened by recent feedback from within my circle of family, friends and colleagues.

Apparently the teaching profession in the UK is beginning to revolt against teaching global warming, which they see as mere propaganda.

The BBC is also being seen as a propaganda tool right across the board. Their active support for AGW is seen in this light and therefore the standing of AGW is suffering badly.

All good signs, if not an open revolt yet."

Is this true?  Is it even plausible?  Hope springs eternal.  May I ask all who read this to please forward a link to this post to any and all of their contacts in teaching.  If you have none, how about forwarding it to some local schools, e.g. geography or science head teachers?

If a spark of sense is smouldering in JohnofEnfield's circles, perhaps it can be found elsewhere, and encouraged to turn into a blaze of fury that will help see the curriculum cleansed of odious alarmism.

Do Climate ScareYouAlls make good teachers or preachers? - a musical offering.

[note: KnowItAll replaced by ScareYouAll 21/11/10]

APOLOGIES: Gilbert and Sullivan
TITLE: I Am the Very Model of a Modern Climate-ScareYouAll
 
Lyrics
[Pirates of the IPPC]



I am the very model of a modern Climate-ScareYouAll
I’ve information digital, quotable, pictorial
I know the hacks of TV-land, and quote just like an oracle
On ‘News at Ten’ to ‘News at One’, on crises categorical.


I’m sort of well acquainted, too, with matters computational
I’ve heard of those projections, both simple and dramatical
On past and present temperatures I’m teeming with a lot o’news
Tho short of cheerful facts about the Yamal trees we have to use.
 
I’m very good at scariness and all degrees of fearfulness
I know how children get those nightmares quite horribilis
In short, in matters terrible, fearful and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate-ScareYouAll.
 
I know our media’s trickery, in Nature and the NYT
I dish out press releases and they headline anything from me
I quote in elegiacs all the flaws of Homo Sapiens
With polemics I can dazzle almost any leftwing audience.
 
I can tell Trenberths and Santers from the Manns and even Houghtons
I know the Schmidts and Hansens  from the Albert Gores and Joneses
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din anew
And whistle all the airs from that infernal M4GW.
 
I can write a laundry list in Hulmeian Obtusiform
While forgetting every detail of those emails in ExCRUciform
In short, in matters terrible, fearful and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate-ScareYouAll.
 
In fact, when I know what is meant by "lapse rate" and "stratiform"
When I can tell at sight a timeplot from a tephigram
When such affairs as hunches and guesses I'm more wary at
And when I know precisely what is meant by "wet in an adiabat".
 
When I have learnt of progress made in methods so statistical
When I know more ANOVA than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I've a smattering of elemental calculus
You'll say a better Climate-ScareYouAll has never been to see us.
 
For my scientific knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of last century
But still, in matters terrible, fearful and excitable
I am the very model of a modern Climate-ScareYouAll.

A singalong version, with the original words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYZM__VdEjk&feature=related




I posted an earlier version of the above on WUWT yesterday as a comment, but a post there today made me dig it out to polish it up a bit. The post was about yet another agitated professor, this time a professor of astronomy, ranting away on climate, desperately trying to provoke his class. An unedited video of this class is here.

Full Video: LSU Astronomy Class from Campus Reform on Vimeo.

We have professors of many sorts, of various ‘ologies such as psychology, apparently so demented with fear that they make dreadful pronouncements well outside their professional competence.

We have environmental/climate office holders in the media (not least in the BBC), and in all  those organisations previously concerned with other things before they discovered meteorology such as the WWF, FoE, GreenPeace, and Oxfam telling us the end is nigh with much gusto.  Not to mention those organisations previously concerned with meteorology before they discovered other things, such as the UK Met Office, NASA, and CSIRO.  

 We have had the 10:10 zealots scaring even their own followers with the PR disaster of their extremist movie ‘No Pressure'.

And of course, we have the IPCC itself, whose reports, leaders and followers like Albert Gore scatter the word ‘catastrophe’ around like confetti, happily winning plaudits and fortunes from those they have managed to convince.  

Yet I don't find any of them convincing. Nor do many others. No doubt we should deepen our study of what the experts are telling us, but I can do without the emotional, scaremongering excursions into polemics from academics who ought to know better, from journalists who parrot their words, and from no end of political and financial interests finding advantage in the melee. 

Any schools still free to do so, should actively and explicitly distance themselves from this unseemly arena of unsettled science and very settled politics, to concentrate instead on educating and building the 
confidence of their pupils as free agents, rather than scaring and 'mobilising' them to the tune of a very politicised drum.

Note added a few hours after original post: more Gilbert & Sullivan adapted for the modern climate here:

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/9/the-modern-climatologist.html   (good verses in the comments as well).

Note added 30 April 2013.  Here is yet another version: http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/a-modern-climatologist/

New hope for climate sense in the classroom - speechless teachers?

http://comics.com/big_nate/2010-11-17/

It may not be on climate, but the lesson is clear enough.  Children can ask good questions!

(thanks, Anonymous)

(and later seen here as well: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/ )

As insight into the real science of climate, as opposed to computer models programmed to give CO2 a dramatic effect, and into the proper analysis and reporting of climate data (as opposed to cherry-picking for dramatic effect - be it from PCA, trees, weather stations, satellites, or media headlines), spreads wider and wider, there is surely hope that some children at least will be able to stir things up in the classroom.

Perhaps children will have the courage to do what teachers may be afraid of, or prevented from, doing: digging in behind the facade of CO2 scaremongering.  Given the awful onslaught of climate-related-indoctrination for political purposes, this would indeed be an affirmation of the human spirit.

Scientific papers (peer-reviewed and published) dealing with the real climate, and not the worship of GCMs and associated politicising.

Source: http://cartoonsbyjosh.com/

The Climate Science blog published a reminder today of the list of papers which have been collated at Popular Technology:

http://climatescience.blogspot.com/2010/11/800-peer-reviewed-scientific-papers.html

These are papers which do not pursue alarm about CO2.  They support a sceptical view of that alarm, as befits scientists of integrity.  One day, our school and college textbooks will give them the prominence they deserve, but a lot of troubled and turbulent political water  will have to pass under the bridge before that day arrives - such is the sorry state of modern climate science (and of modern politics).

The list has been edited and updated, and now includes a section of responses to criticisms of the earlier lists:

'The following papers support skepticism of AGW or the negative environmental or economic effects of AGW. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 800 counted papers. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.

Criticisms: All criticisms of this list have been refuted or a change made to correct the issue. Please see the notes following the list for defenses of common criticisms. I make every attempt to defend the list where possible, in many cases my comments correcting the misinformation stated about the list are deleted and I am blocked from replying. Please email me if you have any questions or need me to address something, populartechnology (at) gmail (dot) com.'

Their rebuttals of criticisms:

'Failed attempts at "debunking" this list include,

- Lying about the paper counting method used. (Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Replies, Responses and Submitted papers are not counted. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 800 papers. If they were counted the paper count would be +50 papers.)
- Lying about the list being debunked because certain papers on the list do not "refute" AGW theory. (All papers support either skepticism of AGW or the negative environmental or economic effects of AGW.)
- Lying about peer-reviewed journals not being peer-reviewed. (Every journal listed is peer-reviewed.)
- Lying about the inclusion of a paper on this list as a representation of the personal position of it's author in regards to AGW theory. (It is explicitly stated in the disclaimer that "The inclusion of a paper in this list does not imply a specific personal position to any of the authors".)
- Lying about all climate related papers not on this list endorsing AGW theory. (There are thousands of climate related papers but only a small percentage of these explicitly endorse AGW theory.)
- Lying that certain paper's age make them "outdated". (The age of any scientific paper is irrelevant. Using this logic all of science would become irrelevant after a certain amount of time, which is obviously ridiculous. This would mean dismissing Svante Arrhenius's 1896 paper "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground" and the basis for greenhouse theory. There are over 650 papers published since 2000 on the list.)
- Lying that Blog posts, Wiki pages and YouTube videos "refute" peer-reviewed papers. (That is not how peer-reviewed papers are challenged. Any valid criticisms would follow the established peer-review process of submitting a comment for publication in the same journal, which allows the author of the original paper a chance to publish a rebuttal in defense of their paper.)
- Lying that broken links somehow invalidate the list. (Anyone with an elementary knowledge of the Internet knows that links can break at any time for a myriad of reasons. All broken links are fixed when notified or found. Regardless the full citation is provided so there is no excuse about not being able to locate the paper.)
- Lying that since some of the papers are mutually exclusive the list is falsified. (The purpose of the list is to provide a resource for the skeptical arguments being made in peer-reviewed journals and to demonstrate the existence of these papers. It is not supposed to be a single argument but rather a resource for all of them.)'

Link to the list: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

Many of these will be largely inaccessible at school level, but surely no more so than those which have 'inspired' modern curricula of climate / CO2 alarm.  Variants of that cartoon by Josh could be produced many times over if these curricula were to be critically reviewed with this list to hand.