To Holt for TEE: transnational energy education, or is it more of 'scare the kids, control the adults'?

The dark spectre of 'behaviour change' may be stalking the quiet streets of Holt today, as various climate-related activists from Norway, Sweden, and England run a 'teach the teacher' programme in this small English town:

"The teacher training event at Holt brings together the very best international energy education practice to ensure teachers are well equipped to engage their pupils in learning about climate change and energy efficiency.
...
Teachers will also learn more about how to connect young people with the broader community, business and university partners to develop skills and action. "

Does that last part mean 'pressuring their parents to toe the party line on climate'?  If so, let us pause for a virtual two minute silence for 'Philip and Tracy', symbolically slaughtered using explosives in the 10:10 movie for the crime of having parents who were insufficiently convinced by said party line. (see the movie here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTLDel-G9k&feature=player_embedded ; see the strategy espoused via here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/10/terrorise-children-control-adults.html )

Civil servant Jonathan Thompson, Environment Planning Team Leader from the Environment Agency, is reported as saying ‘We are proud to be supporting this event with it's focus on developing international understanding and sharing of knowledge and experiences. Climate change is an international issue we all need to address. Education is critical if we are going to act and adapt to climate change and make the significant changes in behaviour needed.’  (my emphasis added).

I hope we can find out more in due course as to what they are getting up to in Holt this week.  Perhaps they are genuinely concerned to help teachers teach wisely and well about climate.  Hope springs eternal.

This event has been flagged on Bishop Hill a couple of days ago, with a hat-tip to Dave W.  As is often the case, the Bishop's post has an interesting set of comments, not least on the culpability, vulnerability, and competence of local authorities such as the one supporting the Holt event.

Commenter 'Pharos' tracked down some relevant links:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/126979.aspx  and  http://www.answerproject.eu/
There may be many such events going on.  And why not, given the large funds available to support alarm about climate?  More background here: http://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/campaign/index_en.htm

Many universities are in on this gravytrain, here is one outfit with the disarmingly honest acronym of SAUCE:
http://www.schools-at-university.eu/project/index.html :
"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. The SAUCE programmes are held at all partner universities from 2009 until 2011."
(German, Dutch, Danish, and Latvian universities in this little earner, or should I say siphon for taxpayers money under the control of the EU)

Here is one constructed by a group based in the University of Sussex, tapping into UN funds:
http://www.childreninachangingclimate.org/

Here is another, apparently a registered charity in England and Wales: http://www.se-ed.org.uk/index.html, with a contact address in London, c/o 'Global Action Plan'.  'Global Action Plan' seems to be into tapping UN cash: http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/about-us .  Founded by green insider Trewin Restorick .  That in turn led me to DEFRA sites, and to a sinking feeling about just far into the political fabric the CO2 alarm virus has spread.  But that is another story.

Note added 21 Jan 2012.  Here is an example from the States of using the children to get to the parents, by a teacher called Visco who has, thank goodness, now retired: 'For Visco's class, that meant teaching his students that small changes could have a large impact on the planet. "I had lots of students who would come in and say, 'My parents hate you. I'm driving them nuts, making them recycle and turn heat down and change lightbulbs,'" he recalled.
In many cases, by teaching his students he was also teaching their parents, something that Yale's Leiserowitz has also found. "Do parents influence kids, or do kids influence parents? Evidence suggests that it works both ways."
"I definitely saw changes in my students, and I definitely saw parents that softened," said Visco

Climate propaganda: humour and a history lesson.

Under the previous government of the UK, this skit would have been very 'close to the bone'.  Let us hope the new government will keep away from such madness.  Mind you, in Canada when they went in for mass-indoctrination about climate dynamics back in 2002, something interesting happened:

'By 2002, McIntyre was in comfortable semi-retirement in Toronto ....every home in Canada was sent a leaflet about the risks of global warming.  When McIntyre read his copy....'

The rest is history, ably documented in the book from which the above quote was taken, 'The Hockey Stick Illusion' ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Illusion-Climategate-Corruption-Science-Independent/dp/1906768358 ).

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: mankind is making progress, doomsayers are low-credibility distractions

Picture: http://kabiza.com/images/buga25.jpg

Pierre Gosselin reports on a recent article in a German publication which points out just how much progress has been made over the last century or so, and how the doomladen forecasts of such as Paul Ehrlich have been refuted time and time again.  Such facile, highly articulate but profoundly stupid, doomsayers will no doubt always be with us, but must we take them so seriously?  Perhaps the spectacle of the IPCC disappearing in the quagmire of its own making will help this along.  Anyway, back to the article which is reported on here: http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/26/german-focus-magazine-facts-show-planet-much-better-today/

Extracts below are in italics, other words are by Gosselin:

'Human prosperity

   " The world’s population has grown 6-fold since 1800, and at the same time life expectancy has doubled. Between 1955 and 2005 inflation-adjusted average personal income has tripled for the average person on the globe.”

Many of the poor indeed have gotten much richer.

Agriculture

How often do we hear about the threats of industrial agriculture devouring land to feed the exploding masses of people? Guess what? Modern agriculture protects wildlife and forests.

    "With the crop yields of 1961, farmers would have needed 32 million square km of cropland to have fed the 6 billion persons on the globe in 2000. Instead they have been able to harvest the necessary amount of crops on just 15 million acres. That means an area almost the size of South America was spared the plow. Forests and savannahs were thus saved."

All thanks to modern agricultural technology, which today continues to develop nicely. Yet, today, many greens are busily bemoaning the very agriculture that has rescued millions of sq km of forests and wildlife from primitive manaul agricultural practices. Worse, they also want us to fuel our cars with bio-diesel, which would require the extra deforestation of millions of sq km.'

The report on the article ends as follows:

' The future
So what lies in the future now that we have seen that every apocalyptic warning heard earlier in history has ended up being just fly-crap in the wind? The business of apocalypse is a big industry and involves lots of money – so don’t expect the end-of-world-charlatans to go away. There’s more money in it today than ever.

Being wrong every time isn’t going to deter today’s modern charlatans. They have a whole new line-up of catastrophes in their bag of tricks: climate change, biodiversity, ocean acidification, species extinction, to name some. And, there are plenty of malcontents out there who want to hear more, more, more.

But I suspect, like the earlier scares of the past, we’ll soon be able to put those on the list of seriously endangered species as well. Here today, extinct tomorrow.'

 
Schoolteachers should not be forced to show such travesties of truth and decency as 'An Inconvenient Truth', full as it is of doomladen prophesies based on errors of various kinds, including the error of forgetting that the truth will out in the end, and that people are not so dumb as Al and those behind him suppose.  But while teachers may be required by their curricula to propagate ill-founded scares around CO2, they may also have the freedom to inform their charges of all the amazing progress we have made in modern times. Reports such as the one linked to above will help with examples, as will books such as Matt Ridley's 'The Rational Optimist'.  

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: look at the quality of the scaremongerers

IPCC Nobel Laureates Lack Scientific Credibility

' IPCC insiders say many of those who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize have weak scientific credentials. They were chosen because they are of the right gender or come from the right country.'

Here is some good quality journalism - researched, penetrating, well-expressed, and giving a real sense of an independent, thinking mind at work and looking for clarity and insight.  Refreshing.  Three cheers for Donna Laframboise!    Shocked by an article which casually described an Argentinian scientist as a 'Nobel prize winner', she put that in the right perspective (he was merely part of the IPCC which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, not a science one) and then she dug through the IAC report and summarised some of the comments from IPCC insiders about their coworkers, e.g.

'Many scientists are [selected] by their political position and not by their competence. (p. 373)

'The most important problem of the IPCC is the nomination and selection of authors and Bureau Members. Some experts are included or excluded because of their political allegiance rather than their academic quality. Sometimes, the “right” authors are put in key positions with generous government grants to support their IPCC work, while the “wrong” authors are sidelined to draft irrelevant chapters and sections without any support. (p. 542)

'The whole process… [is] flawed by an excessive concern for geographical balance. All decisions are political before being scientific. (p.554)

'I tried very hard to engage my [Working Group 2] bureau…only one out of six was really helpful. Two others meant well, but didn’t know the science well enough to be constructive, and the other three were simply unprepared to help in any meaningful way. (p. 587)'

This has been picked up on Bishop Hill, where there is some further discussion of the quality of scientists in the climatology area.  Haunting the Library also has it, and highlights this quote:

'…two [lead authors] on our chapter (one from a developing country and one European) never wrote a word or contributed much to discussions– nevertheless they remained credited. I felt this was unfair on those that actually wrote the text. (p. 35)'

It is not just the IPCC that gives grounds for concern.  I do get the impression that the more strident alarmist scientists are less impressive in several ways that those who are calling for a calmer approach, but that may be because I expect that to be the case.  I think there are also grounds for believing many of the leaders in the CO2 alarm movement are also not of the best that we poor mortals can find amongst us.  I stumbled upon a site the other day which captured quotes from Al Gore, mostly from over 10 years ago around the US presidential election in the year 2000.  Here it is: http://www.gargaro.com/algore.html. One of the links given is to an essay here: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=12838 which is particularly trenchant, e.g. commenting on his performance in a TV debate:

'Gore also seems to have a very shaky hold on reality. He keeps stretching it, undoing it, remaking it. His exaggerations, lies, made-up stories, suggest that he ought to be a novelist rather than a politician.

'He is robotic in his loud, assertive campaign slogans, which are supposed to pass for serious argument. The monotonous repetition of the same words and phrases are supposed to leave in the minds of the audience indelible impressions that will make people vote for him.'

And this:

'I believe we saw the real Al Gore in the third debate. Eleanor Clift, unhappy over Gore's performance in the first two debates, told her colleagues on the McLaughlin Group, "Let Gore be Gore." And that's what he was in the third debate. He was sanctimonious, unctuous, overbearing, rude, monotonous, repetitive, smug, belligerent, wooden and unbelievable. He constantly broke the rules of the debate by interrupting Bush. The trouble is that no one can trust Gore's figures or assertions because the label of liar hangs over his head. And yet, many millions will vote for him.

'The dictionary defines a psychopath as "a person suffering from a mental disorder," and it defines hysteria as "a psychiatric condition variously characterized by emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor disturbances." If you observed Gore in the first debate, you saw a man contorting his face, reflecting emotional excitability of an extreme kind. His body language reflected excessive anxiety about his ability to win the debate. His psychopathic behavior indicates that he does suffer from a mental disorder. He is unable to adhere to the truth, to reality. His behavior suggests an obsessive personality, so determined to become President that he is willing to say anything, and perhaps do anything, that will get him there. He does not have the temperament required of a President. Because his word can never be trusted, he is disqualified from the job. '

Now is this genuine insight, or merely vicious snark from a biased commentator during a close-fought election campaign?  More research needed.

But I do note that Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' has been distributed to schools throughout the UK, in England by government fiat, in Scotland by an energy company.  I note further that a court in England ruled that the film was so political, that to avoid prosecution under a law against political indoctrination in schools, a list of cautions and examples of major errors had to be provided at every viewing (http://www.newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html).

One of Gore's catchphrases is 'the science is settled'.  It seems to me that the science is settled only in the sense that we know we know nothing like enough about the climate system to make useful forecasts over tens and hundreds of years ahead.  Our computer models are puny in the face of a great complexity, and serve only to provide illustrations of how crude models behave when programmed this way and that.  In my own deservedly humble opinion, the scientific case for alarm is not at all convincing.  It follows for me that the wave of political action and alarums around climate is driven by other factors, not least the personalities and inclinations of the leading players.  This is an area which I hope will receive deep and prolonged study, if only to make society more 'resilient' (to borrow a catchword).  In other words, spending some time on personalities is not a distraction, not a search for cheap jibes, but rather is one of the crucial areas for investigation.  As the IPCC sinks in its own quagmire of deceit and manipulation, we want to learn as much as we can about how and why it has been so influential for so long.  Some theories for that are given here, largely asserting that successful propagandising is the key: http://intelligentessays.blogspot.com/2008/03/anthropogenic-global-warming-propaganda.html

In the midst of this swirl of agitation, propaganda, and assertions, schools and educational leaders generally would surely be wiser if they concentrated on basic science, on observations, and on calm reason, rather than thoughtlessly going with the flow and adding to the consternation and confusion, not to mention the fear and destructiveness, by pushing such travesties as 'An Inconvenient Truth' on to the young.  The moral, and the scientific high ground has been occupied by those who see no evidence to justify acute alarm about manmade CO2 in the atmosphere.  Would that the political and educational systems moved there as well.

Note added 23 Mar 2012.  More on sociopaths/psychopaths in politics here and here.

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: turn green-grim into Grimm-fun

The Australian Climate Madness site has created a new fairy-tale character, the Green Climate Monster:

Now children, thanks to Mr Grimm and others, have long enjoyed scary fairy tales, and these can give them skills which help them spot fairy tales a mile off.  Now General Circulation Models (GCMs) are rather expensive and elaborate devices for producing scary tales for adults.  Maybe the skills of the kids can help those scared adults get a grip of themselves: it's just a fairy tale, Mum, Dad!

Back to ACM on GCMs:

'Anyway, I'd like to introduce this little fella to you (see photo). After many minutes of painstaking research, Australian Climate Madness has decreed that all unusual or severe weather events of whatever nature, anywhere in the world, are solely the mischievous work of the Green Climate Monster (he gets bored easily). The GCM is responsible for the shrinking Arctic ice sheet, the growing Antarctic Ice sheet, advancing glaciers, retreating glaciers, heatwaves, cold spells, mountains of snow, absence of snow, droughts, floods, hurricanes, absence of hurricanes, very windy days, calm days, sunny days, cloudy days, foggy days, El Niño and his twin sister, the seasons, thunderstorms, absence of thunderstorms, excess rainfall, less rainfall, extinction of frogs, discovery of new frogs, fewer polar bears, more polar bears, everything else listed at the Warmlist, and plenty more besides.'

I could see this in a current affairs class - just keep a picture of the Monster on the wall, and stick press-cuttings all around it as the pupils bring them in every month on whatever weather, or other, event is being blamed on 'human-caused global warming', or 'climate change' as it seems to be known for short in the media.  Class discussions could serve to identify the most ludicrous of each crop.