Climate Classroom: questions to stick on the wall

'The climate-change con artists' 
is the title of a post by Leighton Steward in which he recalls Travesty Trenberth's Lament 'we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment', and goes on to pose eight questions which he would like to see addressed by climate alarmists, or 'climate-change con artists' as he also more colourfully describes them.  I think these questions would make a fine poster for the wall of any classroom in which climate change is raised:

1. Why can't warming alarmists produce a single legitimate example of empirical evidence to support the manmade global-warming hypothesis?
   
2. Why has Earth been warming for 300 years when man has only emitted measurable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere for the last 150 years?
   
3. Why did Earth cool for 500 years before the recent 300 year warming and warm for several hundred years before that when even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says CO2 levels did not change?
   
4. Why was the Medieval Warm Period, a thousand years ago, warmer than today even though the CO2 level was 38 percent lower than today?
   
5. Why did many of Earth's major glaciers in the Alps. Asia, New Zealand and Patagonia begin to retreat nearly half a century before the Industrial Revolution and man's CO2 emissions?
   
6. Of the last five interglacials, going back 400,000 years, why is our current interglacial the coolest of the five even though Earth's CO2 level is about 35 percent higher?
   
7. Why has our current 10,000-year-long Holocene epoch been warmer than today for 50 percent of the time when CO2 levels were about 35 percent lower than today?
   
8. Why are correlations of Earth's temperature with natural factors such as sunspot numbers, solar cycle lengths, solar magnetic variations and changes in major ocean currents all better than the correlation of Earth's temperature with CO2 levels?

I am waiting for my copy of Plimer's new book  - it will shortly be in carry-on luggage and flying through the air to me from Australia.  I'll review it here later this month, and I anticipate a bumper crop of further questions that the conscientious teacher will not find any answer for in any climate-alarm-fouled syllabus. They would however be of value as conversation-pieces, or discussion-starters for any suitably qualified class with a suitably courageous teacher willing to raise questions about the relative importance of CO2 as an influence on climate..


According to the source:
Leighton Steward is a geologist, environmentalist, author and retired energy industry executive. He currently heads up the organization Plants Need CO2 and is a veteran of television and talk radio where he helps educate the public and politicians about the benefits of CO2 as it relates to the plant and animal ecosystems.

Happy Head, Chilly Children, Troubled Teachers, Perplexed Parents, Riled Readers - an example of authoritarian eco-arrogance at work

First the Head:

Quote from article 'The school's headmaster, Rob Benzie, shut down the radiators as an experiment to show students how the school could cut its carbon footprint.

''We turned off the heating as an experiment to see if we can lower our carbon footprint,' he said.

'We allowed pupils to wear as many jumpers as they liked and everyone seemed to be happy enough although it did get pretty chilly."


Then the children:
'Pupils at Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, were forced to grip their pens through thick gloves and wear their coats and hats in class as temperatures dropped to 1C.'

And the teachers:
'One teacher said: 'It was absolutely ridiculous I have never experienced working in such cold conditions.
'I am all for saving the environment but to conduct an "experiment" as the head calls it on such a cold day is beyond stupid.
'The kids were complaining, no one was working properly some of them could not even write because they could not grip a pen through woolly gloves.
'We have a number of pupils with mental and physical disabilities here and they really struggled with the cold.
'It was unnecessary and in my opinion barbaric.' 

And the parents:
' mother, whose 12-year-old daughter goes to the school, said: 'My daughter was physically shaking when she came home.'When I heard about this eco day I was absolutely furious.
'I wanted to take my daughter out of school but I was worried I'd get into trouble with the authorities.'

and

'One father said: 'I was just shocked when I found out what had happened.
'I have never heard of such a ridiculous idea. Turning off all the heating in December is just mental.

'The kids could get sick I can't believe any of them learnt anything.

'I know when I am cold I can hardly function. I'm absolutely furious with the school.' 


Finally, the readers: 
Here are the currently top-rated comments to the Daily Mail article from which the above quotes are taken:

Another idiot who shouldn't have any contact with impressionable youngsters.

- Tommy Cockles, Liverpool, 6/12/2011 7:18

Yet another eco-loony who thinks he can 'save the planet'. The planet can take care of itself, as it has done for billions of years.

- Owd Tyke, Devon, 6/12/2011 8:20

These are the teachers preparing the next generation for the work-place - Heaven help us! Typical leftie - more obsessed with a trendy ideology than teaching his pupils the three R's. These are the sort of people who ban religious instruction because they consider it superstition yet embrace with boundless enthusaism the new 'religion' of man-made climate change, which is pure fantasy.

- Gibbo, Stansted, Essex, 6/12/2011 7:20

What better way to teach children that climate alarmists are nutty?

- Casey, Maine, US, 6/12/2011 8:07

There is nothing more dangerous in life than a man (or woman) with a cause. Such people lose commonsense and it becomes impossible to reason with them

- Jeremy R, Sheffield, England, 6/12/2011 8:33

he is breaking the HSE rules on heating a work place.

- Geoff , Cleveland, 6/12/2011 9:15

I think I agree with all the top-rated commenters to this article in the Daily Mail.  Here is an example of someone who should not be in a position of such control over the young.  He clearly needs help himself to deal with his neurosis.  Inflicting it on others is not forgiveable unless he has completely lost the plot, in which case the failing lies with the education authority which continues to employ him.  His action does indeed seem to be illegal, as he has some duty of care.  The whole sorry business is a tiny example of the narcissistic inhumane authoritarianism of the 'green movement'.

Note added 7 Dec 2011

And now the blogs.  This story has been picked up quite widely today, and by some widely read, influential sites.  Here are three of them:

(1) Instapundit

‘#GREENFAIL: Children left to freeze in the classrooms after head turns off heating on coldest day of year ‘to show how school can be eco-friendly.’ It’s a valuable lesson: “Eco-Friendly” just means “in the hands of the smug and sadistic.”
UPDATE: Michael Tinkler notes that at least nobody’s blowing them up. So far.'

(2) The Daily Bayonet:

Lessons in Hypothermia

Hippies hate kids. How else to explain their murderous, misanthropic meanness toward moppets?
A headmaster at a British school decided a great lesson in sustainability would be to turn off the heat for a day. In December:

(3) The Register:

Headmaster freezes schoolkids for Gaia

Earth Goddess requires sacrifices

By Andrew Orlowski

Posted in Environment, 7th December 2011 08:02 GMT

Pagan gods traditionally required human sacrifices – preferably of children – and a West Country academy school appears to be leading the way. To give pupils a lesson in "sustainability" they'll never forget, headmaster Rob Benzie of Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, ordered a "No Power Day ... as an experiment to see if we can lower our carbon footprint".

Added later still on 7 Dec 2011
WUWT is covering it too.  This sure is catching attention!
'The local school authority and parents should probably teach Mr. Benzie the lesson that freezing children to push a radical green agenda makes his job unsustainable, before he does something really stupid.'

Note added 8 Dec 2011
It can be instructive to look at the data.  Here are the values of Max and Min temp in degC recorded at a Met Office station in the same county as this school.  The data are for Yeovilton, and can be downloaded from here

Whichever bit of 'global warming' was exercising the headmaster, it surely was not in SW England.









Note added 6 Feb 2012: more headmasterly stupidity in the name of Gaia: http://dailybayonet.com/2012/02/green-pee/


Note added 12 Sep 2013: the link to the original article in the Daily Mail seems to be dead.  Here is a much shorter report still up on Fox News: http://nation.foxnews.com/freezing/2011/12/06/kids-freeze-after-school-turns-heating-save-planet

WUWT Exposes Suzuki Foundation Scaring the Kids for Climate Cash

The post at WUWT begins as follows:

'Here’s the popup
message
solicitation you get when you visit the website for the first time:

Climate change is melting the North Pole and it’s no longer safe for Santa and his Workshop. So our dear old friend is packing up the sleigh to find somewhere else to live.

You can help! Move your mouse over this website to find gifts you can buy Santa to help him set up a temporary Workshop and protect the North Pole for his return.

Of course, you’re savvy enough to know we won’t be sending actual gifts to Santa. You will receive a tax receipt for 100% of your purchase and proceeds will be used by the David Suzuki Foundation to support our critical work to protect nature and the environment from threats like climate change.

Buying these green gifts and personalized ecards on behalf of hard-to-buy-for friends or relatives on your holiday list is a great way to show you’re thinking of them — and the planet!

Act now to help Santa!

Sincere thanks,
The David Suzuki Foundation

This is nothing more than a thinly veiled revenue generator for the foundation.
No shame, no scruples, just send money. Is it any wonder informed people are doubting the climate change issue when presented with crap like this?'

I was at the EIKE conference in Munich last week, and it was interesting to note the spontaneous and strong applause for a couple of the speakers when they noted with disdain instances of children being scared by climate propagandising.  Most of us, I suspect, don't like it when people set out to to scare our children.  Or anyone else's children.  So this shoddy advert will probably backfire on Suzuki in his attempts to get more cash and more converts.

Note added later: Suzuki has form on scaring children.  From The Daily Bayonet in September 2008:

'David Suzuki has a new article published on his Foundation web site.  This time, instead of imploring the world to listen to him just because he’s old, he is trying to make children guilt their parents into voting with the environment in mind.
His article is full of scare-mongering language and imagery, but there is not one scientific reference or fact in it.  Suzuki knows the science is far from settled, but he also knows that if it came to a debate, he’s on the losing side.  So he plays on emotions; emotions like fear. To children.'

Note added 1 December 2011.  H/t Climate Depot

This tawdry stuff has happened before.

July 2010 in the States: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/07/madness-of-joel-rogers.html A foul oaf called Joel Rogers: '“Here is a picture if you want of the polar ice caps melting, Santa Claus is about to drown. You should tell your children uh that uh these people in your state that oppose taking steps in your state on global warming, they are trying to kill Santa Claus. Once you have the kids you know another 14 years and they are going to vote.” Joel Rogers.'

December 2010 in the UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/dec/03/children-climate-change-television-santa?  Agitprop at work:
'The new 10-part children's show, Mission: Green Santa, has been licensed to ITV and in each 12-minute episode, climatologist and amateur reporter, Dr Maurice Bergs will tell children about the dangers and global warming and encourage them to log onto the Green Santa website to make an environmental pledge.'

Note added 3 Dec 2011.
'All this may seen merely petty, but it is troublesome nonetheless. What the Suzuki Foundation is doing is sending out a scare notice to children everywhere that Christmas is in jeopardy, Saint Nick adrift and lost, making the fate of both of them dependant on giving to the cause. I'm not saying what the Suzuki Foundation is doing is immoral. I will say they have given new life and vigour to the word "tacky." Scaring kids and guilting parents is monumentally tacky.'
Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Give+money+Santa+gets/5806726/story.html

Parents, school pupils and teachers sceptical about climate alarmism - a non-random sample, but encouraging nevertheless

From one of those online polls that inevitably suffers from self-selection by respondents, we see these encouraging results about school pupils, parents, and teachers being sceptical about 'climate change' (which I am interpreting as the short-hand used by activists to denote 'OMG we are in trouble, man-made CO2 is going to wreck everything - i.e. climate alarmism' rather than the literal meaning which is no more than a platitude):

Pity about the 'aministrators', but I guess they are just protecting their jobs, or at least their ears from the tirade that any activist teacher het-up about CO2 would probably subject them to.  

The display above is from a post at the USA's National Science Teachers Association site: http://nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=59035 .  There are no claims there that the results are representative of any more than the opinions of those who chose to respond to their online poll.  That's good.  And I couldn't find any report of how many actually responded, and what fraction they may be of their membership, and that's not so good..  But no matter, this is just a chunk of data that gives a peek into the view of some members of the NSTA.  Since I'd like to stay cheerful, I have picked out and reproduced below those quotes from the examples given which I happen to find unambiguously encouraging.  So this is a chunk of opinion that has been doubly selected!

I believe that “climate change” education is used to indict western civilization of false[ly]-manufactured crimes. Most of what the general news media and the education establishment insist upon as true science is simply not. Also, the numerous incidents of researchers altering data and cherry-picking sensor locations in order to influence data have left the United Nations’ and other groups’ theories and claims discredited and untrustworthy.
—Other, Middle School, High School, Ohio

As an educator in the field of science for 10 years, I am myself still very skeptical...I see too many dollar signs involved in this indoctrination.
—Educator, Middle School, Oklahoma

 I am teaching my students that there is little to no evidence that climate change is [hu]manmade and that the reason that it is such a big deal is because of the money that is being exchanged in order for scientists to support the idea.
—Educator, Middle School, New York

 Poor science on the climate change and obvious falsification of data as shown in the “Climategate” memos...Present side-by-side presentations: Give Al Gore two days, and I do a counterpoint on one day.
—Educator, High School, Kansas

Politically based, not science based…students either believe [humans are] the evil-doer[s] of all that happens in this world, or they disbelieve in global warming.
—Educator, Middle School, California



Sadly, there are at least as many discouraging quotes.  OK, here's just one to show what I mean:


Also there is no debate among scientists about the cause; the only “debate” is among the media and “scientists” working for the oil industry…The media lies.
—Educator, Middle School, Florida

So what is encouraging?  It is merely that there are some teachers, parents, and pupils out there who have not been hoodwinked by the alarmism.  A well-designed sample-survey in this area would be very welcome, but who would do it?  Who would allow it in their school?  Not those 'administrators' I suspect!  After all, perhaps the views now widely labelled 'sceptical' are in fact in a clear majority overall, and would actually deserve the label  'sensible'.

h/t: Tom Nelson

Some things to do to help resist CAGW-scaremongering in schools

I am going to be devoting most of my time to other work for the next four months or so, and I expect to post a lot less often than I'd like to here.  In case any readers are looking for ideas on what they might do to help with the chores of getting egregious materials on climate out of schools and elsewhere, I've been compiling a little list.  Here it is, in no particular order and based on no profound analysis of the possibilities - I've just dusted down and spruced-up a 'to-do' list of my own:

(1)  Investigating 2 sites: Project Genie and Kids Club Zilla

      Shortly after I started this blog last year, I noted 3 possible projects in one of my early posts:

‘a) Schools Low Carbon Day: http://www.cooltheworld.co.uk/low_carbon_day.php Apparently well-intentioned initiative, but of course based on smoke and mirrors.

b) Genie: http://www.projectgenie.org.uk/ An overblown scare site based on notion that carbon (dioxide) is a genie buried in the earth, one which we are releasing to our imminent danger and disadvantage. 

[added 19 Feb 2012:  A glimpse of the approach of this odious project can still be seen in a press release from University College London in April 2010 which contains an extract of the video at the heart of their materials: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1004/10043001]
c) Zilla: http://www.kidsclubzilla.com/index.html I am not sure how current this site is. It is spooky, of unclear origin, and may be a money-making scam taking advantage of the CO2 scare.I have heard that such sites appear after major disasters are in the news. Well, the IPCC is certainly one of those.’

Of these, the first one seems to have disappeared.  I am not so sure about the other two.  Some investigation to find out more about their current state might be worthwhile.  Are they still active?  If so, what are they doing?  Do they matter much?

(2)  Organising the Pages.  I have 5 ‘pages’ on the blog which are in very poor shape. 

They could do with some organisation, and ideas for further development.  The five topics are:

• Climate-anxiety: reports of frightened children
• Climate-curricula: school curricula, policies, an...
• Climate-sites: aimed at children or teachers
• Climate-wisdom: open-letters and petitions
• Climate-books: aimed at children or teachers

Any ideas for material to include in them?  Any ideas for improving their layout, or making them more useful?

(3) Making better use of Delicious.  I have been occasionally adding links to the ClimateLessons collection on Delicious. This too needs a good tidy, and ideas for making more use of it.  My main idea when starting it was to provide convenient access to references useful when Fisking silly climate materials.  One of the key tag-words is ‘rebuttal’ (or ‘Rebuttal’, or even ‘rebutal’ – see what I mean about tidying!).

(4) Investigating the British Council climate propaganda efforts.   What are they up to?  When did it start?  Who is driving it, and why?  It seemed to die down (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110610/full/news.2011.364.html ) but look at this report on Biased-BBC: Andrew Mitchell, Cameron's international development secretary, has announced this weekend (reported in the Sunday Times P6, so not linkable)a £90m grant for the BBC World Service Trust (WST). This, as I have written before, is a body whose main purpose is to brainwash the developing world about eco loonery, and already spends millions doing so, with projects like this:

‘The major objective of Africa Talks Climate is to identify the entry points to engage, inform and empower Africans in local, national and international conversations about climate change. To achieve this, the initiative will collate opinions and then amplify the voices of people at all levels of society. "Climate change is the defining issue of our age," said Peter Upton, Country Director for the British Council in Nigeria. "Climate in Africa is one of the most important issues that all people and governments will face. Africa will be one of the most affected regions but has done the least to contribute to the problem. ‘

Source: http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/11/not-conservative.html#comments

(note added 14 Dec 2011:cg2 emails reveal BC zealots spending UK tax money on creating media pundits)
(note added 27 Jul 2016: nasty person uncovered high up in the British Council: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1501559/three-year-old-prince-george-hit-by-vile-rant-from-british-council-boss-paid-thousands-to-promote-uk/ )

(5) Review, or even Fisk a part of a website or booklet or DVD aimed at children or at teachers.  My series of posts on ‘Low Carbon Day for Schools’ works through just one paragraph on the original site in a series of 8 posts ending in this one (http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-would-you-believe-this-8-of-8-and.html)

http://xkcd.com/386/

Here is an example of Fisking some particularly silly remarks on climate: http://adventuresintimetravel.com/2011/05/27/hari-watch-purple-prose-alert/

Here is an entire book Fisking another book on climate: ‘The Weather Makers Re-Examined’ by D Weston Allen (Irenic Publications, Australia).  ‘The Weather Makers’ being a book of climate alarmism by a Tim Flannery, notorious in Australia for his over-the-top forecasts of doom.

There are a great many booklets aimed at young children.  One I came across recently is ‘Why Are the Ice Caps Melting’, and there is scarcely a page of text in it without something objectionable.  Ordering one such book and doing a review of it would be good practice for anyone wanting to cut their teeth at Fisking.

(6) Investigate what is going on at Science Learning Centres, e.g. this one in the north-east of England (https://www.sciencelearningcentres.org.uk/centres/north-east/climate-change-schools-project/introduction ).  Climate seems to be dominating this science centre, presumably because that is where it has been easiest to get funding.  But what are they doing to the children?  Information about their materials and messages would be useful.  Appears to take AGW as a given, and concentrate on saving energy.  Yet energy is not in short supply, and nagging children about it seems unduly negative and destructive of their spirits.  
Note added 20 June 2012.  These centres remain active, and have a link with something called ClimateNE, with which they share this blog on a business support site: http://blog.nebusiness.co.uk/climatene/

(7) Find out more about what the UK Youth Climate Coalition might be doing in schools or elsewhere. It looks like a group of youngsters having a whale of time, tapping into funds, jetting around the world, and generally feeling like they are saving us all.  But what is it based on?  What foundation is there for this proselytising?  Have they given any deep thought to anything at all?  Does it matter much since they will either grow up or move on to another fad within a few years?  Would they benefit from therapy?

(8)Ditto for Climate Week.  What has been happening to these youngsters? Such as this one: so young, but has served on Obama’s election campaign, advised the UK government, directed academic studies, and more.  They have clearly been convinced and energised about climate change (it would be interesting to try to find out what it is that they have found most convincing by way of evidence), and are finding lots of things to do, committees to join, conferences to attend, initiatives to pursue. 

(9)Scotland seems heading into economic and intellectual swamps along Californian lines, as evidenced by the political push for carbon reduction and renewables.  The alarmists’ penchant for getting to the kids is also well underway, and would be a worthy topic of investigation.  One organisation involved is ‘Eco-schools Scotland’.

(10) Take a Global View.  This site might be a place to start: http://climatechangeeducation.org/international/index.html in order to learn more about international and national activities aimed at schoolchildren.  This organisation would also bear checking in case there is anything unsatisfactory going on: http://globe.gov/about

 (11)Getting information to interested politicians, e.g. note the straight talking here in Australia: http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/05/minchin-offensive-nonsense-from-known-global-warming-alarmists/  Politicians do need information for their ‘soundbites’, and some indication that there is appreciable support ‘out there’ for viewpoints contrary to that of ‘the establishment’ on climate. 

There is to be a meeting in Westminster on 30^th November involving several distinguished critics of climate alarmism and/or the IPCC ('The Climate Change Act Reconsidered' starting 1pm in Westminster Palace or Portcullis House).  Can you persuade your MP to attend? 

(12)Study some aspect of climate in more detail – make it your speciality to be familiar with what the experts and others are saying about it.  Plenty to choose from: polar bears, glaciers, hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc, etc.  Get hold of data yourself and do some plots in Excel to become more familiar with it. 

There are lots of examples here using Excel, albeit by a statistician but anyone competent with spreadsheets could reproduce much of it: http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/.  That link is for Australian temperature data – here is someone who was inspired by it to take a look at Canadian data in a similar way: http://cdnsurfacetemps.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/why-mean-temp-is-meaningless/

Informal data analysis can help stimulate ideas for further tests.  Here are more examples:  as in here:  http://reasonabledoubtclimate.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/texas-winters-hayhoe-warming-effect/

Added 28 Nov, 2011:  Here is an example of a professor of atmospheric science being fatuous.  The analysis shows how easy it can be to refute those driven by dogma and the momentum of an all-consuming 'cause': http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/katharine-and-the-100-year-rain-events/#more-331  

Added 07 May 2012.  Here is another example of someone deciding to 'look at the data', and as is so often the case, finding no cause for alarm.  It concerns precipitation in the San Jose area of California:
http://climatereflections.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/quick-first-look-at-precipitation/

(13) Further to (12).  Prepare to write to, or in, your favourite newspaper and/or post comments at its web-version.  First, of course, get a clear grasp of some aspect of climate that may come up – do not just parrot stuff from other sites, do some thinking, note-taking, and arithmetic on your own and see what views you form.  Then, and only then, start sharing them.  There are so many topics to choose from, so take care not to spread yourself too thinly. Just choosing one might be a good place to start.  There is so much interlinking and overlap amongst topics that wherever you choose to start, you will find many avenues to follow as and when you feel ready to.

(14) Review in more detail the Welsh Climate Pack mentioned here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/09/welsh-schools-to-be-sent-scare-them.html

(15) Outreach from here.  If you find a post in this blog that you like, then draw attention to it in some site or other forum where relevant people gather.  I imagine most of my readers here are already convinced that some level of scepticism is in order about CO2 alarmism.  I think that if there is any merit in a post, it would be best drawn to the attention of those who are most relevant to it, and who are unlikely to see it otherwise.  For example, email details to any teacher you know – you don’t have to defend my ramblings, you might merely say they might be of interest or they caught your attention, and what does your contact think about it?  I think there has been very little outreach from here, and that to me is a great failing. 

(16) Find out more about what is going in your local schools.  Do they still show ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for example?  Where in the curricula are climate change issues addressed, and how?  Do outsiders, e.g. from corporations such as Greenpeace or WWF visit any of them?  Do pupils get to hear about calmer views of climate?  What do your nearby head teachers think about how best to include climate issues?  You could extend this to finding out more about central government initiatives in this area.  I suspect they have faded away dramatically with the change of government, but I don’t know for sure.

Now not many people read this blog (1,000 to 2,000 page view per month since July), so it should not be your first choice as an outlet for any of your work if you can find others.  On the other hand, I'd be delighted if you want to make use of it.  I still harbour hopes that one day it will be useful as a source of information for anyone actively engaged with this resistance effort against the wave of frightful propaganda about climate aimed at the young.  

Added 20 Nov 2011
(17) Design or develop climate lessons which would give schoolchildren valid and balanced insights into the climate system, into meteorology, and into the various implications of either.  These are all interesting areas, and could provide material for very interesting and engaging classes, without any resort whatsoever to the cheap, immoral, and irresponsible device of scaremongering.  The more such curricula there are, the quicker the transition to better scholastic standards in this area could be.  A trickier, and more urgent, task would be to give thought to materials that could help those children already exposed to the shoddy science of alarmism and its possible manifestations just about anywhere in the curriculum.  Such materials would also be of use to adults long past their schooldays but still damaged by their climate-related experiences in them.  This website has a scattering of suggestions for '10-minute trainers' that could be used to expose alarmist nonsense - search on that topic to see at least half a dozen here. (added 6 Dev 2011 A useful compilation of of links to tutorial materials here: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Debate.htm)

Note added 22 May 2012.  Page view rates on this blog have increased to around 3,000 per month according to Blogspot, with one excursion recently to 6,000 in a month. 

Note added 15 December 2012.  Re project (4) above.  A key leader of this British Council work, the David Viner of 'children won't know what snow is' fame, has been spotted as a useful resource by a consultancy which stands to gain from climate alarmism.  Here is a comment posted on the Bishop Hill blog, Unthreaded section:

'Re comment by Brent Hargreaves 98:560 AM) on David Viner's new job.
The link you provide shows that his company thinks the poor chap is a Nobel Laureate:
'David was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993-2007.
[http://www.mottmac.com/newsandpublications/newslist/?id=294066]
They also are under the impression that his diversion of the British Council into promoting alarm about climate around the world was a good thing:
'In 2008 David was appointed global director at The British Council where he developed a ground breaking cultural relations strategy and programme that was delivered through 250 offices in 109 countries.'
Others take a different view of such initiatives, e.g. this writer on Biased-BBC describes them thusly:
'It means oodles more bureaucratic fear-mongering projects, the goal of the greenies involved being to convert the developing world into West-hating, climate change fanatics'
[http://biased-bbc.com/2011/11/not-conservative.html]
But then, Viner's new employer notes that this sort of thing is very good for his business:
'Mott MacDonald’s environment manager Ian Allison said: “We are delighted to welcome David to Mott MacDonald. Sustainability and climate change are important drivers for our business. As awareness of these issues increases, the consultancy is continuing to develop its services and skills to help in strategies for adaptation, mitigation and institutional reform to respond to these challenges.'

Note added 24 October 2013. 

Five Of The Six Snowiest Winters Have Occurred Since David Viner Declared The End Of Snow 

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/five-of-the-six-snowiest-winters-have-occurred-since-david-viner-declared-the-end-of-snow/