EU funds climate-coaching to get pupils on one side of a political debate - but their MPs may not like it

Anyone wonder where all the climate activists have gone?  Why they are so silent and withdrawn when it comes to public debate?  Well, some of them are busy in our schools, following Chairman Mao's tips on getting the young engaged as activists for the cause.  For example, in the City of Norwich, home of the University of East Anglia, famous for its emails, data management practices, climate studies, and carbon consultancies, the EU is funding visits and workshops to help get the pupils thinkng the right thoughts about energy and climate.

In the Norwich Advertiser on 13 Feb

Monday, February 13, 2012         
10:19 AM

The ‘children will learn how to campaign on climate issues’.  At least in part by the promotion of expensive and unreliable energy sources, subsidised by rich and poor alike in their electricity bills and taxes.  This is a very political issue, and there seems little doubt as to which side this EU-funded, UEA supported, campaign will be taking.

This will interest, and possibly horrify, the author of the following words with regard to climate education in schools:

‘I think most parents would be horrified to learn of an organisation that is attempting to influence their children’s education to promote its own agenda.’

These are attributed by the ScienceMedia Centre in New Zealand (as reported on here at Bishop Hill),  to a Bob Ward who works for a wealthy financier called Jeremy Grantham.  Bob handles the PR for one of Jeremy’s organisations.  This is one of two organisations set up by Jeremy in order to influence public affairs in the UK, including education.  Jeremy has quite strong views about climate, and his agenda on it is quite clear on his site.

Holt Hall, mentioned in the clipping, has featured in a previous post on this blog: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-holt-for-tee-transnational-energy.html

Meanwhile in the same English city, on the same day, in a different newspaper, the Evening News, we read that Norfolk MPs are not too happy with the windfarm subsidies. Since these subsidies are crucial for the windfarms, this is going to bring them into head-on conflict with any pupils from that Norwich Sixth Form who were convinced by the EU/UEA team, and even now may be preparing their first 'campaign on climate issues'.

Now these MPs were raising issues with other adults, and not coaching school pupils to be activists for their side of this public debate. I wonder if those MPs might be able to get Bob Ward's assistance to make their points, given his dismay about organisations seeking school children to promote an opposing agenda.

I wonder also if those MPs might also get warning notices issued to all schools within 100 miles of such initiatives (and Norfolk seems particualry blighted in this respect) –  in order to warn them to be on their guard about possible political indoctrination of their pupils.  They might call it Norfolk’s Law, and it could be used for the neighbourhoods of all universities where the pursuit of knowledge amongst adults has been appreciably displaced by the pursuit of influence over children.

Mao said

'The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking. This is especially so in the era of socialism. We hope that the local Party organizations in various places will help and work with the Youth League organizations and go into the question of bringing into full play the energy of our youth in particular. The Party organizations should not treat them in the same way as everybody else and ignore their special characteristics. Of course, the young people should learn from the old and other adults, and should strive as much as possible to engage in all sorts of useful activities with their agreement.'
Ro said

'There is a real risk of raising levels of anxiety amongst children that will not only cause distress in the immediate term but will in the long term lead to those children turning against the environmental causes we hoped they might espouse.’
‘But the deeper question is – why are adults so keen to focus on children? Why concentrate on the weakest, least influential members of society and ask them to act?''

More on 'socialist geography' and on raising activists in schools here:  http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/classroom-climate-conditioning-at-work.html

and here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/03/canadian-climate-campaigners-how-to.html

(hat-tip for the cuttings: Dave W.)

Hey Teachers! Heads, we win, Tails, you lose - climate propagandists cover their backs

On the one hand, here is our advisory note  in which we tell you: 'climate change was a complicated topic many found "daunting and confusing" and could be controversial, leading to many different opinions.'

On the other hand, here are our teaching materials which tell you: 'a single conclusion, that carbon dioxide was virtually solely responsible for driving climate change and presented a range of "apocalyptic scenarios".'.

The text italicised in quotes is based on the reported words of a Senator in South Australia - hat-tip Greenie Watch.  Here are more details of the position taken by this senator, Cory Bernardi, in a hearing with the CSIRO:
"Yet the information that is produced and distributed to schoolchildren appears only to present a single opinion about what is driving climate change," he said.
"How can you explain that given that the explanatory note for teachers says it leads to many different opinions?"

And the answer from the propagandists' friends, the CSIRO?  Not exactly impressive:

'The CSIRO's deputy chief executive for operations Mike Whelan said he had not personally seen the material, but envisaged that the program would be consistent with comments made to teachers.  He told the senate committee the program had only become his responsibility three weeks ago, but he would examine the material.'

I wonder if they are beginning, at long last, to realise that the alarm about CO2 is overblown, based on a flimsy theory of how the climate system works, and all but devoid of observational evidence to support its predictions. 

As Mother Nature continues to refute the alarmist conjectures one by by one, the propagandists do of course change the spin.  They abandoned 'Global Warming' when it become clear that it wasn't much.  They backed away a bit from 'Climate Change' when it became clear than the climate was displaying business as usual.  Then they had a feeble shot at 'Climate Disruption', but those pesky hurricanes and floods and icecaps and polar bears just refused to play along and do their part.  Now, as evidenced by a briefing paper for the UK Parliament (h/t Bishop Hill), they are going for 'Hidden Threat' as in 'natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK's climate over the next few decades'.

What?  Whatever happened to that hockey stick plot, the dizzying rise in temperatures underway, the children who won't know what snow is, the desperate urgency of a Prince Charles or Gordon Brown with their X months left to save the world so better change those lightbulbs quick?  Better scientists than the propagandists choose to quote, had said from the start of the scare that the effect of CO2 would be hard to detect against the variations due to other factors.  They were classed, offensively, as 'deniers'.  Now their wisdom is getting some indirect recognition - the flattery of imitation, but lacking the justice and the courtesy of a climb down by those who did not hesitate to try to scare us, and our children, to further their own ends.

The scientific side of the scaremongering has always had large uncertainties, often glossed over or ignored by such as the IPCC and others who feared that sharing them would inhibit political actions.  They were right, I guess.  Now we are burdened with the monstrous idiocy of the Climate Change Act, and the monstrous cruelty of teaching materials designed to scare children out of their wits.

Ah, but no worries.  We did tell the teachers 'climate change was a complicated topic many found "daunting and confusing" and could be controversial, leading to many different opinions.'  And we did tell the politicians 'natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK's climate over the next few decades'.  We just, kind of , you know, left it a bit late.

Exhibit 1 (2011)

 

Exhibit 2 (2009)

 

Note added 16 Feb 2012 The Australian Climate Madness site has a relevant posting from 14 Feb about government-funded climate propaganda on a TV network : http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/02/governments-climate-indoctrination-exposed-again/

Three New Books for the Climate Classroom - and maybe even for the Staffroom if you dare

(1)  The Delinquent Teenager, by Donna Laframboise

(2) How to Get Expelled from School, by Ian Plimer

(3) Don't Sell Your Coat, by Harold Ambler

      (1) The Delinquent Teenager 

An investigative journalist digging behind the fancy PR and slick politics of the climate alarm industry is a very rare beast indeed.  In the UK, environment and science correspondents have proliferated in print and broadcast media, but they have proliferated, and behave, in the way that missionaries might have done in an era of religious excitement and evangelism, one coupled with generous funding for their work and for the faith which sustains them.  In other words, they do not ‘investigate’ so much as ‘pontificate’, and they do not, and in some cases, dare not since it is against their bosses’ explicit guidance, venture out of line.  Donna Laframboise is not one of them.  She is free and fearless.  Her faith is in the power of daylight, of examination of the facts, of publicising the bigger picture and the details overlooked by others in their haste to be part of the crowd and push the new doom-laden religion which has scientists and computer programmers as the high priests, the IPCC as writer and keeper of the gospels, and such as the Royal Society as one of many Bishoprics in search of power not enjoyed by ecclesiasticals since the Middle Ages.

Her focus in this book is on the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  She is not primarily concerned with the science.  She is concerned with mismatches between what the leaders of the IPCC say, what they do, and what they have failed to do in terms of taking valid opinions and expertise into account.  The organisation presents itself as worthy of trust, but it is not worthy of trust.  It presents itself as an aggregator and reviewer of all relevant science, but it is not – it is a purveyor of a narrow view, a suppressor of debate, and a means by which dissenting voices are ignored.  It tells us it is policy-neutral, to which one can only comment ‘aye, right’ – a double positive which in Scotland conveys a very negative view of the veracity of some assertion.

Why does this matter for schools?  It matters because some materials aimed at children justify their stance by reference to the IPCC.  Consensus.  The UN.  Leading scientists.  Deep research.  Good data.  Great integrity.  Aye, right.  This book is a very useful expose of corruption, conniving, hypocrisy, and deceit.  'But we want to save the planet! So give us a break!'  I don’t think they deserve one, and if you read this book, you won’t either, and in particular, any materials which include the phrase ‘the IPCC says’ will be held by you on the end of tongs while you check them out yourself using more independent sources.  I have helped buy a couple of hundred copies of this book in pdf to email to all the MPs, MSPs, and MEPs in Scotland.

  

(2)  How to Get Expelled from School

A muscular piece of writing from a professor clearly exasperated by the antics and influence of climate alarmists in education and in the media.  I think it perhaps too intense, too sustained and unrelenting to be a hit with most school pupils.  But Plimer has done the heavy lifting here, and provides structure, focus and core content for perhaps as many as 30 to 40 shorter, more heavily illustrated school-level books at various levels.  I hope teachers with a writing bent will pick up from here, and write those lighter books.  They will be needed as part of the long clearing-up operation we face in our schools long after the political foolishness and superficial science of climate alarm has been well and truly consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history.  New books will be required.  In the meantime, and this meantime may last a year or a decade, pupils and parents have to cope as best they can with modern dogma about climate change.  Plimer clearly has his sights on the ‘activist teacher’, and often guides the reader to questions that might expose their real agendas, which are not the education of the young so much as the recruitment of them for ‘the cause’.  I have bought two copies, thanks to a relative carrying them over from Australia – the shipping cost for even a single book being a bit off-putting for me.  This is one for the sympathetic teacher, a reference work for class projects, and a succinct overview of many topics for the keenest of pupils in senior classes.  However, I hope that a great many more books will flow from it, or be inspired by it.  And in that 'meantime', climate realists everywhere could find this book a handy reference.  It is also now available as a pdf, and one group in Australia bought 300 copies to make available to schools there free of charge. [edit 28 Feb - I was wrong about there being a pdf version]
Note added 07 May 2012.

The Australian government has issued a rejoinder to Plimer's book.  As Delingpole has observed, you get most flak when you are over the target.  This looks like an attempted barrage; pdf available here: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/response-to-prof-plimer.aspx  Commentary on it here: http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/07/dept-of-climate-change-rebuts-plimers-book-for-sceptic-kids/

(3)  Don’t Sell Your Coat

‘As I’ve explained already, I was predisposed by birth

and upbringing to concede the high moral ground to

Al Gore and anybody else who told me that they were

fighting on behalf of Mother Earth.

I was wrong.’

This is a beautiful book in many ways.  First of all, in terms of attracting the attention of whoever may pick it up, it is beautifully laid out, typeset, and illustrated.  You might well buy the Kindle version, but I’ll bet you’ll soon come to wish you had something more tangible for the coffee table.  Second, it is extremely well written.  Friendly, fluent, flowing prose, and although dealing with very contentious issues, civil and coherent throughout.  Third, it provides candid glimpses into the life and the intellectual and political development of boy, youth, and grown man, one who is alive to the world of nature and to the world of ideas, and who thought on both deeply enough to shake off the left-wing (= ‘liberal’ in US-speak) conditioning all around him about climate change, and to think through his own thoughts and seek out data himself.  All of this is edifying, and very helpful and informative.  He does not ignore charts and numbers, but he slips them in so that your number-phobe won’t mind much if at all.  Overall, the book is mostly text, with some superb black and white pictures.  I am going to buy a good few copies to send to my friends and family, hoping this will help them see me and my similar views in a better light.  I tell them I am not the one with radical, controversial views ill-supported by theory and observations – that’s the other ‘side’.  I think this book could ensure that they’ll not sell their coats.  And maybe more of them will keep their hats on when the topic of climate comes up!

Testing the Sagacity of the Royal Society: more grist for pupil projects on climate variation

In November last year, a couple of multi-year projects were suggested: monitoring reports of sea level changes, and reports about the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps.  To add extra interest, these reports and regularly updated charts on the classroom wall, would be considered against the heartfelt, but now tempered, claims of the Royal Society in each of these areas.  These would mostly be relevant to geography classes, although science teachers could also make use of them to help motivative their pupils by linking to topical issues.  Now we have the possibility of extending the appeal to include classes in modern studies, wherever political wheeling and dealing and the interface with science is on the curriculum.

Source: NoFrakkingConsensus

  A new report by Andrew Montford called Nullius in Verba describes how a series of presidents of the Royal Society used their positions to promote a speculative theory of impending climate doom.  This theory is so poorly supported, and often contradicted, by observations of the climate system that it is forced to lean heavily on the more readily manipulated virtual world of computer models to gain some credence - at least among the gullible or among those who see advantage in taking the theory as incontrovertible fact.



Another fine resource for both teacher and pupil interested in the Royal Society has just been posted on Bishop Hill.  The Royal Society is often quoted, along with the IPCC, as an authoritative body we should trust.  Donna Laframboise's book has revealed the IPCC as being far from trustworthy, Andrew Montford's pamphlet has revealed the Royal Society in the hands of irresponsible politically-motivated alarmists, and now we have the words of a Fellow of that Society courteously demolishing any residual respect a naive observer might have clinged to out of deference to such a body.  Here is a small extract, put in italics and partly emboldened by me for display here:

'Although I am not a climate scientist, I am sufficiently conversant with the climate science literature to be able to assess the issues accurately. My conclusion is that the case for catastrophic warming induced by man-made CO2 emissions is extremely weak ...

The case for catastrophic warming rests solely on the sign and magnitude of the feedbacks. As has been often said, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”. The potential of catastrophic AGW is an extraordinary claim, but is without compelling supporting evidence. Because of the way that the AGW issue has been politicized together with the behavior of certain climate scientists, the reputation of science and the institutions that support it have suffered. Further, were catastrophic AGW to join the dreary parade of alarms that have punctuated the recent history of affluent societies, the consequences to science and the Society could be severe. It may take a long time before reputations are restored. It is, therefore, imperative for the Society to stay away from politics and advocacy of AGW or any other science based issue, no matter how beguiling the prospect may seem...'

See the post at Bishop Hill for the rest.  This is a very useful introductory overview of many of the reasons why intemperate alarm over the climate is out of order. Links are provided to back up the letter-writer's concerns.

First you scare ‘em, then you snare ‘em – how the UEA treats 13 and 14 year olds

That epicentre of scarequakes on climate and carbon dioxide, the University of East Anglia (UEA) has been lowering its sights recently to target more than 60 early teenagers in their neighbourhood. (hat-tip: Dave W).  Power Engineering carries the story, as does the print edition of the Norwich Evening News on 9th February (see below).  The impression it gives me is that they want them to be receptive to renewables as a source of energy, and at the same time get them involved in a scary scenario about a planetary emergency to get them on side.

Why would a university stoop to such a thing?  Let us first look at it:

First, you get the youngsters to imagine that fossil fuels have disappeared, that this is really scary, and that they must come up with ideas to save the world.  You pay an outside consultancy to do this, since it is one of their suite of activities for the young, and they no doubt have it down to a fine art.  Now by itself, I can imagine really good teachers, with the right type of pupils, engaging their attention in such a way (with no need of course to pay others to do so).  It is easy to imagine this could lead to lots of ideas and useful discussions.  But what about the rest of it?

Second, you bring in people with a vested interest in renewable energy (in this case Aquaterra ,  Seajacks and a tiny start-up called Wind Elements Ltd) and/or carbon reduction schemes and devices (in this case, Lotus Cars and  the University of East Anglia – the UEA, home of the Low Carbon Innovation Centre , commented on here in 2010, and of course of CRU, perhaps most widely known as the source of the Climategate materials ).  You arrange for the pupils to speed-date their way amongst them.

Third, you alert the press to what you are up to, perhaps invite them to be there.

 Fourth, you invite a children’s hero to attend, in this case a local footballer, perhaps in order to increase the possibility of a positive response from the press, and maybe even encourage more pupils to attend.

Now how does it look?  Can you imagine this happening in the old Soviet Union (‘First, imagine the capitalists have closed down all their businesses in some yet-to-be-liberated land, and you have to save the people there from starvation.  Second, let me introduce Commissar Crulcicski who wishes to tell the class about the new 5 year plan, and the glorious ideals of the Party.  You will each have to talk with him.  You need pay no attention to the comrade reporter from Pravda sitting at the back, but the famous footballer Stakhanovily Matthewski is here to distract deal with any technical questions that may arise.  Let us begin.’)

There’s more.  The no doubt well-intentioned facilitators of the simulation game (Camouflaged Learning) describe it as follows:

‘As the day begins, the students are informed that the Earth’s remaining reserves of fossil fuels have finally been exhausted and, as a result, the fabric of what we consider normal life has immediately started to crumble. No more light, no more heat, no more iPods. No more anything, in fact, meaning something needs to be done- and soon- before the world falls into total chaos.’

The UEA representative at the event is reported as hyping this up just a bit:

‘The students must solve the most catastrophic, significant and terrifying crisis imaginable – a world without power’, she said, ‘…It is essential that they act fast because, unless they’re successful, life as we know it could come to an end.’


If I were of a cynical disposition, I’d call this event ‘Camouflaged Selling – of renewables by the companies, and of alarmism by the university’.  Perish the thought.  Who would do such a thing with such young people?


Footnote

Poor pupils of Norwich.  A similar wheeze was followed by energy giant, EDF, last year at a high school in Norwich when they invited a famous athlete to attend a sustainability day of their devising.  To their credit though, it seems they might have skipped the bit where you first scare the kids:

‘“Days like these are something that pupils will remember for the rest of their lives and it is great that EDF Energy can combine this with a way of getting people together to fight climate change.”
It is hoped that the school’s sustainable efforts will inspire others in the local community to follow in its footsteps and think about what they can do differently in their lives to be greener.
Clive Steed, sustainability manager for EDF Energy said: “We can only tackle climate change effectively by taking action together. As a leading energy company, EDF Energy has an ethical responsibility and the expertise to inspire people to reduce their carbon footprint, which is why we kicked off Green Britain Day.’

 

More on EDF’s marketing-through-kids efforts here: http://www.jointhepod.org/