The Environmental Terrorizing of Children

Reproduced here with permission of the author, an article recently published at Canada Free Press by Alan Caruba:

The Environmental Terrorizing of Children

'In many ways, the worst aspect of environmentalism is why Greens not only feel free to terrorize children with doomsday scenarios, but feel compelled to do so.

I have been reviewing books for some fifty years and with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and books such as Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” have been offering scenarios intended to move people and governments to take action that, in retrospect, were based on bad “science” and absurd doomsday predictions.

If you were fooled by global warming, they are counting on you to be fooled again by “sustainability”, their reworking of Marx’s communism in the form of a grandiose scheme to control all of the Earth’s bounty. In June the United Nations will hold a Rio+20 conference that will declare that governments exist to ensure “sustainable well-being and happiness.” The Declaration of Independence offers the opportunity to pursue happiness. It does not guarantee it, nor does it suggest that it is government’s job to provide it.

A key element of the Green’s endless indoctrination schemes has been to reach children, the most vulnerable among us and for this reason our schools have been turned into Green prisons where their version of the Earth is pumped into the minds of children here and around the world.

Their primary teaching tool is fear. Fear that the oceans will rise and wipe out entire cities. Fear that the rainforests are disappearing. Fear that entire species are being destroyed by the hand of man. Fear that the use of any kind of fuel, coal, natural gas, and oil is despoiling the planet.

I have reviewed books for some fifty years at this point and I could not put a number on the books for children that hammer home these and other terrifying themes. One crossed my desk the other day, “Our House is Round: A Kid’s Book About Why Protecting Our Earth Matters” by Yolanda Kondonassis and illustrated by Joan Brush. It has been called “the perfect children’s introduction to environmental issues” by Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

The author is not a biologist, a geologist, a meteorologist, or any other kind of scientist. She is a Grammy-nominated classical harpist. A harpist!

“Our Earth has gotten messy. What should we do?” she asks her young reader. What does she mean by “messy”? Her answer is that “cars, trucks, and factories make pollution, a kind of dirty gas or liquid that goes out into the air and into our rivers, lakes, and oceans.” This book is written for children age five to nine!

Imagine now what it must be like to be that age and be told that the air is polluted and the water is as well. This verges on child abuse.

“Pollution goes up into the sky and forms a blanket of gas that holds heat within Earth’s atmosphere. That makes our whole Earth warmer and leads to unclean air for breathing, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and extreme weather patterns. Scientists call this warming of our Earth’s temperature CLIMATE CHANGE.”

It is a LIE. The Earth has been cooling for fifteen years.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a gas as vital to all life on Earth as oxygen is to the life of living creatures. Without it, not a single blade of grass or tree or the vegetation we call “crops” would not grow. Livestock and wildlife depend on that vegetation. If you are age five to nine, you likely are unaware of this.

This book and all the others that incorporate these lies are a form of psychological terror.

The same week I received “Our House is Round”, I also received “The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea” and “Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More.” You could stack all the environmentally-themed children’s books I’ve seen and it would reach up several stories.

They are a corruption of geophysical and biological science. They have nothing to do with “saving the planet” and everything to do with distorting children’s understanding of the real world.

It does not matter that the Ms. Kondonassis thinks she is serving humanity. The great lie of communism is that it will create a collectivist utopia. In reality it has always depended on terror to maintain itself and it has failed wherever it has been tried. Environmentalism is its latest permutation.

It is the same reason that communism derides religion for its emphasis on life and morality.

It is the same reason Americans are being subjected to government imposed limitations on energy and transportation, and coerced social change, altering and secularizing our society.

I have devoted my life to freedom of the press, freedom to publish, freedom to speak out, and to urge participation in the life of the greatest nation on Earth, but some books like “Our House Is Round” are the worst kind of mental pollution.

Environmentalism, like all tyrannies, begins by indoctrinating children.'

Editor’s Note: In 1974 Alan Caruba was a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Environmental scaremongering targeting children is not new.  In 1984, Herbert London published 'Why Are They Lying to Our Children?' about the same issue.  The foreword by Herman Kahn begins as follows:

'War, famine, environmental disasters, material shortages, and a declining quality of life - that's what schoolchildren are being taught to expect in their futures.  What these grim and mostly inaccurate forecasts are doing to their lives I don't know for sure.  ut I do know this.  Our children are absorbing excessively negative misinformation.'

Well, some children born in 1984 are now teaching in classrooms themselves. I dread to think how many of them will welcome books such as those mentioned by Alan Caruba in his hard-hitting article.  It is little wonder that the mass media, for example, have been so supine in the face of environmentalist excesses - it is quite possible that many there actually believe them, and are not merely looking for sales through sensationalism.  Many politicians, locked in an almost closed mutual feedback system with the media, are in the same boat.  What chance have the teachers got to rebel against the misinformation, and what chance have the children got to survive with their minds and spirits unharmed?

Harpist Decides The Children Must be Told: and so another scary climate book for kiddies hits the streets

All sorts of people have been taken up with the great adventure of saving the planet from our CO2.  The idea of a climate crisis has been remarkably productive, providing a stimulating vehicle for politicians intent on more power, insurers intent on more premiums, journalists intent on more readers, scientists intent on more grants, consultants intent on more clients, NGOs intent on more funds and movie-makers intent on more tickets.  And then all sorts of others have found joining-in irresistible, including, presumably, the woman who wrote the book on the left, 'Our House is Round', which is to be re-released on Amazon in the UK later this year.

The book has been read, partly reviewed, and roundly condemned by Alan Caruba:
 
'The author is not a biologist, a geologist, a meteorologist, or any other kind of scientist. She is a Grammy-nominated classical harpist. A harpist!

“Our Earth has gotten messy. What should we do?” she asks her young reader. What does she mean by “messy”? Her answer is that “cars, trucks, and factories make pollution, a kind of dirty gas or liquid that goes out into the air and into our rivers, lakes, and oceans.” This book is written for children age five to nine! 

Imagine now what it must be like to be that age and be told that the air is polluted and the water is as well. This verges on child abuse.

“Pollution goes up into the sky and forms a blanket of gas that holds heat within Earth’s atmosphere. That makes our whole Earth warmer and leads to unclean air for breathing, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and extreme weather patterns. Scientists call this warming of our Earth’s temperature CLIMATE CHANGE.”

It is a LIE. The Earth has been cooling for fifteen years.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a gas as vital to all life on Earth as oxygen is to the life of living creatures. Without it, not a single blade of grass or tree or the vegetation we call “crops” would not grow. Livestock and wildlife depend on that vegetation. If you are age five to nine, you likely are unaware of this.

This book and all the others that incorporate these lies are a form of psychological terror.'
(hat-tip: Greenie Watch)

The book was published in 2010, and the site promoting it includes an interview with the author, Yolanda Kondonassis, from which I have taken this extract:

'Q: This book is more plain-spoken than most kid’s books about what causes environmental problems. Was that a conscious decsion?

YK: Very conscious. I have a huge amount of respect for the intelligence and capacity of kids. I learned long ago that it’s almost always a mistake to talk down to children. They are refreshingly lacking in agendas so their minds are open in the most productive and observant way. They are also shockingly honest. If something doesn’t make sense, they will usually ask all the right questions and shine a spotlight on the blind spots of adults in about two seconds flat. I love that. Perhaps we should have a kids’ delegation Congress.

Q: In your book, you don’t avoid or tip-toe around the issue of climate change. Tell us about your convictions.

YK: It’s a pretty simple cause and effect equation. The problems facing our earth aren’t simple, but recognizing that we do indeed have problems should be pretty clear. I am big on metaphors so to use another one, I have found that at the beginning of a child’s cold or flu, there is always the temptation for parents to say “it’s allergies,” “he’s overtired,” “she had a long day,” “he’s overheated,” etc. For working parents, a sick child requires scheduling overhaul, missed obligations, and family upheaval. No one wants to admit when these disruptions are imminent. But most moms also know that glassy look in their kids’ eyes that says we’re headed into the sick zone for a few days. Our earth definitely has that glassy-eyed look and we need to admit it so we can get on with solutions. The goal should not be to slow the damage, but to reverse the trends'

Now it is arguable that the earth is far from having that 'glassy-eyed look', but is actually in vigorous good health.  It is not the sickly, vulnerable child that so many alarmed people seemed to suppose, but rather a grizzled, remarkably robust ancient.  As for air quality and water quality,  these have been improving this past century hand-in-hand with industrial progress, and it is the continuation of that progress which holds out greatest hope for further improvements.  The glib 'environmentalism' of such as Kondonassis seems to skip over all that.  Let me finish with a quote from a book which I hope she will read one day if she has not already done so, 'The Rational Optimist' by Matt Ridley:

'The four horsemean of the human apocalypse, which cause the most premature and avoidable deaths in poor countries, are and will be for many years the same: hunger, dirty water, indoor smoke, and malaria, which kill respectively about seven, three, three and two people per minute.  If you want to do your fellow human beings good, spend your effort on combating those so that people can prosper, ready to meet climate challenges as they arrive.  Economists estimate that a dollar spent on mitigating climate change brings ninety cents of benefits compared with $20 benefits per dollar spent on healthcare and $16 per dollar spent on hunger.'

I suspect Ms Kondonassis may not possess this wider perspective.  She, like many other decent well-intentioned people, has probably been scared by the talk of a climate crisis.  And she, like a good many others, has decided to share that scare with children.  Here is how her book presents industrial progress to the very young:

  Negative or what?  And of course, the air and water pollution issues we face are primarily to do with inputs that no-one associates with 'climate change', such as carbon monoxide and sewage, and which have been dramatically reduced in industrialised countries.  Kondonassis' list - whole Earth warmer ... unclean air for breathing, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and extreme weather patterns - is readily Fisked: the slow warming of the past 150 years or so seems independent of CO2 and has recently slowed down despite CO2 levels rising faster than ever, air quality has been improving at least in the developed world, Antarctica - the major icecap is not melting, the slow rate of sea-level rise has become even slower in modern times, and even the IPCC has stopped using extreme weather as a poster-child.  Perhaps if and when she realises these things, she will stop promoting the facile propaganda of climate alarmism.  If that should allow her more time for playing the harp, the world will become a little better as a result.

'Trust me' science - is that something teachers could highlight in the classroom when required to propagate alarm over climate change?

North Shore

 Teachers are generally required to stick to curricula, and curricula these days are at risk of containing what is little more than propaganda or conditioning for climate alarmism.  The distribution of 'An Inconvenient Truth' to schools in the UK is an illustration of this.

But a post I was reading today suggests a way in which teachers can at least alert their pupils to intellectual and moral dangers while at the same time sticking to the letter of their climate-related curricula.  The post has a provocative title:

A lot of science is just plain wrong

 It is on a site whose goals I have a great deal of admiration for called Straight Statistics, where they describe themselves as follows: 'We are a campaign established by journalists and statisticians to improve the understanding and use of statistics by government, politicians, companies, advertisers and the mass media. By exposing bad practice and rewarding good, we aim to restore public confidence in statistics.'

Extract from the post (I put it into italics, and added the emboldening):

'Suddenly, everybody’s saying it: the scientific and medical literature is riddled with poor studies, irreproducible results, concealed data and sloppy mistakes.

Since these studies underpin a huge number of government policies, from health to the environment, that’s a serious charge.

Let’s start with Stan Young, Assistant Director of Bioinformatics at the US National Institute of Statistical Sciences. He recently gave evidence to the US Congress Committee on Science, Space and Technology about the quality of science used by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Some might think, he said, that peer review is enough to assure the quality of the work, but it isn’t. “Peer review only says that the work meets the common standards of the discipline and, on the face of it, the claims are plausible. Scientists doing peer review essentially never ask for data sets and subject the paper to the level of examination that is possible by making data electronically available.”

He called for the EPA to make the data underlying key regulations, such as those on air pollution and mortality, available. Without it, he said, those papers are “trust me” science. Authors of research reports funded by the EPA should provide, at the time of publication, three things: the study protocol, the statistical analysis code, and an electronic copy of the data used in the publication.

Further, he calls for data collection and analysis to be funded separately, since they call for different skills and if data building and analysis are together, there is a natural tendency for authors not to share the data until the last ounce of information is extracted. “It would be better to open up the analysis to multiple teams of scientists.”'

The key is to spot the 'trust me' science. We do need to take a lot on trust, especially in pre-university education where there is neither the time nor necessarily the specialist skills to demonstrate the evidence and the arguments for every assertion.  But when scientific assertions are made which others deploy to produce widespread alarm, and/or to support far-reaching policy decisions, then it would seem obvious that someone somewhere should be able to thoroughly, and independently, check the results and the reasonings.  In fact, the naive observer might suppose that governments would insist upon it under such circumstances.  That did not happen in the area of climate policy.  In direct contradiction to the Nullius in Verba spirit of the original (but not the present) Royal Society, the words of alarmists were taken at face value, not least the Summaries for Policy Makers published by the IPCC.

The flaws of the hockey-stick plot could have been exposed earlier had the methods and the data involved been made available to all.  In fact it took a remarkable amount of determined statistical sleuthing to find the truth, the story of which has been captured for posterity in Andrew Montford's superb book, The Hockey Stick Illusion.  McKittrick and McIntyre's work was inspired by the modest goal of trying to reproduce a dramatic graph which had been pushed through letter-boxes throughout Canada by a government there convinced by the alarming picture it conveyed.  It was phoney.  The government was fooled.  The two part-timers (M&M), not in the climate science field, took several years to overcome the barriers to making that clear.  In the meantime, the huge political impact of this graphic had happened.  The damage was done.

The sorry state of some corners of climate science - those occupied by those most active in steering the IPCC - has been revealed by the release of the ClimateGate materials.  They include this quote by Professor Jones of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a quote subsequently put in a Parliamentary record here by the climatologist, Warwick Hughes, who had requested some data held by Jones, and received this in reply:
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

Jones is clearly of the 'trust me' school of scientific method.  As are any who push the output of complex computer models as 'evidence'.  Mann of the notorious hockey stick plot, was also expecting others to trust him and his co-workers.  We do not have to assign sinister motives to such people in order to be very concerned about this.  We merely have to assign them human fallibility.

So, my tentative suggestion is this.  When you have to display some scary graph projected say tens of years into the future by some hideously complicated software, when you have to refer to unsubstantiated assertions about doomed polar bears, disappearing glaciers, spreading deserts, and so on and on, you can label it 'trust me' science.  And explain perhaps, that our trust should at best be tentative, pending further enquiries.

 

Something for the Climate Classroom Wall: a fine riposte against the scaremongering and negativity of the climate snake oil sales force

Posted on Bishop-Hill, this new work by Josh was inspired by Matt Ridley's excellent book 'The Rational Optimist'.  Imagine the difference in outlook if a book like that rather than the corrupt, misleading, error-strewn, and alarmist propaganda of 'An Inconvenient Truth' had been sent to all schools by those running the Thought-Control (Youth Section) Tendency in the last Labour government?  Inconceivable since bad news and alarmism are what such people thrive on, and are what has allowed a generation of people with the moral fibre of snake-oil salesmen to spread so much fear and deception around climate into our schools.

Well, strike back a little - stick that drawing up on your classroom wall!

Note added later on 3 April: Matt Ridley's post of 21st March gives more details of what inspired Josh's work. WUWT is also carrying the drawing, and someone called Peter S in the comments there is suggesting raising funds to distribute the drawing as a poster to schools.

Earth Hour is Phoney, Energy Hour is Genuine: how schools can help children appreciate modern energy supplies, and sidestep the odious conspiracies around climate change.

Source

 If people must (and some seem determined to) engage in global displays of the same thinking at the same time on their clocks, then Energy Hour has much to commend it over the profoundly unpleasant and dubious Earth Hour as promoted by wealthy fundraisers such as the WWF.  For them, and others, fear means funds and they clearly don’t have enough yet to give all their executives incomes in the top percentile – that 1% targeted, curiously enough, by some other left-wing agitators as being somehow the bad guys. [Hat-tip – all the links in this paragraph are to posts by Donna Laframboise.]  In brief, Earth Hour is phoney because it is based on shoddy science, and is part of an intense propaganda campaign aimed ultimately at winning political control on unprecedented scales using 'climate change', currently, as the preferred Trojan Horse to get into people's minds and lives.  There are at least three alternative 'Hours' being suggested as defences to this insidious power-grab:

(1) The International Climate Science Coalition  is promoting 'Energy Hour':

Ottawa, Canada, March 28, 2012: “Earth Hour is yet another symbol of how climate activists have hijacked the environmental movement,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Most people do not realize that, when they turn out their lights for sixty minutes on March 31, they are not supporting science-based environmental protection. Participants in Earth Hour are unwittingly helping prop up one of the most threatening scientific hoaxes in history—the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities are known to be causing dangerous global warming and other problematic climate change.”

 Anthony Watts (WUWT ) has picked up on this and that will ensure wider coverage.  The ICSC are taking the following approach:

‘“If we are going to demonstrate solidarity with those who lack adequate energy supplies, then we need to really feel what they feel, not just turn off a few lights,” said ICSC energy issues advisor, Bryan Leyland of Auckland, New Zealand. “Earth Hour should be renamed Energy Hour and citizens encouraged to use as little energy as possible for 60 minutes so that they can get a sense of what societies without adequate power are actually like. For this is exactly where we are headed if governments continue to yield to climate activists and try to replace reliable, base load generation with expensive, intermittent and diffuse energy sources such as wind and solar power.”

(2) Tim Blair in Australia is suggesting an 'Hour of Power': 'Earth Hour is with us again this Saturday night, so you’ll want to start planning.
For your normal Earth Hour types, this is a simple procedure. Just turn all your lights off at 8.30pm and sit there thinking that you’re Jesus. But for those of us in the Hour of Power movement, a proper celebration requires substantial commitment.
Just follow my essential power party guide and you’ll be set.
First, it’s symbolically vital that you turn on every single light for the appointed hour. Sounds easy enough, but there is always a sneaky bulb out on the back porch or in the garage. Be vigilant. Don’t let even the smallest or least visible globe escape illumination.
Toddlers are especially useful for this. “Just preparing for Earth Hour,” a friend texted before 2009’s event. “Max is loving running through the house turning all our switches on. We think he’s really learning something important!”'

Jo Nova has picked up on this and that will ensure wider coverage down-under.  She has also added a few ideas of her own to it (with a little fun with 'Hello Earthians!', picking up on a demented speech by the leader of the Green Party there):

'Hello Earthians! It’s time to say thank you to Edison, to Faraday and Maxwell, it’s time to celebrate the Gift of Light.

Saturday night at 8.30 – 9.30pm this week is the Hour of Power

(Don’t confuse this with the splinter group celebrations called Earth Hour, where people sit in the dark –  so they can appreciate the glory of luminosity come 9.31).

The Glory! We are the lucky generation with light at the flick of a switch

In the hundred thousand years since homo sapiens came to be, people have fled bondage, wars, small-pox, dysentery, died from minor scratches, starved to death, been ravaged by lions, stricken by cholera, and survived the odd ninety thousand year stretches of hypothermic, abysmal ice age.  We lived in the darkness for 99,900 years, cowering in corners, listening to drips, waiting for the sun.

There is only one type of Freedom – and all else is servitude, slavery or tyranny.

It’s your chance to show your commitment to fighting the forces of darkness. Be brave, stand up to the people who want to tell you what kind of globe you are allowed to buy. Feed the world by helping to boost global CO2 to lift crop yields and fertilize farms all over the planet. Children are hungry in Haiti and, since CO2 is a well mixed gas, sooner or later, you will be helping them.

(3) The Competitive Enterprise Institute is promoting 'Human Achievement Hour':
‘On March 31, some people will be sitting in the dark to express their "vote" for action on global climate change. Instead, you can join CEI and the thousands of people around the world who will be celebrating Human Achievement Hour (HAH). Leave your lights on to express your appreciation for the inventions and innovations that make today the best time to be alive and the recognition that future solutions require individual freedom not government coercion.’


It seems to me there are two basic options if you want to do something about 'Earth Hour' other than go along with it (and three, if you would prefer to ignore it completely):

 Option 1 Turn off lights etc as a symbol of concern and compassion for those who do not have this wonderful resource so readily available.

Option 2 Turn on lights etc to show how much you appreciate them, and that you do not take them for granted while others lack this wonderful resource.

Either option could be used to motivate study of the great benefits we have gained from mass power generation, and how these benefits can grow hand-in-hand with economic development.  The recent surge in material progress in China provides dramatic illustration of this, as they are said to be building coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week.  No doubt, they will be displaced in due course but in the meantime, just as they did in the West, they can provide the enormous benefit of affordable, reliable electricity supplies as a stepping-stone to better futures.

Now, I must confess I am more inclined to turn all my lights etc on out of revulsion at such as WWF telling me to do otherwise.  I regard them as having made a transition from admirable to reprehensible, and anything I can do to diss them is appealing.  But these are not noble sentiments.  On the other hand, the examples above give plenty of scope to devise an Energy Hour/Day/Week etc etc that would be more edifying if you wish to take part in such activities, or if you are required to by, for example, state control over your school.

Note added 31 March 2012.  WUWT has that satellite pic of North Korea, and re-publishing of McKitrick's classic rebuttal of the sloppy, regressive thinking promoted by the like of the WWF for Earth Hour. Quote 'Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism.'

Note added 3 April 2012.  'Globe' as used above is Australian English for 'light-bulb'.


Note added 18 April 2012.  Here is a letter from a primary school announcing Earth Hour to a parent. A parent who was rightly outraged at the naive nonsense contained in the letter, and the deliberate intention it conveyed of indoctrinating the childen.