Climate Control brings a new dawn for People Control (aka totalitarianism), and even children can help.

A. Suppose you happen to have an urge to control the lives of others in all the important details, but that you need a bit of cooperation from them at first.

B. Suppose you have found a topic by which to catch their attention, indeed by which to scare them and make them worried about their future.

C. Suppose, furthermore, you have spotted that most people love nature, and do not want to harm wildlife, and therefore are predisposed to admire and support those people who make it their life’s work to help out the world’s flora and fauna.

Question 1. Where do you go?  What organisation might you join to further your ambitions?

Answer 1. That’s easy. A lot of suitable organisations have sprung up or transformed themselves to take advantage of the new opportunity.

They too discovered that topic in B.  It is of course airborne carbon dioxide, a trace gas in the atmosphere vital to plant life, and thence to virtually all life.  The levels of it have been increasing, and simple calculations suggest that could one day, perhaps by the end of this century,  make the world a little bit warmer, perhaps as much as about one to two degrees centigrade on average*.  Which, if the similarly warmer Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period are anything to go by, would be good news all round: more agricultural land, longer growing seasons, possibly reduced storminess and more predictable monsoons, reduced heating bills in the heavily-populated colder countries, and so on. 

But wait, how is that scary?  Well of course it is not. Quite the reverse.   

But what if you could program up computer models purporting to reflect the climate system, and include in them, not the rising CO2 levels (because that is actually way beyond their capacity to model) but instead a presumed overall effect of suppressing heat loss from the planet to outer space? As well as not being able to model CO2, these computer models can’t model clouds, nor solar variations, nor many features of the ocean very well.  That means there are lots of adjustable parameters to play with.  With a bit of luck, out of the shambles that can result from trying to model such a horribly complex system, you can with a bit of pampering ( ‘flux adjustment’ for example) get outputs that look something like some aspects of our climate.  If you keep the handling of water vapour nice and simple – just let it go up with temperatures, then you might see a positive feedback appear which leads, amidst the spaghetti tangle of very varied projections, to some which give end of the century mean temperature increases of 5 or 10 or 15C.  Bingo!   

Now get the spinners in to write lurid tales of doom and disaster (what a leading guru of this new climate movement called ‘scary’, ‘dramatic’, ‘simplified’ scenarios).  Engage  policy-makers with helpful ‘summaries’ and these vivid scenarios.  Soon the money will be flowing in the right direction as simple (or is it venal?) politicians swing into action in pursuit of the clear advantages they can see for themselves and their causes.  Before you know it, whole political classes will be on board.  Charities once concerned primarily with the poor, or with wildlife, will push all that to one side and champion ‘climate change’ as the big issue, the biggest money-earner they have ever seen. 

So, by way of example, let's say you join the WWF (the organisation formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund).  Lots of jobs there, some with six-figure salaries – this is a wealthy multinational corporation now.

You’ve missed the pioneering years of this great fund-raising.  But you still want to do your bit.  You want to help secure the gains and, don’t forget, you have all these ambitions about control at the back of your mind.

Question 2. What next?  Where should you concentrate your efforts?

Answer 2. That’s easy too.  Who are easier to scare, children or adults?  Well, yes the children.  So there you go.  Scare the children into supporting your ambitions, and not only will that be good for your pension and career prospects in the longer-term, it will also help in the immediate future.  You see some of the children will go home and shame and pester their parents and so they in turn will be more likely to support your political goals.

Google ‘wwf children climate change’ and you’ll get a couple of million hits to help give you ideas. 

But I just want to draw attention to one perhaps less obvious opportunity (hat tip Donna Laframboise): work with slum children in a developing country.  There’s surely a nicely vulnerable group to get started with.  It may also be a way to tap into EU funds.

Never mind that those children have more serious, more real, and more challenging problems to look forward to, and that their parents are tackling them now.  No never mind that.  Planet needs saving.  Do what we say. Before it is too late.

You’ll soon learn the score, and it will give you an early experience of control over others – that’s what you want after all.  For more details of this opportunity, visit http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/19/latest-from-the-wwf-eco-indoctrination-of-slum-kids/

*Note added 22 April 2013 Here are the simple calculations, widely used, deployed by distinguished physicist Will Happer.
Extract, referring to delta-T-2, the expected temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 levels: 
' In fact, the basic physics of the CO2 molecule makes it hard to justify a number much larger than ∆T2 = 1 C – with no feedbacks. The number 3 C comes from various positive feedback mechanisms from water vapor and clouds that were invented to make the effects of more CO2 look more frightening. But observations suggest that the feedbacks are small and may even be negative.'
Further illustration is given here.

For the Climate Classroom Wall: actual versus doomsters' projected global mean temperatures

 The so-called settled science and the associated computer models produce the rising spaghetti spread of outputs you can see in the the diagram below just published by Roy Spencer (hat-tip Bishop Hill).  This variation is there despite the pampering of the models, and the careful orchestration and selection of their runs and outputs around the world.  The alarmed ones credit the rising temperatures to rising levels of CO2.  But they do not include CO2 in the models as an active participant in the simulations.  Instead a presumed effect of the CO2, grandly labelled an 'external forcing' despite it being clearly internal to the climate system, is added and the models are run to watch how they adjust.  The added effect is done by reducing, suddenly, the rate at which radiative energy escapes the model atmosphere.  As you might expect, and as the alarmed ones hope, model temperatures then tend to rise and thereby inspire those who wish scare children and disturb adults with tales of impending doom.

Source: Spencer

 The early part of the chart shows some alignment with estimated actual mean temperatures in the lower troposphere derived from satellite observations (UAH, RSS), but this is not due to the predictive skill of the models so much as the parameter adjustment skills of the modellers trying to get good fits to past observations.  Spencer does not report on when the forecasting part of the model outputs begin on these plots, but in the comments below his post he guesses that it may be no later than 2007.  Ignoring the 1998 spike widely attributed to a very strong El Nino, the sustained divergence of actual from model seems to begin in about 1995.

Note also that there are other forecasts of global mean temperatures that have a better track record so far than the climate models.  Here are two:

(1) Global surface temperatures projected from 2007 model runs are shown in the green band.  The blue (cyan) band is for the empirically-fitted model by Scafetta in which he merely makes a combination of past, observed cycles in temperature plus ad adjustment to reflect the overall warming of the 20th century.  The thick red line changing to thick blue is derived from observations. The thick black line shows Scafetta's model projected into the future.  So far, it is doing a lot better than the multi-million pound GCMs.   I reckon Scafetta's model could be run on a decent programmable calculator such as this one costing about £30.

 (2) An even less expensive prediction model is the basic persistence one devised by an expert in forecasting techniques after working through a checklist of what it takes to produce forecasts based on best practices (a checklist against which the climate forecasts of such as the IPCC fail dramatically).  This expert was so dismayed by the poor basis for forecasts made by the IPCC and taken up by such as Al Gore, that he announced a public bet over whether Gore's claim of a 3C rise by the end of the 21st century (and this is at the moderate end of IPCC predictions) could beat a simple persistence forecast.  In the 63 months since the bet began, the persistence forecast has done better in 55 of them.  Details are here: The Global Warming Challenge. 

These plots can help your pupils regard the IPCC, and assorted CO2 alarmists in general with the contempt they deserve.  They may have to regurgitate their 'science' to pass exams, but they can treat it like theology rather than science - the exam answers are then more about the faith of the alarmed ones than about science or the world outside of their expensive but woefully inadequate General Circulation Models (GCMs).

Note added 20 April 2013  Taking the model outputs seriously, because to do so suits them very much, alarmed ones have made many blunders.  Pierre Gosselin has assembled a collection relating to their confident assurances re warmer winters for Europe.  Examples can be seen here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/climate-teachers-have-you-seen-any-of.html

CO2-Conjecture Causes Contempt: scared children used as an argument for scaring more of them over the global warming that has not taken place in their lifetimes.

An article in The Guardian today reports on a UNICEF commissioned sample survey being used as an argument for no-change to the treatment of ‘climate change’ in school curricula for under-14s in England.

The sampling (the details of which are omitted from the article – that by itself is unimpressive to say the least) found 3 out of 4 children aged 11 to 16 years (no other details given other than they are British) claiming to be ‘deeply concerned about the impact of climate change’, and  ‘worried about how global warming will change the world’. 

This is at a time when there has been no ‘global warming’ during the lifetimes of these children, when melo-dramatic speculation over the importance of CO2 is under wider and deeper attack than ever before, and when there has been nothing at all extraordinary taking place in weather, in sea level, in ice variation, and in sea temperatures.

The results of the poll should, you would think, have caused outrage in any objective observer.  Who has been messing with the minds of these youngsters?  How can they get away with doing that?  How can it be stopped?

But no.  The article, and the organisation which commissioned the survey, UNICEF, are taking the view that the results mean the indoctrination and scaremongering in schools should continue.  In this perversion of logic and morality, they wish to resist the very modest proposals that would increases the chances of under-14s being left alone to concentrate on their basic studies rather than be exposed to climate campaigns in the classroom.

Like other short-sighted NGOs, Unicef have not hesitated to exploit the climate scare to raise funds.  Look at this for example, part of a screenshot from their website here.

Children in developing countries are among those hardest hit by 'climate change'?  Is that right?  First, we might ask, what 'climate change'?

Is it the change that has brought record crops to India?  The change producing record harvests in Kenya?  The change producing record harvests in South America?  Perhaps it is the change that has brought record coffee harvests to Indonesia?  Or the record grain harvests in China?

Is it the change that has seen reduced hurricane activity?  It can't be the climate change known as 'global warming' because we know that one has not been happening for nearly two decades now.  And it won't be good enough to dig out examples of local floods, or droughts, or other burdens unless they can be shown to be extraordinary.  Everywhere experiences climate variation, and in general, the wealthier the country, the more able it is to cope.  The wealth of many developing countries has been increasing quite dramatically.  Good news, eh?  I wonder if these points are in the desired curriculum for 'climate change'?  I fear not.  They would distract from the message of alarm which is so highly-valued by those who wish to indoctrinate the young by such means.

Paging David A, the polar bears are doing OK - talk of their decline was just cheap propaganda to scare kids about climate.

The idea that polar bears are disappearing has been widely used in order to win the attention of children and scare them about their own future by claiming the polar bears are already suffering badly from 'climate change' and so in due course will they.  Even the world-class narrator of nature documentaries, David Attenborough, has been taken in, and he really ought to know better.

An open-letter has been published, ostensibly to Attenborough, but actually it could apply to any teachers who have made use of the notion that polar bears have been suffering from the effects of global warming and that it is all due to humanity.  In fact, the polar bears have been doing fine, and of course the idea that humanity is driving the climate system is a far-fetched notion that more and more people can see is so unhinged from reality that they will question the morality, as well as the intellectual integrity, of anyone who pushes it.

The letter was published today in Quadrant Online.  It is from a Dr John Happs, who is described as a science educator.  He is also president of an interesting discussion group in Western Australia - the WA Skeptics.  They set out to encourage 'a responsible view of curious and unlikely claims (including medical claims) by providing regular meetings open to all'.

John Happs

His letter is quite a long one, with a great deal of well-referenced information in it to back up his conclusions:

 “There is no evidence that the planet is warming dangerously. Nor is there any evidence that Arctic ice and polar bears are about to vanish. There is ample evidence to show that polar bears are not under threat.  What is under threat is scientific integrity and the public’s access to accurate scientific information. The media must shoulder some of the responsibility for the misinformation and exaggeration that has been promoted about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and a bleak future for polar bears.”

 

Examples of Exploitation of Polar Bears for Propaganda

I did a quick Google for 'polar bears and climate change for kids'.  Over 6 million hits, of which the following three were but some early examples:

(1) WWF: “The effects of climate change are already being felt by local wildlife and habitats in polar regions.

For example, polar bears and Emperor penguins, at the north and south pole respectively, are already declining in number as sea ice retreats for many months of the year.”

(2) Twiggle Magazine: “Children will learn that climate change is causing ice caps to melt and makes it harder for the polar bears to find food.”

 (3) An eco-activist produced this in 2006: 

Sad to say, it is the sort of nonsense that could all too readily be found in classrooms and school materials today.  

Teachers can tell their pupils that the polar bears are mostly doing OK, and far better now than a few decades ago. They can also tell them we're mostly doing OK as well, at least better than a few decades ago.  Global warming attributed to human intervention is not a threat to us, nor to the bears, nor to anything else.  If anything, we would all benefit from more global warming, not less. Somehow speculation about  largely beneficial and modest temperature rises in the 20th century has been used to demonise carbon dioxide and our industrial and agricultural progress.  So far, the rising carbon dioxide levels' only demonstrable effect on us has been to contribute to an appreciable rise in agricultural productivity on the one hand, and a hideous rise in irrational and destructive scaremongering and climate-linked policy-making on the other.  

Note added 16 April 2013: Relevant thoughts and links in this Spiked article: http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13462/ 

Kidding the Kids about Climate Consensus: quick, before they see that Climate Crock is more applicable

Source

While the scientific case for alarm over CO2 has never been a strong one, and is now is ruins thanks to observations contradicting crucial predictions from it, the zealots who found so much advantage in pushing it have not let up on recruiting the very young to bolster their cause.  The moral case for doing that has never been a strong one, and one day it too will lie in ruins as the zealotry becomes more and more exposed as shallow and pernicious opportunism.

From an article The Washington Examiner' (h/t Greenie Watch):

"New science curriculum standards for United States schools, expected to be unveiled this week, include an increased emphasis on man-made climate change from kindergarten through 12th grade. Climate change is already a part of many schools’ science curriculum, but the new guidelines significantly expand the topic and are expected to be adopted by 41 states.

The Next Generation Science Standards teach that “Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (‘global warming’),” according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute."

But, thank goodness, the journalist writing this, a Michal Conger, is no dupe like so many of her profession in this area.  She notes the recent reservations about including climate in UK curricula for under-14s, and goes on to write:

"What the Times fails to note is that man-made global warming is hardly a consensus theory among scientists. Several new studies show the earth hasn’t gotten any warmer in at least the last decade.

“It’s a shame that American school kids are being taught claims of certitude on an isse that continues to unravel before our eyes,” Marc Morano, communications director for Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told The Washington Examiner. 

The U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph, German magazine Der Spiegel, and The Economist have all recently acknowledged the evidence suggesting global warming isn’t the catastrophe climate change advocates want school children to think it is."

It seems these new curriculum standards are not compulsory, but they may well be adopted by dozens of States.  I wonder if some of the children themselves might deal with them, as per Ian Plimer's vision of highly-informed pupils asking difficult questions?  (posts about Plimer's book on this site are here, here, here and  here).  Then the teachers, that most docile of professions as far as the content of their work is concerned, might start asking questions themselves.  Such as, 'Why should we push propaganda in our classes that even the children can see through?', or even, 'I wonder what harm we are doing to the young by presenting them with this ill-founded, poisonous, and destructive world-view?'