Climate Teachers: don't add to the rotten legacy of the environmental movement

Environmentalism has a rotten legacy.  The climate scaremongering is part of it.

(1) Have you checked for yourself  the materials you use to teach about climate?

Teaching children that they face climate catastrophe, or even serious and imminent threats, due to rising levels of carbon dioxide is such a momentous decision that surely any conscientious teacher will at some stage do some checking of his or her own as to the credibility of such assertions.  The journalist Melanie Phillips did just that, and she was not impressed with what she found. 

This article appeared today in Greenie Watch attributed to Melanie Phillips but without a source-link.  It looks like it could be her work to me, and so I am tentatively reproducing it as such here:

I have not yet found the article at source, but the above image as published has this i.dailymail link:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/07/article-2320940-19AB0B18000005DC-854_634x407.jpg
Note added later same day: I have tracked the above article down.  It appears without any explanation in this article, which though very moving and important, is not about climate.  I presume it is included because it is in the book just published by Phillips.  A recent article by her on climate is here.

(2) Meanwhile, the campaign continues at high levels and low:

(2.1) Outrageous scaremongering (aka 'climate diplomacy') this month at the UN:

   Note added 12 May 2013.   Collectors of examples of over-the-top alarmism will appreciate this one from 1881: linking up telegraph wires around the globe will cause catastrophe.  Description and commentary here and here.

(2.2) More subtle (but note the scary 'quadrillion') school outreach by the UEA last year (hat-tip Dave W)

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

(3) And for what?  To contribute to the already rotten legacy of environmentalism? 

The Rotten Legacy of Environmentalism 

Under each of these sections taken from the site Bread and Butter Science (created by James A. Marusek) can be found links to examples of harm:

Prolonged Psychological Fear Based on Unfounded/Distorted Claims

Needless Death of over 30 Million Innocent Young Children

Loss of a Dependable Electrical Infrastructure

Dependency on Foreign Oil and Higher Fuel Prices

Endangered Species Act

Starvation

The Agents of Fear

Development of the "Precautionary Principle" into a Fear Distortion Tool

Taking of Property without Just Compensation (Private Lands)

Tying National Security Up in Knots 

Eliminating or Weakening Flood Prevention Systems (Dams, Levies)

Depriving Workers of Their Livelihood

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Destruction of Credible Science by Promoting Junk Science

The Destruction of Scientist who disagree with the Environmental Agenda

Promoting a Small Utopian World for the Elite through a Population Control Agenda (Isn't this called Genocide?)

Sponsor of Terrorism in the Name of the Environment

School Indoctrination: Driving Fear into the Hearts of Our Children
 and here are the first few links in this last category:

• The Child-Manipulators
• Facts, Not Fear
  • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2
  • Chapter 3
• The Greening of America's Youth
• Educational Indoctrination, Environmental Style
• PeTA's Propaganda: A Part of the Curriculum!
• Science vs. Propaganda
• School Reverses on Showing of Al Gore Climate Change Film
• Al Gore told there are Nine Inconvenient Truths in his Film
• Students Thrown Climate Life Preserver
• Too Much Fear, Too Few Facts
• Climate Change Scenarios Scare, and Motivate, Kids

 There are dozens more, including a couple to Climate Lessons posts I'm pleased to say.

So, next time you hear the apologist refrain about it doesn't matter if the theory is wrong, it is leading to good things anyway, you might want to dig out this list and share it around.

It makes for a rotten legacy, does it not? 

Climate Education: a chance to sponsor a promising video

 An experienced film-maker is seeking to raise $130,000 to fund the creation of a short (7 minute) video about the notional costs of 'stopping' climate change according to IPCC methods and materials.  Apart from the fatuousness of trying to stop climate change, the notion is also an extremely extravagant one since the costs involved far exceed the expected costs of adapting to the projected conditions that this odious organisation promotes as our likely fate without such expenditure.  Fifty times more according to the calculations of Lord Monckton who is supporting this very worthwhile venture.  I think this video could well be very useable within schools, and so I have made a donation towards the costs.  Watch the promotional video below, and perhaps you will too:



Hat-tip: Bishop Hill
More background information on the proposed video can be found at WUWT:

This video, website and interview combination is a game-changer and could radically shift the climate debate.  But it will only have an impact if a large number of people watch the video.  The video needs to be so fun, fast paced and visually engaging that people will not only watch it, but also pass it on for their friends to watch.  7 minutes is an ideal length because it’s short enough to keep people’s attention, whilst being long enough for us to pack in all the information required to understand the maths and economics behind 50 to 1.  It’s effectively a short film which mixes the presentation of the maths and formulae with animations to illustrate every step along the way AND snippets of interviews with internationally respected experts lending the weight of their professional opinions to the subject.
President Vaclav Klaus, Professor Henry Ergas, Professor Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Professor David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova have all agreed to be interviewed and we are still waiting to hear back from a few others.  Traveling with a production crew (to North America and Europe and back as well as around Australia) to get the interviews, as well as studio filming, editing, animating, colour grading and audio sweetening costs money.  That’s why I need your help.

Sounds good to me.   I hope he gets all the money he needs.

Contributions can be made by credit-card here, and a PayPal option may also become available.

Note added 6 May 2013.  Payment by PayPal is now available.
Note added 7 May 2013.  An update video clip.  It contains the good news that Donna Laframboise has been added to the list of interviewees.
 

Climate Classroom Library: copy and paste this post to make a bookmark, then buy the book!

Climate Book-Burners












Origin of the picture.

 “The burning of a book is a sad,
sad sight, for even though a book
is nothing but ink and paper, it feels
as if the ideas contained in the book
are disappearing as the pages turn to
ashes and the cover and binding--
which is the term for the stitching and
glue that holds the pages together--
blacken and curl as the flames do their
wicked work. When someone is burning
a book, they are showing utter contempt
for all of the thinking that produced its
ideas, all of the labor that went into its
words and sentences, and all of the
trouble that befell the author . . .”
― Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

 “Torch every book.
Burn every page.
Char every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.”
― Ellen Hopkins


 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/censorship


-----------Cut along here to make your very own bookmark-----------------------------------------------


The book in the picture is called 'The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism', and is by Steve Goreham.
Here is some of his most recent writing republished at WUWT:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/the-tragedy-of-climatism-resource-misuse-on-a-global-scale/ . 

His book can be bought on Amazon.

It is a lively book, designed and presented to be highly accessible and dipped into anywhere for insights and very quotable observations.  There are lots of photographs, cartoons, charts, and diagrams. It would be a useful resource for any pupil pursuing a project on climate change and/or the associated agitation and panic it has induced in policymakers.

Note added later on 3 May 2013.  It is not just climate blogs that have noticed.  For example, with bold added here:
'Sad but true, mock book burnings appear to be acceptable behavior of professors at San Jose State University.
In this case, Dr. Alison Bridger is doing the honors. She is proudly assisted by SJSU assistant professor Dr. Craig Clements. They disagree with the text’s content.
Drs. Bridger and Clements are currently featured on the front April entry on San Jose State University’s Department of Meteorology and Climate Science web page. They may mysteriously disappear before you read this.
Most certainly they thought what they did was hilarious. Apparently, so did the whole department.
Lousy texts get tossed in the trash every day at universities around the world. But when you make a public statement of it, as San Jose State did, you cross a line. You tarnish any legitimate climate research that institution ever does.
Unfortunately, all they proved is how politics has stained the pristine world of science.'
 http://informthepundits.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/book-burning-is-alive-and-well/

Note added 5 May 2013.  More of the same:  http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/05/04/san-jose-state-burns-books/

Climate Classroom Wall: use this image to help your pupils get windfarms in perspective

A nuclear industry expert and publisher has had enough of the 'heartwarming images of wind farms' so widely promoted in response to the conjecture that humans are having a dramatic effect on the climate system, and to the political and financial opportunities this conjecture has provided thanks in large part to spin and propaganda. She is Andrea Jennetta, described on her blog as 'the owner and president of International Nuclear Associates, Inc., the publisher of Fuel Cycle Week. She has 25 years working in the nuclear fuel cycle.'  (hat tip: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/05/01/where-do-wind-turbines-come-from/)

 Here are some of her words to go with the picture.  The rest are here.

'Environmentalists love wind turbines, right? They’re so healthy and good for the environment, so pretty, innocent, clean. Environmentalists love peddling heartwarming images of wind farms basking under sunny blue skies and nestled in the bucolic embrace of verdant hills. People picnic under them, children skip and shout for joy at the sight of them!

But what environmentalists don’t show you is how wind turbines are made. So I will. Here goes: wind turbines are predominantly made of steel, and steel is predominantly made of iron. Manufacturing wind turbines requires extensive mining of iron ore, which means mountains and valleys get ripped to shreds. Not to mention all the other metals such as copper, nickel and  titanium that have to be dug out of ground to build every wind turbine displayed in those heartwarming images.

How do you feel about those pretty wind turbines now? Are they still clean? Are they still green? Are they still heartwarming and bucolic? Hardly. (I could also show you images of carbon-spewing cement factories that produce the cement bases for offshore wind turbines, or steel factories that actually turn iron ore into steel but I’ll save that for another occasion.)

My point isn’t that iron mining is dangerous, toxic or a threat to human civilization. My point is that when anti-uranium zealots bemoan the evils of mining and then make genuflections to a wind turbine, they’re not being straight with you. The fact is that pretty much everything we use in modern life — including every form of renewable energy you can think of — requires the extensive mining of raw materials from the earth. And mining isn’t pretty. But that doesn’t mean it’s unsafe or a threat to your existence. That’s why we have science, technology and smart engineers.'

Note added 29 May 2013  More illustrations of the impact of windfarms : 'In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories.'
See: 'http://www.challengingclimate.org/story/4210/4331/Our-least-sustainable-energy-option

Targeting Children for the Cause of Acute Climate Alarm over CO2 - will the zealots ever stop?

Two new pieces in the Yale Climate Media Forum were announced yesterday.

Parenting in an Age of Climate Change:Communicating the Tough Truths to Children
by Allison Guerette & John Wihbey

Climate Change Included in Science Teaching Guidelines
by Lisa Palmer








(The editor, Bud Ward, is not a neutral observer of the climate change fiasco. For example, he is one of the jurors for something called the Schneider Award, and they unanimously gave it to James Hansen last year.  I wonder if it is awarded to whoever was deemed to be the best at creating Schneiderian Scenarios - 'scary', 'simplified', 'dramatic' - with which to engage our attention?  Hansen would surely be a frequent contender if so.)

There is a lot to be studied in these two articles, and I hope to get back to them next week.  In the meantime, Tom Nelson has picked up on one point, and I have spotted another.  Here they are:

 (1) Inoculating children against ideas disturbing to the zealotry

Tom Nelson 
 Good question: How can left-wing teachers "inoculate" children so that they don't believe it when their parents tell them that CO2 doesn't cause bad weather?

From 'Parenting in an Age of Climate Change: Communicating the Tough Truths to Children | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media':

"In a 2010 address to the National Science Teachers Association, Lynne Cherry, author and director of the Young Voices on Climate Change films, put forward the following prescription for dealing with climate change issues and the sometimes-pernicious influence of media:

How we can respond to the current onslaught against climate change in the media? We can “inoculate” kids by having them not just learning about climate science but actually going outdoors and doing climate science."

(2) On a 'steadily-rolling disaster' calling into question 'the very way we live'
The text in quotes is taken from the second paragraph of the article by Guerette & Wihbey linked to earlier.  I have submitted a comment on it.  If past experience is anything to go by, it will not appear*.  So here it is, with italics and emboldening added:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

April 24, 2013 at 3:23 am

 

Quote “Climate change offers a unique parenting challenge: a steadily-rolling disaster to which we all contribute, punctuated by periodic events and mounting scientific evidence. It calls into question the very way we live and the world we will leave for our children.”

Well, the absence of warming over most of the past two decades does not look to me like a ‘steadily-rolling disaster’, nor does the drop in hurricane activity, nor does the absence of anything extraordinary happening anywhere in weather, ice extents, or sea levels and temperatures.

We most assuredly will face climate-linked challenges in the years to come – we always have and we always will. But I rather think we would be better prepared to deal with them by doing more of the most successful ‘way to live’ the world has ever seen.

I think you would all do better to leave the children out of this squabble, and try your best to protect their childhood from political interference.

*Note added 25 April 2013  Hurray I was wrong! The comment has appeared, and a response to it.  Hope springs eternal.  Pushed for time at the moment but will try to get a reply in before the end of today, after which I will have no chance to do so for several days.

Note added later on 25 April.  Here is my reply:

'Thank you for responding, Leiran.  I followed the link you gave, but I found nothing there to disabuse me of my ‘facts’. I saw the charts showing changes, but since climate always changes I would expect to see such charts. If we could contrive this by some magic, at just about any period in our atmosphere's history, we would find such charts.  Depending on the space and time scale you choose to focus on, we are typically warming or cooling, seeing ice extents vary, and so on, over days, decades, and centuries. On the grander scale of millions of years, we can see that generally the planet has been warmer than now, and  that over thousands of years, that we are in an overall cooling trend within our relatively warm phase, the Holocene interglacial, of the current ice age.

I do not see an indication of a ‘dramatic global temperature increase’ following the industrial revolution.  I do see a gentle one since the end of the Little Ice Age, say from about 1850 onwards.  And within that, I see nothing to convince me that the remarkable rise in ambient CO2 levels since the 1970s has had any discernible effect – the rises in the first part of the 20th century being somewhat similar in rate and size as those which occurred later under higher CO2 levels.  Nor, in my innocence, would I expect CO2 to have a major influence.  It is a trace gas whose contribution to the brief delaying of heat loss from the Earth’s surface to space is very modest compared with the contributions of airborne water in all its phases.  It also does not seem to contribute much at all to the great heat engine of the climate system – the daily transfer of heat from the tropics towards the poles, a system which dominates our weather and in which water plays a very important role. 

I first started on a serious study of the climate system in the mid 1970s, and after a gap of some decades, I am getting back to it now.  So please be assured my remarks are not casual, nor are they intended to be provocative.  I have not been convinced that there is sufficient reason to be alarmed about CO2, and I have looked on with bemusement at the strange mix of severely damaging policy proposals and actions passed with great assurance by some while the climate really does go on behaving pretty much as if the additional CO2 doesn’t really matter very much.  Just like Prof Lindzen expected it to.  Let me commend this report of a talk by him from 1989 to you: http://www.fortfreedom.org/s46.htm

My bemusement turns to horror, dismay and sometimes anger when I see the same sort of assurance bringing scare stories to the young about climate threats attributed to mankind’s influence.   That seems to me to be an abandonment of a basic adult responsibility to protect children from terrifying beliefs about their world when the grounds for such beliefs are so flimsy. '

Note added 5 May: the reply did not get past the moderator!  But a good couple of comments from Barry Woods did - see comments below.
Note added 8 May: I just tried again to post a comment, using only the first two paragraphs of the one above in case a shorter comment has more chance of success.