'Facts, Not Fear': an excellent book for helping you to help your children deal with climate-scaremongering and other eco-propaganda.

Aimed at parents and teachers, this excellent book shows the way to take the sting out of the facile alarmism pushed at the young on climate and other fashionable eco-topics.  First published in 1996 in the States, 'Facts, Not Fear' is bristling not only with counter-arguments to defuse alarm, but also with a structure which could be readily adapted and built-upon for use elsewhere. 

Dozens of copies are available on Abebooks.

 

In 1999, an edition customised for use in Canada was published with lots of local examples to help readers engage with young people and encourage them to take a wider view than those typically presented by zealots promoting alarm for their cause of the day.  This edition is shown on the left and can be obtained via Amazon from various dealers.










I intend to share extracts from this book in further posts.

Note added 03/10/14:   The first three chapters are reproduced on line here:
 http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/facts_not_fear/

Climate Teachers: a quiz to pass around the staffroom

If your colleagues mostly read The Guardian and excoriate The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail, then they are likely to a) be seriously mis-informed about climate change and b) unlikely to have seen this quiz.

10 questions out of hundreds that could be constructed on similar lines are not too many to put someone intent on their coffee off trying them.  The two Tory opportunists in the picture may even provide motivation for them to have a go since I suppose a Guardian-reader will automatically be incensed by them.  In this case, for once, they would be right in their prejudice.

As a bonus poke in the eye, let them see the rest of the page carrying the quiz, but only after they have been softened up by it! 


Hat-tip: Fang Tentmate (email), and for the image, Not A Lot of People Know That.

50 to 1 Project: still in with a chance of proceeding

 One thing we shall need for years to come is good quality materials to help repair the damage done in politics and in education by the past decades of overblown alarmism about CO2.  This video project promises to provide exactly that, and may yet manage to go ahead on a reduced budget.  Here is the latest update:



Donations by credit-card or PayPal can be made here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change

Note added 30 May 2013.  Good news - the project is going ahead!  Details here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change?c=activity

Note added 29 July 2013.  It looks like all the interviews and the studio-work  has been completed, and they are going flat-out on animation with a target release date of 'around about' 25th August.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIsBMM0m9Vc&feature=youtu.be

Carter Shreds the Climate Propaganda Pumped Out to Children for Decades

Prof Bob Carter shreds the case for alarm over CO2 and climate in this lecture from 2011, recently put on toYouTube. It is a public lecture on "Climate Context as a basis for Better Policy",
given at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, June 2011  (h/t http://spielclimate.blogspot.co.uk/ and through them https://twitter.com/Climate_con/statuses/336167271582035968)


This deserves the 'must-see' label!  Not only does he expose the shoddy science, he also exposes the shoddy policies and shoddy politicking and shoddy PR efforts that have thrived upon it.

This should be recommended viewing for every teacher in the world.

I also think there are seeds in this video for ideas that could be used as and when the 'authorities' get round to creating a decent curriculum on climate for schools.  That might have to precede publishers willing to risk new books aimed at the young, and suitable for schools, with a more realistic and optimistic view of our climate system and our impact on it.

That might include the fact that we have never been in a stronger position than we are now to cope with climate variations.  So parents might like to take the initiative and tell their children that.  There will be troubles ahead from climate, just as there have been in the past.  But we are more ready than ever before to handle them.  Our abundant supplies of affordable energy are part of that.

‘Fifty to One’ sounds like it would make a good resource about climate policy for use in schools

As someone who has not been convinced that recent increases in CO2 are an important or dominating driver of the climate system, I find the speculations about temperature changes as promoted by the IPCC quite hard to get excited about.  However that is not the case with many influential or powerful people – they are very excited indeed, and want us all to put a stop to world development in a dramatic fashion.  Dramatic reductions in fossil-fuel consumption along with dramatic increases in the use of inefficient generation technology such as windturbines, will in my view increase the cost of energy supplies and thus make it harder to cope with climate variation in years to come.

The discussion of climate change is now so heated, and polarised, that it will take remarkable efforts for one side to get through to the other.  This proposed video, 50 to 1, is one such effort, or so it seems to me.  Remarkable because it will take the IPCC methods and use them to demonstrate that the actions proposed to ‘stop climate change’ are many times more expensive than those that would be involved in adapting to it.  About fifty time more, according to some!

The appeal has not reached the halfway mark in sums promised, and we are at the halfway mark of the appeal’s planned duration.  I hope all readers will consider donating.  Lots of small donations might inspire a few huge ones.

Donations by credit-card or PayPal can be made here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change

They will only be taken up if a sufficiently large sum is reached to enable the project to proceed.

Note added 30 May 2013.  Good news - the project is going ahead!  Details here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change?c=activity