Climate Scaremongering Antidote: fight back with optimism and good cheer

'Compared with any time in the past half century, the world as a whole is today wealthier, healthier, happier, cleverer, cleaner, kinder, freer, safer, more peaceful and more equal.'

Matt Ridley, August 2014 : http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/reasons-to-be-cheerful-%281%29.aspx

One of the underpinnings of the pathological pessimism such as Paul Ehrlich and other extreme 'environmentalists' have promoted for decades is a sense of foreboding.  A sense that everything is getting worse, and that we need drastic, revolutionary change to have any hope of surviving.  Climate scaremongering is but one vehicle for such promotion, and it was one seized upon with relish by the likes of the Club of Rome, Maurice Strong, and sundry other modern millenarians whose biggest and most successful political monsters have been UNEP and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The deliberate insertion of climate scaremongering into schools and the mass media has harmed many.  Surveys of children reveal high levels of anxiety about the future.  Several such surveys are reported on here, along with more specific reports of children scared about climate:  http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/p/climate-anxiety-reports-of-frightened.html

But as Matt Ridley points out in his book, The Rational Optimist, and in the recent article from which the quote above is taken, we humans are actually doing pretty well when it comes to progress.  This includes our ability to cope with climate variation.  Unfortunately we are still vulnerable to superstition and deliberate scaremongering, especially when it is dressed up in pseudo-scientific guises and treated with an astonishingly low level of critical review in the mass media.  The reality is that ...

There is a lot to be cheerful about. (hat-tip Richard Drake, http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/2396918).

And our children should be told about it.

10-minute trainer: Hansen's faulty faith at Wirth's Sauna Session in 1988

Hansen was a performer in an event stage-managed by Senator Timothy Wirth to make an impact on the US Congress.  Wirth sneaked in the night before and opened all the windows in the room to be used for the hearing, thereby effectively disabling the air-conditioning for what was expected to be one of the  hottest days of the year. This childish piece of manipulation should not be forgotten.  Worse actions than that were to follow in pursuit of political goals through scaring the world about our impact on climate, but this is an early piece of arrogant and shoddy behaviour.  As for Hansen in his role as useful idiot, he put on a good show.  His faith in his vision of the future has turned out to be a faulty one.  The blog post by Steven Goddard points out how wrong he was on hot summers in the USA.  In the same year, he gave another interview in which he assured a journalist that roads in New York would be flooded by rising seas in 20 years.  That too has turned our badly for him.  Several years after this interview was published, he denied  this, claiming he said 40 years not 20 (but even 40 years is not being remotely supported by trends).  By then it was clear just how foolish the claim was from a scientific point of view.  It was not so foolish from an agit-prop one, and whether or not Hansen was aware of that, his words will have served to mislead many.

Everything below re-blogged from Real Science (Steven Goddard)

Posted on August 13, 2014by stevengoddard

On a hot day in 1988, Hansen told this to the US Congress

His Bold Statement Transforms the Debate On Greenhouse Effect

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: August 23, 1988

He held up one die representing the climate for the period 1950-1980. Two sides were white for an average summer, and two other sides were blue for colder-than-average summers. The other two sides were red for hotter-than-average summers. Thus, on a roll of the die for that period, there were two chances in six of having a hot summer at any given location in the country.

Then Dr. Hansen picked up the die for the 1990’s and explained:

”If our climate model calculations are approximately correct, the greenhouse warming in the 1990’s will be sufficient to shift the probabilities such that the chance of a hot summer in most of the country will be in the range of 55 to 80 percent. Four sides of the die are red. I believe it is obvious that the man in the street will notice that by then the dice are loaded. There will be more hot summers than normal, and the hottest ones will be hotter than they used to be.” 

His forecast couldn’t possibly have done any worse. He gave it during the hottest summer on record in DC, and this year has been second coolest

So far this year, less than 2.5% of days in Maryland have been over 90 degrees, which is the second lowest on record. Compare to the peak year of 1988, when over 19% of days through August 11 were over 90 degrees.

For the entire US, the frequency of 90 degree days has plummeted, and is near record lows

Teachers: prepare for a new piece of climate scaremongering guff – a button-badge, and fight back

The next 'last refuge' of the climate scoundrels?

Jo Nova has reacted to the new button-badge which has apparently been designed to give the climate scaremongering campaign a boost. The circular badge is mostly black, with a bit of green at the foot, perhaps to suggest a decaying plant stalk with just a hint of life left in it, and of course the circle is also used to invoke 'planet earth' since it comes with the tag-line 'It's Not Warming. It's Dying.' Jo has added a footnote to this latest piece of glib and irresponsble scaremongering to the effect that what may be dying is the fear of a carbon crisis.  Let us hope so.

The planet is, if anything, greening.  Furthermore, we humans are doing a pretty decent job of improving it wherever and whenever we have the spare wealth to do so.  And almost all of those countries which are still beset with great poverty and deprivation have been making spectacular progress in becoming wealthier.  Thanks in part to their increased use of fossil-fuels, just as those fuels were vital for the already developed nations.  They remain vital to us today, but we have several options that might allow us to reduce our use of them over the rest of this century if we should wish to do so, for example to reduce air pollution, or to conserve valuable chemical feedstocks.

If the climate scare campaigners start pushing these buttons at the school gates, or even from within your school, here are some links that expose the flimsy basis of this latest attempt to terrify the ill-informed and vulnerable in our societies:

NIPCC REPORT

(1) The IPCC is biased.  In a court of law, their case would not survive examination as a neutral brief.  It is blatant advocacy of a particular point of view.  It is not to be trusted for making a balanced case.  See this link for a legal analysis to this effect:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1612851 .  The IPCC makes the case for the prosecution of CO2, and it is a far from convincing one.  See this link for materials that expose the advocacy by marshalling the substantial scientific case for a calmer view of our impact on biological systems: Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts.

Matt Ridley on 'greening'

(2) The  author of 'The Rational Optimist' (a book that would be good to see in every school's library, and staffroom) Matt Ridley appears in the following video to explain how the planet in greening, not least as a result of our CO2 and our wealth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

Mueller Report

(3) The GWPF has published a short and informative report on the greening of the Sahara: http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mueller-sahel.pdf

Doug Hoffman has also reported on other studies showing beneficial, greening, trends in recent years: http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/going-green-rising-co2

Taking a Break

Source: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-14.76,84.65,349

My apologies to any regular visitors here, but I am taking a break from blogging for another couple of weeks or so.  In the meantime, here is an entrancing site showing recently estimated surface winds in an animation (with numerical values for speed and direction at any point clicked).  The view can be rotated and zoomed, and additional computer-model generated fields can be added (click on 'earth' at bottom left to get the menu):
http://earth.nullschool.net/

Note added 3rd July.  The model gives a dramatic picture of tropical storm Arthur's surface winds off the east coast of the States:  http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-73.54,30.96,1512

Should teachers use the classroom for campaigning on climate change?

'Is the teaching of basic skills and basic knowledge not hard enough without adding the complication of deliberate political manipulation into the mix? Are teachers to be the willing servants of whichever government or ideological position happens to be currently fashionable or empowered? Are they also to willingly intervene between parents and their children in ways which seem intended to weaken the special bonds within a family?

I am particularly concerned with climate change and the associated wish of some powerful groups, not least in international agencies and NGOs, to make use of children as political tools with which to promote fundamental views about life, and even lifestyle and political choices, on to their parents. There are materials out there aimed at scaring children about their future, and surveys show that many are in fact living with a fear that they may not survive thanks to environmental catastrophes heading their way. There are materials aimed at distancing children from their own parents by persuading them, the children, that their parents are part of ‘the problem’ and need to be changed.

This combination of fear about the future and separation from previous sources of trust and guidance, are basic elements of brainwashing as described by Sowell (1993) in his book ‘Inside American Education’ where he provides several examples of such ‘stripping away of defences’ in schools in a range of programmes.

Andrew Montford and I have written a report entitled ‘Climate Control: Brainwashing in schools’ (GWPF, 2014) in which we focus on eco-alarms in general, and climate-related ones in particular. This was reported on here on the Schools Improvement Net (2014), where it attracted a few generally disparaging comments. None addressed our concerns that there may be widespread targeting of children in our schools with what amounts to eco-propaganda or, at the very least, inadequate treatment of important topics. But why should teachers be engaged at all with such campaigning in their classrooms and in extra-curricular events for their pupils? By all means, let them campaign with other adults, and engage them in debate on controversial issues. But surely it should be beneath them to seek to take advantage of their position in the classroom to try to persuade their pupils of their views?'

Extract from a guest post on the Schools Improvement site: http://schoolsimprovement.net/guest-post-teachers-classroom-campaigning-climate-change/