Nothing Short of Criminal: Green zealots exploiting children in an Australian primary school

Reblogged from Jo Nova's site:

'High pressure propaganda: Greens using children to write activist letters in school

Gary Johns (former Labor Minister in the Keating Government) writes in The Australian that children are being dished up green speakers at school, asked to write letters about “their thoughts” to politicians, and taking letters home to parents seeking their permission to join the campaign which is run by a volunteer for The Greens. The children were offered sample activist letters to copy.

Greens infiltrate the classroom

I received a letter this week that had been sent to the parent of a 10-year-old schoolboy and signed by the deputy principal of Cottesloe Primary School, Perth. The letter requested her permission to send a letter, allegedly written by her son, to Julie Bishop regarding the UN climate talks.

The activist site is Curtin’s CASE: Climate Action for a Safe Environment. Curtin refers to the electorate (not the university). The site has sample letters to ask Julie Bishop to get climate action and change the weather. The speaker at schools was Dr Chilla Bullbeck, who was “chair of women’s studies at ­the University of Adelaide until 2008 but is now a full-time “volunteer” for the Greens in Western Australia.” She claims “Curtin’s CASE is not a political organisation, but admits “our project does appeal to Greens members and supporters”.

The letter to parents directs them to the campaign website where a standard letter is ready and waiting.

“Dear Julie Bishop,

My name is … and I am an ­average … student … please help this goal of mine (to stop global warming) become yours too ­because we can make a difference for Australia” (emphasis added).

Craft a persuasive letter using their thoughts, describing their goal? This is a deception. This is high-pressure propaganda and it is taking place in primary schools right now.

Johns has some very good questions:

A representative of a political party was allowed into the classroom to push the party’s agenda on young children and to use them to write letters to achieve the party’s goals. Were other ­voices heard?

Were children aware that if the world decides to cut the output of carbon dioxide emissions by denying cheap energy-dense sources they are condemning ­millions to an early death through poverty?

This exercise in high-pressure manipulation of 10-year-olds took place a few suburbs from the University of Western Australia where a posse of ignorant academics and students ran Bjorn Lomborg out of town.

I will send a message to Johns about his use of “climate-change deniers” — the mythical creatures no one has ever met who deny ice ages and what not. Johns inadvertently feeds the monster by pretending that this phrase has any meaning at all. Lomborg is not a climate change denier, but no one else is either. Can we start writing in accurate English instead of activist strawmen?

They asserted he was a ­climate-change denier. He is not. Lomborg knows the cost of trading the possible loss of life in 100 years from climate change against the certain loss of life now through lack of access to cheap dense forms of energy.

Better terms are climate-crisis-believers, versus climate-crisis-skeptics.'

End of reblog.  The original posting at J Nova is here, along with discussion comments:  http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/high-pressure-propaganda-greens-using-children-to-write-activist-letters-in-school/

N.B. The following would be illegal in at least England & Wales according to the Education Act of 1996:  

'A representative of a political party was allowed into the classroom to push the party’s agenda on young children and to use them to write letters to achieve the party’s goals. '

An aside.  I am clearly running months late on my next two promised posts.  They are still on the cards.  I hope to get back to them soon and get them published here.

The future of this blog: helping anyone wanting to resist climate scaremongering in schools

My heartfelt apologies to regular visitors.  It has been a long gap since the last post, and you may feel clicking to here has been wasting your time.  I had hopes that this blog would encourage discussion and lead to lively exchanges with frequent inputs from active teachers and educational administrators as well as parents, but this has not happened.  Given the trolling and junk comments that occur so often on more lively sites, the tranquillity here has not been all bad!

I now see the next phase of this blog as focusing on proving reference materials, useful links, and occasional encouragement for parents and others who wish to see an end to schools being used to promote radical political views using concern over climate variation as the vehicle, and often 'sustainability' as the cloak.  The facile use of fearful images and projections about the near future has been part of this, and deserves to be the first target of those concerned to let children grow up without such burdens being imposed on them by ruthless campaigners, or by naive followers convinced they are doing what has to be done.

The astonishing political success of eco-alarmism over the past few decades has been a dismal sight for anyone who has spotted the lack of substance behind so many of the claims and campaigns.  The global warming one has been the most successful by far, and has arguably done the most harm as a result.  The penetration of school curricula, both formal and informal, has been part of this 'success', and the prevalence of 'sustainability', so closely associated with climate alarmism,  in tertiary educational institutions recognised in the recent NAS report* suggests that new waves of teachers and administrators will emerge to damage the mental and indeed physical and moral well-being of further generations of schoolchildren.

In Germany, the physicist Horst-Joachim Lüdecke has been talking of the 'sobering-up process' he thinks may be underway with regard to the excesses of renewable energy programmes there:

'Lüdecke thinks that the sobering-up process will take time because every political party has made green issues part of its platform. “Green is a very difficult colour to wash away,” the German physicist writes.'  

Lüdecke then explains the primary disadvantage of renewable energy: their low energy density, i.e. meaning they require vast areas and that the major ones are weather-dependent. The German EIKE professor does not know how long the sobering-up process will take, citing the immense power of an array of lobbies behind the green movement.

Lüdecke also aims harsh words at Germany’s pompous and one-sided media:

Finally a word for the German media, here especially for the public TV and radio networks. They are rightly being compared by the current contemporaries to the conditions of former East Germany or even earlier times.”

At the political level, Lüdecke blasts the atmosphere of intimidation against people who have alternative views, who often are threatened with physical violence from radical leftists groups.'

I fear something similar applies in schools.  The standard leftist mentality that anyone who disagrees with them has to be malevolent and must be treated with contempt is part of the problem.

I have been involved in a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get groups of people together to campaign against climate alarmism in schools, and I have concluded that I am not well-suited to that, nor at stimulating debate through this blog.  I have therefore decided to concentrate on studying the details of one corner of climate science.  The corner I have chosen is the Arctic in general, and Greenland in particular.  I will simply be aiming to become much better informed about them, and in due course be ready to contribute when they are raised in support of political/educational goals.

I will keep this blog going however, by updating its reference pages from time to time, and with the occasional post.  My hope is that some of those who will think of becoming more active against climate scaremongering, and other manipulation of children for radical political ends, will find useful information and ideas here to help them get started.  Next month, I plan posts on two themes:
(1) some issues or tactics that seem to be emerging from 'the other side', and (2) some suggested reading for those thinking of getting involved to protect children from the threat of being misinformed, misled, and indeed scared by those who want to use them as footsoldiers in their war against industrial civilisation.



*'Sustainability is fast becoming the dominant ideology at colleges and universities in the United States, Britain, and many other parts of the Western world. It is an ideology that harms both the spirit and the substance of liberal education.'
 http://www.nas.org/images/documents/NAS-Sustainability-Introduction.pdf

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all people of goodwill everywhere

Of the three major religions to emerge from the Middle East, Christianity seems to be the most impressive for its compassion, gentleness, and generosity towards non-followers (such as myself) as well as to its faithful. It has also inspired far more great works of art and music than any other religion anywhere as far as I know (which is not very far, but I share my limited view nevertheless). J S Bach produced a fair few of them. Here is an exquisite rendition of his 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' by the Norwegian singer often referred to there simply as Sissel, assisted by a young choir and orchestra:

CO2 Driven Climate Panic in Jeopardy: a prospect of it being disgraced even further by observation of ice variation

WUWT

WUWT has what I think is an informative and important presentation by Jim Steele.

Very much in the tradition of Hubert Lamb, he makes a plea for much better understanding of natural variation of climate as a pre-condition for being able to assess our impact on it.

He makes a plausible case that the next 10 to 20 years could be decisive in assessing the strength of human impact (via CO2 in particular) and natural variation on glacier and icecap variation.

Another reason to postpone panic over our CO2 emissions.  Unfortunately, we have had panic already, and a great deal of consequent suffering and damage to societies around the world, and indeed to the environment thanks to the headlong rush into bio-fuels and wind-turbines.  The damage to children who grew up over the last 20 years or so of intense scaremongering directed at them, and an associated promotion of contempt for industrial progress, may be the biggest harm of all.  But who can tell?  How could this be measured?  How might that damage, however extensive, be repaired?

Jim Steele notes that 'the public remains ill-informed and fearful about the causes of retreating ice'.  He presents evidence for solar, and oceanic influences being the dominant sources of variation over the past several thousands of years.

Screenshot from video

He notes the 'failed climatic interpretations' of glacier retreats on Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and Glacier National Park in the United States. Neither of them correlate with rising CO2 levels, and both can be explained by other sources of variation.  It is worth noting that 'failed climatic interpretations' would make a good sub-title for the propaganda movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' which was foisted upon schools by a government in the UK and has been widely shown in schools elsewhere as well.


Jim Steele concludes the substance of his presentation with these words:

'With the recent decline in solar flux, and the shift to cool phases of ocean oscillations, natural climate change suggests that although glacier retreat and sea level rise will likely continue for the next few decades, the rates of sea level rise and glacier retreats will slow down.

The next decade will provide the natural experiment to test the validity of competing hypotheses.

Are changes in the Earth's ice driven by natural, or by CO2-driven climate change?

I'm betting on natural climate change.'

Jim Steele's website is here: http://landscapesandcycles.net/

It is of particular interest for this blog that as well as being a director of a field centre for nature studies, Jim Steele has decades of high school teaching experience in San Francisco.  See: http://www.sfsu.edu/~sierra/Instructor_JimSteele.html

President Obama's Last Resort? A New Propaganda Push on Children and Climate.

US News

Allie Bidwell writes at US News: 

'Perhaps unable to convince older Americans of the severity of global warming, President Barack Obama is hoping to have better luck with the next generation by turning to the classroom.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Wednesday announced it will launch a new initiative aimed at climate education and literacy that will distribute science-based information – in line with the administration's position on the issue – to students, teachers and the broader public.

Educators, government officials, philanthropic leaders and those from the private sector will participate in a roundtable discussion at the White House Wednesday. The participants will focus on how to spread more resources to teachers and increase professional development and training related to climate change for educators, federal employees and informal educators, such as those working in national parks, museums, aquariums or botanic gardens. '

Read the rest here: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/03/obama-administration-to-launch-global-warming-education-initiative   (hat-tip: Climate Depot)

This is not good news.  After blundering big-time in both domestic and foreign policy issues, and with only 2 years of shelf-life left as president, Obama will have noticed that his legacy is going to be a very unflattering one.  He may now be betting on there still being lots of momentum left in the climate scaremongering movement.  He may well be right.  But, to borrow a phrase, will no one think of the children?

PS There was an announcement back on October from the OSTP*, giving a two-week window for inputs: 'Do the activities of your school, institution, organization, or company align with the call to action to enhance climate education and literacy? Send your ideas, commitments, summaries of your work in this area, or even photos of you, your students, and colleagues working to enhance climate literacy to ClimateEd@ostp.gov by November 7. 

Your input is critical to building an educated, next-generation American workforce that grasps the climate-change challenge and is equipped to seek and implement solutions. '  I dread to think what the campaigners sent them, or had already sent them since two weeks looks like a nominal gesture of 'public consultation'.  

*OSTP: Congress established the Office of Science and Technology Policy in 1976 with a broad mandate to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The 1976 Act also authorizes OSTP to lead interagency efforts to develop and implement sound science and technology policies and budgets, and to work with the private sector, state and local governments, the science and higher education communities, and other nations toward this end.