PISA Survey finds only 9% of 15-year olds can distinguish fact from opinion when reading

'Only 9% of 15-year-olds can tell the difference between fact and opinion'

'In the US, 13.5% of 15-year-olds can distinguish between fact and opinion when trying to interpret a complex reading task. In the UK, it’s just 11.5%.

Those results are both better than the OECD average of 9%, according to the latest results of PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, an international test of math, science, and reading which is administered by the OECD every three years.'

Read the rest here: https://qz.com/1759474/only-9-percent-of-15-year-olds-can-distinguish-between-fact-and-opinion/

No wonder, then, that youngsters are so vulnerable to CO2 Scare propaganda!  As well as pointing to failings in education, this also points to the value of good teachers and parents who help their children make better sense of the world.  The recent waves of publicity for Extinction Rebellion's and Greta Thunberg's ill-informed opinions add some more urgency to finding ways to help parents and teachers, and to help the children themselves, see the lack of substance in the CO2 Scare.

For the Climate Classroom Wall, and for Christmas gifts: the Josh 2020 Calendar, and his new book

Josh's calendar for 2020 may be his best yet, and that is saying something.  Glorious colours, great wit, and lots of insights, and reminders of stuff and nonsense from afflicted (aka 'anointed') ones of the CO2 Scare.

You can buy it here: http://cartoonsbyjosh.co.uk/

For the classroom wall, or the staff-room wall, or your kitchen wall - several conversation pieces each month - all with charm and even compassion, not least for the afflicted ones and their self-anointed leaders.

It also makes for a good gift, as does Josh's new book: 'All You Need to Know About Climate Change - in cartoons'

Here is Matt Ridley, writing in his foreword to this book:

'Nobody does a better job of exposing with wit the shaky foundations on which these predictions of doom are built than Josh.  In these pages are real scientific, economic and political arguments expressed in ingenious cartoons, their background explained in paragraphs of pithy text.'


Couldn't have said it better myself.

A great present for young and old, and it could especially help any teenagers you know at high school who may be deeply troubled thanks to the wicked propaganda they have been subjected to all their days.

You can buy it here:  http://cartoonsbyjosh.co.uk/books

And it is also on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/need-about-Climate-Change-cartoons/dp/0955005981

Ideas for High School Projects on Climate Alarmism and the CO2 Scare

Lots of ideas for high school projects on the CO2 Scare could be plucked from this video by discerning teachers: three penetrating thinkers and analysts on climate variation (and the current alarmism around it) - Ross McKitrick, Steve McIntyre, and Anthony Watts talking good sense, aided and abetted by Mark Steyn, a penetrating thinker and analyst of current affairs - as well as a lively chairman of this discussion:

See:  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/27/apocalypse-deferred/

And from the comments on that post, here is a link to a video with more explicitly highlighted ideas here for senior pupils doing projects on climate alarmism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUVqZKBMF7o&feature=youtu.be

(hat-tip: CO2 is Life,  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/27/apocalypse-deferred/#comment-2856368)

And for pupils doing a project on English lit and climate change, or journalism and climate, might well find inspiration here:

https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2017/07/Clive-James.pdf

And to mark the recent passing of Clive James, here is a relevant poem of his:

Imminent Catastrophe

The imminent catastrophe goes on
Not showing many signs of happening.
The ice at the North Pole that should be gone
By now, is awkwardly still lingering,
And though sometimes the weather is extreme
It seems no more so than when we were young
Who soon will hear no more of this grim theme
Reiterated in the special tongue
Of manufactured fright. Sea Level Rise
Will be here soon and could do such-and-such,
Say tenured pundits with unblinking eyes.
Continuing to not go up by much,
The sea supports the sceptics, but they, too,
Lapse into oratory when they predict
The sure collapse of the alarmist view
Like a house of cards, for they could not have picked
A metaphor less suited to their wish.
A house of cards subsides with just a sigh
And all the cards are still there.
Feverish Talk of apocalypse might, by and by,
Die down, but the deep anguish will persist.
His death, and not the Earth’s, is the true fear
That motivates the doomsday fantasist:
There can be no world if he is not here.
        -- Clive James, The Times, 17 March 2016

[This grand wee poem was also published on this blog in March, 2016:
https://climatelessons.blogspot.com/p/climate-culture-poetry-and-song-from.html]

Climate Sense from a Politician - let your children see this

Aussie MP Rubbishes Climate Emergency Myth.

That invaluable blog, 'Not a Lot of People Know That', has an embedded video of an Australian politician making some telling points about a climate emergency which has become as fashionable as it is unfounded:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/11/21/aussie-mp-rubbishes-climate-emergency-myth/

More of this please.  Will schoolteachers dare use this short video clip in class?  Let us hope there are still some in that profession who value reality over ideology, and dislike scaremongering about CO2.

Addenda
For more by way of chapter and verse, with lots of illustrations, about there not being a 'climate emergency' try:  https://realclimatescience.com/2019/11/there-is-no-climate-crisis/
'There is no climate crisis, but there is a crisis of climate superstition, fraud, incompetence, and censorship.  And it is being used to terrify children and threaten the future of western civilization.'
(hat-tip: http://climatescience.blogspot.com/2019/11/there-is-no-climate-crisis-and-heres.html)

Or, if you prefer video, here is a good one on this topic by the same author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU&feature=youtu.be
(hat-tip: Greenie Watch)

We need to protect children from Climate Chicken Littles

Jim Steele: 

'By perpetuating bogus claims of a world ending in 12 years, the Chicken Littles are doing far more harm than blinding children to scientific evidence that many species, from polar bears to Adelie penguins, are thriving. Our children miss the “important lesson” that a “climate crisis” is only a theory supported by scary narratives, not facts. So how do we protect our children from Chicken Littles who seek to enroll vulnerable minds into their doomsday cults? How do we motivate our children to be good critical thinkers, and not blind group thinkers mesmerized by fear and ‘end of the earth’ scenarios? 

Foxy Loxy invites Chicken Little into the "safety" of his den

We tell children fairy tales to alert them to the real dangers, such as Crying Wolf. In the original Chicken Little tale,  Foxy Loxy offered Chicken Little and friends the shelter of his den so they would be safe from the falling sky. Once inside Foxy's den, they were never heard from again!'

Source: http://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2019/10/chicken-littles-vs-adelie-penguins.html   This post also contains details of climate-scare-deranged 'science' about Adelie penguins.