Scaring Children about Climate - some good news, and some bad news at the end of 2013.

As can be seen in numerous posts and pages on this site, there are people willing to do horrible things in order to bolster their own political and/or financial prospects, or to flatter their egos as saviours of the world, or to damage industrialised economies or to suppress development opportunities in the less-industrialised ones.  I refer in particular to the deliberate intention of frightening children with horror stories about climate.  The frail notion that rising levels of CO2 are dominating the climate system to the imminent danger of life on Earth is the intellectual underpinning that seems to be required for such inhumane behaviour.  The good news is that there have been many scientific papers published in the past year which could help undermine the glib assurance of those who enjoy and benefit from standing on or around this dreadful platform.

The Good News

The good news which I want to feature here is the many setbacks this year in the scientific underpinnings for alarm over human impact on climate.  When the threadbare nature of the scientific case for such alarm, and the inevitable scaremongering which it encourages, are more widely exposed for what they are, the political support will surely weaken further, and then in due course our schools may become freer to concentrate on the education and on the pastoral care of their pupils and be less vulnerable to those who view them as potential recruits for sundry political causes such as ‘sustainable development’ and ‘carbon reduction’.  

There are a great many papers to choose from.  To provide an illustrative selection, I have chosen one for each month from just one blog, a blog which published dozens of reports every month, usually with a direct link to a scientific paper, or to a meta-analysis based on scientific papers.  Readers might like to take a look themselves by scrolling through the archives there:  THE HOCKEY SCHTICK             .

January: ‘Inconvenient truth: Sea level rise is decelerating’  

February: ‘Clouds/aerosols control the climate, not man-made CO2’   

March: ‘Analysis finds warming leads to less extreme storms’  

April: ‘New paper demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels, not man-made CO2’  

May: ‘Global warming caused by CFCs, not carbon dioxide, study says’  

June: ‘New paper predicts a decrease in tropical cyclones in the future’   

July: ‘New paper finds climate change over decades primarily determined by the oceans'  

August:  ‘The skeptics were right: Climate changes naturally & these natural changes outweigh any man-made influences’  

September:  ‘New paper finds another amplification mechanism by which the Sun controls climate’   

November: ’ New paper finds evidence of Svensmark's cosmic ray theory of climate on a regional scale’

December: ‘Observations show IPCC exaggerates anthropogenic global warming by a factor of 7’ 

 

These are a somewhat arbitrary selection from the dozens of relevant posts in each of these months at that blog.  I make no claims that this selection includes the best papers, nor even that the source blog is the best or only place to find such links.  It is an encouraging aspect of the disparate resistance to scaremongering over climate that there are a great many sites and blogs around which can provide entries into the scientific literature, and often helpful summaries and commentaries as well.  

A major contribution of the year was, in my view 'Climate Change Reconsidered II', and I will say a little more about it at the end of this post.  (I helped it along in one of the most modest of ways one can contribute to such a venture:  by reviewing one of the chapters ahead of publication.).

The Bad News

The bad news is, in essence, that the production of materials and the creation of initiatives to win children over to causes underpinned by climate-scaremongering continues  The pressure on children remains relentless and widespread.  Some may be due to hard-hearted activists, some may be due to decent people duped by the relentless propaganda they themselves have been subjected to, in some cases all their lives.  Here are a few recent examples:

UNICEF:  they have a new campaign, and a new catchphrase ‘A Climate Fit for Children’   In the UK, they run a schools network pushing children into political actions, and it wants to get into this new campaign as well:  ‘Children and young people have a powerful voice and it’s one our decision-makers should be listening to.’

University of Leeds (and others):  they think it a wheeze to rope children into preparing feel-good propaganda about a low-carbon future by getting them to work with deep greens such as Derrick Jensen to produce cartoons for the cause.  (I wonder how they cover the suffering and waste due that cause) 

The product of this cartooning is a graphic novel which ‘is being circulated to schools and museums throughout the UK, as well as selected comics shops.’

Greenpeace plays the Santa card.  Every year it seems some eco-loon or other spots this opportunity. Suzuki has tried it for example.  Now the bourgeois hooligans of Greenpeace have had a shot at it: Santa under threat from disappearing ice.  A miserable effort from miserable people determined to darken all our lives. It won them a Bah Humbug Award from ACM, but it really deserves deeper contempt than that conveys.

ColdPlay soundtrack for a junk video aimed at kids.  A video described on the rtcc site as having had the support of the Foreign Office (something I hope someone will investigate).  The video contains a doom-laden future thanks to 'climate change' - the classic CAGW stuff.  Designed to keep children awake at night.  Awake and screaming for help perhaps.[6 Jan: Climate Science has highlighted the Foreign Office connection]

‘Common Core’  in the USA. That’s the official name for sweeping changes proposed in developing a national curriculum in the States. It doesn’t look good for the children.  For example, in Colorado ‘Fifth grade students at Fremont Elementary School in Colorado were assigned a reading passage that describes global warming as a dangerous, man-made phenomenon that will destroy civilization in a few hundred years.'  Everyone wants to do their bit to disturb the young, even teachers of English it would seem.  Another report entitles this 'Students Receive Doomsday Climate Propaganda' and that seems about right.

UNESCO deep in planning for ESD next year.      (ESD = Education for Sustainable Development.)  By which they mean 'suppressed development', and which of course is driven by the usual set of climate fears, and buttressed by any other eco-scare you care to mention.  The banner of sustainable development is the big vehicle for the political and financial ambitions for many taking advantage of the climate scaremongering.  Who could possibly be against 'sustainable' they must suppose.  Anyone who has given it more than a moment's thought would be my response.  Anyway, there is to be an ESD conference in Japan in November, 2014.  I'd like to think it will be cancelled for lack of interest, but that would require a lot of wishful thinking to be sustainable for very long, sad to say.

[Note added 12 Oct 2017:  Good news. USA to quit UNESCO in 2018.  Not before time.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/10/12/u-s-withdraws-from-unesco-the-u-n-s-cultural-organization-citing-anti-israel-bias/?utm_term=.d79a39b9fdb2]

Looking Ahead

The hapless shipload of climateers currently stuck in the Antarctic ice provides a fittingly allegorical end to 2013 for the CAGW movement as captured by Josh (hat-tip: Bishop Hill):

http://cartoonsbyjosh.com

Let us hope that they are all brought to safety in due course, but let us also hope that their cause continues to be morally and intellectually and economically and politically in trouble next year as well, and in every successive year until it is dismissed forever as an awful aberration.  One that nevertheless caused a great deal of harm while it lasted.  

Loss of respect for science may well be one of the longer-lasting effects, but it will take more and more scientists to lift their attention from their own studies and devote some serious attention to what has been done in their name if this aberration is to end sooner rather than later.  The Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change has been doing sterling work in building up a body of research .  Its report 'Climate Change Reconsidered II' was for me one of the most important events in 2013, not least because this report could be of value for years to come for scientists intent on getting more information about what we know and don't know about the climate system, and who have realised that they cannot trust the IPCC, nor those who embellish and exaggerate what it has chosen to publish..  I hope that more and more teachers, educational leaders and administrators, and interested politicians will come to the same realisation sooner rather than later.

[hat-tip: Dave W for some of the links used in this post, and for general encouragement]

A Merry Christmas to all my readers!

Not being blessed, if you like, with religion myself I still find a great deal to admire in Christianity: the compassion, and generosity to be found in the texts and amongst so many of its followers, and the beauty-that-can-make-you-gasp to be found in some of its buildings, large and small, and also in some of the music.  The above singing and the building it is taking place in, are fine examples of this.  

More usual posts will resume before the New Year - I have a bit of a backlog of ideas and notes, but most of them are about matters that invoke the opposite of the cheerful spirit of this coming week in much of the world.  So I'll leave them to one side for a few more days.  

Cringing Teacher, Bold Pupils - Australian youngsters strike a blow against climate dogma in their classroom

Jo Nova has an inspiring report up on her blog:

A reader Russell writes in to tell me his Year 9 son Jordan and his friend, Tom, took on their teacher’s sacred belief in man-made global warming. Given no warning, and called insulting names in front of the class, they took up the challenge with gusto and stayed up til 1am that night to put the presentation together. Not surprisingly the teacher tried to pull out the next day, but the class would not let her.

Jo continues:

From reader Russell:

The other week at school my eldest son (15) was challenged by his teacher to present to the class why he is a ”climate change denier”. He had to do this presentation the next day.

At the start of his class the next day he advised the teacher he was ready.  She told him she wasn’t interested now, maybe another day. His classmates started heckling her saying ”You Chicken Miss”. She eventually agreed and got another teacher to sit in as well. Before my son spoke she showed the class the promo to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. After his presentation the class gave him a standing ovation. There is a lot more to this story, the above overview sort of explains what occurred.

To start his talk he read out five quotes from the ”US Senate Minority Report” below, then his power point. She made him stop the Prof Carter video 3min into it, the Prof Ball podcast about 5min in and let the class watch the other 10min video all the way through.

'May there be a thousand young rebels following in their footsteps', says Jo.

Amen to that! 

See Jo's post for more details: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/two-high-school-students-take-on-teacher-over-climate-and-win-standing-ovation/





Footnote 1.  The presentation which the pupils only had a few h ours to put together, begins with this statement signed by Edward Teller, one of the world's most distinguished physicists:

Footnote 2. WUWT has an informative report on how one mass media outlet in the States chose to obscure  Teller's signature in a broadcast featuring the 'Oregon Petition', and he notes there another extremely distinguished physicist had also signed the same statement: Freeman Dyson -

Indoctrination in Suppressed Development in New Zealand Schools

“The indoctrination of high school students as a directive of the UN’s Agenda 21 and common core global education standards has shown up in New Zealand exam papers.”

 Thus writes Ian Wishart* in an article published last week on the NZ website Investigate Daily.  He continues:

“Two exam papers from different students in the 2008 year are clearly wrong on the facts, but nonetheless gained “Excellence” in New Zealand’s National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) exams and are paraded on the Ministry of Education website as “exemplars” to measure up to.

The two exams show children were brainwashed with inaccurate information on New Zealand history, and caricatures of modern worldviews reflecting curriculum bias.

You can read the offending exam papers here exemplar-3-2008-exam”

One of the questions required the pupil to compare and contrast ‘capitalist’ with ‘indigenous’ world views.  A caricature of each seems to have been taught to the pupils, and these caricatures are admired in the examples. 

Now, given that capitalism has led to the most dramatic improvements ever in the quality of life of people (e.g. with respect to air, water, food, and shelter quality), of domesticated animals (modern husbandry practices), and indeed to great strides forward in helping conserve wild animals and wild lands, and that primitive lifestyles have made no such progress, you would be astonished to learn that remarks such as the following seem to have received high marks in these New Zealand exams:

Source

‘[The capitalist world view] is that the economy, society and the environment are in no way connected and therefore not affecting one another.”

‘[The indigenous world view is that] the environment, society and economy are linked and each individually important and highly significant to the other.’.

‘Culturally the capitalists behaviour is to live in the present, with little reverence of interest in their ancestory [sic] and their traditions are selectively upheld.’

‘The indigenous people place a lot of emphasise [sic] on tradition and pass it on orally through generations so their history is ‘alive’.  This benefits these later generations significantly as they can learn skills such as hunting, fishing and harvesting.’

 ‘The capitalists practise exploitation against [sic] the environment.  They are production and resource based.  They use the natural resources of the land to turn a profit..  When the resources in that particular area are used up they simply move on, destroying that land for future generations.’

 ‘The indigenous people work in harmony with the land.  They act as stewards of the land, without enforcing their power over it as they are spiritually connected to it.  They practise subsistence production, taking enough and no more from the land.’

See the exam papers for more examples: http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/exemplar-3-2008-exam.pdf

Now this simplistic romanticisation of ‘indigenous’ societies and equally simplistic demonisation of ‘capitalist’ societies is so widespread, that the poor teachers and pupils can scarcely be blamed for replicating it.  Yet where is the success?  Where are people healthier, better fed, better sheltered, and so on?  Where do people live longer?  Where are slash and burn agricultural practices most discouraged?  Where is air quality, indoors and out, higher? Where is environmental improvement and conservation more strongly supported?  

The gross simplifications are of course part and parcel of the promotion of 'sustainable development' - a notion that would be more informatively described as 'suppressed development'.

It would be better if both pupils and teachers were less dogmatic here.  Capitalism is at heart, the simple matter of free trading amongst individuals and communities, and the accumulation of surpluses with which to try for more and better things.  As Adam Smith pointed out long ago, the pursuit of individual self-interest that this seems to imply is highly conducive to societal improvement.  Others have noted that this also thrives best under conditions of intellectual and political freedom.  To merely disparage one caricature, and look at the other through rose-tinted spectacles is not good for education.  Good for indoctrination though.  Perhaps essential for that.

*Ian WIshart has just published a book called ‘Totalitaria’:

‘An explosive new book says the United Nations has rolled out a global education policy designed to indoctrinate children to accept a planned world government regime.

Revelations are made in the new book “Totalitaria: What If The Enemy Is The State?” by award-winning investigative journalist and bestselling author Ian Wishart.

The book reveals the policy is part of Agenda 21 and also the UN’s world education curriculum, and it has been implemented in New Zealand as part of NCEA national standards and will underpin the controversial “Common Core” education standards in the USA.

Journalist Ian Wishart says the agenda actually stretches back almost to the inception of the United Nations:

“Back in the 1950s the top officials in the United Nations came up with a very long term plan to change the world to accept a global ruler. They felt the only way to bring world peace was to bring in some form of global government based on new spiritual values of peace and love. In the book I quote the UN officials and their documents on this.

“They figured out the most strategic way to force this change was to build up public fear about different world problems, so that eventually people would practically beg for global government – which, of course, the UN was perfectly placed to provide.”

Among the crisis opportunities they seized on was climate change.’

More details here: http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/4657/climate-change-and-global-governance-linked-to-green-religion/

Looks very promising... 

Kindle edition available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totalitaria-What-Enemy-State-ebook/dp/B00GAN74WS

[Note added later: I've skimmed through the Kindle edition, and I must warn readers that it is a rather frantic, lively account of Lucifer-worshipping people of influence in the UN and elsewhere.  That makes it a bit hard to take seriously, but it does contain a lot of information as well as provocative comments.]

More on the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers: multiple retreats disguised and spun for PR at the expense of science

Leading authors from the NIPCC have reviewed the IPCC’s  ‘Summary for Policy Makers’.   They were not impressed.  Who would be?  It is a mix of tawdry spin and feeble science.  Here are some extracts from their review, with the review headings shown in bold:

Introduction

The IPCC has retreated from at least 11 alarmist claims promulgated in its previous reports or by scientists prominently associated with the IPCC.  The SPM also contains at least 13 misleading or untrue statements, and 11 further statements that are phrased in such a way that they mislead readers or misrepresent important aspects of the science.

…

1. IPCC Retreats

Eleven statements made in the 2013 SPM apparently retreat from more alarmist positions struck in earlier Assessment Reports or in related research literature. These repositionings are to be welcomed when they move the IPCC’s commentary closer to scientific reality.

[see the full review, linked to above, for details of each of these 11 retreats – none of which are recognised as such in the IPCC materials.]

…

2. Misleading or Untrue Statements

The following 13 statements by the IPCC are written in such a way that although they may be technically true, or nearly true, they are misleading of the actual state of affairs.

[see the full review, linked to above, for details of each of these 13 statements – all presumably spun to assist the political wishes of those driving the IPCC, wishes which require there to be a climate crisis caused by industrial development.]

…

3. Deceptive Language that Misrepresents the Science

The following 11 statements by the IPCC create an unjustifiable impression of either scientific certainty or false alarm, or appear to have been chosen to evade conclusions that run counter to the IPCC’s belief in dangerous human-caused warming.

[see the full review, linked to above, for details of each of these 11 statements – once again all presumably spun to assist the political wishes of those driving the IPCC]

…

4. Advice for Policymakers

Between 1988 and 2001 (the span of preparation of its first three Assessment Reports), the United Nation’s IPCC was the sole international body able to provide advice to governments on the global warming issue. With the formation of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) in 2003, a second and independent team of scientific assessors began to emerge.

Now, with the release of new 2013 reports by both the IPCC and NIPCC, due-diligence analysis, such as that contained in this briefing paper, is finally possible. The IPCC’s “Green Team” scientific advice can now be weighed against the views of a “Red Team” of independent scholars.

With the same set of peer-reviewed scientific papers available to them, the scientists of the IPCC and NIPCC have come to diametrically opposing conclusions. IPCC scientists remain alarmist about the threat of human-caused global warming, even while they admit observations increasingly invalidate their model-based predictions. They are reluctant to acknowledge past errors and new research that challenge their hypothesis of human-caused dangerous climate change.

In stark contrast, NIPCC scientists find no hard evidence for a dangerous human-caused

warming. They find the null hypothesis – that observed changes in climate are due to natural causes only – cannot be rejected. NIPCC scientists remain open to new discoveries and further debate.

In 2013, any engaged policymaker or commentator has a responsibility to be fully familiar with the arguments and conclusions adduced by both of these teams of climate advisors. Towards this end, we present the primary conclusions of NIPCC’s latest report as they are stated in its Summary for Policymakers:

1. We conclude neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979-2000) lay outside normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in Earth’s climatic history.  Furthermore, solar forcings of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized, and evidence is lacking that a 2C increase in temperature (of whatever cause) would be globally harmful.

2. We conclude no unambiguous evidence exists for adverse changes to the global environment caused by human-related CO2 emissions. In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not accelerating; no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or rainfall or in the magnitude or intensity of extreme

meteorological events; and an increased release of methane into the atmosphere from

permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is unlikely.

3. We conclude the current generation of global climate models are unable to make accurate projections of climate even 10 years ahead, let alone the 100 year period that has been adopted by policy planners. The output of such models should therefore not be used to guide public policy formulation until they have been validated and shown to have predictive value.

[this final section has been reproduced here, above, in full, but with italics and bold added].

Any parents or teachers or other responsible adults wishing to tackle the hyperbole, the assurance, and the deceptions of those intent on misleading children about our impact on climate have to do their own studies to highlight what is going on, and to be in a position to argue for reform.  This might seem an impossible task for non-specialists, but that need not be the case.  Many people around the world are working to expose this scandal and bring it to a wider audience.  See the list of blogs on the right-hand side of the screen for examples.  Amateurs and professionals are involved.  Subject-matter specialists are too, as are many who bring general analytical and/or communication skills to the task in hand.  There is little by way of organisation. This is more of a spontaneous, scattered uprising against an establishment of vested or political interests whose policy and other interventions have already caused great harm.  Most of us will have something to contribute to help replace the exaggerations and other excesses of that establishment with calmer, more soundly-based perspectives about what is going on and what may happen in the future.  The NIPCC reports, to which I have recently contributed in a very modest way as a pre-publication reviewer, are at the more technical end, but even there, there is much that is readily accessible.