Under the Cloak of ‘Climate Change’: childhoods sacrificed for political gain

 'When asked to choose the 3 biggest threats to the world from a list of 9, the most common answer is terrorism, chosen by more than half (59%), followed by climate change (49%).'

Extract from the results of a BBC survey of some 329 schools, with 24,000 respondents aged 11 to 16 years, published 24 March, 2011 (hat-tip: Bishop Hill ).

So, if the survey has been well-conducted( see footnotes 1 & 2) approximately half of secondary-school children in the UK regard 'climate change' as one of the biggest threats facing the world.  How can that be, given that nothing at all unusual has happened to any weather phenomena, including air temperatures, rainfall, storminess etc, and nor to commonly associated phenomena such as polar ice extents?  The answer, of course, is clear enough: very successful lobbying and publicising of the results of computer models programmed to give CO2 a large effect as a driver of climate using positive feedbacks.  Given that CO2 levels have been rising, and are confidently expected to rise further, there is clearly the makings of a good scare story here.  However, neither the atmosphere itself nor many leading climate scientists, have been sufficiently convinced by these stories to, in the case of the atmosphere, display unusual behaviour, and in the case of the scientists, display alarm.  Yet many others are alarmed, or find it convenient to act as if they are for the sake of political and other advantages.  Finance houses, political parties, environmentalists, and development organisations have all seen substantial boosts to their incomes and/or their influence thanks to the widespread publicity given to such as the IPCC.  Many well-intentioned individuals and groups have no doubt been persuaded to 'do something' by all of this, and are even trying to get schoolchildren involved in political actions.

One such group is Norwich Education and Action for Development (NEAD), whose Windmill Project was reported upon this week in the Norwich Evening News (see cutting).  Hat-tip: Dave W.

The headline, and the activities described look innocent enough.  Since our climate has always changed and is no doubt still changing, children should be taught about it as part of their nature or geography or science studies.   Who would not want that?  The changes however are quite slow and hard to detect amidst the within-year variation, and so it is unlikely that this topic ought to be a major part of any curriculum for such a young age group.  The problem though is that they may be being misled about climate risks, and that these in turn may be scaring them, and leading them into political roles which seem utterly unsuited to their tender years.  On the NEAD site, one can find phrases such as this one:

'Most importantly, children are offered information about some of the solutions to problems related to climate change. This will give children the power to make informed decisions and allow them to move towards behavioural and attitudinal change.'

Primary school children have been visited by this group in the past.  Although their teaching materials are not available to non-members on their site, my concerns that they may be the usual alarmist stuff are not allayed by listening to this song sung and partly composed by children at a NEAD event  at a school in October last year:

'The Norfolk Flood Blues'

It is quite hard to make out all the words, but it seems to begin with stamping of feet in time to the music, while chanting
'Rain Flood Rain Flood Rain Flood Rain Flood ...'

Later on, I think I heard these phrases (please email corrections or confirmations about these!): 
'Water in my home, Water in my bed'
'It's destroying everything'
'I feel doomed.  I feel scared.'

Pictures of the children and some of the adults involved in this can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nead_dec/sets/72157625120574255/detail/

I looked up the UK Met Office site to see what weather records I could find for East Anglia, the region in which Norwich lies.  Records were available for Lowestoft, a coastal town less than 20 miles from Norwich.  I extracted monthly rainfall, monthly sunshine hours, and monthly mean maximum and mean minimum temperature values for the 30 years 1980 to 2010, and used these to produce the plots shown below.  Can you see any grounds for alarm in them?

 

 The pupils will have some difficulty in discerning ‘climate change’ in such a display, dominated as it is by within-year variation.  Throughout this period, CO2 levels grew, along with increasingly agitated pleas and warnings from people who ought to have known better, such as James Hansen who in 1986 was warning of mean global temperature rises of several degrees by the year 2010.  Since the computer models suggest the temperature rises will be greater away from the equatorial regions towards the poles, a naive observer might well have expected more action in the Lowestoft data by now.  Could it be that the models are also useless for predicting such things?

Mercifully, the NEAD people do not seem deranged like those who produced the film ‘No Pressure’, whereby children of non-compliant parents were portrayed as being violently destroyed,  ‘pour encourager les autres’.  I suspect that NEAD attracts many good people, but people who have been misled by the IPCC, and by others.  There are further grounds for concern about NEAD: first, is it really a charity, second, is it at risk of crossing the line re political indoctrination in schools, and third, will campaigning around climate change really help the world's poor in the long run?

The 'Fake Charities' group keeps a database of charities which it has investigated, using this guideline:

“We define a Fake Charity as any organisation registered as a UK charity that derives more than 10% of its income—and/or more than £1 million—from the government, while also lobbying the government. ”

Unfortunately, NEAD fits their bill, as evidenced by information in their most recent annual report:
(1) more than 90% of their funding comes from the Department for International Development (see page 17 of the report)
(2) they seek to influence policy, e.g. on page 7:

‘We will also call for ACTIONS to be taken to affect policy-making agendas, encourage pupils’ political and social engagement, increase involvement with and understanding about new and marginal communities, and to demonstrate understanding of our interconnectedness and the importance of our values and perceptions.'

They are also treading on thin ice as far as the Education Acts are concerned.  These specifically make political indoctrination an offence, and they provided the basis for a legal action taken against a thinly-disguised political DVD on climate featuring the American politician Al Gore. 

Standing on actual or virtual platforms to broadcast your concern for others and demand ‘action’ does not provide any magic to prevent you, in the end, making everyone worse off, not least the very people you wished to help in the first place.  You still have a responsibility to do research and check, check, and check again with good data as opposed to good intentions, or the projections of feeble models of the climate.  I think development groups in general, and NEAD in particular, would do well to steer clear of the clamour around 'climate change due to humanity'.  They may well see some short-term advantage in it, but that will change very rapidly indeed when sufficiently many people have seen through the weak science and strong PR that underpins it.  Such as the people who contribute to this site on the topic of 'eco-imperialism'.

That would help adults work on real problems, including those of world development, and perhaps give more children a chance to enjoy their childhood without being pushed prematurely, and without anything like adequate justification, into either anxiety or political action.               

Footnote 1 (added 26th March).  The survey was not a random sampling of any kind.  From the report:
'School Report invited the 804 schools, signed up to the project in the relevant period to take part, 329 did so. There was no maximum or minimum limit to the number of children at each school that could take part. The average participation rate was 73 but figures ranged from 1 to 7841. There is no claim that those responding to the School Report Survey are representative of all 11-16 year olds because of self-selecting nature of the schools that take part and the sample of children therein. However there is some evidence that the schools taking part in School Report are broadly representative of schools across the UK and that those taking part in the Survey are representative of that group2.' 
Footnote 2 (added 27th March).  That as many as 50% of secondary-age children have this melodramatic view of climate variation has not been established by this survey, in view of the self-selection involved (by schools, and by pupils within them).  It only shows that some children in some schools have this view, although the authors of the report indicate that they find it plausible that the national figure could be somewhat similar.
Footnote 3 (added 28th March).  An opinion poll reported on today (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/03/25/old-men-in-midlands-are-the-biggest-climate-sceptics-115875-23013783/): 'A poll for this week’s Climate Week also found 45% of the younger generation think climate change is man-made but only 26% of people close to retiring age agree.'.

Apostasy in the Church of Climate Change: a leftwing radical rubbishes the alarmism

Activist Teacher: On the gargantuan lie of climate change science

A blog post by Denis Rancourt which I came across today (Hat-tip: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/) is based on a contribution by him to an event organised by the geography student association at the University of Quebec in Montreal.  He begins by listing in leftspeak such things as  

# 'the majority of service intellectuals (high priests) in each civilization was only created and maintained to support the hierarchy'
# 'the whole climate change scam is now driven by the top-level financiers newly eyeing a multi-trillion-dollar paper economy of carbon trading and that this is the reason it’s now a dominant mainstream media and corporate messaging presence'
#' the invention of the US-centered military-backed global finance structure of predation'
# 'establishment scientists are service intellectuals who virtually never diverge from supporting power, who at best look for sanitized and hypothetical “problems” that do not threaten hierarchy and who feed their false self-image of relevance'

But then, mercifully, he says:

'Never mind all that.'

And goes on to examine some aspects of climate science under  5 'story-elements'.   These are indeed key parts of 'the narrative' so loved by political activists and their spinners everywhere, but Rancourt is decidedly unimpressed by them:

Step-1: Combustion of fossil fuels produces CO2
Step-2: This large amount of CO2 from fossil fuel burning goes into the atmosphere
Step-3: Post-industrial atmospheric CO2 produces an increased planetary greenhouse effect
Step-4: The increased planetary greenhouse effect causes planetary warming
Step-5: Climate chaos and melting glaciers

The first of these steps he concedes as correct, albeit banal.  The second he deals with by noting the relative unimportance of the anthropogenic contribution to the great and still poorly understood fluxes and stores of carbon dioxide and carbon, and declares, somewhat vividly 'Environmental scientists working from the CO2 climate hypothesis want post-industrial atmospheric CO2 to be large for the same reason they want their penises to be large.'  For the third step, he notes many of the reasons why it is implausible that CO2 is a driver of climate, and highlights some of the controversy over its role in the atmosphere through the so-called greenhouse effect and the mythical positive feedbacks which form key pillars of the alarmist faith.
As for step four, he comments on and references papers with more technical background on such topics as the difficulty of defining a global temperature and the shoddy disregard of good forecasting practices by the IPCC, and concludes: 'These are the reasons that “global warming” became “climate change”. Model extractions and empirical evaluations of a mean global temperature were shown to be hog wash.'  On step five, he points to the fatuous, but required of the faithful, blaming of anything and everything bad on 'climate change': 'We pull climate chaos out of the non-linear physics hat and every weather event and habitat destruction observation on the planet becomes evidence for climate change.'  He describes this as a circus.


His final paragraphs draw overall conclusions which are also out of a radical playbook and are not at all to my taste as a ex-leftie.  However, I believe it is the case that many teachers veer to the left and so might lap it all up.  And that is the interesting point for this blog.  Is this a straw in the wind, a wind blowing from the left that will make climate change activism look so reactionary and harmful that it will be anathema for any self-respecting radical?  And will that mean less indoctrination in our schools?  We can but hope.

Note added  22 January 2013.  Rancourt was dismissed from his university in 2008, ostensibly because he refused to go along with the grading of students.  More details here: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/Rancourt09.htm, where it is described as an example of academic 'mobbing'.


 

Donna Kebabs the IPCC: play sycophancy-bingo with your school's materials

The IPCC is often portrayed as a trustworthy, authoritative, product of the world's top scientists' views on climate.  It is none of these things.  If you have references to the IPCC in textbooks, DVDs, presentations made by visitors, or posters on your walls, you might like to try to find exact or close matches to widespread misconceptions about the IPCC using a database of quotations compiled by Donna Laframboise.  In her words:

'A variety of claims are routinely made about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These have to do with:

• the organization itself
• its reports
• its processes

Among the most common claims are these:

• the IPCC is comprised of the world’s top scientists
• it produces authoritative, trustworthy reports
• its processes are rigorous and transparent
• it cites only peer-reviewed literature

Such claims have been made by IPCC participants and spokespeople. They’ve been made by the highest government officials of some of the most respectable countries in the world. They’ve also been made by journalists, book authors, and activists.'

Now these claims have been refuted, not least by Donna Laframboise's carefully documented investigations.  So, if you have a class that has passed the relevant exams, or is good enough to be able to do so while at the same time also having a more realistic view of climate change, then here is a rich field for mini-projects:

(1) First find a matching phrase from materials/events in your school - the database is here
(2) Next do some investigation and write up a brief report or presentation on the veracity of the selected phrase.
(3) Rinse and repeat - it promises to be a lot of fun.

Your Pupils Could Be Lead Authors for the IPCC: just be sure to teach them 'right opinions'

http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/

Background: http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/the-strange-case-of-sari-kovats/

Something for the Climate Classroom Wall: insight from a physicist in east Germany

'What is happening with regards to the climate hypothesis today is that profound and far-reaching conclusions are being based on pure suspicions. That’s religion, and not science. There are also many other well-founded hypotheses on climate dynamics that allow completely other conclusions to be drawn. But strangely, they are being massively suppressed – simply because they don’t accommodate the political concept of rescuing the planet. That’s propaganda, manipulation, suppression of the freedom of expression and demagoguery. As ‘an educated citizen of former communist East Germany’, I’m experiencing grand déjà-vu.'
  
Prof. Knut Löschke, a solid state physicist, who conducted research until 1986, founded PC-Ware AG, and then turned it into a European IT company before leaving in 2009.


Hat-tip: http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/10/german-physicist-slams-climate-science-says-climate-politics-is-grand-deja-vu-of-communist-east-germany/
Visit the NoTricksZone for more details and links.

The words of Prof Löschke are also quoted here, with the additional apercu  'We are sawing the branch we are sitting on.': http://oekowatch.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/357-professor-knut-loeschke-wir-saegen-gerade-den-ast-ab-auf-dem-wir-sitzen

The quotation is taken from an interview published in the magazine 'Smart Investor'. 

Beginning to Teach on Climate? - let Jo help you keep on top of the propaganda avalanche

Teachers in geography, science, and current affairs have a particular responsibility to work at clarifying their own views as to the quality and credibility of the arguments, and of the players involved in the promotion of fears around carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  This is an arena in which many special interest groups in politics, in finance, in academia, in government agencies, in the UN and in the EU, and in business have spotted advantage for themselves, and so considerable diligence is required of anyone trying to make their way through the resulting avalanche of materials urging us to do this or do that to avoid catastrophe.  It is notable that children in schools are being deliberately targeted by some of these groups in order to produce 'little activists', pressurising their parents and others to take specific domestic, commercial, and political decisions.  The use of fearful images and narratives is commonplace, and is often accompanied by thinly veiled contempt for the achievements not only of their parents in providing, inter alia, comfortable homes and transport arrangements for them, but also of the tremendous progress made around the world since the industrial revolution.

Jo Nova has posted a handy overview of the sorry saga of the shoddy-science, devious politics, and historical ignorance which degrades so much of this 'CO2-based activism':

'Almost everything you thought you knew about man made global warming might be a worthless half-truth.'


Her 'Skeptic's Handbook' is an excellent place to start:

'Donors have paid for over 160,000 copies so far in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and soon in Germany. Over 60,000 copies have been downloaded from this site (and countless others from copies on other sites.) Plus volunteers have translated it into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan, Spanish, Thai, Czech, Lao and Italian. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish.  (Versions in Dutch, and possibly Italian are on the way). Updates are placed here, along with translations, as well as places to read comments and links to the web-pages where each part of the handbook will be discussed.'

Canadian Climate Campaigners: how to produce lots of 'little activists' in schools

'At the start of the afternoon, the grade 5 students in Mr. Bloom’s class at Bert Edwards Science and Technology School didn’t know much about climate change.  By the time they left school for the day, they were ready to enlist their families in the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.'
'The students were participating in the Climate Change Showdown, an educational workshop developed by the BC Sustainable Energy Association (BCSEA).  Jennifer Munro, City of Kamloops Environmental Educator, and BCSEA’s Sadie Cox came to the classroom to present the 80-minute workshop.  Students watched a video, played a board game and did skits illustrating how they’ll work on changing everyday actions to help solve climate change.  The students took a contest sheet home so they can recruit their families to help with driving less, eating local foods, taking shorter showers and turning off the lights.'

Chairman Mao would have been envious of such success.  It could have come from his advice:

'The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking. This is especially so in the era of socialism. We hope that the local Party organizations in various places will help and work with the Youth League organizations and go into the question of bringing into full play the energy of our youth in particular. The Party organizations should not treat them in the same way as everybody else and ignore their special characteristics. Of course, the young people should learn from the old and other adults, and should strive as much as possible to engage in all sorts of useful activities with their agreement.'

Introductory note to "A Youth Shock Brigade of the No. 9 Agricultural Producers' Co-operative in Hsinping Township, Chungshan County" (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. III.

For more details of the work of that Canadian 'youth shock brigade' at Bert Edwards Science and Technology School, see: http://thompsonenvironmental.net/2011/03/climate-change-heroes/

More tips and techniques for this kind of work can be found here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/classroom-climate-conditioning-at-work.html

Note added 30 October 2011 Here is evidence from the USA of a systematic initiative to manipulate children for general, no doubt leftwing political ends: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/teachers-union-offered-grant-to-create-activists-out-of-1st-2nd-graders/
Extract:
'The National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the country, offered a $5,000 Learning and Leadership Grant to two Wisconsin teachers who intended to use the funds to “help first and second grade students” become “activists.”
The description of the grant for teachers Andrea Burmesch and Tara Krueger of Muskego Elementary read:

Ms. Burmesch and a team of colleagues will develop a critical literacy inquiry based unit of study to help their first and second grade students understand the role that power plays in their lives. The teachers will learn how visual literacy and technology, particularly website and podcast development, can be used by students to create activist messages that make a positive difference in their lives and the lives of others. The students will create their messages around issues important to their lives.

The grant description is no longer available on the NEA Foundation website as Muskego-Norway Superintendent declined to accept the grant given its dubious language and intent.'

Fortunately this one was nipped in the bud by a competent superintendent, but how many of them are there?

(hat-tip: Education Watch )

Teach Them about this Deeply Deceptive Statistic used by CAGW Spinners: the '97%'

The notorious, the fatuous, the misleading claim that  '97% of climatologists' believe in ('catastrophic' implied/stated/assumed) anthropogenic global warming has been rebutted many times.  Anyone with an elementary grasp of sample-survey techniques would have refused to publish the results, based as they are on a sloppy question, an imperfect frame, and a tiny subset of self-selected respondents of unknown qualifications.  But perhaps when you are saving the planet, the means justifies the ends, or more clearly, 'let's not let scientific integrity get in the way of political impact.'

The WUWT site has a post dated 4th March from Jospeh D'Aleo, a meteorologist, reacting to another meteorologist still trotting out that egregious 97% as if it were a clincher instead of an embarassment, as per:

'Of the climatologists, a staggering 97% agreed to the same question… It’s very difficult for me to understand the disdain for science that exists today.'  

Oh the ironing!  (as they say on the Daily Bayonet)

D'Aleo digs out an IceCap post from last December by Solomon, of the Canadian National Post, and reproduces part of it.  Here is an extract, referring to a crude online survey sent to 10,257 'Earth scientists', of whom only 3,146 chose to respond, and of them a subset of 77 was extracted to create the 97%:

'This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers - in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change.  The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.'

Of course, with a mass media largely supine and uncritical under the whirling deluge of alarmist press releases, soundbites, and sundry spins, the '97%' grew wings and became something with which to impress the public.  But the public is catching up.  Teachers can contribute by ensuring that their pupils see that '97% ' as well-worthy of their disdain.

An SPPI report on the '97%' is available here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/consensus_opiate.pdf


Hat-tip: The Climate Science blog.

Added 7 March: There is analysis at Climate Quotes of the two questions used in the survey, noting that they could readily be answered in the affirmative by those who do not see any convincing evidence or arguments that AGW is a major and urgent threat: http://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/

Added 19 July 2012.  Barry Woods provides a lot more information and insight into fatuous 97% and 98% claims: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/#more-60090
Amongst other things, he tracked down an MSc thesis that was the source of one of the most widely quoted 97% figures: 'As this MSc thesis was the original source of the oft cited Doran paper  97%  quote, I tracked it down (sometime ago now) and discovered in the appendi that there was a great deal of  email feedback and answers to write in questions from the scientists that actually participated in the survey, much of it critical and sceptical of the survey itself, the methodology and the questions asked. Additionally, amongst those environmental scientists that responded, were some very sceptical sounding scientists with respect to man made climate change being the dominant driver of climate change.'  
As well as the Doran/Zimmerman survey, he reports on the later Anderegg 'survey', and notes scathing critiques of it:
'Paul Matthews: “Scott Denning needs to be more careful if he and his fellow climate scientists are to be taken seriously by scientists from other fields such as myself. 
He loses credibility by referring to the ridiculous Anderegg et al study, in which the authors put scientists into two different pigeon-holes. ' 

Picture for the Classroom Wall: shut down Australia, save 0.01C of warming

When it comes to that part of the curriculum calling for the children to suggest ways of reducing their 'carbon footprints', such as getting their parents to cancel holidays, turn off lights, reduce the heating, and so on, there is great scope for making them feel bad about their way of life, and the awful things their parents have done, such as buying a car or leaving the TV on standby, or buying food not produced in a nearby field, or, horror or horrors, not giving two hoots about it all.  The above diagram can help them see how worthwhile their actions could be in helping save the planet as it apparently hurtles like a snail towards a somewhat more congenial climate.

The illustration above by Jo Nova.  More at: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/shut-down-australia-and-save-0-01-degree/

The calculations, based on IPCC-style science, are provided by SPPI in a report which can be downloaded from here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/impacts_of_climate_mitigation_measures_in_australia.html

The report is very short, and the sums look easy enough.  Why not get a class to do them for your country?  Help the children see what all the fuss is about, and at the same time help yourself decide how much longer you can stomach pushing spirit-sapping mind-numbing propaganda from the WWF, the IPCC, etc, etc, etc

Notes added 8 March: (1) Here are some computation results for an EU scheme that would return an ostensible 0.002C impact for an expenditure of 2.9 trillion euros: http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/08/the-eus-serial-economy-killers-0-002%C2%B0c-for-e2-9-trillion/
                                     (2) Here are results for many countries of the world, scroll down to find this table

Which I interpret to mean 'shutting down Australia', for example would ostensibly give a temp drop of 1.92/1000 C, i.e. 0.0019C, which is a lot less than the result of 0.01C headlined in this post.  The method used was different, being based on the assumption that greenhouse gases mean the average temp of the Earth is 33C higher than it would be without them, and noting that only about 0.14C of this could reasonably be attributed to manmade CO2.  The earlier Australian value was ' ... calculated with Wigley 1998 protocol assuming that Australia would otherwise have kept producing about 3% of the total CO2 emissions of developed countries. The SPPI estimate uses Wigley’s (1998) mid-range emissions scenario (which itself is based upon the IPCC’s scenario “IS92a” ' (see link to Jo Nova's post above).
Note 1 added 14 March: Jo Nova has new calculations of temperature rises:' ..The effect, according to the IPCC’s theory of man-made global warming' is not alarming: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/carbon-tax-australia-welcome-to-futility-island/    100% reduction in Australian emissions from now to 2050 would reduce temps by 0.0154C using the IPCC approach, an approach which one can of course readily assume to be based more on PR-potential than good science.
Note 2 added 14 March.  USA.  Willis Eschenbach has been doing sums for a post on WUWT about the impact of EPA proposed CO2 reductions: 'Based on the reanalysis the results for projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to be reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm (previously 3.0 ppm), global mean temperature is estimated to be reduced by 0.006 to 0.0015 °C by 2100.'  
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/13/how-much-would-you-buy/

Johnny Ball on School Science: Why are we scaring our kids?

The distinguished presenter of TV programmes and talks on mathematics and science for children has just been on a daytime news programme on UK TV, showing a brief movie about his views, and being interviewed.  The transcipt is over at GWPF: http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/2563-johnny-ball-why-are-we-scaring-our-kids-to-death.html

He asks 'Why are we scaring our kids to death?'

So, why are we?  And who is doing it?  The school curriculum seems obsessed with violence, tragedy, and disasters such as National Socialism and WWII, fatuous talk of CAGW, and pollution of various kinds, and of course the counter-progressive mush of 'sustainability'.  Who is it that is so determined to give our children a poor view of humanity and our prospects?  They want to 'make little activists'.  Why do we let them within a mile of young minds and spirits?

Well done Johnny Ball for taking this fight into that heart of the 'liberal' darkness, the BBC.

Lessons in Intolerance: a wry look at contempt for CAGW sceptics

The Sun, 26th February, 2011.

Hat-tip: http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7301  

A more considered, but equally heartfelt piece on this topic is to be found in The Spectator magazine:

'It’s another powerful, and depressing tale of the woeful state of climate science. Real science welcomes refutation: with global warming, it is treated as a religion. As they say in their cover story:

“Nature’s original peer-review process had let through an obviously flawed paper, and no professional climate scientist then disputed  it - perhaps because of fear that doing so might harm their careers. As the title of Richard Bean’s new play - The Heretic - at the Royal Court hints, young scientists going into climate studies these days are a bit like young theologians in Elizabethan England. They quickly learn that funding and promotion dries up if you express heterodox views, or doubt the scripture. The scripture, in this case, being the assembled reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” '

and this classic of understated but penetrating insight:

'Science as a philosophy is a powerful, but fragile thing. In the case of climate, it is now in conflict with science as an institution.'


Link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6706648/debunking-the-antarctica-myths.thtml