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

Learning by Metaphor: foolish building, foolish technology, foolish teacher, foolish 'science'

Foiled by the winter: The £25,000 eco-classroom that can't be used because solar panels don't provide enough heat

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360297/25-000-eco-classroom-used-solar-panels-dont-provide-heat.html#ixzz1Ey9IWSKc

Simple arithmetic would have shown this building to be a foolish one, yet it was constructed.

Modern technology would have made a better building than this one, yet it was constructed.

The importance of the building as a gesture, no matter how absurd, outweighs, for some, all other considerations:
"Headteacher Jill Hughes defended the project and said she hoped classes would be held in the classroom when the weather gets warmer.  She said: ‘We’re delighted to have the Living Ark - its a tremendous resource both for the school and the local community and is an important part of the Muswell Hill low carbon zone initiative.’ "

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360297/25-000-eco-classroom-used-solar-panels-dont-provide-heat.html#ixzz1Ey7jLQ3R

The source of this madness, this modern ideology, can be traced to political exploitation of computer models of the climate which are hopelessly inadequate.  Just like this building.  It is a metaphor for the wastefulness and the incompetence and the smugness of CO2 alarmism.

More details in the Daily Mail report.

Hat-tips:   http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/25/climate-craziness-of-the-week-3/    and http://spielclimate.blogspot.com/2010/03/suggestions-for-blogs-and-links.html

Note added 7 March: details of a grander scheme costing colleges in Los Angeles the loss of $10million are given here:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/03/colleges-blow-10-million-on-wildly.html, and once again it would have been avoided if arithmetic had been allowed at least equal status with ideology.

Note added 11 July: another example of this foolishness, this time from East Germany :
'Pupils and teachers dread every school day at the SeeCampus. If the deodorant of just one person fails to work, then half the classroom goes into a coma. The ventilation in the exemplary passive building is a catastrophe. There’s an extreme lack of fresh air on hot days. Because of concern over the health of the children, who complain about headaches and fatigue, parents are threatening to stop operation of the school through legal action.  The school building SeeCampus in Niederlausitz becomes completely overheated on summer days and is badly ventilated. Headaches and cardio-respiratory problems with pupils and teachers are the result. The number of sick days is climbing rapidly.'
http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/11/flopped-green-passive-school-suffocating-students/


Note added 23 September 2013: more metaphor opportunities:
(1) children threatened by insects dropping in from an 'eco-school' roof:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/10327504/School-closed-after-pupils-bitten-by-mites-in-eco-roof.html
(2)children threatened by mould and damp in another 'eco-school':  'Devon County Council says it has already spent £250,000 to investigate the problem and without urgent repairs, it says teaching pupils inside the building could seriously damage their health.' 
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Acclaimed-eco-school-forced-shut-classrooms-years/story-19789593-detail/story.html#ixzz2fi669r8B 

An End to Government Scaring of Children with Climate Propaganda in the UK?: a couple of straws to clutch at

We know that children in the UK have been frightened by materials on climate change.
We know that the mass media in the UK have produced or relayed 'climate porn' for many years.

We know that the UK government issued the reprehensible, and frightening, DVD 'An Inconvenient Truth' to schools in 2007, along with guidance on how to make the most of it.

We know that in 2009 the UK government funded and promoted a frightening tv ad with imagery apparently designed to attract and disturb children.
We know that a scary movie involving children was used during the opening of the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009.We know that the UK government funded absurd, and scary, nursery rhyme posters on climate for which it was rebuked in 2010 by the Advertising Standards Agency.

We know that art exhibitions for climate propaganda have been promoted by scary imagery, and even individuals have produced scary movies to help their climate cause.

We know that various groups have produced more professional scary movies and adverts viewable by children, or, in the case of the ugly 10:10 movie 'No Pressure', with the brutal murder of children as one of the dramatic devices to urge conformance to the party line on climate.
We know that games and cartoons have been produced to scare children about their 'carbon footprint'.
We know that various initiatives on climate change aimed at schools are in place, and are concerned to achieve 'action' of one kind or another, but mostly pressure on parents to toe the party line on climate and the desired 'behaviour change' as per the prescriptions and analyses pushed by the IPCC.
We know that schools are being pushed into seeking to create 'little climate activists'.
We know that the head of the IPCC has identified children as a key political target.

So it is not unreasonable to speculate that scary climate movies may be shown to children in schools in the UK.


But evidence of how much and how often does not seem to exist. 

The journalist Leo Hickman has had several pieces recently on the possibility that scary videos are being used in schools to advance the cause of climate alarmism (aka 'CAGW', 'climate change', 'sustainability', 'climate disruption').  This was triggered by a remark by Johnny Ball, who built up a considerable reputation for sharing his enthusiasm for mathematics on tv programmes and talks for schoolchildren.  In more recent years he has taken up the cause of defending children from climate scaremongering.  This, of course, is to invite the wrath of the greens.  So it is all the more remarkable that a CO2-alarmed correspondent in a CO2-alarmed newspaper has sought to expose as unacceptable the kind of attacks on his reputation which Ball has reported.

Hickman reports Ball as asserting that a movie talking of an unliveable planet by 2050 has been shown in schools.  And, to his credit, Hickman pursues this.  First he appealed to his readers to provide any examples of such a movie being shown in schools, and he received none.  He also checked back with Ball, who could not give further details.  And then he checked with the Department for Education (DfE).

The good news here is first of all that no examples were sent to him, other than reference to Gore's reprehensible 'An Inconvenient Truth'.  This may be due to the nature of the Guardian readership, a paper which gave a generous plug to the 'No Pressure' video.  But, on the other hand, it may be due to such videos being rarely shown. 

The second piece of good news lies in the response Leo Hickman obtained from the DfE (my emphases added):

"Keen to get the definitive position on this, I asked the Department for Education (DfE) to clarify the situation regarding the showing of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in schools. It said that in March, 2007, the following email was sent to all secondary schools announcing that the film, as part of a larger educational pack, was being sent out, but that schools could opt out if they wished.

Then, after the court case in October, 2007, updated guidance was emailed to schools in December, 2007.  But that was 2007. What about today? A DfE spokeswoman said it is very unlikely any school is still using this educational pack containing An Inconvenient Truth because teachers are warned on the website that this is old teaching material and could be out-of-date. She said no other climate change-related film has been distributed to schools by the department since 2007. She added:

    We are awaiting to hear more about the National Curriculum review, which will look at all aspects of the curriculum, and will know more then about where teaching on climate change will fit – currently it comes more under the science curriculum, it may well still be [following the review]."

Should we be pleased, or remain cynical?  The alarmists and their strategists may well have decided that the 'scare the children' tactic has backfired on them, or merely that they always need something new to keep the scare bubbling over in the political class.  So perhaps we shall be spared further shocking, blatant, scaremongering materials.  Perhaps, they will gamble that there has been enough of that, that 'CO2 as a source of impending catastrophe' can be treated as a given, or pushed to one side, while superficially more positive messages about 'sustainability' will provide the new banners in their relentless campaign against humanity and industrial progress.  Time will tell.  In the meantime, the numerous groups set up to tap into climate education funds, or win donations from climate scaremongering, or trade in carbon credits, or secure influence over governments through 'environmentalism', or pursue any advantage based on the notion that we face a clear and present danger from rising CO2 levels, will not go away overnight.


It may be merely that the presentation of misleading or frightening materials on climate to children has entered a more subtle phase.

Schools without Scruples over Climate: never mind the facts, the computers have spoken

Definition of 'Scruple': a doubt or hesitation that troubles the conscience or that comes from the difficulty of determining whether something is right.  Schools such as the one reported on here in Norfolk, UK, don't seem to suffer from such a thing when it comes to climate:





It is not difficult to excuse this sort of excess, e.g.
Well, we're saving the planet.  That deals with the conscience.
The IPCC, the Royal Society and other Government-funded bodies, all say we are doomed unless we reduce CO2.  That deals with the 'rightness'.

But what is the reality?  First, with regard to the weather phenomena of the planet, nothing at all extraordinary has happened anywhere with regard to temperatures, precipitation, storms, ice extent, glacier movements, or sea levels.  All we are seeing is perfectly consistent with business as usual for a turbulent atmosphere with a complex, irregular surface, and varying orbital, solar, and oceanic features.  The null hypothesis of 'business as usual' has not been discredited by observations.

Second, with regard to argument from authority, the circular nature of that can only be broken when pushed into, when it will be discovered that political activists orchestrated a global panic by exploiting the conjectures of a few dozen workers in the field of climatology, especially those parts relying heavily on computer models.  The limitations of their work are becoming more apparent year by year.  Let it be summarised as follows: the computer models are too primitive to be fit for prediction, the data sets are too sparse in both space and time to be sufficient as a detailed guide to what has happened in the past, let alone be capable of reliable extrapolation into the future. 

So, we are in a situation in which nothing unusual has been seen to be happening to the weather, to the sea, or to the ice.  There has been a remarkably steady growth in ambient CO2 recorded at Mauna Loa, a volcano on a Pacific island.  Just about anything and everything in and around the atmosphere can influence climate, including CO2.  The problem is not determining whether this factor or that has an influence, but rather it is determining the nature and the magnitude of it. The simplest model for increasing CO2 levels is that they would lead to a modest overall warming, one which would be hard to reliably confirm in the variability of temperatures due to all the other factors involved, a warming of around 1C for a doubling of the ambient levels. But a few people programmed up computers to illustrate a much more dramatic effect of CO2 via an unconfirmed positive feedback mechanism.  This was spotted as a godsend by those who wished to see an end to industrialisation or a weakening of western power or a dimunition in energy consumption or a reduction in population or an overthrow of capitalism or a massive transfer of cash to the developing countries or the dawn of world government or a rise in their own level of recognition as wise prophets or seers or an increase in the audience for their media or an increase in the grants awarded to their institution or more votes for their party.  And what a hugely successful 'big thing' they have made of it over the past 30 years.  That man-made CO2 is leading to catastrophe is now a 'given' in our schools, and leads to events such as this one:

 

But it is by no means properly treated as a 'given'.  It is not satisfactory to base so much belief and commitment on a flimsy foundation.

Sources: 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/environment/photo_gallery_attleborough_high_school_tackling_climate_change_1_804906

http://www.theclimaterun.org.uk/shaping-norfolks-future/

Hat/tip: Dave W.

The Toyota Recall and CAGW: two examples of sense submerged by alarmism

The vulnerability of modern societies to scare stories is revealed on a small scale by the Toyota Recall fiasco, and on a large scale by the CO2 Alarm fiasco.  Both give insight into how politicians and others can be hassled into hasty actions and foolish decisions.  Or is it merely that they spotted advantage in propagating the scare?

Millions of vehicles were recalled around the world, and a new TLA spread: UIA - un-intended acceleration.  Sounds scary!  Better do something!  The theatre is on fire!  Everybody out!  No time to waste!

Except it was a false alarm:
 
'NASA's Toyota Study Released by Dept. of Transportation     02.08.11'

'WASHINGTON -- The results of a ten-month study by 30 NASA engineers of possible electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles was released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).


"NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations," said Michael Kirsch, principal engineer and team lead of the study from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.'


This would be a good project for senior pupils interested in current affairs: a side by side comparison of the climate scare and the accelerator scare.  They are on different scales, but they share much in common:

(1) something scary for the general public
(2) a simple theory to convey 'knowledge' of the reason for the scare
(3) self-serving groups joining in the alarmism in which they have spotted advantage
(4) hasty legislation or the threat of it
(5) resources diverted to unnecessary actions
(6) in retrospect, revealed to be unfounded and foolish


Would that NASA, which led the investigation into the Toyota recall (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/nesc-toyota-study.html), would display the same disinterested and analytical approach on climate.  But no, that would be naive, since they are a prominent example of stage (3) above.

Stage (6) is still underway on climate alarmism, and is taking far longer.  The climate stage (3) was just on so much greater a scale, aided and abetted by massive state funding for such as the IPCC, and the far larger set of parties who spotted political, financial, or merely career opportunities in and around the scaremongering.

Note added 07 April 2014.  The disturbing episode of the Toyota false alarm is still getting coverage.  An Obama functionary called LaHood helped make the alarm worse, and Toyota ended paying a fine of $1.2 billion: 'No one is innocent, of course, but not everyone is bailed out. So Toyota, after recalling millions of cars and changing parts and floor mats even before LaHood's outburst – and after years of being hounded by the administration – recently agreed to pay a steep fine for its role in the acceleration flap. This, despite the fact that in 2012, Department of Transportation engineers determined that no mechanical failure was present that would cause applying the brakes to initiate acceleration. The DOT conducted tests that determined that the brakes could maintain a stationary car or bring one to a full stop even with the engine racing. It looked at 58 vehicles that were supposedly involved in unintended acceleration and found no evidence of brake failure or throttle malfunction.' http://patriotpost.us/opinion/24589  . 

Classroom Climate Conditioning at work: the plotting, the preaching, the results

 'Teaching Climate Change' - a video for teachers.

I guess it all depends on your point of view.  For me this is a sinister, spine-chilling video from way back in 2008, but I can see how the faithful would be pleased with it, giving insight as it does into the equivalent of two senior Jesuits ensuring the doctrinal correctness of a parish priest with teaching duties.

A professor, a PR/communications man, and a teacher are sitting by a window discussing how best to convert children into political activists for their cause.  Frequent shots from the classroom are spliced in to show their schemes in action, and interviews with some pupils at the end demonstrate some success - youngsters now guilt-ridden, and keen to 'take action'. 

Dramatis Personae

The Professor: David Lambert, Chief Executive of the Geographical Association, part-time professor and co-author of the blog 'Impolite Geography', where a recent post quotes with apparent sympathy these words from someone called Huckle, in 1985: “The struggle to construct and implement a socialist school geography will face many setbacks as it has in the past, but it remains part of the overall struggle for a counter-hegemony and an alternative future”.  No, I don't know what it means either!  But the notion of 'socialist school geography' rings alarm bells in my head, given the appalling track record of socialism in the 20th century, most notoriously in Germany in the 30s and 40s, in the USSR and in Mao's China.

The Communicator: Ed Gillespie, Founder and Director of Futerra, a public relations organisation which looks to have been a great financial success, with clients including the BBC, the government, and many multinational corporations.  Ed is introduced as a 'climate expert', although he lacks any relevant professional qualification or experience in the subject, unless we take the broad definition which could include anyone who notes 'If these wet summers continue, I'll have to give up my vegetable plot' and is able to back that up with some data, and of course at least a speculative link to 'climate change'.  It would have been more accurate to introduce him as a successful businessman with a strong interest in climate alarmism.  (http://www.futerra.co.uk/about_us/directors )

The Teacher: David Dixon, a teacher at Hampstead School.  He comes across as an effective and sympathetic teacher, and is shown working with a dream class of bright, and engaged pupils, albeit ones whose critical faculties did not get displayed by the editor.  David states at the end of the video that he sees teaching 'climate change' as a 'moral duty'.

Their aim: to see how best to make use of 'climate change' to get their ideas across about 'geography', 'diversity', 'sustainability' (this last term used near the end as an umbrella term for everything else).

An early slide in what may be the first lesson has this in a prominent bullet-point:
'How can we alter our lives?' [at time 02m:10s]

Teacher decides in favour of 'steering away from the science ideas', which seems like a good tactic, given that some of the most penetrating attacks on climate alarmism are coming from scientists.

The Professor notes: 'We understand the science.  We trust it.', a catechism which I think triggered the Jesuit analogy in my tiny mind.

Pupils who say the right things about various self- and other-denials, get rewarded with 'Excellent!  Brilliant!', which is a bit much since they are merely doing as they have been told.

The Communicator promotes 'Carbon calculators' as the weapon of choice to get the class engaged in assessing their own lives, those of their parents, as well as of a celebrity and a teacher in their school.  And the movie switches to them doing just that, picking out an outstanding sportsman, David Beckham, as a figure to somehow compute a carbon footprint for, and for it to be seen as a bad thing rather than a symptom, as I would see it, of his great success.  A bit like Al Gore's footprint, which for some reason did not get a mention.

People in the USA are singled out, not so much to celebrate diversity, but to note without challenge a pupil's assertion that they are 'big and drive about a lot'! The USA, spenders of more money on overseas aid, on climate research, on new technologies, on the United Nations, than any other country is reduced to a stereotype. 

The Professor: 'why has it been allowed to happen?'  (Hinting at some authority, possibly a deity, who allows this and forbids that? Surely not!) Why did it allow 'the possibility of ....global catastrophe'  [at 10:11] Switch to big smile of delight by the The Communicator [at 10:12]) - you could almost see the cash-register sparkling in his eyes at that magic word 'catastrophe'.

If I close my eyes, I can picture our balance sheet...

A juxtaposition in time which seems accidently informative, but perhaps in fairness to Ed, it was just a trick of the editor's art.

 

The Professor: backing away from the deity notion, he slips in the basic cause ot the 'catastrophe' as due the fact that 'we consist of individual nation states', and hints at the discredited, even by leftwingers, 'tragedy of the commons' hypothesis so adored by an earlier generation of environmental activists, a hypothesis named explicitly by The Communicator.

Towards the end, the clear hijacking of 'climate change' as a cloak to smuggle in 'sustainable development' is revealed.  But what, you may ask, is the cloak of 'sustainable development' smuggling in?  A Trojan horse for more government control perhaps, including some kind of supranational version? (please excuse my mixing of metaphors in one short paragraph!)

The Communicator:  '..we can turn kids into a whole bundle of little climate activists..'[at: 12:53-59]).  

Yes you can, but only some of them, some of the time, not all of them, all of the time.  You missed this one for example:
http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/fighting-from-bottom-pupil-strikes-back.html.

The Teacher: 'we have a moral duty to teach this'.  Your morality may well differ from mine, but that's diversity for you.

Overall, a dismal story.  ( for more 'dismal' on geography teaching in the UK: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/rotting-from-top-government.html )

But let us try to be more cheerful!  Imagine the same framework, but now with a disciple of Julian Simon as the professor and Matt Ridley as the communicator!  In this new version of the clip, they are sharing thoughts about how to convey to children the wonders of the world, and what transformations in the quality of life have been achieved, and how that progress is becoming worldwide now that China and India in particular have given private enterprise a little more freedom to thrive.  The abundance of resources could be illustrated by the shale oil and gas discoveries, and the sequential failures of forecasts of 'peak oil' , not to mention many other 'environmentalist' forecasts of doom refuted by simple or subsequent observations. The cleaner technologies of the most industrialised countries show how pollution can be reduced, and more efficient use made of materials and energy supplies.  The class will be encouraged to imagine how future generations might live, with the promise of destructive, stultifying large-scale poverty fading from the world.  What a planet!  They might come to decide, as does the lead character in a current London play called 'The Heretic', with a bit of hyperbole:

".. that people, not nature, are the real miracle of life. "I've decided that the stars are rubbish. ... The stars are God's mistakes. We are the miracle. Life. Human intelligence. Human innovation, creativity, invention. That is why, every night, the stars gaze down on us in awe."

Now to develop that idea would be radical.  And would seriously challange the establishment view that we must worship nature and hang on the every word of 'environmentalists', apparently in direct proportion to the level of alarm they can muster.  Why not just teach children about climate, how varied it has been in the past, and how it will no doubt continue to vary in the future?  On the way, explaining how industrial and agricultural progress is helping more and more people to reduce their vulnerability to weather events and to climate variation. To give more emphasis to climate science, another version of our remake could choose the professor from a long list of good candidates, such as Lindzen, Spencer, Carter, and many others of that noble ilk.  And the communicator chosen from Monckton, Nova, Delingpole, Montford, and many others of that also noble ilk.  It might be harder to find 'The Teacher' though, as I guess they are liable to get fired or demonised if they step aside from the establishment line on climate.  But somewhere, surely, in private schools at least there are many who could fit the part?  Or perhaps the teacher could be shown in silhouette, with a dubbed voice, to protect his or her identity.  That picture would, by itself, be educational.

Note added 04 May 2012: My original link to the video above no longer works and has now been removed.  A possibly later (October 2011) version of the video is available here: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/en-us/Resources/Item/105435/ks3-4-geography-teaching-climate-change#.T6PPlFKM58F

Paired Comparisons in Climate Claims: paired by credulity and context

How about these, side by side on the climate-classroom wall?

The intellectual problems of the alarmists, exposed by Jimbo in a comment at Notrickszone:

'A few things caused by global warming:

Warmer Northern Hemisphere winters due to global warming
Colder Northern Hemisphere winters due to global warming

Global warming to slow down the Earth’s rotation
Global warming to speed up the Earth’s rotation

North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty
North Atlantic Ocean has become more salty

Avalanches may increase
Avalanches may decrease

Plants move uphill due to global warming
Plants move downhill due to global warming

Monsoons to become drier in India
Monsoons to become wetter in India

Plankton blooms
Plankton decline

Reindeer thrive
Reindeer decline

Less snow in Great Lakes
More snow in Great Lakes

Gulf stream slows down
Gulf stream shows “small increase in flow“

San Francisco more foggy
San Francisco less foggy

Less winter snow for Britain
More winter snow for Britain '

Is 'climatology' really fit for use in schools?  Should there not be a watershed below which exposure to it is not advised, say 30 years of age.  Just about enough years to see through shoddy science and self-seeking spin?  Leaving schools, and universities, to concentrate on truth and understanding, and postponing the shoddy stuff to be dealt with in those later years.

Note added 11 Feb: Pierre Gosselin has compiled a longer list of them, using 4 more pairs posted in a later comment by Jimbo: http://notrickszone.com/2011/02/10/unfalsifiable-science-proof-of-climate-change/

Note added 16 Feb:  Another commenter has added even more pairs: http://notrickszone.com/2011/02/10/unfalsifiable-science-proof-of-climate-change/#comment-14480 , giving credit to John Bignell: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm): “A complete list of things caused by global warming”.

Good Advice for Teachers: 'Don’t be intimidated by false claims of “scientific consensus” or “overwhelming proof.”'

An open letter that would grace any classroom wall:

'February 8, 2011

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate:

In reply to “The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change”

On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to “take a fresh look at climate change.” Their intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host of cataclysmic climate-related problems.
We, the undersigned, totally disagree with them and would like to take this opportunity to briefly state our side of the story.
The eighteen climate alarmists (as we refer to them, not derogatorily, but simply because they view themselves as “sounding the alarm” about so many things climatic) state that the people of the world “need to prepare for massive flooding from the extreme storms of the sort being experienced with increasing frequency,” as well as the “direct health impacts from heat waves” and “climate-sensitive infectious diseases,” among a number of other devastating phenomena. And they say that “no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate,” which is understood to mean their view of what is happening to Earth’s climate.
To these statements, however, we take great exception. It is the eighteen climate alarmists who appear to be unaware of “what is happening to our planet’s climate,” as well as the vast amount of research that has produced that knowledge.
For example, a lengthy review of their claims and others that climate alarmists frequently make can be found on the Web site of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (see http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.php). That report offers a point-by-point rebuttal of all of the claims of the “group of eighteen,” citing in every case peer-reviewed scientific research on the actual effects of climate change during the past several decades.
If the “group of eighteen” pleads ignorance of this information due to its very recent posting, then we call their attention to an even larger and more comprehensive report published in 2009, Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). That document has been posted for more than a year in its entirety at www.nipccreport.org.
These are just two recent compilations of scientific research among many we could cite. Do the 678 scientific studies referenced in the CO2 Science document, or the thousands of studies cited in the NIPCC report, provide real-world evidence (as opposed to theoretical climate model predictions) for global warming-induced increases in the worldwide number and severity of floods? No. In the global number and severity of droughts? No. In the number and severity of hurricanes and other storms? No.
Do they provide any real-world evidence of Earth’s seas inundating coastal lowlands around the globe? No. Increased human mortality? No. Plant and animal extinctions? No. Declining vegetative productivity? No. More frequent and deadly coral bleaching? No. Marine life dissolving away in acidified oceans? No.
Quite to the contrary, in fact, these reports provide extensive empirical evidence that these things are not happening. And in many of these areas, the referenced papers report finding just the opposite response to global warming, i.e., biosphere-friendly effects of rising temperatures and rising CO2 levels.
In light of the profusion of actual observations of the workings of the real world showing little or no negative effects of the modest warming of the second half of the twentieth century, and indeed growing evidence of positive effects, we find it incomprehensible that the eighteen climate alarmists could suggest something so far removed from the truth as their claim that no research results have produced any evidence that challenges their view of what is happening to Earth’s climate and weather.
But don’t take our word for it. Read the two reports yourselves. And then make up your own minds about the matter. Don’t be intimidated by false claims of “scientific consensus” or “overwhelming proof.” These are not scientific arguments and they are simply not true.
Like the eighteen climate alarmists, we urge you to take a fresh look at climate change. We believe you will find that it is not the horrendous environmental threat they and others have made it out to be, and that they have consistently exaggerated the negative effects of global warming on the U.S. economy, national security, and public health, when such effects may well be small to negligible.
Signed by:
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, University of Alaska1
Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania
James Barrante, Southern Connecticut State University1
Richard Becherer, University of Rochester
John Boring, University of Virginia
Roger Cohen, American Physical Society Fellow
David Douglass, University of Rochester
Don Easterbrook, Western Washington University1
Robert Essenhigh, The Ohio State University1
Martin Fricke, Senior Fellow, American Physical Society
Lee Gerhard, University of Kansas1
Ulrich Gerlach, The Ohio State University
Laurence Gould, University of Hartford
Bill Gray, Colorado State University1
Will Happer, Princeton University2
Howard Hayden, University of Connecticut1
Craig Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Sherwood Idso, USDA, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory1
Richard Keen, University of Colorado
Doral Kemper, USDA, Agricultural Research Service1
Hugh Kendrick, Office of Nuclear Reactor Programs, DOE1
Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology2
Anthony Lupo, University of Missouri
Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute
Donald Nielsen, University of California, Davis1
Al Pekarek, St. Cloud State University
John Rhoads, Midwestern State University1
Nicola Scafetta, Duke University
Gary Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study
S. Fred Singer, University of Virginia1
Roy Spencer, University of Alabama
George Taylor, Past President, American Association of State Climatologists
Frank Tipler, Tulane University
Leonard Weinstein, National Institute of Aerospace Senior Research Fellow
Samuel Werner, University of Missouri1
Thomas Wolfram, University of Missouri1
1 – Emeritus or Retired
2 – Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Endorsed by:
Rodney Armstrong, Geophysicist
Edwin Berry, Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Joseph Bevelacqua, Bevelacqua Resources
Carmen Catanese, American Physical Society Member
Roy Clark, Ventura Photonics
John Coleman, Meteorologist KUSI TV
Darrell Connelly, Geophysicist
Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consulting Meteorologist
Terry Donze, Geophysicist1
Mike Dubrasich, Western Institute for Study of the Environment
John Dunn, American Council on Science and Health of NYC
Dick Flygare, QEP Resources
Michael Fox, Nuclear industry/scientist
Gordon Fulks, Gordon Fulks and Associates
Ken Haapala, Science & Environmental Policy Project
Martin Hertzberg, Bureau of Mines1
Art Horn, Meteorologist
Keith Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Jay Lehr, The Heartland Institute
Robert Lerine, Industrial and Defense Research and Engineering1
Peter Link, Geologist
James Macdonald, Chief Meteorologist for the Travelers Weather Service1
Roger Matson, Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists
Tony Pann, Meteorologist WBAL TV
Ned Rasor, Consulting Physicist
James Rogers, Geologist1
Norman Rogers, National Association of Scholars
Thomas Sheahen, Western Technology Incorporated
Andrew Spurlock, Starfire Engineering and Technologies, Inc.
Leighton Steward, PlantsNeedCO2.org
Soames Summerhays, Summerhays Films, Inc.
Charles Touhill, Consulting Environmental Engineer
David Wojick, Climatechangedebate.org
1 – Emeritus or Retired'

Letter in PDF form: TruthAboutClimateChangeOpenLetter

Thanks to: WUWT  


Note added later: Details of the 'Letter from the 18 alarmists' are given here, along with some powerful Fisking of them: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/04/pielke-sr-on-the-gang-of-18-letter-to-congress/

Fighting from the Bottom: a pupil strikes back against climate-cloaked indoctrination

A little flippant perhaps, but in this tiny act of defiance by what may be a 14-year old completing a 'climate questionnaire' I see a spark of hope:

 

Source: http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/clarkson-1-harrabin-black-shukman-0.html    

It would seem this was captured by someone while entering the children's responses into a computer.

For non-UK or non-TV viewers: Jeremy Clarkson is a charming free-thinker, decidedly averse to being told what to think by the PC brigade.  He leads an extremely popular tv-programme about cars (mostly).  He also writes articles for newspapers, such as this:

 

From The Sun, 29th January, 2011.  Hat-tip: http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7124  

A little humour is not amiss in the face of the all-but-relentless propaganda in the media for the establishment's take on climate variability, and how it can be exploited by governments and corporations alike - such as the WWF for example, or Greenpeace, or Goldman-Sachs, or, while it lasted, Enron.

Rotting from the Top: government interference in UK geography classes

2007: 'Children will be put on the front line of the battle to save the planet under radical proposals to shake up the way that geography is taught in schools.

The plans, to be published on Monday, will ensure that, for the first time, issues such as climate change and global warming are at the heart of the school timetable. Pupils will also be taught to understand their responsibilities as consumers - and weigh up whether they should avoid travel by air to reduce CO2 emissions and shun food produce imported from the other side of the world because of its impact on pollution.'

'Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said urgent action needed to be taken to avoid the worst-case scenarios and that educating children about the dangers of climate change was vital. "Children have a dual role as consumers and influencers," he said. "Educating them about the impact of getting an extra pair of trainers for fashion's sake is as important as the pressure they put on their parents not to buy a gas-guzzling family car."

The plans are part of a major review of the secondary school curriculum that will be unveiled by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Government's exams watchdog, next week.'

2011: 'Children’s knowledge of capital cities, continents, world affairs and the environment is in sharp decline because of poor geography lessons, inspectors warned today. 

In a damning report, Ofsted said teaching in the subject was not good enough in more than half of English state schools.

Geography – traditionally a cornerstone of the curriculum – is often undermined by a lack of space in school timetables after being edged out by exam practice and other subjects such as citizenship.'

That didn't take very long.  I wonder how convincing Johnson's 'influencers' are when challenged by those who have learned some geography, some science, some logic, and some common sense?

See also: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/02/climate-education-in-schools-mess-of.html

Added 09 Feb: Previous UK government issued a massive amount of guidance to schools: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/education/labour-s-advice-to-teachers-was-the-length-of-two-bibles--$21386565.htm