Extraordinary Alarmist Propaganda Destined for Our Classrooms – Part 1

Posted: October 28, 2012 by tallbloke in books, climate, Incompetence, media, Politics, Uncertainty

I could hardly believe my eyes as I read this document from a supposedly reputable UK ‘science based’ agency. This is what people in positions of high trust and high public pay want to push into the minds of youngsters in Britain’s schools. The whole thing needs a thorough debunking, which we’ll undertake over a series of posts. When we’ve completed it, with references to scientific papers and the on the record statements of scientists, we’ll deliver this to the agency involved and report their response.  Here’s the opening section.

Climate change – the story for teachers
Questions that you need to be able to answer:

• Is the climate changing?
• What has caused the climate to change?
• How much do we expect the climate to change in future?

Since 1988, more than 3,000 climate scientists, ecologists, technologists and economists from round the
world have formed an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The view of this panel amounts to a
scientific consensus on climate change, its likely impacts and what we can do about it.

In Britain, the key science working group has its headquarters at the British Meteorological Office’s Hadley
Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

Scientific experts from around the world agree that, whatever we do now, significant climate
change is now unavoidable.

It will take decades to reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even then,
because natural systems take time to readjust, global warming is a phenomenon that will figure prominently
throughout the lives of children presently at school. This assumes that a concerted international effort will
help reduce the effects of climate change. Early signs are not encouraging! If we do nothing, timescales will
be reduced and the detrimental effects will be magnified.

Sea levels may continue rising for centuries.

Climate change facts
The climate change facts (resources download) are in large print and can be printed out on to coloured
paper or card to display in the classroom. Here they are for reference:

• Changes in our climate are real and are under way.
• The average global temperature over land in 2002 was around 1°C higher than at the end of the 19th
century.
• Warming in the 20th century was greater than at any time during the past 400 to 600 years.
• All ten of the hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. The warmest year since global records
began in 1860 was 1998; the second warmest was 2005, the third warmest 2002, the fourth warmest
2003 and the fifth warmest 2004.
• The record for the hottest day ever in Britain was broken on Sunday 10 August 2003 as temperatures
soared to 38.5°C in Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent.
• Mountain glaciers the world over are receding.
• The Arctic ice pack has lost about 40 per cent of its thickness over the past four decades.
• Global sea level has risen about three times faster over the past 100 years compared with the previous
3000 years.
• A growing number of studies show plants and animals changing their range and behaviour in response
to shifts in climate.

Consequences – general
Climate change will seriously disrupt our lives. While, on average, the globe will get warmer and receive
more precipitation, individual regions will experience different climatic changes, with different consequences
for the local environment. Among the most severe are:

• a faster rise in sea level;
• more heat-waves and droughts, resulting in more and more conflicts over water resources;
• more extreme weather events, producing floods and property destruction;
• a greater potential for heat-related illnesses and deaths, as well as the wider spread of infectious
diseases carried by insects and rodents into areas previously free from them.

If climatic trends continue unabated, global warming will threaten our health, cities, farms and forests,
beaches and wetlands, and other natural habitats.

Consequences – UK
• Climate change will have direct and indirect impacts in the UK. Over the next century, it is likely that the
UK will become warmer, sea levels will rise, rainfall and severe gales will increase, and there will be an
increased risk of flooding.
• An increased risk of flooding, storms and sea-level rise will have serious detrimental impacts on land
transport and marine operations. The provision of services across the UK can also be affected.
• In relation to public health, the secondary effects of climate change may result in increased air pollution
and a higher incidence of respiratory diseases associated with damp conditions.

Be part of the solution
Clearly, global warming is a grave problem. It will take everyone – governments, industry, communities, and
individuals – working together to make a real difference.
These are solutions that will help reduce global warming, and you can be a part of them.

But
• ‘Americans are driving more in less-efficient vehicles. Sales of sports utility vehicles and pick-up trucks
have been amazingly strong considering the recession, and low pump prices are keeping people on the
roads’ – Mike Lucky, analyst for John S Herold Inc, December 2001
• ‘One person flying in an airplane for one hour is responsible for the same greenhouse gas emissions as
a typical Bangladeshi in a whole year.’ – Beatrice Schell, European Federation for Transport and
Environment, November 2001
• ‘The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated [within 50 years] unless much more substantial
reductions in emissions are made than those envisaged’ – Jonathan Gregory, climatologist at the
University of Reading, April 2004, commenting on the fact that, upon melting, the world’s second largest
icecap could raise sea levels by seven metres, flooding most coastal regions. Plot this on an OS Map of
your nearest coastal area.

Comments
  1. Bryan says:

    I would just love to be a science teacher for these lessons.

    Lesson 1.

    Right class you have been given Micheal Mann’s famous hockey stick graph expanded for 1998 to 2012.
    Often used by the IPCC consensus opinion experts.

    On the same graph of predicted temperatures plot the real temperatures for this period.

    Examine the predicted as compared to actual temperatures.

    Conclusion

    Write a paragraph or two about the IPCC and Michael Mann.

    Lesson 2

    Right class you have been given tables for estimated total ice mass averaged per decade for the last 10 decades for ;

    Arctic Region
    Antarctic Region.

    Combine these tables to find the global ice mass per decade and complete a histogram of total ice mass versus time for the last century.

    Review statements about Ice given in the Agency handout

    Write a paragraph or two about the accuracy of the Agency material.

  2. Richard111 says:

    My layman comeback to all this ice melt is to get the discussion focused on ONE CUBIC METRE of ice and calculate the energy required to melt that ice. First from 0C and then from say -10C. Then discuss how many cubic metres in a cubic kilometre and the fact that 400,000 cubic KILOMETRES (minimum) need to melt to raise global sea levels by just one metre. All this ice must come from the land. Any ice in the sea has no effect. Then remind them that all this melting ice is at the poles where the sun don’t shine much. The numbers are staggering. For this to happen in 50 years the sun would have to nova.

  3. J Martin says:

    It is school children where internet blogs are NOT making inroads and indeed I would argue that no sceptic blog presents a beginners guide to the sceptic viewpoint for adults or kids.

    Sorry, but reading WUWT and Tallbloke’s blogs for instance is akin to wandering around lost in a wood unable to see the wood for the trees.

    My own conversion process not quite two years ago now, involved Googling sunspots which took me to sceptic websites which I had no idea even existed and every evening for 3 weeks I read about climate fraud, Yamal in particular. At first with complete disbelief but over time there was so much of it which was also backed up by dire predictions which had not come to pass, Hansen etc.

    I was and am still angry at the disinformation that I had been fed by irresponsible politicians and social climbing newspapers editors.

    What is needed is for a website initially aimed at adults but later make a glossy version aimed at kids. Start with the core facts to help give interested adults (and kids) an introduction into the reality of climate fraud and science. And yes, initially the fraud is more important than the science !

    Many will not understand the science but people do understand fraud, and mainstream climate science provides a target rich environment in that area; Hansen (air conditioning boast), Santer (IPCC), Mann (MWP etc), Tiljander, Yamal, then show a few simple graphs that graphically demonstrate that whilst co2 got a correlation with temperatures for about 30 years it didn’t before then and hasn’t done since. Then show that mainstream climate science (MSCS) is attempting to extend the period of correlation both before and after the 30 year period by reverting to yet more fraud, there are some very good graphs demonstrating this where we can see the machinations of NOAA and GISS in action.

    After that examine the wild and failed predictions of James ‘Yogi Bear’ Hansen (it must be the hat), and others, New York under water, co2 going up at 45 degrees but temperatures resolutely flat. The dire predictions about the Sahara, yet when a journalist revisited an are was stunned to find it had gone green with far more trees and grass. etc. etc.

    Then show hard evidence of co2 in action, the bubble of co2 over the Pacific which the MSCS models predicted would show as being warmer has been extensively measured by satellites and balloons (radiosondes) and turns out to be cooler, suggest reasons why, such as co2 displaces water vapour which of course is 7 times stronger greenhouse gas.

    Show the Japanese satellite evidence that shows that the Western World are not the co2 bad guys that the IPCC et al would have the World believe.

    Move on to debunking the misinformation that the newspaper headlines would have us believe, the nonsense about coral, sea levels, sea PH, hurricanes far from increasing are in fact at a record low, etc etc. Show that every newspaper front page that has been published is the exact opposite of what is really the case.

    Deal with so called record temperatures, look at more fraud in action, (keep it simple, remember, people do understand fraud) the removal of cold and country based temperature stations, the adjustment of colder country side measurements upwards to bring them in line with UHI based measurements, the opposite of what they should have done, mention the difference in area between the urban environment and the the non urban environment (1% V 99%).

    Look at the stuff the IPCC essentially ignore, clouds, oceans, the sun.

    Look at co2 and the increasing amount of evidence that it doesn’t perform as advertised, bring in Venus, the solar system is always good for firing up kids minds, use some of Bryce’s slides, there’s no end of available material.

    Look at the real future, show graphs of sunspots and the Maunder, Dalton, show the recent 2 year sunspot gap and show that even in that short two years we hit record low temperatures in the UK, (USA?). Show that that future has started and that there is no chance of runaway global warming, rather, steady global cooling.

    Show Livingston & Penn, and others, and dare I say it, Tim Channon (1), and Roger Andrews (2). Also show and mention other people and graphs (always always, keep it short, visual and simple), Habibullo Abdussamatov, etc.

    Show that there is a range of opinion about the forthcoming Landscheidt (3) minimum, near Dalton repeat, between Dalton and Maunder, deeper than the Maunder, etc.

    Show that global cooling will be the real problem, in the last ice age (that’s the phrase ‘the people’ use, although science prefers ‘glaciation’), the tree line dropped down to France and was just North of the Mediterranean, state how much further south of that tree line you have to go before you can grow wheat.

    Point out that when, not if, that happens something like a billion well armed people from the Northern hemisphere will need to move South, probably into South America and Africa, where the existing population may not exactly welcome this invasion, and indeed in a colder World, food growth will be reduced and so the planet may need to lose at least half or perhaps more of it’s population, this will no doubt be a bloody process, quite simply it will be us or them. Brutal but inevitable.

    Short, simple, clear, visual, is the essential key. Don’t shy away from showing the fraud that has taken place and is if anything increasing, people DO understand fraud.

    Most people didn’t do well at school, most people are not academically minded, people turn off if something is long winded, needs thought, has no graphics, indeed the graphics should be capable of delivering the message without any need for explanation wherever possible.

    But certainly include links to original articles and other more detailed articles for those who want to delve further.

    The trouble is who has the time to do all this, and the resources ? Few, if any of us I would think.

    If someone (a group) could produce something good enough that perhaps could get into kids social media underground that bypassed the teachers and normal media and that then had the possibility to go ‘viral’ (that modern buzzword), then perhaps truth, common sense and reality might have a chance of being heard amongst that mass of people and probably far more importantly the next generation of voters.

    OK I will have missed loads of stuff, and I haven’t dealt with (1,2,3), but another day perhaps. Time for another coffee on this as usual miserable English Sunday morning.

  4. tallbloke says:

    Good stuff J Martin. I think you have a good handle on what is needed to counter the disinformation being bandied around by alarmists like John Hirst of the MET Office, and others in positions of influence.

    Make their unsupported alarmism clear and call them on it.

  5. clivebest says:

    Perhaps this is actually part of the new Religious Education syllabus ? The dogma of papal IPCC infallibility ! Repent now and follow our path or else the wrath of Gaia will descend you deniers unleashing biblical floods, plagues of mosquitos, and the fires of hell !

  6. Richard111 says:

    Lucy Skywalker has made a good try http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk//Science/Curious.htm

  7. Ceri Phipps says:

    Greenland Ice sheet gone in 50 years? I make that 14cm sea level rise per year. Alarmist nonsense.

  8. Mike Fowle says:

    This indoctrination is disgusting. But it feeds into children’s viewpoints – a sense of idealism, priggish superiority to their parents (thanks mom and dad for screwing up the world for me – as I think P J O’Rourke put it) and so on. But J Martin’s notion of a blog aimed to inform children seems a good idea.

    Further thought. Some historical perspective on extreme weather events might help to dispel the current hysteria that it’s all only happening now. Pictures (and film footage where available) would be of interest in itself.

  9. TinyCO2 says:

    The stuff above makes me so angry, not least because any kid who does try and be the voice of reason will be penalised by the teacher.

    J Martin

    I could be wrong but I suspect Anthony Watts has something like you described planned – see Monday’s news.

  10. Magnum says:

    Ref: J Martin
    If you go to Jo Nova’s site, she has compiled the Skeptics Handbook which should fulfil your basic information requirements.
    Perhaps somone needs to remind this Science based agency that the climate always changes and it’s very little to do with mankind!!

  11. J Martin says:

    Richard111 :- Many thanks for that. It seems an excellent resource for teens and above.

    Magnum :- Also thanks for that. I have managed to download a short pdf and it seems there is a book, but I haven’t yet found a link to buy a copy.

    I think I will also buy a copy of Ian Plimer’s book “How to get expelled from school”

  12. suricat says:

    TinyCO2 says: October 28, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    “The stuff above makes me so angry, not least because any kid who does try and be the voice of reason will be penalised by the teacher.”

    I concur! I’ve helped my grandchildren with their “Climate Change” homework in the past, and they were penalised for using ‘other information’ and not responding to the ‘given data’.

    This isn’t the way to educate pupils that study a ‘science’ subject, pupils should be praised for their personal research on a subject within the field of science. Penalty, in this instance, only inferred the inability of a pupil to learn by ‘rote’ (repetitious instillation/installation of a fixed mantra to memory) and is the antitheses of a ‘prerequisite’ for a student of any science discipline.

    There’s something wrong with the curriculum here.

    Best regards, Ray.

  13. […] Extraordinary Alarmist Propaganda Destined for Our Classrooms – Part 1 […]

  14. John Shade says:

    Good to see this being exposed, but where does the orginal document come from? Can you give a link to the source? Thanks!