Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Monday 3 June 2013

'Facts, Not Fear': helping parents drive out fears of global catastrophe from children misled by their schools.



Amazon
Facts, Not Fear is inevitably out of date, so why promote it here? 

Since it was published in 1996 and 1999, the harm caused by environmental alarmism has arguably increased.  For example, in the UK we have seen a Labour government actively engage in promoting climate alarmism in schools, and the impact of diverting farmland to produce bio-fuels has been tragic on a large scale for the world's poorest people.  At the same time, the case for alarm over carbon dioxide has gone from weak to even weaker.  For example, global mean temperature has doggedly refuse to rise along with the continued rise in carbon dioxide levels, and the computer modellers have had to revise their talk, and their projections, to admit a lower ‘climate sensitivity’.

Even though the case for alarm may soon become widely recognised as inadequate as a basis for policy-making, or indeed most anything else, there will remain the task of cleaning up school curricula tainted by it, and doing something to help children disturbed by it.  This book provides an excellent starting point for both.  I hope the book will be updated and re-published, and it seems all but inevitable that it would be even more effective, relevant, and convincing if it were to be.

I shall do some more posts based on the book, and encourage readers to buy it pending that hoped-for new edition.

The book covers a lot of ground.  Here are the titles of the chapters and the appendices:

1.      A letter to parents. 
2.      Trendy schools.
3.      Last chance to save the planet.
4.      At odds with science.
5.      What are the costs?
6.      World population – will billions starve?
7.      Natural resources – on the way out?
8.      Canadian forests – a wasteland?
9.      The rain forest – one hundred acres a minute?
10.  North American wildlife – on the edge?
11.  Where have all the species gone?
12.  The air we breathe?
13.  A hotter planet?
14.  Sorting out ozone. 
15.  Acid rain. 
16.  Not a drop to drink? 
17.  Don’t eat that apple?
18.  A garbage crisis? 
19.  The recycling myth. 
20.  What we can do. 

A. Textbooks reviewed.
B. Environmental books for children
C. Books for a well-stocked environmental library
D. Academic and Scientific Advisory Panel

The primary authors are Michael Sanera, qualified in political science, and Jane S. Shaw, qualified in economics.  Two researchers at the Fraser Institute provided the customisation for the Canadian edition: Liv Fredricksen and Laura Jones.  Appendix D lists dozens of subject-matter experts who reviewed issue-specific chapters 6 to 19.

To give you an idea of the intentions and style of the authors, here are the last few paragraphs of Chapter 1, A Letter to Parents:  

'How can you give your children a more balanced view of environmental problems?  One way is gently to supply the information that is missing in their classrooms.  This book will give you the facts and insight into scientific controversies that are not covered in the textbooks.


Simply learning that reputable scientists often disagree with the claims of imminent catastrophe will keep your children from blindly fearing the future.  Such information will also help your children see that environmental science is a discipline that reflects scientific uncertainty and is open to continual discovery.  Your children can learn about environmental issues and develop their critical thinking skills at the same time.  As scientists do, they can collect the facts and see whether the theories that have been advanced actually fit the facts.


With this greater objectivity, students can also begin to think critically about the causes of environmental problems, and develop their understanding of human nature.  They won’t be so quick to accept the simplistic claims of catastrophic global destruction.  Your children will probably stop pestering you to take up the cause of the day, or at least they will be willing to consider that their crusade may not be for everyone.


Each chapter concludes with a few questions and answers that will help you summarise the information for your children.  Each also has activities that you and your children might like to read and perhaps try out.  The activities offer concrete evidence that supports the information in the chapter.  However, the activities are merely suggestions that make a richer experience out of a trip to the lumberyard, say, or the supermarket.  We recognise that you are a busy parent, with many goals other than teaching your children environmental science.


Unlike the authors of some environmental books for kids, we don’t expect you or your children to picket a fast-food restaurant or write a protest letter to your local politician.  We think your children should have a chance to learn about the environment rather than be mobilised into trendy campaigns.  This book will help them.’

I think it could.

Sunday 2 June 2013

'Facts, Not Fear': an excellent book for helping you to help your children deal with climate-scaremongering and other eco-propaganda.





Aimed at parents and teachers, this excellent book shows the way to take the sting out of the facile alarmism pushed at the young on climate and other fashionable eco-topics.  First published in 1996 in the States, 'Facts, Not Fear' is bristling not only with counter-arguments to defuse alarm, but also with a structure which could be readily adapted and built-upon for use elsewhere. 

Dozens of copies are available on Abebooks.

 

In 1999, an edition customised for use in Canada was published with lots of local examples to help readers engage with young people and encourage them to take a wider view than those typically presented by zealots promoting alarm for their cause of the day.  This edition is shown on the left and can be obtained via Amazon from various dealers.










I intend to share extracts from this book in further posts.

Note added 03/10/14:   The first three chapters are reproduced on line here:
 http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/facts_not_fear/

Sunday 26 May 2013

Climate Teachers: a quiz to pass around the staffroom

If your colleagues mostly read The Guardian and excoriate The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail, then they are likely to a) be seriously mis-informed about climate change and b) unlikely to have seen this quiz.

10 questions out of hundreds that could be constructed on similar lines are not too many to put someone intent on their coffee off trying them.  The two Tory opportunists in the picture may even provide motivation for them to have a go since I suppose a Guardian-reader will automatically be incensed by them.  In this case, for once, they would be right in their prejudice.

As a bonus poke in the eye, let them see the rest of the page carrying the quiz, but only after they have been softened up by it! 


Hat-tip: Fang Tentmate (email), and for the image, Not A Lot of People Know That.

Friday 24 May 2013

50 to 1 Project: still in with a chance of proceeding

 One thing we shall need for years to come is good quality materials to help repair the damage done in politics and in education by the past decades of overblown alarmism about CO2.  This video project promises to provide exactly that, and may yet manage to go ahead on a reduced budget.  Here is the latest update:



Donations by credit-card or PayPal can be made here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change

Note added 30 May 2013.  Good news - the project is going ahead!  Details here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change?c=activity

Note added 29 July 2013.  It looks like all the interviews and the studio-work  has been completed, and they are going flat-out on animation with a target release date of 'around about' 25th August.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIsBMM0m9Vc&feature=youtu.be

Sunday 19 May 2013

Carter Shreds the Climate Propaganda Pumped Out to Children for Decades


Prof Bob Carter shreds the case for alarm over CO2 and climate in this lecture from 2011, recently put on toYouTube. It is a public lecture on "Climate Context as a basis for Better Policy",
given at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, June 2011  (h/t http://spielclimate.blogspot.co.uk/ and through them https://twitter.com/Climate_con/statuses/336167271582035968)


This deserves the 'must-see' label!  Not only does he expose the shoddy science, he also exposes the shoddy policies and shoddy politicking and shoddy PR efforts that have thrived upon it.

This should be recommended viewing for every teacher in the world.

I also think there are seeds in this video for ideas that could be used as and when the 'authorities' get round to creating a decent curriculum on climate for schools.  That might have to precede publishers willing to risk new books aimed at the young, and suitable for schools, with a more realistic and optimistic view of our climate system and our impact on it.

That might include the fact that we have never been in a stronger position than we are now to cope with climate variations.  So parents might like to take the initiative and tell their children that.  There will be troubles ahead from climate, just as there have been in the past.  But we are more ready than ever before to handle them.  Our abundant supplies of affordable energy are part of that.

Tuesday 14 May 2013

‘Fifty to One’ sounds like it would make a good resource about climate policy for use in schools


As someone who has not been convinced that recent increases in CO2 are an important or dominating driver of the climate system, I find the speculations about temperature changes as promoted by the IPCC quite hard to get excited about.  However that is not the case with many influential or powerful people – they are very excited indeed, and want us all to put a stop to world development in a dramatic fashion.  Dramatic reductions in fossil-fuel consumption along with dramatic increases in the use of inefficient generation technology such as windturbines, will in my view increase the cost of energy supplies and thus make it harder to cope with climate variation in years to come.

The discussion of climate change is now so heated, and polarised, that it will take remarkable efforts for one side to get through to the other.  This proposed video, 50 to 1, is one such effort, or so it seems to me.  Remarkable because it will take the IPCC methods and use them to demonstrate that the actions proposed to ‘stop climate change’ are many times more expensive than those that would be involved in adapting to it.  About fifty time more, according to some!

The appeal has not reached the halfway mark in sums promised, and we are at the halfway mark of the appeal’s planned duration.  I hope all readers will consider donating.  Lots of small donations might inspire a few huge ones.


They will only be taken up if a sufficiently large sum is reached to enable the project to proceed.

Note added 30 May 2013.  Good news - the project is going ahead!  Details here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change?c=activity

Friday 10 May 2013

Children and Carbon Dioxide: don't let the zealots terrorise one by demonising the other.

'Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonisation of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.'

Extract from a Wall Street Journal piece by Harrison H. Schmidt and William Happer, 8th May, 2013.