Essay by Eric Worrall
My question – where is the climate class action lawsuit on behalf of kids who suffered mental health damage at the hands of climate educators?
‘How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?’: research reveals what Australian kids want to know about our warming world
Published: March 21, 2024 6.04am AEDT
Chloe Lucas Lecturer and Research Fellow, School of Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences. Coordinator, Education for Sustainability Tasmania, University of Tasmania
Charlotte Earl-Jones PhD Candidate, University of Tasmania
Gabi Mocatta Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures Program, University of Tasmania, and Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University
Gretta Pecl Professor, at IMAS and Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania
Kim Beasy Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of Tasmania
Rachel Kelly Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Future Ocean and Coastal Infrastructures (FOCI) Consortium, Memorial University, Canada, and Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania
Every day, more children discover they are living in a climate crisis. This makes many children feel sad, anxious, angry, powerless, confused and frightened about what the future holds.
…
Research and public debate so far has largely failed to engage with the voices and opinions of children – instead, focusing on the views of adults. Our research set out to change this.
We asked 1,500 children to tell us what they wanted to know about climate change. The results show climate action, rather than the scientific cause of the problem, is their greatest concern. …
In Australia, research shows 43% of children aged 10 to 14 are worried about the future impact of climate change, and one in four believe the world will end before they grow up.
…
The largest group of these questions (15%) asked for predictions of future events. Some 5% of questions implied the planet, or humanity, was doomed. They included:
Will all the reefs die?
How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?
How long will we be able to survive on our planet if we do nothing to try to slow down/reverse climate change?
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-long-before-climate-change-will-destroy-the-earth-research-reveals-what-australian-kids-want-to-know-about-our-warming-world-226122
The abstract of the study;
Analysis of children’s questions on climate change reveals that they are most concerned about how to take action
Chloe H. Lucas,Charlotte A. Earl-Jones, Gabi Mocatta, Kim Beasy, Rachel Kelly, Gretta T. Pecl
Summary
Children across the world are facing physical, emotional, and social impacts of climate change. Despite burgeoning scientific and political climate discourse, the voices and opinions of children are underrepresented, as previous research has focused on the opinions of adults. This lack of representation contributes to feelings of disempowerment and betrayal. We investigate children’s priorities for climate knowledge, reporting on questions asked by approximately 1,500 Australian school students as part of a climate literacy engagement project. They reveal remarkable depth of consideration about climate change, with a stronger focus on impacts and action than on scientific causes. “What can we do?” was the core concern of 40% of questions, which often emphasized individual responsibility. Urgency and frustration were evident in questions about climate impacts posing an existential threat to life. Findings demonstrate the importance of considering children’s valid concerns when making decisions that affect their education, well-being, and future.
Read more: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00100-3
Thankfully some kids may be quietly receiving advice from parents or grandparents not to attend climate marches or commit acts of eco-terrorism.
… Social hierarchies perpetuated through family, school, and media norms support children making individual choices within existing systems but also delegitimize collective action that might disrupt these systems. This tension is described by Karsgaard and Davidson, who document a participatory research project involving 99 school students from 13 countries that led to the presentation of a white paper on childhood climate citizenship to the IPCC. The authors found that while the children participating in their project most often saw climate change as an issue of justice, they were limited in their ability to imagine different ways of dealing with this issue by the dominant framings of individualized responsibility and government leadership. Despite their age, children felt responsible for their participation in economic systems that damage the environment: “When describing how they might act to address climate change and climate injustices, students tended toward individualist behaviors in response to a deep sense of guilt over consumptive practices” …
Read more: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00100-3
How did we let this education disaster happen?
There is zero chance anthropogenic climate change in the foreseeable future will make the world uninhabitable for humans. The proof is that our monkey ancestors thrived in a much hotter world. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned.
If a bunch of monkey ancestors with brains the size of matchboxes could figure out how to thrive in a hothouse world, we could certainly manage.
Having said that, it is doubtful if anthropogenic CO2 could recreate anything like the hothouse conditions of the PETM, even if we burned every scrap of recoverable fossil fuel on the planet. Not only is the CO2 band of the atmosphere almost completely saturated, which severely limits the impact of additional CO2 on global temperature, the Earth has experienced significant geological changes since the PETM such as the establishment of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current 33 million years ago, which continues to exert a substantial cooling effect on the global climate. The Earth’s current geology is currently aligned so strongly against warming, from a geological perspective we are in the middle of an ice age, the Quaternary Glaiciation.
But kids are not being taught this basic science, this unequivocal proof that even if global warming occurs, global warming is not a threat to human survival and prosperity.
What really outraged me, a sizeable fraction of kids (1 in 4) believe the world will end before they grow up. Some of them feel guilty about “consumptive practices” they believe are wrecking the planet, which presumably includes eating meat and other high carbon, high calorie foods which kids need to develop to their maximum potential. Even worse, those children have been made to feel a deep sense of responsibility – even though, as kids, they have very little responsibility for the state of the planet.
How many of those one in four kids who believe the world is about to end will turn to hard drugs or other self destructive behaviours, to escape the pain and guilt and feelings of responsibility, which have been inflicted on them by climate educators? Because we know climate despair is driving kids to abuse hard drugs: Leading rehab specialist Dr Wodak (retired), testified in a government inquiry in 2019 that fear of climate change is a major motivation for kids giving up on life.
How many of those 73,000+ people who die of Fentanyl overdoses every year in the United States, were kids whose climate educator convinced them there was no point trying to pursue life, liberty and happiness?
Future generations will look on our era of “climate education” as an age of collective child abuse, and will wonder why nobody stood up to the abusers and put a stop to it. Because there will be a tomorrow, and a day of reckoning.
Perhaps it will be the kids themselves who put a stop to educational child abuse, by suing schools and education authorities for lying to them about the dangers posed by global warming, and causing them to make harmful life choices. This outrageous situation is just begging for a smart lawyer to launch the mother of all class actions, on behalf of drug addicts and mental health patients whose lives were ruined by climate educators.
There will be a a tomorrow and a day of reckoning, even if 1 in 4 of the kids who will one day participate in that reckoning do not currently believe that there will be a tomorrow.
“Well son, it’s before you turn 16.” Let’s not now, in the midst of millions of turning points activating, be reticent to scare the little b…..s to death.
Absolutely despicable!
Outrageous!
Lying to little kids, and scaring them to death for political/monetary gain!
I can’t see how anyone is surprised by this.
The CAGW crowd, government, public school system, mainstream media, UN and any number of other organizations have been pumping this crap into our heads 24/7 for decades. It is not only children who are scared.
Here is the problem, if you accuse anyone of saying these things they fall all over themselves denying it. Technically most of them don’t say the world will end but some do. The problem is that when someone says something like that no one on the other side corrects them. That is why so many people are scared.
Problem is, we are not allowed to correct them. We are censored and ridiculed. The message is quickly shuttled down the memory hole.
Color me unimpressed. 6 authors to get an N of 1500? Feeble. While a senior partner at BCG, I would assign two junior consultants to do a client customer survey and they would produce N=1500 in a week. And that with much more complex/longer survey questions enabling a full conjoint analysis mapping a market segmentation.
And only 43% were somewhat climate concerned? That means 57% weren’t at all.
And only 25% of the 43% think climate change means they won’t make it to adulthood? The parents of those 11% of sampled school kids need to be contacted, because those poor kids definitely need help. Maybe their parents, also. And probably their school teachers also.
Reminds me of Bill McKibben declaring he wouldn’t get married because climate change meant his potential children would have no future—before he got married and had two kids. Virtue signaling seems strong until it isn’t.
Did Bill say that when he realized hadn’t scored
in many yearsever?And in Tasmania, no less.
One place I have been several times in winter…
.. guess what… it’s darn cold. !!
This “study”‽ is beyond parody !
remembering Tassie is the CORE state of the greentard movements and Bob Brown save the franklin etc etc
And here in Canada the climate insanity is extra dense, extra shrill, in spite of the obvious advantages of the mythical global warming would have to my country. Politically it’s extra stupid: the climate champion Justin “black-face” Trudeau refuses to stop a scheduled increase in the carbon tax in spite of the terrible economy, that he is greatly responsible for.
No sympathy for the people from Trudeau.
I suggest that the new movie ” Climate The Movie” by shown in all schools like Al Gore’s propaganda show was. The cure for fear caused by lies is truth. I only have a small number of folks I know well but none of them accept this Climate Crisis narrative. There must be some schools and teachers willing to give these kids the truth.
The curriculum in some places makes climate education with rigorously proscribed material mandatory, along with tests and reviews. A teacher who tries to moderate the message by say inserting their own observations is risking their job, especially if they are denounced by a climate zealot colleague. You can’t say try to take kids into your confidence because as soon as one of the kids spills this detail to another trusted adult you’ll be investigated as a pedo – “this is our secret” is what child groomers do.
Teachers who hate themselves for what they are doing suffer a horrible choice: Grit their teeth and try to do what they can to mitigate the damage without getting into too much trouble, or leave the job and leave the true believer zealots in charge of everything.
especially if they are denounced by a climate zealot colleague
Sounds East German
The radical Left might as well be called a bunch of Nazis, because they act just like them. Or communists. There’s not much difference. They are both totalitarian and destructive and radical Democrats are following in their footsteps.
true. and Vic alone is short 5k teachers. the ones who wont lie for the agenda are maybe why the shortfall .
A few years back, I participated in a Career Day at a local elementary school. After my talk about hurricanes and weather, the teacher asked me as an aside if climate change was something to be worried about. I assured him that it wasn’t, and he seemed greatly relieved. I suspect there are a lot of teachers who don’t buy into the alarmism, but feel unsupported in speaking out about it.
I appreciated the climate the movie . BUT while we oldies liked the scenes of past they used at unis streets etc kids now? will laugh at it. they wont relate and will see it as “old shit” and wont absorb the message because its not new shiny bright etc
“I suggest that the new movie ” Climate The Movie” by shown in all schools like Al Gore’s propaganda show was.”
A link to “Climate the Movie” should be supplied as rebuttal every time a climate alarmist claim is made. The movie debunks all the climate alarmist claims. Nothing else is needed.
It broke my wife’s heart when talking about career aspirations, one of our grandkids up and said –
“no point Gramma, we’re already screwed”.
You are in a position to try to undo the damage, providing the parents aren’t climate zealots.
We try resolutely Eric, to the point of encouraging them to consider alternatives to graduate degree studies such as seeking apprenticeships and universally recognised trade qualifications.
Struck some positive interest by asking –
“would you prefer to keep going to school for another 3 or 4 years after high school, or instead take a paid job with hands-on training and qualifications that you can use just about anywhere in the world?”
Electrical / electronics and world travel are the current ambitions of the eldest girl.
“Electrical / electronics and world travel are the current ambitions of the eldest girl”
Explain to her that EVERY facet of electronics, world travel etc are totally reliant of fossil fuels..
I think they’re over the whole wokeness debates frankly Bnice2000.
They just want to look forward to a quality, independent, enjoyable life, without constantly being told from all directions what they’re allowed to say, do, think, approve of, disagree with.
They know they’re being fed party-lines, but I suspect their strategy is to just keep their heads low, and hope they’ll be past it in a few years.
I would love to think there will be a 1960s style youth revolt and rejection of “the Establishment”.
(even though I won’t be around to participate again . . . )
“… universally recognised trade qualifications…”
I wish there were more people learning trades here in Wokeachusetts. It’s almost impossible to find a plumber, electrician and especially carpenters. If you find one they think they deserve the fees of lawyers.
“If you find one they think they deserve the fees of lawyers.” Some are worth more. When asked for advice on career direction by someone who has no special aspiration for their life’s work I always direct them to the trades and tell them manual skills will soon be extinct but the need for them will never go away.
Simple economics of supply and demand in the case of artisans and a closed shop in the case of lawyers
Get her a 20 in One Arduino kit. I just finished teaching a 6 month course for teenagers on Arduino robotics and programming, by the end of the course every kid had built their own robot out of wood, and several of the kids were researching and building their own projects.
Thanks Eric, you’re an epic time-saver.
She has a birthday in 3 weeks, so it’s just ordered and on its way.
Ta muchly.
Welcome Mr. When she wants materials for her own projects Arduino stuff on eBay is really cheap. The main reason for buying the kit is support when you first start learning.
Ifixits got a lot of stuff on arduino there and raspberry Pi as well from memory
Sanity Check Time!
This is a beer mat calculation. It uses only factual data, recognised by the IPCC. Even 10 – 14 year old kids can do this Arithmetic.
Assuming anthropogenic CO2 is 100% responsible for warming, how long before mankind’s emissions double from 280ppm in 1850 to 560ppm at which point global temperatures are predicted to reach a catastrophic 2ºC above preindustrial?
How much CO2 has mankind emitted since 1850:
1850 atmospheric CO2 levels: 280ppm (parts per million) (Vostok Ice Core).
2024 atmospheric CO2 levels: 420ppm. (Mauna Loa observatory)
3% being mankind’s contribution to the Carbon Cycle (IPCC)
Subtract 280ppm from 420ppm = 140ppm divided by 174 years (2024 – 1850) = average of 0.8046ppm annual total increase of CO2.
Mankind is responsible for 3% of that CO2: 0.8046ppm x 3% = 0.0241ppm.
How long before mankind’s CO2 contributions take to raise CO2 levels from 420ppm (today) to 560ppm.
560ppm – 420ppm = 140ppm ÷ 0.0241ppm = 5,809 years
That was easy. But there’s more:
To establish how much we would alleviate warming by 2050 (26 years’ time) if we eliminate 100% of mankind’s CO2 emissions today:
2ºC ÷ 5,809 years x 26 years = 0.009ºC.
What is that per annum?
0.009 ÷ 26 = 0.0003ºC per annum.
Remember, these are not my numbers, they are the numbers climate alarmists are evangelical about.
Nor am I attempting to prove whether CO2 causes warming or not, I’m accepting what the extreme alarmists contend, that anthropogenic CO2 is 100% responsible for warming. I don’t believe it, but they do.
Charles the Moderator refused me doing an article on this because it was an average from 1850 – 2024 and he told me the rates of change of CO2 were exponential. Fair enough. But you can do the calculation based on Mauna Loa data from ~1960 when the rate of CO2 increase is pretty linear and it still turns out to be hundreds of years.
It’s also a sanity check, it’s not a scientific calculation down to the last micron. And I also give the climate alarmists the benefit of the doubt and ignore the effect of the Sun, Solar winds, Clouds, UHI and every other variables which are never calculated in to their claims anyway.
if you do X can you post that there? im only allowed a tiny wordlimit, but thats excellent even if you call it rough.people NEED to see stuff like this. Im posting links to try n get people to come here n read more too.
Help yourself.
“560ppm – 420ppm = 140ppm ÷ 0.0241ppm = 5,809 years” (for manmade CO2 emissions to add 140 ppm to the atmosphere)
HotSpud, perpetually stuck on stupid
The current CO2 rise rate of +2.5 ppm a year, entirely from manmade CO2 emissions, would cause a +140 ppm rise in 56 years, not 5,809 years
Charles blocked your article because he is smart, and you are dumb.
Only stupid people claim 3% of the atmospheric CO2 had manmade origins, when the right percentage is about 33%. Please stop being stupid and embarrassing yourself and fellow conservatives
At a +2.5ppm a year rise rate, atmospheric CO2 will take 168 years to double from 2023’s 420 ppm, to 840 ppm
The rise of the global average temperature from that CO2 x 2 change will be from 0.75 to +1.5 degrees C. based on predictions by “skeptic” scientists without the exaggerated claim of a strong water vapor positive feedback used by Global Whiners
The CO2 is 97% Natural Nutters deserve the insults I decided to aim at them in 2023. They are stuck on stupid, contradicting almost 100% of the “skeptic” scientists — Ph.D.’s who harmed their own reputations by trying to help us fight CAGW scaremongering.
Under 1% of them believe the insane CO2 is 97% natural myth. Richard Lindzen does not believe that myth. Willam Happer does not believe that myth. Just ignorant science deniers like HotSpud believe that myth.
Have a Nice Day
If you want to continue spouting your junk science, why not join the leftist Climate Howlers. They love junk science.
Richard Greene
(BS, MBA)
2023 WUWT down vote champion
(replaced Griff)
It is a proven fact that the human emissions of CO2 are only about 3-5% of total emissions. NATURAL emissions make up the rest.
DENIAL of basic facts is all dickie-nutter has to support his egotistical anti-science AGW/leftist cultism.
Again.. dickie, the AGW-nutter produces nothing but blustering… his only way of communicating with the world.
Please stop being so incredibly stupid.. you are embarrassing even your AGW-cult comrades.
—
btw.. Did you know there is no isotopic evidence of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere?
Or is actual measured science beyond your ability to comprehend.
You are failing to count for the fact that nature absorbs pretty much 100% of what nature generates. That’s why the CO2 levels stay constant for millenia at a time.
Had man never started burning fossil fuels, CO2 levels would still be around 280 to 300ppm. Everything above those levels, man was responsible.
As to the warming that started 200 years ago, It hasn’t been long enough for that to warm the oceans enough to release more than a tiny amount of CO2.
The calculation isn’t intended to be definitive. It’s something that can be stuck under the nose of an alarmist and they can’t refute it because it’s their numbers I use.
That’s impossible to prove.
Your average alarmist hasn’t the first clue about that. Most of them don’t know how much CO2 is in our atmosphere.
“nature absorbs pretty much 100% of what nature generates. “
So that means it must absorb pretty much 100% of what humans generate… no way it can tell the difference.
What humans generate is a small fraction of what nature generates.
Keep thinking.. you might get there…. then you will realise why there is no isotopic evidence of human CO2.
Just don’t bother listing to dickie.. you don’t want to become that dumb.
Yes, the natural CO2 cycle is much larger but the scientists estimate that the emissions are about the same as the sinking – and in fact if you look at various production reports and measure how much CO2 humans produce in a year and convert it to how many extra ppm’s it would produce on it’s own – it works out to 4-5 ppm. But the amount only goes up by 2 to 3 a year, so nature is a)ready absorbing half of our emissions and keeping up with humanity as the total emissions keep rising. (The yearly ppm increase is a little more than it was 50 years ago but human emissions are many times multiplied)
Charles didn’t refuse my article because the numbers were wrong. Read what I posted dummy.
Direct me, please, to where I said I believed anything?
BTW, you couldn’t lick Griff’s boots. 🤡🤣
I think your article was rejected because your premises and math were screwy.
You started off by saying assume 100% attribution of warming to manmade CO2, but then pull a figure of 3% out of thin air.
And the IPCC are expecting about 5°C of warming because of their inflated feedbacks affecting the inflated measurements
Anyways, CO2 is increasing about 2ppm or so a year (goes up by 10ppm October to April, and comes down by 8 May to September ) and it’s interesting that human emissions would actually contribute 4ppm but mother Nature rises to the challenge and sucks up half of our emissions, assuming that the natural CO2 is in some kind of magical Jedi balance.
560 ppm is 140 ppm away, 70 years.
It’s weird that the Keeling CO2 curve hasn’t gone exponential after the 2000 rise of China, India, so many other countries that actually want to prosper, unlike the suicide squad that runs most 1st world nations.
The past ~50 years has only produced a bit over 3/4 of a °C, or about .15°C/decade. Even rounding up to 0.2° means not quite 1.5°C by 76 years from now, 2100.
Big whoop – Inuits still won’t need freezers.
If the western world continues down the idiotic anti-everything Net-Zero pathway…
… then yes.. your future is most definitely “screwed”.
Your very actions are destroying what is, and creating what will be a hard and dismal future for your generations.
Actually teaching the kiddies real science would be too simple, rather than the current Lysenkoist fear p@rn.
Well, according to leftist progressives, math is racist. STEM is discriminatory against those of lesser intellectual abilities. And college student loans should still be forgiven for those who never studied anything useful because they flunked high school math and therefore couldn’t do college STEM.
Up is down, left is right, and feelings rule over logic. Not going to end well.
Rud, the new thing is STEAM – you have to have Arts too now.
In the year 2525…you know the song!
I’m almost ’70.
When I was a kid nukes were going to take us all out. (Genuine threat. Cuban missle crisis and all that.)
Today, they scare kid’s about the weather. They’re to young to have a clue about what the word “climate” really means or if the weather was better or worse or when before they were born.
Without going into “old timer” stories about having to walk uphill to and from school, I remember them calling for High School volunteers to help put out grass fires in Devou Park in Northern Kentucky.
(I wanted to help but I was in Grade School. and of the age where my friend’s Dad was burning out the dead grass in his yard and we had fun placing plastic army men in front of the flames. I likely would have had a pocket full of army men and not much help.)
Years later, I was in the middle of “The Great Blizzard of ’78”.
Some winters have been colder than others (’78). Some have been warmer.
Some summers have been hotter (and sometimes wetter) than others. Some summers have been cooler )and sometimes drier) than others.
My lifetime with my experiences and the weather events I’ve seen is not long enough to personally experience what they want call “Climate Change”.
The weather changes year by year. Man’s CO2 has little or less than little to do with it.
Don’t be fools.
Honest scientist aren’t claiming “The Science is Settled”. Politicians, Political Scientist and agenda driven MSM are the only ones making that claim.
(Along with those out to make a few bucks by jumping on the Junk Wagon. (Solyndra CEO’s for example.))
PS As I said, I’m almost ’70. I haven’t lived long enough to detect actual and genuine “Climate Change”. I’d have to be Methuselah for my experiences to be even close to valid.
Don’t let them fool you into thinking weather changes from year to year in your lifetime is “Climate Change”.
“When I was a kid nukes were going to take us all out. (Genuine threat. Cuban missle crisis and all that.)”
I recall the same thing, some of the neighbors were building “fallout shelters”, and we
had bomb drills at school, getting on the floor under the desk. I asked my dad if we
were going to build a fallout shelter, he paused for a moment and said no. Then he
went further and said if the missiles start flying he was going to get his baseball glove
and go out and catch the first one that flew in because the world wouldn’t be worth
living in after if a nuke blewup. I still have a metal drum from one of the fallout shelters.
The kids today are being seriously indoctrinated by our public education system. Sad.
I regret when I was a kid asking those around me what their life was like.
My Mom’s uncle was one of Patton’s translators.
One of my uncles was in the 82nd airborne in WW2. (Not Normandy but he was in “The Battle of the Bulge”.
His twin was in Burma. After WW2, he stayed to spy on the French. (Family rumors were that he was OSS. Don’t know. But he sent one of Dad’s friend’s a postcard saying, “The Falcon falls at Midnight” a couple of weeks before the Berlin Wall fell. He and my Dad were pranksters.)
I worked with an Italian WW2 vet that fought at Stalingrad and, after Italy surrendered, ended up in Dachau. He told me stuff I won’t get into.
I’ve lived through that time in my life when I thought my opinions were, somehow, new and superior to my elders.
Some of that might be, but I doubt much of it actually “new”.
“Been there. Done that. Threw away the T-Shirt.”
Point being, we oldsters were also once young. Your “attitudes” are nothing new, nothing we didn’t experience.
We’ve just learned to be more discerning when someone tries to sell us a used car.
“I regret when I was a kid asking those around me what their life was like.”
I hope it was oblivious, but that should be,
“I regret when I was a kid NOT asking those around me what their life was like.”
A PS my step-grandfather came to the US between the wars.
I remember him talking about when the price of a glass of beer went from 4,000 to 8,000 marks in one day.
I always treasured time spent with my elders. Some had it easy
but a number endured very tough times. My Uncle George was
a veteran of The Battle of Corregidor and survived The Bataan
Death March. He never talked about it-never once. His wife,
my dads older sister told me about it in detail at his funeral. Another
uncle was an ace fighter pilot flying a P-38, he was still a pilot
when I first met him and he did speak about his time in service.
My dad was a Korean veteran and died 100% disabled at 51.
One doesn’t have to walk too far down the street to see someone
you wouldn’t want to trade places with…kids today are a bit soft..
A friend of my Dad was also an Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat MD.
I went to him for my first pair of glasses.
He also survived The Bataan Death March. He wrote a book about it and his time as a POW.
I read it but don’t have a copy of it.
One more missed opportunity to learn some history from those who lived it.
I do remember from the book that how bad it was often depended on who was the Japanese Commander of the section they were marching in. His would sometimes make his troops walk and let the prisoners ride the truck. (Maybe because that section contained more MDs and officers?)
When I was a kid, in the 1960s, we too had the nuke drills. Crawled under the desks. I remember looking at the back wall of the school room, nothing but windows and wondered how being under a desk would do any good.
We also had tornado drills, although I have not idea if that town ever had a tornado. That aside, in the tornado drills, we were moved into the hallways. The walls were cinderblocks floor to ceiling.
To this day I wonder why tornadoes were considered more hazardous than nuclear explosions.
Fun 78 blizzardo story. My then wife and I were slated to go to the newish Munich office of BCG back when I was a mere manager in the Boston office, for at least two years because I was an AFS German high school exchange student, so already spoke rudimenatry German. (Duh). The blizzard of 78 hit Boston very hard three weeks before we were to depart, and before we had finally sold our US station wagon and dinghy sailboat. Took a week to dig out, but we got her done in the end with much reduced prices. Ouch.
But loved the following near six year based in Munich. We both rapidly became very fluently bilingual, and enjoyed touring all of Europe. (A intense year of German language 2 hr per day tutoring plus full immersion does that.) We learned three of four German dialects: Hoch Deutsch (Prussian), Swabisch, Bayerische ( close enough to Austrian German to serve). We never mastered spoken Schwitzerdeutsche, although could read and write it fine. (Bavarian joke, in Bayerische: “Schwitzerdeusche ist also eine Krankhalkeit [throat disease].)
My wife enjoyed visiting Italy so much via the Brenner Pass that after she got her German Dolmetscher certificate (fluent certified bilingual translation per German Government, took 2.5 years) she learned fluent Italian so we could have fun there also. I stuck with my just OK high school/college French, so we had fun there also. And of course, almost everybody in Europe has English as the second language, so we were never out of pocket language wise . Just delighted a bunch of natives by conversing in theirs, not ours.
😎
Where I was in Ohio in ’78, we had a few staff members about, in rural flat country, 5 miles away that were cut off. Communication was via CB radio. They had no power. No water. No heat.
We sent out what we had. A backhoe, a dump-truck with a snow plow and an extended cab “5th wheel” pickup to bring them our people back.
It took them 8 hours to make it about a quarter mile down the road.
We ended up bringing them back via snowmobiles. Which was itself dangerous. (Visibility? What’s that?) This was during the blizzard. (The snow and drifts had obliterated the landmarks some of us drove everyday.)
Fun Blizzard of 78 additional story. We were renting a nice second story condo in a nice complex just south of the Boston beltway. Ours faced west. After the blizzard, we had snow up onto our west balcony, The first floor unit was buried 18 feet deep in a drift.
I have similar memories of 1963 gradual build up of snow against both front and back doors, they both faced the same way, until we could no longer dig ourselves out. So restorted to climbing in and out of the coal hatch which remained clear.
My elder brother was sitting his Highers later that year so he went the 4 miles to the bus where the roads were kept clear our side road to nowhere was way down the priority list and stayed with friends during the week.
Sledging (tobogganing) at night when the snow that had melted slightly and then frozen into ice was real fun, unfreezing pipes the next morning not so much.
By the end we’d burnt just about all our stockpile of wood, coal and peat and were just about to take emergency measures like sawing branches from the few trees round the house when the thaw came. We’d walk to the shop 4 miles away for supplies on the clear weather breaks I remember many sunny days between heavy snow falls. A neighbouring farmer would come by on his tractor a few times with half a lamb. I can haven’t eaten lamb for 60 years as a result.
But I have many good memories of that winter
Ben, you’ve stressed my old brain with this –
I have 100% Irish ancestors, but even that doesn’t help me comprehend a front door and a back door both facing the same way.
(Full disclosure, I usually read Joe Biden speeches to give my comprehension skills a work-out)
A “work-out” or a burn-out? 😎
So the kids do just as their teachers taught them to do – by example – pay lip service to CC but keep on using fossil fuels every day. To express fear of CC is virtue signaling, because that is the accepted thing to do. But keep on using fossil fuels every day, that is okay as your heart is in the right place and this is all about feelings.
The good kids who don’t want to be hypocrites are the most vulnerable to this abuse. Good kids trust their teacher.
I suspect an honest answer would be another 4.5 billion years, although an expanding and dying sun would probably finish the job a bit sooner than that.
I suspect all the gas we siphon off the sun for type 2 civilisation solar engineering projects will significantly extend the life of our sun.
“What really outraged me, a sizeable fraction of kids (1 in 4) believe the world will end before they grow up.”
I thought that when I was a 10 year old back in ’60.
Not to worry kids, you will own nothing and be happy!
Before the Reformation the Catholic church had free reign on destroying the psyche of almost every child of the western world. That helped keep the church strong for many centuries. Why would anyone expect that such a tried and true practice would not be picked up by new religions?
I’ll never stop being amazed about the amount of hatred atheists have towards the church, and how most of their opinions are informed by myths and legends that were never true.
I’d Love to see them hauled over the coals for scaring kids witless. I also experienced this as a teen in the 70s . family planning came to our schools and told us NOT to have kids because too many people already, we would have no fuel food or future because the ICE AGE/nuke war was coming soon. so I quit school because what was the point of going to uni to be a vet if there wasnt going to BE a future? I decided to not have kids for the same reason. spent my life scrimping and going without so I wouldnt take “more” to allow something for others.
and decades later..whats it gotten me? old childless no family supports crap jobs with no super and living at poverty level for my lifetime.
If I could get my hands on the ones that LIED at school or any of the others theyd not walk away entire.
From the article: “Every day, more children discover they are living in a climate crisis. This makes many children feel sad, anxious, angry, powerless, confused and frightened about what the future holds.”
Climate Alarmists should be ashamed of themselves for the damage they have done to mental health of children, with their unsubstantiated claims of climate change doom.
When the doom doesn’t come, these kids are going to realize they have been played for fools. They won’t be happy about that.
Oh that is a better substitution. Convince children that they are nothing but genetic mutations, Goo To You Via The Zoo. Just screwed up horrible animals wearing clothes while destroying the planet because monkeys did a better job than humans.
Take that nihilism and amp it up with guilt. Make sure that there is no resolution, no absolution, no way out other than through the logical conclusions of death and deliberate poverty. Any innovation, success, wealth production, planning for a future is evil and just makes things even more dire. Monkeys don’t have written languages, recognizable civilizational infrastructure, morality, abstractive thought that leads to saving, investing and planning for the future. Humans do and now the whole planet is running into extinction! What is the rational conclusion?
How is it that previous generations, and those outside the influential sphere of the Neo-Marxist seem to not share this death cult mentality? Why isn’t the education cartel being held responsible? Is it just easier to blame TikTok and damned capitalists because somehow teachers, who have been demanding continual compensation increases because of their self-claimed influence and impact on children all of a sudden have no responsibility in any way for this misfit generation of depraved sociopaths?
Why doesn’t India or China suffer this same pathology?
Many here probably reject Christianity and consider it myths and foolishness, but the fruit of such faith is polar opposite of the death cult the kids are indoctrinated into.
I read 12 climate and energy articles this morning and this one was the best. Also the most depressing
Today’s school children are the leaders in 30 to 40 years.
I believe the climate change brainwashing in school is just a small percentage of all the leftist / Marxist brainwashing in schools these days.
In my school days in the 1960s, I had no idea what political parties any of my teachers favored. They never discussed politics or religion in mixed company. A very good Rule of Thumb that seems to be ancient history. No teacher ever gave the impression he or she did not like the US.
If children are brainwashed to fear CO2, then later in their lives fascism will be no big deal to “save the planet”.
Fascism needs a boogeyman and CO2 / energy use is perfect. Energy affects everyone and everything.
Hitler had Jews as his boogeyman
Lenis and Mao had capitalists
Joe Bribe’em has CO2
Climate change is fear of the future climate created by fantasy predictions of doom.
The actual climate change (global warming) has been pleasant and beneficial since 1975, yet people still have climat fear.
It’s my opinion, after 26 years of climate and energy reading. that CO2 emissions and global warming were both very good news for our planet.
The only exception is when hydrocarbon fuels were burned without modern pollution controls and caused air pollution. As has happened over too many Asian cities. Air pollution is an environmental problem but the extra CO2 always good news, not pollution.
All humans have adapted too climate change every year of their lives. The easiest climate to adapt to is a warming trend during an interglacial. That’s where we are now.
Today we have the most pleasant climate since the Holocene Climate Optimum ended about 5,000 years ag, yet there is more climate fear than ever before in human history.
That unjustified climate fear shows how effective propaganda can be to create a fake boogeyman. Even using an invisible boogeyman like CO2.
Is there intelligent life in the universe?
Considering the insane fear of CO2 and the anti-science designation of CO2 as a pollutant, there does not seem to be that much intelligent life on this planet.
Richard Greene
(BS, MBA)
2023 WUWT Down Vote Champion
Bingham Farms, Michigan
… where we LOVE global warming and our plants LOVE more CO2
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog
Billions and billions of years from now, ol’ Sol will have burned through the majority of it’s hydrogen and enter a new phase where it turns into a red giant and expands to incinerate the Mercury, Venus and Earth.
So that’s about 7 or 8 billion years more or less, before climate change destroys the Earth. Will you be ready? Will the citizens of the world unite in common purpose, discard the shackles of capitalism, religion and democracy in order to ensure the survival of our species?
Extreme Climate Alarmism is a crime against children — and, in my opinion, should be prosecuted.
How did we let this education disaster happen?
Decades of apathy.