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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
There have been a number of stories recently about how Australian schools are doing wonderful things. Sadly, few of these wonderful things seem to involve educating the nation’s children.
According to Australian SBS;
Australian schools going green to combat climate change
A trial program is hoping to shine the spotlight on schools and show them how they can help to combat climate change.
A Perth high school was the first in Australia to be accredited carbon neutral, but the school still wants to do more.
South Fremantle Senior High School in Perth’s south signed up to the Low Carbon Schools Pilot Program to help reduce its carbon footprint.
Fifteen-year-old Taylah Kippo told SBS News the time to act on climate change was now.
She said she was worried about her own generation, but also the ones after.
“You see the effects of climate change every day in our life now at the moment,” she said.
“You see it in many other countries including Australia in areas like farming and many different areas from the changing of the climates.
“It’s not good.”
Fellow Year 10 student Lauren Hunter said her school, which uses photovoltaic cells and has air conditioners on timers, could do more.
Read more: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/11/27/australian-schools-going-green-combat-climate-change
Meanwhile, back in the real world, there is worrying news about the quality and standards of Australian Education;
OECD education rankings show Australia slipping, Asian countries in the lead
A new report shows it’s not the wealthiest countries that perform the best, but those that value education the most.
What is happening?
Asian countries are currently in the lead according to the most recent global education rankings published by the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD): Singapore tops the list, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
The ranking was devised by combining the mathematics and science test scores for 15-year-olds across 76 countries, using results from international tests including the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2012) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 2011).
The mathematics and science rankings are among several tabulated in the report, Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain, in which links between economic growth, social development and educational attainment are explored. OECD director Andreas Schleicher says the analysis encompasses a larger sample of countries than ever before, providing “a truly global scale” of education quality for the first time.
…
How does Australia fare?
In the latest OECD league table, Australia is ranked 14th behind Poland (11th), Vietnam (12th) and Germany (13th). In other data tabled in the report, Australia ranks 19th for secondary school enrolment rates, behind the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates; and 17th for having the lowest share of students (just under 20 per cent) who have not acquired basic skills. For Singapore and Korea, this figure is under 10 per cent.
Concerning to some, Australia’s performance in the PISA tests, held every three years, has shown a steady decline. In 2000, when the first tests were held, Australia ranked 6th for maths, 8th for science and 4th for reading (out of 41 countries), dropping to 19th for maths, 16th for science and 13th for reading in 2012 (out of 65 countries).
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/oecd-education-rankings-show-australia-slipping-asian-countries-in-the-lead-20150525-gh94eu.html
This is not the first time Australia has had a bad school report. But there is no sign of a change in direction – education standards are still sliding, and green rhetoric is on the rise.
Ignoring normal education standards, while celebrating the conversion of government funded schools into climate madrasas, preaching extreme religious doctrine, is the kind of trend which is normally associated with third world trouble spots, not with a modern country like Australia.
Perhaps if Australian schools put more effort into teaching children basic skills like reading, writing and mathematics, and spent less money, time and effort on useless green gestures, like installing photovoltaics, they could afford to leave the air conditioner switched on. They could use the money they saved to provide a comfortable learning environment, and better quality educational materials for their students.
We are no better in the UK according to teaching friends of mine.
In the US, many of the states are attempting to opt out of the Common Core nationalized education. Science education in Common Core will emphasize sustainability, climate change, and evolution in a “holistic” approach to sciences. This is at the expense of the hard sciences and other specific branches of knowledge. Bill Gates is the main patron.
So yes, for example, the children will be told to look at pictures of traffic in the LA area– or some other huge American city– and to think of “solutions” for the “traffic.” However, they will not have the ability to point out to the teacher that city planning and engineering require local decision making, and they have for decades. They will not be able to point out that none of the “solutions” to “traffic” will apply to anyone but people in very populous cities, because most people live in the country. They will not be able to discuss the history of the accomplishments of real scientists, inventors and engineers who developed the internal combustion engine and freed us from using muscle power of men and animals to turn wheels and raise sails. So in the example I have chosen, the children are learning nothing, or worse, less than nothing.
At any rate, the nationalization of curricula in the US, the UK and Oz (plus any other Commonwealth member) is all designed to facilitate the implementation of UNESCO trash directly into the schools of these English speaking countries. Other UN treaties which will be implemented in the classrooms are UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW. CEDAW among other things would eliminate any differences between the genders in the curricula.
Freedom of education is the only way some children will receive a good education in the basics. The use of international environmentalist and radical agendas in the classroom through treaties involves far more than just climate change indoctrination.
Common Core was intended to reduce the cost of primary and secondary educational materials. The adoption of textbooks is the right of State adoption boards because education is reserved to State rights. Initially most States supported the alignment of State Standards which are used to design the textbooks and assessments.
All the Department of Education was asked to do was to facilitate the alignment of these general State Standards. They were never authorized to change them beyond their initial meaning.
In theory, the alignment of the Standards allows for a National version of the materials which makes them cheaper to produce and revise.
A discipline specific textbook is a grade specific program of products which includes a student version, teachers version, a package of teachings resources, and both digital and printed assessments. Multiple this program of grade and discipline specific products by 50 states and you’ve got a general idea of the potential cost savings.
Unfortunately, the Department of Education imposed their interpretation on the States which created the absurd math related Common Core nonsense.
States don’t have to adopt the Common Core version of the product. States still adopt the materials but once again the Obama administration managed to screw up a potential public benefit with overreach.
So now we have 50 sets of State Standards plus the Federal Common Core nonsense.
It sounds like the revenge of the zombie urban-planners.
During my time in UK primary and secondary schools I experienced a slightly similar ‘paradigm shift’. In the 1970’s they introduced a teaching of “Modern Maths” in my region. Obviously I was quite young and of limited mathematical abilities, but I still noticed a change. The change seemed to be more of an emphasis on touchy-feely-relating-things like “sets”, “matrices” and “groups”, and away from the ‘hard’ manipulation of numbers and algebra.
I later went to a high school where “Traditional Maths” was taught to me until 18 and, frankly, was glad. Both then, and in later years at University.
I’m not commenting directly on those worthy aspects of mathematics, but the whole scheme really was a bunch of incompetent hippies trying to get hold of the school teaching curriculum.
I’ll add that my first cool science lessons, at age of about 7 to 9, told me that carbon dioxide was essential for trees and plants to grow. Something that Prince Charles’ more expensive education apparently failed to tell him. He should stop talking to his plants and start listening to them.
My wife teaches 8th grade Hospitality and Human Services, and her official scope and sequence demands two weeks spent on the benefits of “sustainable actions” such as recycling on the hospitality industry. That’s as close to a quote as I can recall.
If it was confined to science education, then I could at least chalk it up to people actually believing their rhetoric. However, when you put these things into unrelated topics, then it has definitely become propaganda.
The elementary school is an ideal place to brainwash children. I see it being done; I just wonder why.
I would be surprised if it is being done because all of the materials are fact checked before publication.
Do you have some examples other than NASA materials which don’t undergo State Adoption standards.
It’s the only way liberals can gain more supporters !!!
John, read the article and look at the picture. Do you need more?
Curious George,
The photo lacks a caption and source information. Any conclusion based on it is useless especially if it was the only instance and representless than 50 people.
The article quotes 2 students. This is hardly proof of brainwashing.
I was referring to USA textbooks which require fact checking before publication. I seriously doubt Australian textbooks are designed to present falsify as fact.
One only has to listen to the children who are now a little larger as they are in college, but still small of brain – crying for SAFE PLACES! – safe from anyone using an un-pc word within their earshot! At least when I was in college during the 60s we exercised our freedom of speech out in the open market place of ideas.
Actually, George, the elementary school is the ideal location to have our youngsters begin to appreciate environmental issues without any brainwashing or scare-mongering. I recently paid a visit to an elementary school where my daughter teaches. In the middle of a paved outside area where the kids lunched and played was a grate that collected storm water. A sign painted on the pavers next to the grate read ‘All water entering here goes straight to the Great Barrier Reef’.
It occurred to me that this approach (subliminal?), accompanied by appropriate subject matter in the classroom, is the way to go, without having to devote too much precious classroom time.
KATIO1505,
It’s still preaching and “subliminal” is brainwashing. Schools should stick to basic learning and develop in students the ability to research and think logically. Then they will be able to make their own decisions when the reach adulthood and be more likely to recognize nonsense.
The public school system in Australia is run by the Education Union which is rampant left wing preaching all the current left wing ideologies; climate change, same sex marriage, multiculturalism, love of Islam, prevention of all forms of competition, failing to challenge students, adopting anti-western curricula, particularly in history, trying desperately to close church and independent schools (except for Islamic schools). They are trying to destroy the Western way of life and successive weak politicians keep caving in to their demands. Thankfully more parents are enrolling their children in the independent schools at significant personal cost. The upside of that move is governments spend about 5/8 on private school students as on public school students. The education union is contributing to it’s own demise but it will destroy many fine minds in the process.
Robin’s site has some good explanations of why the changes in Western education are happening. Many of these changes sound good, but educational leaders are changing the meaning of some of the key concepts to hide some important aspects. Much more information at: http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/
John McClure,
Curious gearge wrote;
“The elementary school is an ideal place to brainwash children. I see it being done; I just wonder why.
You wrote;
“I would be surprised if it is being done because all of the materials are fact checked before publication.”
Sir, I think that brainwashing (in the education context) means being trained to believe/repeat things simply because they are presented as facts by some authority figure . . like training a parrot basically . . and it doesn’t really matter whether the parrot is trained to say two plus two is four, or two plus two is seven . . the point is that the parrot cannot tell the difference, because they don’t understand what they are parroting.
@ John McClure – November 28, 2015 at 12:33 pm
Shur nuff, John, ….. just like all of the IPCC reports about CAGW …. also required “fact checking” before publication.
But the fact is, ….. US textbooks are not “fact checked” until after publication and then only after many, many months of use in the Classrooms. To wit:
“Twelve (12) of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools across the nation are riddled with errors, according to a two-year study led by a North Carolina State University researcher.” http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99129
“A 2001 study of middle school physical science textbooks (commissioned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) resulted in 500 pages of scientific error and imprecision in 12 middle-school textbooks used by 85 percent of students in the U.S. John Hubitz, the lead researcher, concluded that “none of the 12 most popular middle school physical science texts was acceptable.””
OOPS, …… the link for the 2nd quote.
http://www.christianvssecular.com/textbook_trap/science_errors.php
Samuel C. Coger,
You’re correct, in 2001 there was a great deal of press related to factual errors in textbooks and, I completely agree, there’s no excuse for the errors. However, I assure you the initial version of the source material which is used to create the various State versions are fact checked.
You’re citing 14 year old studies but mistakes do happen. Pearson goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure the accuracy of its primary and secondary products.
However, if State Standards specify Global Warming, Climate Change, Sustainability, etc. then the related material will be found in the textbook. The concern, how does one fact check these topics.
John McClure says:
State Standards are simply a “consensus of opinions” of politically appointed lefty liberal science illiterates whose primary interest is “appeasement” of those persons whose influence is critical to their maintaining of their “job status” and “favorability” rating.
Political appointees serve at the “will and pleasure” of those who appoint them.
And a “consensus of opinions” does not determine what is or isn’t science fact or factual science.
And as an added note about what the Public Schools are currently (2014’s, 15’s) teaching (brainwashing) their students, …. read it and weep, to wit:
HA, it don’t get much weirder or imbecilic than when you have 13-year-olds unknowingly promoting “mass murder” of the human population.
Very true, and the Open University is one of the culprits. It’s a disgrace!
Very true, Wolsten, and the Open University is one of the main culprits. It’s a disgrace!
BBC reporting on all matters to do with supposed climate change is reaching new hysterical heights today with the start of the utterly pointless and inane meeting of Paris-ites. Lots of footage of storms and deserts and other stuff supposedly the result of ‘global warming’.
The Paris meeting is making the Green Blob pull out all stops in its disinformation campaign on climate. As for teachers, they are unfortunately usually more left wing than the general population, hence their disposition to peddle greenie propaganda.
“As for teachers, they are unfortunately usually more left wing than the general population, hence their disposition to peddle greenie propaganda.”
One would expect the BBC to jump high.
Yup, I agree with the observation concerning the current crop of teachers.
I sense that things such as safety and stable economies are
on track to take a hit. Such instability refocuses the general population on essential skills again.
People cut out the fluff, zero in on what matters on many levels.
Of course the majority of the current crop of teachers are more PC, “greenie” and left wing than the general population ….. simply because they are a product (graduate) of the Public School System themselves and thus nurtured by their Teachers to believe those things.
The lefty liberals started taking control of the school curriculum in the early to mid 1970’s, …. which is 45 years ago. So it is safe to assume that all of the “old school” Teachers have done retired or quit.
wolsten
I agree, but suggest a look at this premise, please.
Is coincidence [Australia slipping down the tables; and green nonsense being pushed] causation?
Now, were the converse true [a thought experiment, please], and much watermelon propaganda being ‘taught’ in the skools of – say – Ruritania, and the Ruritanian kiddies’ maths scores were going up, and any Warmista claimed the improvement due [even largely] to the fascist lies being taught, I imagine this blog, amongst others, would react less then favourably.
I don’t say the premise is wrong.
I do seek some hard information [not the sort of bias I have, and possibly others may share, that watermelon – bad; sceptic – better] that would irrefutably link Green Indoctrination and the Education of Aussie kids.
Auto
I’ve been following WUWT for a long time, probably since the Bering Strait opened up. I’ve learned a lot about climate change and global warming, and I’m constantly impressed with the depth of knowledge exhibited here and the many lucid analyses of the climate change alarmist industry.
That being said, I am often frequently disappointed with knee-jerk “anti-green” commentary that paints everything environmental as negative. Yes, Big Green has thrown over the traces and raced off into global warming hyperbole, in search of funding from the climate change machine. But that doesn’t mean that everything green is bad.
The fact that Australian schools are adopting climate change rhetoric and activities does not mean that is the reason they are faring worse in comparison to Asian school. That’s a correlation without causation as mistaken as CO2 levels and global average surface temperature.
As a life-long ecologist, I know there are environmental consequences to the dominant society’s growing consumption and waste production. Things that cannot go on forever, don’t. The present course of our civilization cannot be sustained on this our only and finite world. Finding solutions to this ever narrowing pathway need not be tied to climate change. In fact, over concentration on climate variation at the expense of action to reduce pollution, resource depletion and habitat loss is ultimately counterproductive.
Rather than facile green-bashing, I prefer rational and constructive thought and discussion about the realities of climate variation, and the integration of climate change adaptation within the framework of ecological study and environmental action.
Sorry, Mr. Lewis. This site is a one-way street, no going the other way, every day the same direction, the same dose. Move along now.
Malanlewis
Well said.
It often comes down to a desire to learn as well as the discipline in place personally and at a school level in order that The conditions are right to learn.
I well remember in south Korea in the 1970’s that there was a burning desire to learn and the parents actively encouraged them as they were still so close to the poverty of their very recent past.
Without that hunger to learn and the all round discipline! it is easy for children to coast through their education. It probably has little to do with green education and more to do with the right attitudes to learning from all involved.
Tonyb
LN says:
This site is a one-way street…
This site doesn’t censor comments, not even yours. Maybe that’s a good thing: people can see how unhappy you are.
If you tried to make constructive comments, readers would like it. But it’s just untrue that WUWT is “a one-way street”. Your own comments prove that’s not true.
@LN:
Do you not see the irony of you complaining about closed-minded people on a site that does not censor dissenting opinion? Perhaps it is not a one-way street but the fact that the viewpoint is so flawed that it is easily debunked?
You have a valid point, in my opinion, malanlewis. Green bashing is no better than “denier” bashing.
I think your missing a few sheep…. Mr shepherd !!!
When people stop being reasonable and become fascists, they deserve bashing.
It is the greens who have forsaken legitimate environmental issues in zealous fervor to promote the CAGW alarmist meme.
I see many people here who are, like me, actual environmentalists…who care about real issues and not made up political BS which is tirelessly promulgated in order to further a leftist agenda.
How can one have anything but scorn for people who care not one whit about facts?
It is the people that are derided, not legitimate concern for good environmental stewardship of the Earth.
The so-called green movement has long since forfeited any right to being considered environmentalists.
Have a look at the quote ““You see it in many other countries including Australia in areas like farming and many different areas from the changing of the climates.
“It’s not good.”
That’s not even good English. Perhaps the school should concentrate on actually educating children in how to read and write correct English.
Straw man fallacy much?
Perfectly put Malanlewis. I fully agree that we should be careful stewards of our natural resources. Although I’m 82 years old, and can’t possibly hope for an economic payback, I recently replaced a 15 year old 65% efficient gas-fired furnace with a new 97% efficient unit. I drive a small, fuel efficient car in the winter and a scooter that gets 100 MPG in the spring, summer and fall. I’m not concerned about the alleged temperature raising effects of CO2, but rather by the waste of our precious fossil fuel resources. Our 20,000 cogniscenti attending the Paris Climate Change party could have shown us the way by staying home and tele-conferencing. But no, the need to go low carbon doesn’t apply to them, just to the great unwashed masses like me. Pathetic!
Nonsense. Fuel efficiency is about saving money. Worrying about saving “our precious fossil fuel resources” is pure foolishness, whose only value is the “feel-good” effect.
We have enough fossil fuel on this earth for many more centuries – (yes shale oil will be hard to extract.) When we do run out, the ingenuity of scientists and engineers will provide other sources.
Trebla, if you believe your furnace is 97% efficient I have a bridge you might be interested in.
Billy Liar
Hi
just a thought
” Although I’m 82 years old,” “and a scooter that gets 100 MPG ”
me too when i am 82.
I really don’t want to give up my leather trench coat.
michael
If you reduce your consumption of finite fossil fuels by 50%, Jim Hansen’s children will be able to be the ones that preside over the burning of the last few drops.
Reduction by 75%, with concomitant frugality on the part of Jim Hansen’s children will ensure that Jim Hansen’s grandchildren will have the honour of using the last of the resource.
What have you got against Jim Hansen’s great-grandchildren?
malanlewis,
It is not about green bashing per se. Stop and think for a moment, teachers only have limited class time to teach. What is being sacrificed in the curriculum? Science? History? Math? Critical thinking?
First give them the tools they need to think, learn, imagine. With those they will find their way, rather then become intellectual basket cases like Leland Neraho. (Sorry Leland Neraho, but you are.)
michael
Pretty sure in Australia they don’t waste any time on religion like we do here. So they have the time to teach conservation and respect for natural resources instead of fairly tales and Santa Claus stories. As if a god, who is so powerful and creative to conjure up the sun and all the other celestial entities, would sit around and wait 4 billion years, watching swamps steam and bacteria multiply before finally making a frog jump or an ape climb a tree. Absurd, unscientific notions through and through. Certainly all of you intellectual scientists would at least agree on that.
IBC
Leland Neraho says:
…a god, who is so powerful and creative to conjure up the sun and all the other celestial entities, would sit around and wait 4 billion years, watching…
I have to larf at this guy’s small mindedness, with his assigning of human emotions, thinking, and body parts.
Whatever created the universe and everything in it — and everything else that is not seen or understood — is so far beyond little Leland that the sad Mr. Neraho assumes he understands it all. In fact, such a creator is so far beyond anyone’s understanding that it is pointless to speculate like that.
Certainly Leland doesn’t understand anything, and his snarky, hate-based comments on this excellent site reflect his intense frustration at his intellectual limitations. So he lashes out, because he’s got nothing else; certainly he has no understanding of anything beyond his own limited bubble of existence. He doesn’t even understand his own ignorance: he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Per his own comment above, the apex of his very limited existence seems to be flying a kite.
When Leland says “Certainly all of you intellectual scientists…”, he is referring to scientific skeptics; the only honest kind of scientists. Skeptics admit we don’t have the answers, and we are skeptical of those who claim they do. Leland should try being a skeptic for a change. It instills humility — a quality that Leland is sadly lacking.
dbstealy , yea, he made me want barf too !! LOLj
Leland Neraho
November 28, 2015 at 9:29 am
” Sorry, Mr. Lewis. This site is a one-way street, no going the other way, every day the same direction, the same dose. Move along now. “……..
Kettle, meet pot !!!
“As if a god, who is so powerful and creative to conjure up the sun and all the other celestial entities, would sit around and wait 4 billion years, watching swamps steam and bacteria multiply before finally making a frog jump or an ape climb a tree.”
You figure such an Entity would be in a hurry to have frogs jump and apes climb in trees for some reason? Why exactly?
Leland Neraho- please leave God out of this discussion. You don’t understand what you are talking about. Humankind can’t understand itself, much less something that encompasses the universe. It would help clear your thinking if you’d visit wmbriggs.com and read some of the posts on reading St. Thomas Aquinas. We can’t understand God, but we can at least learn how to think rationally about what we can’t understand.
“So they have the time to teach conservation and respect for natural resources instead of fairly tales and Santa Claus stories.”
Where is “here”.
please show documentation such as Class plans. at a public school, Documentation from a local school board. Put up or shut up. You are an embarrassment to all of the teachers who tried to educate you.
michael
p.s. conservation and respect for natural resources does not belong on the curriculum, it is a preference of behavior, thus a form of religion.
BTY a religion does not require a god.
malanlewis, I take your point, especially on the correlation – causation between math scores, e.g., and teaching ecology. Where I suspect you might be off is that these teachers are all but crazed environmentalists. You are being very charitable with them. You don’t see them as zealots–not their job–but as educators. Alas, they got religion. They got Gaia.
Also, if you think even a few of them know what they are talking about, please sit down and have a discussion with some of these teachers on what they would call “evidence” for the coming climate catastrophe. No one on WUWT thinks the earth should be ruined, polluted or destroyed, because of modern technologies and convenience. And I would bet that everyone who posts here cares, and cares deeply, about the environment. But I’ve spoken with high school (and college) teachers, most of them without a scientific background on this climate change issue, on a number of occasions. Said conversation gets real depressing on the logic and CAGW evidence front, and real fast.
CAGW is largely nonsense. But it’s ok to teach nonsense as truth to kids? Don’t know about you, but when a 15 y/o starts making assertions about the environment, like he knows what he’s talking about, I head for the door. You know, 1984. I like to think there’s at least something of a difference between education and indoctrination. That sort of subtlety is lost on ardent Greens.
When I was in high school, my biology teacher refused to teach evolution, on religious grounds. She skipped over that chapter in the text book and would never discuss it in class.
That was fifty years ago.
Somehow, I learned about evolution, and eventually earned a PhD with evolution as the central premise of my studies (correlations among human population movements and climate variation).
I’ve never met a teacher who was a global warming zealot. I must live a sheltered life.
Fifty years ago there were global cooling zealots.
“I’ve never met a teacher who was a global warming zealot. I must live a sheltered life.”
You must not be paying one single iota of attention.
Kids are being taught that they are living on a dying world, that ordinary weather is proof of a poisoned atmosphere.
In order to make people believe lies, critical thinking skills must be omitted from the curriculum, along with all of the actual facts and knowledge that is counter to and contradictory of those lies.
Since nearly every aspect of our world is now viewed by many through the muddy lens of CAWG alarmism, the above includes omitting entire libraries of factual knowledge from our children’s education.
This is very interesting. Do you have some documentation of curricula that teach that “children are living on a dying world, that ordinary weather is proof of a poisoned atmosphere”? That ” critical thinking skills must be omitted from the curriculum”? That omit “entire libraries of factual knowledge from our children’s education”?
You can do your own homework.
malanlewis,
“Somehow, I learned about evolution, and eventually earned a PhD with evolution as the central premise of my studies ….”
I believed in the Evolution concept for many years, even after I came to believe in a Creator God . . and it was only when I was trying to convince a fellow Christian that it had really happened, and went looking for the very strong evidence I assumed I could produce, that I realized I didn’t actually know of any myself. And I never did find any strong evidence, just dogmatic belief (and a lot of double-talk ; )
A few educators were at a local farm show (Tocal for Australians) and they were advertising the problems of “carbon pollution” with several black, CO2 stamped balloons filled with helium. I asked how a colourless gas could be depicted as a black balloon. I asked them about the pause. I asked them about the inefficiency and intermittency of renewables which they were promoting. I asked them about spinning reserves. I asked them about their photos of “dirty” power stations and the water vapour coming from the cooling towers. I asked them about the increase in crop production, the greening of deserts. I asked them about the very minor temperature increase and the small rise in sea level. By this time I had a sizeable audience and two distraught “educators”. They went for coffee.
“As a life-long ecologist….”
Ah, that says it all. Nail, meet hammer.
It’s important to understand that the green movement is why climate science is so incredibly broken and this leads to green bashing, which IMO is well deserved. That being said, habitat preservation, conservation and reducing pollution are all noble pursuits and should continue. The problem is that the green’s illogically consider CO2 to be a pollutant, rather than the vital molecule that makes the world green in the first place.
“The problem is that the green’s illogically consider CO2 to be a pollutant, rather than the vital molecule that makes the world green in the first place.”
Ahh..and this point is exactly how to drive a wedge between the greens and the global warmongers.
Tree huggers for global warming!
“schools …adopting climate change rhetoric and activities.” You don’t see anything wrong about it. I do. We should not be teaching intolerance and fanaticism. We should be emphasizing critical thinking.
Mr. Lewis, If you have been following WUWT for a long time, then you should have noted that your concerns are indeed the concerns of thinking people here. The point is the CO2 ‘green’ is only green in greening the planet and improving crops and forest health. Of the trillions spent in the modern green scenario, none is being spent on what you deem a problem. Indeed, the problem is being exacerbated by impoverishment of economies solely for anti CO2 efforts. Probably in ecology you are not being taught that you need wealth to solve environmental and health problems.
Also in ecology, your third paragraph would indicate that your discipline’s ‘common sense’ view is a helpless-life-in-a petri-dish-resource-type accounting for human (and other) life on the planet. This has been disproven over and over. We didn’t get buried under several metres of horse manure (Malthus) and the industrial revolution didn’t stop because of dwindling coal supplies (Jevons). Indeed, the 1972 “Limits to Growth” was a dismal failure in intellectual content before the ink was thoroughly dried. Instead of massive starvation in our petri dish by 2000, we wound up with double the population and much lesser poverty and disease, much larger food supply and we are as a world population living longer and healthier with fewer people at the margins.
Was this stupifying surprise for biologists and ecologists an accident? No it is the result of the application of limitless human ingenuity – a factor that definitely isn’t taught in ecology and biology. I think your texts and lectures need to be rewritten (perhaps with help from engineers and scientists) after so many failures in the parochial 18th century theory that underpins a broken discipline (same bag as social sciences which are now just activist nodes working against the productive sector).
Moreover, we have reached 90%of peak population, which will we will reach by 2040-50. We can already see we can feed everybody even with the idiocy of converting food to automobile fuel to ‘save the planet’ from CO2 (plant food!). Re other resources, abundant new resources of oil and gas, centuries of coal, millennia of nuclear. The USGS also completed a study on resources of copper (2013) for the future that found there are 3.5billion tonnes of conventional geologic copper resources left to be developed and mined. We currently produce 20Mt/y. 550 million tonnes has been mined since the beginning of human existence (Copperfacts) and it all remains on the surface of the earth ready for re-use. We are recycling more and more and we are using less and less/unit of product (human ingenuity at work). The computing power of a 1960s multi ton, large air conditioned computer room is replaced today by a pocket calculator that weighs less than 200 grams!
My friend, there is no shortage of resources. Regard these paragraphs as part of the ecology of humans not known to ecologists to add a chapter to your hoary tomes. I fear some engineer is going to beat you to the modern rewrite of your science.
Hello Gary: Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Solving environmental and health problems does not require “wealth.” (Depending on your definition of “wealth”) The first step is to stop creating them! This requires cessation of unlimited growth, which is the cause of much of our physical and social problems.
We do not live in a Petri dish, we live on a finite planet, with limited resources and capacity to absorb wastes. If this were not so, we wouldn’t have environmental and health problem needing solutions.
The perception of “limitless human ingenuity” is a social affectation not based in fact. In reality, it was access to fossil fuels that resulted in a temporary escape from Malthusian limitations. In the real world, things that cannot go on forever, don’t. Like it or not, humans are subject to the same resource limits and environmental cycles as all other species.
Computing power does not trump physical limitations on resource extraction and waste production. In fact, modern computer power comes at the expense of enormous energy usage, based on fossil fuels. See above.
There is no shortage of resources, in general. And there are limitations in human extraction and use of finite resources. If this were not so, we would not be concerned with environmental and health problems caused by resource depletion, pollution and waste dispersal.
Engineers and economists are not educated in the principles of ecology that regulate all life on this planet (and all others). I’ll not look to them for the next chapter of ecology.
Exactly!
I was going to right a book on the importance of sustainability and then everything changed!
Old and wise. Just how do you think it became possible to grow anything on a desert. Proper management of water resources without help of environmental obstructionists who won’t allow building more water storage and diverting water to where it is needed is one of the chief problems. Yes, without some sensible way to store water, it is a fool’s exercise to grow on the desert. Even so, this remarkable arid patch of ground supplies a lot of the fruit and vegetables on my table up in Ontario, Canada, plus supplies much of the US. You sound old and wise enough to know that the population of California has grown by leaps in bounds in your lifetime. It is about the population of all of Canada – yet it is a land of plenty.
A final point, farming anywhere has risks. You can have all the water you want but a 10 minute hail storm can flatten your wheat to the ground. You have a tornado rip miles of crops, you can have an early or late frost kill your fruit production or, heaven forbid a drought, particularly in a desert! But let me make a gentleman’s bet. The crops will be plentiful next year and let’s hope authorities can get on with building some storage for the future. And when this happens, you will be older and even wiser.
1 old and wise:
Water is not in short supply, it is merely poorly distributed in space and time.
California has wet years and dry years.
Regions not too far away have massive rivers which run into the sea unused.
The only reason California is suffering now is because of short-sighted efforts to prevent new dam construction, and other infrastructure projects that might make unusable water useable, or bring water from where it is plentiful to where periodic scarcity exists.
Rivers that flow into the sea are not unused. They are home and water supply for terrestrial wildlife. They carry nutrients and water to the ocean for ocean wildlife. They nurture plants along their entire length. They add water to the aquifers over which they flow.
Humans are not the only species on they planet.
Droughts in California are completely normal.
Not planning for them is short sighted.
You want to argue otherwise, argue away.
“We do not live in a Petri dish, we live on a finite planet, with limited resources and capacity to absorb wastes.”
Whereas if we lived in a petri dish we would not have limited resources and capacity to absorb wastes?
(Oopsie, you blew it slick ; )
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
When you are thirsty and go to fill a glass in your kitchen, you do not crouch beside a creek flowing through your house.
The tap you turn is connected by miles of pipe to a water source far away. For people in sunny places, it might be very far away.
Generally, it is more practical to transport water in pipes than to transport sunshine in wires.
as to water being the limiting factor.. as C3 plants have access to more CO2, any observation or experiment will show what botanists know, plants use less water. Water is not the limiting factor, it’s CO2.
Karl,
you are vastly overstating your point. Plants need both water and CO2 but the frequency of deficiency of each is far from equal.
CO2 is everywhere, water is not. In places without water there are no plants.
1oldone says:
… mercy me, ya learn something new all the time.
Well… other folks do. But you? Not so much.
Dams are built to mitigate droughts. But the enviro-nutters destroyed the giant Auburn dam. As everyone else knows, we could sure use that water now.
Mebbe, I was thinking more along the lines that plants transpire water excessively when CO2 levels are low , demonstrated in numerous experiments showing up to 90% reduction in water intake when CO2 levels were adequate for day long C3 photosynthesis. With higher CO2 levels water requirements are not much higher than that needed to maintain turgidity. Kinda like water is not the limiting factor for a whale sieving plankton if the plankton concentration was high(er).
As is stands plants can and do strip the CO2 levels down so quickly that they may only get an hour or two of photosynthesis in before they start pumping and losing water – there’s an article on corn field studies discussed here that shows how rapidly CO2 is stripped to unusable levels..
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/plants-suck-half-the-co2-out-of-the-air-around-them-before-lunchtime-each-day/
malanlewis,
You made many valid points, particularly about green-bashing. Ad-hominem attacks are what they are, no matter which side utters them.
I also agree that a growing focus on ‘green’ activities in schools is not necessarily a cause for decreasing academic achievement in those schools, however, I would not be surprised if further investigation revealed it to be true. The reason I believe it might be true is that the science of modern environmentalism, which the green movement is founded, is not very good science at all, and must rely on emotional persuasion to succeed, and not scientific reasoning.
For example, you wrote:
“As a life-long ecologist, I know there are environmental consequences to the dominant society’s growing consumption and waste production. Things that cannot go on forever, don’t. The present course of our civilization cannot be sustained on this our only and finite world.”
The whole concept of ‘sustainability as a goal’ is a bedrock assumption of modern environmentalism. It is an unquestioned meme that has spread though out First World group-think. It is a starting principle that much of the modern environmental argument is founded upon. And it is unnatural, unscientific, unachievable and a complete insult to all future generations.
At this moment, the world is completely unique. It has never been just like it is now, and it never will be again. In fact, at all moments since the world began, it was completely unique. The Earth is constantly changing and evolving. No part of it has ever been ‘sustainable’ and no part of it ever will be. This world is dynamic. Stasis does not exist here naturally. Yet modern environmentalism keeps insisting that sustainability is the ultimate and righteous goal! The truth is that the only thing in this world that appears to be sustainable is death! The only way to make something stay the same is to kill it and encase it.
Life, by definition, is change. All life must change its environment; take something in and give something different back. That’s science. That’s what the children should be learning, and not the false god of sustainability.
Because we live in such a dynamic world, children should be taught about the power of adaptation and the wonders of invention and imagination. Those are the skills that will make this world far less ‘finite’ and open the solar system to us. They should be taught that all decisions have consequences, but that it is impossible to know the full extent of those consequences. Therefore, life is a super-dynamic swirl of constantly choosing, adjusting and choosing again. They should be taught that the idea of a ‘right’ choice that is perfect for all times and situations does not exists. Children should be taught that change is natural, normal and an inevitable part of life, and that sustainability is and always has been an illusion. Children should be taught that future generations will be even better at making choices than we are, and that we shouldn’t try to solve their future problems when we don’t have a clue what they will be. Instead, we should try to solve our problems so that they will have a better platform on which to address theirs.
The unnatural notion of sustainability needs to be replaced with the more pragmatic memes that we were taught in kindergarten: clean up your mess and be nice to one another.
very well said, thanks
+10
Wow, 250 plus comments.
Nothing like a title about the kiddies minds being messed with to garner interest.
“clean up your mess and be nice to one another” …. brilliant simplicity
Thanks for that.
A new hire spent the day with me recently. Ivy grad. She asked me for something to remember in her first days. I told her “Don’t be a dick and give your best”
I got reprimanded.
I’ll try yours next time.
+1
IMO sustainability is a form of luddite conservatism. Not that I’d be totally against sustainability, it is just raised as an icon, like a statue of goddess at an altar.
If you really want to pull their chain (i.e., the ‘greens’) point out that
Mr. Lewis – might I point out the world’s cities are where “green” action needs to be taken seriously. These folks live in concrete bunkers, use the most energy on the planet, consume, by far, the most electricity on earth, waste the most of any species, consume the most goods and services, couldn’t live for a week without food, use the most resources, have the least amount of greenery, and yell the loudest about the environment. Meanwhile those of us out here in fly over country actually live out here WITH nature and respect the land, the sea, out waters, and our air. We make a living off these resources. Meat doesn’t magically appear in grocery stores, nor does and other food product, or fuel, or any other resource. And yes, we’re well aware CO2 is what we breathe out, what plants use, what every other living species on this planet produces as well. The lungs of the earth is out here in fly over country where we reside. Moreover, global warming is a scam. Taxing citizens to death has fixed exactly what? Sending taxpayer money to the world’s despots, kleptomaniacs, and third world dictators achieves exactly what? THAT, sir, is today’s “green” ideology as outlined by the UN IPCC.
+ 10,000
Albertalad
Many good points. What is not sustainable is the following: constantly increasing taxes; the constantly growing 18+ trillion dollar debt while misleading people with the claim they have reduced annual deficits; spending billions of dollars annually on weak technologies like wind, solar, and biofuels pretending that these can replace fossil fuels in the near future; subsidizing expensive electric cars for the rich which remains to have a viable battery; sending tens of thousand representatives to a Paris conference with a huge carbon footprint and massive waste of tax dollars while implementing a plan to make life miserable for everyone else; telling people their medical insurance cost will fall under the government medical plan, and continuing to adjust the temperature data during flat temperature periods.
“The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide”, 1996
‘An introduction To Sustainable Development Planning’
Forward by:
Maurice Strong, Chair. Earth Council
Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Canada, Executive Director UNEP, was on the now closed Chicago Climate Exchange Board and now Lt.Governor of Ontario, Canada
http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/openebooks/448-2/index.html
Available at the above website.
RIP Maurice Strong
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/maurice-strong-climate-development-pioneer-dies-35463459
malanlewis,
Yet another pseudonym from the same ole green activist tw1t…. he has many and pretends to be the objective middle ground open minded etc.. he’s not.
Eff off.
The green refused to debate 20 years ago and now that the tide has turned against your fascism YOU now want to be reasonable.
Well a congressional-FBI RICO inquiry into the climate related spending will be reasonable.
An investigation into collusion between the EPA and the the publicly funded fake science would be reasonable.
Michael Mann disclosing the FOI requested documents wherein he lied about the tree ring calibration of the HAD CRU data set would be reasonable.
Provide that for a start or p1ss off.
O come on…tell us how you really feel !! LOL ….+ 10,000,000
The problem isn’t that kids are being told to take care of the “environment”. The problem is what they are being told that means.
The ” GREENS ” have no one to blame but themselves !!! If you lay down with dogs you get fleas !!
Malanlewis, I recognize there are those who are polarized against the ‘greens’, but this is one place where even those who are polarized anti-skeptics are tolerated when they stay within the rules. I am also motivated by environmentalism to be here and want to know if there is a way to turn this thing around, so we can get back to material and beneficial pollution remediation instead of the immaterial, phantom threats (solely verified by those paid to prove the desired outcomes) which have been obviously inflated and opportunistically exploited by the few upon the many.
I’m right with you, Dawtgtomis!
As per Lord Viceroy Monckton…” They call themselves GREEN because they are too YELLOW to admit that they are RED !! “
Malanlewis,
First, a disclaimer: I indeed, support all manner of ecological preservation. I even reuse my paper coffee filters often several dozen times (remarkable paper or whatever it is made of) plus have a clean mindset in general (I’m almost 80 and grew up in a family that saved string, tin foil, paper bags, etc). I also organically farmed for almost 20 years. I hold patents in hydrometallurgical processing (recently filed) that were conceived deliberately to be as gentle on the environment as possible and the product, lithium compounds for electric vehicle batteries (no use making a feedstock in an unclean way for the green car industry) from a project slated for production by 2018. Lithium hydroxide is prepared by electrolysis (hydroelectric power) and lithium carbonate that uses atmospheric carbon dioxide instead of trainloads of soda ash which all other producers use. Moreover, the process generates sufficient hydrogen to significantly reduce power for calcining, crystallizing, heating and drying.
My point about the ingenuity factor slid off you somewhat and I expected it would because it isn’t a familiar idea in terms of being of considerable magnitude. Water is not a problem on this water planet. It does require some logistics, application, conservation and a little surplus funds is part of it. Ingenuity is the confounder of the famous historically forecast ecological disasters. It isn’t an understatement to say human-caused planetary disasters WILL NOT happen.
For one, they never have. Not one incident. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible localized events -let’s be clear I appreciate this- but even a year afterwards, contrary to what experts believed, radioactivity was back to background levels. Chernobyl is now like the Serengeti. Wild animals thought to have been extirpated: wild boars, moose, wolves, lynx, bears, elk, birds of all kinds, occupy the exclusion zone. There were a few mutations in some birds and smaller animals, but guess what- you probably get it that predators ate them all up!!! Almost as if nature even provided for this eventuality and this was one of the dirtiest most expediently designed plant you can imagine. Oh, of course, ‘official’ reports still say it is a continuing disaster but this is part of the politicized landscape that is engulfing us on all subjects and new graduates from Australian and other countries institutions will be doing negative studies on it for the party line. Look at the remarkable photos (it looks like parts of Canada):
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/chernobyl_wildlife_the_radioactive_fallout_zone_is_a_wildlife_refuge_photos.html
Malanlewis, I hope you are a lot younger than I so you will live to see the bright, clean, world of stable 8-9B (maybe declining somewhat from this as our foolish policies have retarded the march to prosperity of our poorer citizens and contributed to overpopulation) healthy human population before mid century on an earth with even better habitat for our fellow furry, feathered, slippery, buzzing…inhabitants and will remember my Axiom and maybe rewrite some of the ecology texts. Did you know that Lake Superior could contain 90B people, each with a square metre to tread water in if you would like a handy ‘graphic’ to put 10 times the earths human population into perspective.
Hey everybody, go to Mr. Lewis’s blog and you’ll see he’s not from greenie land.
malanlewis,
You make some very good points. Cognitive bias usually causes us to gravitate towards seeing things that line up to one side of polarized issues……sometimes unable to objectively discern the good and bad related to specific elements of a belief system(when both exist).
The earth is greening up and its creatures benefiting from the increase in CO2 and slight warming. Had CO2 dropped 120 ppm instead of increased 120ppm, global crop failures and plants shutting down, as well as catastrophic harm(huge fatality numbers) on all life would be the worlds biggest problem……..by a wide margin.
Currently, at just 400ppm, CO2 is still not optimal and most life would continue to benefit with additional increases.
Warming the higher latitudes of the N.Hemisphere has decreased the meridional temp gradient and decreased potential energy and many measures of extreme weather……hurricanes/typhoons, violent tornadoes, mid latitude cyclones, global drought(slightly).
Growing conditions for life during the past 30 years have been the best on this planet since at least the Medieval Warm Period and considering the higher CO2 today, probably much better than that period…….that was even warmer than this in many places.
The problem is that the side that is distorting this reality and focusing all the attention on a huge lie also embraces some common sense sustainability issues that must be reconciled………by everyone.
An increasing human population and the consumption of natural resources cannot continue forever at this rate. Increasing CO2 will actually assist us(not hurt us) in meeting the needs of humans, plants and other creatures going forward but that doesn’t change the fact that things will need to change in order to obtain a sustainable balance in the future………..unless we are willing to risk substantive damage to the environment and life on this planet.
Unfortunately, the next 2 weeks, CO2 will be misrepresented(as a pollutant) to accomplish a specific agenda based on an ideology and it compels those of us that know the truth about CO2 to speak out………….which makes it almost impossible, to think about the positive/legit elements that go along with this group think belief system.
May I add here, that future population increases hinge directly upon the rate of abject poverty in nations still attempting to achieve affluence. The fact that most of those nations have corrupt governments should be the main concern of the UN in its agenda to reverse ‘global overpopulation’.
… The fact that Australian schools are adopting climate change rhetoric and activities does not mean that is the reason they are faring worse in comparison to Asian school. …
If a teacher can receive credit for something other than providing an education, don’t be surprised if providing education slips as a priority. If you tell a kid the world is about to end, its not their fault, but there is nothing they can do about it, don’t be surprised if they are less than enthusiastic about finishing their homework.
Preserving the environment is now mainstream and the Greens are not what they used to be.
The need to remain relevant in a world where environmentalism is business as usual has driven the Greens to become ever more strident and extreme. It is now almost impossible to have a sane conversation with them. They shout slogans in your face, call you names, ignore anything you say, and spout ridiculous antiprogress, anticapitalist, antihumanist and antirationalist philosophy. It is all emotion and shouting and slogans. They are unbalanced fanatics.
The Greens these days are about as relevant to the environment as PETA is to animal welfare.
I would aprove of tax payer funding for some kind of medication for these people.
“Climate Justice” &. “Fossil Free” are not genuine environmentalist buzz words, but that of zealots.
Everyone wants to live in a healthy and clean environment, but there is a difference between installing proper filters on coal fired power plants, so nothing else gets emitted but CO2 and water vapor (no soot, sulfates, dust, heavy metals or radioactive stuff, that is), or destroying them altogether and replacing them with extremely expensive and unreliable wind turbines, providing intermittent energy on the cost of a dense network of heavy duty roads all over the pristine country side, necessary for installation an maintenance, while emitting insane levels of low frequency noise, inaudible, nevertheless seriously damaging to the human auditory system.
These zealots simply hijacked the environmental movement and turned it into its opposite. No wonder I am often frequently disappointed with this attitude.
malanlewis,
That being said, I am often frequently disappointed with knee-jerk “anti-green” commentary that paints everything environmental as negative.”
I’ve never seen anyone here paint anything environmental as negative, let alone everything. Please give some examples, so we can judge for ourselves whether you are making that up (or just reactively accusing those who don’t agree with your notions of what is “environmental”.)
Without some examples, you’re just some guy accusing people for no good reason that I can see . .
Isn’t one problem the way that the climate change machine/alarmist industry has hijacked “ecological study and environmental action” as the terms were once understood?
Look at someone like David Bellamy: he was a campaigning ecologist before most of the CAGW chorus started school. But he dared to speak out against the new orthodoxy, so he has been denied the platforms which he could have used to educate us about real threats to habitats and species, rather than about chimera derived by running cherry-picked data through skewed computer programs.
The way a belief system handles dissent says so much about its core values!
You are missing the point malanlewis.
When you add more more or new content into schools, like climate change and alike, you must take out some. There are only a certain amount of hours in the day, and so when you add something new into the curricular something must be taken out.
Thus math, science and other more relevant and more important topics than climate “rubbish” suffer at the hands of this maleficent introduction. Leading to mathematics and science scores to suffer.
That’s correlation WITH causation. The real problem here is that you as an ecologist, are ignorant. Green-bashing or not, when you don’t understand something as straight forward and as simple as this, you only show your stupidity. High school is no place for ecological and environmental studies, these are specialized subjects that should be learnt later after high-school. High school is a place where you need to learn the things are absolutely necessary to prepare the young for life — ecology isn’t necessary one of them.
That’s funny, I prefer bashing of facile studies of climate variation.
I agree and I think that’s one of the biggest problems with the AGW movement. They have obsessed over CO2 and “climate change” so much that they have discredited sensible environmentalism. It’s one thing to demand less mercury emissions from coal-power power plants, because we know that’s harmful, and quite another to demand we pump all the air emissions from the plants into holes in the ground because of irrational terror over a vital molecule for life. For most of them any pollution is immediately linked to capitalism, so instead of imposing or enforcing environmental regulations they want to destroy the industries themselves. It’s almost impossible to have a sane conversation about sustainability with them about.
We definitely need to return to a more sensible environmentalism and away from this pseudoreligious lunacy.
Look at here, where students march for ending free speech or want to re-segregate black students?
https://emsnews.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/students-attack-911-memorial-attempts-a-black-female-professor-and-white-student-union/
It is sad watching young people demand things that harm them.
It is odd watching Australia worrying about the climate when that continent is so isolated by deep oceans from all sorts of things making the climate nearly continuously mild so there was no ice age in Australia, for example.
err.. you need to read up in that:-)
we DID have ice just like everyone else did
we have the glacier pathways gouged out of coastal areas to prove it
and if it was “mild” then how come our big lizards etc also died off at the same time as NTH ones did?
hmm?
Agreed Oz…Aus did experience an ice age. Even our Flannel knows that.
Right on cue, Anthony serves up another article that everyone is going to agree with and lament the horrible trends and “green rhetoric on the rise”. Is it really better to waste things? Light toxic things on fire rather than powered by wind? Is un-sustainability what you all want here? More destruction because CO2 is cool? How about we teach kids how to throw rocks at dogs’ heads instead of petting them. What’s up for tomorrow Anthony? Charts? Guest written article on seal meat getting thicker, not thinner?
You are obviously another Kool-Ade drinker. CO2 is used by all parts of the life cycle. More CO2 will lead to a greener planet and raise the bilions of poor out of poverty,these are facts that are ignored by the coolade drinkers such as yourself.
I’m disappointed in the name calling. It detracts from the cogency of the argument.
What will happen when the “billions” are raised from poverty and live just like us? Where is the water to support hose billions? Where will the food be grown? What will happen to habitat for the rest of life on this planet?
So malanlewis…
You would rather those billions remain in poverty and suffering, so the righteous few can live in luxury?
malanlewis… Wow , I’ve heard a lot of stupid arguments but that must be the stupidest of the century !!
These back and forths are hopelessly confusing.
That was not my comment Marcus.
malanlewis – Malthusian alert!
Um … they’ll be raised from poverty and live just like us? They’ll stop dying inhuman deaths from starvation and poverty, and their birthrate will drop to replacement levels just as ours has
There is plenty of water on the planet. It is lack of infrastructural investment that causes water shortages, not an actual physical lack of water.
When efficient farming methods replace subsistence farming, on considerably less land than is currently used for it. It is the places where people are starving and living in poverty where humans impose the greatest stress on the environment. Desperate people will cut down every tree for cooking fuel and heating, and will eat anything vaguely edible. It is only in places free from extreme poverty that a squirrel can live in a city unmolested.
It will enjoy considerably lessened pressure from humans as most of us become urban dwellers and more efficient farming methods free up marginal land for nature preserves..
Poverty creates environmental stress, not affluence. You Malthusians have an inhuman and evil belief that it is somehow necessary to starve most of the human race to death. This is completely and absolutely false. Your ideas are just WRONG. In fact they are EVIL. You advocate for the deliberate and completely unnecessary starvation and impoverishment of a large fraction of the human race. I therefore regard you as a dangerous unbalanced fanatic and a worse monster than Joseph Stalin..
malanlewis… looks like yours ??
“What will happen when the “billions” are raised from poverty and live just like us? Where is the water to support hose billions? Where will the food be grown? What will happen to habitat for the rest of life on this planet? “
Marcus
And so. YOU demand the right to condemn those innocent billions to short, ugly lives freezing to death in the deadly cold, eating rotten food warmed on manure-fed stoves and digging water from muddy pits of disease, parasites, and vermin?
RACookPE1978,
“And so. YOU demand the right to condemn those innocent billions to short, ugly lives freezing to death in the deadly cold, eating rotten food warmed on manure-fed stoves and digging water from muddy pits of disease, parasites, and vermin?”
Don’t be silly, not he himself I’m quite sure . . he’s advocating that the most powerful people in each Country (the UN) pick some preferred “experts”, that will decide such things for the whole of humanity . . You know, the ancient way of deciding things; Elitism.
old1,
Just don’t worry about it. It’s not your concern. The market will take care of everything. Malthus was wrong.
1oldy,
The free market has worked 100.0% of the time when government butted out. No exceptions.
But you believe ‘this time it will be different’.
I have to laugh at how sure you are about everything, especially since you have been flat wrong in every comment. However do you do that? ☺
1oldy,
Please stop deflecting. This has nothing to do with “child labor”.
The fact is that children have always worked on the family farms. Many of the states and Territories had agricultural economies. In fact, the reason we have summer off from the school year is because of the great need for the kids to also help out around the farm during harvest.
What really improved everything for farmers (and their farm animals such as oxen and horses who pulled the plow) has been the gas engine tractor. It did not really pick up sales until later than 1938.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/media/machines0102.jpg
But threshers went around to separate farms during the season. I am sure many a teenager were happy about that.
The problem is now we have an Administration who thinks there should be laws against kids working on the family farm, and that there should be year round schools.
Also, Child labor in factories was more prevalent in the UK in the 1860’s. States and countries began to pass laws against kids working full time as early as those days. Children could work part time in the UK in the 1870’s, I believe.
Hi 1oldnwise,
The truth is that in the US 95% if farms are family owned. Many of them have been passed down for generations. Farmers have larger farms and use multi-family diesel tractors. A family farm and ranch may also include over a thousand head of cattle. Just because they are larger does not make them industrial as opposed to family owned. Be of good cheer.
This is as contrasted with farms in Africa. Farmers there can only cultivate about a hectare because of the weeds. The weeding is women’s work, and since many of them have no gas engine tractors and are denied herbicides, the farm can only farm as much as the women can clear before harvest. In Africa and South America, work on the farm is hard and long. Kids want to get off the farm and try the cities as soon as possible because of the hand weeding and harvesting, and often devastating losses because of pests.
What will cause labor shortages is organic growers. They must use hundreds of hours during peak season for hand weeding. This is bent over drudgery. Those hours weeding cause labor shortages in harvest.
Right on cue, troll Leland uses idiotic straw man arguments to site-bash, rant and whinge.
I agree Bruce, it’s quite pathetic !
Leland, I’ll respect your views if you live in a log cabin, burn wood for fuel, have your own little wind turbine for electricity and don’t use anything made of plastic, don’t ride a car over roads paved with asphalt (derived from crude oil) and basically, live the way people did before the industrial revolution that brought people like you all the wonderful benefits of modern living. Otherwise, you’re just like those hypocrites converging on Paris in their tens of thousands, flying there in fossil fuel powered aircraft and living off the public dime in the process. I’d give anything to have the fossil fuel industry go on strike for a month. You people need a reality check, and that would do it.
I guess I haven’t been reading WUWT comments carefully enough over the years.
I thought Anthony’s followers were beyond meaningless rhetoric.
I would sure appreciate it if responders would discuss the article and comments and and refrain from attacking the commenter.
I live in a large house with epic views and a deep wine cellar. I have 32 solar panels, no electricity bill, the highest rated insulation you can buy, and take public transportation. I do eat, but am doing my best to be vegan and eat only high quality meat on special occasions instead of gray Kroger’s slabs. I am certainly consuming, albeit substantially less than when I emerged as a good American with a Porsche, Jeep, and off road vehicles. I kite surf now instead. It is the best sport ever invented. My goal is to reduce my hypocrisy as much as possible, but it’s tough.
Dear Mr /Misses Leland !! You are delusional, seek help immediately !
1) You don’t use roads made from nasty oil BUT you ride on the buses that drive on the roads made from nasty oil !!!
2) Your still breathing, which means your pumping out CO2 !!!
Malanlewis, you get to say what you want. You do not get to direct the conversation.
I would sure appreciate it if you would drop the BS, and stop defending the other troll, Leland Neraho.
Don’t bash the guy, everyone’s trying to make sense of it all in their own way and few are prepared to give up the modern world, they may think they want to and they may think they’re doing ‘the right thing’ – but he has to live his life and accept the paradoxes. I often tell tree hugging friends it’s really not that hard to ‘get in touch with nature’ – it’s easy. When you get home from work, simply do not go inside. Stay out and feed the mosquitoes that night. When you rise in the morning, don’t go for a tap but instead find your own water. Kill something. This takes some a bit of time, but eventually they get hungry enough.. foraging in rubbish bins is cheating. DO not go back to work. Kill something else. If you’re a forward thinker, gather grass and plan to find a nice hole underground for when winter comes. Maybe the next few things you kill should have little furry jackets that you can remove and dry out in the sun to reduce the stink. After a week or parasitic bothers, scratches from defensive squirrels, cold and damp and some spider bites I find most people head back indoors and close their cave to the vicious world outside.
You know what the gist of the article is, that schools are indoctrinating children with unproven green nonsense. Your reference to lighting “toxic things” vs “powered by wind” shows your bias. Fossil fuels have powered man’s climb out of the feudal age and will continue to give us a comfortable and progressive civilization. Wind was fine for the windjammers of bygone times when it took six months to travel to the other side of the globe but wind energy is of too low a density to ever be more than a boutique power source. You then go off the deep end with a stupid analogy about teaching kids to throw rocks at dog’s heads. You epitomize the befuddled logic of the “greens” that we here deplore.
Nice, I could not have found a way to say it better !! My version was more or less ” F off ” !!!!
Right on cue…
…crybaby Neraho (O’Haren, maybe?) appears, with nothing but his endless snarky insults and ignorant comments.
But since that’s all he’s got, that’s what he uses. He knows that if he ever got into an honest science-based discussion, he would be demolished.
Please stop the personal attacks.
malanlewis,
Did you ever hear Pearl Bailey’s hit 45: It Takes Two To Tango ?
Mr. ‘Neraho’ appeared here, not to add anything constructive to the discussion but rather, to attack everyone even including the host of this science site. I fully agree with your comment: “I would sure appreciate it if responders would discuss the article…” So would I. But where has Mr. Neraho done that, other than emitting mindless snark and insults?
If you expect no pushback, you have yet to understand human nature.
I issued Mr. Nearho a challenge, in case you (or he) missed it: I challenged him to engage in an honest, science-based discussion. That would be a change from his snarky insults, no?
malanlewis, I’d love to be all kissy-face, but it takes two to tango.
Thanks Mr. Lewis. I have today, two days after Thanksgiving, been called a crybaby, hypocrite, lunatic, basket case and I’m sure more, which is fine. It is in the end a political battle, and Jefferson and Alexander went at each other’s throats for a good decade using all kinds of low and false means. Your arguments however, seem to be winning as no one can really honestly say that caring about natural resources is bad and being jerks about debating pedagogy is right. But they try. And try. And nowhere can anyone prove that the Pacific ocean temperatures are not on their way to making new highs for the anthropocene, otherwise known as warming, which in turn causes….. Climate Change.
Leland N complains:
Right on cue, Anthony serves up another article that everyone is going to agree with…
Wrong again: you get to post your comments, but it seems you’re never in agreement. Just a sample of some of your previous comments:
This website and comment section seems like a big circle jerk…
And:
When they realize that they have been taking showers in recycled urine, they will be pretty ticked off and rain down some pretty quick change, and it won’t be peaceful for you old farts.
And we’re…
…a bunch of bible thumping idiots
And:
Santa is coming and Jesus will open the door and feed him cookies.
Next, Leland admits that he’s…
…Definitely trolling. I just do this to amuse myself and maybe give someone an embolism to reduce the carbon footprint one denier at a time.
And @Anthony:
How can you claim to be scientific by citing your own blog posts and that of others making comments in the same circle jerk website?
Now ‘Leland Neraho’ complains he’s getting some pushback, when he started the whole thing with his own snarky and insulting comments above.
But I for one am willing to start over, and limit the discussion to facts, evidence, logical comments, and anything else that doesn’t try to put anyone you disagree with into a box.
It’s up to you, though. Because as you can see, I am an advocate of game theory:
Treat me good, I’ll treat you better
Treat me bad, I’ll treat you worse.
Clean slate. The rest is up to you…
Okay, DBStealy– Science based discussion on what to teach, and what not to teach young children. Let’s start with religion: Child abuse, brainwashing, indoctrination, or enlightenment? I say brainwashing, other more eloquent folks have characterized it as child abuse (fear of being sent to hell eating cookies). So please state the scientific merits of teaching how the planet was zapped into place and filled with fauna and flora in 7 days. Welcome to America.
(Reply: Please don’t bring religion into the discussion. Stick to science. Thanks. ~mod.)
Hello? DB Stealy? Scientific debate on teaching religion vs green practices? How water-walkers and burning/talking bushes and men who live 800 years is relevant?? Sustainability 101 vs. a book of lies and burning cauldrons. Which one, on the merits of science. Let’s go. Let’s take a 25 year old college graduate with no exposure to Christianity or Islam, and have him or her read the Old or New Testament (okay, just the New since it wouldn’t even be close to a fair fight) and then a book on sustainable farming practices. Which would they accuse of being a bizarre internet hoax?
(Reply: Once more: please don’t start discussing religion. -mod)
Okay DB, you win, you have the time to pull all my Bulliet Rye infused comments to the forefront and left no context to how I was treated prior. Clean slate though from here, right? Just the facts, no Obama, no discussion of liberties being taken– just water temps, rainfall patterns, jet streams and ice cores. Show me a chart that proves that there is no increased warming in the current El Nino? That the water is not warm at all, it’s just the media, or greenwashing. Show me, don’t tell me, that there is a pause, and that you can show that using any other starting year than 1998. And you can’t cite your own site. You just can’t. And then since this article about pedagogy, what is more valuable to teach– religion or sustainability? 20 bucks someone calls me another name.
Leland N,
Sea surface T is normal.
Oceans to 2000 metres depth is normal: normal.
The IPCC has been totally wrong:
http://s16.postimg.org/o9s4jpjed/Temps_0_2000_M_Ocean_2nd_2014_to_2100.png
[click in charts to embiggen]
Surface to 1900 metres depth, nothing unusual happening:
Ocean Heat Content stopped rising around 2009:
http://s27.postimg.org/idj4ait4z/Deep_OHC.png
ARGO buoys show ocean T has been generally declining:
http://tumetuestumefaisdubien1.sweb.cz/ARGO-sea-temperature-max-max.PNG
‘Greenhouse forcing’ deconstructed:
http://s17.postimg.org/y2qsxky8f/OHC_Missing_Energy_Dec2012.png
I can’t speak for other commenters, so no bets. And this is just the sea temp charts. I have ice core charts, but you need to be more specific about what you’re looking for.
That’s what liberals do, deflect away from the topics they can’t defend !!
dbstealey …..BAM !!!!!
Gary Pearse
November 28, 2015 at 11:20 am
There is no shortages of resources (except for imagination among the drones). see above
SAVE THE PLANET…..STOP BREATHING !!!!!!
Are they being taught that increased CO2 is greening the earth? I think the opposite is being taught.
Ref:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/15/greenpeace-founder-delivers-powerful-annual-lecture-praises-carbon-dioxide-full-text/
how about we teach kids this, Leland –
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/26/3-reasons-to-be-thankful-for-fossil-fuels-this-holiday-season/
Yeah, Leland, it is better to burn toxic things(wood, animal dung, etc.) especially if you want windmills. You can’t build more than a maginally effective wind-powered flour mill without electricity in abundance to produce rare earth magnets, high strength steels, carbon fibers, epoxy resins, aluminum, and concrete.
‘sustainability’, as jclarke341 pointed out, is a CAGW phantasm, a will-o-the-wisp. In the 1890’s no one knew we’d be able to burn atoms in just 50 years. The mechanical calculator had just been invented. No one new an electric powered one with a billion times the capability that fit in your hand would be commonplace in 100 years.
Seal meat is to difficult to produce economically. Leave it to the traditional Inuit to harvest. More likely in 50 years it will be cheaper,easier, and faster to produce 1000 different kinds of meat in some sort of hydroponic-type production than raise beef cattle and have the little machine to do it in your kitchen.
so my local small town school with under 200kids
greentinged headmistress moves in
so she puts TOXIC bloody astroturf into oval
reduces cooling from greenlawns, makes the kids go sit in sheds rather than on the oval where theyd play before..
costs out town a goodly chunk of the million$ the rest was “green grants”
astroturf breaks down into tiny plastic chemical dust bits
wonderful..she wont be round for the cleanup.
meanwhile locals are out of jobs in ground care as well.
small community, that matters!
she bans coke..thats good, but plastic bottled water is ok?
huh? we have taps and cups but theyre not mentioned..
still got a used bottle issue.
she goes Hitech
white boards n throw out the old…pcs
perfectly good machines dumped, I know I salvaged a few
money would have been better spent on books and blackboards cos the kids here arent any smarter for the tech toys.
scary how bad their english writing and maths skills are..
I know because they work IN shops and are bloody useless
It is EVERYWHERE
So is AIDS … collusion , causality or coincidence ???
Interesting conundrum, the difference between environment and climate. Students should be encouraged to use critical thinking and should question pollution as the byproduct of poorly designed processes and ill conceived legislation.
Students should understand how their day-to-day decisions impact the environment and how infrastructure was never designed to mitigate pollution. Examples: proper disposal of batteries, pharmaceutical products, the use of high fire chemicals, etc…
Oddly, these issues are construed to mean global climate making it someone else’s problem to solve. Maybe we need better teachers?
Carbon Dioxide is NOT pollution, it is plant food !!
Proper disposal of batteries,etc could be taught at home and not take up school time? Teaching time in the schools is already reduced with all kinds of fluff taking up learning time.
Hi Barbara,
I can’t speak for Australia but USA education and textbooks include course work in the natural environment grades 6-8. Human impact on the environment is included but it’s from an Ecology perspective not an environmentalist perspective. Pollution/adverse impact on the natural environment, its causes and mitigation are a great critical thinking opportunity.
I agree, many of the specific concerns should be taught at home.
What is worrisome is how Australia is teaching children that they are going to roast to death. That is no more likely than freezing to death. As our planet entered a geological era of alternate long Ice Ages and short Interglacials, Australia has had a very stable climate which is why creatures from BEFORE the rise of mammals, has been like a Noah’s ark of life forms more than 40 million years old. They thrived all this time, untouched by any climate ‘changes’ even the most drastic.
” The Land Down Under ” will have a whole new meaning soon !
Here in Silicon Valley the school children are indoctrinated in more than just green garbage, but the rest of the radical left agenda as well. It’s disturbing how many high school kids think Bernie Sanders should be POTUS. Reminiscent of the kind of indoctrination used by the Nazis back in the 1920’s.
Ask one of them what the definition of PI is !! Last time I asked that question the girl told me me ” Well, it’s not a cake is it !! “
Leland does not like the truth, does he. You know I grew up in Northern US in the 50 & 60 May snow fall was unheard of, now it is common place. Lake Superior never had Ice in June now it does, yet you greens are telling me it getting warmer. I will tell you we don’t know if it is or is not, to the most part I believe the so call warmth we are suppose to have is due to three reason, one yes we are recovering from the little ice age, two we had a massive equipment change and it add warming and three they are incorrectly adjusting for UHI and their homogenizing is add a warming bias.
As far as the article all I can say is the US school system is very good at indoctrination and very poor at education, when you hear a bank teller ask if twenty five dollars and fifteen dollars equals forty dollars, God help us, the worst part they are so call collage educated people. I don’t know what they got in school for but is surely was not education.
Ice is definitely growing at both poles and Hudson Bay as well as the Great Lakes. The ‘warm’ cycle’ is petering out and we are evidently entering another cold cycle.
And the weathervane for this is Hudson Bay which is where each Ice Age first began to really gather strength, it is the epicenter of glacial growth covering half of North America several times already.
Unfortunately, the IPCC will still be claiming the world is warming even after Manhattan Island is again covered by a kilometer of ice.
. .As a Northern Canadian, I can tell you, without any bias, deception or delusion…… I WANT SOME GLO.BULL WARMING ! I’m tired of freezing my nuts off every six months!!
“Unfortunately, the IPCC will still be claiming the world is warming even after Manhattan Island is again covered by a kilometer of ice.”
But let us be fair here; it will be hot ice after all. 🙂
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
A nut warmer ?..So thats why your smiling all the time !! LOL
While I agree that the environment needs to be looked after better, politics should not feature in schools and AGW is political.
When my children went to school I expected the school to teach them to read, write, count and think, but under no circumstance to teach them WHAT to think. Luckily the school agreed. We encouraged them to question everything, to think for themselves, look at all the facts and come to their own conclusions; and not to be afraid to change their opinion in the light of new facts.
Oldseadog +10 – You have said exactly what I tell my children and grand children. Whether they believe in scary CAGW thing or not, deciding whether warming in a country that has 6 months of winter and 6 months of bad sledding is a good or bad thing is up to them. All I ask of them is that they THINK for themselves and not buy into the flavour of the the day Dogma and always question what they are being told. And they do that very well when I tell them something.
Now here is an interesting fact for Trebla (I am just 12 years behind you). In Sunny Alberta, they are planning to shut down the 40% of our power produced from pretty modern, clean coal plants and replacing it with bird splitters. I have just bought two propane instant water heaters, one to replace my water tank heater and one to replace/supplement my electric powered water to water heat exchanger because the government policies have made electricity non-competitive with propane. In fact, even with the new NDP Carbon tax, propane will remain a less expensive energy source than the bird and bat splitters. That is what I call eco-madness – or just politics. Appearances are what counts, not actual economics or the environment.
Oldseadog – Nice to see someone to expect a school to teach how to “read, write, count and think”. I would like to see a campaign to get primary schools back to these basics. I call them the Four R’s : Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmetic and Reasoning.
I was a teachers’ aide back in the mid-70’s, One of the teachers I worked with taught remedial reading to 7th and 8th graders.
The workbook had a lesson that I’ll never forget. The gist of it was:
“There are two things I like about my little brother Billy and two things I don’t like.
The two things I like are that he’s easy to please and he’s fun to play with.
The two things I don’t like are that he screams and cries a lot and he breaks everything I let him him play with. Just yesterday he broke my favorite model airplane.”
The questions they were to answer asked what were the two things he liked and what were the two things he didn’t like.
Kids aren’t being taught to think. They have to learn that at home. (And they won’t learn it watching TV, even if it’s Sesame Street or Disney.)
… Oldseadog…hat tip !!!!
I was a kid during WWII. Why are they trying to frighten these kids? They have enough to worry about. During the war we knew, but our elders were wise enough to try to protect us, so we could do what kids do, including reading, writing and arithmetic. Our elders also knew that we might have to someday do what they were doing.
The foundations of human intelligence are not genetic. Children need a time of innocence, happiness, and instruction and the care of their own parents. Attachment Theory shows that the structure and organization of the brain is developed through the power of a few close, stable human bonds (parents and marriage). Once the structure of the brain is developed through a few close relationships, the child has the ability and cognitive resources to learn new facts and to understand the significance of what they have learned.
In private schools and homeschooling, we can see that learning is also a very self-motivated, self-organized activity as the child moves into the teen years. Children teach themselves new skills in a good home environment. For example, they may master a computer language or become excellent in drawing.
Children also need to be protected from the permanent damage to the brain and central nervous system caused by psychoactive drugs during their developing years. The brain has not mature until the age of 23, and this is the time when drug use is the most dangerous.
Just like Hitler , they must force indoctrination on the children !!
I suspect they’re trying to frighten the kids, because the parents aren’t taking them seriously…
When kids heads are filled with Greenie garbage, they learn that it isn’t facts or truth, or science that matters, but rather emotion. They learn that it’s easier to just parrot things instead of thinking for themselves. Under such conditions, the brain rots.
I read:
Now, I knew there were parrots in Australia but I didn’t know they went through the school system. All I can think is, shame – that a 15 year-old has had her head turned away from critical thinking in such a way. I live in hope that in years to come she will look back on this comment and cringe – and that before that happens she does not attain any position of power over her fellow citizens (written by someone who has a lot of cringe-able memories).
She’s been turned into a Gore-bot! She forgot to say ‘Climate change is real’.
When I went to school in the 60s, we were warned about global cooling. In the 70s we were told that food and oil would be scarce and millions would die. No one worried too much about those scenarios because a nuclear winter, acid rain or ozone depletion would wipe us out before any of the above happened. Now it’s CC. Keep ’em scared – keep ’em in line.
Nothing has changed in the decades since that was written.
I’m beginning to understand why Australia has the highest per capita empty-headed activist climate scientists. They got to them early. The rest of us outside of Asia are, unfortunately, striving to catch up with Australia though.
From yesterday’s featured guest article: “Jim Jones, the People’s Temple leader, led over 900 persons to commit suicide 32 years ago. Jones was charismatic and knowledgeable of both Scriptures and human behavior. After the mass murder/suicide and the murder of U.S. Congressman, Leo Ryan, Jones and his followers were on the news every day for weeks. Jones, who built his cult around a “doomsday” scenario — convinced his followers that the world was past due for an apocalyptic ending very soon. The apocalypse of an alleged climate change shares many of Jones’ cult-like qualities.”
(Snip. Please, don’t refer to other readers as being part of a ‘circle jerk’ -mod)
We teach non-science in the US, so in order to discuss what science should be taught (subject of today’s article, so I’m not veering here) we need to be able to identify the source of the ignorance and how many are indoctrinated into the belief that the Earth was given to man to do what he wanted with it, and if he messed up, God will just fix it, or bring the chosen to Mars, after the reckoning, of 7 billion people’s sins. If you’re not willing to look at religion as a source of bias in your science you are irrelevant.
Hey Mod… I think you are being trolled.
Thanks for coming on here Leland.
Your ‘text-book’ Warmist responses demonstrate perfectly the confusion which is eroding belief in your Faith; amongst everyone except the discontented and easily confused.
You may have noticed that big panel down the side which contains pretty much every official source of climate data available, from every reputable source. It’s called ‘science’…we’re quite good at it here and
THAT’S why we’re winning and your side is losing the argument.
But as I say it’s great to see you here…reminds us all of how important it is to face the likes of you down!
I’m stupid enough to have faith. The science is pretty clear on that one. But I am being censored. The author gets to use terms like climate madrasahs and yet religion is off limits. ??
(Reply: You were not “censored”, your comments were posted. You were requested to not make religion your issue. Stick to science, please. -mod)
Leland Neraho
“…we need to be able to identify the source of the ignorance and how many are indoctrinated into the belief that the Earth was given to man to do what he wanted with it …”
The only religion I am aware of that fosters such an approach is true atheism. On the premise of there being no “higher power”, man has no possible intrinsic logical or “moral” reason not to do whatever man wishes to do. Same as any other happenstance generated critter, arising in a purely materialistic world.
“…and if he messed up, God will just fix it, or…”
Messed up? What does that mean in a totally happenstance/material universe? How can one happenstance state be more or less messed up than another? It seems clear to me that you are importing/borrowing the concept of there being a special “intended” state, but there is no such state if there is no Intender, by definition. That’s just some stuff one of the happenstance conglomerations of particles is imagining has some special significance . . on true atheism.
You can spout anything you like about what is right, or fair, or fixed, but it means nothing more than what you prefer, if there’s really nothing here but us biological preferrers.
Liberal deflection from reality ! When they can’t win with evidence they will try to baffle you with bullshit !!!
Trolling with the wrong bait. The source of ignorance is children who were not taught reason, morals, and self-discipline. Abe Lincoln wasn’t taught, he learned it with some help.
This “carbon-neutral” thing is a real scandal, taxpayers money diverted from education to making futile “green” gestures. St Andrews University in Scotland is doing it, changing their low cost mains gas central heating to using “hot” water piped from burning wood 4 miles away, reducing the amount of wood available to those who really need it, those without mains gas and without access to large amounts of taxpayers money.
didn’t old Bill foresee this in the Scottish Play – “’till Burning Wood shall prove the Dons insane…”?
We must stop this global warming!
We must stop these ignorant comments!
NO dbstealey
We must keep them so we can give future children something to laugh about !!!
. .YES, let’s go back to the LIA !!! DOH !
“We must stop this global warming!” ~ some anonymous twit
Ok, suppose we don’t.(we can’t after all as CO2 is not the reason for any warming) What would happen if the planet warmed 10 degrees Celsius? The warming is supposed to happen mostly towards the poles. We get a warmer Canada and a warmer Russia. So? I guess that would mean Moscow winters would go all the way up to only cold as hell instead of the present damn near intolerable.
I mean seriously, what would be so bad about a very nice and warm planet earth.
My nuts would be happy with a little warming !!
Once again, LN tries to drag religion into things, this time using the thinly-veiled excuse that it’s “the source of ignorance”. Three strikes and he’s out.
But it’s all he’s got !!! ROTFLMAO !
Dude- religion is in the article above “climate madrasahs” and “extreme religious doctrine”. Scroll up. Facts are facts. Pigs on the other hand, don’t fly, and Jesus isn’t circling the moon. Teach science not religion.
(Keep pushing religion and you will be invited to take a time out. -mod.)
Any one that starts their sentence with ” Dude ” has an IQ of 20 !!
on the photo –
why are all the boys and girls laughing? school road trip, no class today?
really bad poster and banner art – must not be doing art in schools anymore
good to see “Fossil Free” X’d out = we’re for fossil fuels !!
I personally object to schools using children to protest, sign petitions, sell items or to collect money during school hours, or in their free time.
I also would like people to know that 1/4 of these children are being treated with a prescription medication in order for them to sit in these schools.
I agree – but look again, these are not young children = many are easily the 23 years old you mentioned
Of course Bubba Cow. Those are college students, you are right.
Still, in my town the high schoolers are collecting money for “the poor” in orange cans at traffic intersections, with matching signs and slogans.
Also, the teachers stood at a major intersection and held placards with their elementary school class for a school funding issue on the ballot. Sometimes they sell door-to-door for the public schools for rewards, or bring catalogs home.
And if anyone hasn’t heard, as UKIP is campaigning for a full, free and fair referendum to leave the European Union, the pro-Europe parties (that is, all of them) are pushing to lower the voting age to 16!
Lowering the voting age to include school children is not appropriate, since they cannot even support themselves or hold office yet.
Government unions are not acceptable !!!
They were told to or they’d lose their jobs.
http://watchdog.org/247924/union-bosses-supreme-court/
Marcus– You should really stop posting and focus on your case. Killing a cop and two civilians is a serious matter.
Oh Bummer has said “enough is enough”
for the 23rd time.
Leland Neraho . . Are you drunk ?? Nothing you have said tonight makes any sense !!
[Please do not insult innocent sleep-deprived drunks … by comparing them to CAGW propagandists. 8<) .mod]
Thanks, Marcus. Some guy in Arizona from AFSCME called me a month or so ago telling me I should be upset about something in California. I had him a bit upset before he explained what it was. That must be it.
Dear Mod…I am NOT sleep deprived…yet !!!!
As in California, Australia, too suffers droughts because of present-day short-sighted Green efforts to prevent new dam construction, and modern irrigation infrastructure projects that might make unused water useable. 3,000 years ago they realized this in Yemen and built the World’s first large dam and irrigation system to bring water from when and where it is plentiful to where it is needed and prevent it simply evaporating. Green education in schools opposes all that sort of forward thinking.
Surprising fact to many dam builders, the drought in California is due to a complete drop off of the Sierra snow pack, not lack of reservoirs, due to lack of winter storms because the normal jetstream flow was altered due to existence of a high pressure ridge that persisted. Reservoirs only help to offset the impact of a long drought, but their existence or numbers wouldn’t prevent a drought.
actually not that simple – if you wish to learn
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061215-757095-california-drought-caused-by-environmental-activists.htm#ixzz3fdquBgFi
OMG. You are quoting an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, written by a central valley Representative? I’ll take a cite from this site long before thinking I can learn from Nunes. Water use and storage is not the same as rainfall and snowpack. It’s just not. It’s not. Really, it’s not.
I’m taking my time-out now please. The name calling is just fine, but the rest is just too much. If an article mentions subject-that-can’t-be-mentioned, how can it not be mentioned? If the trends up how are they down? If this is truly the place, why doesn’t Shell cite you all? Have you read their analysis? Or are they the enemy now too.
So the giant Auburn dam, which was stymied by the enviro crowd until the state gave up, wouldn’t be of any use now?
Common sense isn’t your strong point, ‘Leland’.
Your comments are getting dumber by the minute !! A large part of the drought in Cali is caused by the fact that the greenies like you FORCED cities to let an entire river dump into the ocean instead of redirecting it to where it is needed, just to protect a fish that is not even good enough to use as bait , thus increasing global sea rise !!! If you want some smelt, Canada has millions to share, and they actually taste good !!!
I have to agree with what Leland says about the Ca drought, except that the lack of snow is more indicative of cooling than warming as its in the warmer El Nino periods when we get the most snow. I’ve been visiting Sierra snowfields during the summer for decades and much of their recent demise has been due to unusually heavy summer rains coming up from the South which washed away much of the Sierra’s alpine glaciers and snow fields. I spent over a dozen days and nights in the high Sierra throughout this summer and rather than the usual hot and dry, it was unusually cold and wet. I should also point out that the 2011/2012 summer snowpack remained at the highest levels I’d ever seen, so variability is the norm, not the exception.
Leland,
Your silly replies are getting tedious. Please try harder to communicate intelligently. Try to stick to science facts and quit wandering around looking for a fight.
To address Cali’s problem, the first thing to do in the desert if you want to grow crops, is make sure there is plenty of water “for the bad years”. This means storage and piping. Politics and the green lobby have created these situations. They have taken a simple problem and turned it into a disaster. Can you say reservoirs???And please educate yourself on the long term trends of rainfall in desert regions. And one last thing, ask yourself, how much water do they use in L.A., San Fran, etc., compared to the amount of rain that falls on their respective geographic areas?
Australia is going in the wrong direction:
http://41.media.tumblr.com/af3ebddd6074c6e133bcabe61ae20537/tumblr_nydqrmU7B01rhnukoo1_500.jpg
I whent to skool in orstraya and theres nuffin rong wiff my inglish.
Sow kwit yappen.
. . . ROTFLMAO …. stop..it hurts !!!
Preparing alarmist material for schools is a highly sophisticated project.
Let’s imagine that we were to try to create a wholly alarmist description of the situation afflicting the continent of Antarctica as a result of “global warming”.
Obviously we would want to pile up every possible alarmist claim whilst making no mention of the vast amounts of contradictory evidence or uncertainty.
We would first have to find the greatest amount of warming recorded anywhere, ever, in Antarctica.
So we could start with “Antarctica has experienced air temperature increases of 3°C”.
That’s sounds alarming. Obviously we may need to specify, “in the Antarctic Peninsula.”
And then, not mention that the figure is a clear example of cherry picking. Or that temperatures across the whole of the rest of the continent have shown no such warming or in some cases a cooling trend.
We know that penguins are thriving and that sea ice is increasing but how about saying, “the distribution of penguin colonies has changed as the sea ice conditions alter.”
That sounds vaguely alarming to the uniformed child.
Later we claim that some arbitrarily selected worrying thing “may be associated with reduced sea ice cover.”
O.K. so sea ice cover isn’t reducing, BUT we said “may be” so we’ve covered ourselves.
Anyway, those are the basic instructions.
If you persist in this exercise then you will end up with the U.K. A level course material. As follows:
“5:1 Impacts of climate change
Warm up
Antarctica has experienced air temperature increases of 3°C in the Antarctic Peninsula Although that might not seem very much, it is 5 times the mean rate of global warming as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Over the past 50 years, the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula has been one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet. This warming is not only restricted to the land but can also be noted in the Southern Ocean. Upper ocean temperatures to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula have increased over 1°C since 1955. It has now been established that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is warming more rapidly than the global ocean as a whole. Studying climate change in Antarctica is important because it enables scientists to predict more accurately future climate change and provide information to politicians and policy makers.
The warming of the Antarctic Peninsula is causing changes to the physical and living environment of Antarctica. The distribution of penguin colonies has changed as the sea ice conditions alter. Melting of perennial snow and ice covers has resulted in increased colonization by plants. A long-term decline in the abundance of Antarctic krill in the SW Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean may be associated with reduced sea ice cover. Large changes have occurred in the ice cover of the Peninsula. Many glaciers have retreated and ice shelves that formerly fringed the Peninsula have been observed to retreat in recent years and some have collapsed completely.”
This is not a satire. This course material can be found here:
http://www.discoveringantarctica.org.uk/alevel_5_1.html
excellent – science and education by formula – much cheaper than labs
Its a disgrace and I can imagine what will happen in a few years when global cooling kicks in. The green leftoid teachers will say they only taught the material given to them by higher authority.
Its not good enough, I demand a public humiliation of all those involved with this indoctrination., which has produced Nihilism among the young.
As for the students who have been brainwashed, we should be able to snap them out of their malaise with good humor and a rational debate.
Don’t worry. They will all forget their past mistakes, just as quickly as they “made up” their present delusional worldview. Stupidity is a mindset that conveniently shows no attachment to information.
They will move on to some new or variant delusion, learn nothing, and they will doubtlessly complain when “irritating bores” keep “bringing up the past”.
Mr. Frog, you forgot to show the picture of a ” starving ” Polar bear that is stranded in the middle of nowhere on the last lonely chuck of what use to be Antarctica !!! ( Ignore the injured leg ) LOL
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/record-breaking-polar-bear-spurs-climate-change-concerns/55349/
indefatigablefrog, pretty much every sentence in that course material is dated and highlights the inherent bias of the piece. It is also obvious that it has been written with a rather parochial view by the British Antarctic Survey because pretty much everything it talks about is only applicable to the British claimed chunk of Antarctica which includes the Antarctic’s most northerly piece of land – the peninsula. Furthermore, there is no historical context. Many ice shelves retreated in the early years of the 20th century. More recently, there has been a dearth of large icebergs breaking off ice shelves in the Antarctic. WUWT?
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/04/us/world-war-ii-planes-found-in-greenland-in-ice-260-feet-deep.html Now 400 feet deep Melting Greenland PLEASE EXPLAIN
” Six American fighter planes and two bombers that crash-landed in Greenland in World War II have been found 46 years later BURIED under 260 feet of ice, searchers said today. ” BURIED …can you not read ?
@DB Stealy: this is from NOAA. Not reliable or is surface temp not relevant? Trend looks up though.
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/oceans/sea-surface-temp.html
oh boy, the EPA …
One more time, NOAA.
. . . . N.O.A.A.. .???. thanks for the laugh….
The NOAA graph show 1degC in 135 years at the ocean surface, .07degC/decade. Is it reliable- probably not, since it is not a real temperature but a rough statistical estimate. In any case temperature is a very poor proxy for the energy associated with water in the climate. Gigatons of water melt and freeze each year and many times that evaporate and condense everyday. So the energy change error represented in the graph is many, many times the .33 J/g/1degC over 135 years.
Global average rainfall alone is ~5×10^5 km^3.
LN:
I thought youy were taking a time out? That sure didn’t last long.
Anyway, that’s a chart of the U.S. you posted. But the issue is global warming.
Since you apparently don’t know the difference, I suggest taking a few months off to read the WUWT archives, in order to get up to speed.
Leland Neraho
you mean the same NOAA that is violating a congressional subpoena? try to find someone with a shred of credibility.
And yes there was a time when NOAA was golden. More the tragedy. But then as Talleyrand said
“It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.”
michael
Oh and Leland though its late Happy thanksgiving.
From the NOAA: Sea surface temperature increased over the 20th century and continues to rise. From 1901 through 2014, temperatures rose at an average rate of 0.13°F per decade (see Figure 1).
Sea surface temperatures have been higher during the past three decades than at any other time since reliable observations began in 1880 (see Figure 1).
Your post above says 0.0027c per year, which is only 0.0486f per decade (i think i did it right). Who is right? DB Stealey or NOAA?
takes a really good thermometer to measure to 10 thousandths of a degree
Completely agree with you. Seems to be simple, is it warmer, or colder? I think the answer is that it’s warmer. Ergo, not only possible, but probable that it is not just warmer, but warming. DB is also only using 15-20 years of data. Not that it matters, his trend is still up.
What goes up, never comes down? Monotonically increasing forever and ever? Tell that to your trig teacher.
Any thermometer can do that if it was made by the the same people who make Twizzlers. (I think Hansen is a major stockholder.8-)
Keep in mind that for more than half of this interval, measurements were very sparse in both time and space. Many of the ‘adjustments’ made by NOAA (and propagated into the EPA presentation) are to compensate for this disparity once the data is ‘homogenized’. I wouldn’t put too much faith in the results as their methodology provides enough wiggle room to get whatever result you want and once you get the results you’re looking for, you stop looking for errors in the data or the analysis and get the IPCC to canonize your results in a technical assessment report so that others can build on your work, thus applying strong positive feedback to the broken science.
Leland N,
The NOAA has routinely “adjusted” the numbers. Only credulous fools take what they say at face value.
Per Leland’s request, I posted several links showing real world observations that confirm that SST’s are not rising as claimed by NOAA. But as usual, ‘Leland’ ignored them, and went right on to worship of his chosen ‘authority’.
Would it really surprise ‘Leland’ if he found out that the head of NOAA and all other departments serve at the whim of the President?
Could ‘Leland’ then make the connection between Obama’s ignorant parroting of the “climate” narrative, and the fact that NOAA fabricates non-existent warming?
Or is that government bureaucracy the final word in all things sciency?
It’s not. The NOAA and similar bureaucracies have been co-opted. Now they are the source of major misinformation campaigns, aimed directly at the lemmings who hold them up as some kind of ‘authority’.
That ‘appeal to authority’ logical fallacy that ‘Leland’ always falls back on is doing exactly as intended: it is leading the sheep to the conclusion the government wants. And best of all, it takes no thinking whatever.
Perfect for ‘Leland’, no?
But how far can one trust NOAA? See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/28/ncdcnceis-karl-and-peterson-refuse-congressional-subpoena-on-flawed-pausebuster-paper/
WOW, and here I thought your comments couldn’t possibly get any more ignorant…Silly me !!
Leland Neraho November 28, 2015 at 10:44 am
Dear Leland (May I call you Leland?) Concerning your statement about God waiting 4 billion years to see a frog jump or an ape climbing a tree. This supposes that the Earth is the only place in the Universe with jumping frogs or clambering apes. Perhaps frogs jumped and apes climbed much earlier elsewhere in the Universe after the Big Bang and so your God did not have to sit around twiddling the celestial thumbs until these jaw dropping events occurred!
That’s a great point James. Obvious almost in hindsight, but rather illuminating nonetheless. You’d think he would have kept them a little closer though, don’t you? I guess if you’re God, 23 million light years to the next blue-green is just a walk through the garden. Seems to be an unattended progression though, from bogs to frogs to dinosaurs, so it could still refute the purposefulness that Western religions apply to the process to frame the purpose of our existence. No?
Leland, you still don’t comprehend that God isn’t ‘in’ time, He doesn’t ‘walk or see ‘progress’ in the universe. God is eternal so time, distance, and any other dimensions we see don’t even apply. Our whole shebang just ‘is’ to God. Mortals need not apply.
p.s. I can’t comprehend it either.
I am an Agnostic person BUT your comments assume that GOD is worried about TIME !!!!
The reason we don’t discuss religion here.
Some mindless prat keeps bringing up religion even though this site tries to keep to science. Well, since science has become so politicized this site ends up sticking to politics and science. (politics as it affects science you see)
You see my dear prat, one can believe in things outside of our material universe and many of us do that very thing, but science sticks to what it can observe and measure (not model with a computer) and that leaves out most people’s concept of religion. You could go for a discussion of philosophical Daoism but since the Dao that can even be named is not the true Dao we would not get real far as science now would we?
So, how about we give the religious comments a rest. (even if you are really the Pope)
“Ignoring normal education standards, while celebrating the conversion of government funded schools into climate madrasas, preaching extreme religious doctrine, is the kind of trend which is normally associated with third world trouble spots, not with a modern country like Australia.”
Mindless prat #1: Eric Worrall, author of the article. It’s above you. Scroll up.
Oh, I see. You are not capable of reading with comprehension (or refuse to do so). To observe that schools are preaching a religious doctrine is not discussing religion though I do see that the uneducated or the very young might make such a mistake.
I have seen comments here before explaining to mindless prats the difference between religious beliefs and the scientific method. That also is not disusing religion but rather explaining the difference between science and religion.
The OP was correct and it was not an open invitation to have some alarmist idiot begin telling us all his religious views. Keep them to yourself.
You probably should also send an email to Anthony Watts, purveyor of this site, since he posted two articles, back to back, referencing religion. For some strange reason he won’t reply to mine 🙂
Who would? Seeing as how you are incapable of understanding the subject you are babbling on about.
No Mark, I am merely not in agreement with you, your rules, obfuscations, or the value that you and your generation and demographic currently provide to the discourse of the future. Hence you and yours sling insults. All day long.
Leland Neraho
Ah, but “your generation” have added “nothing” to the world, but merely sucked the life from tens of thousands each year in your quest for a Socialist Utopia of lavender rainbowed unicorns. Requiring the money, protection, inventions, jobs, traditions, training, culture and tolerance of your betters from MY generation.
Or, as your generations protests, do YOU demand the protection (slavery) of the 7th century ignorant Muslim hordes? Are YOU to be the ones thrown from the rooftops to YOUR death, enslaved in cages, and burned, whipped, cut and stoned to death?
Oh dear, you disagree. What ever am I to do? You don’t like my generation or my demographic? Oh dear me.
And you don’t like facts and observations. Those mean old things that slay pet theories. Like CO2 always following warming in all time scales which tells us that CO2 does not cause warming but is caused by warming. (the warming of the oceans mainly) Not to mention that thermodynamics pretty much kills off your CO2 will fry us delusion.
But how am I to go on now that a know-nothing has said he does not like my generation? The humanity!
Disclaimer: Please friends, don’t worry for my safety. I will struggle on with my sad little existence even though some twit thinks my generation is unfit to exist. (I wonder how he found out my age?)
markstoval..Don’t worry, Leland is just a liberal atheist troll desperately trying to find some way to hang on to his immature beliefs !! P.S. ….I am also an Atheist, but I accept reality !!
“For example take the time scale of the past 18 years. There has been zero warming, but CO2 has risen 30 ppm.”
We don’t know there has been no warming since the data sets are unreliable. We also don’t know that there has been any increase in CO2. We think these things may be true, but politicized science and cooking the books keeps us from knowing just what the last 18 years has brought.
But if you are right and CO2 went up 30 ppm with no warming — then CO2 causes warming is falsified and the Paris confab is about nothing other than population control and civilization destruction.
Besides, I was talking about natural CO2 rise in the past following warming and you move the goal posts to industrial release of CO2.
Marcus wrote: “markstoval..Don’t worry, Leland is just a liberal atheist troll desperately trying to find some way to hang on to his immature beliefs !! P.S. ….I am also an Atheist, but I accept reality !!”
Yes, I knew about him but was have a spot of fun myself. I can’t be an atheist since I don’t believe the universe got here “by random chance” or “by accident”. On the other hand, as a Daoist (or Taoist to some) I just substitute “the Dao” when people start talking about the big white haired magic Santa in the sky. That helps a bit. 🙂
Does that make me an agnostic?
Uhhh …Yep. As we see, CO2 follows T pretty exactly.
Sorry to debunk your belief system once again.
And there is really no corellation between ∆T and ∆CO2:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/de/temp-emissions-1850-web.jpg
The only cause-and-effect is seen in the causation: ∆T causes ∆CO2. Old dummies may not understand see that, but everyone else does.
So ?? I don’t talk to walls either !!!!
To Mark Stoval.. I accept your religious beliefs without any reservations !! You are free to believe what ever your heart desires !!! I, unlike most liberal Athiests, such as Leland , do not and will not belittle other people for their beliefs !! Religion is a matter of the heart not science !!!
Good idea Mark.
Without future interruption and hopefully some attention here, once again the number one smoking gun.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwierf6o_LTJAhUJSyYKHYM2CMEQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2013%2F12%2F06%2Fdenier-land-how-deniers-view-global-warming%2F&psig=AFQjCNErv4d3gMiH23rXl9U81oMQ4F8Zug&ust=1448863721826668
Thanks for that link to the Cook parody. I had forgotten that one. 🙂
I once had local temperatures here rise over 30 degrees F in just 6 hours. At that rate the earth will melt in a few months! Luckily I was able to stop the rise in temperatures by eating a nice lunch and then a dinner. It worked! The temperatures started back down a dusk.I try never to miss lunch and dinner — it is for the children!
Is the question rhetorical?
In Australia, education today means ideological indoctrination, not learning of knowledge. As to thinking critically, well that would challenge ideology – a definite taboo. See for yourself:
https://youtu.be/iKcWu0tsiZM
Thats hilarious Val 🙂
STOP ….I’m laughing so hard it hurts !!
+ 10,000,000,000
Had me cracking up! Too funny…but too real to.
wow val
thanks, I think
that was truly scary
The indoctrination doesn’t stop when students complete their schooling , it continues into university where courses and lectures keep pushing global warming narrative. The infiltration of Australia’s academia by green agendas has had a big influence in dumbing down Australian school kids. The encouragement to not question the AGW theory reflects that rote learning is dominating our education system with group think the norm. Creative and lateral thinking is almost frowned upon by an education system controlled by principals /principles of political correctness.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards.
– Mark Twain
also by the same man:
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
What I read is “We want salvation now”, in other words, this movement fulfills a religious need. That need is based on fear of death, a button pushed constantly by the environmental movement. Sort of like selling cars with sex.
In answer to your title, YES.
Agreed. But I would go further and point out that any government school is a place of indoctrination. Close all the government schools and let private schools serve the student and parent.
“The Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Education Union and the NSW Teachers Federation have adopted policies endorsing action on climate change.
The Federation policy adopted at the 2011 Annual Conference calls for continued support for the ACTU and AEU environment policies and activities, including lobbying in support of a sustainable low carbon economy which includes a price on polluters and pollution.
The Australian Education Union has put together an online Environment Resources and Action kit that provides information and links to assist teachers in understanding and teaching current environmental issues.
The ACTU has an online Climate Change and Jobs campaign that addresses climate change issues from a union perspective and includes a range of resources and video presentation on the issue.”
NSW Teachers Federation Aug 2011.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”
It is not federal and state government curriculums, headmasters and mistresses and school boards that determine “the man” – it is teachers’ unions.
Any teacher will tell you that Common Core is worthless. Teachers who mus t implement it never were consulted. It is a product of so-called “untellectua;s” and the ed school professors they are allied with who sit in their ivory tower and have not seen the inside of a school room for the last twenty years.
Brain-washing children should be out-lawed. At the present moment we have no such legislation on our statute books anywhere in in our western democracies.
What ever happened to the three R’s ??
I was interested to find out what was currently being studied at nearby Cardiff University.
See what you make of these examples of material promulgated by the Cardiff Uni. Centre for Zizek Studies. No words could describe what I discovered. Open pdf here:
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjt4qesrLTJAhXCRBQKHWJbAeYQFggkMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fzizekstudies.org%2Findex.php%2Fijzs%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F382%2F452&usg=AFQjCNHqOWhVnea7nR2sXDdqm-sJCMBiQQ&cad=rja
And here:
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjt4qesrLTJAhXCRBQKHWJbAeYQFgg2MAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zizekstudies.org%2Findex.php%2Fijzs%2Farticle%2FviewFile%2F308%2F391&usg=AFQjCNGUuZvJUb4oy1f58IDpEyIRJiVQOA
The emphasis on soft, anti-science, feel-good topics like “climate change” is symptomatic of the equality-of-outcomes philosophy underpinning education in Australia.
The curious equation that comes out of it is: everyone passes = everyone fails.
It’s enough to make your blood run cold.
Australian education used to have an exceptional reputation worldwide as any Australian teacher who taught overseas can attest—-but since the Left took a stranglehold on it in the late sixties —stepped up in the seventies—the trajectory has been nothing but downhill.
Leftist teachers ,unions and academics find it easy to snow parents into thinking all of their new PC schemes and the post-modern curricula are educating a new elite of intellectuals with all options open.
The opposite is the truth.
My mother and her friends whose family circumstances precluded formal education post-Primary School —are infinitely more literate and numerate than most Year12 graduates right now.
With the great fundamental education they had to Year 6 they went on to educate themselves and opened up many options unavailable to the many smart kids who fall by the wayside now.
Australian K-12 education over the last 4 decades is a disgrace to the country and a massive betrayal of parents who either wake up to the situation and pay for private tutors— or don’t and find out too late that their children have had their options closed.
Parents should be able to sue the Left for damage done to generations of children.
The Left’s new mantra is STEM study—as if they invented physics ,chemistry and higher maths, engineering, technology—as if it can just be grafted on when students have been deprived of the fundamental knowledge required.
There’s no chance for Australia to have a good education system until mastery of literacy-with full and comprehensive teaching of English grammar and real mastery in all aspects of numeracy are TAUGHT —not just presented—in Australian Primary Schools— as the irreducible prerequisites for Secondary studies.
If a student is not fully literate [ as far as the English language is concerned] by the end of Year 6—and fully numerate—it’s enormously difficult for them to catch up in order to study STEM subjects.
Without complete overhaul of Primary education–including re-education of teachers—and elimination of the PC fad curriculum—STEM graduates will continue to be only the very top level of students who can teach themselves and those whose parents were able to bypass the ‘education system’ by paying for private tutors.
Didn’t Aussie educational standards improve dramatically under the watchful eye and loving care of Ms Gillard?
An absolute martyr.
Not sure about that. I think some skools got a few “halls” and other unless buildings…and maybe some aircon, and maybe the propane heaters in some had exhaust flues that actually sent fumes OUTSIDE the classroom. I do recall that every child would receive a laptop. Not sure how that worked. I do know my former wife’s nephew received one…and he never used it.
If you need a benchmark for Education in Australia I only have two words for you. Cook and Lewandosky!
Schmidt is from Montana.
Blackburn from Tasmania.
We need to do better.
One troll derailed this thread. Instead of discussing the issues of the article we (ME) digressed into fruitless debate with a arsonist.
The real questions like how to communicate with school boards and how to be elected or be appointed to them. never saw the light of day.
just my thoughts
michael
Excellent observation Mike
If he wants to learn he will. WUWT is an excellent resource for the facts.
As for school boards, I’m not sure there is an effective method to effect change.
Originally, I was not a fan of home school, but more and more I see well adjusted thinking humans coming out of home schooled environments. I realize it’s not the answer for the masses, but it may offer an out for those parents who want something better.
Meanwhile back over in Europe they’ve taken an awful turn in wrong direction. This shocked me when I saw it today and figured I’d share. I realize it is not directly related to CAGW, but the tolerance of people/ideologies that should not be tolerated is part of why CAGW grew roots. It’s a further manifestation of the false guilt syndrome coupled with a pollyanna view of the world. An capitulation to a new world order that is disturbing in its sheer inability to be understood … at least by me.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/11/watch-anti-migrant-video-going-viral-across-europe/
WARNING .. you are likely to be upset by this video.
What is absolutely insane is that liberals don’t realize that THEY will be first targets !! Mooslims do not accept gays , free speech or even free thought !!
Thank God Americans have the right to bear arms !!!
What should be evident to all is that there is no one way to teach all children, as the experts and academics would have us believe.
And obviously, there is no one curricula that fits all students, schools, and teachers. Parents have choices between public schools, charter schools, private schools, private tutors, online distance learning and homeschooling.
If the argument for educational freedom is not plain to every one on principle, perhaps this might be a better way to look at it.
Spending per student:
“NSW has the largest public school system in Australia, with spending of $15,718 per public school student in 2011/2012.”
While the public school system spends well over $10,000/student in Aus and in the US, other schools will have spent far less and gotten better results. As long as the failing school system and the teachers’ unions do not regulate these smaller, more versatile and flexible educational choices, than some children will have a good education. Parents are responsible for the upbringing and education of their own children.
Mass education is for convenience – like mass producing goods and materials. It is a convenient sitter for working parents. It is convenient for various purposes of the state. It is convenient for etc. etc.
But it mostly produces a look-alike mediocre commodity. In the guild system of earlier centuries when masters taught just a few students, an occasional apprentice would go on to exceed his master in capability. Yes, exceeding one’s professor these days is much easier, but the bar is so much lower that there are very few high achievers.
The Australian public education sector pays “educators” very very well (I don’t need a 5 year degree to read text from a teachers handbook in accordance with the curricula). Especially universities. In Australia, superannuation (Super) is part of your pay package and is mandatory and is currently set at 9.5% p/a of whatever you get paid. I always look for jobs that are salary PLUS super (I am told your employer pays that super! What? Yes, the employer does pay it for me, but It is part of my salary “package”! The employer does not pay that out of their pockets). Unlike politicians, ordinary workers cannot touch this super until 65. So, if we lose our jobs and get evicted/home re-possesed, we cannot save the family and family home by using some of that fund. Well, you can, only after 28 weeks of unemployment. Hummm…
Workers at universities in New South Wales (NSW) receive super at 17.5% p/a. And that is paid by the Govn’t.
My last contract was with a NSW Govn’t agency. All being outsourced. And everyone I worked with had been with the agency a long time were just waiting for the day when they could take redundancy the money and run. It was quite a depressing place to be when all you could hear was talk of this. And I would do the same.
There’s nothing wrong with teaching kids a bit of environmental consciousness. The trouble is, far too many people, including media, politicians, opinion makers of all sorts, are unable to separate CO2 from the kinds of pollutants that got the environmental movement started in the 1960s. This article appeared in “Canada’s National Newspaper” today:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/partners/thomsonreuterscapitalize/advtrclimate/chinas-war-on-pollution-is-now-a-matter-of-survival/article23427450/
One has to assume that the people that wrote this article really think that “greenhouse gases” cause smog. Either that or they are deliberately manipulating their audience with shocking pictures (good heavens, that would never happen in Canada, surely?)
With that kind of ignorant nonsense being so widespread among so called informed adults, is it any wonder that kids are being taught rubbish?
And to add to the media abuses of rational discourse of this one day, Ban Ki-moon was interviewed by CBC-TV and stated that climate change is leading to terrorism (actually, I think he said “may be” but that’s probably just to make him appear thoughtful, wise and sage). I assume some of the audience have let the thought slip into their subconscious where it will end up distorting their world view a little bit more.
Don’t know if it’s true in Oz, but certainly seems to be the case in North Carolina that our students are being fed a load of carp.
Somebody please take Hallie Turner under your wing and point her in the right direction. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article46795925.html
Greenwashing is on in NZ schools. My daughter recently received a module at yr 9 level from the corresondence school on “Sustainability”. Her teacher is not going to like getting it back for grading. Without any help she has commented on her perception of propaganda (her word) that is the whole document. He response to the tuatara being threatened extinction by global warming is “they’ve a good run”.
I’m going to scan the module and save it for an appropriate occasion. It’s too close to Christmas to have to deal with bonehead politicians.
Correction:
Her response to the tuatara being threatened extinction by global warming is “they’ve had a good run”.
When they say aircon is on timers – What does this mean? That the aircon switches off after hours? So does every commercial building in the country. Or does it cut in and out during a school day? That’s crazy.
PVs may actually have been a good investment, when the search for fake green credentials caused the govt to spray FITs among the highest in the world (before attempting to default when they saw the bill).
As for the rest, every word is true. No surprise that a school in the People’s Republic of Fremantle wants to waste its money on carbon credits rather than computers). Even the double agent PM blathered today about going carbon neutral.
See CO2 has a negative impact on something. The education of teenage Australians!
Well the short answer is YES.
Public education has become, naturally. a tool of the Kleptocracy.
For example my father joined the work force at age 12, left us a full scale library when he passed, never stopped learning, inquiring and laughing.
Science charmed me early, but boredom in highschool sent me into the workforce at 16, also never stopped reading, inquiring and snickering .
Now I help the occasional child with homework assignments and am appalled by the quality of the stupid.
Reading, writing/typing and arithmetic were the base tools of civilization.An instructed child could use these tools to become an informed adult.Where are the adults?
Government especially via government union worker, destroys the very things it pretends to provide.
The only useful function of government is to provide a theatre of the absurd, a morality play for the fools and bandits born to each generation and those that look across our borders and lust for what they see.
Unfortunately, given the historic tendency of bureaus to grow like cancer, we might have to insist that law and order and external defence be provided only by citizen volunteers.
Hmmm. Teach people to think ‘eh, now there’s a novel idea. Bit like teaching a cat to sit. Cargo Cult much easier.
John McClure: I was referring to USA textbooks which require fact checking before publication.
John, would that it were true! I have learned amazing ‘facts’ from adopted California textbooks. One current text has a page with a map of California showing several regions, including the Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada, and the Coastal Range. A few large cities are shown in some of the regions. Each region is printed in its own color. The students are asked which city is at a higher elevation, Monterey, or Fresno?
Incredibly, the teacher’s manual gives the answer as Monterey. To our readers who are not familiar with California, Monterey is on the beach (nominal elevation 26 ft) and Fresno is deep in the Central Valley (nominal elevation 357 ft). The authors seem to have made the same mistake as many of the students will: just because a location is in a region described as mountainous it must be higher than another location found in a region described as a valley.
The good news is that blunders like this give me the opportunity to show the kids why they shouldn’t just assume that because something is in print, it must be true. And then explain what information regional maps do or don’t show.
The bad news is that the ‘experts’ who wrote this text, the publisher that printed it, and the state curriculum commission that reviewed it, all failed to catch this error. Even worse, that the classroom teachers who presumably piloted it either failed to notice it, or did not care enough to report it.
Eric Worrall:
I know nothing of education in Australia and I would not want to comment on it because I am not Australian.
I write to comment that in the above photograph a banner demands “Climate Justice Now”.
Climate is natural and nature is not ‘just’: nature does not treat everybody the same or equally. Hence, “Climate Justice” is an impossible dream.
Morally educated youngsters would know that nature is not “just” and, therefore, compassionate care consists of helping those assaulted by natural disasters of disease, weather, geology, and etc.. Morality does NOT include campaigning for nature to obtain impossible anthropomorphic qualities of justice, morality and/or compassion.
Please note that my point is not pedantic. I am writing about teaching the young an ability to understand what is true and what is not.
Richard
Down here on the Southern edge of the tropics, nature is that beautiful yet terrible phenomenon you keep at arms length, with regular application of powerful pesticides, household barrier sprays, suncream, bug spray, insect repellent, flea treatment for the pets, keeping the grass short, avoiding long grass when you are out walking, wearing a hat, don’t swim when the beach is covered in poisonous jellyfish. Admire it, but keep in mind it wants to eat you.
Welcome to Australia.
Patrick,
Priceless.
thank you
Hahahahaha
Privilege points.
Can the pendulum swing any further out of whack ?
Richardscourtney –
“Please note that my point is not pedantic. I am writing about teaching the young an ability to understand what is true and what is not” – You are so right.
That is a subject, much neglected these days, called “philosophy”. And that is far more important than teaching children “subjects to help them get jobs in the modern world”. We all need first and foremost to use our God-given brain properly – not just to blindly accept all the “brainwashing” going on in our schools.
This is what religious cults do, they indoctrinate children! The earlier they are indoctrinated the more fanatical they become!
Now down south, values education rules,
not skills, once 6th for maths, for science
8th and reading 4th, now dropping
down the ladder but say, what does
this matter, when you hafta’ ‘educate’
the flock to save the world.
Australia is a fine example of a country where the government finds nothing wrong wit politically indoctrinating school kids. The government cannot fool the adults so it decides to have zero-based indoctrination instead… using school kids, like taking an empty glass and filling it with bullish_t!!!! And the parents are too busy ‘chucking another shrimp on the bar-bee”, to even notice.
When these kids finally start working, that’s when they realise that there actually is a real world out there in which they have to live, and that all that they were taught at school was about a world of make-believe.
Thankfully I was schooled in the UK, Ireland and Belgium before all this rubbish started in earnest. I was laughed at for my interest in planetary science and the solar system, even being called up in front of class to explain my doodle (A solar burst) during story time (I was 8 then).
But here in Australia, the indoctrination starts young, especially now that all students must have a some form of PC to do homework. I help out my friend’s daughter with maths, she is 10. She receives extra-curricular maths studies too, which I help her out with. But sometimes after her homework, which is driven from a school website, she can select only what can be described as “prepared” quizzes. These quizzes are hosted on another website. Some of them are fun, but some of them are clearly targeting pliable minds. The anti-oil and climate change propaganda is disgusting. And just like the video Val posted, the “correct” answer to some of the questions is actually, technically, the wrong one to get a pass (Such as using only the word carbon, an element, to describe carbon dioxide, a molecule and calling it pollution).
ThisisatestSeemsIcanttypecorrectlyonthissiteanymore
On BBC News this morning, Professor Richard Allen, of Reading University said, “I have been learning about climate change since I was a boy in the 1980’s and the picture is becoming clearer and clearer.”
So scientist of his generation were first indoctrinated over 30 years ago, and confirmation bias will ensure that they will not change their minds because all facts will appear confirm their beliefs.
Here in NZ a high school science end-of-year exam has a question for how a steam engine works, using coal as fuel, but before it dares to ask such a thing it first, as a preliminary question, asks “why is it bad to burn fossil fuels?”. Apparently this style is a sort of disclaimer, an apology, for teaching real science. With that style, how long before the real science is removed altogether?
NZ Willy says, “Here in NZ a high school science end-of-year exam has a question for how a steam engine works, using coal as fuel, but before it dares to ask such a thing it first, as a preliminary question, asks “why is it bad to burn fossil fuels?””
I have some Common Core aligned science books for the third and fifth grade. They are just work books. They have whole assignments selling worthless wind turbines to the unsuspecting children. The text books also slip in a worthless wind turbine here and there. But our text books are older and we really like certain publishers. They actually fulfill the promise on the cover, “Learn about science and how things work.”
Also, the fact is that we do not just burn fossil fuels.
There are so many products made from coal tar and from petroleum, that I emphasize to my kids that nothing is wasted. Those coal tar and petroleum products are every where. Those who rail against fossil fuels do not seem to understand the ways inventors have found to make new and very useful and diverse products from those nice enormous carbon molecules. Like these:
A very good documentary that appears to be published in May of 2015.
Only 1800 views. Pretty shocking actually because it’s very good.
Learned about the history of the proliferation of the CO2 rush to hysteria.
Thatcher, mining protests, desire for nuke power coupled to replace vulnerability to oil and miners.
Then hijacked by the anticapitalists who merged with green zealots.
Quite the little party of bedfellows.
Many more tidbits and connections.
I’ll watch I more than once.
Encourage folks to check it out.
Only negative that I’d add is they should have hammered on ice history history more.
What this all says to me is that if a top quality doc can be made with articulate interviews it’s just a matter of marketing the message …. more, better, keep it a coming.
Sorry dashed that off in a hurry, but I’m using my privilege points today.
“I” should be “it”.
“history” should be “core”
A bit dated – released orginally in 2007.
Thanks Ian. Yup no Obama timeline.
How do you like the gist of it ?
What would you improve ?
Climate change is reducing education
As someone who lies in the area that this school resides I would say that the “carbon neutral” achievement of the school is symptomatic of the misguided focus of the education departments.
My oldest son is 2007 started at this school. It had a poor reputation but a new principal who was making good strides to bring it up. Once we found out the principal was leaving we took our son out as he only has one chance of high school). We then had the Rudd/Gillard governments who pushed the carbon programs. Prime minister Gillard made two visits to the school lauding its Carbon achievements. I would ride past the school every day and see the carbon achievements on the school billboards thinking they have lost the plot. Of my school teacher friends none put their children there (they went private).
The parents voted with their feet so now the school can house 800 students but only 320 odd are enrolled.
It is now being merged into a neighboring high school (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/fate-could-be-sealed-for-fremantle-secondary-schools-20140408-36b1g.html) because they cant get the numbers. Before you say demographics are the cause West Australia where this school is has healthy population growth and private/Independent schools are full.
So I don’t blame the “carbon neutral” for leading to the demise of the school. However it is symptomatic of how the administrators (State & Federal) have lost focus on whats important.
Not surprised, what other bit of idealism, nice and simple but not too demanding, do we offer the young generation? Bombing the ‘radicals’ we do not understand? At least this obsession with ‘carbon (!} goes beyond the ‘selfie’ and watching copulating. Is this obsession not a substitute for religion?
Surely the State should not decide what is important? But isn’t only follows the ‘market’.? We have lost the plot….but does the private sector do better? There is a lack of a humanistic ideology, even culture in our schools in west) which has been replaced by green ideology and hence fear of teh futute UNLESS…It is a religion of a sort. What do private school teach instead? Sectarian religion|?