Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate change crusaders are concerned that at 16 years old, the age Climate is officially introduced to the Australian school curriculum, too many kids are proving intractable, holding onto skeptical views about climate change. Their solution – start applying pressure when the kids are younger and less able to resist authority.
Why we’re building a climate change game for 12-year-olds
October 30, 2017 6.10am AEDT
PhD candidate, Australian National University
Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
There is no doubt that we need to teach kids about climate change.
But although the Australian Curriculum embeds climate change into its senior high school program, children are typically aged around 16 before they receive any formal teaching on the topic. We argue that this is too late.
Here’s a possible solution: “CO2peration” is an interactive, online game we developed for children aged 12-14. It teaches climate science in a politics- and emotion-free zone.
In most countries, the topic of climate change is usually introduced at around the age of 16. Unfortunately, students at this age have largely made up their minds about climate change. Any efforts to teach them about the science may cement those opinions (both for and against) – particularly if it threatens their existing opinion.
This “made up their mind” phenomenon is known as a worldview – and it is the single biggest predictor of an individual’s opinion related to climate change.
Working with 12-year-olds
At the age of around 12, children undergo a rapid developmental change that, over the next 12 years, will take them fully into adulthood.
This change preempts some exciting intellectual developments. It prepares the child for some of the challenges of adulthood – such as building social networks, finding work or becoming financially responsible. It also allows them to start processing complex issues like nuclear energy or social justice.
So around age 12, children’s worldview is still open to change and they can take on board new information in a way that their older selves may not.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/why-were-building-a-climate-change-game-for-12-year-olds-85983
I guess the idea that school is there to teach kids how to read and write and reason is way too old fashioned for modern educationalists, who now appear to consider school a means of indoctrinating kids with their worldview.
They don’t appear to have considered, or maybe don’t care that deliberately bringing many of the kids into conflict with their parents by force feeding the kids social justice and climate action dogma from a young age might disrupt their home life, which could have all manner of detrimental knock on effects.
When it comes to green policy, the end always seems to justify the means.
I am not sure that this debate will be over anytime soon, since the whole CAGW premise is a type of belief system in justifying many different disciplines on a quasi science level. It has become like a cultish religion that has become mainstream and anyone can say anything they like, and you can offer all the proof you need to invalidate a claim, to no avail. On both sides of the argument, and there is even skeptics who do not agree that CO2 is a GHG, although they probably do the most harm to the sceptical argument since they are usually all round quacks in other ideas too. CO2 is the minor GHG is the atmosphere, water vapour being the major GHG. But CO2 is the gas of life as we see all around us, including whole mountain ranges like the northern Rocky Mountains, or the Himalayas’ that were once laid down in oceans teeming with life. CO2 is the molecule of life and is getting a very bad rap being labeled a pollutant.
It is mainly because there is such financial interests now that keeps this new industry roaring, like a huge monster forest fire creating its own weather, consuming everything in its path. Now the bankers are in on it, because there is the spread to be made on carbon credits, and taxes for Gov’ts of all stripes. And subsidies for this project and that, all paid for by taxpayers that don’t seem to be smart enough to know they are being sc@mmed. The education system, run by the teachers and unions is about control, and what a better time than to get students brain washed into a new ideology than before they graduate high school. In the end, in about 10-15 years or less, when the data shows that temperature is not a linear upside to increasing CO2 levels, will this idea be busted. And will probably be busted by the same kids that are getting brain washed right now. Nobody likes to be made out to be a fool, and then be given the bill for it.
I am totally encouraged by the statement that 16 year olds are capable of making up their own minds and seeing through all the hype to the point that the high priest are worried about future membership.
I recommend you do the following search, it will explain how it works.
David Rockefeller funded feminism.
Watch the YouTube video.
Nice post Eric.
The ANU is a socialist hot bed.
Most AU universities, the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO, AAD, AIMS are run by socialists encouraged by the current CONSERVATIVE government headed by an ex Goldman Sachs CEO (Malcolm Turn-bull).
Australia is in a dark place slavishly clinging to its Paris Agreement.
Several State Governments have added additional targets and green taxes, for example in Victoria:
LRET (Federal) 1.36068 c/kWh.
SRES (Federal) 0.30628 c/kWh.
VEEC (State) 0.30578 c/kWh.
Competitiveness is going out the window and most elderly are now in bill shock.
But it’s no problem for the likes of Mr Grant who lives handsomely off other people’s money while inflicting his socialist costs on industry and the elderly.
The new academic criminal class . . .
A very small amount of carbon dioxide has a very significant effect. Ancient climate records show that even small changes in CO2 have a big influence.. No-one wants this – but its undeniable. The science looks pretty sound to me.
That comment is nearly the opposite of what the proxy record shows. Changes in CO2 have amazingly little effect, or correlation with temperature. Are you out of grade school yet?
Ancient climate records show no such thing. There is no agreed-upon general theory of the glacial cycle that would quantify the CO2 contribution to overall temperature change.
CO2 goes up as temperature goes up. CO2 may amplify a temperature change, but on its own, it could never produce a reversal from warming to cooling and back to warming. It thus cannot be the main driver of the cycle.
Max, have you considered that you yourself are a major contributor of small amounts of CO2? Every time you breathe or speak, you exude that gas. It’s even worse when you are flatulent and can’t control it.
Perhaps you could reduce your own carbon emissions from the general levels by not speaking or breathing. Put a clothespin on your nose, for example.
Smooches!!!!!
Where are these records of which you claim?
The records I’ve seen show CO2 levels going from 1000ppm up to 7000ppm while temperatures also bounce around. However there is no correlation between the two charts.
Mr. Mueller:
A website called ‘global warming art dot com’ (omit the spaces and replace “dot” with the usual symbol) has a chart which is a compilation of proxy temperature and CO2. There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature for the past 500 million years.
Add to that, the Cryogenian was a time of extensive and multiple glacial episodes, occurring when CO2 concentrations were measured in percents, not ppm (reference: Geologic Time Scale, various editions, by Gradstein, Ogg, Smith, and by Gradstein, Ogg, Ogg). Then in the Ordovio-Silurian glaciation, CO2 was some twenty times the current level.
The contributor Bill Illis has published a chart on this website (and perhaps a friendly mod can append it to this post) showing the past 750 m.a., and the complete lack of relationship between CO2 and temperature.
Just because a change in ‘average’ global temperature has happened over the past few hundred years does not mean there is a singular cause for it. Climate is a complex, coupled, non-linear system, and very dynamic. This “Holocene” Interglacial does not even represent a blip in geologic time. We have an entire history of Earth climate that says definitively that it does NOT respond to a single factor* and is not in danger of going ‘runaway-this’ or runaway-that’.
Be at peace, and know that the Earth is going to do whatever the Earth is going to do; we cannot stop it, or change it. The history of evolution is adaptation. Please, evolve with the rest of us, while we improve the human condition.
Regards,
The Mostest Deplorablest Vlad the Impalerest (and a crashing bore-est and an even bigger-est bully-est according to C.T. at Jo’s).
*Recognizing that “instantaneous” events, such as asteroid impacts or other, very short-lived events occur, and some thousands of years may be required to re-establish an ‘equilibrium’ condition (for lack of a better word).
Dangerous game to play when they figure out later they have been sold a pup.
“It is un-American to give a student an unbiased viewpoint instead of teaching him real Americanism. We must teach our children, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ We cannot afford to teach them to be unbiased and make up their own minds …”
The Daughters of Colonial Wars
It would seem that indoctrination of the young is not exclusively a Leftist phenomenon. The quote, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” is attributed to Aristotle, but has been widely associated with the Jesuits (Loyola) and Communists. I believe that, for most people, the moral correctness of ‘getting ’em young’ is largely dependant on whether one happens to agree with the indoctrinating material — not the practice of indoctrination, per se.
If you seriously wish to have an education system designed to teach people HOW to think and leave dubious material (History, Cosmology, Geomorphology and Palaeontology spring readily to mind) until the young minds have been fully formed and are capable of forming mature, independent opinions (which you may find distasteful), then you will have to scrap virtually every formal education system currently in use. You will also find it impossible to get any meaningful support from the Establishment in any society on Earth for such a subversive program.
An education system should teach skills, not beliefs.
Interesting:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41778089
CO2 levels “not seen in 800,000 years.” The problem is that the glacial records don’t have the temporal resolution to let us pick out such short term spikes. Apples and oranges.
Why the fixation on the last 1 million years?
The earth is way, way older than that.
Is there a penalty for child abuse?
Not if done by an agent of the government. Especially when such abuse is government policy.
The schools can try in vain to push the AGW propoganda, but their Father (in my case anyway) will always be there to provide a voice of reason and alternate point of view. My children will not be indoctrinated.
From the article: “So around age 12, children’s worldview is still open to change and they can take on board new information in a way that their older selves may not.”
In other words, they are more easily brainwashed.
Well, they can’t brainwash the thermometer.
Yes, bur rebelliousness starts around the age of 12 and continues into early adulthood. Or have you forgotten that?
Just because some dumb teachers say something is so, doesn’t make it so, does it?
Or do you think kids don’t have enough initiative by age 12 to start back-talking adults?
We did when I was that age.
If you are addressing that to me, Sara, I think you have misread my meaning.
I think a kid of 12 would like nothing better than to outwit an adult and show them where they are wrong about CAGW or any other subject.
I asked a 12-year-old about CAGW some months ago, not knowing what he knew about the subject, and was pleasantly surprised when he told me he thought it was a hoax. I don’t know where he got that message, but it wasn’t from me, although I did praise him for being so smart. 🙂
Kids are still thinking for themselves, but some are not. Just like adults.
I guess school has changed enormously when I was going from 1st grade to high school We poor mopes were taught math, chemistry, biology, English, penmanship (yes, it was a subject), basic history, and so on. There was no indoctrination, no political crap running through the school systems. The only time politics ever came up was during campaigns, and we were told to listen to the radio broadcasts or watch the TV broadcasts if we had a TV, and then answer questions about it in class. But we were never told how to think.
Now you have a population of high school graduates who are so illiterate that they can’t sign their own names to anything, can’t do simple arithmetic without a calculator, and when they hit the university level are required to take remedial math and remedial English. That’s a sad statement about the US school system, but it explains why more parents do home schooling. or get their shorts in a bunch when their kids come home from grade school spouting political propaganda instead of asking for help with homework.
But while it is very sad that we have to acknowledge that failure, it isn’t true of all US school systems. The better high schools are sending students to do summer internships with companies that are looking for innovative thinkers and STEM-oriented students, and willing to fund these kids with scholarships when they reach college level.
My old high school, a country school that had shop and wood working classes (trade school stuff) for boys and domestic science classes for girls, is now the elite high school in my hometown. My, how things have changed.
It’s a shame that Oz, which has a huge opportunity to do the same thing, instead sends itself right down the drain with this political twaddle. And the people who are embedded in it are, I’m sure, quite giddy with their own sense of infallibility.
The problem extends beyond schools, to how children are now raised;
http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation
Having been a teacher for 10+ years, I can only agree.
Australians have taken the dumb cultural pill for years now, see all the Great Barrier Reef obsessions, caused by falling sea levels in fact, technically illiterate energy policies making emissions expensively worse, and protecting a highyl eroded infertile worn out wilderness interior almost no one actually lives in which is rich in accessible (see erosion) natural resources that fund the developed economy they actually depend upon – as they cling to the thin green rim. The Saudi Arabia of the Southern Ocean. It would appear ignorance and quasi dogmatic versus scientific and rational education is why they are so enthusiastic and positive about all the most stupid ideas. “Oh Yeah”. Hard of thought, full of enthusiasm. Ignorant belief is a popular option everywhere, so much easier and socially acceptable than hard understanding.
However there are so few Australians that what their ignorant masses think out there in the Soiuthern Ocean doesn’t matter on a global scale, albeit sad for the few that have troubled to understand for themselves and can still think, and who are attacked as heretics for doing so. Those precious few who can still thin and are not corupted by money and power should concentrate on communicating reality where the most people with choice are, who are still educated to understand, as opposed to believe.
It’s a shame as the ungrateful ignoramuses have a former PM in Tony Abbott who understands the pseudo science legalised protection racket, while most of the rest of the self serving, sinecure harvesting MPs prefer to roll in the renewable subsidy trough and/or chase green votes with very un-green agendas they don’t really understand the facts of, or care about, at massive public cost to the economy and environment in fact. Just like Western Europe. IMO, but only as an electrical engineer, physicist and technology businessman, so what would I know about how to get and keep an easy living as an elected politician with “interests”? How much can you get for your principles in Ozzie politics?
“It teaches climate science in a politics- and emotion-free zone.” Climate science is free of neither.
How long until they start forcing the kids to report on the activities of their parents?
Or this:
That was depicted in a film called “Equilibrium” IIRC.
LOL
“The team are now urgently seeking crowd funding – if you’re concerned about climate change, please visit the Kickstarter campaign to help make this important initiative a reality. ”
They currently have 10 310 AU$ out of 38 970 AU$
What sort of game do you expect to create with 38 970 AU$ ? seriously ?
I can’t wait to see their game. It is “extremely likely” that it will be boring, bad-coded, and trashed by target kid in a glance.
Surprise! Surprise! Education is a method to indoctrinate, that is to implant specific beliefs and ideas in, children. That is why we should abolish government schools. Notice the ever increasing number of parents who homeschool their children, often combining resources to do so, because they are not waiting for that to happen.
The Conversation is a green US foundations sponsored rag. What else do you expect from them?
“This “made up their mind” phenomenon is known as a worldview – and it is the single biggest predictor of an individual’s opinion related to climate change.”
First you have to prove that climate science is unique in that the science itself is incapable of convincing people, but it should be. If you can’t do that, then you might as well send your kids to indoctrination camps during the summers.
So tell us why it is different than other sciences like biology, physics, or chemistry.
Teach a child basic science reasoning and show him the graphs of CO2 vs global temperatures (there are many such graphs on the Paleoclimate page of the Reference Pages on this site) and he will conclude CAGW is a false hypothesis. That is he will see that, on this planet, in the long term, CO2 and temperature don’t track each other at all and in the short term cases in which they do it is the CO2 that responds to changes in temperature, not the other way around. That’s counter to the hypothesis (more atmospheric CO2 causes the earth’s atmosphere to warm) and so disproves it. It will be obvious to even a child that CAGW is a bad hypothesis. It’s a shame it isn’t obvious to climate scientists because it’s only the appeal to their authority that keeps CAGW alive.
12 yr olds? They pretty much start them on cultural Marxism in day-care……
Sorry to be late to this party, check out what our climate crusading Canadian federal government has on this for children:https://climatekids.ca
Just try to do the little “tests” and see what comes out.
If these kids retain what they’re taught as well as they retain the knowledge from other subjects, they’ll forget about this climate brainwashing fast enough.