Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Willie Soon – What do climate activists do if they can’t convince adults to support their hardline green policies?
Children’s books can do more to inspire the new generation of Earth warriors
June 4, 2018 9.59pm AEST
Gary Haq
SEI Associate, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York
A changing climate means the frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires has become a common occurrence. Temperatures are increasing on the land and in the ocean, the sea level is rising and amounts of snow and ice are diminishing, as greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations have increased. Unfortunately, children and young people are taking the brunt of climate changeand this will continue into the future.
Doctors are seeing the serious effects of global warming on children’s health and are concerned that it could reverse the progress made over the past 25 years in reducing global child deaths. Not only that, children are at risk of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety due to natural disasters caused by climate change.
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Given the enormity of the climate challenge, it is surprising how limited coverage of our changing climate receives in current children’s fiction. The children’s publishing sector is booming. UK sales of children’s books rose by 16% in 2016 with sales totalling £365m. Globally, children’s book sales have risen steadily across all age categories.
Some picture books do explain climate change (such as The Magic School Bus and Climate Change by Joanne Cole and Bruce Degen). And there are plenty of young adult novels that feature dystopian climate futures (such as Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd). But few fiction books for eight to 11-year-olds discuss the issue.
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We need children to care about the planet if they are to the tackle climate challenge that lies ahead. Storytelling can play a part in raising awareness and inspiring children and young adults to take action and become the next generation of Earth warriors.
Michael Mann endorses the child “Earth Warrior” initiative.
"Children’s books can do more to inspire the new generation of Earth warriors" by @DrGaryHaq of The @ConversationUK: https://t.co/Iaw2U2m9CK#TantrumAction @TantrumBook
— Dr. Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) June 4, 2018
As a father I’m rather glad about the shortage of “dystopian” children’s stories. Young children experience enough nightmares without deliberately force feeding them nasty apocalyptic visions of how painful, empty and pointless their future will be.
Grimm tales from a defeated movement
What is next for Mikey you give the kiddies lollipops if they say they believe in global warming.
….better than exploding them for not believing.
Making more Eric Holtaus bed wetters.
Paranoid delusions of the Left.
indoctrinated to believe 2 + 2 can = 5.
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
Richard Lindzen
Don’t forget to offer candy or special brownies to lure them in.
I think maybe they might want to read THIS first, before wasting their time:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-has-run-its-course-1528152876
https://www.wsj.como/articles/climate-change-has-run-its-course-1528152876
I am really worried of the mental health that the children. They hear all about the dangers of cars and planes, and yet father and mother takes their cars to work every day. And the family goes on a summer vacation using aeroplane, as well as other work related excursions and meetings.
IMO this is the perfect recipe for schizofrenia, and I think we will see this in the years to come.
You know, when I was a kid, the most dangerous thing you could do was jump off the garage roof into the sandbox next to it. We used to climb trees with abandon, and ride bicycles with no helmets because helmets were not considered necessary.
Now kids can’t even pet a goat at a petting zoo without some overanxious parental unit going crazy about germs and goat diseases. They can’t go to a pick-your-own orchard to pick apples and peaches, because there might be bugs that would sting them. They can’t even ride a tricycle without a helmet because BUMPS!!!!
And if you, as a parent, let your kids go some place on their own, you can be reported for child neglect and endangerment, not because you did anything wrong, but because the hyperbolic anxiety that pervades society has generated this attitude.
Helmets paradoxically make bike accidents and injuries more likely, because the (somewhat illusory) sense of safety they provide tempts riders into taking more risks. 🙁
As I substitute teach middle school and high school I have come across a pamphlet published by Scholastic International at 6th grade level from which the children were assigned a composition to be written. It was a regurgitation of some of the most absurd excerpts from the book “Silent Spring”, the book written to assist in the banning of DDT and helped to justify the establishment of the EPA. When I asked the teacher if he knew what was in the publication, he had not had an opportunity to read it, probably due to all the bs meetings required by both state and federal regulations which he is required to attend.
Officialized propaganda at the 6th grade level both figuratively and in actuality. Scholastic International is a leftist publisher used by many schools to produce children’s publications.
I question whether environmental ‘propaganda’ is not already more widespread than this post suggests and such would show up in a survey. I have it on good authority that education society meetings often had such and some programs are invested heavily in statistical analyses, some questionable.
I posted this before and have not found out more about it, but this comes from two universities for ‘educational’ use. It is very simplistic, clearly ‘climate change’ oriented and not very competent. http://www.beg.utexas.edu/coastal/thscmp/support/SeaLevelRiseLesson.pdf
This should be actionable at law: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring novel is a total scientific fraud: a six page pdf from the Journal of American Physicians and Scientists, (fall) autumn 2004.
DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud.
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
This “ban” on DDT has led to a true holocaust, perhaps 100 million deaths from malaria, mostly women & children in the 3rd world.
This is a genocide at the command of EPA head Ruckleshaus, June 1972, which exceeds the horrors the Communists perpetrated in Russia, China & Cambodia. A triumph of the “free” world.
All part of the 1%s depopulation Agenda 21.
John Doran.
Karl Marx was against the nukelar family. He saw it as one of the primary institutions bolstering up the Enemy, our prevailing society.
Since the Marxists have no respect for the Nukelar Family, as a basic unit and building block of society, they have no problem messing with the political beliefs of our kids, especially if it serves to create division between kids and parents.
Once that division, and derision, is in place, the kids are open to exploitation as political pawns.
My kid came home from school, and told me I was wasting water as I ran the tap while brushing my teeth.
Here is how it works: Junior learns that it is virtuous to not harm or pollute the earth, and that wasting water is harming the earth. Junior is encouraged to inform his parents about how to be virtuous – the school instructs the kids to have us all exercise, eat our fruits and vegetables, and reduce our carbon footprint, and not waste water.
The break is there: parents are not the source of teaching regarding virtue and sin; the schools are – obviously, since Mom and Dad are sinners – wasting water, carbon footprint, soda straws, etc.
Being smarter than the average grade-school instructor, I ask my kid:
Wasting water? Where does it go?
Down the drain.
then where?
to the waste water treatment plant.
then where?
to the ocean.
then where?
[i know they have already learned the water cycle – in school. he sees where I am going]
it evaporates and goes into clouds.
then where?
it falls on the land, and goes into the lakes and rivers.
then where.
to the water treatment plant.
then where?
through pipes, to our house.
then where?
down the drain.
OK, where did the water get “wasted?”
I have cut a divide between my child and the school. He knows he cannot take everything they say for granted, and he knows that part of their mission is to take over my job, as parent. If I stick with this, he will be fairly innoculated from their mind control.
It’s actually a good idea to keep the flow going when sending viscous stuff like toothpaste and denture cream down the drain. Keeps them from building up in the U-trap and causing a nasty clog. Same thing with toilets. Newfangled “water-saving” models clog much more often than the oldschool commodes that actually flush. Any money you might save on your water bill will be eaten up and then some by paying the plumber.
I agree on the “brainwashing” they get- but here is what ‘waste’ they are being told about: the human/machine/chemical/processing costs to ‘make’ fresh drinking water is high. One could collect rainwater to flush toilets, do laundry, etc (but is it not safe to drink)..so potable water DOES cost a lot in the processing for millions of people in large cities, etc. who can’t use ‘non-filter-processed’ options. All water coming from spigots and faucets must be safe and potable… for people and animals. We trust drinking from a garden hose, right? but much water is overused-1 hr. showers, letting the faucet run. The hippie term: “if it’s yellow let it mellow” could save millions of gallons of potable water for every saved flush..but most Westerners are too squeamish.
There is good money in children’s fiction.
there’s good money in Mann’s fiction too.
Our public schools, and now many, if not most, universities, have become places of indoctrination and propaganda, certainly not education. Converting children’s school books into propaganda tools fits right in with the latest mode of operation for the Left. CAGW is a major piece of the Leftists orthodoxy. It is the environmental equivalent of national health care, social justice, etc. As we have heard from UN leadership CAGW could be the greatest redistribution of wealth and change in the economic system in human history. I learned long ago that many leaders on the Left are very patient in reaching their ultimate goals.
This is a real set-up.
Parents trust the schools.
We parents can no longer know what curriculum is being taught – because it is not just in a textbook – it is in an access-controlled, copyrighted textbook, where it is illegal to copy material out of it, and the school’s terms of access do not include broadcasting the materials or posting them on a public site, and which often uses a lesser-known, and often proprietary, reader (analogous to pdf reader or ebook reader)- whereas a physical book could be sitting in a library for simple perusal.
Teachers are eager to be handed curricula, and merely walk their class through pre-planned curricula.
School districts are focused on costs – they are always being pinched, as they are downstream from the political budget-making process of local and state politicians. And, they are too busy to lobby – except when lobbying for their own wages, perks, and retirement plans – that consumes their lobbying resources and energy.
This leaves a set-up where the intelligencia can waltz in and teach anything – as long as it does not raise an eyebrow. And, when it does, the guilty party is never fingered; instead, the teacher blames the principal, the principal blames the school district, and the school district blames the legislators. OR, somewhere along the line, someone just says, “this was just an exercise to get students talking,” and they promise they will never give the assignment again – the Diversity Pledge, the Gaia story where Mother Earth gets hurt and cries, etc.
As with tobacco companies, it pays to focus on hooking the young ones.
Please can you replace ‘training’ with ‘indoctrination of’
What kids really need, especially young ones, are caring parents. Parents can read them stuff like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are”, “Good Night Moon”, or Grimm’s Fairytales.
Older kids can do well with real science projects and real science fairs. Duplicating “off the web” presentations on climate change or simplistic sociology questionnaires should be forbidden. Even very basic science, such as how to measure something and calculate the error, or how to figure out where error’s might come from in even simple experiments are highly educational and useful teaching.
Very intelligent… brainwash the little kids and send them home to shame their parents! What an excellent political strategy when your science and your politics and your propaganda and polemics have failed to persuade the public.
Just don’t push so hard you have the little kiddies looking around for some equivalent of the 10:10 No Pressure red button with which to murder their parents.
CAGW people, have you never wondered how those very young African men children chose or figured out how to become ISIS or Boko Haram fighters, carrying weapons, using them, ready to slaughter or kidnap and rape school girls? How about the young Chinese teens that happily sent their parents off to be reeducated during the cultural revolution in China, leading to 10s of millions of deaths? Maybe you should think on that for a bit.
Well, at least they are on the right track. “Climate change” is about storytelling, since it is all fiction. And since the propaganda campaign with adults has failed, all they have left are the kiddos.
For Children ==> I recommend Susan Crockford’s Polar Bear Facts & Myths: A science summary for all ages.
See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33827728-polar-bear-facts-myths
Children’s fiction tends to be rebellious.
If the adults are still there pushing their world view there is nothing left for the young hero to do… Dumbledore must die for Harry Potter to become the true Chosen One.
In the real world it is the Greens who are the establishment. They hold the power over the agenda.
So the heroes must rebel against that orthodoxy.
Case in point, Avengers: Infinity War. A commercially successful film where the villain is a highly competent, committed and idealistic Malthusian.
Twenty five years ago (or more) the big medical advance was “evidence based medicine”.
So where is the evidence for this? There are not more disasters; CO2 itself can’t cause asthma, and most certainly the temperature has not increased any amount that would cause health problems (if it has increased at all).
The article treats mental health as a separate issue, and they may be close to having a point there; constant bombardment of children by activists with doom laden predictions most certainly can cause “….issues such as depression and anxiety….”
Already been done,hasn’t it.
See Tiny Tim and “The Ice Caps are Melting”On Youtube, look at the poor children trapped as his audience, those abused kiddies probably form the core of the adult “Alarmed Ones”.
Now I read that Hoolywood was rewriting “Chicken Little” Only this time C.L is a prophet.
Not a frightened fool.
Everybody gets an award I guess.
Could someone explain to me what “the frequency of extreme weather events […] has become a common occurrence” means? To me (non-native English), this looks so awkward. Frequencies change, increase, decrease, alter, … , but can a frequency become a “common occurrence”?
It is advertising English designed specifically to make you “buy” the “product” – in this case, extreme weather events – which are not actually increasing or decreasing, but pretty much the same from one year to the next.
A good example is Accuweather’s forecasts, which are becoming more and more amateurish because they change the daily temperature projections during the day. They will forecast a heat wave for a certain area, when the temperatures they are projecting are normal, NOT unusual, for that area and time of year, and the projected heat wave will frequently not happen.
Since they’re not really very good at making accurate forecasts, they use advertising language to get your attention, hence ‘frequency of extreme’ will turn out to be ‘normal number of storms’ when you make notes on what happened and compare them to prior years.
It carries over to descriptions of climate stuff that is really weather stuff, such as hurricanes and tornadoes. I think they get some kind of adrenaline jolt out of what they do.
“Children’s Books”, aka childhood indoctrination opportunities, are the same as educating criminals (uneducated as many children) into thinking that are supporting a noble cause that they will feel justified in being violent about. All good things in the eyes of socialist/anarchists.
#TantrumAction and #TantrumBook? Yeah that pretty much sums up their approach to science.
I heard a climate change warrior on the radio the other day say that when he asked his sixteen years old daughter if she had a boyfriend she said why bother as climate change will kill us all in the next few years. He just agreed with her. Poor girl.
The younger two Gurnsys are in the middle of their school exams in the UK at the moment.
One doing GCSE’s (aged 16) and the other doing ‘A’ levels (aged 18).
I’ve always encouraged them to check out facts for them themselves and listen to both sides of a discussion before forming their own opinions on murky subjects, such as this.
Helping them with revision for their exams over that last few months really brought home how deeply entrenched the AGW doctrine is in the UK education system.
Makes my blood boil.
I shall now make tea and, perhaps, in protest, have a Rich Tea biscuit.
One day, I hope to sit with them, with a bottle of single malt, and say, “Do you remember when the world told us THAT was the truth?”