By Geoff Sherrington,
In Australia, either Melbourne or Canberra is the most active locus of climate change activism. We still have talk back radio. Melbourne’s Neil Mitchell on 3AW, 8.30am to noon on week days, is certainly in the Top 5 of national audience levels. He has been king for many years.
Yesterday, 29th November 2018, Neil Mitchell interviewed Laura Sykes, who represented the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. The eight minutes of interview expressed some of the most extreme verbal activism I can remember. Those who seek a calm discourse about climate change should listen to this to judge the amount of work ahead of them to reverse opinions like these that Laura holds so strongly.
https://www.3aw.com.au/neil-mitchell-clashes-with-youth-climate-coalition-over-student-strike/
(scroll down for clip~ctm)
Laura was on air to promote a ‘strike’ by school children aged 5 upwards, to display unhappiness with Australia’s current political treatment of ‘climate change’, however defined. This interview also gives you some insight into the attitudes of Neil Mitchell, whose attitudinal choices are followed by many listeners.
My thanks are given to radio 3AW for permission to air this on WUWT.
………………….
About the author.
Geoff Sherrington, a 1960s Science graduate with a Chemistry major spent much of his career as Chief Geochemist in mineral exploration with Geopeko Limited, plus development and operation of major mineral and forestry resources. Science gradually gave way to politics to combat the heavy increase in bureaucratic and political obstruction of the principles of free enterprise.
The Geopeko team found 13 new mines in its operating life from 1955 to 1995 or so. (Many exploration people do not find any). The value of sales from those mines, to year 2015 and expressed in 2015 values, has been about $62 billion. One discovery was the Ranger Uranium deposits, then the largest in the world. This mine had a cocktail of ingredients that were like poison to green groups, so the non-science education was considerable and relevant to the climate change debate.
Many exploration science matters such as statistics are common to both mineral exploration and climate change.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Remember “Tokyo Rose”.
I often wonder how did Australia come to be so climate-cucked in the first place?
gore got the minions working rather fast here,they hit small rural towns all over with the incontinent garbage film
plus we have wankers like flimflam and otherslike steffen who saw cash/fame and jumped onto the wagons early,JCU being a private and pricy uni saw funding and jumped fast also
then of course the abc has a definite bias to socialist communist and greentard views.
our media elsewheres as thick as your talkin heads, they say whats put in front of em
and big greens paying a lot of advert money
Granny used to say “A dollar sez more than a dime”.
Pop Piasa
How many government-paid climate scientists did your Granny said could be bought with 92 billion government dollars?
You are talking a few hundred school students.
Ask them to give up there electronic devices for the sake of climate change and watch the number drop 🙂
Ask them to stop flying in jet planes!
Absolutely. Fighting climate change is something everyone who buys into it needs to do on a personal level first before demanding that the government sets policy for others.
I still have trouble getting over the schoolgirl who was offended at me laughing at her for wearing a use faux fur ban real fur badge as well as a no more plastic one both incidentally made of plastic coated metal.
As well as pointing out plastic pipes are essential for water and gas her mobile relied on it for wires and the battery what did she think faux fur was made from not to mention her clothes. She sulkily said these were he teacher’s two pet causes. Can you blame the young for being fools with education like that?
Don’t dare! Their iPhones are renewable with biodegradable ear phones.
Australia is ideal territory for the Global Warming Religion. Its natural extremes are regularly played by the Warmists to maximum effect.
“I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains.”
Dorothea Mackellar – wrote that over a hundred years ago….
Thank you so much for bringing that up. That poem is so embedded in our culture that we take it for granted! I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the first line in at least one ad back in the ’90s.
“I often wonder how did Australia come to be so climate-cucked in the first place?”
How or weather? No, you’re right, the history of the debate has cucked us over Down Here. I have few explanations and fewer excuses.
We do have a deep inferiority complex, our so-called ‘cultural cringe,’ which has turned our tertiary sector into a desperate, grovellingly grateful Salon des Refuses for the Steffens and Stephans who were too mentally mediocre even for the US climate academy.
OTOH I suspect we punch above our division for skeptics per capita, with heavyweights like Jo Nova, the late John Daly, Warwick Hughes, ….
Meanwhile our Prime Minister had the audacity to suggest that, its being a school day, school kids should probably be in school. After his foreseeable crucifixion I wrote this to the Sydney Morning Herald, forlornly. Probably should have used fewer threatening words like ‘adiabatic.’ For entertainment purposes only—yes, I know the language makes too many concessions to climate ignorance.
___________
Dear Sir,
I may not believe in the science, but I’ll defend to the death the right of semi-educated teenagers to skip Maths, History and Science in order to raise much-needed awareness of their opinions about adiabatic lapse rates, black-body radiation physics, proxy validity in paleoclimate reconstructions, and the myriad other domains of knowledge required for forming a scientifically-literate position on global warming.
More power to them. If I were young and naïve enough to mistake an IPCC report for a scientific paper, I’d also feel an ethical responsibility to decry government inaction on behalf of the planet I was about to inherit.
If the PM wants to blame someone, he should confine his criticism to the education system. It’s an open secret that teachers of everything from English to Religious Studies use An Inconvenient Truth as an electronic babysitter. Teaching is the hardest and most underappreciated profession in the world, but if you’re struggling to come up with a lesson plan, how about devoting a couple of hours to critical thinking and skepticism?
Yours faithfully,
+42 :<)
I love the sarcasm. That letter or similar should be sent to every newspaper here in the U.S. I hope you don't mind if I/we borrow (plagiarize) most of it with only minor modifications to fit our local situation. I have yet to figure out how to submit it locally with proper attribution.
Joe,
Yeas, steal away, please. Let me know if you have better luck tricking someone into publishing your version than I did. Thanks for your kind words!
In Tasmania where I live, where our power source is nearly all renewable hydro, we also had this ”strike” from kids. How in gods name can five year olds have any rational thought with the science of man made climate change unless they are brain washed. They would not have even seen any measurable change in the climate within their whole life time. I squarely blame the teachers. The use of school students for an alarmist indoctrinated opinion from teachers speaks heaps of the failure of an educational system which is supposed to be impartial. Unfortunately here in Australia the ”cacca verde” seems to have a stranglehold within education and the unseasonable heat wave together with bushfires in Queensland certainly isn’t helping.
Well done Neil Mitchell though for some rationality instead of going with the alarmist flow like we normally witness within the MSM.
Somewhere in the distant past here in Oz, I recall a drought breaking in central Australia. The media comment of the time where along the lines of “ there are children here today that are seven years old that have never seen rain in their lifetime”. Imagine that, a climate that had always been dry and hot suddenly became wet. Those seven year olds are probably in their sixties and have hopefully figured out that the climate changes.
SAID HANRAHAN
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s lookin’ crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak–
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want a inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
I greatly enjoyed this poem–it scans, it rhymes, it even makes sense! Bravo!
It was written in 1919 and used to be a staple of primary school lessons in Australia. It is probably now banned because weather shocks are now all caused by humans and we can’t have anyone knowing they were commonplace in the past…
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Hanrahan
Excellent!
“Neil Mitchell clashes with youth climate coalition over student “strike””
Clashes with?
Sorry, I’ve been spoiled by years of YouTube consumption. I only click on media labeled…
“Neil Mitchell DESTROYS youth climate coalition over student “strike””
…or higher.
I hope like hell I don’t live to a hundred as I am getting so sick of the inmates running the asylum.
Without any doubt the kiddies’ parents are manipulating their children. The parents have decided to use their children as propaganda tools for socialism — for political power.
This is the path that moral relativism creates. Whatever means necessary are justified by the end purpose. It is how the worst atrocities of the 20th Century were started.
They’re so adowable tho
Did you see the Lil’ Klimate Krusaders? See that brother and sister dressed up as “carbon” and “pollution”?
So cute! I could just eat them up. (If I were a plant, obviously.)
Reminds me, I’ve always wanted a couple of
protest accessoriesoffspringtime to give the missus a good seeing to
Well on the way to the ways of the Hitler Youth Movement, the Soviet Komsomol and Mao Zedong’s Young Pioneers …
Laura Sykes = Box of rocks with a mouth.
.
and id reckon AAVAZ or getup are tied into her what was it? climate coalition or whatever
be worth a dekko
i
I’d guess avaaz as theyre global green and full on on adani hate and other campaigns in Aus.
i get their flyers n greenpiss to keep an eye on what theyre screaming about…read delete ,sigh
“The eight minutes of interview expressed some of the most extreme verbal activism I can remember.”
Extreme? Sure, the girl was obviously having a life-threateningly good time with all the Ritalin she’d confiscated from her five-year-old Associate Professors of Atmospheric Physics. But if you slow the recording down just enough you should find the “Goldilocks” frequency—located about halfway between Colombia’s annual coffee yield and Satanic product recommendations—where Ms Sykes’ voice becomes audible to creatures with two legs.
And when judged on their merits, her words don’t sound all that far removed from worlds’ best clicomm practice.
[Rule #1: conservative radio hosts have male privilege and they won’t hesitate to illegitimately insert it in your mouth if you let them get a word in edgeways.]
Other than the bizarre, specific delusion she voices (about the ease with which infants can stay on top of all the relevant Earth sciences) she could be any other believalist, only less abusive, couldn’t she?
Had Neil Mitchell not been so completely thrown by such developmental-psychology denial, I wish he’d asked her to put one of these Wunderkinder on the phone. My first 10 questions for 5-year-olds would be to repeat the word ‘carbon dioxide’, then again, then again, just so I could make absolutely sure Mum and Dad’s coaching was audible in the background.
“Those who seek a calm discourse about climate change should listen to this to judge the amount of work ahead of them to reverse opinions like these that Laura holds so strongly.”
Yeah it might seem hopeless but I reckon that, if you made urine tests for veterinary-grade stimulants a condition of any future meetings, she’ll sound comparatively sane
The kiddies weren’t the only ones wagging school and you gotta love the-
‘I’m a scientist and I know what I’m talking about’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=&v=voLyT_kJbwM
Priceless.
(hat tip Tim Blair)
It’s a great pity that more journalists don’t adopt such incisive questioning … it’s a lot more entertaining than the groupthink MSM is currently dishing up.
Laura Sykes works for the renewable energy lobby. Her NfP employer is funded by other NfPs who are funded by the ‘industry’ and donors large and small. This is lobbying in its most manipulative incarnation. The renewables mafia using schools and kids for money and power.
And Neil had the opportunity to expose her employer but fell short of doing so. Why I wonder; was employer non-disclosure a pre-condition for the interview?
Too funny Neil asking the question to which he received a ‘blank’ answer and then he backed off .
Easy starter question to allow kids to click they’re ignorant, ask em what percentage< of the air is carbon dioxide? That usually stops them cold. Next one is , what do plants use for ‘food’ and how many tons of that food do they suppose it takes to build a 100 ton tree, like the ones in the Sou’ West of West Oz that they’d see fill the forest? Then – what % do they think it’d need to drop to to kill that tree dead?
Once they wrap their minds around the vastness of these ideas and comprehend how little CO2 there is and how it’s effectively depleted to close to kill levels every single day, I’ll show the University of Utah’s graph of monitored by-the-minute daily graph of CO2 levels and ask them why they think it drops so low as soon as the sun comes up and remains low through the day, and I’ll further ask them, were they ever shown this graph by an adult in a position of responsibility ?
Thanks. A link with data and a good narrative: https://weather.usu.edu/multi_year_graphs/co2concentration
This is not necessarily the one that you referred to.
Can you provide a link to the U-U minute-by-minute daily graph of CO2 levels? I cannot locate the data. Thanks…
try this:
I see you’re heading into winter so the readings are a bit higher than during the growing season
https://air.utah.edu/s/measurements/?_inputs_&stid=%22wbb%22&submit=1
have a look at the warmer months when things are growing: such as this time series dragging a mouse across the graph shows the minutes
I was put on to this monitoring site after asking here some years back if anyone knew of a daily concentration series when I was writing up an article about C3, C4 and CAM plant photosynthesis and also asking why the heck with all the media attention on CO2 was no one talking about the minute by minute series.. you’d think if they were serious about Co2 being an ebil pollutant then they’d be linking to such a thing – they do for UV, smog and other such things (I knew why they didn’t, I just thought the hypocrisy was astonishing)
https://www.nationalregisterofbigtrees.com.au/
The BBC World Service also interviewed one of these kids, showing how the media has hidden control of the news agenda, and gives the craved-for publicity to favoured causes. LBC radio in the UK also gave a platform to a few hundred climate protestors who have been closing bridges recently.
The common sense conservative viewpoint is seldom heard, we do seem to be heading back to religious fundamentalism, where “green” is the new state-supported religion.
Take a look at this article out of Canada’s CBC today, where a psychologist is weighing in on why people are skeptical:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-psychology-1.4920872
I’d be very grateful for your responses to this psychologist.
Today on WUWT:
What Lousy Philosophy Tells Us About Belief In Global Warming
abc rn also ran this lass,
excpet they fawned all over her.
every mis statement accepted as gospel as per usual.
Notice that skeptics of the climate consensus are never smart enough to be qualified to to offer a critique, but 5 year olds are qualified to participate in political action supporting the most extreme bdemands of the climate consensus.
More ominously, notice how this leader is able to at once talk about democracy and science, while simultaneously convicting those who disagree of being not only wrong but corrupt.
My impression is that she managed to damage her cause quite a bit. And not simply because of her annoying and rude style of talking.
It is child abuse.
I’m in South Carolina. Last night I was listening to 2GB via the TuneIn app. I believe the host was Justin and the show is called Talk something.
Most of the shows I hear are “right of centre” and the topics are the same as the challenges to freedom worldwide.
Climate, guns, immigration and drugs. The other topic was Uber vs taxis.
And government does the same crappy job.
I loved the string of verbal vomit over how much these kids are telling her about how they fear for their future and are angry at their politicians for not listening to them. Followed on the heels of, “well there might be some that don’t agree”..but that’s not important, let me overtalk about how many of them DO agree. I’m not sure of the number but we’re estimating HUNDREDS of schools and about 600-800 students showing up.
The 5 years olds…ye gads woman! Seriously? OH but 5 year olds KNOW, won’t someone please think of the children?
THE BEST QUESTION: “You aren’t going to be a teacher are you?”
And she missed the entire set up.
There are definite reasons why the use of child soldiers is roundly condemned. Apart from placing the children in peril, the child soldiers are prone to atrocities.
So, of course it is a notion of the green blob to do what is in other contexts considered a war crime.
I’ll plow this plowed ground and beat this dead horse yet some more. Maybe somebody will step up and ‘splain scientifically how/why I’ve got it wrong – or not.
Radiative Green House Effect theory (TFK_bams09):
1) 288 K – 255 K = 33 C warmer with atmosphere, RGHE’s only reason to even exist – rubbish. (simple observation & Nikolov & Kramm)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6465958633963347968
But how, exactly is that supposed to work?
2) There is a 333 W/m^2 up/down/”back” energy loop consisting of the 0.04% GHG’s that absorbs/”traps”/re-emits per QED simultaneously warming BOTH the atmosphere and the surface. – Good trick, too bad it’s not real, thermodynamic nonsense.
And where does this magical GHG energy loop first get that energy?
3) From the 16 C/289 K/396 W/m^2 S-B 1.0 ε ideal theoretical BB radiation upwelling from the surface. – which due to the non-radiative heat transfer participation of the atmospheric molecules is simply not possible.
No BB upwelling & no GHG energy loop & no 33 C warmer means no RGHE theory & no CO2 warming & no man caused climate change.
Got science? Bring it!!
Nick Schroeder, BSME CU ‘78, CO PE 22774
Experiments in the classical style:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
No 33 C and K-T
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6466699347852611584
It is fitting that five year olds, who believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and monsters under the bed, so readily also believe in a climate catastrophe caused by CO2.
Targeting children has been a long dream of the propagandists. Already David Suzuki was always looking at addressing them rather than their parents…
The climate agitprop daily delivered by the CBC in Canada excels at pushing this agenda:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hope-on-climate-change-doesn-t-come-easily-but-action-isn-t-futile-1.4924187
ANY climate stuff in BC is always one way or another supported by fake charities pushed by Tides, Rockefeller Brothers etc…
https://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
He’s a scientist and he knows what he’s talking about:
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or feel sad or hopeless or sick, so I kind of did all of those. But mostly I laughed.
”we should still do something even if it’s not human induced” Precious!
Gold!