Important new project provides videos and short non-technical issue briefs for students
Paul Driessen
It’s time to challenge the steady diet of bias, false information and alarmism on climate change that students are fed in and outside of their classrooms. Science and public policy analyst Dr. David Wojick has launched an important new project to do exactly that.
From kindergarten onward, our young people are repeatedly told that they, our wildlife and our planet face unprecedented cataclysms from manmade climate change, resulting from our fossil fuel use. The science is settled, they are constantly hoodwinked, and little or no discussion is allowed in classrooms.
They thus hear virtually nothing about the growing gap between computer model predictions and satellite temperature measurements; questions about data manipulation by scientists advocating the dangerous manmade climate change narrative; the hundreds of scientists who do not agree with the supposed “consensus” on manmade climate chaos; or the absence of any real-world evidence to support claims of carbon dioxide-driven coral bleaching, species extinctions, or the seemingly endless litany of ever more absurd assertions that fossil fuel emissions are making sharks right-handed, arctic plants too tall, pigs skinnier and salmon unable to detect danger, to cite just a few crazy examples.
Students are rarely told that the United States enjoyed a record 12-year absence of category 3-5 hurricanes making landfall between 2005 and 2017, or that 1944-1950 was the worst period in history for monster hurricanes hitting Florida. They’re not told the U.S. had 40% fewer “violent” (F4-5) tornadoes per year in 1986 to 2018 than in 1954 to 1985 – or that America did not have a single violent tornado in 2018, for the first time in history. Instead, they are misinformed that storms are becoming more frequent and intense.
They are rarely even told about the Little Ice Age, Roman and medieval warm periods, prolonged droughts throughout history, or the critical roles of fluctuating solar energy, periodic oscillations in Pacific and Atlantic temperatures and currents, and other major natural forces that have driven climate changes throughout Earth and human history.
It’s therefore hardly surprising that we are now seeing children marching in the streets and calling for “climate action” and “climate justice.” Worse, their teachers do not only excuse their truancy. They encourage it, giving course credit for these actions, or even saying student activism on climate and fossil fuels is more important than their reading, mathematics, history and other course work.
It’s ridiculous. But it’s real, ongoing – and often paid directly by our tax dollars or by tax-exempt foundations and activist groups whose views dominate and permeate our education and media systems.
In addition to what students are learning in their classrooms, they also receive “guidance” and “information” from “educational” websites that promote climate alarmism. Incredibly, many have been federally funded for years, and some are still funded by Trump Administration federal agencies!
For example, the “Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network” (CLEAN, as in “clean energy”) operates the CLEAN website, which is funded jointly by NOAA, NSF and DOE: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.
It supposedly advances “climate literacy” – which is really code for the false belief that humans are causing dangerous climate change. CLEAN says it has over 600 free, ready to use resources suitable for use in secondary and higher education classrooms. It also boasts that it is the core of the “Teaching Climate” part of the Climate.gov website. This is Federal Government bias targeting children.
One of the key principles of CLEAN’s version of climate literacy is explained thus: “A great challenge of the 21st century will be to prepare communities to adapt to climate change while reducing human impacts on the climate system (known as mitigation).” CLEAN also says “Because the primary cause of recent global climate change is human, the solutions are also within the human domain.” In other words, we can now control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate, by adjusting its carbon dioxide thermostat control knob. In our dreams.
All of CLEAN’s biased teaching materials are based on this false premise. The reality is that dangerous human influence on climate is completely unproven and the subject of intense scientific debate. That only the scary side is being presented as settled science is a severe and intolerable lack of balance.
Dr. Wojick recently launched a crowd-funding project to provide alternative educational materials. His materials reflect the profound and well-documented debate that actually flourishes worldwide about nonsensical climate alarmism, the real (natural) causes of climate changes and weather events, the ways increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are helping plants to grow better and faster, and the actual causes of the sometimes crazy phenomena and creatures we encounter on this planet of ours.
The Climate Change Debate Education project or CCDE is still small. But it is growing steadily – and its GoFundMe effort is playing a critical role.
At this point, Dr. Wojick’s CCDE project provides two primary kinds of educational materials. One is skeptical videos by leading scientists. As of now there are 193 videos, by eminent scientists like William Happer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Wojick says his goal is to list 1000 skeptical scientific videos, clearly proving that the scientific debate is real.
Dr. Wojick and his project are also developing what he calls “gate breakers.” These are one-page, nontechnical summaries that explain a particular issue in the scientific debate about climate change. They are designed to be used to confront, challenge or question “gatekeeping” alarmists – such as teachers, speakers or politicians – who refuse to admit the scientific debate even exists.
Thus far, there are three gate breakers on the website, addressing hurricanes, the Little Ice Age and the sun’s role in global warming and climate change. But many more are on their way.
One interesting feature is that each gate breaker has a version that includes a Google Scholar search for more of the massive scientific literature on its topic. Dr. Wojick says the point of these searches is not that students can read all this technical stuff, but that they can see the debate truly exists. In each case, there are thousands of scientific journal articles that challenge the groupthink and borderline hysteria that dominates classroom and media discussions of climate issues.
The Climate Change Debate Education project is an ambitious and important undertaking.
It deserves the support of anyone who believes in the scientific method, integrity in scientific research – and having open, robust debates on dangerous manmade climate change claims that are being used to justify a rapid and complete switch from fossil fuels that provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy … regardless of the tremendously harmful impacts that switch would have on our economy, jobs, living standards, health, productivity, housing, transportation and personal freedoms.
Companies that could and should support this vital educational program are too intimidated by the Antifa mobs arm of the $2-trillion-a-year Climate Industrial Complex to do so. That means citizens need to step forward. The future of American and global science, energy and prosperity hang in the balance.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment.
There are a couple of major flaws with the steroid analogy cited in the referenced news article. The “teacher” tried to impress on the students that observing increased home run hitting in baseball players who used steroids was the same as observing increases in extreme events in weather, and that the demonstration of conclusion of increases in one somehow implied the demonstration of conclusion of increases in the other.
First, steroid effects on muscle strength can be, and have been, measured in controlled experiments, replicated in vitro and in vivo with a large number of identical complete systems concerned (humans and animals). Since the experiments are controlled, direct measurements of the effect of the drugs at various levels compared to no drugs can be made and quantified. In particular, replicated, controlled experiments have shown the graduated, quantitative behavior that supraphysiologic doses of steroids, especially when combined with strength training, increase fat-free mass and muscle size and strength in normal men. These results are directly applicable to, and have been measured concerning, strength requiring tasks such as home run hitting. The fact that accumulation of the home run statistics over a fiduciary period is done is irrelevant to the hypothesis. The conclusion could just as easily be demonstrated experimentally with a batting cage and a motion sensor.
Second, the attribution of extremal events to an existing, but irregular, low level trend is one of the weakest claims currently in climate science. Extremal events by their nature require very long periods of time to detect changes, and every study that has looked at such events concludes there is simply not enough time yet to detect any change statistically. Secondly, the climate of the earth is a one-off system and it is impossible to do a controlled experiment as has been done for steroids. One cannot study a physical earth exactly like ours with some parameter different in controlled steps, such as levels of C02 or any other factor, and compare to ours. So the analogy to steroids and athletics is false and misleading on several counts. A computer simulation does not count as an experiment, since it can only return values based on what has been programmed into it, which despite current usage in some communities, does not constitute an “experiment.”
She is grossly misleading them on the conduct of science. There are better ways to address it.
There is one analogy that might be made with something scientific, right here on this blog.
With the new moderation time lag, this is a great simulation of what it would be like having a computer chat with someone near Jupiter.
Wow. Judging by the flak, this one is right on target 👍
Having undertaken a few pro bono “interventions” (aka de-programming, de-brainwashing) with success, I am likely to get more requests from anxious parents who have children becoming fearful, disengaged, even suicidal because of all this climate change lunacy.
I know that skepticism is hard-wired into humanity, otherwise we would never have progressed from the trees and the caves. Most adults I know are aware that the climate change meme is a pack of lies, not necessarily because they are well versed in the subject, but because they know when they are being lied to.
I am also reassured by the number of young people who understand what is going on, in spite of everything they are fed by schools, the media, social media. But there remain many who do not seem to have the gene or faculty, and need help.
Thanks Paul and David. I’ll be contributing, and I will be claiming it as a work-related expense.
In school, I remember the worst weather disasters were the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and the North Sea flood of 1953. Of course now we are told thousands died in the Puerto Rico hurricane Maria, so maybe it is comparable to Galveston?
Post says:
Incredibly, many have been federally funded for years, and some are still funded by Trump Administration federal agencies!
Not incredible at all — the deep-state bureaucracies (the swamp) are entrenched Juggernauts. Don’t blame Trump for that — he’s one of the few fighting it.
“It’s therefore hardly surprising that we are now seeing children marching in the streets and calling for “climate action” and “climate justice.” Worse, their teachers do not only excuse their truancy. They encourage it, giving course credit for these actions, or even saying student activism on climate and fossil fuels is more important than their reading, mathematics, history and other course work.”
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“Worse, their teachers do not only excuse their truancy.”
The baddest children we ever had. 16 year olds lifelong told, they were always right. They had nothing to learn and the others always will be wrong.
Natural born pests.