A disappearing act

John Shade has been looking at a campaign called Schools' Low Carbon Day. Having noted that the campaign claimed to be run by a registered charity, he checked with the Charities Commissioners and found that the charity concerned didn't exist. The people running the show eventually contacted him and said that since they hadn't actually collected any money, they hadn't bothered registering the charity.

Low carbon day was on Friday. But intriguingly, no sooner was it over than the campaign website was closed down. No reporting of how it went, no nothing.

I think it might be worth verifying the story that no money was collected. Does anyone know of any schools that actually took part?

Comments

[Dick Puddlecote]

My kids' schools are normally front and centre for initiatives like this, but neither was propagandised this time.

Curious.

[Poiuyt]

The domain www.lowcarbonday.com is registered to an unspecified person. The site, though, seems to be associated, in some way, with www.cooltheworld.com, which is registered to

[snip - please don't post personal data in comments. Thanks]

[The Englishman]

Google still has the old site cached;" cache:http://www.lowcarbonday.com " in the chrome browser.

I like the practical lesson ideas they give, for instance:

Demonstrating Solar Photovoltaic energy (from BP)
Keystage: 2/3/4

Inexpensive Solar PV demonstration kit from BP (£14 per kit, £16 including teachers notes, £40 for three kits). You can also download the informative teachers notes free of charge from the above site (as long as you register which takes two minutes). These include a discussion of solar energy and the photovoltaic effect. Activities for both primary and secondary level.

Follow this link: http://www.bp.com/genericResource.do?categoryId=8043&contentId=7037460

[Anoneumouse]

I notice that the google cached version of www.cooltheworld.com has the following in the bottom right hand of the page....Copyright Mothers Against Climate Change 2009

[Bishop Hill]

Anoneumouse

Mothers Against Climate Change is not a registered charity either.

Here's a school that took part

http://www.wolverley.worcs.sch.uk/2010/06/21/low-carbon-week-21st-25th-june/

[The Englishman]

cache:http://www.lowcarbonday.com shows that it too is Copyright Mothers Against Climate Change 2009 in the souce code

http://mothersagainstclimatechange.com/information.php is still live and says "Over 1600 schools registered representing more than 600,000 pupils" - as is http://lowcarbonday.com/information.php - (looks like a page they forgot to wipe)

[Foxgoose]

Commenters on this (somewhat "sweary") blog have identified the couple who ran the cooltheworld.com website:-

http://grumpyoldtwat.blogspot.com/2010/05/brainwashing-bastards.html

Bizarrely - their other business is flogging patio heaters!

It's a funny old (green) world.....

[Martin A]

A website

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/blogs/510/Schools-Low-Carbon-Day.html

mentions "Schools Low Carbon Day has been organized by ‘Cool The World’, a registered educational charity started by a group of mothers who feel that more should be done about climate change..."

[Bishop Hill]

Cool the World is not a registered charity.

[Peter S]

Schools Low Carbon Day was founded by Erica Charles (nee Robb) and the website is registered to Ian Charles who runs a an online gardening shop - Primrose London - based in Reading.

Erica Robb is also founder of the Cool The World website which states "An overheating world is creating a big change in climatic conditions and this can harm the delicate ecosystems in which species live", Ian's site, meanwhile, is flogging "Bullet Patio Heaters" inviting shoppers to "Extend the season of outdoor entertainment from March to November with these best of breed patio heaters".

This may not be Erica's first connection with online gardening however. As coincidence has it, in March 2000 an Erica Robb, former NatWest trader, founded 'dig-it.co.uk' with ex-male model Nicky Roeber (encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-61415559.html). Unfortunately, this gardening venture soon ran into trouble. Come 2003 angry shoppers were writing to the Guardian complaining that Dig-it had been steadily debiting their accounts for previously cancelled orders. Dig-it folded in August 03 with over 1000 outstanding orders in the pipeline. The administrative receivers said it was extremely unlikely that customers left out of pocket will see their money again (guardian.co.uk/money/2003/sep/25/consumeraffairs.consumerpages).

Green fingers?

[james]

More even info and screen captures here
http://grumpyoldtwat.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day.html

[AndyScrase]

A Google search for "lowcarbonday" (no spaces) shows up all the pages on the site that are below the index page.

e.g
Primary School lesson plans
http://www.lowcarbonday.com/lessonsprimary.php

Kid's carbon calculator
http://www.lowcarbonday.com/kidscarboncalculator.php

Kids carbon quiz
http://www.lowcarbonday.com/kidscarbonquiz.html

There's also a link through to actionaid
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/101751/age_of_stupid.html

In particular, some stuff about the Age of Stupid:movie

Available from November 2009 in the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, learners will have the opportunity to:

• Study and debate different viewpoints on the challenges of climate change
• Investigate how environmental change arises, including the impact of human activity
• Consider alternative future scenarios for the planet and the risks associated with not tackling sustainability
• Make a contribution to change by getting involved with the 10:10 campaign.

'Stupid or not: Education for a smarter planet’ packs can be ordered from our online shop for £25

[mat kiddy]

www.wolverley.worcs.sch.uk !! been there [from cookley] and they are total w$%^&*)__ !

[dave]

Off topic, a brief note:

"www.cooltheworld.com, which is registered to [snip - please don't post personal data in comments. Thanks]"

The information is publicly available, so wouldn't usually be considered personal. Anyone who wants it can check with the domain registrar.

[Don Pablo de la Sierra]

A Nigerian scam?

[Don Pablo de la Sierra]

Bishop

"www.cooltheworld.com, which is registered to [snip - please don't post personal data in comments. Thanks]"

The information is publicly available, so wouldn't usually be considered personal. Anyone who wants it can check with the domain registrar.

You are absolutely WRONG on this one Bishop. This is PUBLIC DOMAIN information, sir.

And for those of you wanting to know, it is listed

HERE

And I might point out, that the name and address are meaningless 9 times out of 10. The actual "owner" can be anywhere. I have found numerous sites registered in countries that had nothing to do with the actual owners, who are often in Russia, the ex-satellite countries, Africa, and the far east. (I used the return IP address to track it back -- and even that is often foiled with "anonymous" forwarding sites -- which can be identified by their IP address.

Even telephone numbers can be forwarded to the US or UK.

Please note that the "owner" is iandcharles@hotmail.com." Basically meaningless. Even if there is a Charles family living in Reading at the address indicated, it also means nothing as they could have been picked out of a phone book.

So, unless Ian D. Charles comes forward and agrees that he actually owns the site, it is all meaningless.

Been around the horn too many times with this to worry about it.

[Kevin Cave]

What confirms the link between Mothers Against Climate Change and the Low Carbon Day campaign, is that both mothersagainstclimatechange.com and lowcarbonday.com resolve to the same IP address (easy to find out - from a linux command line prompt enter "host lowcarbonday.com" and "host mothersagainstclimatechange.com" , swap "host" for "ping" on a Windows command line prompt).

The same IP address for both indicates that both sites were either served from the same web server using name-based hosting - or were served from different web servers but from the same host provider. In either of the two cases, the link to Mothers Against CLimate Change is confirmed.

Regards.

[RETEPHSLAW]

It is really difficult to believe some of the earlier comments above.

Scams related to AGW?

Never!

[SimonH]

Kevin: The same IP address for both indicates that both sites were either served from the same web server using name-based hosting - or were served from different web servers but from the same host provider. In either of the two cases, the link to Mothers Against CLimate Change is confirmed.

Meh.. that's not really conclusively demonstrating the link, to be frank. Lots of unrelated websites can be served from the same IP, without the domain owners having anything to do with each other, such is the nature of t'internet. Even domain registration information itself doesn't prove absolutely that two sites are linked (though it ought to, in principle), since domain registration is often a service offered by the more tech-savvy to the less tech-savvy.

None of this is to suggest that the link isn't reasonably demonstrated otherwise.

[Kevin Cave]

SimonH:

Meh.. that's not really conclusively demonstrating the link, to be frank. Lots of unrelated websites can be served from the same IP, without the domain owners having anything to do with each other, such is the nature of t'internet. Even domain registration information itself doesn't prove absolutely that two sites are linked (though it ought to, in principle), since domain registration is often a service offered by the more tech-savvy to the less tech-savvy.

None of this is to suggest that the link isn't reasonably demonstrated otherwise.

Taken as standalone evidence, what you say is true, however, as has been commented earlier by Anoneumouse :

I notice that the google cached version of www.cooltheworld.com has the following in the bottom right hand of the page....Copyright Mothers Against Climate Change 2009

Therefore further indicating the connection. Call me overly-eagre to come to conclusions, but the evidence I see before my lying eyes indicates what I said earlier is the correct conclusion :)

Regards.