Bishop Hill Climate Control in the NYT
Apr 21, 2014 Education The Montford/Shade climate control report gets a mention in a New York Times article on climate change education.
In Britain, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organization of climate change skeptics, has accused schools of brainwashing students with political indoctrination similar to that in Mao Zedong’s China.
“The education system, subverted by a green political movement, now seeks conformity with environmentalist orthodoxy,” the foundation warned in a report this month. Politicians, it said, are “effectively handing much of the curriculum to green activists.”
The whole article is worth a look, but would be much stronger if it addressed the question of whether "sustainable development", a political (and somewhat nebulous) concept, is the correct starting point for children's education.
Reader Comments (18)
It would have been fair for the NYT to mention that the GWPF is an unaccountable organisation through which the wealthy in the UK try to promote policies favourable to their interests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation#Funding
Inadvertently radicalizing the next generation of Environmentalists.
Terrorism just giving narcissists a "worthy cause" to act out their tendencies
Well done Dave ,Tony and Gordon as if there weren't enough home grown potential terrorists already.Every violent loony looking for an outlet.
This rate they may have to send more under cover cops to sleep with their girlfriends and boyfriends to make sure they don't start making home made explosive to attack the transport and electricity grid infra structure of the country.
"Climate Change Is Finding Its Way Into the World's Classrooms" ? In the UK it seems to have been embedded there for the last decade at least.
Many subjects already include a huge side-order of "green worldview" - for want of a better name. This is prominent in science subjects: physics, chemistry, biology.
One of many problems with bringing "green thoughts" into science is that the greenery seems to be sprinkled on afterwards by someone with no real understanding of science. For example we read that "copper is extracted using chemicals" - this is in a chemistry text book and not a womens magazine.
Just a quick example from AQA GCSE Chemistry: we have already learned that "Sometimes builders add small stones or crushed rocks to the mixture of water, cement and sand. ... this is called concrete" we then have a 2-page section on "Limestone issues" where pupils are invited to discuss the environmental, social, and economic effects of starting up [sic] a new limestone quary in a National Park.
My biggest complaint about this is the displacement effect. A qualified science teacher is wading through this un-scientific stuff and a science lab stands unused in the background. The children could be learning more science or doing some pipetting / titrating etc. They could learning about polymerisation instead of the war on plastic bags.
My second complaint is that it is all negative - a kind of whiny "let's find a problem with everything".
Fred Pearson (10:12 AM): your point being? Surely you are not suggesting that the relatively trivial accounts of the GWPF, compared with those of “Greenpeace”, “Friends of the Earth”, the IPCC, the EU, etc could seriously make a dent in the armour of their opponents?
Interesting to note that from the same source (Wikipedia), the description of “Greenpeace” funding is not loaded with the same codicils that the GWPF entry has, despite receiving 202.5 million EUR in 2008, as opposed to GWPF’s £503,302 receipt in early 2010 (less than a quarter of a percent of “Greenpeace’s” EURO funding), nor the accusatory comments by a known antagonist. Curious, too, to note that “Friends of the Earth” (acronym “FoE” – how appropriate!) doesn’t even bother to mention funding.
Methinks that you might be letting your own altruism cloud your interpretation of the evidence in front of you. I can say that, as it was something that happened to me, for quite a few years. It is a form of brainwashing.
Opening comment is just mudpie slinging .. There is strong evidence it could be reworded
* Greenpreach refuses direct taxpayer money, but FoE does receive substantial proportion of its income from the EUIn tracking the OECD's Green Growth global initiative that started in 2011 that then morphed into the Great Transition in 2013 at a Paris meeting we were not invited to, this 2008 book published by the OECD Sustainable Development: Linking economy, society, environment comes up. Sure does make the term not nebulous at all. It also makes the need for both political indoctrination and the elimination of Axemaker Minds in general necessary.
The book is by Tracey Strange and Anne Bayley and as of yesterday was located on a server at the world resources forum's site.
I wish schools would teach children not to drop litter, that would improve the environment way more than teaching them to reduce their carbon footprints.
It would be fair to point out that the NYT is that rag that denied the holocaust up until the mid 60s.
UNESCO is a player. Who invited them into our diverse Sovereignties with their specific, relevant , tailored educational aspirations?
Anyone want to comment about whether UNESCO involvement is wanted or needed, good or bad?
I suggest that it is past the time for more faceless, unelected, country officials to pose as National representatives (without citizen choice) with assumed powers to make agreements with the UNESCOs of the World - that One World Order, perhaps:?
I get really cheesed off in a similar way when my home country Australia is in the news as having reps named this or that representing me at IPCC meetings.Who are these people? Why are they trashing my Soverign Rights?
Why is UNESCO trashing educational rights?
I would recommend John Shade's recent post on his blog Climate Lessons for more information about what is going on in schools propaganda
http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/climate-brainwashing-of-children-rough.html
"It would be fair to point out that the NYT is that rag that denied the holocaust up until the mid 60s."
I think you mean the Ukrainian famine.
The problem with "sustainability" is that it sounds such a sensible concept. Who would argue for doing something in an unsustainable way? The problem, of course, is when it comes to actual examples which are judged by alarmists to be unsustainable, which happen to include using fossil fuels. The clever people at the UN have captured the language.
"Sustainable" is a word that means "what I like". It has no actual defined meaning, and it throws the Greens into a spin when you ask for one.
The world is never going to run out of steel, concrete and glass. Steel is among the most heavily recycled items on the planet (with no need to for subsidies to achieve that). We are, however, using up arable land to housing at an alarming rate.
The most sustainable option, therefore, is for us all to live in glass tower blocks, which minimise fuel use, both in heating and in transport to and from work. It is also most cost-effective in terms of producing quality living space per dollar.
However the eco-loons think that small plot holding, with hugely inefficient use of arable land, is "sustainable". What they mean is "non-industrial", which they wrongly equate with sustainable. No matter than there isn't any way that we could all live that way and keep a healthy population -- it would literally not be sustainable.
If we want to feed ourselves efficiently, and save as much wildlife as possible, the best option is high-density urbanisation.
Geoff-UNESCO assumed control over the direction of higher ed globally about 1998. The accreditation agencies report to UNESCO to ensure that ed reform in both K-12 and higher ed is in compliance with UNESCO's vision of using education to change culture. I have a book available on amazon that lays out precisely how this vision of cultural evolution works to gain a nonconsensual transformation towards socialism. Julian Huxley, Aldous' brother, who helped create UNESCO in the 40s, was one of the primary architects.
Finally, as I have documented on my blog, UNESCO has announced that since 2002 it has been addressing ed reforms globally as the "Task Manager of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21."
On the definition of sustainable development, in 2005 the UN added economic, social, and political domains to the jurisdiction it insists it has. The document was called "Understanding Knowledge Societies." This is an old post that talked about it. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/all-that-is-solid-melts-into-air-but-does-it-really/
It also discusses Paul Ehrlich's integral involvement.
Having read the wiki article that Fred Pearson links to, I am surprised that he did not recognise a smear job. Only the very uninformed or those whose minds are made up could take this sort of stuff seriously.
Lennart Bengtsson (IPCC) points at an big elefant in the room!
He has many times put forward the argument that we already have experienced 80% of an doubling of CO2 (with methane and other greenhouse gases) and got a lousy 0.8 C increase in GMT during the same period. He also makes a point that you dont even have to be a climate specilaist to realize that its obvious that there is something fundamentely wrong with the hypothesis of a high climate sensitivity and the estimates from IPCC.
Why dont even sceptics understand the central importance for this argument?
Lennart B is "outed" from MSM in Sweden and is a frequent kommentator at "Klimatupplysningen"
his latest komment on this issue and argument you can find here: (Its a reply to a "green" politician)
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/04/21/tillbaka-till-ruta-ett/#comment-369997
"The whole article is worth a look"
If you have a strong stomach. The whole article is actually terrible - its thesis could be summed up as "Obviously Global Warming is real and should be taught in schools, what a shame all these people keep wanting to discuss and even question it - they are clearly idiots who ought to shut up."