Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Don't let your children near St Thomas University, Mrs Worthington...

There must be many youngsters fired up at school about climate, and keen to study something linked to it at university.  It is such a broad area, and now such a prosperous one, that many different subjects and even some 'disciplines' offer courses.  But some will be unsatisfactory.  Some will be unscientific.  Some will be biased and politicised beyond the pale.

A Professor Abraham of St Thomas University in the States published a snide, superficial, supercilious, and super-silly online presentation that presumably reflected his teaching style, his integrity, and his grasp of climate science.

The C3 site describes him as the 'Bozo of St Thomas':
 http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/07/the-bozo-of-st-thomas-university-professor-ignominiously-confirms-the-lying-of-global-warming-alarmi.html

Viscount Monckton, whose earlier presentation was the target of Abraham's, has replied at length.  After first giving Abraham a month to explain himself and respond to Monckton's concerns.  Answer was there none.

You can reach the offending presentation (83 minutes, with soundtrack and slides) and get Monckton's detailed response in a pdf file via here:
 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/a-detailed-rebuttal-to-abraham-from-monckton/

Or you can get the rebuttal directly from the SPPI site here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/response_to_john_abraham.html

Monckton's response would be a good gift for a senior school pupil looking for a suitable university and a suitable degree.  It will encourage them to be very careful where they go, as well as show them how a civilised man debates.

Who knows how many Abraham-clones there are in the UK alone?

Friday 9 July 2010

"Throughout my school life we have had talks on climate change, and what we can do to prevent it. People my age are terrified of what might happen to our planet" Quote from a 15-year old.

The least forgiveable harm produced by the political success of the IPCC is, in my opinion, the harm it has done, and will still do, to children.

Adults discussing theories about climate and speculating about disasters is one thing.

But pushing speculations as facts, 'facts' that will scare children, is quite another.

I suppose that many, perhaps most, of the people campaigning in and around schools about the climate have no wish to 'scare children witless', to quote from (3), but it is hard to see how their vivid preoccupation with doom-laden speculations can do anything else.  Some will see through them (in due course), some will ignore them, some will be scared by them.

Here are some recent reports of some that were scared, from three countries:

New Zealand.  Source: (1).

'Today's children are worried about more than just their homework and peer pressure - they are also worried about terrorism and climate change and whether there will be a future for their own children.
...
Auckland University Researcher Fiona Pienaar interviewed children aged 8-12 for her PhD to find out what stressed them out and how they coped.'
...
'Global warming and how a natural disaster would affect their lives were two other issues for children.


"I'm worried about the environment and the global warming, the ice and how it's going. I write it down in my little notebook ... I'm thinking people should actually stop the global warming before it's too late for their children," said one child.
...
'"The future, if we have children, would there be a future for them?" asked one child.'

'Ms Pienaar said that in the past children tended to think of themselves as immortal but these days things have changed. They are far more exposed to the media and their parents' stress issues, which has led to a greater awareness of potentially stressful world issues.'

'When children have those concerns it can be very distracting and I don't think it's surprising that we have increasing behaviour problems, increasing diagnosis of childhood anxiety disorders and childhood depression.'


USA.  Source: (2).

'An article by Johanna Sorrentino at Education.com (titled "Get Your Kids Global Warming Savvy") reveals survey results "of more than 1,000 middle school students across the country [that] found that kids fear global warming more than war, terrorism or the health care crisis." Not only does this statement suggest the US has a non-existent "health care crisis" but it demonstrates the dangerous power of misinformation in education. Sorrentino's article is full of the very misinformation that leads to the unwarranted fear children have about "global warming."'

The source article, by Bob Webster, goes on to explain why, and he also recommends a book for children on climate:
'... parents who want to provide a good education about global warming and climate change (and how teachers are misleading students), there is an excellent book for "kids [who] fear global warming more than war, terrorism or the health care crisis." It is The Sky's Not Falling - Why It's OK to Chill about Global Warming (for children and adults) by Holly Fretwell .... Well organized, this book presents a fairly comprehensive view of climate change and global warming designed to calm any fears children may have from gross exaggerations they may have heard at school, on TV, or in other media. While the book is written for children, it is excellent for adults whose education failed to prepare them to understand why the notion that humans can cause "climate change" is absurd.'


UK. Source: (3).

'Today, it is not the mushroom cloud that threatens to suffocate children psychologically but carbon emissions. The new bogeyman is climate change: submerger of nations, polluter of skies, slayer of polar bears.'

Here is one 15 year old quoted in the article:

'Throughout my school life we have had talks on climate change, and what we can do to prevent it. People my age are terrified of what might happen to our planet; it has been drilled into our brains at school, home and even on TV. We watch the news and see earthquakes, flooding, tsunamis, and we hope that by the time we are our parents’ ages we will not be having to cope with these routinely.'

Some more disturbing quotes are in the article, but here is one by the journalist who wrote it:

 'Teaching children about man-made climate change — which is very real and threatens our wellbeing — and persuading them to adopt green habits is essential, but it can be done without scaring them witless.'

Note the casual and confident assertion that 'man -made climate change ... is very real and threatens our wellbeing'.  Not surprising, since this is the establishment view.  But shocking, all the same.  Can the journalist argue a case to defend her assertions, or would she resort to appealing to the 'authority' of the IPCC?  I suspect she has acquired her opinion because there is a lot of it about, like some kind of 'flu.

Not all journalists have caught the infection, thank goodness.  Here is a recent piece in the Washington Times which is sensible about climate change: (4).

But it is not just passive exposure to the media and their parents.  There is a widespread and generously funded level of deliberate pushing of climate change concerns on to children.  I am accumulating lists of sites that produce propaganda aimed at children, or entice them into climate-related networking groups, or 'action groups', or provide materials and project ideas for parents and teachers to push the IPCC line on climate.  I plan to publish my 'list so far', in the near future.  In the meantime, there is an illustrated list of 16 'climate propaganda' sites here (5), and of these, at least 4 are specifically aimed at children.  And, to end on a postive note, here is a UK link to Amazon for the book mentioned earlier (6).  I have this book, and I thoroughly recommend it. [Note added 16 July: the book has several technical errors which would need to be corrected before it was good enough to give to youngsters, but it is an excellent source of perspective and ideas for teachers.]

References
(1) http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10639763
(2) http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3671
(3) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article7066030.ece
(4) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/8/climate-change-a-collective-flight-from-reality/
(5) http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/climate-change-propaganda-websites/#more-92
(6) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skys-Not-Falling-Global-Warming/dp/0976726947/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278688433&sr=1-1

Thursday 8 July 2010

Why Would You Believe This? (4 of 8) . 'And that's not to mention the 30% of species at risk of extinction [due to impact of humans on CO2 levels].'

They really do want to scare the horses, as well as the children.  The source site for this quote has now closed down.  See earlier posts, e.g. (1) & (2), for the context of this extract from their reasons for worrying children about climate:

'And that's not to mention the 30% of species at risk of extinction.'

Julian Simon had the measure of this particular sleight of hand 26 years ago (3).  Take the upper end of a speculative range of values, and report it as if it were a fact.  Not only that, decouple it further to suggest that the '30%' applies to all species, and not merely to a subset deemed at particular risk.

The ‘30%’ figure was promoted in the IPCC's 2007 Summary Report for Policy Makers, where it was the upper end of a range.  For a summary of some of their scare stories from 2007, see (4), which has this, with my emphasis added:

'The report says that around 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the plant and animal species assessed are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if global average temperatures exceed 1.5 degree C to 2.5 degree C over late 20th century levels.'

So not only is this a speculation about the impact on a subset of species, it presumes a further speculation about temperatures.  Both speculations are so flimsy that the whole phrase is worthless except as a piece of propaganda designed for the mass media.

The low levels of scientific and statistical competence in the mass media allow such things to pass unchallenged in the news, and of course the juxtaposition with talk of man-made CO2 invites the public to more misleading conclusions.  First of all, species have always died out, and one might argue pedantically that 100% are ‘at risk of extinction’ – it is part and parcel of evolution, and of the vulnerability of any lifeform.  Why would this be worse under warming, given that conditions would be generally more favourable for life?  Especially if ambient CO2 levels increase, since more CO2 would provide an appreciable surge in plant growth wherever there was no other constraint such as insufficient mineral availability.

Both the species estimates and the temperature projections are based on computer models.  Computer models of these poorly underststood and complex systems are merely vehicles for exploring conjectures in limited ways.  In particular, they provide neither evidence nor data, merely speculations.  Apparently the species extinction models referred to by the IPCC took no account of acclimatisation nor of the more favourable growing environment produced by increased ambient CO2 levels.  This is eerily reminiscent of the absurd doom-laden talk in the 1970s by the notorious scaremongerer Paul Ehrlich, who also took no account of human ingenuity and of the benefits of certain trends such as increased availability of energy supplies and other resources.  His mental model of the world seems to view it as some kind of petri-dish, lacking in intelligent life.

As for the models used to support the 2007 assertions on extinctions, here is a recent expert opinion on them, with my emphasis added (5):

'The two researchers - Kathy Willis from the UK's Long-Term Ecology Laboratory of Oxford University's Centre for the Environment, and Shonil Bhagwat from Norway's University of Bergen - raise a warning flag about the older models, stating "their coarse spatial scales fail to capture topography or 'microclimatic buffering' and they often do not consider the full acclimation capacity of plants and animals," citing the analysis of Botkin et al. (2007) in this regard.'

This article concludes, my emphasis added:

‘Clearly, the panic-evoking extinction-predicting paradigms of the past are rapidly giving way to the realization they bear little resemblance to reality. Earth's plant and animal species are not slip-sliding away - even slowly - into the netherworld of extinction that is preached from the pulpit of climate alarmism as being caused by CO2-induced global warming.’ 

 The CO2 Science site (6) has a lot more useful stuff on species extinctions, as does the SPPI site (7).

The casual throwing around of scary but phoney numbers, and their replication through mass media in support of their cause, is all part of the modus operandi of the IPCC.  Their touting of the '40%' fantasy fact about the Amazon being but one of many, and one which by itself could account for a great many species extinctions.  Here it is refuted (8):

'The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim -- based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study -- that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.  "Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall," said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.
"The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct," said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC.'


So, what are we to make of the '30%'?  My inclination is to read it bearing in mind the above reservations about models, and taking due note of this statement (9):

'The attitude toward scientific fact reporting by environmental scientists may be best summarized by Stanford biology professor, Stephen Schneider’s statement, “We need to get loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios and make dramatic statements. Each of us has to decide on the right balance between effectiveness and honesty”.'

Along with some examples where honesty seemed to count for very little:

'In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.'

—Paul Ehrlich, (Earth Day 1970) (10)


'Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.'
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson (Earth Day 1970) (11)


And perhaps, if you think the '30%' still has a shred of credibility, consider this 'data' pushed by the WWF in 1996, and roundly rebutted here (12):

'How does WWF arrive at the number 5O,OOO species extinctions per year? It can be no coincidence that this same number is the upper limit suggested by Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University. Wilson states that while only l.5 million species have been described, it is reasonable to believe that there are over 3O times that many, i.e. 5O million. Then a computer model, based on island biogeography theory, is used to generate the number 5O,OOO. There is no list of Latin names for these species. It is, in fact, a preposterous combination of extrapolation and pulling numbers from the air.'

This is all part of a long and ignoble tradition amongst political campaigners who wrap themselves in the sheep's clothing of concern for the environment (13):

'In the 45 years since the publication of Silent Spring, it is very obvious that many environmental scientists choose effectiveness in generating media attention over honesty. Today the ability to obtain government funding for environmental studies clouds their judgment even more.'

I referred to Julian Simon at the start of this post, and I expect to do so again in this series.  But for now, I'll conclude with the title of his 1984 article (3), followed by an extract from it:

'Truth Almost Extinct in Tales of Imperiled Species.'

'... this pure conjecture about upper limit of present  species extinction is increased and used by Mr. Myers and WWF scientist Thomas Lovejoy as the basis for the "projections" quoted  in the fundraising letter and elsewhere.  Mr. Lovejoy--by  converting what was an estimated upper limit into a present best-estimate--says that government inaction is "likely to lead" to the extinction of between 14 and 20 percent of all species before the  year 2000.  This comes to about 40,000 species lost per year, or  about one million from 1980 to 2000. In brief, this extinction rate is nothing but pure guesswork.  The forecast is a thousand times greater than the present--yet it has been published in newspapers and understood as a scientific statement.'

Simon spotted their tricks back then. His insight was not enough to stop them at their game, neither back then nor now.  We are faced with campaigners less concerned about the truth, than about the impact of their statements in the media, and upon their sources of funding.

References
(1) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-concerned.html
(2) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-hoax-scam.html
(3) Article by Julian Simon reproduced in this link (need to scroll down to find it): http://www.skepticfiles.org/skeptic/az_mar92.htm
(4) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119122043.htm
(5) Idsos article: http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N24/EDIT.php
(6) http://www.co2science.org/subject/e/extinctionmodel.php
(7) http://sppiblog.org/tag/species-endangerment
(8) Amazongate reference http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311175039.htm
(9) Schneider quote and more on Schneider: http://www.john-daly.com/schneidr.htm
(10) Ehrlich's and others' quotes: http://pushback.com/issues/environment/ecofreak-quotes/
(11) Gaylord Nelson's and others' quotes: http://www.ihatethemedia.com/earth-day-predictions-of-1970-the-reason-you-should-not-believe-earth-day-predictions-of-2009
(12) http://www.nafi.com.au/library/viewarticle.php3?id=37
(13) http://www.netrightnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1252273:four-decades-of-deceit&catid=1:nrn-blog&Itemid=7

Monday 5 July 2010

This should scare 'em - life underwater, War of the Worlds, floods, damaged planet

How long are the good people of England going to tolerate the pushing of this ignorant and frightening nonsense on to their children?


'Climate change forms the focus for South Hill Park’s Big Day Out on Saturday.....
The theme sees the festival imagine what the world would be like if we lived underwater and as part of this, Reading’s Global CafĂ© will present its take on the topic while a children’s procession at 5.30pm will feature a large crustacean created by their own hands. It will be inspired by H G Wells’ War Of The Worlds.
There will also be a special performance by Sound Interventions, who will present Drift, an outdoor show which imagines, in an abstract way, what our environmental crimes might soon be doing to planet earth.
Drift will be a procession staged on top of a flood, will use recycled instruments and include a fire show....
There’s a strong family focus to the event, especially during daylight hours, with the festival’s daytime activities climaxing in a children’s parade at 5.30pm.'

Why Would You Believe This? (3 of 8): '[because of rising CO2] Hundreds of millions of people may not have enough water. Floods, heat waves and droughts may affect millions more. The ensuing migration could make the world a very unstable place.'

Contentious chunk number 3, from the reasons given as to why we should be worried about climate change caused by humans, and why we should ensure our children are worried too - according to a now defunct site promoting Schools' Low Carbon Day (1).  I want to continue with this Fisking to provide a coverage which may be of wider interest.

'Hundreds of millions of people may not have enough water. Floods, heat waves and droughts may affect millions more. The ensuing migration could make the world a very unstable place.'

This is blatant and shameless scaremongering.  The cautious verbs 'may' (twice) and 'could' (once) provide the authors with some protection from total ridicule.  It has long been the case that these calamities 'may be true', or 'could happen'.  And of course, we know for sure that there will be people 'short of water', that there will be 'floods, heatwaves, and droughts', and that there have been already substantial migrations and there may well be more.

Despite the frail, or completely lacking, justification for their views, campaigners under the banner of 'agw' or 'climate change, have had a substantial influence and are intent on entrenching this in society by indoctrinating children.  We must therefore take these campaigners seriously - indeed they have already done serious harm around the world: to children and to vulnerable adults, to the poor and hungry, to the environment, to science, to politics, and to technology.

Here they want to scare children with three things: floods, heat waves, and droughts.  As is usual with environmental scare stories, a search of the literature will soon reveal major flaws in the reasoning.  For the examples below, I have taken reports from the 'Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change' which exists to: 'disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climatic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.'  See (2).

FLOODS: for more examples, see (3).
Example of scientific study
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V8/N1/C2.php
What was learned
'In describing the results of their analyses, Mudelsee et al. report finding, for both the Elbe and Oder rivers, "no significant trends in summer flood risk in the twentieth century," but "significant downward trends in winter flood risk during the twentieth century," which phenomenon -- "a reduced winter flood risk during the instrumental period" -- they specifically describe as "a response to regional warming." '
What it means
The results of this study provide no support for the IPCC "concern" that CO2-induced warming will add to the risk of river flooding in Europe.  If anything, they suggest just the opposite.'

HEAT WAVES: for more examples, see (4).
Example of scientific study
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V10/N24/C1.php
What was learned
'Because of the fact that depletion of soil moisture (which has long been predicted to accompany CO2-induced global warming) results in reduced latent cooling, Fischer et al. found that during all simulated heat wave events, "soil moisture-temperature interactions increase the heat wave duration and account for typically 50-80% of the number of hot summer days," noting that "the largest impact is found for daily maximum temperatures," which were amplified by as much as 2-3°C in response to observed soil moisture deficits in their study....'
What it means
'....In light of these complementary global soil moisture and river runoff observations, it would appear that the anti-transpiration effect of the historical rise in the air's CO2 content has more than compensated for the soil-drying effect of concomitant global warming; and this observation brings us to the ultimate point of our Journal Review. Based upon (1) the findings of Fischer et al. (2007) that soil moisture depletion greatly augments both the intensity and duration of summer heat waves, plus (2) the findings of Robock et al. (2000, 2005) and Li et al. (2007) that global soil moisture has actually increased over the past half century, likely as a result of the anti-transpiration effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment - as Gedney et al. (2006) have also found to be the case with closely associated river runoff - it directly follows that the increase in soil moisture caused by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will tend to decrease both the intensity and duration of summer heat waves as time progresses.'

DROUGHT: for more examples, see (5).
Example of scientific study
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V9/N37/C1.php
What was learned
'In the words of the two researchers, "droughts have, for the most part, become [1] shorter, [2] less frequent, [3] less severe, and [4] cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century." '
What it means
'It would seem to be nigh unto impossible to contemplate a more stunning rebuke of climate-alarmist claims concerning global warming and drought than that provided by this study of the United States. And as evidenced by the many materials archived under Drought in our Subject Index, much the same findings are being reported all around the world.'

I will give examples for Asia and Africa in the next {but one] post of this series, but for now I want to end with some general points.

In relatively warm periods, such as the Roman one, and the Medieval Warm period, and our current one, humanity and the rest of nature thrived.  A cool period would be worse than a warm one for both. There is little doubt that the end of our mostly very pleasant interglacial is due within a few thousand years, and that if there is to be a credible climate-related mass migration, it will be such as the evacuation of Northern Europe - a process which would begin as soon as the winter snows fail to melt in the summer - for the ice sheets will not slide slowly down from the north, they will grow on the spot through successive winters.  There is no indication that this will happen soon.  But, as and when it does, the wealthier we are, the more technologically advanced we are, the better educated we are, the more chance that it will be handled in a competent and humane fashion.  Scaring children about heat and CO2, rubbishing real scientists trying to accumulate real knowledge instead of toeing a political line, denigrating technology, crippling our lowest cost sources of energy, and promoting guilt, fear, and ignorance in the young - none of that will help - they merely disrupt progress and cause harm.

References
(1) http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/06/schools-low-carbon-day-concerned.html
(2) http://www.co2science.org/index.php
(3) http://www.co2science.org/subject/f/subject_f.php.
(4) http://www.co2science.org/subject/h/heatwaves.php
(5) http://www.co2science.org/subject/d/subject_d.php

Sunday 4 July 2010

Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deaths

I imagined it went a bit like this:

(1) We believed you when you said CO2 was a threat, and windmills part of the answer.

(2) We believed you when you said children in primary schools should be told of climate threats.

(3) We believed you when you said our windturbine would kill only one bird a year.

But then reality started to intrude.  14 dead birds in six months.  Headteacher coming in early to clean them up before the children arrived.  Children being upset by birds killed during the school day.  And, at last:

Windturbine shut down.

Now perhaps the teachers, having seen (3) was a lie, will review what they have done on (2), and that will surely take them into (1) and the dawn of a shocking realisation: humanity's CO2 has a negligible effect on climate, but it does benefit plants, and thus in due course, insects, birds, bees, herbivores, and people.

Story of the turbine here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929/Primary-school-forced-to-turn-off-wind-turbine-after-bird-deaths.html

Some pathos here:

We've tried so hard to be eco-friendly but now we can't turn it on.
"We can't get rid of it either because we bought the turbine we had to apply for grants and the grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change states that it has to stay on site for five years."
This tiny turbine only wasted £20,000, killed 14 birds, and disturbed perhaps a few dozen children.  And it is hard to get rid of.  Scale this up to the UK's national programme of massive subsidies for windfarms.....Looking to the future of these, Dreadnought's poem comes to mind:
I met a traveller from a distant shire
Who said: A vast and pointless shaft of steel
Stands on a hill top… Near it, in the mire,
Half sunk, a shattered turbine lies, whose wheels
And riven blades and snarls of coloured wire
Tell that its owners well their mission read
Which did not last nor, nowhere to be seen,
The hand that paid them and the empty head.
And scrawled around the base these lines are clear:
‘My name is Milibandias, greenest Green.
Look on my works, ye doubters, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round this display
Of reckless cost and loss, blotless and fair,
The green and pleasant landscape rolls away.
Note: Ed Miliband was an energy secretary in the previous government of the UK, and a prominent climate alarmist.

Note added 7 October 2011: Another school in England loses its turbine, and nearly some of its pupils: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/06/wind-turbine-fail-school-left-holding-the-bag-for-53000/

Note added 14 March 2012: a windfarm in the States may shut down at night because of a dead bat - post at Bishop Hill.  A comment on this post also gives a local newspaper link for the above story: http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/localnews/8252862.Portland_school_turns_off_wind_turbine_to_halt_seabird_slaughter/

'Meghan Cox Gurdon: Leaving the lights on won't kill a polar bear' - a journalist reacts to adult hysteria reaching children

Extract from a piece today in the Washington Examiner (hat tip:http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/) :

'Two small girls appeared in the kitchen. One of them looked vexed; the other looked worried.

"Can you please tell her that global warming isn't real?" asked the exasperated party.
Through my mind swept a series of possible responses. They ranged from the instinctive ("People are suffering from hysteria."), to the equivocal ("Many believe it's real and many do not."), to the blandly reassuring, ("Sweetheart, it's not something you need to worry about.").
"Why do you ask?" I punted.
"Someone told her that if she leaves a light on, a polar bear would die."
Blandness and equivocation disappeared.
"Nonsense," I told the child. "Grown-ups are investigating global warming and arguing about it. The one thing I can tell you is that you shouldn't be afraid to turn the lights on. It's not going to affect a polar bear either way." '

Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Leaving-the-lights-on-won_t-kill-a-polar-bear/article/12489




The article concludes (my emphasis added):

'Put aside the debate over climate science for a moment. These are adult matters, or at least they should be. It's iniquitous for grown-ups -- who themselves are roiled over the subject -- to transfer their anxieties to children who are too young to wrap their minds around the issues, let alone "save" the Earth.
It's unfair. Ultimately, it may also redound to the environmental movement's disadvantage. For just as children discover that there is no Santa Claus and no tooth fairy, they'll eventually stumble on the statistics indicating that the world hasn't warmed appreciably for a decade. In other words, today's 8-year-olds may grow up to discover that the guilt and fear perpetuated upon them in childhood were based mostly on vapor, on adult hysteria. We ought to protect them from that, at least.'


Amen to that.  Oh for ten thousand times ten thousand of articles like this one to be published!