School Children Brainwashed About Climate Change
By Paul Homewood
I came across this GCSE revision guide a while ago, since when it has gathered dust!
Having now had a chance to read it, I was taken aback by the section on climate change.
The whole chapter reads as little more than a propaganda sheet, filled with inaccuracies, half truths, emotive slogans, subliminal messages and a total lack of historical perspective.
I have highlighted parts of it, but in truth I could have highlighted the whole lot!
Just to pick up on a few points:
1) They mention the retreat of glaciers over the last 150 years, yet there is no mention at all of the Little Ice Age, or the fact that the very same glaciers expanded massively during that era.
Ironically, the chapter unwittingly contradicts itself on the final page, when it shows graphs for global temperatures and CO2 – note how CO2 levels began increasing from 1860, yet temperatures only began rising after 1900. Also the rise from then until 1940 was comparable to recent decades, despite the rise in CO2 being much smaller then. This of course suggests that simply blaming warming on CO2 is over simplistic.
2) They claim that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. There is zero evidence to support this claim, as even the IPCC accept. In particular, the reference to increase in tropical storms is without foundation.
3) The claim that the UK has experienced some of the wettest, windiest and driest weather is also contradicted by the data. Indeed, as far as the last two are concerned the opposite is the case.
4) They claim that CO2 levels have never been as high as they are now. This is quite an astonishing claim, given that they have been much higher than now for most of the Earth’s history.
5) The next section called “What are the alternative futures”, is nothing more than an indulgence in scaremongering, with little basis in fact. Encouraging kids to imagine apocalyptic futures is not education.
6) Then we come to the case study in sea levels. Notice how they have gone from the previous claim of “up to 1 metre” to a map drawn at 5 metres above sea level.
7) If that lot was not bad enough, we finish with the spider diagram, specifically intended to get children to imagine the likely impacts of global warming.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, mass extinctions, plague, Greenland melting, nuclear war, refugees. Note also the subliminal messaging – Stern Report and Act Now.
Whoever has written this guide clearly has little knowledge about the subject, and has simply picked up a few talking points and applied a large dose of alarmism.
The worry of course is that it is not just the guide we are talking about. The whole of that particular GCSE course would have been based around the same nonsense.
I realise that this particular guide was last published in 2015, and is specific to Welsh schools. But I very much doubt whether the current geography syllabus is in any meaningful way much different.
The guide was, by the way, originally published in 2010, so at the very least there is a large chunk of young impressionable minds, which have been brainwashed.
It is little wonder that the younger generation have become so paranoid about climate change.
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Even if the information were true ( 🙂 ) it isn’t Science!
It’s more like Geography.
School Science should involve learning and applying, using numerical problems, the Laws that our physical world appears to obey: Classical Mechanics, Ohm’s Law, Boyle’s Law, Charles’ Law, the exponential decay and types of radioactivity, the laws of reflection and refraction, simple electromagnetism, basic chemical reactions including some of the historically important industrial processes, atomic numbers, atomic weights, to name just a few!
With the sort of course content as described above, they won’t have time to do what is necessary to prepare for Science A’ levels and beyond. They will not understand what is required.
How will they know what Science is about? It’s Political Science, and we have to many of those already.
I forgot the Periodic Table! 😦
Give us a break, Robert! The first word you see at the top in BIG letters is ‘Geography’!
What a relief!
Not so long ago this type of subject matter was included in GCSE Science: let’s hope it has been removed from that.
It is social science, food science anything but physics and geological history
The UK DAB radio station “Fun Kids”, aimed at school and pre-school children, regularly features a song called “What would greta do”, containing lines such as “its OK to stay out of school, if you’re fighting for something cool”.
Conspiracy theorists may want to investigate the station’s sources of funding, since there are no ads.
On a positive note, the station switches to “chill-out” music after 9pm, the best (IMHO) of the genre, and there are no news bulletins, hence the survival of the radio.
The late meteorologist Reid Bryson had a few things to say about AGW in 2007. It should be in the GCSE syallabus, “Reid and Discuss”…
http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20070913051956/http%3A//www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html
“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”
“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”
“Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…
And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor.
You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.”
Also in the syllabus should be this amazing (because it is stlll on iplayer) mini-series from the BBC, “Ice to Fire”.
From Ice to Fire 22 Feb 2018
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b09rzq05/from-ice-to-fire-the-incredible-science-of-temperature
Helen Czerski Physicist and Oceanographern – Fundamental Physical Laws of the Universe
From 4 minutes, in this episode: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09sc7yj/from-ice-to-fire-the-incredible-science-of-temperature-series-1-2-a-temperature-for-life
“Only one place in the Universe we can be sure life exists and that’s here on earth.
Nearest neighbour Venus, a little closer to the sun has a surface temperature of over 450 deg C. (No claim of CO2 causing the temperature on Venus)
Mars, next planet out, minus 60 degC. [Venus has 96% CO2, Mars, 95%, with over 510 deg C difference in temperature.]
“The molecular structure of water is key to why the Earth’s temperature is warmer than you might expect.
Hydrogen bonds are key to water’s influence on Earth’s temperature. Hydrogen bonds are so strong that it takes a lot of energy to break them. And that means that the water in the earth’s oceans can absorb a huge amount of heat energy from the sun, without changing from a liquid to a gas.
The atmosphere traps the sun’s heat, a process known as the Greenhouse Effect and although we tend to associate this with carbon dioxide, it is actually water vapour that accounts for much of the trapped heat.
Were it not for the water in the oceans and the atmosphere, keeping earth’s temperature warm and stable, our planet would be as inhospitable as Venus or Mars”
Surprisingly, her story is also backed up by NASA:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps/MYDAL2_M_SKY_WV
“Water vapor is also the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Heat radiated from Earth’s surface is absorbed by water vapor molecules in the lower atmosphere. The water vapor molecules, in turn, radiate heat in all directions. Some of the heat returns to the Earth’s surface. Thus, water vapor is a second source of warmth (in addition to sunlight) at the Earth’s surface.”
Whatever happened to CO2?
‘Water vapour is a source of warmth’? These people at NASA should be embarrassed by their utter cluelessness.
Indeed. I just saw this same BBC presenter on a BBC 4 programme tonight, called “Autopsy on the Oceans. Oceanographer looks at the dramatic changes affecting the oceans”.
I only saw a bit near the end, but she was putting shells in a solution of hydrochloric acid, lo and behold they fizzed and bubbled. She was suggesting that this was happening in the oceans because of CO2 “acidification” and then moved on to methane clathrates that were going to increase global temperatures.
The difference between HCl and Carbonic acid is several orders of magnitude and carbonic acid is actually necessary for shell formation in the complex chemistry of the ocean.
I’ve seen this sort of presentation before, former head of NOAA, Jane Lubchenco, had a video online with a stick of chalk in a flask of vinegar and yes, it fizzed and bubbled, with the claim that this was happening in sea water,
So dishonest from people professing to be scientists.
The “Natural History” GCSE proposal from the UK “green” party was again in the news recently, apparently the govt will look at it again. Hmm, lessons for school children devised by a political party, nothing would surprise me in this period of woke hysteria:
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2018/09/21/caroline-lucas-calls-for-natural-history-gcse-ahead-of-people%E2%80%99s-walk-for-wildlife-with-chris-packham/
A revised textbook for Geography? What about History.. unrevised? Hubert Lamb on the climate. Or perhaps Reid Bryson? This onslaught of politically correct propaganda is more than just a bit disturbing. It’s our scientific future disintegrating day by day.
Love the rising sea levels projection around the Wash.
Spot the difference vs that of the sea level in the Kingdom of East Anglia during Anglo-Saxon Times:
Isostatic readjustment. Never let the truth ( or a product of the Enlightenment ) get in the way of a money making scam! Welcome to the new Dark Ages.
Drainage!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens
Also a major factor in eliminating endemic/indigenous malaria!
https://www.cleanriverstrust.co.uk/the-ague-returns/
Remember “Malaria in England had effectively died out by the 1950s, mostly due to the draining of much of the marshland where mosquitoes bred.”
The climate alarmists forget that Malaria in the UK was the natural state – not a new threat of climate change! The biggest reason it might return is mass infected migration (as after the 1st Gulf War) which caused a resurgence in Europe. Without widespread mosquito breeding site opportunities, with remaining effective drugs, and a lack of a self-sustaining level of infection in a local population, it will not become endemic/indigenous again – whatever the weather.
You should see the Physics study guide. Not for the faint of heart.
When I was at school geography was learning facts about the world, not suppositions about the future. The first part of your quotes above is full of could, may, likely. I don’t remember anything like that in any subject we were taught. Do these people have any qualifications?
Wonder if that radio station would suggest Naomi instead of Greta, doubt it somehow.
Actually, WJEC exams can be taken in schools anywhere in the UK (not that it matters, of course – I imagine the other exam boards are just as bad).
Hodder Education has a web site which gives you the opportunity to report mistakes. It is entitled ‘ Spotted a mistake” . Who is going first? Perhaps we should start with any easy one like point 6 on Paul’s list.
But but but if the science is settled, why is the evidence still growing and why are scientists still researching it??
Why? Follow the money!
Haha! Got it in one!
The notion that the many climates of the many different parts of the globe were at some stage ‘just right’ and that any departure from that state is regrettable and alarming is the real problem. It’s argument from a false premise.
As a former secondary school teacher I am very much aware of the swing towards propaganda and away from inquiry and exploration in Australian education.
Unfortunately, Julius Sumner Millers ‘Why is it so’ has gone out of the window.
Erl, your (great) first paragraph should be the first thing that pupils see. They need to be urged to question ‘the’ science. It’s what science demands. Teachers should be doing so on behalf if their pupils.
They don’t want any pesky non-conformists to whatever the prevailing dogma might be.
Paul,
I went to their site and could not find the above but I found this
https://geography-revision.co.uk/gcse/weather-climate/assessing-climate-change/
It starts of kind of reasonable and then the train suddenly shifts laterally and flies off into the wise blue yonder with some wild assertions…sweeping generalizations and baseless claims.
It all starts to go horribly off into lalaland from the section marked “Satellites”
This is the first section., I get angry when I see “science” twisted with words, taken out of context which is the main ploy of the climate propagandists, mixing small pieces of data with assertion. The BBC are masters of this black art
Regards
Jonathan Scott
An awful lot of ‘coulds’ and ‘mays’ in that doc. And that last box about ‘and now it’s your turn’ is the very definition of begging the question – or could it be, leading the witness?
Strangely, if you google these two one cannot find any academic background for either. And it’s surprising to see authors of such an academic pamphlet who do not have letters after their names. I begin to wonder just who in the DfE decided that this was worth publishing for schools. Someone spent some money and someone made a packet.
It is still going on, at my granddaughter’s school they have been taught that St Greta has taken on the whole world single handed against the nasty deniers. They have also been encouraged to join demonstrations against “Climate Change” in support of St.Greta.
Their course material is similar to that above too,
Last year my wife returned to supply teaching after a 25 year gap. She was horrified how things had changed. In one of her first geography lessons to year 12 pupils (1st year of A levels) she asked the geography students why it was winter in the UK in January. None could answer but they all had an “opinion” on climate change. After 3 months she decided to give up as she felt she was no longer teaching more, dare I say it,expected to brainwash.!
Maybe the geography lesson should include the following song from Camelot to show what COULD happen to the weather if the activists get their way:
It’s true! It’s true! The crown has made it clear.
The climate must be perfect all the year.
A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there’s a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot.
The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
In Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot, Camelot
That’s how conditions are.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
I know it gives a person pause,
But in Camelot, Camelot
Those are the legal laws.
The snow may never slush upon the hillside.
By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
The BBC goes all the way on this – read, watch and weep; Figueres is astonishing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/three-pioneers-who-predicted-climate-change/p08ftt06?playlist=sustainable-thinking
Then there is this teachers aid site https://www.twinkl.com.au/search?term=carbon+cycle
An Aus site but it reaches western teachers everywhere
What is as important as the teaching guide is the marking, ie examiners, guide .Pupils could have excellent teachers who go through the arguments for and against AGW but if the examining board adheres to the text as illustrated above , then a pupil who answered a question about climate change objectively and intelligently would fail and a dimmer student who only memorised and repeated the text in the study guide would pass.
Is that the situation that we want?
Similar problem to the situation in which Ray Sander’s wife (above) found herself.
New Jersey state plans to indoctrinate infants with half-baked climate propaganda…
https://nj1015.com/al-gore-congratulates-nj-becoming-first-to-teach-climate-change/
“CO2 levels began increasing from 1860, yet temperatures only began rising after 1900. Also the rise from then until 1940 was comparable to recent decades, despite the rise in CO2 being much smaller then”
The bigger fail and the essential trickery of climate science is that the observed rise in atmosCO2 is caused by fossil fuel emissions and that therefore it can and be moderated by reducing fossil fuel emissions. This essential equation has no empirical evidence and yet it has been sold and the conversation has been steered to other topics with amazing success.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/18/12479/
Paul’s work is never done – more biased BBC BS to demolish.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52973089
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52943037
Indeed, and I forgot to take my blood pressure pills this morning, too.
“That the country does not need to use the fuel that used to be the backbone of the grid is thanks to a massive investment in renewable energy over the last decade.”
Gas, GAS, you numptys! Over 50% of demand all this overcast, still day. In fact all those wind turbines, all the ones blighting beauty spots and cluttering the horizon out at sea, are generating less than Sizewell B would be if the brainiacs at the National Grid hadn’t negotiated the shut down of half of its output because the wind was going to be so strong!
And breathe….
And talking of brainwashing; the BBC’s climate coverage is sick enough; but the lionizing/martyrdom tone of the Floyd coverage and the incitement to demo/riot/break virus law and giving legitimacy and airtime to professional agitators and ultra race extremists who have ‘equality’ nowhere in mind, only disorder, power, and subjugation…… surely the final straw for many, has the BBC finally put the nail in its own coffin? I hope so.
Sadly as well as indoctrinating CAGW the syllabus has been watered down so that the kids are no longer equipped with the analytical skills needed to work out it is garbage. Maths is in the doghouse. Physics and chemistry are mostly gone.
Do they understand graphs and data? I doubt it. One of the interesting things with the Chinese virus crisis is that parents seem to be finding out more and more what it is, exactly, that their children are being taught. And that homeschooling is getting a boost thereby.
“Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”
– Vladimir Lenin
Whenever a child sees a graph, the first thing they should be taught is to question for misleading/biased presentation, the quality of the underlying data/methods/objectives, etc.
The trouble with graphs, charts, is that, just like computer models – they add a false air of authority and certainty.
Prof. Cox looking like a moron: “You’ve seen a graph.” – Oh well, that’s case closed then!
It is perfectly obvious that the lunatics are firmly in control of the asylum, despite the efforts of a few hold-outs like President Trump.
To add to the latest “mass BLM riots = good”, but “complaining about Lockdown = bad”, we noe have our Beloved Leader London Mayor Khan setting up a “Commission” to advise him which statues should next be tossed in the river. Any thoughts on how this “Commission” will be set up? Who will serve on it? Whether Nelson’s column will be found wanting?
I await with interest to see if Khan will suggest that the Kaabah should go, bearing in mind Islam and its Prophet’s promotion of slavery, continuing in parts of Africa to this very day?
Don’t hold breath.
God help us.
More talking to ourselves – what’s the point. We live in a democracy, if this is what they want let them get on with. The price will be paid later but most of us won’t be around to say “we told you so”.
Yes a democracy – which is why the extreme left bypass it with mob rule and deceit, because their views do not in reality have popular majority support, but they intend to impose them anyway.
How many times have we heard it was legitimate to do x/y/z illegal action because democracy was not working/too slow; the ripping down of the statue democracy had decided to keep for now, the prevention of fracking operations that democracy had decided was legal and necessary – Caroline Lucas used the excuse of the “democratic deficit”!
“Right class repeat after me — one plus one equals two.”
“One plus one equals two.”
“Two plus two equals five.”
“Two plus two equals five.”
“Winston, Winston! No Winston — you’re wrong, two plus two can not equals four! Big Brother science tells us that two plus two equals five!”
“Stop arguing Winston, you’re just wrong.
OK class tell Winston he’s wrong.”
“Winston is wrong, Winston is wrong, …”
And so the children learn what they need to know …
BBC picks its smokescreen moment again, news leads with the threat of far right extremism, after heavy sentences were handed down to 4 unpleasant fantasists.
Why is the hand of justice so slow to be as hard on certain other really dangerous extremists, including the ones currently being promoted by the BBC?
After today’s announcement about returning to school in Sept 2020 ,( or is it 2021 – with Boris in his “I don’t know what to do – get me out of here” mood one cannot be sure) the last thing you need to wiorry about is this fake information teaching guide. There is no teaching going on . And with teachers being paid full salary, no teaching duties to bother about and the beaches of Spain, Italy and France opening up I suspect that come this Sept the teaching unions will be arguing that a second phase makes opening schools unthinkable for at least another 6 months.
Meanwhile teenagers are strolling round the town in groups of 3.4.5, skateboarding in the precincts and generally associating as closely as they always do.
This Govt is totally out of its mind .
We have a situation where the death figures are worse for deprived areas of NW and NE England and Wales. Unemployment is one reason for that relative poverty and the solution from the Mayors of Liverpool and Manchester is to keep schools closed so that the children will become even more disadvantaged compared to the more prosperous areas and their parents are denied the opportunity to leave home to work.
Perhaps I am a bit harsh on Boris , the nonsense seems to be widely spread amongst most politicians- they attend too much to the media and too little to what the country needs which is to get back to work and back to school. Earn and learn are the only ways out of this crisis.
Actually there is teaching going on, and some of the resources they are using at home (as previously covered on here), as well as those provided by the ‘benevolent’ BBC, are far worse for climate propaganda than that!
It could have been a lot worse. You point out some clear (and popular) errors in specific facts. But the most important thing is the broad outline. That is really quite measured, and more nuanced than I’d have expected for this level of education.
For example, at the start they say “the evidence is considerable and growing”. What they don’t say is “now established that” or “97% of scientists believe that…” Rather direct attention is drawn to evidence, and the clear implication is that it is not cut and dried. For the potential consequences, they say “could” and “may”, leaving it quite clear that these are conditional outcomes dependent on the assumptions made, not firm predictions. I think this is rather better than I might have expected.
I have read that George Washington was one of the worst slave owners in that his punishment included breaking up a slave’s family and selling half of it in the West Indies.
If there is any truth in this will the US capital have to be renamed?
This is but a shadow of what the BBC put out, slick, brilliant presentations, https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/imagining-a-world-without-fossil-fuels/p0639hks?playlist=sustainable-thinking
Try the one by Christiana Figueres https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/imagining-a-world-without-fossil-fuels/p0639hks?playlist=sustainable-thinking
See also
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/10/a-monte-carlo-simulation-of-the-carbon-cycle/