There are adults out there that want nothing to do with the young climate change activists that led strikes and marches on Friday. Some estimates indicate that over 4 millions people world-wide marches. They are angry with these youths, and their parents. They think we should be watching and listening to them for fear of what they might do to their country. I agree, we should be watching them because they have something to say.
There was a comment on Judith Curry’s blog Climate, Etc. about the student activists whontestified at a House Joint Committee Hearing . It was written by a man who holds a Ph.D. in logic and the philosophy of science, and publishes most of his articles on websites, such as Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). It turns out that CFACT is nothing but a right wing organization that tries really hard to discredit climate science. It is anti-climate science group. He writes frequent comments on the Climate, Inc blog.
I didn’t expect to find this type of a comment on Dr. Judith Curry’s Science Etc. website. Dr. Curry is a respected climatologist, and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is an expert in the science of hurricanes and global warming.
So, why such a negative comment about the four activist students? I knew that Dr. Curry was critical of the community of climate scientists, and felt the community should be more accommodating to climate change skeptics. Here was a respected scientist who felt strongly about this, and was willing to publish and be interviewed about it.
Her views appear to have attracted anti-climate change activists. A variety of people come to her site, and some, were clearly members of anti-climate groups, such as writer who took on the student climate activists.
Here is what I said as a reply.
Thanks for your comments. Although I am not a scientist, I am a science educator, and also had the pleasure of working with teens and their teachers in the USA, Russia (& when it was the USSR), Spain, Czech Republic. Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, Botswana. Students from these countries used the primitive Internet in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s to investigate environmental issues (ground level ozone, solid waste, water pollution, and others) locally, and then share their data globally using a project website.
You underestimate the teens you called out in your comment on Dr. Curry’s blog. I agree that there was a lot of emotion present when they presented to the House Foreign Relations and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. That’s part of the point, I believe. The demonstrations, strikes, marches, whatever they might be called, are rooted in strongly held beliefs and the urgency to act. The Civil Rights movement and subsequent legislation is a good example.
I don’t know about you, but when I was 15, I was not a Greta Thunberg. Perhaps you were, but I would say that she is to be admired, not called names such as “Queen.” It was in keeping with her logic to suggest that the Congress pay attention and read the IPCC or any of the various reports that have been published. She has been consistent in asking the adults in the room to do their work.
Following up your links to CFACT, and I am not sure if the students in the Climate Strike are acting any differently than the titles I purused. A picture of Donald Trump, with the DVD title Why Global Warming Hype Must Be Trumped Now. Or Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People was not what I would consider a scientific approach to climate issues.
Young Climate Change Activists Should Be Heard and Seen
Take a few minutes and ask teens what they know and think about climate change. Do they think climate change is real? What opinion do they have about the climate strikes held recently?
I shared these comments with a friend in Atlanta, Ed Johnson, who is an advocate for public education and the rights of teachers and their students.
‘Jack, thanks for sharing. Interesting and telling how the writer ends his piece with…
“So as I said at the beginning, these young extremists are not leading their generation, although they would like to. They are outliers, in more ways than one: policy, science, etc. As such they are not to be taken lightly, on the contrary they should be watched closely, lest they do great harm to America.”
How many times throughout history have young people had to “be watched closely, lest they do great harm to” to some dysfunctional aspect of civil society?”
Here is what was said about the youth activists
…The Democrats recently held a House hearing manned by four young climate alarmism activists. The very title of the hearing is multiply false: “Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Warming Crisis.”
These young alarmists are not leading their generation, any more that the old alarmists are leading mine (and there is no crisis). Thankfully a large fraction of both generations, and the ones in between, are skeptical of alarmism.
However, the hearing did showcase some of the questionable tactics and ideologies being used to promote this bogus crisis. That show is worth the price of admission.
First up was Greta Thunberg, the teen queen of climate alarmism. We were all waiting to hear what she had to say, so she wisely said almost nothing. She merely tabled the October 2018 IPCC report looking at the small differences between future warming of 0.5 degrees and 1.0 degrees C.
Thunberg tersely told Congress that they should read this report and that they were not doing enough. She never said what was important in the report, if anything, or what Congress should be doing that it is not already doing. It was really rather insulting, but I am sure she did not want to be cross examined on specific statements.
The really funny thing is that there is nothing in this IPCC report to support the crisis narrative. By coincidence I had just written an article to this effect, titled “Is the climate crisis a cruel hoax or a tragic blunder?” So in a very real sense she made a tragic blunder.
Another witness of interest was Vic Barrett from the so-called Alliance for Climate Education (with the zippy acronym ACE). He too was somewhat insulting in that he wore a baseball cap, but I digress.
I happen to have an education effort going, the Climate Change Debate Education (CCDE) project, so I looked into ACE. It turns out their idea of education is to train more activists! Their motto is “Get Educated, Take Action.” They boast of having trained 4,000. This is indoctrination, not education.
Their sole education looking resource is a lengthy video with the usual alarmist narrative: science (questionable), then impacts (adverse) followed by solutions (the usual green dreams). In contrast my CCDE project offers about 350 videos on the science, ranging from one minute long to one hour, plus class handouts on specific scientific issues like hurricanes, the little ice age, etc. This is science education. (sorry, I looked into this, and its nothing but anti-climate propaganda)
ACE is clearly well funded, certainly to the tune of millions, maybe a year. There is no disclosure, but there is a hint. They have a three member Board, which is very small as these things usually go. One of the three members is a wind industry company executive. My bet is the wind industry funds ACE, whose number one goal is to end fossil fuel use.