Disgraceful climate indoctrination in Australian schools

Thinly disguised propaganda

Note: Due to a WordPress glitch, this post has had to be redrafted and comments have unfortunately been lost – Ed.

Andrew Bolt reveals yet another shocking example of deeply offensive and highly inappropriate political propaganda masquerading as “science” in a New South Wales geography text for Year 8. The full text is reproduced here as I think it is important that is is made as widely available as possible.

How do you feel knowing that your children are being indoctrinated in this manner when they go to school?

CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the planet is warming, there are still people who deny that is a result of human activity. The most vocal of these deniers are conservative political think tanks and the right-wing radio ‘shock jocks’.

There is, of course, a range of views or perspectives, even among the sceptics. These range from an outright denial that there is a problem to those who concede that climate change is real but argue that the  rate of warming and the predicted impacts of climate change have been greatly exaggerated.

Shaping the nature of the public debate about the issue is an important focus for those groups opposed to any program designed to reduce CO2 emissions. In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that a conservative American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was offering scientists and economists US$10,000 each ‘to undermine a major climate change report’ from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Many large fossil fuel-based industries have also tried to discredit the work of scientists. Exxon Mobil, the giant American oil company, has, for example, spent millions supporting conservative (right-wing) organisations that cast doubt on the science on which the warnings about about a warming climate have been based.

Companies such as Exxon and think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute have used patronage to win the support of conservatives in the American Congress. The following are typical of the views expressed by global warming sceptics:

‘Man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.’ James Inhofe

‘You remember the ice age? It’s been warming ever since, and there ain’t nothing we can do to stop it.’ Conrad Burns

In Australia, journalists such as the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Miranda Devine, the Telegraph’s Piers Akerman and the radio ‘shock jocks’ Alan Jones and Ray Hadley dismiss the science underpinning warnings about global warming.

NEW LEADERSHIP

Fortunately, a new generation of world leaders is taking global warming seriously. In the United States of America, President Barack Obama is working to reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels and is providing leadership in international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

[quotes from Obama and Al Gore omitted]

In Australia, the Rudd Labor Government is legislating for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), which has as its aim a 5-25 per cent reduction, on 2000 levels, of the country’s CO2 emissions. The CPRS is an administrative (market-based) approach to control CO2 pollution by providing economic incentives for the achievement of reductions in emissions. Under the scheme, Australia’s biggest polluters will pay for the pollution they generate and there will be a limit placed on the number of Australian carbon pollution permits issued each year.