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climate-debate

Allow children to learn about the Arctic without terrifying them with fantasies of climate catastrophe

by Polar Bear Science, Oct 31, 2022

This is a reminder that I have written three Arctic animal picture books, a polar bear ecology reference book, an Arctic ecology teaching guide (free) & a polar bear attack thriller suitable for teens, all of which let kids be kids.

In contrast to a book reviewer at the New York Times (30 October 2020), see image above:

Two new picture books and a novel for young readers place children at the center of climate calamity. Fittingly, they are stories of homes under threat; home, after all, is the thing climate change stalks, be it a house, a community or a livable planet. Each book offers its own lessons on how to cope with life under the monster we’ve created. The novel even shows how kids can help slay it.

No child needs this. Children need to be allowed to learn without being used as pawns in an adult political battle. Activist authors suggesting that climate change is a predator waiting to ‘stalk’ children’s homes and communities through floods and wildfires is reprehensible, not only because it isn’t true. Kids don’t need a ‘mini-primer on climate change’. Adults should fight their own battles and leave the kids alone. List of my books and links below and in the sidebar.

Polar Bear Facts & Myths, for middle-school kids: Available in six languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese. English version also available in ebook version.

Walrus Facts & Myths is available in English in paperback and ebook formats, also aimed at middle-school kids.

Free Arctic sea ice ecology teaching guide for middle-school age home schooled kids. The printable pdf booklet is free to download here.

Polar Bears Have Big Feet, for preschoolers in paperback only (because little kids need one too!).

Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change, fully referenced information on polar bear ecology, suitable for teens and adults, in paperback and ebook formats.

EATEN: A novel, a polar bear attack thriller suitable for teens and adults, in paperback and ebook formats. Many readers have told me: “I couldn’t put it down.”

unclassified

Greta’s Back: COP27 A ‘Scam’, A Platform For ‘Greenwashing, Lying, Cheating’

by S. Smith, Oct 31, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Greta Thunberg has described climate summits such as the COP27 conference taking place in Egypt next week as a “scam” that is “failing” humanity and the planet by not leading to “major changes.”

The Swedish activist said people in positions of power were using the high-profile gatherings for attention and were “greenwashing, lying, and cheating”. [bold, links added]

“As it is now, COPs not are not really going to lead to any major changes, unless of course, we use them as an opportunity to mobilize,” she said on stage at the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival on Sunday where she was promoting her new work The Climate Book, an anthology of essays on the climate crisis from over one hundred experts.

Activists must try to “make people realize what a scam this is and realize that these systems are failing us”, she added.

This week the UN warned that there is “no clear pathway” in place to limit global heating to 1.5C – a target from the 2016 Paris Agreement – as only a handful of countries had strengthened their pledges to take action.

In a wide-ranging keynote address and on-stage interview with the journalist Samira Ahmed, Ms. Thunberg spoke on everything from politics and activism to how to deal with eco-anxiety.

Asked for her thoughts on the controversial tactics of groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, who have recently made headlines, including by throwing soup over Van Gough’s Sunflowers, the teenager said there was a broad range of actions so [she] couldn’t generalize, but that she thought it was “reasonable” to expect climate activists to try different kinds of actions.

“We’re right now in a very desperate position and many people are becoming desperate and are trying to find new methods because we realize that what we’ve been doing up until now has not done the trick,” she told Ahmed.

As for upsetting people, she said “harming people is one thing and making someone annoyed is a different thing.”

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See also : Greta Thunberg Spurns COP27, Lays Out Plans for World Domination

better to know...?, climate-debate

THE UNSTOPPABLE GROWTH OF GLOBAL GHG EMISSIONS

by R. Lyman, Oct 2022 in FriendsOfScience

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2022. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

Advocates of the thesis that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing catastrophic climate change claim that United Nations-led international conferences will succeed in causing the countries of the world collectively to radically reduce fossil fuel use by 2050.

The “climate change” issue is a global one. It concerns the global effects of global emissions and the possibility that collective action by all the countries of the world (or, at least, the vast majority of major emitters) can so reduce emissions and concentrations as to eventually change global impacts. Since 1992, there has been a series of international conferences, mostly under the auspices of the United Nations, seeking agreement on how, by how much, and when to reduce emissions. In spite of these conferences and the series of agreements and lofty political statements they have produced, emissions actually rose by 60 per cent from 1990 to 2020. By 2021, China alone accounted for 30 per cent of world emissions, and was the fastest-growing source of emissions, followed by India.

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