An inconvenient truth: Britain promotes sleepless nights for children

Tee hee, here I am looking for reasons to call other people hypocrites. I've long stated that everyone is hypocritical about something and to varying degrees, yet we really like this game, don't we? I'll point the finger and you, you point it at me and it's a nice deviance from real issues and real problems....

Okay, enough prelude.

I've noted one of the favorite kicking dogs of the left is the Homeland Security Terrorism Advisory System. I've seen many on the left claim the Bush Administration has raised the terror alert level just before an election in an effort to scare people into voting for Republicans. They call it fear-mongering. The left has had great fun with it, there's the Sesame Street Version, The Simpsons Terrorism Advisory, this spoof with President Bush.... Very funny, huh? All intended to play down the fact that there is any threat of terrorism on American soil and make the advisory appear ridiculous for political reasons.

In politics fear-mongering has a long history. I could make a case for this but I don't really think it's necessary, don't we all agree that fear-mongering in politics has a long history?

Now we have the global warming hype...or is it more *PC* to call it "climate change" these days? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying there's no consensus that man is the cause of it or, at least no consensus about the extent of man's responsibility for it.

In this recent article from sp!ked, Turning children green with fear, Lee Jones, a doctoral candidate in politics at Oxford, writes:

"If the aim of the politics of environmentalism is to scare people, then it has succeeded. Green writer George Monbiot declared in his book Heat that he wanted to ‘make people so depressed about the state of the planet that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuels’. He may not succeed in keeping people in bed all day, but the panic that he and other environmentalists are helping to foster does seem to be keeping kids awake in their beds at night.

A recent survey of 1,150 seven- to 11-year-olds in Britain found that half of them often lose sleep from lying in bed worrying about climate change. One in four blamed politicians for the problem while one in seven declared their own parents weren’t doing enough to save the planet..."

"...the poll also suggests that the way they are learning about the issue promotes fear and paralysis over reasoned activism. While most of the kids associate climate change with apocalyptic scenarios like ‘the submerging of entire continents’ (which no one, not even the IPCC, is predicting), concerns like poor health and animal welfare also get bundled into the issue. As for solutions, one in 10 children thought recycling had something to do with riding a bicycle...."

"...because they are children, they are more receptive to these messages and less able to think critically about them – which might explain why the government is targeting them by sending copies of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth to all secondary schools (4)...."

I provided a link for an article dealing with the 'alarmist' nature of Al Gore in my last blog entry, Recommended Reading 2:

"...a growing number of scientists are uneasy with the catastrophic scenarios in his film on global warming, according to a report in The New York Times March 13.

At issue for scientists is not Gore’s assertion that climate change is taking place or that humans are primarily responsible for rising temperatures. “They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism,” writes William Broad, the Times’ senior science correspondent...."

Why is the British government allowing 50% of its children to spend sleepless, fearful nights imagining catastrophe by prompting secondary children to view a film which a growing number of scientists are claiming is overly alarmist? Especially considering that according to the survey some of the children are becoming suspicious of their own parents and it is not even inspiring them to become activists for the cause.

Should people be aspiring to depress people into staying in bed so they won't contribute to climate change when there isn't really consensus among scientists that us humans really contribute to climate change that much?

The verdict is still out. Even as there has been some effort to silence meteorologists who question the level of responsibility that human beings have for climate change, see: Science Buzz and ABC 33/40 Weather Blog.

Anyway, next time you hear some hypocrite pointing out that the Bush administration is using fear tactics to promote their agenda by raising the terror alert level (when in reality they might have just cause), remember...:

"A recent survey of 1,150 seven- to 11-year-olds in Britain found that half of them often lose sleep from lying in bed worrying about climate change."

...yer a hypocrite too. Explain that concept to your children, they'll have about as much ability to comprehend what you are saying about hypocrisy as those British children have to critically consider global warming hype in a highly politicized world.

Geesh.

Note: I started writing this several days ago, waffled about whether to finish it and post it or not because who doesn't know that there is much debate about the cause of global warming? Since that's sort of old news I was afraid it would be boring. I decided to go with it because I wonder how many people are aware that, according to a British survey 50% of British children are having trouble sleeping at night, in part, because they are either required or prompted to watch Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient *Truth.*'