Our Planet
I’m still out west, staying in an airbnb. Last night I was trying to relax – fat chance! – and watched some TV I thought might be soothing. It was the first episode in the Netflix series “Our Planet.” What beautiful photography! Absolutely stunning stuff, and all the better because there’s one of those really big HD screens here.
But the program pushed on the “we’re ruining the planet” message so very very hard. In fact, if you go to that website I just linked, you’ll see it’s one of the main messages of the series. I had been thinking it would be a good thing to watch with my very young grandchildren, until I realized that it would probably frighten them a lot. No need to rush that; they’ll get enough of it when they start attending school. The educational system is heavily engaged in frightening young children and influencing them politically in every possible way, indoctrinating them in the tenets of leftist thought.
I wouldn’t mind if it was a balanced, fact-based point of view that they were given. But “Our Planet” had the familiar stuff about how all the arctic ice will melt, complete with visuals of polar bears that are supposedly highly theatened. It doesn’t take much research to discover the exaggerations there. For example, from 2016, quite a few years before the series was made:
This year, as every year, there has been much excitement in the media about ‘catastrophic’ melting of Arctic sea-ice, run-away melting, tipping points, death spirals and “ice-free” summers…
Claims of ‘ice-free’ conditions at some time in the summer have been bandied about for years in various forms but as the reality sinks in that it’s not as bad as some had claimed, the dates when this is expected happen have often been pushed out beyond the life expectancy of those making the claims.
The meaning of “ice-free” has also been the subject of some serious goal-post relocation efforts, we are now told that ‘ice-free’ does not actually mean free of ice, it means there will be less than one million square km of ice left.
This special branch of mathematics is apparently based on the axiom that zero = 10 6
The problem with this obsessive focusing on one single data point out of 365, is that there is a lot of short term, weather driven variability that can affect the exact timing and size of the minimum in ice coverage. Since the main interest ( outside maritime navigational requirements ) is the hope to find some indications of long term changes in climate, this is not a very instructive way to use the detailed data available.
It’s too long to summarize, so please read the whole thing.
More articles that are interesting and not too lengthy: this as well as this. I long ago fastened on Judith Curry’s site as the best and most reliable source for climate information. She has impeccable credentials and no political bone to pick, which is more than I can say for most people on either side.
There are too many possibilities to link to: Try “temperature” “NASA” “pause” and for grins, add “satellite”.
Neo,
If you’re looking for something similar, but much less political to watch with your grandchildren, “Planet Earth” has amazing images and a lot of wonderful information about nature and species. And it’s narrated by Sir David Attenborough! We watched a lot of it with our kids and I don’t recall any climate madness. There are also some documentaries on how they captured some of the wildlife images, which would also be fascinating to watch with your grandchildren to give them an impression of the work that goes into nature photography.
First trailer: https://youtu.be/7n_1JZgDPf4
Second trailer: https://youtu.be/c8aFcHFu8QM
Jordan Peterson is teaming with Bjorn Lomberg and others to do an alternative to the World Economic Forum and an honest approach to human impact on climate will be one of the central topics they annually address.
If you are interested in the topic of anthropogenic climate change yet are unfamiliar with Bjorn Lomberg I highly recommend seeking out some interviews, or reading one of his books. There are others just as good; the above mentioned Judith Curry, Michael Schellenberger, but few more prolific or who have been active so long.
Rufus T. Firefly:
That’s an older series, same narrator. I think I saw some of it years ago and it’s great. I’ll check it out again.
It had beautiful photography, too. But the new one’s photography is even more impressive; too bad about the relentless messaging.
I can only suggest that you make use of the good programming, but take the opportunity to promote a dual purpose – teaching your grandchildren the joys of critical thinking and skills required to see through bias to arrive a the truth of the matter.
Yes, it is too bad about the relentless messaging. But I wonder why? What is the point? To encourage people to give up gas-driven vehicles? I don’t hear them asking for donations, so it doesn’t appear to be a fund-raising gambit.
F:
I believe it’s a combination of virtue-signaling plus political indoctrination to general leftist viewpoints.
And of course (or of cursed)
in woke public schools (not all, but enough) children are being taught not to trust their parents (say in the gender confusion/mass hysteria) but to trust in their teachers (some be groomers). Indoctrination for nihilism, despair, and reliance on the state. Started with the Reds (socialists and communists), Greens (environmentalists), the now the other colors and achromatics (sexualists). Because, power.
Climate cooling… warming… change. Undeniable. Unfalsifiable. A cargo cult with “benefits”.
Some actionable items to note:
* Arctic summer sea ice has not disappeared.
* Sea level rise has not accelerated.
* There is no tropical troposphere hotspot as modeled.
* Pacific Islands have not shrunk.
* Polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef are thriving.
* Renewables are expensive by themselves, intermittent, and provide no grid inertia which leads to blackouts.
Rud Istvan
om,
“Indoctrination for nihilism, despair, and reliance on the state.”
Whether it’s intentional, or a by product of the approach, you are sadly correct that those three outcomes are all too common in U.S. youth who have gone through the public school system.
It is criminal to replace the optimism of youth with cynicism and despair.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” – Some old, Jewish, white guy
Revolver Mag, “Total Victory: DeSantis’ ‘New Florida College’ Triumph Is the Blueprint for Recapturing ‘Woke’ Institutions Across the Country” (or, And Now For Something Entirely Different [wink]): https://www.revolver.news/2023/02/desantis-new-florida-college-is-the-blueprint-for-recapturing-woke-institutions-nationwide/
Catastrophic AGW has become a religion. It has its DEVIL – Greenhouse gases, especially CO2.
It has its sinners – those who use fossil fuels to improve their lives.
It has its Hell – a planet with boiling oceans and no polar bears.
It has its path to expiate your sin – give up fossil fuels, red meat, and all human comforts.
It has its Saints – Hansen, Trennberth, Schmidt, Jones, and Briffa to name the most prominent.
It has its preachers and priests – Gore, Kerry, Thunberg, the MSM, etc.
It has its hierarchal body similar to the Papacy – the IPCC.
It has its apostates and Luthers – Lomborg, Curry, Konin, Shellenberger, Spencer, etc.
True believers have accepted two beliefs (both unproven) on faith:
1. That CO2 is the only factor controlling the climate.
2. That computer models, which have been shown to be imperfect and wrong, can predict the future climate with precision.
I count myself fortunate that I won’t be around to experience what they plan to do. But I intend to fight them every inch until I’m gone.
I feel very fortunate to have attended public schools when there was still an emphasis on patriotism, civic duty, responsibility and building oneself up to contribute to one’s community.
The warts of American history were not kept from us, nor were the flaws of America’s heroes and heroines. However, we were instructed that we were heirs to a unique and glorious political and social framework that would permit us to pursue our dreams and, if we worked tremendously hard, make a positive difference in the world. We were free to become good and do good and it was our responsibility to follow that path.
How does one develop into a motivated young adult focused on self-improvement and improving the lives of others when one is told he or she is a member of a culture and political system built on oppression, enslavement, misogyny and genocide?
“A farmer went out to sow his seed… Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.” – Some old, Jewish, white guy
JJ,
100% spot on.
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” – Some old, Christian white guy who followed an old, Jewish white guy
neo @ 5:42pm,
I don’t doubt what you write about the new photography being even better, and I absolutely agree it is a true shame that someone’s political agenda has to spoil the beauty, however the photography of “Planet Earth” is truly sublime and awe inspiring. I can’t imagine anyone not being moved and inspired when watching it*.
*And it probably has more political messaging than I remember. It’s bound to be in there somewhere.
Another series I liked to watch with my children was the History channel’s “Life After People.” I don’t recall them ever explaining what cataclysm removed all humans from Earth, but each week they would have engineers, zoologists, biologists and other experts postulate about what would happen in certain regions if there were no humans.
I enjoyed watching it with my kids because there was a lot of science and engineering in it, told in an interesting, captivating manner (apocalypses are popular fodder for humans). But, also, it showed how resilient nature and species are. It doesn’t take too many years of non-human maintenance and intervention for nature to take control. I felt it was a subtle way to instill the message in my kids that humans are not as powerful as people like Al Gore, Michael Mann and Greta Thunberg make us out to be.
“catastrophic’ melting of Arctic sea-ice“. I’m always stunned by the absolute moronic level of scientific understanding displayed by the warmunists.
Here’s a simple experiment that you can do at home. Fill a glass part way with water and then add some ice, but not so much that the glass overflows. Next fill a second glass with water so that its level matches the ice water glass. Now wait until the ice melts, or if you’re impatient like me, melt it in a microwave. Ta da! The water levels will still match. This is known as High School physics. I even checked with a friend who is a high school physics teacher. He gave the right answer and even gave the correct explanation.
Next, is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas? Why yes it is. Every commercial greenhouse doubles and even triples the amount in the air because it makes the plants grow larger and faster. Modern plants evolved a hundred million years ago when there was ten times as much CO2 in the atmosphere so they’re designed to use it at higher concentrations.
I won’t get into CO2 heating the atmosphere, but as only 0.04% of the atmosphere, claiming that it has significant heating power is equivalent to medical homeopathy.
Neo:
“No need to rush that; they’ll get enough of it when they start attending school. The educational system is heavily engaged in frightening young children and influencing them politically in every possible way, indoctrinating them in the tenets of leftist thought.”
I know this is an off handed comment, but conservatives are not helpless. They do not need to send their children to government schools to be indoctrinated. They have many choices. And sending children to the government schools is the worst kind of abuse.
I think the first choice should be homeschooling. Neo, you are highly educated and a great teacher. What if you take charge of your grandchildren’s education? Or your son and his wife can take turns helping.
Republican states are starting to implement school voucher programs. Before the election in Arizona was stolen, governor Ducey, and the AZ legislature enacted some of the best school choice legislation in the country. Just a few days ago, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a school choice scholarship bill.
If your son and his wife live in a democrat state, sending your grandchildren to a non-indoctrinating school would be about the best gift that you can give them.
I am passionate about this issue because the schools are where the left has won the culture war and the battleground where we need to take it back.
Coincidentally, yesterday evening I sent an email to a select list, including grandchildren, in which I challenged recipients to provide credible, verifiable evidence that there is a warming trend significantly severe as to be threatening; and if there were that it is primarily attributable to human activity (AGW).
I cautioned not to use apocryphal terms like ‘receding glaciers’ or ‘melting ice cap’ as evidence by pointing out that 25,000 years ago the ‘Laurentide Ice Sheet’ buried the site of Chicago under 3,000 ft of ice. When it receded, it left behind Lake Michigan.
There are similar topographical features across the globe.
Similarly, I rejected that the rising sea was engulfing Venice, Italy because it has been known for a long time that Venice was built on unstable soil and is settling.
I could not resist noting that sophisticated AGW alarmists, like the Obamas, are even now investing $$Millions in seaside estates.
No responses so far; none expected.
We may be ruining the environment, but it is because a significant number of people do not bother to pick up their own detritus; including that left behind by their pets. I wonder if it is a cultural thing here in SoCal, or if it is systemic and endemic around the world–to use a favored term.
Rufus T. Firefly.
I learned a couple of military pieces. “The Army Song” , I think it was. For it’s Hi hi hee in the field artilery….
And the Marine Corps Hymn.
“God Bless America” “O Beautiful…” “America The Beautiful”
Said the pledge.
Rufus T: “The warts of American history were not kept from us, nor were the flaws of America’s heroes and heroines.”
I would call the claim that they were kept from us a pet peeve except that “peeve” is too trivial. The claim that school kids were until fairly recently not taught anything about slavery and various other bad things in American history is just b.s. Dammit, I went to elementary and middle school in the ’50s and early ’60s in *the rural deep south*, and we were taught about that stuff. It was not emphasized, and I remember one teacher who tried to downplay the evils of slavery as compared to other forms of oppression. And I doubt anybody wanted to talk about the then-current segregation. But to say it was kept from us is a falsehood, at least in the school I attended. We were also well aware that the Indians had been seriously mistreated. We may not have been taught the worst of these things but we were certainly taught the basic facts.
In high school civics we did discuss segregation, and under the guidance of one of the best teachers I ever had, a principled conservative, had a serious debate about the civil rights legislation that was being passed even as we discussed it.
Ir anyone is interested in a good website about the arctic in general, polar bears in particular, I can recommend polarbearscience.com. it’s essentially Susan Crockford’s blog. She’s a zoologist of 40 years experience although I confess I don’t know how decades were devoted almost exclusively to polar bears (if you’re going to study apex predators you must study their prey). Unfortunately since she’s devoted to her research and not alarmism she.was fired from her position as an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, B.C. Canada back in 2019. She refused to lie for the cause.
Bob Wilson:
Their parents are not conservative.
Re: relentless messaging … In nature documentaries:
Neo wrote “I can only believe it’s a combination of virtue-signaling plus political indoctrination to general leftist viewpoints.”
I agree. And the most distressing, crippling effect is the fear and anxiety it instills.
Any obsession that children are fed, with no way to counteract, let alone take control, causes a cruel stunting of their brains.
Neo, re: grandchildren:
“their parents are not conservative”
If I may ask: What about the other various, involved relatives?
You can still have a real effect, certainly. They both need and deserve that!!
(Bless you for caring and seeing that.)
Marv:
There are few other relatives, and none of them are conservatives, and they live in a community that is almost entirely on the left.
In my lifetime, I have been warned about ;
Global nuclear war, global pollution, global overpopulation, global famine, global drought, global resource depletion, global cooling, global warming, global AIds, Y2K, and most recently global pandemics.
Since these are all “global” problems, they will of course require a global response, IOW global government.
Because global government is the recommended solution to every problem, whether they exist or not.
Rufus, many of the “Planet Earth” shows as well as the program “Nature” on PBS (which is often narrated by Attenborough too), still manage to shoehorn the climate change missive into the last 5 minutes of each show, whether they are about life at the bottom of the ocean or snow monkeys in Japan. So yes, while most of the program is devoid of political agenda, it will show show up at the very end. I usually stop watching when the nature portion stops and the narrator says “Sadly…” as they flip to a shot of a highway with bumper to bumper traffic.
Neo, what about parents who are conservatives trying to keep their children from being indoctrinated in government schools? I have noticed that you and many other conservative bloggers are more in the identify and complain about problems than in the present solutions business. As the Paul Simon lyrics say, do not remind me of my failures, for I have not forgotten them. At the very least, presenting successes, such as those by Ron DeSantis almost every day, would help to uplift your readers. Your fellow bloggers at legal insurrection are doing this, and I find it very refreshing
“A Conservative Classical College Board”, Auguste Meyrat, The American Mind: https://americanmind.org/salvo/a-conservative-classical-college-board/
That was Jackson Browne who wrote “don’t remind me of my failures…from the song These Days. Also done by Ian Matthews.
“In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. By 1985, enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.” Paul R. Ehrlich early father of fear porn
Here is a good interview of Richard Lindzen done by Jordan Peterson, climate science. I found Peterson a bit annoying, he talks to much and doesn’t seem to know much hard science. But it is a good interview, and perhaps Peterson’s ignorance helps clarify things for others without a STEM background.