Month: August 2023

In Florida: Along with Slavery’s Good Points, a Climate Denial Curriculum

Ron DeSantis’ Florida is now adopting Fossil Fuel funded education materials for Public Schools – so along with the good news about Slavery, you’ll be able to get the “facts” about carbon pollution.

I won’t give a link to the video described below, “Ania’s Energy Crisis”, but the still above gives you the flavor. On the right, blond, aryan Ania is starting to doubt the indoctrination from her obviously woke, (and slightly Jewish looking) teacher, and worries about being rejected by her (somewhat darker) fellow students who are worried about climate change. Ania gets an angry note from an online follower named “klimatekaren”.
Her parents tell her that parroting coal industry talking points is just like fighting communists and Nazis.
Ania finally triumphs by delivering coal to her fuel deprived neighbors.

I am not making this up.

Scientific American:

Climate activists are like Nazis.

Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable.Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles.

These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group.

Now, the videos could soon be used in Florida’s classrooms.

Florida’s Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics.

Education experts call the videos dangerous propaganda.

Florida is the first state to allow PragerU materials in public schools, where teachers will have the option of showing the five- to 10-minute videos in their classrooms. Florida public schools have roughly 3 million students, more than the entire population of Kansas.

PragerU CEO Marissa Streit says the videos will rebalance schools that have been “hijacked by the left.”

“Young kids are being taught climate hysteria,” Streit said in an interview. “They’re hearing that the world is coming to an end, and we think that there needs to be a healthy balance.

“The climate is always changing,” Streit added, repeating a climate-denial motto that rejects fossil fuel burning as the cause of continuing record-high temperatures.

For now, Florida has approved using PragerU videos only in civics and government for younger children. Some PragerU climate denial videos are classified under non-climate categories, which could enable their use in Florida.

But education advocates fear that the nation’s third-largest state has granted a stamp of approval that will spread the videos to classrooms in other states.

Florida’s approval is alarming because children will watch the videos when they are at their most impressionable stage, in kindergarten through 5th grade, said Adrienne McCarthy, a researcher at Kansas State University who tracks PragerU. Extreme ideas are presented as common beliefs in many videos, she said.

“They can take these right-wing, controversial ideas and cloak them in seemingly harmless and friendly rhetoric,” McCarthy said. “Then they create this kind of facade of normal conservative beliefs, and they use authoritative figures [in the videos] in order to convince the audience.”

“It’s also targeted at the parents themselves, saying that if you want to be a good parent, you should be teaching your kids this,” McCarthy added.

Continue reading “In Florida: Along with Slavery’s Good Points, a Climate Denial Curriculum”

In Vermont, No Haven From Climate Impacts

Montpelier Vermont is a charming, somewhat crunchy, laid back state capitol, in an area that many people may have moved to believing it would be safe from the worst aspects of climate change.
This summer, they found out that was not the case.

Associated Press:

A beloved bookstore in Vermont’s small capital city moved across the street to a new spot farther from the Winooski River after an ice jam sent river water into the store in 1992. A nearby office supply and gift store did the same in 2011 because it liked a different space that came with a bonus: it was higher and farther from the river.

But their moves to higher ground weren’t enough to save them from flooding after torrential rains in July caused what some saw as the state’s worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. Some communities suffered more severe flood damage this year than when Tropical Storm Irene ravaged the small, mountainous state in 2011.

“I think most people in this area were very concerned about climate change, but we also were a little pretty much thought we were a little safer here because we had not really suffered the drastic events that some other parts of the country have,” said Rob Kasow, co-owner of Bear Pond Books. “But I think now we’ve been a little disabused of the notion that Vermont is safe from climate change.”

Now the mostly gutted shops, restaurants and businesses that lend downtown Montpelier its charm are considering where and how to rebuild in an era when extreme weather is occurring more often. Vermont’s flooding was just one of several major flood events around the globe this summer that scientists have said are becoming more likely due to climate change.

“It’s definitely going to happen again,” said Lauren Oates of the Nature Conservancy of Vermont. “It’s not a question of if, but when and how bad next time.”

Two people died in the flooding. More than 4,000 homes and 800 businesses reported damage, though officials expect those numbers to rise as the damage is tallied.

Many communities in Vermont — small, rural and mountainous — grew up in valleys where the rivers were needed to move goods. Hundreds of years later, that means roads and waterways that often lie close to each other, State Climatologist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux said.

Continue reading “In Vermont, No Haven From Climate Impacts”

Humans in Climate Crisis – Keeping On Till It All Goes Sideways

Video above said to be from China’s current flooding.
Translation: Despite increasing amounts of rain, people just keep driving, in the end they are washed away. Works in the same way as we are tackling the climate crisis: keep going until nothing works.

One Year On from Historic Floods: Pakistan is a Nuclear State in Crisis

For those that think climate impacts on the poorest of the poor do not affect them, consider the political instability of a nuclear armed state, with a formidable domestic Islamic jihadist movement, and nuclear weapons.

Guardian:

A year after Pakistan’s worst floods in living memory, a report by Islamic Relief Worldwide has revealed the devastating long-term impact on people, especially children, and argued that rich nations must compensate those countries most affected by the climate emergency.

Researchers from Islamic Relief who talked to people in the flood-affected areas found 40% of the children they surveyed had stunted growth and 25% were underweight as families struggle to access food and healthcare. About 80% of mothers reported sickness among children, with outbreaks of diarrhoea, malaria and dengue fever increasing.

Women and girls reported being particularly affected, with pregnant women still struggling to access health services and girls most likely to be underweight. Many of the women displaced by the flooding do not have the privacy to breastfeed, meaning poorer health for their babies.

The flooding in Pakistan in August and September 2022 – described by UN secretary general António Guterres as a “monsoon on steroids” – led to the deaths of more than 1,700 people and 33 million losing their homes, land or jobs. About 800,000 cattle and other livestock perished and 28,000 schools and health clinics were damaged.

Speaking at the launch of the report in Islamabad, Waseem Ahmad, chief executive of Islamic Relief Worldwide, stated: “No amount of financial aid can compensate those who have lost loved ones and seen their homes and everything they own destroyed. But we need to see climate justice, where the biggest polluters pay for the damage and destruction caused by climate change.

“As climate-related catastrophes increase, it is the poorest and most vulnerable people who bear the brunt of the suffering. They are the ones most likely to live in fragile homes and least likely to have savings to fall back on, or assets to sell, or any kind of ‘Plan B’ when floods hit and crops and livestock are wiped out.”

Continue reading “One Year On from Historic Floods: Pakistan is a Nuclear State in Crisis”

Trees Can Help in Heat, but Heat Makes Life Harder for Trees

Above, from my interview with NASA expert Benjamin Cook.

AZCentral:

As we work to slow climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we should all draw hope from the way Heat Ready Phoenix, a first-of-its-kind municipal agency, is showing how we can tackle heat risk from every angle. 

This ranges from new age approaches like installing reflective “cool pavings” and leveraging technology to better reach at-risk citizens to nature’s original cooling technology — trees.  

In fact, Phoenix was the first city in America to commit to achieve “tree equity” in every neighborhood. 

This deserves special attention, because trees offer an affordable tool we can use to cool every city while delivering co-benefits for health, wealth and community well-being. 

As evidence, the push for tree equity in Phoenix is part of a model collaboration with other municipalities across the region, called the Phoenix Metro Urban Forest Roundtable.

Tucson is leading its own tree equity push called Tucson Million Trees. 

Continue reading “Trees Can Help in Heat, but Heat Makes Life Harder for Trees”