GWPF | 4 Dec 2014
Research blaming pesticides for the decline in honeybees has been called into question by a leaked note suggesting that scientists had decided in advance to seek evidence supporting a ban on the chemicals. The private note records a discussion in 2010 between four scientists about how to persuade regulators to ban neonicotinoid pesticides. The leaked note says that the scientists agreed to select authors to produce four papers and co-ordinate their publication to “obtain the necessary policy change, to have these pesticides banned”. –Ben Webster, The Times, 4 December 2014
The note, which records that the meeting took place in Switzerland on June 14, 2010, says: “If we are successful in getting these two papers published, there will be enormous impact, and a campaign led by WWF etc. It will be much harder for politicians to ignore a research paper and a policy forum paper in [a major scientific journal].” –Ben Webster, The Times, 4 December 2014
When Republicans take control of both houses of Congress next month, President Barack Obama will be hard-pressed to cut US greenhouse gas emissions dramatically – a promise he made to Americans and the world and a key to his legacy. Some Republicans have indicated that they may try to make the passage of overall government funding dependent on congressional agreement to cuts for EPA enforcement. If that kind of government-funding legislation fails in Congress or if Obama were to veto it, there could be yet another government shut-down for lack of money to keep agencies in operation. —Associated Press, 3 December 2014
An international goal of providing $100 billion each year by 2020 to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change impacts and pursue green growth is far off what is needed to achieve a global clean revolution, the U.N.’s top climate change official said on Wednesday. Christiana Figueres told journalists at U.N. climate talks in Lima that in terms of paying for the efforts needed to shift economies worldwide onto a low-carbon track “$100 billion is frankly a very, very small sum”. She said $90 trillion would be invested in infrastructure over the next 15 years. –Megan Rowling, Reuters, 3 December 2014
The Obama administration wants students and teachers to toe the line on climate change. Perhaps unable to convince older Americans of the severity of global warming, President Barack Obama is hoping to have better luck with the next generation by turning to the classroom. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Wednesday announced it will launch a new initiative aimed at climate education and literacy that will distribute science-based information – in line with the administration’s position on the issue – to students, teachers and the broader public. “If you believe, like I do, that something has to be done on this, then you’re going to have to speak out,” Obama said in June at the University of California–Irvine commencement ceremony. “You’ve got to educate your classmates, and colleagues, and family members and fellow citizens, and tell them what’s at stake.” –Allie Bidwell, U.S. News, 3 December 2014
We have found examples of serious errors, misleading claims, and bias through inadequate treatment of climate issues in school teaching materials. These include many widely-used textbooks, teaching-support resources, and pupil projects. We find instances of eco-activism being given a free rein within schools and at the events schools encourage their pupils to attend. In every case of concern, the slant is on scares, on raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as on what they should think. In some instances, we find encouragement to create ‘little political activists’ in schools by creating a burden of responsibility for action on their part to ‘save the planet’, not least by putting pressure on their parents. —Andrew Montford & John Shade, Climate Control: Brainwashing In Schools, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
1) New Science Scandal: Scientists Accused Of Plotting To Get Pesticides Banned – The Times, 4 December 2014
2) US Republicans To Nix Obama’s Climate Plans – Associated Press, 3 December 2014
3) Obama’s $100 Billion Per Year Climate Pledge ‘A Very, Very Small Sum’: UN Climate Chief – Reuters, 3 December 2014
4) Obama Wants Kids To Toe The Line On Climate Change – U.S. News, 3 December 2014
5) Climate Control: Brainwashing In Schools – The Global Warming Policy Foundation
1) New Science Scandal: Scientists Accused Of Plotting To Get Pesticides Banned
The Times, 4 December 2014
Ben Webster
Research blaming pesticides for the decline in honeybees has been called into question by a leaked note suggesting that scientists had decided in advance to seek evidence supporting a ban on the chemicals.
The private note records a discussion in 2010 between four scientists about how to persuade regulators to ban neonicotinoid pesticides.
The EU imposed a temporary ban last year after the European Food Safety Authority identified risks to bees. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs opposed the ban, saying that there was not enough evidence of harm to bees.
Many farmers have blamed the ban for high levels of damage to this winter’s oilseed rape crop from flea beetle.
The leaked note says that the scientists agreed to select authors to produce four papers and co-ordinate their publication to “obtain the necessary policy change, to have these pesticides banned”.
A paper by a “carefully selected first author” would set out the impact of the pesticides on insects and birds “as convincingly as possible”. A second “policy forum” paper would draw on the first to call for a ban.
The note, which records that the meeting took place in Switzerland on June 14, 2010, says: “If we are successful in getting these two papers published, there will be enormous impact, and a campaign led by WWF etc. It will be much harder for politicians to ignore a research paper and a policy forum paper in [a major scientific journal].”
The scientists at the meeting included Maarten Bijleveld van Lexmond, chairman of the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, and Piet Wit, chairman of the ecosystems management commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an influential network of scientists and environmental groups.
The Task Force, a group of scientists who advise the IUCN, published a report in June stating that neonicotinoids were “causing significant damage to a wide range of beneficial invertebrate species and are a key factor in the decline of bees”.
The Task Force used the report to call on regulators to “start planning for a global phase-out” of neonicotinoids. The present two-year EU ban, which began last December, is due to be reviewed next year using evidence from field trials.
Thousands of farmers who use neonicotinoids are hoping that the trials, overseen by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, will show that the risks to bees have been overstated.
Nick von Westenholz, chief executive of the Crop Protection Association, which represents Bayer and Syngenta, manufacturers of neonicotinoids, said: “The work of the Task Force is regularly cited by activists as being strongly independent research, conducted with the utmost scientific rigour.
“From reading this document it looks to me that this group decided on its conclusions first and then embarked on the research to back them up. That clearly flies in the face of claims that the IUCN study represents independent and rigorous science. The claims of the Task Force now seem increasingly suspect and I hope that policymakers will treat these studies with an appropriate degree of caution.”
Mr Wit said that the leaked note was accurate but he denied that the scientists had decided the conclusions of the research in advance. Dr Bijleveld van Lexmond, a founding member of WWF in the Netherlands, said that the Task Force was independent and unbiased.
see also:
Scientists ‘Fixed Evidence’ To Ban Pesticides, Note Reveals
2) US Republicans To Nix Obama’s Climate Plans
Associated Press, 3 December 2014
When Republicans take control of both houses of Congress next month, President Barack Obama will be hard-pressed to cut US greenhouse gas emissions dramatically – a promise he made to Americans and the world and a key to his legacy.
The Obama administration ballyhooed an agreement with China last month that commits Beijing for the first time to action that would eventually slow its emissions of heat-trapping carbon emissions. That deal reaffirms ambitious US goals under Obama’s leadership, but he still may face attempts in Congress to block the money needed to fund government enforcement of emissions rules.
The US-China agreement has provided some optimism for a gathering in Lima, Peru, where representatives of 190 nations are holding talks on a new worldwide deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming from causing irreversible damage.
But in the US, relations between the White House and congressional Republicans are particularly bad these days, and it’s not just because of Obama’s aggressive actions on climate change. Shortly after the November election gave Republicans majorities in both legislative chambers, the president used his executive power to order big changes in US enforcement of immigration laws.
Obama has temporarily shielded from deportation millions of people in the country without permission, an action that has deeply angered Republican members of both houses, especially the big block of small-government, anti-immigration tea party members in the Republican caucus.
Obama’s moves on climate change cut just as deeply, and Republican ire is equally long-standing on that issue. John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, said the president had “poisoned the well,” making bipartisan co-operation between the White House and Congress unlikely.
A key Republican senator, who will become chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has called climate change a “hoax” and has vowed to block Obama’s moves on every front.
“As we enter a new Congress, I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the [Environmental Protection Agency’s] unchecked regulations,” said Senator Jim Inhofe of the oil-producing state of Oklahoma.
Inhofe’s threat was in response to the landmark agreement that commits the US and China, the No 1 and No 2 greenhouse gas emitters, to dramatic action on carbon emissions in the coming years. Inhofe called the agreement “hollow and not believable.”
3) Obama’s $100 Billion Per Year Climate Pledge ‘A Very, Very Small Sum’: UN Climate Chief
Reuters, 3 December 2014
Megan Rowling
LIMA, Peru (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An international goal of providing $100 billion each year by 2020 to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change impacts and pursue green growth is far off what is needed to achieve a global clean revolution, the U.N.’s top climate change official said on Wednesday.
Christiana Figueres told journalists at U.N. climate talks in Lima that in terms of paying for the efforts needed to shift economies worldwide onto a low-carbon track “$100 billion is frankly a very, very small sum”.
“We are talking here about trillions of dollars that need to flow into the transformation at a global level,” she added.
She said $90 trillion would be invested in infrastructure over the next 15 years.
“The world needs to decide: Are those $90 trillion going to go into clean technology, clean infrastructure, and above all resilient infrastructure, or is it going to go into the technologies and infrastructure of the last century?”
Climate finance is in the spotlight at the two-week negotiations in Peru, as developing countries push for more clarity on how to drive funding up to the $100 billion level governments committed to back in 2009. Finance is seen as key to building trust between richer and poorer nations at the talks.
A voluntary accord agreed at the 2009 Copenhagen summit said the money should come from “a wide variety of sources”, including public and private funds, bilateral and multilateral funds and other “alternative” sources of finance.
One problem to date is that there has been little understanding of how much funding is flowing, what kind, and from where to where. That has hampered progress on working out a clear pathway to ramping it up.
4) Obama Wants Kids To Toe The Line On Climate Change
U.S. News, 3 December 2014
Allie Bidwell
The Obama administration wants students and teachers to toe the line on climate change.
Perhaps unable to convince older Americans of the severity of global warming, President Barack Obama is hoping to have better luck with the next generation by turning to the classroom.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Wednesday announced it will launch a new initiative aimed at climate education and literacy that will distribute science-based information – in line with the administration’s position on the issue – to students, teachers and the broader public.
Educators, government officials, philanthropic leaders and those from the private sector will participate in a roundtable discussion at the White House Wednesday.
The participants will focus on how to spread more resources to teachers and increase professional development and training related to climate change for educators, federal employees and informal educators, such as those working in national parks, museums, aquariums or botanic gardens.
“If you believe, like I do, that something has to be done on this, then you’re going to have to speak out,” Obama said in June at the University of California–Irvine commencement ceremony. “You’ve got to educate your classmates, and colleagues, and family members and fellow citizens, and tell them what’s at stake.”
With many states transitioning to the Next Generation Science Standards, opposition to issues such as climate change and evolution has resurfaced with a new intensity. At least 12 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, which place an increased emphasis on the controversial topics and were developed by a group of national science and education organizations – including one also involved in developing the Common Core State Standards.
A Gallup analysis in April showed that 1 in 4 Americans are global warming skeptics and are not worried much or at all about it. All of those deemed skeptics said the rise in the Earth’s temperature is due to natural changes in the environment, rather than pollution, and that global warming will not pose a serious threat in the future.
Meanwhile, a separate survey from Yale and George Mason universities found just more than half of Americans – 55 percent – said they were at least somewhat worried about global warming, while only 11 percent said they were very worried about it. The same poll found 66 percent of Americans think global warming is happening, and that half of Americans think global warming – if it is occurring – is largely human-caused.
The White House initiative pulls together more than two dozen advocacy and education groups from more than 30 states that responded to a call for increased leadership in climate education made by the administration in October. Some of the groups include the Chicago Botanic Garden, the American Meteorological Society, the Alliance for Climate Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Philadelphia School and the Green Schools Alliance.
The groups will provide fellowship programs, teacher training opportunities and increased attention to public education on climate change through museums, aquariums, botanic gardens and zoos. The combined efforts are expected to reach millions of students, teachers, federal employees and visitors to national parks and public nature facilities.
5) Reminder: Climate Control – Brainwashing In Schools
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Andrew Montford & John Shade
We have found examples of serious errors, misleading claims, and bias through inadequate treatment of climate issues in school teaching materials. These include many widely-used textbooks, teaching-support resources, and pupil projects.
We find instances of eco-activism being given a free rein within schools and at the events schools encourage their pupils to attend. In every case of concern, the slant is on scares, on raising fears, followed by the promotion of detailed guidance on how pupils should live, as well as on what they should think. In some instances, we find encouragement to create ‘little political activists’ in schools by creating a burden of responsibility for action on their part to ‘save the planet’, not least by putting pressure on their parents.
The National Curriculum has recently been reviewed by the government, but the proposed changes seem unlikely to prevent such practices.
Surveys show that many children are upset and frightened by what they are told is happening to the climate.
Teachers and administrators have a fairly free hand to choose textbooks, other materials, visiting speakers and school trips for pupils provided they fit in with curricular goals. This raises the risk that some may select alarming and politically loaded sources in order to win children over to the ‘environmental cause’.
This ‘cause’ is often presented through the notion of ‘sustainability’, a poorly defined catchword covering political and personal actions for which fundamental criticism is rarely entertained. Many campaigning NGOs and other organisations with vested interests such as energy companies proffer teaching materials and other resources for use in schools. Some of it is presumably being used.
There are clear grounds for very serious concern. We therefore call upon the Secretary of State for Education and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to undertake urgent inquiries into climate change education in our schools. Only a systematic evaluation of what is going on can determine the extent of the indoctrination as well as the emotional and educational harm to pupils that is undoubtedly resulting.
