Oxfam have produced a political program that reaches into Australian, UK, and New Zealand schools under the guise of “climate science”. There are petitions for children to send to the PM. Law abiding corporations are called “polluting vested interests”. Kids are now advising the government on energy policy and economic direction, and NGOs, which are partly funded by Big-Government, are effectively telling kids to vote for Big-Government. Anyone spot the conflict of interest?
Tony Thomas has been reading up on Oxfam Australia, and lays out their most “activist” messages below. According to Oxfam, it reaches some 100,000 children in Australian schools. In the UK over 2,000 schools in England and 550 in Scotland are part of the “Global Learning Program” and English schools get “up to £500 of e-credits” which schools can use to pay for CPD”. CPD for those of us non-UK types is “Continuing Professional Development”. Perhaps the English readers can tell us a bit more, but it sounds like Oxfam and Big-Gov-UK are working hand-in-hand.
Oxfam has a “whole school approach” which means in-school and after-school activities, as well as teacher training and curriculum development. It’s “holistic”, which means it promotes global citizenship and everything except for Western culture, Western industry, free markets, and taxpayers (who help fund it). It’s more about sustainability of activism, not sustainability of civilizations.
Roughly 30% of Oxfam Australia’s total income comes from government grants. I’m sure Oxfam staff sincerely believe in the climate religion, but I’m also sure there is no incentive for them to find holes in an idea which helps get left wing Big-Government parties elected who are less likely to cut the “Foreign Aid” budget. They keep the lobbyists and bureaucrats in office who support NGOs. Plus it’s a smart “business plan” to reach out to future donors. Presumably any Oxfam staff member who pointed out how carbon trading feeds big bankers, increased corruption, and did nothing for the poor and the environment would be uninvited to drinks after work. Forgive my cynicism, but the day Oxfam points out that windfarms and solar cells won’t change the weather is the day I might believe they care more about humanity than their own tribe.
What’s the answer? Before kids get fed politics, they need to be taught logic and reason. In schools, the rightful place for Oxfam material is as fodder for debates and analysis but children need to be trained to spot propaganda. Principals and Oxfam need to feel the heat. In it’s own words Oxfam’s grand plan is to redirect itself more to “influence authorities”, and “redistribute wealth” and less to “deliver services”. They are becoming a nakedly political outfit. — Jo
Save the world with motherhood statements?
Oxfam rams its climate scares into classrooms
By Tony Thomas
Oxfam Australia is yet another climate-catastrophe spruiker to be welcomed into classrooms along with Cool Australia, Greenpeace, Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF, Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth teams. But Oxfam is successfully carving out its own territory in the intra-green competition for children’s souls.
The 2013-14 Oxfam Australia annual report says more than 20,000 teachers used Oxfam resources to teach 100,000 students. And more than 6800 students in high schools and universities took part in 40 Oxfam workshops to help them become discussion leaders among their peers.
Oxfam resources specifically for schools
At a glance, Oxfam appears even more politically partisan than the other groups. It cites “great examples of the myriad ways schools can make a difference” and directs students to its “Take Action” page,
“Tell the PM to be the Australian leader we need. Demand he goes to New York and commits in person to the new UN #GlobalGoals for Sustainable Development.”
Take Action also says, below a caricature of Prime Minister Tony Abbott holding an umbrella against a cyclone, and alongside a political petition:
“So far, the Abbott Government has absolutely failed the climate leadership test. Email our political leaders now. Tell them you’re searching for someone to step up and lead Australia on climate..
Tell them that Australians want a bold and visionary government that’s prepared to make the right choice. For everyone, not just for polluting vested interests.
Take action now!”
Some of the climate solutions that Oxfam offers kids are batty. Its “inspiration for students” resources for schools includes recommendations by an Elisha Donkin (“ passionate about food security, global inequality, health and sustainable living”) to help save the planet by eating an untapped source of protein, viz grasshoppers and cockroaches. These are “hailed as the next greatest addition to your diet for health as well as the environment… So, forget about vegetarianism, watch this video and be persuaded to add some juicy beetles to your salad.” (The video link is dead but I found an equivalent here.)
She also urges kids not to flush pee and paper, and finishes by rattling the class can for Oxfam: “A little donation can go a long way and is always appreciated.”
Oxfam’s “3things” site for kids refers them to Oxfam’s mainstream climate pages. On those pages, Oxfam says, “It’s not just the average temperature that is rising. With more heat and energy in the atmosphere and oceans, our weather is becoming more extreme and unpredictable.”
For details of the various unfacts, Oxfam refers readers to Tim Flannery’s Climate Council. Oxfam says that being fair to the planet means cutting emissions to keep warming to only 1.5decC, “beyond which many countries have said they will face unmanageable suffering and devastation.”
Oxfam wants Australian emissions to fall by at least 40% by 2025, and to net zero before 2050, ”including developing a concrete plan to phase-out coal from Australia’s energy supply” and lavish donations to the third world’s $100b a year climate fund/boondoggle.
Kids are barraged with urgings to “take action”.(Banking on Shaky Ground, School Resource Activities (PDF)). Apart from them petitioning the Prime Minister on climate, Oxfam also revs them up to petition Australia’s big banks ANZ, CBA, NAB and WBC and lash them for lending to companies doing “land grabs” from peasants in the third world. Oxfam, to save teachers thought, provides a template for a class “debate”, with banks on a hiding to nothing.
I’d bet Oxfam will soon emulate the Youth Climate Coalition and organize kid-campaigns against banks for lending to fossil fuel companies.
Playing on kids’ good nature, Oxfam provides heart-wrenching videos and tales of stricken people. An example, South African local farmer Yvette Abrahams:
“My family is meeting to discuss moving. We cannot stay.
It is very emotional for us as a family. When indigenous people lose their land, it is not just about food and material welfare. When we lose our land we also lose our spiritual practices which are deeply tied to the land. So the little that we have managed to preserve through slavery, genocide, colonialism and apartheid, we are about to lose to climate change.
“Climate finance [provided by rich countries] is restorative justice. I appeal to you to not leave this to your children to sort out. Because they are going to have to share a planet with my children.
You can help strengthen the voices of women like Yvette!
Australia is feeling the effects of climate change. But it’s poor people around the world who are bearing the brunt.”
Via the referral above from 3things Oxfam offers kids videos called “Faces of climate change”.
“Go to this site and in the groups designated by your teacher watch the short film clip, or read the text provided… When all the groups have presented their report write a summary response to the statement: “Climate change is impacting on farming practices across the world.” — Worksheet, 3 major challenges
…
I took a look at the Australian “face of climate change” who turned out to be Helen Henry of Hamilton, Vic., one of Oxfam’s six “Sisters on the Planet”. The 2008 film begins with Helen lecturing a roomful of Hamilton citizenry: “Science predicts that if Greenland was to melt, we would see an increase in sea levels of 6 metres.”
The film cuts to the Wannon flood plain, with Helen saying it looks (at 2008) lots drier than a decade earlier, when brolgas used to dance about on the swamp: “It really hit home to me that perhaps there would not be the childhood I experienced, available to my children.”
An Al Gore acolyte, she was oblivious that the district flooded badly in 1946, 1981, and 1983, and sure enough, after her filmic lament, in 2010 and 2011, her town got flooded again. She had bemoaned that her family businesses Henry’s Hydraulics couldn’t order 100% renewable electricity (“I love windfarms,” she said). But the inconsiderate 2010 flood knocked out Hamilton’s power altogether.
Here’s another Oxfam template for a class:
“Using the Bureau of Meteorology’s State of the Climate Report 2014, complete the following exercise:
Choose a region near where you live and using the summary page, research any evidence of climate change occurring in your region.
Use the maps of temperature change, rainfall ranges, heatwaves and fire weather, and scroll down to the Australian map of climate scenarios.
Use this information to suggest how these changes might impact on the sustainability of local farms.
Find an image of a local farmer/group of farmers and using speech bubbles write their comments on climate change and its effect on food production.”
Classroom-resources: Worksheet-3-major-challenges-to-food-production-climate-change
Oxfam’s push into schools with heavy political messaging, is assisted by Oxfam’s long-standing reputation for humanitarian activity. Oxfam also has plenty of savvy about giving teachers a tempting “bundle” of information and pedagogy. The success of classroom brainwashing will probably depend on whether kids’ natural cynicism is stirred up by such a deluge of green proselytizing. #
OXFAM’s non-school material is only a click away
Oxfam’s current crusade is against the Australian coal industry, with the message that 90% of our coal should be left in the ground.
Oxfam is pushing back against the uncomfortable proposition that electricity grid expansion is leading the third world out of poverty, instead arguing that localised solar power is what struggling peasants need.
Oxfam does plenty of good humanitarian work with its disaster relief , and its advocacy for peasants beset by predatory businesses. But because it believes global warming will fry the planet in a few decades, it makes climate activism top priority. “Why is Oxfam working on climate change? Tackling climate change is central to ending poverty.”
It goes on to talk about warming creating another 50m starving people and rising seas threatening a billion.[i]
The class material offered is only a click or two
from this sort of Oxfam stuff:
“Today, with an irresponsibly weak target to reduce pollution by just 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030, the Abbott Government has chosen to risk a brutal future of ever more extreme and unpredictable weather, making it harder for families and farmers everywhere to grow and buy enough food to eat.
It’s a #badcall – … one that risks brutal consequences for some of the world’s poorest communities, that are already being hit hardest by the devastating impacts of climate change.
We do not have to accept this disastrous decision. The Government can and must increase its target in Paris. Call on Australia’s political leaders to step up and lead on climate.
In contrast, the Labor Party’s thought-bubble on renewables promotion is hailed by Oxfam CEO Dr Helen Szoke (salary $229,000) as “A welcome show of leadership and vision”.
“(W)hile the energy revolution gathers pace, the Australian Government remains stuck down the deep, dark coal mine of the past and seemingly oblivious to [renewables] changing realities.
“Captured by an ailing coal industry and urged on by conservative commentators, our government has delivered a series of bizarre and misleading pronouncements about the future of coal.”
I could find no mention by Oxfam of the 18 year (so far) halt to global warming; instead, Oxfam finds dire consequences of imagined global warming everywhere it looks.
Like its activist peer groups, Oxfam has twigged that teachers are variously too busy, lazy or unequipped to teach climate , and are therefore happy to outsource such lessons to alarmist third parties providing class materials, lesson structures, templates and curriculum integration for both teachers and kids.
The tone of the Oxfam material is pretty hysterical, especially about events like Cyclone Pam, via Oxfam UK teachers’ notes.
The Australian material includes “Climate Change”:
Hungry for a fair climate?
Climate change is the single biggest threat in the global fight against hunger.
Extreme weather events, like Tropical Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu[iii], are a forceful reminder that the people who have done the least to contribute to climate change are already being hit hard by its devastating impacts.
Dirty polluting companies are causing climate change to worsen, poisoning our clean air, and threatening our food, water and health.
The Australian Government has been shirking responsibility and acting in the interests of the big dirty polluters.
Luckily, families and farmers around the world are fighting back and driving smart and positive climate action.
Don’t let families and farmers take the heat for our inaction. Be part of the fight for fair food in a fair climate!
The Oxfam grand plan
Oxfam these days is a more cohesive or “one Oxfam” body as a result of a six-year plan to integrate the 17 national Oxfam outfits. The 2013-19 master plan is big on promoting wealth transfers: “Redistribution of 10% of the incomes of the richest countries would increase the incomes of the poor countries by more than nine-fold per head.” But it has little to say about promoting conventional economic growth:
“[The poor] will benefit from expanded national and international debate on economic development policies beyond conventional GDP growth to focus on equitable prosperity within a resource-constrained world.”
The plan also wants to tilt Oxfam’s humanitarian work more towards political agitation: “The proposed ‘worldwide influencing network’ aims to drive our shared agenda more powerfully within the broader global movement for change. It is an expression of Oxfam’s ‘enabling’ role. It marks a trend towards working more on influencing authorities and the powerful, and less on delivering the services for which duty-bearers are responsible.” — Oxfam Strategic Plan (PDF)
Oxfam Australia enjoys tax-free charity status although there’s nothing obviously charitable about trying to destroy Australia’s fossil-fuel industries. In addition to $52m raised from the public last year, Oxfam also got $23m in grants from the federal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. (See the Oxfam annual report.)
Annual reports do not specify how much Oxfam Australia is spending on climate campaigning per se. Its five-year climate action blueprint for 2010-15 called for $14.6m spending, “from a mix of supporter funds and institutional donors”.[ii]
Tony Thomas blogs at tthomas061.wordpress.com
_________________________________________
FOOTNOTES
[i] Oxfam claimed in 2009 that “The number of people affected by climatic crises is projected to rise by 54% to 375 million people over the next six years, threatening to overwhelm the world’s ability to respond.”
The six year time frame takes us to 2015. Anyone notice 375m climate crisis victims?
[ii] Addressing Climate Change: Oxfam Australia’s Plan of Action, Jan. 2011, p14
[iii] There is no evidence that Cyclone Pam had any connection to global warming.
Fear mongering is terrorism.
591
Especially when aimed at children, who have little or no natural defences.
In a way, it is a form of child abuse.
They will not get a generation of believers. But they will get a generation of cynics.
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Indeed it is!
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wow. jo, you are too kind when you say “I don’t want to stop NGOs going to schools and teachers colleges”. everything Tony Thomas details is straight propaganda and has no place in the schools and Oxfam should get no public money for CAGW activities. many thanks to Thomas for bringing this to light. meanwhile,
8 Sept: AFR: Bernie Fraser quits Climate Change Authority
Former Reserve Bank of Australia governor Bernie Fraser has unexpectedly quit as chairman of the Climate Change Authority
Neither Mr Fraser nor the Authority would give a reason form him quitting the post…
Guardian: The departure of Fraser means only four board members remain: Professor Ian Chubb, Professor David Karoly, Professor Clive Hamilton and Professor John Quiggin. The authority also has an acting chief executive, Shayleen Thompson.
SMH: Mr Fraser’s departure means five of the nine board positions are vacant. The authority’s management will be led in the interim by Professor David Karoly, a climate expert at Melbourne University.
He (Greg Hunt) said the vacant positions “will be filled in the near future”…
not even bothering with urls as there’s so much partisan political rubbish wrapped around this announcement. SMH attributes their piece to a trio of writers(?), Nicole Hasham, Lisa Cox and Peter Hannam.
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Yes, it’s full on, and kids need to be wise to this propaganda. I want it in schools, but the first priority is surely that kids (and quite a lot of teachers) need to be taught logic and reason. Then let them analyze the flaws. If we don’t do it in schools, when will they learn to see the bias in it?
That said, I’d don’t think governments should pay NGO’s to go to schools, or if it has to happen, they need to also fund freedom seeking, Western cultural heritage, libertarians, conservatives, etc etc.
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Governments from Hellenic period to now don’t generally go for educating children to become genuinely independent thinkers and researchers, beyond what is absolutely necessary for vocational purposes. Governments are also not too keen on people who would teach them to become genuinely independent thinkers. They really like and avidly support those who mouth pleasing platitudes about educating children, and how nice it would be for them all to have the best of educations. They just don’t like it much if the real-deal ever takes place. Which is actually a bit irreversible and politically regrettable. Which also suggests explanations of much of what we see going in science departments and agencies, as the educated types are generally the most logical and skeptical of people, so can be a real pain, and not very undesirable as a result. Thus it’s important to make sure they’re not educated to too fine and edge of logic and reason or independent analysis, so one must ensure they have fairly lackluster and uninspiring instructors, who themselves have never questioned a failed meme, or exhibited the irksome tendency to question a received distilled wisdom of the many.
280
So sweeping a condemnation, but where did you learn your own reasoning and logic?
28
I am somewhat despairing about what my grandchildren are reporting from school. Their talk is all about the horrors of European and English culture, about how we are destroying the earth through the climate and CO2, how we are to blame and its all about white privilege. When I attempt to counter some of it I get a disdainful, “the teachers wouldn’t be allowed to teach it if it wasn’t true.”
Where to go? What to do?
In a minute I’ll give up my helpless, hopeless stance and call my sister who doesn’t stand for this. I’ll work out my own personal plan for action.
300
This highlights the type of “silly little girl” we now get as teachers. Most are very much from the “chattering class”. From my contact with them, most are not bright enough to sort the facts from the propaganda.
Once upon a time career opportunities & higher education were more limited. If you didn’t have a rich father, you had to get a scholarship to get to uni. Two of the top 10 in my senior high school class were selected for teachers college, where a 2 year course made them a primary teacher. This was free, but required the student to serve 5 years as a public school teacher on completion.
Another 3 won teachers scholarships to uni, which required a similar term of service upon completion. Only those with a high leaving certificate pass were selected for these scholarships.
Thus it was only the more competent that made it into the classroom in most subjects. Many, now in their late 20s or early 30s stayed in the profession after this period due to inertia. In general, I had a much higher standard of teacher than my kids.
Once the feminists got control of the education system, they started dumbing down the courses to aid the average girl. I expect our next generation of teachers to be even less mature & worldly than this one.
210
I could not agree more, the standard of teaching has taken an almighty dive, to depths that will probably never be recovered.
The profession is now seen by those NOT teaching as a child minding extension with males are being groomed into taking on maths and science teaching because the student needs at least some paternal figure and/or the current crop are too busy teaching about the injustice that was dished out generations ago to aboriginals or promoting cli-fi making false claims on the demise of the world, all caused by the imperial development leading from our colonial past and its current incarnation.
60
I left school in 1966 at the end of Grade Ten and joined the RAAF.
I was surprised how many of my fellow class members from that time ended up becoming school teachers, even back then, and I see the same thing persisting even now. My brother was at Physio and met a girl who knew me, and he phoned me and put her on the phone and we talked for around a quarter hour. I went through Primary and Secondary school with her, well, until I left anyway. She was a teacher and mentioned that perhaps five or six of our class members went into teaching. Huh! Thank heavens I got out when I did, even though I ended up teaching the electrical trade to new guys in the RAAF as my career there wound towards retirement. She mentioned that only two of them did make it into Uni, and one of them dropped out. It seems I perhaps did make a relatively good decision to join up in the RAAF.
University and a degree in those days was the target for the Academic stream. It was no real aimed for vocational thing, but just the fall back if you didn’t get accepted for Uni.
The fall back if you didn’t make it was Teachers College, even then, in 1966 and even as early as that Grade Ten level, when there was the beginning of an inkling of how good you might become.
Still the same now.
It was the same with my Son when he graduated from Grade 12. Teachers College was the fall back position for most of his friends as well.
Now, our Granddaughter is a couple of Months away from Graduating from High School, and it’s even the same now.
I gently quiz her about her fellow students and what the main targets are. She says that there are a few in her circle who will actually make it to the hoped for prestige degree courses, but in the main, the fall back is still Teachers College.
Incidentally, I again gently prodded and asked if anyone in here grade Twelve cohort was hoping for Engineering Degrees. She looked at me with a quizzical look, and said why would anyone want to do that. Her School (The Catholic Emmaus College) is one of the four huge high schools here in Rocky, two on the South side, and two on our North Side, two RC schools and two State High schools, each with 1500 to 2000 students, so I’m talking huge here, and our Granddaughter’s Grade 12 cohort numbers in the hundreds, and she can’t think of anyone wanting to do Engineering.
And Climate Change. Whenever I mention it, I get a filthy look, and the comment “don’t you start on that crap!”
It’s the single most encouraging thing I hear from here about her schooling, and when I gently as possibly bring it up, she tells me that no one ever talks about it at all when they are among their friends. NO ONE!
Tony.
180
If our youth are not interested in climate change. that is encouraging in a way. But if we are to progress as a society it must be by the “relentless application of reason” (a phrase I have borrowed from Jeff McMullen). Therefore I believe that our youth must concentrate on climate change and conscientiously reject it.
I have a daughter, who is very interested in Nature, and hence so far she has adopted the climate change mantra, as indeed I did initially. I may have got one point home recently when I mentioned the terrible death toll of birds to Solar power plants. Since she has an interest in birds I will wait and see if I get follow up questions
80
I wonder if the policy writers at Oxfam ever read Mein Kampf, change a couple of words in their diatribe and one might say achtung!!!
110
Das Kapital!
10
Just had a BBQ with the neighbours. Their son is a science teacher. He’s around 25. He’s so adamant he’s right as the curriculum says it is. My challenges to put up the ’empirical’ science were met with frantic googling on his phone to first work out what ’empirical’ meant. Next I was shown various catastrophic web blogs. That’s what we are dealing with. I fear it may be too late unless the politicians wake up and start fixing this now.
10
pat,
I should have read the comments before responding below. They should get no money. They don’t belong there. In fact, as a matter of principle, there should not be NGO’s in the educational system to begin with. We pay taxes to have the government provide the education for our children. Why should we allow any outside influence to creep in and take over that job? They should’t have any influence whatsoever. The only ouside influence should come from the parents of the students. No one else.
One more thing. NGO’s get a portion of their funding from the national – federal government but they operate on a local level exerting their influence on local school boards and and local governments. That’s the front line. Any objections to influence from NGO’s must be voiced at the local level.
Abe
242
Actually I would rather that we pay the government to hire and manage good teachers but the content of the education be strictly under control of the parents and the voters within the school district. As far as I can see the possibility of trouble creeping in when government controls the content is just as bad as when the NGOs control things.
Some will call me a rabid local control freak or other such things. But in the end, the parents and voters within the school district are the only people in this world who have a legitimate vested interest in what’s taught in the classroom and what’s not.
140
Roy Hogue,
Absolutely. And that was the original function of local school boards. A place where parents can take positions of influence within the system both as members of those boards and by being present and active at board meetings.
Yes, they will. But please be aware that those that do, are precisely those people that want parents to stay out of their children’s education. 😮
They should not be ignored. They should be opposed!
Abe
211
But who determines which teachers are “good”? I saw a teacher sacked once because some of the local people were on a hate session driven by an unrelated issue and needed a scapegoat. Religion had bit to do with it too, in the late 20th century! Primitive!
20
Ted,
Good question. It’s certainly not a very easy thing to manage. But how do you determine if, say, a doctor or plumber is good? You judge by results they turn in at the end of the day. And above all else you don’t make teachers or administrators non firable.
The political aspect is always going to be there. Every pipsqueak cause has gone for control of the classroom, whether it be worldwide like climate change, or a local grievance. The success of the whole thing depends on the parents and the voters. So as a starting place, I think we need parents and voters in general who pay better attention to what’s going on and how well things are working.
And above all, we need to recognize that not all school districts will do it well — same situation we have now. So we need to let it operate and accept a certain amount of trouble. But with complete autonomy at least the failure of one district will not contaminate all the schools in the country.
20
“Professor” Clive Hamilton? I always thought he was a self appointed moral majority, or ‘public intellectual” as he self describes. With a very puny intellect, which takes the path of refusing to engage with any critic who does not share his odd belief system
160
What gets me about this whole issue is the self righteous semantics of it all.
It seems to me that, if you say something with which Oxfam approves, they will deign this to be an example of ‘Leadership’. If you say something with which Oxpam disapproves, they will deign this to be the absence of leadership.
I find it a totally arrogant position. Who are Oxfam to claim to be the arbiters of what is, and what is not, Leadership?
Remember, Oxfam is an un-elected lobby group. As such, the organisation is no different to any other un-elected lobby group such as a lobby group from big oil or big coal. The only difference may be in Oxfam’s self-appointed sense of self-righteousness. At least Tony Abbott and his government are elected and can claim to represent a democratic constituency.
360
For a lot more about Oxfam, top-down, see
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/09/facts-go-begging-oxfams-fundraising/
120
That’s a great article, Tony, very useful. Have you any information about the origins of Oxfam? I’ve been trying to find out a little about this, largely because it appeared at the time when Willi Münzenberg and his successor Otto Katz were busily setting up communist front organizations, and it does fit the pattern. Oxfam’s own mythology suggests that they came together to send food shipments through the blockade that was causing starvation in occupied Greece in 1942–but Maggie Black, whose history of the organization came out in 1992, acknowledges that there is no record of how the money (12,700 pounds!) they raised for that mission was actually spent. It would be interesting to find out; maybe it went to their fund-raisers!
60
A second part to the Oxfam follow-up is published today,
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/09/oxfam-part-2/
20
The other main semantic marker of the self-righteous Green groups is the word “demand”.
They never “suggest” or “request”; they are always demanding that other people behave in the way they have deemed correct.
Another one is “make a difference”, as though different is inherently better than what we have now.
I could “make a difference” to my local community hall by driving a fully-laden 18-wheel lorry through the building, but that wouldn’t be an improvement.
130
If I was in charge of education, these nuts would not be allowed anywhere near our schools and children.
260
Presumably chief among your reasons is that kids shouldn’t be fed a pack of lies.
I mean look at this shrill wibbly-wobbly agitprop in the “fair climate” handout:
Five out of the six statements in that single sentence are objectively false.
The part about worsening climate change is theoretically true but has been measured to be too small to be significant. The last empirical measurement I saw estimated the radiative forcing of additional CO2 as a trend +0.20 ±0.06 W/m^2 in a decade. The RTMs would predict +0.28W/m^2 so the measurement is slightly less than predicted. Since 1960 it should have added 1.2W/m^2. That’s against a baseline of over 240W/m^2 infra-red, so it’s a tiny fraction of a percent increase. That doesn’t establish at all how much temperature difference 1.2W/m^2 really makes, which is by the Stefan-Boltzmann theory only 0.33 degrees.
The other five statements are more easily disposed.
•”Dirty polluting companies” : Carbon dioxide is essential to life on earth, is at geologically abnormally low levels compared to the last 50 million years, and is therefore not a pollutant.
•”causing climate change to worsen” : The frequency of cyclones has decreased in the last 20 years compared to the 1960s and 1970s, and is more likely related to circulation patterns such as the PDO rather than global average temperature. Global average lower troposphere temperature has flatlined for 17 years and has been cooling for the last 13.5 years, so there is currently no “worsening” occurring.
•”poisoning our clean air” : In the rich western countries the power stations are required to scrub particulates and sulphur dioxide from the exhaust, so there is very little poison or pollution emitted.
•”threatening our food” : The additional CO2 has been credited for a 15% increase in earth’s land-based biomass because the effect on crops is a slight boost to their size.
•”[threatening our] water” : More evaporation also means more rain, and a warmer world is a wetter world. Plants also use water more efficiently when more CO2 is available, so if the plants are transpiring less it should mean more remains in groundwater for wells.
•”[threatening our] health” : Dirty polluting companies would threaten your health but we already established there are none of those in electricity generation, at least not outside of China and India. Indeed, cheap electricity would greatly improve health in developing countries by replacing smoky indoor fires with stovetops, and the only electric power source rumoured to be cheaper than coal is Lithium-Fluoride nuclear reactors which are still in prototype stage.
All that was just in one sentence.
Oxfam are begging for charity but their sales pitch beggars belief.
260
I think the study you’re referring to is Feldman et al 2015. Apparently between 2000-2010 they measured a radiative imbalance on CO2 absorption wavelengths of 0.2W/sq.m during when CO2 increased by 22ppmv. I was directed to that paper a few weeks ago by someone arguing that CO2 was having a significant warming effect on the climate. Of course as with all of these studies that I’ve come across, the paper exists behind a pay-wall so you have to pay £25 for the privilege to access the evidence. Anyway, a radiative forcing of 0.2W/sq.m corresponds to a warming of about 0.037C on a baseline temperature of 288K by the S-B law which only explains about 30% of the increase in temperature that warmists claim occured throughout that period of 0.12C. The counterargument from warmists is predictably thus: ‘the feedbacks explain the rest of the warming’.
70
lol I just realised you linked the paper in your post. Duh. Sorry
50
Richard
You may be able to get your local librarian to get you a copy.
30
All part of the program against Western education Robin keeps talking about at http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/. Grab the minds and emotions early and keep hitting them.
140
Anyone with children or nieces and nephews needs to read Robin’s site:
Here are three good articles
This one fits Oxfam/CAGW to a T
Destroying the Dominant Social Paradigm Via Education for 21st Century Political Power and Personal Gain
Collecting Student Data to Practice PsychoPolitics on a Massive but Invisible Scale without Consent
This is the same future that I am seeing:
Quietly Coercing a Vassals and Fiefdoms Future for All of Us While Hyping Economic Development
Middle Ages? Well yes a return to the Middle Ages has been what all of this has been about since US founding Fathers kicked out the Aristocracy and their buddies the bankers in 1776.
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The attempted creation of a Grünjugend proceeds apace. It’s amazing what a decade of indoctrination of children can produce. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmC_7WONyoY
You’d wonder if the parents are aware their kids are being co-opted into political campaigns as PR cannon fodder when they’re supposed to be there to learn a thing or two.
Pointman
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https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/12/restoring-sanity-national-curriculum/
Cross-curriculum-values-inculcating framed
by progressive certainties for a brave new
world is not education. We need to return
to syllabus education with emphasis on
significant content and critical thinking
skills leading to personal autonomy. Values
of honesty, respect for self and others
suffice. State school separation of state
and religion needs to include avoidance of
of inculcating the religious dogma of guilt environmentalism and collectivism run riot.
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I discontinued my donations to oxfam many years ago after receiving a letter urging to contribute to some left wing protest. I hear that Salvos may also politicise their stance as well. If this is the case I will do the same.
Charity is not about politics, but about humanity and selfless giving, a concept that a typical leftie would never understand. For them charity is about forcing your donation, activism and giving away your money, but not theirs.
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I cancelled my monthly donation years ago when I read their policy statement and their support for CAGW. I do not go into any of their charity shops and try to discourage anyone I know to do likewise. The first thing I do when charity appeals are broadcast on the telly is to read their policy statement and if it supports any of the “warmists” programmes then they will not get anything from me.
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before logging off, here are some of the people in charge of Oxfam, which Wikipedia claims has four main focuses for its resources – Economic Justice, Essential Services, Rights in Crisis, and Gender Justice. plenty of UN connections. do I believe they want to save the planet from alleged CAGW? no.
Oxfam: Oxfam’s CEO, Directors and Trustees
Oxfam’s Leadership Team
Mark Goldring, CEO
Mark has decades of experience within international development: as chief executive of VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas); in the field for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)…
Penny Lawrence, Deputy Chief Executive…
Penny is Chair of the global NGO humanitarian network, International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) and also sits on various advisory committees, e.g. at Oxford University, the Centre for the Study of African Economies and sustainability advisory bodies, e.g. IKEA, Unilever.
Penny started her career as a teacher and was International Programmes Director at VSO before joining Oxfam…
Francoise Vanni, Campaigns, Policy and Influencing Director
Other key development roles include Chief of Communications for UNICEF…
Jack Lundie, Communications Director
Before Save the Children, he worked at the BBC in a variety of roles, including strategic creative development for London 2012, Deputy Editor of Blue Peter and as innovation lead for BBC Sport. Prior to this, he led Comic Relief’s interactive team through two Red Nose Days and a Sport Relief…
Andrew Horton, Trading Director
Andrew has a degree in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia…
Oxfam’s Trustees
James Darcy, Vice Chair
Now a freelance consultant, James has led numerous organizational reviews and programme evaluations for UN agencies…
David Pitt-Watson, Hon. Treasurer
David Pitt-Watson is an Executive Fellow at London Business School, and Chair of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative…
Dame Marjorie Scardino
Marjorie Scardino was for 12 years chief executive (first in America and then worldwide) of The Economist Group and then, for 16 years, the chief executive of Pearson plc, the world’s leading education company and the owner of Penguin books and The Financial Times Group and half of The Economist.
She retired from her Pearson position on 1 January 2013, and is currently the Chairman of The MacArthur Foundation…
Nkoyo Toyo
She has worked for many development partners, including the United Nations, World Bank, European Uion, DfID and UNIFEM…
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/our-trustees
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Pat, or someone, can you appreciate the post above and NOT recognize a conspiracy?
UN-fund the UN now!
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Jo,
If they’re promoting false ideas, they should be stopped. They should not be there. Period.
What exactly is the best side of a lie? The government shouldn’t fund false, misleading propanda at all. Period.
Sorry. That is to say, I don’t applogize for what I wrote. I’m sorry that it may appear to you or others that I’m against you personally. I’m not. I support what you do 100%. I just think that your approach here is wrong. 😉
They’ll never let you in! You have to get them out! 😮
Cheers,
Abe
121
They are going to promote the false ideas on TV. We can’t hide that material from kids. Better to get it out, and have a debate.
“What exactly is the best side of a lie? “
C’mon. A loaded question. Which “lie” exactly did they use? Looks like the usual half-truths, wrapped in mangled English, which half the time we hear from the CSIRO and the ABC.
If the government funded both sides an Oxfam were dishing out lies, it would be a gift to the honest commentators.(If you find any, do let me know.)
If we “banned” Oxfam, some other group would take its place. If we banned government funded NGO’s, some big foundation would fill their shoes. Stopping speech is not the answer. Setting up better school resources, and teaching proper logic and reason is the only long term approach.
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But that requires that we take the politics (usually union driven, at least it is here in Canada) OUT of the teaching. Teachers are supposed to teach fact not opinions and nonsense….that isn’t working out so well for us in any country.
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Bill,
Your assessment is spot on. It’s not just the NGO’s but the teachers unions too. That’s why I mentioned the local school boards. The school boards are the interface between the government funded schools and the parents who pay to have their children educated by those schools.
It’s at the community level, by way of the local school boards that parents will be able to influence and even direct what their children’s education will look like. It’s there and nowhere else that parents can have a say in what will be taught and how it will be taught. It’s there and nowhere else that parents can stand up to union influence, NGO influence and any other foreign influence.
Over the years we’ve all allowed these outside groups to come in and tell us how they think our children should be educated, what they should know, and how they should think. The question is, how long will we continue to allow this negative force to remain entrenched between us and our kids?
Abe
161
Jo,
You’re not being rational. When you say half-truths you automatically imply half-lies, don’t you? And you know full well what those half-lies are so please don’t ask me what lies did they use.
Yes. The kids will hear the same BS non-sense on the tele and the MSM, but if they were not influenced by the schools to accept propaganda as valid science, they would spot it right away everywhere else. It’s that influence that needs to be removed. As long as there is an outside influence within the schools preventing the proper functioning of the school, the kids will continue to acept what they see in the popular media. The proper function being education not political activism. Not for and not against Cagw ™ or any other political or ideological perspective.
Schools were meant to teach. Period.
Abe
200
It’s my observation that no matter who controls the curriculum there will be some slant in the direction the controlling interest wants. This may be a good thing or it may be terrible. So what can we do about that slant, that bias that’s always there? The only thing I can see that has a chance is to make sure that no one, not government, not Oxfam or anyone else can get control over a whole nation’s schools or even a whole school district for that matter. So let me reiterate my argument from above, the parents and voters of the school district have to be in control of curriculum. That way, if one or even a number of districts get it wrong, it doesn’t contaminate the rest and it balances out the opinions with which students graduate and enter adult life. And we have to be willing to let any conflicting ideas work themselves out in the marketplace of daily life.
I can’t conceive of a perfect system of education. But I can easily see the advantage of putting control where the one real interest lies and then letting nature take its course. If the parents and voters don’t want to pay attention, then their schools fail. But all the other schools will succeed. If everything is controlled centrally and the central authority get it wrong, every school in the country fails.
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Abe, Read my quote, (that you quoted) I said ” I don’t want to stop NGOs going to schools”. That means I don’t think the answer is to legislate that non-governmental groups have to stay out of schools. I’m a free speech girl. Silencing people doesn’t work. More regulation isn’t the answer. Better education is.
And obviously we can’t “keep NGO’s out of schools”, or propaganda, by ruling out “half-truths”. What an Orwellian thing that would be. The answer to half truths is always to point out the whole truth. We can’t stop “half-truths” from getting into schools.
The answer in Australia is a very long term thing. We are barely even talking about school vouchers or charter schools (I expect a lot of Australians don’t know what they are). We need a whole different culture where parents see education as a free market choice. At the moment we have one of the most government controlled education systems in the entire West. The government funds both public and private, and there is only a tiny sector outside that. In other words, there is no true private sector. Parents can pick The National Curriculum, or The National Curriculum. “Independent” schools are government run and owned.
But I didn’t like the last paragraph, so I rewrote it. It’s better now. A useful prod. Thanks.
PS: The Centre for Independent Studies put out a report recommending charter schools just last week. But the knives are out everywhere lest this “American” idea takes off.
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Jo,
I read your quote before I quoted it. I quoted it because I know what it means and I disagree with it. I’ve now gone back and reread my comment and I couldn’t find where I suggest that legislation is the answer.
So while it may be true that legislation will be part of the solution, a very small part, being active at the local school-board level is the only way this problem can be solved. That’s where NGO’s are active and that’s where the parents need to be active also.
It may even be the case that legislation was put in place to allow NGO’s in, so the legislative solution would be to remove that legislation. IOW smaller government. But, unless the parents get involved in the activities of the school-boards, we’ll never know will we?
Furthermore, school-boards enact policies all the time. So in that sense, government gets bigger all the time. Don’t you want to be active and have an influence in what those policies are?
You said you’re a free speech girl. Well, I’m a free speech guy. I’m all for it. What I want is for my kids to be educated on how to judge other peoples statements. How to use logic and rational thought. I don’t want them to be exposed to some truth and some propaganda and be told that both of these are acceptable viewpoints. That’s what will happen if you continue to allow political activists to promote political objectives as if they were scientific facts.
Obviously. But that’s the reverse of what I propose. I propose that by keeping NGO’s and any other politically vested interests out of the schools, that will remove the propaganda and ‘half-lies’. In order to remove their influence and thereby keep them out of the schools, parents need to get involved in their local school-boards.
While I admire your idealism and the tenacity whith which you present it, again, there’s a small problem with this proposal. Education is not a free-market. In most of the world in general, and all of the Western world in particular, education is mandatory. This means that even if you provide options in the form of alternative schools and curriculums, that still leaves the old, poltically infested system in place. And that means that there will always be students who get a raw deal.
Charter schools, home-schooling, and school vouchers may be valuable in the short term, if we can get them to work properly. But in the mean time and over the long haul we must fix what’s broken. Leaving it intact will only cheat a vast amount of students of their proper education. Which students will those be?
Abe
110
Jo a question to for you and any experienced educators out there, at what level should this type of social/political ideals be taught in schools, late primary, high school or saved for early university when the student has more life experience?
Traditionally any child would be taught political/social bias’ from their family or exposure in the various media available, but in schools there is always the risk of over zealous teachers influencing the curriculum to lead the student into thinking a certain way.
This won’t always work as personally looking back now there were a few teachers that tried pushing leftist ideals on us including the validity of ‘The Greenhouse Effect’ as it was known in the early to mid 1980’s, my parents were a good leveler of ideas when you asked questions and encouraged you to investigate yourself or presented forgotten history that is never raised in schools or media.
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Yonniestone,
College/University. Only as an elective and only if the course name and description clearly state the course is political in nature.
K-12 is mandatory. So students will be forced to learn the subjects they’re taught and they’ll be expected to pass those courses.
Back then, mass media was much more balanced when presenting political views. Not any more. And it’s that connection between parents and their children that the current educational system strives to sever. By enacting compulsory K-12 education as law, the progressive movement led by Dewey took the first step in severing that connection.
Abe
By the way, the green thums was as much to commend your parents as it was for the content of your post.
90
Jo,
I don’t often disagree with you but here I do. In schools we condition our kids to assume the education represents the world in a factual way. The NGOs including oxfam are exploiting that environment to corrupt that learning environment. It’s one of the resons western education is failing. We teach stuff through the lens of political correctness – fail.
Political parties are not allowed to directly influence education in schools, so why is the
progressiveregressive side of politics allowed to corrupt our children using their NGO proxies, political messaging to school children must be banned regardless of who does it.A number of things SHOULD be legislated.
1. No NGO that has any business lobbying government should be government funded, or tax free. Huge conflict of interest. And that means Greenpiss and oxfam.
2. NGO claims in support of their hawking for donations must be subject to [tests of their] claims. For example Flannery should have to substantiate or repudiate his dams will never fill again lie, or run the risk of being prosecuted for touting for donations on the basis of an lie – corporations would be crucified if they did what NGOs do.
3. NGOs must be subject to truth in advertising legislation.
4. Leadership of NGOs must be subject to the same laws and sanctions as the corporations they are.
Our schools MUST be protected from non-factual fraudulent propaganda from anywhere, it should be possible for a citizen, any citizen, to have an organisation excluded and fined heavily if they can be shown to be delivering lies, half-truths ( unbalanced materials) or propaganda to students or packaging and offering up such material as suitable for school use.
Sorry Jo, but you are wrong, small children are not the right target for a debate, they must be insulated from the propaganda, lies and truth twisting, until their minds are capable of reliably telling truth from lies and spin. NGO legislation MUST be amended such that citizens can force them to correct their lies. Lying is NOT ok especially in schools.
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1. Agreed. But it happens. This post was there to point out that conflict.
2. Yes, so quote the “lies”, be accurate. If Oxfam are citing the BOM and CSIRO, the real problem lies there. No court will tell off Oxfam for repeating what the BOM says.
3. Agreed.
4. Agreed.
5. I want to protect students from propaganda by teaching them to see through it rather than by banning them. If groups are banned from schools, the bureaucratic machinery will ban skeptics from visiting schools because they “disagree” with the BOM. If there is no free speech, we lose every time. If there is free speech we win. I will always fight for free speech. If we ban government funded NGO’s from schools, they will set up subdivisions funded by Foundations and get in with the exact same message. I we ban Oxfam, a new group will take its place and say the same thing.
6. Small children are already subject to politicised messages – -it comes in their text books already (just not as openly as Oxfam are pumping). It comes from the ABC “news” at night and “news” for kids run in school time. We can’t stop it and protect kids through silence, we have to inform parents so they can protest to the Principals, and we need to get logic and reasoning into schools. If having Oxfam at the school starts a discussion and debate, that’s so much better than having the ABC news shone in every day with no comment.
7. Where did I say “lying” was OK to children? Ans, not.
Bob, we seem to be debating two different things and we agree on nearly everything (ex 6). You don’t need to apologize and say “sorry Jo”. But you do need to read what I wrote carefully. 😉 More regulation and more legislation always ends up helping big-government. But we should not stand by while big-gov funds propaganda. If Oxfam feels heat from DFAT for being caught pumping political messages at schools, it will pull its claws in.
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That logic does not follow. In fact, a “half-truth” is entirely different to a “half-lie”.
A “half-truth” presents some of the facts, but does so in such a way, that the recipient will cognitively interpret the facts in a particular way. For example, a doctor telling a patient that, “it is an unpleasant disease, but people often recover”. This “half-truth” was often used in the mid-twentieth century Polio epidemic, where the potential for disfigurement was never mentioned.
A half-lie uses equivocation to mask the fact that a lie is being told. Phrases like, “Some people believe … ” or, “It has been reported that …”, and my favorite: “Astute readers will have already reached the conclusion, that …” insert lie here.
60
Ah Ha! then a half truth is even worse than a full lie.
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Mark D.
Touche!
Couldn’t have put it better. 😉
(And I’ve been trying since that comment went up.) 🙁
Abe
10
I guess that’s why the oath you take as a witness in court goes,
Emphasis is always on THE WHOLE TRUTH as I see it.
I don’t know if a half truth is worse than a full lie or not but I know they are both lies. A lie of omission can do as much damage as a lie by direct false statement.
40
I like this quote.
“To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But, in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff
30
agree
40
Jo,
Just-To-Bring-The-Point-Home!
You own a business and hire an accountant. You find out the accountant is cooking the books. You don’t hire an additional accountant to reverse the mistakes. You fire the accountant and get a new one.
The same is true in education. Local school boards, under the influence of foreign agencies, are ‘cooking the books’! Pun Intended. 🙂
Therefore . . .
Abe
130
Well said J A G
40
I am with you Abe.
Political/pressure groups should not be in K-12 PERIOD. Children should be learning the three Rs not learning to be useless political agitators like Obama and his crowd.
If I had kids I would yank them out of government schools so fast it would make your head spin and home school. As it is I advise parents to home school and connect them to Dr Robinson’s (Oregon Petition) website and connect them to some of the local homeschooling networks in my area.
Robinson Self-Teaching Homeschool Curriculum
Even if you are not in the USA or do not have kids it is worth looking at. His point of view is you start the kid off. Teach reading and a bit of math and then turn the kid loose to learn on his own. THIS develops a thinking independent individual well armed for todays world because they can think for themselves, do research and they can stand on their own two feet and they know it..
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gai,
Thaks! 😉
Out of all the alternatives to public K-12, home schooling is the most promising because you can take advantage of it right now! In the US, they’re working towards having the home-school curriculums adhere to Common Core either directly or by requiring that finals and SAT’s be aligned with it.
That’s where the first salvo needs to be fired. i.e. Preventing that connection from being enacted into law.
Abe
70
Even if they ‘require’ Common Core by aligning the testing to it, if you home school you can still teach your kids facts and have them learn the crud just to pass testing.
All this does is drive home the fact the government is trying to brainwash them to the kids. This is especially true if you use Dr Robinson’s method of self-teaching where the child grabs hold of a topic and researches it. Not only Dr Robinson and his wife, but the entire group of research scientists at the Oregon Institute were part of setting up his curriculum so it is very much research orientated depending a lot on a child’s natural curiosity to promote learning.
All of Dr Robinson’s children have done very very well in college. If I recall correctly Zachary tested out of the first two years of college.
The liberals of course are trying to figure out ways to counter this trend towards home schooling and therefore yank out the old reliable “Adjusted”
From Love, Joy, Feminism
….The demographics of these samples were far whiter, more religious, more married, better educated, and wealthier than national averages. And yet these test score results were compared to average public school scores that included children from all income levels and family backgrounds. Not surprisingly, wealthy homeschoolers from stable two-parent families who take tests administered by their parents in the comfort of their own homes outscore the average public school child by large margins.
The simple fact is that no studies of academic achievement exist that draw from a representative, nationwide sample of homeschoolers and control for background variables like socio-economic or marital status. It is thus impossible to say whether or not homeschooling as such has any impact on the sort of academic achievement measured by standardized tests….
60
gai,
Don’t get me wrong. I approve of home schooling as I mentioned. And I agree that by using the right curriculum and promoting the natural curiosity of children, you can achieve excellent results. i.e. well adjusted rational adults that know how to, and feel comfortable with, thinking for themselves.
The part about ‘the first salvo’ was meant in reference to my previous comments about fixing the parts of the system that are broken. I believe we should raise and nurture our own children but I also believe that we should be involved as a group in helping others in their strugle to raise and nurture their children.
The progressives have become quite elegant at dividing us into smaller and smaller groups so that we don’t present a unified front against them. They’ve also been very effective at seperating us from our children. Both of these ‘successes’ need to be reversed.
This will only occur when we combine our individual talents into one cohesive entity. When they say, “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts”, this is what they’re referring to. Social groups. IMHO.
Abe
40
JAG,
I agree which is why my husband and I, having no children are involved in promoting home schooling and the homeschooling network in our area. (We also tutor)
A local church not far from us has donated the church basement for use as a class room. This means the home schooled kids get to socialize and the parents are not locked into having to watch their kids all day long. It also means there is a wide range of expertise for answering questions.
30
Hear, Hear Gai. What you’re talking about, in essence, is teaching children to think for themselves from the earliest possible age. If they can think, they can reason, they can research and they can draw their own conclusions, (hopefully) without political influence.
70
What some agencies hope to achieve,
From the work they perform to relieve,
Is that school-children feed,
On their climate-change creed,
Thus deluding the youth to believe.
210
… In place of not learning to read.
40
Nice irony. There used to be a group of oil companies known as “The Seven Sisters”. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(oil_companies)
50
oxfam has always been one of my top choices for donations (of large scale organizations at least). they used to be more centered. they will never see another dollar of mine. i hope they are reading this.
150
“Oxfam – CEO Dr Helen Szoke (salary $229,000)”
Jo a great article …
I think $229,000 seems rather a lot to pay for a reduction in services..
150
No!
You forgot something?
The expense allowance; probably double the salary.
90
Oxfam was also a big winner form all those comedy festivals and galas held over the years spruiked by the rabid left comedy arm of the entertainment industry, sadly I’m not laughing now though!
100
It’s a very sad day when supposedly humanitarian groups like Oxfam advocate expensive energy for the world’s poor:
Oxfam, Energy & Policy by Mike Schellenberger
ABC, No, coal is not good for humanity
OPINION
By Helen Szoke
Oxfam has released its latest report, Powering up against poverty: Why renewable energy is the future.
Dr Helen Szoke is the chief executive of Oxfam Australia.
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‘It is here that the Government is risking Australia’s own future. Coal consumption in China fell 2.9 per cent in 2014 and has continued to fall precipitously through 2015 as the country funnels billions of dollars into renewable energy.’
Helen Szoke
——-
Its a lie, they have cut back on coal because of the economic downturn and not because renewables are making inroads.
140
Not to mention the bulk of the non-coal is either Hydro or Nuclear.
Unlike western countries China is not crazy.
70
It is not the funding of renew ables that is the problem. If only it was.
The problem is that ‘Carbon green’ has usurped traditional environmentalism.
Once upon a time there was environmentalism. All molecules were under the microscope. Pesticides, herbicides, heavy-metals, and so on.
Along comes ‘Carbon Green’ and now being environmental is being aware of CO2. It stops around about there.
Kids need to be taught the history of environmentalism and how it changed.
In my opinion.
50
el gordo. In any case, i do not disagree with the point you made.
40
Speaking of charities.
The Heart Foundation is apparently doing a doorknock appeal this September using local volunteers.
Before you donate, I suggest you read page 8 of the following pdf
http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/Food-sensitive-planning-urban-design-full-report.pdf
51
I avoid donating to most charities now unless I have been able to see locally where the money is going. Have been stung on too many occasions.
Read through the first couple of paras by “Trev” and got the message quick.
The rest of it is amazing; not quite what you might have understood about your Heart.
Well spotted Andy
KK
60
To be honest, I’ve seen many manuscripts with near identical words to page 5. “bla bla bla is written for a diverse audience, including planners, architects, urban designers, engineers, policy makers, community members and elected representatives”.
Sometimes a Councillor will run with an idea for a while. But it is never taken up as a policy, nor are they well considered as far as consequences go. They are an ideological idea only. Impractical in the real world.
“Mostly Harmless”.
30
Not harmless Greg.
The volume of waffle is there to confuse and ultimately provide a big stick with which you can be controlled.
There is so much of this CRAP everywhere through government and business that it is a threat to reason and clear statements of the facts.
It is probably worse in our Teaching Courses at University. No basic science regarding good teaching and content ; just waffle, and somebody gets paid to do this????
KK
90
I went off them after seeing their nonsense recommendations on diet. Even now they approve of margarine, among other things.
60
John Silver
Says that “Fear mongering is terrorism”.
Good things often come in small packages and this comment says it best.
It is terrorism without the blood, but the most cunning terrorism of all; the capturing and detailed distortion of young minds .
These youngsters deserve PROTECTION.
We are letting our kids and grandchildren be robbed and DENIED the best that education should offer in the capacity to think and act for your own and the community “best interest”.
Get out of the UN, bring some form of rationality to the world of politics; but how’ revolt????
KK
90
The infiltration of green groups and organisations into all our major institutions has been ongoing for years. This targets the population at all levels at schools , in media , in politics, in companies ,in the churches. Every aspect of normal peoples lives are being impacted by this insidious movement. As I have said before Global Warming Alarmism is the greatest moral dilemma of our time. True evil is that which is disguised in good intentions.
100
A couple things which Jo wrote in response to fellow “postees”
As a Libertarian, I liked this very much, and pretty much sums it up 😀
So…
Should we be worried about Oxfam’s change from being a simple “famine response” charity into a full on political propaganda machine ?
Australians will have to decide if they want to financially support
“Political Oxfam” as opposed to “Famine Relief Oxfam”
80
We are not talking free speech here we are talking deliberate brain-washing
As far as I am concerned the local citizens who pay the taxes that pays for the school are the ones who should have the say. This is NOT what is happening. Instead, at least in the USA, while the Pledge of Allegiance and Lords Prayer are chased out of the schools propaganda outfits like PETA and Oxfam get an open invitation. Heck ‘if I recall correctly “sustainability’ is now required by law at college campuses in the USA.
100
agreed
40
It is serendipitous that Oxfam is highlighted here. The UN post-2015 push is on. Membership of this UN ‘team’ predictably covers all the key UN players. At the heart of this lies the UN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL (ECOSOC), the United Nations’ central platform “for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development.”
As the NGO’s form the bedrock of UN action and undemocratic interference in the name of the Ministry-of-we-know-best-for-your-own-good, a little research quickly establishes the link between Oxfam and UN ECOSOC visible here — NGOs in Consultative Status with ECOSOC. Look at the breathtaking list of broad community and institutional involvement. This is the UN in your life now. Now consider how one sets about pushing back against this tide?
It is therefore no surprise that Oxfam are on mission in schools. Further, they will see it as not only justified, but defensible and officially sanctioned. But what also becomes clear when one searches through the various UN sites is the ballooning complexity of the UN bureaucracy, that is truly a burgeoning global Government-in-Waiting. Of this there can be no mistake. The evidence shows that the UN is continually insinuating itself and its institutions into global daily life and that these preoccupations preclude its core activities. “UN Climate change” as we all know is a key lynch-pin. The UN bought and paid for climate ‘scientists’ a long time ago.
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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I agree with most of the comments above but I remind you that there have been quite a few comments on this blog , over time, from posters who have related what their children / grandchildren have said about the AGW issue , namely they see it as a load of rubbish. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but we have to give the kids some credit for being work out what is right and what’s wrong.
Does Oxfam have “charity status” in Australia? ( If it is like NZ then an organisation with charity status does not pay tax)
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Unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of indoctrination and propaganda being perpetrated throughout our public school systems. In fact I see our schools turning into training camps for a new form of socialism rather than staying as academic learning centres. This is happening not just for the climate change scam/hoax but in a lot of other areas, such as the relaxing of sexual morality and the push for religious tolerance as long as it’s not Christian. I hope the comment by Ross above is right and our children have to good common sense to resist such attacks but I can’t see it happening as long as the schools get away with what they are doing. If you tell a lie long enough the majority end up being brainwashed.
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Peter
Good comment
Our children have no capacity at all to discriminate in these matters.
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As I have said before the brain washing is deliberate and it started in 1896 with John Dewey.
Dumbing Down America
Oxfam is doing there best to also foster “the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society…”
WHAT does any of that stuff have to do with learning to read, write and do math? Heck here in North Carolina their was a fight to teach ONLY printing and do away with cursive writing but the schools have plenty of time for filling the kids heads with propaganda.
North Carolina’s ‘Back to Basics’ Education Revives Cursive Handwriting
100
I did some research on John Dewey and he has a lot in common with the likes of Stalin (extreme left socialism) and Hitler (extreme right socialism) which all lead to relativism that’s now becoming more prevalent yet again. The result is there is no distinction between what’s good and what’s evil. Such thinking leads to a shattering crisis as history has proven so many times. The AGW scam/hoax is just the start. I see a world developing more and more like the movie Equilibrium before my very eyes. Probably will take another 10-20 years but we are definitely heading in that direction.
40
Dewey was bad news and has done much harm to many many Americans and anyone else who had the misfortune to be ‘educated’ under his system.
He was also a founder of the American Fabian Society though that has pretty much disappeared off the internet.
50
some might have noticed a Unilever connection to Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s Deputy Chief Executive, in the listings above.
then remember Unilever/Paul Polman’s high profile on the CAGW front.
Oxfam Australia: Unilever
Unilever represent a truly global partner, providing support to Oxfam affiliates across the world…
Unilever staff also contribute donations through their workplace giving program, which form an important source of ongoing sustainable funding for Oxfam programs.
leftist New Int outlines some of the criticisms that were being levelled at the likes of Unilever & charities such as Oxfam etc:
Dec 2014: New Internationalist: The company they keep
Ian Brown on the love-in between the big charities and transnational corporations.
Oxfam’s uncompromising vision of a world where everyone has enough to eat is embodied in the high-profile ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign, which promises to ‘provide people… with the information they need to hold the Big 10 [global food and beverage producers] to account’. One such is Unilever, about whom Oxfam was, until recently, rightly critical: ‘[Unilever’s] record on land rights leaves plenty to be desired.
By its own Responsible Sourcing policy, Unilever will not require 80 per cent of its suppliers to consider the rights of women to land ownership until the end of 2017. In the past Greenpeace has accused Unilever of sourcing its palm oil from Indonesian suppliers whose activities included ‘tearing up areas of pristine forest then draining and burning the peatlands’. The company was recently fined $120 million by the European Commission for establishing a price-fixing cartel in Europe along with Proctor & Gamble…
Yet despite all the criticism, ‘Unilever is a vocal advocate for tackling climate change and new business models that benefit poor farmers,’ according to Penny Fowler, head of Oxfam’s private sector team. ‘[W]e will continue to engage with Unilever and other companies because reducing global poverty and inequality is good for business and us all.’ Oxfam currently helps the transnational under its ‘Corporate engagement’ programme ‘to incorporate thousands of smallholder farmers into their [Unilever’s] global supply chain’. But is this really an innovative way of ending poverty or is Oxfam helping a rich company get richer at the expense of poor farmers? Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, is in no doubt of the benefits to the company, giving thanks to ‘partners who are assisting us to deliver this new business model’…
http://newint.org/features/2014/12/01/charities-and-transnationals/
such criticisms led to this vague promise recently:
17 Aug: Reuters: Chris Arsenault: Large food firms back voluntary plan to stop land grabbing
Global food giants and international NGOs have drafted a framework to prevent land grabs just as hedge funds, companies and plantation owners race to acquire new territory.
Drafted by senior figures from Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola and other large firms, along with researchers from Oxfam, Global Witness and the other international organizations, the voluntary guidelines on responsible land acquisition were released on Monday.
Indigenous people and local farmers in some of the world’s poorest countries in recent years have seen companies push onto land they have inhabited for generations, as investors scramble to secure land rights and forest resources…
Unilever, a major consumer goods manufacturer, declined interview requests, but sent a statement calling land rights a “core focus area” for the firm.
The company is “developing a new Global Land Rights Policy” which it will publish later this year, a Unilever spokesperson said in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation…
Palm oil plantations, cattle ranches, large forestry operations, sugar cane plantations and crops grown to produce biofuels are among the largest targets land grabbers seek…
More than 32 million hectares, an area larger than Poland, has been traded in large-scale land deals since 2000, according to a study from Sweden’s Lund University published in November…
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-large-food-firms-back-voluntary-plan-to-stop-land-grabbing-2015-8?IR=T
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“The question remains whether Australia will do the right thing by the Pacific and ensure the leaders meeting sends the strongest possible signal ahead of Paris, or whether together with New Zealand, it will use its influence in the Forum to weaken any outcomes,” Dr Szoke said.
ABC
——
Can’t speak for our cousins across the gap, but I’m pretty sure Tony Abbott will offer them renewables free of charge.
40
Very annoying.
I wrote a post (that appears to have simply vanished, in spite of being advised I was submitting a duplicate post upon trying again).
In that post, which took considerable time, I highlighted with links the UN bedrock platform reliant on NGO’s and in particular the consultative role played by organisations to the UN.
Oxfam is one such listed organisation, clearly crossing the boundary from charity into overt politics. It will not be lost on most that Oxfam will feel entirely justified and indeed mandated (courtesy of a UN imperative – post 2015 goals) to interfere in the school room. They will see themselves ‘on mission’ in this top-down undemocratic and orchestrated ‘educative’ role.
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Darn, I hope your post gets fished out of the black hole Manfred.
I can not say I am surprised at the information. Several years ago I tripped over information that the NGOs were created specifically to silence the voice of citizens without them realizing it.
From five years ago:
THE ORIGINS OF NGOs
Remember Maurice Strong, Chair of the First Earth Summit in 1972 that started CAGW? The guy who said “…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class…are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns….” in his opening remarks at Earth Summit II in 1992.
In brief Maurice Strong worked in Saudi Arabia for a Rockefeller company, Caltex, in 1953. He left Caltex in 1954 to worked at high levels in banking and oil. By 1971, he served as a trustee for the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1972 was Secretary-General of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment. He was Co-founder of the WWF and Senior Advisor to the World Bank and the UN.
Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.” http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html
NGOs REPLACE VOTERS in USA
By Presidential Executive Order the USA was divided into ten regions. These regions are governed by an unholy mix of unelected government bureaucrats and NGOs. The regions were set up by President Nixon but the implementation of the “regional governance concept began in earnest with the Clinton-Gore administration. “On the heels of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development , came the President’s Community Empowerment Board, chaired by Vice President Al Gore,” [ http://www.rense.com/general63/ree.htm ] These quasi-governmental regional authorities are slowly transforming the US from representative government to government by United Nations sponsored and directed NGOs and appointed bureaucrats.
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Thanks gai. It seems to have disappeared beyond the event horizon!
I have re-tracked down some links that may be of interest, re:
The UN, NGO’s and the euphemistically described ‘2015 millennium goals’.
First:
The policy diktat machinery of the UN.
“The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is the United Nations’ central platform for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development.”
Second:
The NGO support of “currently 4,186 (NGOs) in active consultative status with (ECOSOC). Information regarding applications for consultative status, participation in meetings and events at the United Nations…” Oxfam (2002) is listed here and it is an extraordinary example of undemocratic governance in action. So, if anyone thinks that the UN is not already exerting considerable influence at a global community level, I suggest that the evidence provided here suggests the contrary.
In fact, trawling around the various organs of the UN highlights the glaringly obvious, that The UN is Global Government in Waiting. Of that there can be no doubt. I would venture to suggest that it would also seem why UN focus appears inept and under-powered when it comes to their alleged core business. The ‘refugees’ out of North Africa and Syria are a case on point, left firmly in the lap of Europe, while the UN focus lies instead on its 2015 Millennium Goals that require posturing on climate and the environment in preparation for the COP21 escargot extravaganza.
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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Manfred,
ECOSOC = INGSOC ? ! 😮
Abe
10
Thanks Gai.
I’ve just re-posted and it has disappeared again. This is most bizarre.
Here are the links in longhand. Have a look. The UN is incontestably a Government in Waiting. The communal reach through more than 4,000 NGO’s is undeniable.
http://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/about/index.shtml
http://csonet.org/
http://csonet.org/content/documents/E-2014-INF-5%20Issued.pdf
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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My third attempt to post today, the last three attempts disappeared even though it appeared as though they had been properly posted.
Know that the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is “a unifying platform for sustainable development and plays a key role in convening development actors to address a broad range of themes that contributed to preparations for a unified and universal post-2015 development agenda.”
Know that ECOSOC is the United Nations’ central platform for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development.
Know that the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has a pivotal consultative NGO Branch.
The list of NGO’s is published here. As we know it includes Oxfam.
It is hardly surprising that the NGO’s think they have a mandate to meddle without democratic consideration. The more one looks, the more it is evident that the UN is a Global-Government-in-Waiting with structures and tentacles permeating every aspect of ‘civil’ society.
Just give them the nod.
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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There are about 4000 NGO’s plugged into the UN. Oxfam is just one. They’re collectively engaged in the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), a unifying platform for sustainable development. ECOSOC plays a key role in convening development actors to address a broad range of themes that contributed to preparations for a unified and universal post-2015 development agenda.
The full list of ECOSOC NGO’s may be read here: List of non-governmental organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council as of 1 September 2014
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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Manfred,
Thanks for all your effort to get this information out.
Rosa Koire has good information about ICLEI… International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. It was created as a non-governmental spin-off by the United Nations in 1990 to implement Agenda 21 locally across the world.
My local city has one of their land use plans. My farm becomes part of a wildlife corridor with no human use allowed.
What is being done to the People of Christchurch NZ is an example of how the local people are cut out and these NGOs substituted when it comes to decision making. The NGOs are to give an appearance of legitimacy to what is in actual fact totalitarian rule by the UN bureaucracy.
OXFAM is doing the brainwashing to make the next generation accept their serf status.
30
give us your money:
8 Sept: Toronto Star: Bob Weber: Pension managers must consider climate change risks: study
Climate change is one of the biggest risks faced by Canadian pension plans, says a new study.
“Climate change risks must be taken into account, and pension trustees may protect the longer term interests of their beneficiaries by acting as effective public-policy advocates for climate change regulation,” says the report from the Toronto-based firm of Koskie and Minsky, one of Canada’s leading pension law firms.
“The urgency of climate change, coupled with its potentially severe consequences, suggest that pension fiduciaries may engage governments on climate change issues to attempt to achieve a collective outcome that they are incapable of achieving alone.”
The report was commissioned by Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE), a non-profit environmental investing consultancy that advises clients with a total of about $14 billion in assets, said spokesman Kevin Thomas…
But the report goes further. It says trustees may also have a responsibility to preserve an overall economy in which it is possible to prosper…
One thing trustees can no longer do is deny what’s happening, says the report.
“In making investment decisions, climate change denial is not an option,” it says…
http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/09/08/pension-managers-must-consider-climate-change-risks-study.html
8 Sept: Reuters: Sharon Bernstein: No easy passage seen for California climate change bills
California lawmakers negotiated frantically behind the scenes on Tuesday over the fate of several proposals to dramatically reduce the state’s use of fossil fuels and slash the amount of greenhouse gases that legally could be emitted…
The proposals, contained in two bills that must be passed by Friday night or die, won passage in the liberal state Senate but have met opposition from moderate Democrats in the Assembly.
Equally controversial is a proposal floated last week by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown that drivers pay $65 per year in additional fees to help pay for road repairs in the state…
The deadline for bills passing the legislature’s regular session is Friday night. A special session on the state’s transportation system could continue longer, but lawmakers have not yet said they would do so.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/08/us-usa-california-climate-change-idUSKCN0R82PK20150908
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Quite a few years ago I bought a board game called “Propaganda”. It was commissioned by the British government during WWII and its purpose was to train people how to recognize propaganda. After testing it, the government decided not to distribute it as it proved to be too effective — teaching people to recognize the British propaganda as well as German. The government didn’t want to destroy the effectiveness of its own propaganda and figured that they could keep the German propaganda down with wartime censorship.
Teaching kids to recognize the techniques of manipulation is possibly the best response to blatant propaganda attacks like Oxfam’s, since they end up being permanently inoculated against all kinds devious arguments. (Make them into ‘skeptics’, in the original meaning of the word.)
There are organizations which teach these things, and even supply lesson plans for school teachers:
School Journalism is an organization (apparently associated with the University of Missouri) that creates High School lesson plans and supplies materials for complete courses in Journalism, including a fairly comprehensive segment on propaganda methods and detection.
Southern Methodist University (in Dallas, Texas) teaches a class on Propaganda — see the materials here.
Weirdly, this is taught through the Physics Department. (I guess it is still important that scientists are taught to think logically — too bad many of todays “Climate Scientists” didn’t have this kind of instruction.)
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I don’t know about Australia, but the best way to insert instruction into the school curriculum is using local pressure from the parents. Perhaps some of the organizations like CFACT can be interested in helping to organize such pressure.
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It would be really nice if you still have that board game “Propaganda” to donate it to someone like CFACT or Heartland (who does educational stuff) to make an updated version of it.
Better still come up with a computer game of a similar nature.
And you are correct once the blinders are off you can spot the propaganda a mile away.
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The only game on offer at the moment is ‘Headache’, oh but ‘Monopoly’ seems to be growing….
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Found this link at the Academic Games Leagues of America. Don’t know how that’s related to the board game.
Lorne Greene (is there more than one?) wrote in an advert:
Publisher info indicates that the Allen/Greene/Moulds version of the game was (first) published in 1966. This one looks like an updated version of the original.
20
What! The one by Lorne Greene and Robert Allen? This one: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/159548/propaganda-game
It includes “an 88 page book which includes the rules of play and descriptions of numerous propaganda techniques, 40 cards containing propaganda quotations, four ‘prediction dials’, and a score chart.” It even covers informal fallacies of logic. I want one. . . .
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mind-blown-Dominic’s IMAGINARY link between global climate change and the rise of the robots:
8 Sept: WaPo: Dominic Basulto: The strange link between global climate change and the rise of the robots
Dominic Basulto is a futurist and blogger based in New York City
In fact, according to a mind-blowing research paper (LINK) published in mid-August by computer science researchers Joel Lehman and Risto Miikkulainen, robots would quickly evolve in the event of any mass extinction (defined as the loss of at least 75 percent of the species on the planet), something that’s already happened five times before in the past…
First of all, there has to be the type of climate change event in 2050 that many — including the UN — are warning about.
Second, that climate change has to cause the type of destruction that the UN has been warning about, leading to a mass extinction. (Not so far-fetched, given the fact that some are already saying that we’re already in the midst of a “sixth extinction.”)…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/08/the-strange-link-between-global-climate-change-and-the-rise-of-the-robots/
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(My bolding here)
Umm, and when their batteries go flat …..
Tony.
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Comedy Gold
50
The exoskeleton of the robots will be made of solar panels. Robots that have been dormant can hold hands with other robots that have been busy to initiate energy transfer to the depleted busy robots. 🙂
20
Did that get peer-reviewed??
So funny if it did. !!
Another mockery of the journalistic peer-review process. 🙂
10
ramping up the rhetoric:
8 Sept: MSNBC: Tony Dokoupil: Europe’s next crisis: Climate change could create millions of new refugees
President Obama set the tone in a speech last week in Alaska, where he summoned images of “desperate refugees,” “entire industries of people who can’t practice livelihoods” and “political disruptions that could trigger conflicts around the world.” Secretary of State John Kerry dubbed them “climate refugees,” and warned of a global fight for food, water and “mere survival.”
Now, less than 100 days before a major climate change summit in Paris, the president of France is sounding the same alarm…
That’s not just political hot air…
In recent years, people with “.mil” domains – official U.S. military addresses – have been accessing more federal climate data in general…
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/europes-next-crisis-climate-change-could-create-millions-new-refugees
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You’ll love this. We are going to get even more large scale solar subsidy farms. Click on link to go to page and listen to audio.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/australias-solar-industry-to-get-a-boost-with-ten-new-solar/6760724
Australia’s solar industry to get a boost with the construction of ten new solar farms
Wednesday 9 September 2015 8:23AM (view full episode)
Australia’s solar industry is set to get a big boost of energy, with ten new large solar farms set to come on stream.
The ventures will be funded by a $350 million grant from Australia’s two major renewable energy agencies—the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
It’s hoped the extra capacity will bring down the price of solar power relative to the booming wind power industry.
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Yowza! What wonderful news! (my bolding here)
LARGE SCALE.
Wow!
Ten of them for a total nameplate (all ten) of 200MW.
That is impressive.
So, ten new Solar PV plants. Total yearly power delivery from all ten of them is 220GWH, you know, the same power delivered by Bayswater in, umm, 3 days and 9 hours, with all four units running.
They have a
modelled,hoped for, life span of 25 years.So, if we pretend really hard that they can deliver at their best rate of power delivery for their whole life, then the total power delivery from these TEN solar plants over that full 25 years will be the same as actually delivered by Bayswater in 114 days under normal operation of Bayswater.
So, TEN new solar PV plants, LARGE SCALE no less, will be saving 114 days of CO2 emissions from ONE power plant.
But you see, it won’t be actually doing that, saving those emissions, because Bayswater will still operate for those 114 days.
The calculation is based upon what the emissions MIGHT BE ….. IF this 200MW of solar power was 200MW of the oldest tech largest emitting coal fired mini plant they can model, and then add some to make it even more impressive.
Now, that really IS propaganda on behalf of this solar announcement.
And don’t be conned by the statement that it will only cost $350 Million. That’s just the seed money.
Tony.
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Would it be that is what I heard about 1:30 pm in part via “ABC Misinformation”?
Seemed to be about the given latest green power being equal in cost to new coal technology?
And inklings of some snouts in a trough?
As I think I heard
10
Forgot to add – thought of Tony’s reaction immediately.
20
Off Topic: Labor, Greens and Senators now calling themselves independent, noting that all of these parties and people have been accepting donations/bribes from the union movement, the Greens for example recently received $500,000 from the CFMEU and their leader received $100,000 for his 2013 election campaign from the Electrical Trades Union, and now they have voted down government legislation to close the Climate Change Authority.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/a_change_to_have_sceptics_rule_the_climate_change_authority/#commentsmore
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Bolter’s pick to fill the Board: ‘William Kininmonth, Ian Plimer, Garth Paltridge, Bob Carter and economist Alan Moran.’
50
1. It seems to me that the education system in Australia is already overrun with activists pushing their own leftist / politically correct agenda.I would have thought it to be a ‘no brainer that our schools should be (and remain) politically neutral territory. For those children who are interested in the subject then they can learn at home under the guidance of parents, as it should be. Oxfam politics should not be in our schools!
2. Oxfam was once all about feeding the starving people of the world which is of course a most worthy cause. However, as has said above Oxfam have since crossed the boundary from charity for the starving, into political activism and in particular the agenda of Global Warming alarmism. Because of this I can no longer support them and I have recently cancelled my monthly donations to them.
Geoff W Sydney
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no sooner did I post the 72-page report from this lot yesterday, than we have a new one:
8 Sept: Guardian: Suzanne Goldenberg: Climate-smart cities could save the world $22tn, say economists
The Global Commission on Economy and Climate, an independent initiative by former finance ministers and leading research institutions from Britain and six other countries, found climate-smart cities would spur
economic growth and a better quality of life – at the same time as cutting carbon pollution.
If national governments back those efforts, the savings on transport, buildings, and waste disposal could reach up to $22tn (£14tn) by 2050, the researchers found. By 2030, those efforts would avoid the equivalent of 3.7 gigatonnes a year – more than India’s current greenhouse gas emissions, the report found…
The UN concedes the climate commitments to date fall far short of the 2C goal. But the strategies outlined in the report – some of which are being put into place already – would on their own make up about 20% of that gap, said Amanda Eichel of Bloomberg Philanthropies who also consulted on the report…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/08/climate-smart-cities-could-save-the-world-22tn-say-economists
for Suzanne it was $22 trillion, press release says $17 trillion:
8 Sept: The New Climate Economy: Global Commission on Economy & Climate
Press release: Low-carbon cities are a US$17 trillion opportunity worldwide
“The steps that cities take to shrink their carbon footprints also reduce their energy costs, improve public health, and help them attract new residents and businesses,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change…
Nick Godfrey, Head of Policy and Urban Development at the New Climate Economy and an author off the report, provided context for the report’s analysis. “US$17 trillion in savings is actually a very conservative estimate,” he said…
i’m not even downloading the full report, so can’t say how many pages they’ve churned out this time. u can access parts or all at this link:
New Climate Economy 2015 Report: Seizing the Global Opportunity
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT 5.38 MB : Seizing the Global Opportunity: Partnerships for Better Growth and a Better Climate.
Section Five: Carbon Pricing
A strong, predictable and rising carbon price – applied through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system – is a particularly efficient way to advance climate and fiscal goals…
Section Eight: Drive low-carbon growth through business and investor action
http://2015.newclimateeconomy.report/
50
An increasingly visible trait of the environmental NGO’s are the extraordinary levels of outright arrogance and hubris now being displayed.
A dangerous trait for those NGO’s in that they have reached a point where they seemingly believe that they are becoming untouchable and are no longer beholden to anyone.
They have seemingly reached a point where they now believe they are beyond the reach of any governing political power in a democracy or the many approximations of pseudo democracies that pass for governments in many of today’s nations.
We are seeing more and more of that arrogance as a bunch of increasingly wealthy millionaire/ billionaire dissident backed NGO’s attempt to take on and try to force democratically elected governments to follow their own hard line environmental and social ideologies and try to force governments to implement agendas and policies that are highly favourable to those same unelected, unrepresentative and unaccountable, responsibility denying NGO swill and their ideological fixations which are now being rapidly extended right across a whole plethora of numerous NGO sponsored causes.
It is inevitable that at some time in the not very distant future a major political and potentially savage social backlash will evolve that is directed against the power, influence and the very existence of most of today’s major hubris laden environmental and social and political reorganisation promoting NGO’s.
This backlash has already begun in India with savage financial accountability and foreign funding transfers between the various national branches of the Greenpeace NGO’s now being placed under serious financial scrutiny by the Indian and state governments which are being quoted as saying Greenpeace is costing India—
here
India of course being just one nation, Russia another, now Peru after the debacle of Greenpeace’s deliberate damaging of a very ancient piece of desert art work, all of these plus many other nations are now quietly beginning to react strongly against the most activist NGO’s who have been more and more arrogantly trying to force governments to follow and implement their own NGO agendas.
As the likes of the NGO Oxfam tries to insinuate itself into a nation’s political culture, its political agendas and most importantly starts to direct its actions against specific politicians on a very personal basis, eventually and inevitably, they, the whole of the NGO mafia scum along with corrupting the political process will try to insinuate themselves into and corrupt the legal fraternity as well to protect themselves from legal action by individuals and the state while all the time attempting to accumulate more and more power and wealth and control over nations.
There is only one ending for this and that is the political system along with the legal system and with most of the public holding an increasing disdain for the overwhelming arrogance of the NGO’s, they will eventually react and react savagely by placing controls backed by universal publicly supported legislation that will cripple the activities and business of the NGO’s and make them fully accountable for EVERY action and policy implementation they may wish to undertake.
The NGO’s, the Oxfams, the Greenpeaces, the WWFs , the Sierra Clubs and all their clap board pseudo activist fronts they use to hide their most activist and therefore most damaging to a nation’s interests, activities , will be held to full legal and financial and criminal liability.
And that will spell the end of many nefarious activists agenda driven NGO’s
Oxfam by targeting politicians, is setting itself up for a massive political backlash as politicians of all persuasions take stock and ask themselves and one another, maybe next time it could be me that is targeted deliberately and personally by some unsavoury agenda driven NGO trying to destroy me personally for not following its agenda.
So we cut of its flow of funds just as India has done and then we force it and all other NGO’s to follow the company and corporation rules that apply everywhere else in our society.
NGO’s are corporations pure and simple, set up to achieve certain ends and goals just as any other company or corporation is set up for and exists to achieve it’s owner’s goals be they making money or creating a technology or in the case of the NGO’s, originally creating a new social meme but which like most corporations have succumbed to the lust for political, social and economic power.
Most of my life I have so often seen that when a seemingly unstoppable force or corporation is apparently becoming dominant, go looking for the white ants, the termites in the base of that towering corporate colossus.
You will always find the Termites in there busily destroying the very foundations upon which that corporate colossus has been erected on and exists on.
And one day that corporate colossus will come crashing down as the overloaded structure supporting it in the past succumbs to hubris or arrogance or incompetence or financial ineptitude or pure corruption any other of so many reasons.
All corporate bodies including the NGO’s have a life cycle best summed up in the Adizes Life Cycle and its various life cycle stages.
Take your pick of what stage, [ expanded by clicking the stage for a drop down ] the current NGOs are on the Adizes Life Cycle.
I believe they are now already past the Fall stage and maybe already into the Aristocracy stage, rich, powerful, becoming inflexible, short term strategy orientated and no longer have a longer term vision.
They are becoming susceptible and ripe for a major politically driven and socially supported revenge campaign against their activities in a number of advanced nations to the point where their very existence in most advanced nations let alone in the developing nations where their nefarious impact has been the most economically and socially devastating, over the longer term is no longer in the least guaranteed.
And never forget!
Each generation casts out much of what the previous generation had constructed as they build their own generation’s social structures.
The Greenpeaces, the WWF. Oxfam and etc and etc were all constructs of a generation now leaving its centres of political and economic power and influence and a new generation with very different goals and aims and a new plethora of unforeseen and very serious problems facing it, comes into power.
The new generation with perhaps even its very survival in an increasingly hostile religion and ideologically driven and divided world will most likely relegate the tired old NGOs of a past generation into the powerless void where so many similar social, economic and legal agenda driven political and socially derived entities down through history have been confined by the following generations never to be seen again.
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There is an addendum I should add to my above lengthy post.
As Jo has done in her headline post, there is one single item which the environmental and society reorganising NGO’s of today cannot face or stomach and that is the open exposing of their full range of increasingly secretive and deliberately hidden activist driven activities.
The NGO leadership and their contributors no longer ever openly speak about their society controlling and society reconstructing aims as they know full well that to do so would rapidly lead to a deep distrust by the populace and would therefore destroy their ability to implement their societal controlling agendas.
Like a bunch of smutty cockroaches, todays NGO’s scuttle for the darkest spot as soon as a spotlight is shone on their activities and their aims, their goals and their agendas.
And that will tell you all you need to know about these increasingly morally and ethically corrupt, agenda driven , unaccountable, unelected, responsibility avoiding collections of power driven fruit loops and do gooders of the water melon political persuasion that go by the name of “Non Governmental Organisations” [ NGO’s] today.
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Pointman has written a great piece on what the Russians and now the Indians have done to Greenpeace
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/the-indians-are-on-the-warpath/
I would hope that other countries start to take notice and follow their lead, not just with Greenpeace but all the other NGOs like Oxfam etc.
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ROM
And they have the hide to refer to us cockies as illiterate!
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And next unthreaded I’ll post you a gliding-esque observation
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🙂 🙂
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I do hope you are right ROM.
BTW…I think of you as the St Paul or the Bernard Levin of this blog! 🙂 That is meant as a compliment. I have to concentrate hard with the long sentences but it is rewarding!
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“Kids are now advising the government on energy policy and economic direction”
Can they do a worse job than the current advisors?
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link for the Oxfam Australia Unilever partnership excerpt posted earlier in the comments.
https://www.oxfam.org.au/get-involved/business-partnerships/oxfams-partners/unilever/
plus a bit more detail about the folks running Oxfam Australia:
Oxfam Australia: Chief Executive, Dr Helen Szoke
Her distinguished career accomplishments includes leadership of the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission as Commissioner (2004-2011 – LinkedIn), and the Race Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Human Rights Commission (2011-2013).
Oxfam Australia: Board Members
Ann Byrne
Responsibilities: Co-Chair of the Finance, Risk and Audit Committee
As CEO of two large superannuation funds and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors Ltd…
Ann is a member of the Compliance Committee of ***BlackRock Investment Management Australia Ltd…
LinkedIn:
CEO 2008-2013 Australian Council of Superannuation Investors…a collaboration of superannuation funds who manage about $350 billion across all asset classes.
CEO 2000-2008 UniSuper: superannuation/ pension fund for Australia’s university and research sector with $A28billion under management and 400,000 members
CEO 1992-2000 Superannuation Trust of Australia.
Wikipedia: BlackRock
BlackRock, Inc. is a multinational investment management corporation based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with over $4.77 trillion in assets under management…
At the end of 2014, 65 percent of Blackrock’s assets under management were from institutional investors…
The Network for Sustainable Financial Markets: Ann Byrne
Interests:
“Being entrusted with the retirement savings of many Australians highlights the need to ensure that investment markets are sustainable and based on long term strategies. My current role at ACSI looks at long term governance requirements and the need to take account of environmental and social issues for long term investing.”
http://www.sustainablefinancialmarkets.net/participants/ann-byrne/
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Golly. BlackRock is a major investor in the coal industry according to a June, 2015 report in The Guardian, which is campaigning to persuade investors to get rid of their shares in this useful black rock:
“Many of the largest stakes in the top 50 coal companies are held by asset management companies and BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, leads this list with $24.6bn. But the Guardian analysis shows that BlackRock’s holding represents 0.65% of its total assets, a proportion that is over 50 times greater than the world’s second biggest asset manager, Allianz.”
Feels strange to post a link to The Guardian here, but I suppose I can be excused when it exposes investment behaviour that raises more questions than it answers.
And in Blackrock’s 2015 Investment Outlook, this is hinted at under the heading OUR INVESTMENTS (and expanded upon in the full report, thusly):
“Our contrarian idea: beaten-
up natural resources equities
as a hedge if US dollar
strength fades.”
And how did those resources get so “beaten up”? Oh that’s right. Those guys urging us to move away from coal energy like, well, like OXFAM (as quoted in Jo’s article above):
”including developing a concrete plan to phase-out coal from Australia’s energy supply”.
So it appears OXFAM Australia is campaigning to stop using coal energy but at the same time, according to pat’s post above and the Oxfam site also has a board member who also has a foot in a company (BlackRock) whose parent, according to that impeccable source The Guardian, tangentially backed up by the BlackRock 2015 Investment Outlook (full pdf, big download here) from BlackRock Australia’s website, is invested in battered old coal.
Gee, I hope Oxfam’s rep on the Board can persuade BlackRock (Aust.) Board to divest itself from its namesake, for the sake of the planet. Otherwise, all the divestment talk is only driving the price of this maligned natural resource down to be snapped up by folks like, well, like BlackRock.
And the Australian media, government and private alike, are unanimously agreed this story is a hopeless non-starter?
If I had some spare change, I would probably invest in the stuff, too. Oh, to be…what did they say? Yes. A “contrarian”.
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I remember, shortly after Oxfam was first set up (1960s, I think – I lived in Oxfordshire at the time), seeing reports that around 40% of all funds raised went in administration. I decided right then that I would never support them. Their current actions are just plain reprehensible.
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Australian Red Cross admin expenses were close to 20% and many believed that was far too much.
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just want to say Ian Brown who wrote The Internationalist piece “The company they keep” is an insider, so it’s worth reading his entire article:
Ian Brown managed aid programmes for 15 years in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia for Oxfam, the Mines Advisory Group and Terres des homes.
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I had this entire argument about religion when my kids went to school. Once they are old enough to understand the world, they can decide for themselves what religion they do or do not want to follow. Religious body’s target children for a reason – “get them, before they get a clue”. Now the global warming preachers are going the same way.
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Jo
Might be worth a listen to check if you can find it
I just heard a bit of an interview on the Country Hour with “an accent from the University of California” which seemed to mention sources such as New York Times etc. I didn’t hear much and missed the name.
Apparently speaking at Canberra press club today.
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Jo
After a session on DDG probably this
http://www.npc.org.au/upcomingspeakers.html
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Maybe this idea from Andrew Bolt is a way to redress the balance a little
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_change_to_have_sceptics_rule_the_climate_change_authority/#commentsmore
I would hope that Jo and/ or David would allow their “hats” to be put into the mix.
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It would be the fight of the century, warmists and coolists go head to head in the Board room.
This might be our best chance to overthrow the accepted dogma.
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Bernie quit because of Hunt.
https://theconversation.com/bernie-fraser-quits-climate-change-authority-after-difficulties-with-hunt-47228
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Actually I think he quit in response to my email to the authority recently. I made the point that the publications of the authority were emotive and lacked evidence. I think Bernie must have read it and realised that his position was untenable!
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Dear Joanne In case you have missed it,I bring to your attention an article in the Fall edition of The INDEPENDENT REVIEW,Volume 20 Number 2 by Butos and McQuade entitled “Causes and Consequences of the Climate Science Boom”.The journal is devoted to the subject of political economics and public policy in a fairly wide remit and is a scholarly publication of the Independent Institute.
Your work is cited in the lead article. I hope you find this useful. Best wishes Phillip Law Newcastle NSW
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Proverbs 18:17
In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right,
until someone comes forward and cross-examines.
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QUESTION: If we ever got a rational government, how many of the existing contracts and subsidies for unsustainable power could legally be cancelled? I suspect a lot of these things are locked in for 25 years and can’t legally be undone.
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The Abbott Government managed to stop an increase to the renewable energy target but too many Australians fail to understand that with Labor, Greens and others in the Senate who join together to oppose most government legislation, or amend it, until the Senate is supportive the government is handicapped. And Union’s Labor & Greens enjoy what they do.
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I first thought this was a spoof but now I think it’s serious.
http://theconsternation.net/2015/09/09/rising-sea-levels-force-giant-funnel-web-spiders-to-nest-in-trees/
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The problem is that many people do not see it as propaganda. They see “climate change” as proven science, after all 97% of scientists know it to be a fact. Sadly we are counted amongst the flat earthers, anti vaxxers, GMO haters, creationists and others. After all Obama and Kerry know that “climate change” and “gravity” are proven to the same degree and these guys have considerable influence on our future.
With all respect Jo I’m not sure if teaching logic and reason will help. Login and reason 101, would be hijacked (like politics and the MSM) and would start with a comment such as: ” Deniers are the antithesis of logic and reason, with their inability to accept the proven scientific truth”. Sadly the education system has a strong green tint and I’m not sure how it can be altered.
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It gets worse. Year 12 students in NSW are being shown a DVD that claims that El Quaeda is an invention of the Americans.
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Oh no because of climate change (and some mad scientists) we now have to worry about Frankenvirus direct from the Arctic permafrost.
https://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/29470212/frankenvirus-emerges-from-siberias-frozen-wasteland/
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Channelling Hollywood disaster flicks … climate change may unleash pre-historic viruses:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/29470212/frankenvirus-emerges-from-siberias-frozen-wasteland/
Be afraid, very afraid…
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so those Oxfam UN connections are not merely symbolic!
7 Sept: Breitbart: EU and Oxfam Launch Tax Payer Funded Campaign to Urge West into Taking 60 MILLION Migrants
by Donna Rachel Edmunds
One of the world’s largest, allegedly corrupt charities (see linked story below)
joined forces with one of the world’s largest, allegedly corrupt governments to guilt trip the Western world into welcoming 60 million migrants to their shores. On Sunday, the European Commission and Oxfam launched their YouSaveLives campaign to give “a face and a name to this vast army of invisible people.”…
The launch, which took place at Expo Milano in Italy featured a theatre group acting out refugees’ stories; the presentation of Oxfam’s Off Grid Box, a latest generation device capable of producing clean energy and drinkable water using solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable sources; and a screening of the EU and Oxfam funded documentary District Zero, which tells the story of a Syrian refugee in Lebanon.
Present at the launch was Christos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid…
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/07/eu-and-oxfam-launch-tax-payer-funded-campaign-to-urge-west-into-taking-60-million-migrants/
not exactly the worst scandal ever:
May 2014: Daily Mail: Former head of counter fraud at Oxfam is jailed for stealing £64,000 from the charity while probing misconduct by aid workers in Haiti
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2641108/Former-head-counter-fraud-Oxfam-jailed-stealing-64-000-charity-probing-misconduct-aid-workers-Haiti.html
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if it can’t be disbanded, I also would like to see David Evans appointed to the Climate Change “Authority”, tho surely the name needs to change!
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David Evans, Maurice Newman and Jennifer Marohasy are my nominations.
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Excellent nominations.
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I am late in reading this article, its very disillusioning and dispiriting if you still have kids in school isnt it.Back in and around world war two many of the royal family and aristocracy in the UK supported the German Nazi party so called national socialism,then during the cold war upper and middleclass universities were overrun with utopian socialist communist sympaphisers and then in the 1970’s we had the rise of the so called “militant tendency” now they have morphed into James Delingpole’s “watermelons” and they infest NGO’s like Oxfam. There’s a phrase thats been around all that time that sums them up perfectly “THE ENEMY WITHIN” barstewards the lot of em. Oxfam and other NGO’s are run by Wolves in sheeps sustainable wool clothing and have infiltrated our schools in order to create the sheeple of the next generation for the wolves to feed upon .
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doubgtingdave
Having had to deal with three sons – we brought them up to think and question. And had to deal with the results at times.
One highlight was the e-mail from one at the height of the QCC’s “football fields per minute” tree clearing claim which said “Hey Dad have a look at this BS”
We seem to have escaped the terrible teens and the first two are well on their way in jobs and the third in immediate employment while he works his real options.
And we are bloody proud of them and say so.
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Nice one IAN and thanks , i like to think that we teach our kids to question what theyre being told albeit politely, my youngest daughter is still at school she’s 15 and just started her GCSE year , she often comes home to tell me that they mentioned climate science and or environmentalism and sustainability in class today , so i’ve shown her two video’s and let her discuss them to give her some balance , one a simple one that is a favourite here ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE and a more recent and easy to understand video from Patrick Moore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc She came home from school recently and told me her teacher was saying that mans emissions of co2 are polluting the atmosphere so she stuck her hand up and said “actually miss CO2 is plant food and without it we would all be dead” her teacher told her off in class saying you’re talking nonsense don’t interrupt i’m the teacher listen to what i tell you (or words to that effect).This back fired on the teacher because after class her class mates asked her why she did it and my daughter was able to explain why CO2 is important for plants etc and this had a positive effect on her friends so much so that she became a little bit of a hero to them for taking on the teacher.Since then she has posted the above videos on her face book page for others who wanted to see them, i wonder sometimes what the reaction of the teacher was when my brave little girl put her hand up in class and questioned her believes , maybe something like this ;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbhSnATOREY
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Well done your daughter! You are justifiably proud Dave.
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from the Breitbart Oxfam/UN article:
“the presentation of Oxfam’s Off Grid Box, a latest generation device capable of producing clean energy and drinkable water using solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable sources”
download 25 page PDF: 17 July:Oxfam Off Grid Box
http://greenenergy-ec.co.za/knowledge-hub/downloads/item/oxfam-off-grid-box
all the articles re the Off Grid Box online seem to be in Italian. who pays for them? guess u’d need a plenty of them to provide energy for those 60 million new arrivals!
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The Off Grid Box concept is not new. The military have been using equipment like this for several decades. Most of the power in Iraq and Afghanistan was from units like this.
The novelty is that they have reduced the size and hence, presumably the cost. I hope it works.
But as usual, the devil is in the detail. I suspect the quoted figures relate to off load conditions. It would be interesting to see how it copes under full load. Also, most electronic systems – computers and the like – rely on a constant regulated supply frequency. Normally your mains connection give you a 50Hz reference signal (60Hz in some countries), that can be used to stablise whatever secondary generation you are using. If you are totally off grid, that becomes a real challenge. Much of the military equipment size and cost was involved in managing the reference signal.
But good luck to them. I hope it works as designed. It is a much better use for funds, than handing out glossy propaganda material to intermediate school kids.
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Okay. I’ve posted four times here with UN NGO links. None of my posts has been successful. This is more than odd. Am I being blocked for some unknown reason?
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United Nations
E/2014/INF/5
Economic and Social Council Distr.: General
3 December 2014 List of non-governmental organizations in consultative
status with the Economic and Social Council as of
1 September 2014
Note by the Secretary-General
The non-governmental organizations that are in consultative status as of 1 September 2014, including those added as a result of action taken by the Economic and Social Council at its coordination and management meetings held in 2014, are listed below.
Link:
http://csonet.org/content/documents/E-2014-INF-5%20Issued.pdf
[Manfred, these were caught by the spam filter. Sorry, I can’t see why but I’ll look into it. If it happens again please send a message to the support e-mail address.] ED
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A classic.
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Apologies for #54 but I have just ‘proved’ to myself that my numerous endeavours to present posts here (now 5 times) replete with several UN links has met with failure, yet my simple Bat Man post did not.
Any comments anyone?
[Manfred, I freed the comments from the automatic spam filter. I can’t tell why they were there. Usually it is automatic IF an IP address was previously used by a serial spam abuser. I’ll send a message to Joanne. Sorry about the problem.] ED
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Email to Greg Hunt (Climate Change Minister)
re resignation of Bernie Fraser (Chairman)
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A counter to Eco Arrogance.
KK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0aFPXr4n4
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Rereke Whakaaro –
i’m not against the Off Grid Box – i’m just wondering if this is meant to be a big money earner for Oxfam.
btw if Bernie Fraser is to be replaced, how about he is replaced by MAURICE NEWMAN?
and what about appointing JENNIFER MAHORASY to one of the vacant positions?
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the only reason I haven’t nominated Jo for the CCA is because I’ve nominated David Evans.
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Why appoint anybody? They haven’t got a quorum! With luck the rest might retire too.
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Rooss Garnaut told Royal Commission Australia would not need nuclear because wind and solar would become do cheap. Oh, where can I vomit!
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Poor old Ross Garnaut.
The choice was a Rolls Royce, and for Australia, he picked the Lada Niva, and for his second choice, the Trabant.
Tony.
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And who’s going to stop them?
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Wyoming now teaches Common Core and that global warming is real. So every school here is built with blood money, the businesses are, the population is supported by killing the planet with fossils fuels, and what did people do? Nothing.Nothing whatsoever. If you are willing to lose your job, your house, and everything you have rather than stand up and fight, you’ve already lost.
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I harp on about efficiency. Well here is the most efficient car if my sources are reliable, hmmm. No more wasted resources when taking the wrong route, and has a great power to weight ratio. The Apple car. Oxfam will probably donate a few to eligible school teachers.
“Introducing Apple Car” ‘Leaked Ad’
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It’s made of styrofoam so it can float. A fleet of them could be used by climate change charity groups to pick up people in danger of drowning during sea level rise because it floats 🙂 The perfect runabout car for those climate adherents spreading the word about sea level rise. Being made completely of styrofoam also has great insulating properties. Perfect if the climate is changing to hot, or back to cold.
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We had a styrofoam dinghy once, many moons ago. We were driving through Hamburg with it on our car roof when someone alongside us in the traffic jam informed us that it needed a good clean! That stuff becomes very dingy and doesn’t clean up well. We had fun with it in Denmark as it came complete with a little mast and sail.
Since keeping chooks (fowl, or hens or chickens, whatever term you prefer) we have learned that you don’t allow chooks anywhere near polystyrene; they love the stuff and peck it to pieces!
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The car comes with a variety of silicone skins in bright colours so that should help both problems. My own problem with styrofoam is a container made out of Styrofoam coolroom panels. The ants love it and eat it i think. I can tell the ants are there by the white powder outside.
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Would your current government consider holding a formal inquiry into the extent of political interference in your schools under cover of the various eco-alarms?
We made a case for such an inquiry in the UK (see http://www.thegwpf.org/climate-control/) but it seems to have been kicked into the long grass.
[This went to the spam filter. No reason why and you aren’t the first one tonight. Sorry.] ED
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Test comment. Will this disappear too?
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“When indigenous people lose their land, it is not just about food and material welfare. When we lose our land we also lose our spiritual practices which are deeply tied to the land. So the little that we have managed to preserve through slavery, genocide, colonialism and apartheid, we are about to lose to climate change.”
Yvette Abrahams dixit. Interesting name, for a self-described “indigenous” South African. The “Yvette” evokes the original Boers, who were from France, not the Netherlands: Huguenots, sponsored by the United Provinces. It explains why Afrikaners so often have French surnames, which they pronounce in inexplicable ways. “Abrahams”, on the other hand, reads like a perfectly plausible Afrikaans name.
If anyone committed genocide in South Africa, it was the Zulus, who were just as “colonial” as the British, or the Dutch. I’m not going to fight anyone, to defend the Zulu War, but, well before then, the Zulus had eliminated their African opponents and the Zulus are certainly not “indigenous” to South Africa, any more than Vikings are to Britain. Today’s Zulus, by the way, are no more guilty of the sins of their ancestors than modern Germans are.
There was never any European slave trade in the Cape. That happened much further north, around Sierra Leone. There is no way to defend the slave trade, but this isn’t the first attempt by a South African to hitch herself on to the “reparations” bandwagon.
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NGOs aren’t. They should be called GAOs or Government Affiliated Organisations which is a much more accurate term. As soon as I saw Oxfam involved with the leftist circle-jerk that is Melbourne “comedy” I knew they’d be involved in some sort of propaganda at some point.
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