Poor climate scientists know they can’t win the science debate against the engineers, geologists, chemists and physicists who are better scientists, better informed, mostly unfunded and unleashed all over the Internet.

To avoid coughing up the “overwhelming evidence” the climate experts say they have, but can’t seem to find, they are pulling out the Panzers, resorting to pleas for RICO investigations. Treat the skeptical scientists like Racketeers, they say! And what’s their evidence for this conspiracy of corruption… oh lordy, these people are scientists, they must have emails, cheques, tapes and photos. Surely? But no, their evidence are pop-smear-books where the deepest darkest evidence is the common use of “tobacco tactics”! But every activist group under the sun, including honest groups, uses at least some of the exact same tactics. How does anyone point out flaws without “seeding doubt” about them? Either the flaws are real or they’re not, and that’s what a scientist discusses, not “motives”.

There is no law of science called “tobacco-tactics”. If man-made global warming is a dire threat, the evidence comes from instruments that measure the climate, not from smear-o-rama by association.

Indeed, the Team-Tobacco of climate are the believers not the skeptics

I looked up Tobacco Tactics for the first time:

A long-standing tactic of the tobacco industry and its supporters is to try to marginalise and denigrate its critics.

You mean like calling them “deniers”, denigrating their qualifications, printing fantasies about their funding, attacking their religious beliefs, and inventing spurious links to … wait, something as black as the tobacco industry, or the holocaust? How about stranding skeptics at airports, canceling their tickets, sacking them, removing climate skeptics titles and canceling email accounts. What about using students to protest emotionally at universities to stop the research even starting (see Lomborg, Bjorn, UWA)?

The Tobacco industry influenced scientists by commissioning research, and funding scientists, which is similar to the one-sided government funding that pours money at climate models we know are failing, yet doesn’t fund models built on solar factors and natural cycles. Then there is Ghost Writing, like say where Greenpeace writes a document for the IPCC, or where Greenpeace and WWF set the BBC journalistic policy?

In arguments and reasoning the tobacco groups “shift the debate away from the health issues”, just as climate scientists shift the debate away from the science and towards the pitiful tiny funding available to a few skeptics. Climate experts don’t want to talk about the missing hotspot, the uncertainties of ocean heat content measurements, the wild variations of past climates, or the way models fail dismally at predicting the last 18 years.

Legal strategies of Big Tobacco include FOI requests, which both skeptics and unskeptics use. Skeptics want the scientific data, that they shouldn’t even have to FOI. Climate unskeptics want the funding details of skeptical scientists so they can smear them by association and scare off potential donors.

We can build on this theme: please readers — fish for inspiration through the Tobacco Tactics files, and suggest away.

The letter calling for a RICO investigation into skeptical scientists:

Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren,

As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are taking. Nonetheless, as climate scientists we are exceedingly concerned that America’s response to climate change – indeed, the world’s response to climate change – is insufficient. The risks posed by climate change, including increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidity – and potential strategies for addressing them – are detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States. The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.

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Your air conditioner is causing people to emigrate — possibly because they want one too. But other researchers see the chain like this: Air conditioners, cars and heaters increase global CO2 emissions by 4%, which makes no difference to the Global Drought Severity Index in the last 60 years, nor to global temperatures in the last 18 years, but may possibly, maybe, have made one drought a bit drier (while making others a bit wetter). People living in a country where other people want to burn them alive, crucify them and cut their heads off, decide that they can live with the medieval barbarity, but not with the water shortage. Meanwhile other unrelated people in other countries get urges to throw away passports and join in the rush.

Oddly, the countries people most want to get to are the ones that produce the most CO2.

 Time Magazine

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

More than 10,000 migrants and refugees traveled to Western Europe via Hungary over the weekend, fleeing conflict-ravaged and impoverished homelands in the hope of finding a more secure life abroad. Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the new arrivals, human rights activists and migration experts warn that the movement is not likely to slow anytime soon. Intractable wars, terror and poverty in the Middle East and beyond will continue to drive the surge. One additional factor, say scientists, is likely to make it even worse: climate change.

From 2006 to 2011, large swaths of Syria suffered an extreme drought that, according to climatologists, was exacerbated by climate change.

There are people reading tea-leaves who can achieve the same level of cause and effect correlation for a lot less money. Modern science would be a lot cheaper if we just employed them.

Where are the Global Worriers who say “No, thanks” to using human suffering, and baseless reasoning for their own political gain?

Commenters usual guidelines apply. This is not about religion but about the shameless way some people will milk any topic for PR.

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!”

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