The Toronto Star’s climate for kids
The campaign to enlist children in the war on climate change keeps expanding. David Suzuki appeared in a recent Ontario government commercial as a gloomy Big Brother delivering scary messages to an audience of alarmed children. At the Toronto Star, the newspaper is selling a Teacher Guide and a Student Guide to climate change. For $ 9.95, teachers can download the two guides to keep students in grades 7 to 10 agitated over the climate.
The teacher’s guide opens with an explanation that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act as a giant blanket t hat t raps heat energy. “Think how hot the inside of a car can get on a sunny day with all the windows shut.”
From that trapped- in- car image the 44- page teacher’s guide provides suggestions as to the causes, and links to scenes of polar bears clinging to ice flows and to Manhattan under water. The Industrial Revolution is blamed. Question: “What happened around 200- 250 years ago that could account for such a rapid rise of these gases in the atmosphere?” Answer: “Most scientists agree that it was the rapid industrialization of Europe and North America.” Iron, steel, coal, mining, deforestation and increasing animal husbandry are the causes. “We eat far more meat that we did.”
Not s urprisingly, t he main sources of science in the guides includes the David Suzuki Foundation, assorted activist agencies and green science si t es funded by major U. S. foundations. At one point a question prompt asks: “What proof is there that there is a link between increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global temperature increases?” For the answer the guide directs readers to the Suzuki Foundation.
The Toronto Star guides make no attempt to present climate science objectively and makes every effort to advance the bleakest of consequences. If we do nothing, they say, probable outcomes include hot temperatures, rising ocean levels, water shortages in some parts of the world and flooding in others, spread of diseases and pests, loss of habitat, food shortages and mass extinctions.
To avoid all t his, t he teacher’s guide recommends holding a conference of groups of students who will prepare a report and then “turn that into a newspaper-style editorial, explaining the need for international agreement on climate change.”
That will fix things.