Kids, 6 to 11, fear the world will end...

[amicus]

Thanks to the likes of Al Gore and the Global Warming Scare, and the zealot like Environmentalists who shout that man is destroying the planet; one third of all children, in a statistical poll, believe the world will end before they grow up.

A full half, 53 percent, believe the world will be polluted so much that life will barely exist, before they mature.

I heard this on the news, an organization called, Habitat, something, I searched, but was unable to locate the source, but, I thought to pose the question anyway....

Saving the earth; Earth Day, Green advertisements, Global Warming scares, Ice pack melting, ocean level rising, over population, a thousand issues the advocates have been drum beating for years and carried on in the schools to a point where it has finally affected how children think of themselves and the future.

Suppose, just for the sake of conversation, that none of that is true, as I maintain, and have documented, as has Trysail and others; if it is all just political rhetoric and it has impacted children, then what?

How do you counsel a child to 'do your best', be honest and work hard and whatever other inspirational advice you might give; how do you deal with a child who believes he won't be alive anyway, so why try?

Yes, I know full well, that most here are true believers, you know that man is causing the ultimate destruction of the planet; your certainty is absolute, but what if, just what if, you have been wrong all along?

?

Amicus

 

[oggbashan]

In the late 1930s young children in the UK, sent to school carrying gasmasks, evacuated from their homes in towns likely to be bombed, feared their world would end before they were adult.

In the 1950s and particularly the 1960s at the height of the cold war, young children feared that their world would be obliterated in a nuclear holocaust.

Children, and their parents, and people who want to be parents, have feared that the world will be destroyed before the children become adults.

Similar views were expressed in the Bible and in Greek and Latin authors.

What has changed?

The amount of information now available to everyone.

In the 1914 who cared about the assassination of an obscure person in the Balkans? Who cared about massacres in far-away countries? Who even knew they had occurred?

The health advice now pumped out daily suggests that none of us should be alive because we disobey so many doctors' edicts for a healthy lifestyle - yet in the western democracies we live longer, are healthier and more active than any previous generation.

The science about climate change is complex. The best argument I have seen is:

1. If we are wrong yet we try to limit carbon emissions it won't do any harm.
2. If we are right and we don't do anything about carbon emissions we face disaster.
3. Therefore it is better to act, because not acting MIGHT destroy us.

Og

 

[amicus]

Thank you Ogg, for rescuing this thread from an early demise.

"...1. If we are wrong yet we try to limit carbon emissions it won't do any harm..."

I take issue with that as the methods to 'limit carbon emissions', will raise the cost of energy, 'skyrocket it', in the words of the new Administration, and cause great harm to both the lower and middle class with increased energy cost on the order of two to five times more expensive than current prices.

Higher cost for doing business in factories and manufacturing facilities will cost millions of jobs as business retracts and charges higher prices for every commodity to meet the 'cap and trade' fees. Only government will benefit from the sale of carbon credits and that money will be wasted in the usual government fashion.

Thus, there will be a great deal of 'harm' caused; in opposition to your conclusion above.

The cost of food has already risen 15 percent from just the foolish 'ethanol' experiment and grain shipments to a hungry world that once depended upon American corn and wheat will be reduced and humanitarian gifts of 'food banks' around the world will suffer.

Government meddling in all aspects of the economy, including the financial quagmire, the banking and lending crisis, the bailout of the automobile industry will all lead to even deeper recessions and longer lasting ones until government either pulls back and out or nationalizes the entire economy.

Amicus

 

[SWFL_Wordslinger]

I'd start out by having them read State of Fear by Michael Crichton. Yes, it's a fictional story, but he did his homework. There was so much research and scientific data used for that book, that environmentalists conveniently ignore.

I have to agree, that limiting our carbon emissions and other pollutants won't hurt anything...IF it's done right. And everybody driving a Prius is NOT the right way. Not when the manufacture of the Lithium Ion batteries is such an environmental nightmare. In terms of pure production pollution, the Prius is worse for the environment than a Hummer.

 

[oggbashan]

Dirty Old London

I can remember London in the days of the fearsome smog celebrated by Dickens and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

Many people used to die each winter of respiratory problems exacerbated and sometimes caused by the polluted air. I can remember waiting for a train, standing on the platform unable to see my own feet.

My wife's parents had to move out of London because my sister-in-law was suffering so badly from the pollutants that the medical advice was that she wouldn't survive another winter in London.

The Clean Air Acts changed that. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s London's air became gradually cleaner. By the 1980s it was worthwhile cleaning buildings in London because they would remain clean, free of the all-pervading soot and acid.

Someone who last saw London in the early 1950s wouldn't recognise it now.

Cleaning up London cost money but in the end it was well spent. London isn't free of pollution, but the difference that 50 years have made is remarkable.

Og

 

[xssve]

Yes, it's a shame, it's much better for corporate conservatives when they think there are terrorists hiding behind every corner, and inconveniently occupying every region where there are resources that can be stripped clean.

And it's such a short leap from "terrorist" to "eco-terrorist".

 

[amicus]

]I can remember London in the days of the fearsome smog celebrated by Dickens and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

Many people used to die each winter of respiratory problems exacerbated and sometimes caused by the polluted air. I can remember waiting for a train, standing on the platform unable to see my own feet.

My wife's parents had to move out of London because my sister-in-law was suffering so badly from the pollutants that the medical advice was that she wouldn't survive another winter in London.

The Clean Air Acts changed that. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s London's air became gradually cleaner. By the 1980s it was worthwhile cleaning buildings in London because they would remain clean, free of the all-pervading soot and acid.

Someone who last saw London in the early 1950s wouldn't recognise it now.

Cleaning up London cost money but in the end it was well spent. London isn't free of pollution, but the difference that 50 years have made is remarkable.[/I]

Og

~~~

Ogg displays selective memory loss when it comes to pressing his point. In the time of Dickens, people used peat and dried manure along with bituminous coal to produce fire, heat for warmth and cooking. There was no electricity so Whale Oil was used for illumination. With the invention of the steam engine, factories added to the smokey atmosphere of London proper and every other industrial British city; the Industrial Revolution basically occured in England before migrating elsewhere.

Quite like using the Thames as a toilet for human waste, even as a garbage dump, so polluted that river that it caused disease in the London Population.

Thanks to the human mind, the learning process and the acquisition of knowledge, we learn from both our successes and our failures. Ogg and fellow travelers would have a pre-printed recipe books, or crystal ball in which the future was clearly displayed so that man was not required to learn from experience, but by some magical Merlinesque knowledge of the future.

Oggbashan will use any tactic, high or low, to denigrate the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern Capitalism to sully the past and denigrate the present.

Welcome to the scruffy band of 'usual suspects', you belonged there all along.

Amicus

 

[JackLuis]

Most of my life I had the goal to live until the year 2000 and see the centuries change. After having been taught to "Duck and Cover" in the first grade, you know just in case LA went up in a mushroom cloud it would make it easier to find the bodies.

I remember the films of atomic bombs and warnings about the Russians sending fleets of Bear bombers to preemptively attack our Air Bases, one of which was five miles from my home.

I was given an all expenses paid vacation to a South East Asian country and all the ammo I could shoot, by a Peace loving Democrat.

I made it out alive and still was worried about the "Big One" coming soon to a city near by. After all with guys like "W" manning our Air defenses wouldn't you be worried?

Fortunately the Cuban's never sent their fleet of bombers and "W" decided that he'd just take a rest and blow some coke.

If the kiddies are scared now, they probably should be. It won't be the Military that starts the Nuclear Annihilation of the world, it will be some snot nosed Politician like Doug Feith mucking around in Pakistan.

Oh we were talking about pollution weren't we.

Amicus, If the British hadn't forced their industries to clean up in the 50's there might not have been a Industrial Britain after 1960, all their workers would have died off and the Capitalists would have to shovel their own coal.

 

[amicus]

You can argue the thousand facets of pollution of air, water, and soil, from now until the chickens come home, but that is really not the purpose of this thread about kids, 6 to 11 years old believing they will never grow up because of global warming.

Natural climate change is a science, man caused global warming is a hoax and that , with all the propaganda in the schools, is what is striking fear into the hearts of very young children.

The threat of nuclear war was real, the concern about the 'big one' in California and hurricanes along the southeast coast is also real, Anthropogenic Global Warming is not real, it is political and that is the the issue that survey disclosed.

Part of the reason I thought to publicize this information is for the many here who may have children of that age group, in schools that continue to frighten them with lies and ecological dogma that has a sordid political agenda.

Talk to your children about it; see what they say, think and feel about the future.

It may surprise you.

Amicus

 

[kendo1]

And what if you are wrong, ami?

You never seem to consider that option. You are always right.

Back to your question.
No. My kids are not scared that the world will end before they grow up. They are 15 and 13. They are planning ahead for entry to university, selecting the courses they need for their future employment. Both are training for future events in their chosen sports.

If you can remember, as well as I can, how we felt at their age? We were immortal, weren't we?

 

[amicus]

I'd start out by having them read State of Fear by Michael Crichton. Yes, it's a fictional story, but he did his homework. There was so much research and scientific data used for that book, that environmentalists conveniently ignore.

I have to agree, that limiting our carbon emissions and other pollutants won't hurt anything...IF it's done right. And everybody driving a Prius is NOT the right way. Not when the manufacture of the Lithium Ion batteries is such an environmental nightmare. In terms of pure production pollution, the Prius is worse for the environment than a Hummer.

~~~

Welcome to the fray Wordslinger....:

"...Crichton's new, can't-put-it-down novel is a first-of-a-kind thriller--a fast-paced adventure based on the notion that a current widespread fear is baseless. The author devastatingly demolishes myths and misconceptions about global warming: Antarctica is not fast melting away, nor is Greenland defrosting; global temperatures are not rising rapidly; ocean levels are not surging upward; we are not extinguishing most of the Earth's species; we are not denuding the Earth of its forests; the average life span is increasing, not decreasing. In short, dear old Earth is not going to hell in a handbasket..."

As one might suspect, liberal critics panned the book as shallow, shades of Ayn Rand and her critics.

Thank you for your contribution, every little bit helps...

amicus

 

[amicus]

]And what if you are wrong, ami?[/B]

You never seem to consider that option. You are always right.

Back to your question.
No. My kids are not scared that the world will end before they grow up. They are 15 and 13. They are planning ahead for entry to university, selecting the courses they need for their future employment. Both are training for future events in their chosen sports.

If you can remember, as well as I can, how we felt at their age? We were immortal, weren't we?

~~~

Been a long, tortuous and ongoing debate here about, 'right & wrong', Kendo, of which you may be aware.

I have been studying and debating the issues concerning the environment since the mid 1960's. There was a blurb on FOX news yesterday, I am seeking the script, that several outrageous claims by the environmental activists in the 70's are now viewed as ludicrous, they did not come to pass, they were wrong, as I said at the time.

I understand your intent with the, 'immortal' concept of youth, however, I grew up reading science fiction and all the end of the world scenarios' and the atomic bomb scared the hell out of all of us in the 50's, so no, I did not expect to survive very far into my future way back then.

If I express an 'opinion' on this forum, I identify it as such. The things I 'know' to be truth, axiomatic truths, I also state such and defend the foundation with reason and logic. You see, I happen to accept basic truths as self evident and reality as being real.

Good luck to your children as they approach higher education. I would recommend you find, if you can, a Documentary Channel program, "Indoctrinate U." which is an eye opener as a 'liberal' education is guaranteed with 80 to 90 percent of the faculty being left wing democrats.



Amicus

 

[amicus]

jbarnes@washingtonpolicy.org
Earth Day 2008: Predictions of Environmental Disaster Were Wrong

“By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight
reaching the earth by one half” – Life magazine, January 1970

Seattle – Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet.

Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975. Documented examples are below.

On this Earth Day 2008, new predictions will again be made about looming environmental disasters about to strike our planet. If past experience is any guide, most of these predictions are wrong. People concerned about our planet’s future should be wary of statements from activists and other interested groups, so we stay focused on real environmental concerns, and don’t waste time on fearsome predictions that will never happen.

• “...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

Our purpose on Earth Day 2008 is not simply to point out how often environmental activists have been wrong, but to learn from the mistakes made during past Earth Days. Learning from the past will give us a better understanding of our world and the threats that face it.

By being skeptical about routine portents of doom, we can stay focused on the real threats that face our planet, and on the reasonable and achievable actions we as a society can take to meet them.

~~~

This piece was quoted on the news yesterday...took a while to track it down.

Compare the dire warnings of yesteryear with those being made by the Gorites today and notice the similarity.

Then ask yourself why the are so strident and so wrong.




Amicus

 

[Handley_Page]

Well SOMETHING has to be done if we pass a good earth to our children.
Now, in the middle of the recession, we might have the chancer to do it.

 

[Guest]

Kids, 6 to 11, fear the world will end...


http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/sweetsubsarahh/wtf.jpg

 

[amicus]

"Soylent Green", perchance?

ami

 

[amicus]

]Well SOMETHING has to be done if we pass a good earth to our children.
Now, in the middle of the recession, we might have the chancer to do it.

[/I]

~~~

Hello Handley, don't recall having seen you here before...welcome...

The very best thing we can leave for our children are strong individual property rights and an even stronger desire to maintain those self evident rights to life, liberty and property so dearly earned long ago.

The rest....will take care of itself.

Amicus