“Climate guru Petteri Taalas: ‘Climate change is not yet out of control, but the debate is – It has the features of a religious extremism.'”
So read the English translation of the headline of a September 6 news report in Finland’s financial newspaper Talouselämä (The Journal) citing an interview with Taalas, a PhD in meteorology and secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.
Perhaps nothing better illustrates the validity of Taalas’s concern than the use of children to promote the worldwide climate delusion, a scare for which there exists not a shred of physical evidence. Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is a case in point.
After crossing the Atlantic in what she incorrectly dubbed a zero-carbon yacht to address the recent UN climate summit, her actions mobilized millions of climate change demonstrators, many of them children, in more than 100 countries to join protests. In an angry speech at the UN, Thunberg told world leaders that they had “stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us.”
But young people like Thunberg lack the maturity and experience to make sense of this immensely complex issue. They are simply being used as “human shields” for adult climate activists who recognize that the climate scare will soon lose credibility as global warming Armageddon fails to materialize as forecast. Indeed, prominent scientists maintain that the world may have already begun to cool in response to a weakening Sun, a phenomenon far more dangerous than any possible human-induced warming.
In our August 20 America Out Loud article, The Disgraceful Use of Children to Promote the Climate Change Delusion, we explained:
3,500 years ago, there was also a climate-related group which took advantage of children. Called “Baal,” it was wide-spread in the Middle East where it was based on climate related to food production.
At the center of Baal was the human sacrifice of children to supposedly achieve some change in the weather.
If there was not enough rain, bring more children [to sacrifice]
Too much rain, bring more children
Too hot, more children
Too cold, more children
The dreadful people engaged in this practice were chased out of the Middle East by the Israelites, who settled in the area with Moses and Joshua. This was generally accomplished by a leader of Israel calling all the priests of Baal to a large meeting in the Baal sacrificial area and then sending in the military to eliminate them.
Bringing Thunberg across the ocean to help the flagging U.S. climate movement and to recruit more naive children into its ranks also brings to mind the Hitler Youth, who were known for widespread inculcation of German children. As we wrote in America Out Loud:
Its members were viewed as “ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology.”
Education and training programs for the Hitler Youth were designed to undermine traditional German society, invoke fear, and enable its members to become faithful foot soldiers. They appropriated traditional organizations like the Boy Scouts movement, church groups, and other social groups. Sacrifice for the cause was inculcated into their training.
Fast-forward to today, when mass hysteria is focused on mobilizing children to speak out on climate change even though they haven’t learned to think critically or how to analyze our complicated climate. They use soundbites to repeat that are meant to silence [skeptics] and fit on a protest poster. How do you reason with a child holding a sign that says, “There is no Planet B!”? Or that sea levels are rising (which has been happening since the end of the last glaciation [and is not accelerating])? Try explaining to a child holding a picture of a polar bear that asks, “What Will You Do To Save Me?” that the Arctic animal is thriving despite less sea ice.
There are many similarities to those who followed Baal and totalitarian movements. It’s the sacrifice of children for power or politics. Of course, it produces serious harm to children in their personal growth and harm for the future of the country by creating division and strife over nothing.
And the situation is going to soon become very hard on Thunberg as her former allies begin to desert her extremist stance. Along with 15 other child protesters, she has filed a formal complaint to the UN that various nations (e.g., Brazil, Germany, Turkey and France) “had violated international children’s rights by failing to take sufficiently bold measures to reduce carbon emissions,” reported The Times (UK) on September 26. France’s President Macron told French broadcaster Europe 1, “These radical positions will naturally antagonise our societies.” The Times further reported:
Brune Poirson, the French ecology minister, questioned whether Ms Thunberg could succeed in “mobilising people with despair, with what is verging on hatred, setting people against one another.”
Yesterday Boris Palmer, 47, a prominent figure in the German Green party and the mayor of the university city of Tübingen, said he was worried that her movement was becoming “radicalised” and urged her followers to ignore her call to “panic” about the climate. “If you’re panicking, you’re no longer in a position to deal with things thoughtfully, and therefore you don’t achieve your goals,” he told Die Welt.
Meanwhile, on September 23, 500 leading climate scientists and professionals sent a European Climate Declaration to the secretary-general of the United Nations and the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These 500 climate scientists and professionals wrote that there is no climate emergency and that false foundations for climate panic could lead to policy disasters causing massive harm, by destroying energy sources needed for survival. The letter stated:
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”
“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm,” they note. “We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”
“If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.”
In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as “unfit for their purpose.”
“Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models,” they propose. “Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.”
“We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.”
The Baal movement, which sacrificed children to supposedly improve the climate, vanished three-and-one-half millennia ago. The Hitler Youth ended with the downfall of the Third Reich. It’s time for the children’s climate crusade to end as well.
Dr. Joel Glass is an engineer, based in Finland, working in the field of infrastructure for ultra-cold climate environments. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Dr. Jay Lehr is ICSC Senior Policy Analyst.