Climate strike children could solve the crisis if they got off their electronic devices
If Australia’s climate strike children are serious about the world-ending dangers of coal-fired electricity, then a solution to the crisis is right in their very own hands, writes Alan Jones.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Despite all the headlines, there was not a lot to be proud of in relation to last Friday’s so-called climate change strike.
It appears that not only are the proponents poor on science, they are not too flash on maths either.
If it were true that 300,000 people took part across the country, and that’s bound to be an exaggeration, that is a little more than 1 per cent of the nation’s population, hardly a ringing endorsement of the ignorance and emotion associated with these protests.
We ought to be very concerned.
One picture from the strike showed a beautiful 15-year-old girl with “Facing Extinction” written across her face. It is nothing short of a disgrace that young people are being used in this way.
A youth mental health organisation has found four in five Australian students are “somewhat” or “very” anxious about climate change. And half of them report being so on a weekly basis.
There is no other way of putting it — school students and university students are being brainwashed.
One nine-year-old said: “I’m not sure why I’m here. Maybe because of pollution and stuff. I hate Adani because they make the WestConnex.”
This rubbish can only come out of the classroom.
A 12-year-old said climate change was the biggest issue for her generation: “I think Adani is going to be a big contributor to climate change. Don’t put me on the spot though, I don’t know where it is.”
It is not just in our schools.
One university class was told last week: “There will be no lecture (tomorrow). This is to encourage you to attend the Sydney Strike for Climate.
“The Greens NSW provide the following details. You should try to RSVP at the Greens event page on Facebook.
“With extreme weather events including prolonged drought, catastrophic bushfires and record-breaking temperatures gripping our country, Australia is already at the forefront of the climate crisis …”
Yet from the same university, Professor Andy Pitman, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessments Reports 3 and 4, said on June 19 this year:
“This may not be what you expect to hear, but as far as the climate scientists know, there is no link between climate change and drought.”
We have been down this “hoax” road before with so-called “scholars”.
In 1967, Stanford University “expert” Paul R. Ehrlich said the world would be out of food in the next 10 years. Two years later the same Paul R. Ehrlich said the world would suffer a catastrophic explosion by the year 1989. In 1988, American government scientists warned the Maldives would be under water by 2018.
Let’s not forget Halley’s comet. The scientists told us it was going to clean us out. In the end you needed high-powered binoculars to even see it.
Remember Y2K, the year 2000. Didn’t the scientists warn us? Were they right or wrong?
Thankfully, the public are not stupid. It is our only hope in the face of this new “religion”.
Given that most of these schoolchildren, and I venture to say university students and lecturers, couldn’t answer five questions on so-called “climate change”; and given that they seem to be worried about carbon dioxide which is 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere; and given that coal has been demonised as the principal source of carbon dioxide; and given that these young people, and not just young people, have been brainwashed that coal mining must cease and that the $60 billion coal export industry must end; and given we must transition immediately to renewable energy — perhaps instead of marching in the streets and making vacuous noises about something they know little about, they should just stop using electricity.
The bulk of the electricity we use for now and well into the future will be provided by coal-fired power.
So, if you are going to turn yourself inside out about coal-fired power, turn off your iPad, your phone and your laptop, instead of charging them with life-threatening coal-fired power.
Turn off the washing machine. Hand-wash your clothes.
The protesters, I am sure, have never heard of Bjorn Lomborg, who actually believes, as we all do, that climate changes. But Lomborg, a world authority on all of this stuff and the head of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Centre has said:
“This year the world will spend $230 billion subsidising renewable energy … the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost the world from $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion a year by 2030.
“Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any measurable impact on temperatures … the reality is today, solar and wind energy together deliver only about 1 per cent of global energy.
“The International Energy Agency estimates that even by 2040, these will cover a little more than 4 per cent of global energy.”
Lomborg also recently wrote: “One of the world’s leading researchers, Czech-Canadian Vaclav Smil, has said ‘the great hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is wishful thinking’.”
In fact, Lomborg also said: “On a global scale … humanity will be much better off, including in Africa, in a scenario of high fossil-fuel use than it would be even if we succeeded in achieving a benign, low CO2 world …
“Doom and gloom distort our world view and can lead to bad policy. The future is bright and we need smart decisions to keep it so.”
If people threw rubbish regularly into Sydney Harbour or the Brisbane River or the Yarra in Melbourne, there would be an outrage over deliberate pollution. But who cares about the pollution of the minds of young people that leads them to an anxiety that makes them wonder if life is worth living.
If we can have a royal commission into the treatment of aged people in our community, it’s time we had a royal commission into what’s happening to our young people on this climate change issue. Let the apologists and the hoax brigade swear on oath the veracity of what they are preaching in the classroom.
It might be the only way to slow a few people down.
Our children are entitled to the truth and they are not getting it.
Listen to Alan Jones on the Alan Jones Breakfast Show on 2GB, Monday to Friday, 5.30am to 9am