Month: February 2020

BBC: Climate Education is Failing Because Some Graduates Become Oil Executives

Oil DerrickOil Derrick
“West Texas Pumpjack” by Eric Kounce TexasRaiser – Located south of Midland, Texas.

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A child activist interviewed by the BBC is disappointed that some “educated people” resist climate indoctrination enough to accept jobs from oil companies.

Climate change: Schools failing us, say pupils

By Judith Burns
Education reporter

It’s educated people who are causing the most damage to the planet,” says sixth-former Joe Brindle. 

Joe, 17, says schools need to put the environment at the heart of education. 

Ministers agree “it is vital that pupils are taught about climate change” but Joe says schools are failing to prepare them for a climate emergency.

He is a founder member of Teach the Future which next week takes its call for an environmental overhaul of education to Parliament. 

It’s people with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge who are becoming fossil-fuel chief executives and they are the ones who are causing the most destruction to our world,” says Joe. 

“And therefore that kind of shows that education is not succeeding and that our education is broken because education should be creating better people not worse.”

In a statement, the government said: “It is vital that pupils are taught about climate change, which is why topics are included across the national curriculum for both primary and secondary schools. Teachers have the freedom to expand on these areas if they wish.

“This government is a world leader in tackling climate change and we are the first major economy to legislate for net-zero emissions by 2050. The Department for Education provides funding to support schools to become more sustainable institutions.”

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-51492942

An education system which still produces a handful of climate skeptic graduates who can think for themselves just isn’t good enough.

via Watts Up With That?

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February 24, 2020 at 12:02PM

Turkish village buried under 20-feet of snow – Video

21 Feb 2020 – Massive blizzard buries Turkish village under 10-20 feet (3 -6.1 meters) of snow. More than 70 villages isolated.

Leaves residents without power and water and scrambling to remove the snow from their roofs.

How tall are you? Now imagine someone standing on your shoulders. Now imagine another person standing on their shoulders. And realize that all three of you would now be totally buried. How could any wild animal survive such an onslaught?

https://weather.com/storms/winter/video/houses-buried-in-20-feet-of-snow-in-turkish-village

Thanks to H.B. Schmidt for this link

The post Turkish village buried under 20-feet of snow – Video appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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February 24, 2020 at 11:47AM

Coronavirus – New deaths 158, new cases 725

24 Feb 2020 – Total reported coronavirus cases: 79,718 – Yes, the number of cases is still rising, but the rate appears to be slowing. Of course this doesn’t take North Korea into account, where I suspect the rate of both new cases and deaths is still rising

11,567 in serious or critical condition

Total reported deaths: 2,628

Total reported recovered: 25,268

66 new cases in Italy
231 new cases in South Korea
No new cases or deaths in the U.S.

Source:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

See also this interactive map:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

The post Coronavirus – New deaths 158, new cases 725 appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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February 24, 2020 at 11:39AM

Australia installs more renewables than anywhere else but national emissions stay the same

Australians are installing renewable energy, per capita, faster than any place on Earth, or at least we were until 2020 when the subsidies and schemes ran out.

Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables

 

The Quarterly update for the Greenhouse Gas inventory is out and we can see just how much difference all those renewables make, which is almost nothing. Emissions have flatlined.

Australians are paying record prices, risking blackouts, buying batteries and synchronous condensors, building new billion dollar interconnectors, losing companies overseas, and suffering voltage spikes. We’re playing chicken with our smelters, and party games with PeakSmart timers and extra domestic circuits so that electricity companies can manage our pool pumps and our air conditioners.

And this is all we get?

Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables

After adding so many wind farms and solar panels the electricity sector decreased emissions by only 1.2% on the year before.

Electricity sector emissions decreased 1.8 per cent in the June quarter of 2019 on a ‘seasonally adjusted and weather normalised’P 8 P basis (Figure 6). This reflected strong increases in hydro and wind generation (42.0 and 14.8 per cent) […]

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February 24, 2020 at 11:27AM