By Jo Nova

It could be the most rigged survey I’ve ever seen

The Lancet “Planetary Health” poll of young Americans looks as contrived as anything in our fake academic and media world.

The survey, funded by AVAAZ  (a $20 million dollar political activist “NGO“) is clearly an industrial scale psychological mining operation to find Politically Useful Statistics. It is amazing the survey passed ethical approval, because some 15,793 people aged 16 to 24 were allegedly subjected to a relentless series of unhinged and unbalanced suggestions. The sheer repetition of doom mongering is a form of abuse. It’s works like hypnosis — imagine being asked, “How much, if at all, does climate change make you feel the following? Then being offered 10 shades of pain: Anxious, Powerless, Afraid, Sad, Angry, Despair, Ashamed, Grief, Depressed, Guilty, and finally Indifferent, or Optimistic.

Not only was there no chance to say climate change made you feel Bored, Lectured, Cajoled,  Hen-pecked, Conned, and Scammed, but the response list itself was like a hypnotic suggestion, do you beat your wife, how often do you beat your wife, and how do you feel when you beat your wife?

The hapless victims of this interrogation couldn’t escape by picking just one of these words — for every single word on the long list they had to answer on a scale of agreement:  “Not at all, A little, Moderately, Very much, Extremely”.  It’s a loaded scale. There’s no option to “disagree, moderately, very much or extremely.” It was like saying “Do you agree a bit or a lot”?

It must have been clear from the start to every participant that the researchers wanted to hear how bad things were. It would have taken some wherewithal to reply “Not at all” to 26 versions of “Do you see the doom”? And there really were 26 versions — after the first question the second was “How much, if at all, does climate change make you feel the following?” To which the options included “Humanity is doomed” “I question whether the work I put into my career, job, or vocation, will matter” and Climate change will threaten my life”. After 15 (fifteen!) questions of malcontent and fear, there was the option to be hesitant about children, and finally  “climate change will make my life better”.

All of these horror-show questions were listed in the supplementary file with data. (Links below).

Just imagine how many millions of dollars were wasted asking 15,000 people loaded questions?

Tellingly, there is no soul searching despite the supposedly dire results. If two thirds of young adults and teens felt the species was doomed, and half truly didn’t want children, it’s a crisis that can’t wait til 2050. But the whole Lancet “Planetary Health” poll is reported on like just another reason to build wind towers (which was probably the point of the paper). There’s no call for a more balanced education, for a more rational discussion or reminders that compared to the last 100,000 years, we all won lotto. Here we are on Planet Earth with more people, living longer than ever, with more food than we can eat, and we get to sit in machines that go zoom. But no, the only solution here is to cool the planet.

Discussion:

This emotional response represents a substantial burden on wellbeing and might also increase the risk of mental health problems. Youth can benefit from opportunities to share their distress and to act in response to climate change, including in their families, schools and universities, and communities, and through participation in policy development. The findings indicated that the young people in our sample were dissatisfied with the current actions of those in positions of power, in government and in business, and wanted these stakeholders to act to address climate change. In addition, individuals endorsed plans to respond to climate change with their votes and choices about their purchases, lifestyle, and career. These findings reinforce a theme identified in other research that climate change-related distress will continue to increase while climate change remains insufficiently addressed.⁶⁷ Accordingly, the response to address this distress must be for industries, governments, and policy makers to act at the necessary scale.

It almost has a flavour of hostage negotiation — build the wind towers schmuck, or the kids get suicidal, right?

Ironically, the lead researcher was a Lewandowski (but not that Lewandowsky), and this must be the first, zeroth, volume of the all new Lancet Planetary Health Journal. Straight out the mill, it’s a machine for deceit and political propaganda. Welcome to modern “science”. Just a tool for political activists to score points off opponents and get reckless headlines out of the Guardian, while exploiting some young and naive teens and adults who probably do have some mental health issues. Shameless “The Lancet”.

Science has become a paper mill that serves people with lots of money.

REFERENCE

Lewandowski et al (2024) Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events, The Lancet, Planetary Health, Volume 0, Issue 0. PDF (560.58 KB)

If you thought the University of Michigan had exhausted its supply of woke insanity, think again. Their latest virtue-signaling stunt? Deciding that Latin plant names, the backbone of centuries of biological taxonomy, might be racist​ (Latin plant names could be racist, warns University of Michigan).

Using Latin names for plants may be racist, the University of Michigan has warned, in guidance to prevent the influence of colonial “power structures” on visitors.

A strategy document for the university’s botanical gardens and arboretum warns against using the traditional combination of an English name and Latin name on plaques next to its plants, amid concerns they could erase “other forms of knowing”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/10/17/latin-plant-names-racist-suggests-university-michigan

Yes, you read that right: apparently, the language that has served as the scientific community’s universal classification tool for hundreds of years is now a symbol of oppression. This is what happens when academia, long the cradle of knowledge, decides to trade in rigor for ridiculousness, replacing logic with ideological pandering that borders on absurdity.

We’re now in an age where a centuries-old system, grounded in practicality and proven effectiveness, is being labeled as problematic because it doesn’t fit into today’s ever-shifting, ever-demanding social justice landscape. The University of Michigan’s position that Latin names could somehow perpetuate colonialism or reflect systemic racism is not only absurd—it’s dangerous. It takes a hammer to the foundations of science and replaces them with the brittle bones of political correctness.

The practice of naming plants, animals, and virtually every organism in existence using Latin names has been an essential tool for scientists since the 18th century. Introduced by Carl Linnaeus, the Latin binomial nomenclature system gave scientists across the globe a shared language to describe the natural world. In one brilliant stroke, Linnaeus standardized taxonomy and provided a way for researchers to categorize species based on their relationships, physical traits, and evolutionary history. This was an advancement, not an act of colonialism.

Yet, the University of Michigan, in a move that screams We will be the wokest of them all, has decided that this scientific breakthrough is somehow offensive. How, exactly? They argue that Latin names could have ties to colonization, or that they might reflect outdated societal structures of power. The absurdity of this claim cannot be overstated. It’s as if someone decided to pick apart the scientific bedrock for no other reason than to meet the ever-expanding demands of social justice warriors. Apparently, it’s not enough that biology has been made universally understandable and that countless lives have been saved through the precise identification of species for medical and ecological purposes—no, what matters now is that some contrived sense of “inclusivity” has to trump scientific merit.

Let’s put this bluntly: this is what happens when academia stops caring about science and instead bows to the social justice mob. They throw out what works—what has always worked—because someone somewhere might claim to be offended. It’s the intellectual equivalent of smashing your own compass because someone once claimed the company that made it had ties to explorers who mapped uncharted lands. Or, the intellectual equivalent of dismantling your own telescope because someone decided the stars it helped you discover were named by people with outdated beliefs.

And here’s the kicker—this isn’t just an isolated instance of madness. The University of Michigan has been on this woke trajectory for a while now. If we track their descent into ideological oblivion, it becomes clear that the Latin plant name fiasco is simply the next notch in their progressive belt. Before this, they had already made headlines for their overzealous adoption of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies that value identity politics over academic merit. Their DEI initiatives are now at the point where scientific facts and long-established academic practices are being sidelined in favor of social justice lunacy​.

A decade ago, Michigan’s leaders set in motion an ambitious new D.E.I. plan, aiming “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” Striving to touch “every individual on campus,” as the school puts it, Michigan has poured roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into D.E.I. since 2016, according to an internal presentation I obtained. A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching.

When Michigan inaugurated what it now calls D.E.I. 1.0, it intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then reshaping American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I., convinced that such programs would help attract and retain a more diverse array of students and faculty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/magazine/dei-university-michigan.html

What we’re seeing is a growing culture in universities where the pursuit of scientific excellence takes a back seat to the fashionable causes of the day. It’s more important to look “progressive” than to actually make progress. Latin taxonomy, which has been used to describe over 1.2 million species, is suddenly suspect because someone is worried that using Latin might remind people of colonial times? It’s sheer insanity.

The fundamental question that no one at the University of Michigan seems willing to ask is: who does this serve? Is a scientist in Brazil or South Africa clamoring for the overhaul of Latin taxonomy because it somehow limits their ability to conduct research or make groundbreaking discoveries? Of course not. The global scientific community has thrived precisely because of the universality of Latin names. A plant species in Kenya has the same name as it does in France or Japan. That’s not an accident; it’s by design, and it’s been the basis for collaboration, communication, and discovery for centuries. To suggest that this system is somehow exclusionary is not only a gross misrepresentation of reality but also an affront to the very nature of science, which should always prioritize clarity and universality over ideology.

The sheer practicality of Latin nomenclature cannot be overstated. There’s a reason why Linnaean taxonomy has endured for nearly 300 years—it works. Scientists from vastly different cultures, speaking different languages, can communicate seamlessly when they refer to Homo sapiens, Rosa rubiginosa, or Panthera leo. Imagine a world where instead of these clear and consistent labels, we’re forced to use colloquial or politically sanitized versions that change based on geography or, worse yet, political whims. Chaos would reign, and scientific advancement would be hampered by this petty insistence on catering to today’s ideological trends.

And make no mistake, this kind of ideological trend-following comes with real consequences. If the University of Michigan’s position becomes mainstream, it won’t just be Latin plant names that are targeted. Once the ideological floodgates are opened, where does it end? Do we stop using Latin names for diseases because someone claims it’s insensitive to ancient Roman slaves? Do we toss out mathematical terms like “algorithm” because of its Arabic origins, lest someone feels excluded by the reminder of historical conquests?

What makes this even more insidious is that these attacks on taxonomy are being framed as acts of progress or justice, when in fact they are the exact opposite. The destruction of a universal scientific language hinders progress, confuses the process of discovery, and throws us into an intellectual free-fall where no standard is safe from ideological scrutiny. Latin names have nothing to do with colonialism, racism, or oppression. They are about precision, utility, and the advancement of knowledge. That the University of Michigan can’t—or won’t—see that is a testament to how deeply DEI ideology has infiltrated and corrupted academia​

If the goal of the university is to truly educate and prepare students for the world, this kind of nonsense does them a disservice. It teaches them that science is malleable, that facts can be rewritten if they make someone uncomfortable, and that the pursuit of truth can be set aside in favor of scoring points with the loudest activists. This is the antithesis of intellectual rigor. Instead of challenging students to rise to the demands of scientific inquiry, Michigan is telling them that the tools of that inquiry are part of the problem if they don’t align with the prevailing social justice narrative.

The real world, however, doesn’t operate on feelings and woke platitudes. The scientist in the field, the conservationist trying to protect endangered species, the doctor identifying a disease—they all rely on the accuracy and consistency provided by Latin names. They don’t have the luxury of renaming things because a handful of ideologues have decided those names are problematic. This is why the broader scientific community should reject this ridiculous notion outright. If we let woke politics dictate how we name and categorize the world around us, we’re no longer doing science—we’re doing activism.

In the end, this debacle at the University of Michigan is a symptom of a much larger problem. Academia is no longer the bastion of free thought and the pursuit of knowledge; it’s become a breeding ground for the latest woke fads. Latin taxonomy isn’t the problem—it’s the people who see racism behind every tree and under every rock. It’s the people who’ve become so blinded by ideology that they can’t recognize the value of a system that has stood the test of time.

Here’s a message for the University of Michigan and anyone else buying into this madness: stop politicizing science. Stop twisting every aspect of life into a debate about race, gender, or oppression. There’s no need to dismantle the very systems that have allowed us to understand, classify, and protect the natural world. If you truly care about progress, about inclusivity, then uphold the universal standards that allow science to thrive. That’s how you ensure everyone has a seat at the table, not by turning that table upside down because it was made in the 18th century.

H/T strativarius