According to this article, the relentless climate change harangue is driving children crazy:
Child psychiatrists, psychologists and educators say they’ve seen an escalation in the anxiety levels of today’s youth, who are constantly exposed to doomsday talk about the destruction of our planet. But despite the fact that we live in a world with more volatility and fear, experts say there is hope. And to stay mentally strong, they all advocate not just calling for change, but acting for it.
Dr. Anthony Levitt, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s director of research in the department of psychiatry, agrees climate-change anxiety increasingly enters into the discussions he has with many of the young people who come to see him. “Younger people [teens to mid-20s] appear to be much more accepting of the science and facts than older people,” Levitt observes. He’s also seen an uptick in climate-change-related anxiety in parents with younger children.
I wonder what would happen if after 20 years or so, they were to finally admit that the scare was largely bunk, like the decades old anti-fat hysteria.
Many older people tend to think hysteria is good for children, though. They even equate hysteria with responsibility.
I’m just glad I wasn’t raised to be afraid of weather.
Comments
15 responses to ““more accepting of the science and facts than older people””
The human animal seems to fear change, yet change is the only constant that we can see throughout history.
What do we have that has not changed in the last 50 years?
The older generation would not want anything that was required by their Grandparents, and I expect the children of today will see more change than that of the last 50 years.
Remember 50 years ago, no computers on video games no cell phones. Predictions were that no one would want or buy such things. An upcoming ice age was also predicted.
After 1945 most of Europe was in ruins, for decades now Europe has boasted the worlds most modern cities, but still we are afraid of change!
Climate alarmism is a fanatical religious movement based on irrational fear.
Any type of relentless, fanatical religious harangue will drive kids batty.
Gorbal worming’s gonna getcha…
Any substantial difference between that and good, old fashioned hell fire?
Does no one remember the anxiety levels of the kids of the 1950s and 1960s who lived “in the shadow of the mushroom cloud”?
Or is this anxiety entirely new and different?
If I had a dollar for every high school and college creative-writing class short story that ended with atomic bombs going off, I could probably cover my expenses for the rest of 2014.
“Younger people [teens to mid-20s] appear to be much more accepting of the science and facts than older people,”
Change that to “junk science and BS” and it’s dead on.
“Or is this anxiety entirely new and different?”
I was so frightened by Neville Shute’s book, “On the Beach” that I nearly dropped out of college. However, those fears were about real dangers. The whole recycling to global warming thing is a cargo cult.
The driving ideological forces behind climate alarmism are a collection of collectivist utopian fantasies combined with a profound disgust with growing human populations all wrapped up in a deep envy of other people’s wealth. It’s a potent brew of self-righteous elitism and scientific naivete whose target is to control the lives of others at every possible opportunity.
Humans have dealt with the earth warming for ten thousand years. In all that time warming has been good for humanity. Suddenly, just because we started recording temperatures regularly, some people think we just happened to hit the absolute perfect temperature and any higher temperature must be bad.
The anti-science aspects of Global Warming are astonishingly widespread and illogical. Even if the worst predictions of rising temperatures are true, the human race will face some inconveniences and have to adjust to a new environment. Exactly as the human race has had to face some inconveniences and adjust to a new environment throughout the whole of human history. It is fine to debate whether or not humans are, or should be, contributing to warming, it’s another thing entirely to make absurd predictions of gloom and doom just to improve the chances of advancing a political agenda.
What has been happening with global warming dogma the last decade or so is that this constant assertion of “scientific consensus” (as if that even exists, or if it did exist, that it was good), has put not just the reputations of the vocal “scientists” who promote the approved party line on the subject on the line, but has put the entire social credibility of SCIENCE ITSELF on the line. If, after decades of sneering lectures and comparing skeptics to holocaust deniers, the world actually does not go into a runaway greenhouse effect, people will conclude that science itself has become so politicized that it can no longer be trusted to be right on the merits.
It’s a troubling situation.
m. Shellacque,
you are not using the new meanings of the words. In the modern world a fact is any opinion I hold that I can find someone with letters after their name to support, while science is whatever can be derived from misapplication of statistical techniques to small samples of data. Note that this only applies when “I” happens to be someone on the left & “whatever” fits the left’s ideology.
If the history of failed predictions cured my belief in the junk science of CAGW, surely the same cure will work on tomorrow’s generation of future skeptics as well.
The steaming pile of failed predictions is only going to get bigger. Am I smarter than the younger generation to recognize that failed predictions are symptomatic of failed scientific methodologies? Of course not. They’ll come around, just like I did. CAGW is tomorrow’s phrenology: yesterday’s news.
When my daughter was three or so, I had a conversation with some relatives (childless or course) that started with: “We have to scare the kids into believing in climate change so they take action.” That gave me a clue what I was up against.
Now my daughter is seven and just today she told me that “when you buy those ‘green’ napkins, you’re not really saving the planet, you’re just making yourself feel special.” So far so good.
“Any substantial difference between that and good, old fashioned hell fire?”
The difference is substantial. With Hell fire your fate is dependent on your actions alone. With climate change your fate is dependent on forcing other people to act in a way that is consistent with your beliefs.
Years ago, I told my niece that surface temperatures on Mars had increased so I believed any increase was due to the sun.
She brought that up in her classroom and the teacher asked her if she personally had been to Mars to measure temperature.
He was a bully.
After she got out of that school I sent him a polite email. I got back a rambling nasty email from him.
I figure he had spent so long bullying students intellectually he didn’t have the chops to make his case with someone a bit more seasoned.
I feel sorry for the younger people — the schools use every opportunity to brainwash them about global warming, social justice, inequality, anti-religion, gun control, etc. They are potty training them to be good “slaves of the State.”
This seems more like a way to discourage debate, than concern about children. Sadly, I have a jaundiced view of opinions coming from Toronto, epecially expert opiions.
Mr. Scheie must have been raised in one of the blessed lapses of climate hysteria. When I was a kid, I got “Ice Age”, “polar ice caps melting (causing the earth to spin off into space)”, “nuclear winter”, etc.
It just occurred to me to wonder: Given the changes in climate alarmism, are we now to assume that a nuclear war would result in a “nuclear summer”, rather than winter?
[…] our neighbors to the north, we have this article (via Classical Values) on the effect that all the relentless harping on imminent doom and destruction from “climate […]