Last year the UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the Pacific island of Samoa and was filmed by a deserted house that he claimed had been abandoned due to climate change-related sea level rises and increasing storms. It was a porkie that quickly put its hat on and travelled around the world. The journalist Ola Sandstig reporting on Swedish public radio recently tracked down the owner of the house and found the dwelling was abandoned due to the 2009 earthquake and tsunami. Sadly, Samoa is still experiencing sea level rises about six times higher than previous levels but scientists explain it is due to the after effects of the earthquake. There has been no increase in tropical storms in the area and earthquakes and tsunamis are not caused by humans.
Guterres stood by the house and stated that “if we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, the problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa”. The arrogance on display here is astonishing. Most Pacific islands have been inconveniently increasing in size of late due to natural forces such as sand and coral accretion along with land movement. The unfortunate case of Samoa was obviously chosen for maximum psychotic effect. This despite clear evidence that has been presented by the distinguished geophysicist Professor Shan-Chan Han that showed land subsidence in the wake of the 2009 earthquake was causing sea levels to rise up to six times faster. Sadly, this effect is “likely to continue for decades” leading to “regular nuisance flooding”.
This arrogance, common to many climate activists, might be summed up by the attitude: “Come and check us, we don’t care, what are you going to do about it?” It was on display at a recent World Economic Forum ‘disinformation’ seminar when the UN’s chief publicity flak Melissa Fleming stated: “We are becoming more proactive, we own the science and the world should know it.” The science writer Roger Pielke Jr. was unimpressed with Guterres’s Samoa stunt, stating that his photo op and press release “can only be described as an intentional effect to mislead”.
Another misleading UN stat that has been doing the rounds for decades is the claim that women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a climate disaster. Needless to say, the claim has been a favourite staple of activists for years. Last May, the alarmist echo chamber the Conversation headlined the 14 times claim and stated: “A growing body of evidence demonstrates women and gender-diverse people are disproportionately vulnerable to the changing climate and the consequences it brings.” Roger Pielke reports that the claim, which can still be found on the UN main website, along with the internet sites of many linked operations, has been debunked by Professor Henrik Urdal of the Peace Institute in Oslo, who called the 14 times figure a “mythical number”. In 2014, he traced the claim back to a 2013 Save the Children report, which in turn cited a 2013 Plan International report, which quoted an article published in Natural Hazards Observer in 1997. This article turned out to be two-page opinion piece authored by Pastor Kristina Peterson of the US-based Church World Service.
The sleuthing Sandstig from Sveriges Radio tracked down Pastor Peterson in Louisiana, who expressed surprise that her unsourced opinion was being touted as scientific fact in 2024 by the UN as well as other mainstream organisations. The journalist is reported to have asked for a comment from the UN, but none was forthcoming, possibly because Ms Fleming was busy elsewhere claiming ownership of all the politically correct facts.
Finally, Sandstig investigated Guterres’s claim in 2022 that the number of weather, climate and water-related disasters had increased by a factor of five over the last 50 years. This was covered by the Daily Sceptic at the time where the graph below up to 2022 was published.
As the graph shows, there is no evidence that the number of major disasters going back to the turn of the century is becoming more frequent. In fact, the evidence presented suggests that recent disasters are around 10% less frequent than those recorded in the 2000s. In reality, the increase in disasters recorded by CRED EM-DAT from 1970 to 2000 was due to vastly improved reporting procedures. Deborati Guha-Sapir, who oversaw the widely-consulted database for decades, told Swedish Radio that you can argue that climate disasters or natural disasters have not actually substantially increased but the reporting has been “much, much” easier, better and quicker.
Antonio ‘boiling’ Guterres’s constant hysterical pronouncements are risible. But he is still the head of the UN – the parent-organisation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and Roger Pielke worries about the effect of all the false claims and bad science. “The climate science community should care that the UN has been systematically misrepresenting climate science, because it could affect how the IPCC is viewed, fairly or unfairly,” he noted. As reported by the Daily Sceptic in 2022, Pielke noted that he had seen “a concerted and successful” effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, “knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow false information to spread unchecked – and sometimes will even help to amplify it”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Many young people are afraid to debate because if they don’t hold views that are explicitly Establishment Approved by centre-left and far left creepy organisations such as Channel 4, they get silenced, their careers get smashed, they get reported by the police for non-crime hate speech, they get ostracised in college, they get destroyed.
Happens to older people too, just ask Russell Brand.
That was my first thought too – hypocrisy or what?
The thing is, ‘peer pressure’ has always been a thing but I think nowadays we have Stanley Milgram experiments playing out all over the place, with a generous side-helping of cultish mentality. There also wasn’t this cancel culture years ago either, whereby if you don’t toe the line you get ‘disappeared’ or crucified. Even when I went to uni we were encouraged to do our own research, ask questions of authority ( inc info set out in textbooks ) and not take what the lecturers said as Gospel. I can’t pinpoint when this insanity and indoctrination within higher education started but, as a parent, it makes you really concerned about your own kids’ future and what they’ll be exposed to when they go to university.
“ I can’t pinpoint when this insanity and indoctrination within higher education started…”
it started with the Bolshevik Revolution and the lionising of Stalin, and Communism.
When it started is a really good question. I know it’s a pretty long time ago, because even when I was at school and university the general sense was that our teachers and professors were for the most part a bunch of lefties. But it seemed somewhat inconsequential. It didn’t occur to anyone that it could let alone would lead to this.
As I’ve written a few times before, I grew up and spent most of my adult life convinced that our liberal, democratic way of life was unassailable. That it would just prevail over all others by sheer force of gravity. We had the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the iron curtain to prove it too.
Talk about getting it badly wrong.
i was a shy working class male educated by what I percieved at the time to be stuffy sniffy snobby possibly underachieving post-war History Boys of a mainly Conservative/Colonialist nature in the last throes of a publically funded Grammar School. I felt a certain inferiority and class conciousness. This was perhaps not entirely misplaced – but yes I too may have got it badly wrong!!
too true. Although 1) do your own research became – do your own self directed learning yourself whilst paying our exhorbitant tuition fees whilst your lecturers either toss themselves off or cower in fear of wrongthink and 2) we need to teach students how to think – critical thinking not knowledge – but if their critical thinking veares off message we need to reteach them how to recognise misinformation and disinformation according to our criteria
🎯 Bullseye!
She mentions a “pandemic”. There was no pandemic.
Ahh of course, it was the lockdowns. Not the intolerant, aggressive, ignorant, self-serving, juvenile, bourgeoise, fact-free political indoctrination festival channel 4 and their media mates host across their entire output now 24/7?
Whilst fully supporting behavioural manipulation and gas lighting, spewing relentless fear mongering junk science to support the lockdowns they now pretend they’re against, and using their platforms to champion constant hopelessness and a relentless crisis narrative.
Nothing to do with any of that obviously..
The classic term “The pot calling the kettle black” seems appropriate here!
My personal experience is that this is complete BS. I see young kids as they have pretty much always been.
What is different is the teachers and schools are trying to drive them mad with their constant climate, trans, racism brainwashing.
And if anything what stands out is how resilient the kids are.
The problem isn’t the kids. The problems are some of the grown ups pushing radical ideas on them with the backing of the ever more authoritarian state.
I wholeheartedly agree.
The result of being taught in school what to think rather than how to think. Of being taught an ideology rather than a body of knowledge. Of a child being encouraged to gain from fashion, notoriety and conformity in standing before the class to declare itself ‘coming out’, or ‘self-identifying’ (delightfully, as a cat. Just complete the identifying by writing a series of meows on the exam paper and peeing over it).
Nothing to do with the lockdown other than the fact that it forced more people onto social media platforms. There debate is impossible because contrary views are simple cancelled through the click of a button.
The art of listening to an argument and then forming a rational response is dead amongst many young people, and if anyone disagrees with me then I will block them.
My experience with arguments with people (mostly about software issues) who are not supposed to be young anymore is that their usual idea of a counterargument is publically questioning the sanity of whoever disagrees with their pet opinions while completely ignoring the actual topic. Generation Abba — The Winner Takes It all!
Remark to whoever controls the technology which controls us: Can you please stop breaking the edit function by trying to apply automated spam checks to it? We all paid for the privilege to comment here and hence, we are not bots.
The easy solution is to simply not employ them …. a few years living on benefits might change some attitudes.
1965 is way past and this generationing has to stop. That’s just another divide et impera tactic. So, so-called young people (Who do you call young here? When I was twelve, I pretty much considered eighteen-year-olds an alien species.) lack certain skills? Then, teach them. After all, you are supposed to be the one with experience about how stuff works in the real world. They’re not.
The people who are supposed to have taught them when they were younger have refused to do so …. they have been indoctrinated, and mentally destroying them will be the only solution.
During the course of the last 28 years, I’ve met preciously few people capable of tolerating dissent and argueing their case in face of it. They usually feel attacked, get angry because of this and lash out at whoever disagreed with them with whatever abuse they can presently think of. And large numbers of these people were older than me. Hence, this Gen Z wailing is completely inappropriate. The people this label has been stuck on don’t differ from the predecessors in this respect.
Since March 2020 Britain and the West has faced such a vicious and unrelenting onslaught on its traditions, its culture and customs that it is frankly amazing that there are still so many of us still standing.
Our Christian religions have been hollowed out to appease the Islamic jihadis as if this will in any way halt their bloodthirsty assault on our society.
Science, or at least that which pretends to be science in the mainstream is now a medieval farce not even supported by the pretence of honesty – as it doubtless was in medieval times.
Language has been turned on its head, literally such that inclusivity means separate groups and diversity far from indicating minor deviations from the norm refers to utmost depravity.
‘Black Lives Matter’ means that nobody’s lives Matter and ‘Just Stop Oil’ means only that we are going to make your lives miserable but can I have a new plastic banner please before the shops shut?
Education, education, education – good old Tone – is as we all know nothing more than expensive propaganda ie indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination, that the state wickedly encourages the children to sign up for and, trebles all round, makes them pay handsomely for or carry a debt for years hence.
We are told we are facing the age of global boiling yet for the last ten days we have had nothing but rampant downpours. Irrelevant in terms of the planet but in my lifetime the only truly glorious Summer was ’76. We face “climate collapse,” I have asked this before but what exactly does climate collapse amount to? Let me hazard a guess – the weather evaporates, the sky falls in and we are sucked off (😀) into a giant black hole?
No I thought not. Any other suggestions?
Despite all of the above and I have only touched on a few examples this cerebral giant from that bastion of free speech journalism, Channel Four, Alex Mahon has concluded that the mid 20 – 30’s age group have lost the ability to debate because of Lockdowns.
What an utterly conceited, vacuous, intellectual wasteland this woman is.
Get back in your box.
Another suggestion: Climate collapse means the weather becomes unpredictable and than, anything can happen! Doesn’t this scare you? You really ought to be!
The weather is obviously already unpredictable and pretty violent at times but it has always been this way.
The Channel Four boss is being disingenuous. This problem has been going on at least since New Labour got into power and Channel Four itself has been pushing intolerance, filth and depravity since its inception. The lockdowns merely exacerbated an existing problem.
I was a left wing teen in the 1990s, but I hung out with Tory and Labour voters of all stripes at my local pub. Who you voted for didn’t define your entire life and who you could talk to. In time, I came to realise the intellectual free marketeer guy at the pub was the one who was right. I wish he’d lived long enough for me to tell him that.
Nowadays, politics has become a 16th century-style Catholic vs Protestant war zone. Lines have been drawn and people now support terrible policies on all sides, because they have to be part of a particular group, rather than think for themselves. I remember the 2017 election. I looked at May’s manifesto and thought ‘I can’t vote for this!” I definitely couldn’t vote for Corbyn, UKIP was in pieces, we didn’t have the Brexit Party and the other parties were a joke.
LOLZ….the idea that they learn any of those skills anymore in University is laughable…
They learn the exact opposite from what I can see….like the good little indoctrinated sheep that they are expected to be….
Anyhow it’s a bit rich coming from Mahon, one of those at the forefront of the
’Brand is already guilty having been judged by us…no other opinion allowed” gang!
Does she consider herself a fit person to give that kind of advice to others while in Brands case having no commitment to accepting a different opinion?
Or worse, taking active part in trial by media…. facts and truth be damned?
”Young people in the workplace don’t have the skills to debate, disagree and work alongside people with different opinions…”
That was so prior to lockdowns and thanks to State education and media outlets like Channel 4.
I believe this symptom is a result of several factors …
– poor parenting / family break up
– snowflake mentality
– woke indoctrination in schools
– elf and safety culture (no appetite for risk)
– poor relationship management due to living online
Also a life spend indoors in centrally-heated homes playing on computer consoles instead of going outdoors in all weather, falling over, getting dirty, skinning knees, getting into verbal and physical fights with other kids, making friends through adversity, learning how to take care of yourself.
If civilisation collapses, if there’s a real plague along the lines of The Stand and millions die, the younger generation wouldn’t be able to hunt a deer, trap a rabbit, keep chickens or a pen some sheep, grow their own vegetables in the back garden, store food for winter or chop down trees for wood. After they run out of tinned food looted from supermarkets, which will leave them with vitamin deficiencies and heart and liver problems, they’ll starve.
A human trait, transcending history and cultures, is for older members to blame societies ills on ‘young people today.’ Five seconds’ thought reveals that the failings of today’s society cannot possibly be the fault of its young, who have only recently entered it and are still far off being able to shape it. If blame is to be levelled at all, it surely belongs with the older generations. It is the Baby Boomer generation, not Generation Z, who have got us where we are today with their inflated sense of entitlement to a level of material wealth enjoyed neither by their forebears nor successors, their fanatical belief that the state will always care for them and that the public sector has their best interests at heart, their ritualistic worship of the NHS and the ghoulish treatments in dishes out, their aversion to private enterprise and indeed anyone who challenges the power of the state (particularly Donald Trump and Margaret Thatcher), their economic ineptitude that tells them borrowing ever increasing sums of money to spend on the same real estate constitutes economic growth, their hostility to anything that contradicts the narratives of legacy media and their rejection of all the world’s religions and indeed most ideas (except those of Darwin and Marx) dating from before 1960s.
some good points there Dom but some generalisations I for one don’t recognise
It may have been exacerbated by the lockdowns, but hey, it started long before.
You can’t talk to anyone nowadays if you don’t hold the same views. You just get dismissed as a denier for calling out their crazy ideas or for challenging the mainstream narrative.