Climate Indoctrination of Children
Erik Bye September 18, 2025
Introduction
This is my first article as a writer within the field of Climate Change, from 2009. The IPCC delivered theirAR4 report in 2007. I considered the climate question as an important challenge for the people who are responsible for the increased emissions of fossil CO2. This was the cause of global warming, with a suggested responsibility for even uncontrolled warming, which we should take care of.As a physical chemist, I was familiar with the IR absorption of the CO2 molecules.
Early this year, the Norwegian Government decided that diesel vehicles should be preferred, due to a reduced CO2 emission of 2-3% compared to petrol vehicles. The price for the diesel vehicles was reduced to encourage the change to these vehicles This was strange due to the small difference in the output of CO2. However, other topics were even stranger. The diesel exhaust particles were carcinogenic, and in addition, the exhaust consisted of NOx gases. The toxicologists warned about the cancer risk, and the health experts warned people with problems with their heart and lungs, related to exposure to increased levels of NOx gases
The promotion by the Government of vehicles, based on the small difference in CO2-emission and the rejection of cancer and lung risk, told me that this was more a political ideology than based on science, and an IPCC sceptical scientist was born!
Inspection of the climate models of IPCC told me that something was wrong. The model had failed in all the main reports,AR1 -AR4.
Late in 2007, the UN, the IPCC and Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and The Fraud was obvious.
Then I was aware of Tellus 10, a textbook in science for children at the age of 16, and since then, I have been a convinced climate realist.
Tellus 10
In the textbook Tellus 10, for the 10th grade of junior high school, there is a section on global climate change, published in 2008. It gives a very unbalanced view of climate change, without any objections to the IPCC's conclusions (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
The students read: "You might think it might be okay to get a little warmer here in the north? However, a warmer climate will result in 'wetter and wilder' weather. Climate change - temperature increase and extreme weather - will affect natural conditions around the world. Even if the increase in greenhouse gas emissions is stopped immediately, global warming will continue due to the inertia of the system. Current forecasts say that it will be difficult to avoid a temperature increase of almost two degrees by 2100
Unvarnished textbook
It is good that the authors have included something about the global changes that are taking place. This gives students a starting point for learning about and discussing our global climate. What is problematic, however, is that the text only addresses one side - the one who agrees with the IPCC's conclusions. The impression is left that what is written is the prevailing view, without reservation. (See the text box for the core of the dispute.) The term "wilderness" is speculative. It is probably a language that the students understand, but it builds up under a "crisis regime".All talk of a climate crisis is highly debatable, and this should be stated in the textbook. With the phrase "Even if the increase in greenhouse gas emissions stops ", the textbook concludes that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of global warming.According to the IPCC, it is overwhelmingly likely that it is emissions of man-made CO2 that are the main cause of the increase in global temperatures. But there is great scientific disagreement about this. There is no reliable documentation that there is a connection between increased CO2 and increased global temperature. Therefore, it has not been unequivocally established that climate change is man-made. This should be stated in the textbook.
Graphic manipulation
The text is illustrated with a temperature diagram based on the Hockey-stick model, shown in Figure 1.
First, this model is very controversial. In addition, the curve shows that the temperature after the year 2000 will almost certainly rise straight up. The graph gives the impression that we are heading straight towards a climate crisis. But the temperatures after 2000 are, after all, only theoretical model results from the IPCC's calculations.
Teacher's guide
The textbook was printed in 2008, together with the teacher's guide. Fortunately, the guide includes some of the nuances of the climate debate.
"The latest data (when this is written in 2008) show that the development in global temperature has levelled off in recent decades from the "peak year" in 1998, even
though the atmosphere's greenhouse gas content is increasing. It is pointed out that all temperature forecasts from the UN are significantly higher than the actual temperature. The question now is whether the IPCC has “missed the mark?” This will be interesting to follow as more data becomes available in the coming years."
This is an important nuance compared to what is in the textbook itself.And thus, it becomes crucial for the communication of climate variations that teachers are good at using the teacher's guide. This involves an extra challenge in a topic that is not at all easy.And here, the view of the "established" can change quickly. This means that the teacher's guide can also quickly become outdated.
Online learning material
Here we are also faced with a very complicated topic, where understanding is far from established. There are significant critical voices against the prevailing "official" perceptions of man-made climate change.
So, what is the solution? It will take time to update the textbook. With skilled teachers and thorough use of the teacher's guide, a nuanced presentation of the global climate can be provided. But if the teacher's guide is out of date, what then?
The Tellus textbook has a website. There is an online teacher's guide here. This must be updated and used for all it is worth. Then the teacher's guide can be constantly up to date and provide the teacher with balanced and updated background material on climate change. But for the learning material - the students' text - to be as up to date as possible, parts of the textbook must also be updated online, i.e. online learning material. In this way, students will receive balanced information about the “state of the art”.
So, one might ask: Is this too demanding? Doesn't the teacher have more than enough to impart their own knowledge, if they don't also have to constantly go online and check that "they haven't changed"? This is probably the price we must pay for providing the best possible education about climate change, especially because there is insufficient knowledge about the causes of the changes.
At the time of writing (March 2009), we have temperature data up to February 2009.Adiagram (Figure 2) shows the comparison for the period 1979 - 2009 with data from HadCRUT3.
The flattening is clear after the year 2000. But the observation period is still a bit short, only 10 years for the flattening itself. But some believe that by 2013? The flattening must stop; otherwise, there is something wrong with the IPCC models. The observed temperature variation shows how complicated this phenomenon is. Moreover, we know little about other factors that can affect the climate. This applies to solar activity, cosmic radiation, cloud formation and above- and belowground volcanic eruptions, in addition to greenhouse gases such as water vapor and CH4. This presents the active teacher with a real challenge.
Conclusion
The challenges line up; students must receive the best possible, balanced knowledge about the climate, so that we make the right choices in dealing with such complicated phenomena. We must ensure that the climate debate is not hampered by resistance to critical questions. Here, schools can help open the debate.
The core of the dispute
The IPCC claims that it is overwhelmingly likely that global warming is man-made and is caused by our emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. This is because an increased content of CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increased temperatures. In the
period 1850 - 1998, both the CO2 content and the temperature rose steadily. But after 2000, the global temperature has not risen, while the CO2 level continues to rise. This may mean that the IPCC models have significant shortcomings. These shortcomings are supported by the fact that we know too little about the other 3 factors that can affect the climate: solar activity, cosmic radiation, cloud formation, the greenhouse gases water vapor and CH4, and above- and below-ground volcanic eruptions. The main question is whether CO2 can matter as much as the IPCC estimates in its model calculations. Do the other factors (mentioned above) matter much more?