RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two months before their upcoming conference at Sydney University (13-15 May), entitled “Socialism for the 21st century,” Aussie far leftists, who include Green Left activists and members of the Socialist Alliance, have just announced the line-up for their inevitable session bashing Israel.

Meanwhile, another Israel-undermining initiative, altogether smarter and more subtle, which has infiltrated the school system in the Aussie state of Victoria, appears to have gone relatively unnoticed.

I refer to the fact that the play City by the Sea, by poet, writer and activist Samah Sabawi, a Gaza-born (1967) Australian/Canadian, is now on the 2016 playlist for school students taking the Victorian Certificate of Education. It means that students in years 11 and 12 will be attending performances of the play at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in May.

An official document listing the plays selected for study in 2016 states, inter alia:

‘Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Drama written examination.

While the VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes that are explored may be challenging for students. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with the treatment of these issues and themes within the context and world of the play prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript. This might involve reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company, researching the playscript, the work of the playwright, director and/or company, attending a preview performance and/or discussing the matter with the school administration. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide only. In some plays, suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. This language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community’ [Emphasis added]

On a nightly show following the Wisconsin primary, science celebrity Bill Nye (“the science guy”) argued that the Republican Party will need young people to win in November, and that the vast majority of millennials believe in climate alarmism. As a conservative millennial, I deny his sweeping generalization, and the data back me up.

Nye lamented that the Republican candidates for president are all “deniers,” and argued that the campaign has yet to pivot to real issues. Then he made the ridiculous claim, saying the gap between alarmists and “deniers” is almost entirely generational.

I don’t think the party can quite get enough votes without millennials. Climate denial is almost entirely generational. Only now and then do you meet a young person — nobody your age is a climate denier. very few. It’s all old people.

To his credit, the show’s host, Larry Wilmore, was a bit skeptical. “I don’t know,” Wilmore replied. “I may have to disagree with you a little bit. I think a lot of it is ideological.”

The numbers back Wilmore on this one. In a Harvard Institute of Politics poll released in April of last year, millennials ended up largely agreeing with their older Americans in being skeptical about climate alarmism.

While 55 percent agreed with the statement that “global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories,” a full 43 percent disagreed with this alarmist statement. Twenty percent held to a more moderate view: “Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars and industrial facilities.”

Money is certainly tight in the post-secondary system nowadays, which raises the question of why a Canadian university in the province of British Columbia is going to spend $110,000 in up-front costs to construct a solar road that will provide enough electricity to power only 40 personal computers.

As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

A decorative compass that students and others at Thompson Rivers University [TRU] walk over to enter the campus’ Arts and Education Building will soon start generating solar energy as a “solar roadway.” …

[According to Michael Mehta, a geography and environmental studies professor at TRU,] “People will be able to walk on it, vehicles will be able to drive on it and it will — in the same way as these other rooftops systems — capture the energy from the sun and produce electricity to operate the Arts and Education building.” …

“It’s expected to produce about 10,000 kilowatt-hours a year of power, which we estimate is the equivalent of running all the computer labs in the building, about 40 computers, for eight hours a day on an annual basis.”

Mehta said he hopes the project will inspire others to make use of the technology, which is already being used in other places around the world. He said the Netherlands already has a 70-metre bicycle path made from solar panels, and France is planning to build long stretches of “solar roads”.

The project’s proposal states that “this array will produce on average 9700 kWh/year of electricity over its planned 25-30 year lifetime.”

Dictionary.com defines junk science as: “faulty scientific information or research, especially when used to advance special interests.” Junk science is going strong. Many junk science enterprises are deeply embedded in universities, the federal government and the public consciousness.

Some junk science is very bad science that is just wrong and can be easily dismissed. For example, the theories that vaccines cause autism or that power lines cause cancer. Some junk science lacks scientific support but catches the public imagination and is used by special interests to make money. An example is organic food. Organic food is food grown by methods popular prior to 1930. The theory is that the old ways were somehow more pure and noble than modern methods. This is only carried so far. The shoppers at Whole Foods aren’t wearing homespun clothes. The government has generated regulations defining organic food and thus has bestowed legitimacy on a fad with little scientific basis. Next our representatives may be licensing psychics and promulgating standards for snake oil. If you want to have a laugh, or get some natural herbs to supposedly improve your sex life, browse the quack medicine aisle at any Whole Foods market.

Often junk science is based on distorting real science. Global warming is an example of junk science where there is a kernel of scientific truth that has been abused and beaten into a junk science edifice supporting huge money flows. There are good reasons for supposing that adding CO2 to the atmosphere might warm the Earth. The evidence is that the warming effect of CO2 is slight and not necessarily bad. (The Earth has failed to warm for over 18 years.) It is clear that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a massive positive effect on agriculture because plants have to work hard to absorb CO2. Increased CO2 concentrations enable plants to grow faster, an incontrovertible scientific fact proved by many experiments. Global warming is promoted by entrenched scientific bureaucracies and by the huge alternative energy industry. Scientific organizations vigorously attack anyone who criticizes global warming junk science and thus threatens their members’ paychecks.