With the youth demand for climate change action growing the world over, students from Huntsville High School came together today to stand up for what they believe in as part of a Global Climate Strike.
“I first heard about Greta Thunberg, the teen climate change activist that started the Fridays for Future movement, this summer,” said local teen activist and walkout organizer Annika Martin. “I was immediately intrigued and shocked I had never heard of her. I started following her on Instagram and discovered that this was a bigger deal than I thought! I highly look up to Greta for being the voice of Mother Earth. She’s only 16, which makes her accomplishments all the more incredible. Around a week before school started, I noticed that there was a global student strike on September 20th, and I knew that HHS needed to get involved.”
Martin then discussed the idea with friends at her school and classmate Sophia Andrew-Joiner agreed to take the project on with with her. From there they worked together to organize, plan, and advertise the walkout. One of the main ways they informed people of the walkout was through an Instagram page @change.HHS where Martin has been posting environmental updates, reminders, and sign ideas frequently.
Teen activist Thunberg recently stated in a speech addressed to US senators: “Some of you may have heard that we have 12 years as from 1 January 2018 to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide in half. But I guess that hardly any of you have heard that there is a 50 per cent chance of staying below a 1.5 degree Celsius of global temperature rise above pre-industrial levels. Fifty per cent chance. And these current, best available scientific calculations do not include non linear tipping points as well as most unforeseen feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost. Or already locked in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Or the aspect of equity; climate justice.”
While the student walkout was just the beginning of the week of protests globally, it is predicted that this could be one of the largest climate strikes in history, said Andrew-Joiner.
The HHS group was just one of many around the world who walked out of their schools today. Although only a small group of 14 students, they were met at Town Hall by over 50 adults from the community who wanted to show their support.
The rally was open to all and about 50 adults arrived at Town Hall to support the students
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- Walter Dix and Sandra Thompson
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- Adrienne ‘Starr’ Young
Matt Irvine with his daughters Alexa and Addyson and grade 9 student Gabe Doyle
While awaiting the students at Town Hall, climate change activist Tom Cowan addressed the crowd. “Today we are here to lift our youth up and show support for Huntsville High School,” he said.
The students also expressed that many of the teachers at HHS were supportive of the cause and encouraged them to continue raising awareness about climate change.
“With strength in numbers we can make our message known to the governments internationally: We cannot keep living like this. As a society, we need to consciously make more eco-friendly decisions. Once we reach a certain point, there is no going back,” said Martin.
Martin and Andrew-Joiner want to encourage adults to join in the fight against climate change with young people.
“Students around the world are forming a sense of community. In the past, countries have had a lot of divisiveness between them as different people have different opinions. In the case, though, we’re all working together towards the same goal: to end climate change. I’m passionate about protecting our earth because it’s everyone’s home; there isn’t another one to fall back on if we screw this one up,” said Martin.
To and from their walk to Town Hall, the HHS students picked up garbage to show that “anyone can take little opportunities to make a difference,” added Martin.
If you missed the walkout but want to get involved there will be another rally held on Friday, September 27 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Town Hall, hosted by Muskoka Power of Many (MPOM), and will feature multiple speakers.
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A few weeks ago I heard an interview with the publisher of the Farmers Almanac, claims to be the oldest weather predicting service in North America. He stated that they needed to change their “model” which they base their prediction due to climate change.
I’m not saying their predictions are accurate but it does show that climate change is occurring.
Erin, you said that Real Clear Energy ‘seems to steer a path that cuts through the verbiage of the right and the left and aims at the truth’. I looked up the author of the article you linked to. His name is James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is a right-wing think tank, most notable for working with tobacco companies to downplay the risks of smoking.
It’s so difficult to know who to believe – on one hand, the people who told us smoking was good – on the other, the vast majority of experts.
Erin, I know that you have issues with “An Inconvenient Truth”; namely that President Gore (hey! we all know that he won) held oil stocks at the time he produced the movie. Irrelevant as this fact is; as he was proselytizing against his best interest; I feel that you owe it to yourself to revisit the film. I believe that 168 top scientists were polled, and that not one denied that global warming was true.
It is good to see the younger people taking a serious interest in this problem.
We need some serious world wide action and not just more and more talk with nothing substantive resulting from it.
Just be careful that the action we plan to take is going to be a real benefit as there is a lot of false data being spouted about in the world today.
These students should learn their science and always ask themselves if each theory or proposed action actually makes sense, based on this science.
We will likely not get a second chance to have an affect on global climate. We need to get it right as we go, the first time. So far a lot of our efforts have been dismal and much of the world is worse at this than Canada.
Also, be reminded that a major part of our problem is simply our numbers. It is one thing to live in harmony with nature when there are just a few of us, it is quite another with billions of us, every one needing space to live and food to eat.
This will be a lifetime challenge for these young students! We all need to pay special attention when we vote as there is really little room now for poorly educated buffoons to be our leaders and petty political maneuvering is not productive.
Erin,
First, both links that you have shared are from the same “article”.
Secondly, the NOAA graph that this “article” is based on shows temperature anomalies. A temperature anomaly is the difference from an average temperature – anything above zero indicates that it is above the average. So for most of the time period noted in that graph, the temperature was above the historical average, in some cases by more than 4C. Also, it’s only data from the contiguous US, not global data, and only over a 10-year span and not even the most recent 10 at that.
Here’s a link to the global temperature anomalies over the period spanning 1880 to the present. The NOAA uses a 20th century average to compare its global anomalies. As you can see, it shows a relatively steady increase over time.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-monitoring/global/nhem/8/201908
Here’s another interesting chart, so you can compare numbers for the contiguous US. It shows that the five warmest years have all happened since 2006. The five coolest all before 1924.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/haywood/110/tavg/12
The NOAA provides lots of data spanning many decades. I encourage you to go to them as a source for your information, rather than relying on the interpretations of others.
Finally, in your most recent comment, it’s Dr. Edenhofer, not Endenhofer (the video has it wrong) and he himself states nothing. The narrator reads a brief “quote” that he has attributed to “Endenhofer” without noting the source of that comment. (Red flag.) But that’s okay, thanks to the power of Google, I tracked it down. It was an interview in German and although I don’t read German, Google Translate does a pretty good job most of the time. I encourage you to translate it as well (unless, of course, you can read German) and read it in its entirety and then compare it in context to the brief “quote” in the video. It doesn’t have quite the same meaning, does it? https://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik_verteilt_das_weltvermoegen_neu-1.8373227
In future, please cite original and verifiable information from reputable sources in your comments. Links to dubious sites that can’t be backed up by fact will not be published.
Dawn Huddlestone
Managing Editor, Huntsville Doppler
This is interesting-
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/11/07/how-climate-science-deniers-manufacture-quotes-convince-you-united-nations-one-big-socialist-plot
Here is a link to a statement from Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, Co-chair of the U.N. IPCC: https://videos.whatfinger.com/2019/09/22/my-gift-to-climate-alarmists-climate-alarmists-debunked/
In the video, Dr. Endenhofer states quite clearly that “climate alarmism” is not at all about the environment (if it ever was) but that it is about redistribution of (middle class) wealth from rich countries to poor countries.
With all due respect, Elizabeth, the link was reporting actual stats from the NOAA. Many “fact check” sites are not to be trusted because of left-leaning bias. Here is another source by a site allied with “Real Clear Politics”–which seems to steer a path that cuts through the verbiage of the right and the left and aims at the truth. It also reports the recently released NOAA stats of no warming since 2005:
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/08/23/climate_alarmists_foiled_no_us_warming_since_2005_110470.html
From Media Bias/Fact Check
“Overall, we rate Ice Age Now a strong Conspiracy and quackery level Pseudoscience website that is Low in factual reporting through rejection of the consensus of science as well as the publication of false climate news stories.”
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ice-age-now/
Michael,
There has been NO warming (at least in N. America–and probably worldwide) since 2005. Just released data from NOAA: https://www.iceagenow.info/fact-no-warming-in-the-united-states-since-2005/
Actually TWO federal candidates attended. Trish Cowie was there too!
I think students world wide are on the right track.We must stop globlewarming,and it,s good to see our local students supporting that cause.The problem is that the united states is responsible for 15% of the worlds pollution and Canada is responsible for 2% of the worlds pollution. I agree with the students, it should be 0%, and our countries should set the example for the world.However how do we reach the other 80%,half whom have no government and can hardly feed and clothe themselves.I have faith in the young mines of the future,there has to be way,maybe a world wide demonstration is a start.How can polital parties in Canada,base thier whole platform on just pollution in Canada,when thier is so much to do?
Well said Ian. Thank you. And Kudos to these students. Many of the student comments quoted in the article itself indicate a very good understanding of the actual science and complexities of this phenomenon.
Indeed, Waldi. I believe that the climate priests were promoting the idea then (in 1989) that, by now, all of the world’s coastal cities would be under water.
The U.N. is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. Check out the “oil-for-food” debacle, of recent times–some U.N. officials and their family members became quite wealthy from the program–among them, the son of U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Anan.
When the IPCC was formed, care was taken to only recruit scientists who agreed with AGW. (In contrast, some climate scientists are now beginning to speak of “global cooling” as a result of decreased solar output.) Global climate change models are notoriously inaccurate. To say, “the science is settled” is a joke. Any scientist who says such twaddle is a politician–not someone with any kind of objectivity. Unfortunately, the big research money goes to scientists who agree with AGW.
I think that it is wise to reduce our fossil fuel consumption, for lots of reasons. But to panic and run around scaring children into believing that the sky is falling and that we only have 12 years (or, is it 10 now?) to respond (by doing what??) is irresponsible and cruel. Greta Thunberg is being used by an organization funded by billionaire, George Soros. Soros has made no secret that he is interested in destroying the sovereignty of the nations of the West, in his zeal to establish world governance (read, world tyranny). He is a despicable old man who, as a teenager, turned in his own fellow Jews to the Nazis. He once claimed in a “60 Minutes” interview that those were “some of the happiest years of my life”. From all appearances, Soros has funded some of the most destructive organizations–from BLM to Antifa through his “Open Society” foundation. He has been quoted as saying, “The only thing standing in the way of world governance is U.S. sovereignty.”
The Constitution of the United States is a barrier to those who seek to destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. That is undoubtedly why you see his paid political stooges (he funds many politicians) rant about the abolition of an “outdated” document. He has set out to use his billions to destroy it.
During WWII, the Nazis were stopped from gaining world dominance by a coalition of the sovereign nations of the West. What would have happened if those nations had been subsumed by a world government with a despot at the top?
Erin Jones
In 1989, the United Nations warned that humanity has a 10-year window to reverse the global warming process before a ecological disaster occurs on the ground. Some of the islands were to disappear from the ground and coastal floods were to cause the exodus of millions of refugees. Until today, nothing has happened.
Not one thing I read here gives us any idea of a solution to the problem it’s fine to say we have to do something but at least have some idea of a solution . As for myself all I see is humans increasing the amount of heat we produce by heating more and more homes and bigger and bigger stores with bigger doors to let more heat out whenever they are opened with bigger paved parking lots that produce a lot more heat than a grass field or wetland. So if co/2 is like a blanket over us and we turn the heat up of course the world will get warmer and will keep getting worse as the population increases . But if we think about it a bit things have been warming up for around 10.000 years give or take a few so all this has happened before so we better learn to adapt to it.
Ian Hastie,
There are many climate scientists who disagree with man-caused global warming but they do not get any press coverage because the government LOVES AGW–all the more tax for them to squander from “climate change” taxes. If Trudeau has his way, even more of our tax money will go to buying a captive mainstream media.
Armstrong doesn’t pretend to be a climate scientist–he was and is an economic forecaster.
Here is a link to a website containing an interview with a former NASA scientist, Dr. Leslie Woodcock, emeritus professor at the University of Manchester (UK) School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science: https://www.inquisitr.com/1234575/nasa-scientist-global-warming-is-nonsense/
I’m afraid it is you who is being “sucked in” Ian.
The authority ,Armstrong , used by E . Jones is a self taught “economist” who also has published his views on climate change , partly while cooling his heels in a federal penitentiary for a Ponzi scheme, defrauding clients of millions with his economic forecasts.
He believes in a global cooling trend, totally contrary to the world ‘s scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.. His logic is pseudo-science , patched together by fluctuations from past global temp changes and related changes in sunspot activity. It is also driven by his publicly voiced belief that there is a central authoritarian effort to reduce personal freedoms with fears of global warming.
I have never ever seen a less convincing “expert” on climate change. Totally unethical and conspiratorial in nature. Sadly,I am afraid E. Jones has been sucked in.
I actually found it heartening that there was not an overwhelming onslaught of student turnout for the rally. Usually, when there’s a message concerning “Area 51”, most students are more than happy to abandon school for their personal peccadilloes. The lesser number was indicative to me, at least, that those who showed up really do care.
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Kudos to Gord Miller for his attendance. I would be surprised indeed if a full slate of candidates did not show up on Oct. 27 (11:30 – 1:00) for the same purpose at Town Hall. The difference, however, is that these protesters will be VOTERS. Nevertheless, you ignore the future voters (and leaders) at your own peril.
Well, it should stand out as a clear indicator as to how to vote, federally, provincially, municipally.
Eh?
Further note: That I do NOT, in any way, profit from the production or distribution of fossil fuels–unlike Al Gore, when he was running around (using lots of fossil fuel, by the way) promoting his film, “An Inconvenient Truth”. At that time, he owned 200,000 shares of Occidental Petroleum. Now THAT is an “inconvenient truth”.
While I find the level of concern and willingness to express it commendable, there is little chance that there is anything humans can or will do about what has been dubbed “anthropogenic global warming”. Planting trees would likely be more beneficial if one is really concerned about the increase in CO2. But, it could just be that the increase in “greenhouse gases” may be beneficial (by trapping available heat) if we are going into a cooling trend, caused by decline in solar output. We have historical records of a severe solar minimum–the Maunder Minimum (1620-1710 A.D.). It caused such cooling that there were several years when there was no frost-free month in northern Europe. As a result, many thousands died from starvation there. It even caused the abandonment of small settlements in southern Greenland which had previously (in warming periods) been habitable.
The earth heats and cools on a regular basis, as the chart in this article demonstrates: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/climate-change-real-fake-exaggerated/
In any case, it is not at all clear that an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere causes anything. It is known that it is the sun-generated warming period which causes a consequent rise in atmospheric CO2–not the other way around.
Disappointing that the mayor and council did not appear to support our youth, nor federal election candidates other than Gord Miller. What does this say about their determination to combat global warming?
I am so proud of these students who showed leadership and passion for this incredibly important issue. The future is theirs, and they deserve a voice. I wish that more students from HHS had the courage to be part of this protest, joining so many students around the world. I hope that our leaders listen. Good to see Gord Miller, our Green candidate there. He has my vote, as the only candidate and federal party who seem to acknowledge the seriousness of climate change.