Climate realism rising! Triumphant climate change conference held in Washington DC

Particularly refreshing for those of us who have fought in support of climate realism for decades was the panel, "Bringing youth into the climate realist fold." It featured meteorologist Chris Martz, social media influencer Lucy Biggers, University of Tennessee student Emma Arns, Heartland Research Fellow (Energy) Linnea Lueken and CO₂ Coalition member Anika Sweetland.

Sweetland's presentation, "My Climate Wakeup," began with her describing her terror of end of the world climate change when a teenager and how, even during her Bachelor of Climate Studies at the University of West Australia, she was being groomed to be a climate alarmist campaigner. She told the audience:

I was taught fear, where there should have been curiosity. And most importantly, I was taught a conclusion before I ever saw the evidence. Even when I accidentally stumbled upon the evidence, I was assured it was completely irrelevant to our current predicament. It was a narrative that everyone followed and no one questioned. NO DEBATE ALLOWED.

My home, planet Earth, was dying. I felt panicked that no one was doing anything about this. It made me so anxious, then miserable and then I got angry. How dare people not care! They got me, hook, line and sinker.

Children all over the globe are being told their home is unstable, dangerous and on the brink of collapse, floods, fires, storms, presented not as natural events to understand, but as proof of doom. And, if they question it, the school will write to their parents.

It is completely irresponsible for us to enable this. The psychological impact of these stories is crippling children's mental health and is simply unacceptable. The proportion of school-aged children diagnosed with anxiety in the UK tripled between 2000 and 2023 and doubled in the USA over the same time period.

Sweetland then went on to describe how we can encourage intellectual independence in the younger generation, such as by engineering a hashtag movement, something like #FACTCHECK, OR #MYCLIMATEWAKEUP, with millions of young people speaking out in support of climate realism. Anika Sweetland's talk is well worth watching by clicking here.

As Marc Morano described so well, and much to the consternation of mainstream media across the world, climate realism is triumphing at last and ICCC16 gave us all a great opportunity to celebrate.