I wrote the following on June 20th, and tracked down Pete Williams from Somerfield, asking for a copy of the report that Bjorn Lomborg seems to have been so impressed by. \u00a0Alas, I've heard nothing. \u00a0Time to chase again, perhaps.<\/p>\n
Back in February, the Boston Globe<\/a> ran a story about a 17-year old who had been\u00a0admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. The youth was refusing to drink water as he was worried about drought related to climate change, and was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The doctors noted this as the first known instance of \"climate change delusion\". \u00a0<\/p>\n On Monday, the Guardian\u00a0ran a piece<\/a> by Bjorn Lomborg<\/a> titled: Scared silly over climate change<\/em> in which he claimed that we are \"frightening children with exaggerations \u2013 they believe they don't have a future and that the world is going to end\". \u00a0Most of the reportage in the story came from the USA, but towards the end, Lomborg says: \"We see the same pattern in the United Kingdom, where a survey showed that half of young children aged between seven and 11 are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern\". \u00a0Indeed it would be, were it true. \u00a0But is it? \u00a0And whose survey is it? \u00a0The Guardian article didn't say.<\/p>\n Perhaps it was the same story<\/a> as reported by GMTV in February which notes: \"Half of young children are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern\". \u00a0If so, this suggests it is a survey by Somerfield. \u00a0Somerfield<\/a> spokesman Pete Williams has\u00a0said<\/a>: \"Concerns over our environment dominate the media at present and kids are exposed to the hard facts as much as anybody. While many adults may look the other way, this study should show that global warming is not only hurting the children of the future, its affecting the welfare of kids now\". \u00a0<\/p>\n All this rather runs counter to anecdotal evidence from teachers and headteachers with whom I have talked who say that young people find the challenges around climate and environment rather stimulating and motivating \u2013 and how much of the Somerfield survey can be taken at face value depends on what was asked, and how, of course. \u00a0I'll try to track this down c\/o Mr Williams \u2013 and report back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wrote the following on June 20th, and tracked down Pete Williams from Somerfield, asking for a copy of the report that Bjorn Lomborg seems to have been so impressed by. \u00a0Alas, I've heard nothing. \u00a0Time to chase again, perhaps....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}