Just what kids who mostly cannot read or do math at grade level need—a day off from school. Fix the schools and the subway DeBlasio. No one wants you to be president. Come home and fix the city.
13
There is not and there never will be technology to make wind energy from where there is no wind. And our young generation, and our politicians, are as geographically illiterate as they are scientifically illiterate.
According to NOAA, there is usable wind only in 1/5 of the country, in the Great Plains, from the Dakotas down to Texas. And some sea breeze. See the map below.
https://www.boem.gov/uploadedImages/land%20based.jpg
In Yonkers NY, a factory installed best personal wind turbine, costing $11,000, produced in a year a grand total of $0.35 worth of power...
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2012/08/recouping-cost-of-wind-turbine-may-take-more-than-a-lifetime/index.htm
(They conclude that it would take more than a lifetime to recover the $11,000 invested in the turbine. In fact it's about 30,000 years, the existence time of Homo Sapiens.)
And in the winter, when you need heating most, there is very little solar energy. Else you could grow tomatoes outdoors in February...
Since the Green Boston did not build a pipeline to PA, and wanted to avoid the embarrassment of a few tens of thousands children, elderly and frail freeze due to Green Energy policies, they had to import LNG from Russia, whitewashed through Trinidad to avoid US sanctions on Russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/tanker-carrying-liquefied-natural-gas-from-russias-arctic-arrives-in-boston/2018/01/28/08d3894c-0497-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html
Putin's friends are Green...
6
Why don’t these kids protest en masse the horrifically sad state of education in this country?
17
Most of these young people have been brainwashed and couldn't tell you the first thing about climate. Letting them out of school for a demonstration is nothing but virtue signalling.
And quit calling skeptics deniers. They are skeptics. The science isn't compelling and regardless of how weak the CC data is, skepticism is critical to science. When you use the term denier as the standard you are equating CC to a religion. Stop it.
14
What do you call people who deny the oblate spheroidal shape of our planet Earth? Skeptics?
I call them delusional. Would you prefer that term for climate change deniers?
21
Parents, please contact your local school district and ask for the same concessions. There are climate strikes planned across the USA this Friday. This can't be something we just leave to NYC and the youth. Make a sign. Leave work. Join with the students.
14
Note to all young up and coming activists: if the authorities give you permission to walk out, it is not a strike.
15
If these students really want to save the environment and reduce CO2 emissions, they will take days off from school to demand more nuclear power plants.
6
Can we assume that the Mayor and school officials will also allow students to attend the March for Life without penalty in January? There are millions of Americans who believe just as strongly in that political cause as those concerned with climate change. Or are we only going to allow students to attend protests that align with the political views of the Mayor. Unfortunately, I probably know the answer.
13
I love that the students and teachers are paying attention to this issue and this day, putting a positive angle on attending the climate strike, and offering climate-related materials in class. To those who see it as just an excuse to cut class: learning, leading and civic participation should be - are - of a piece.
Sure there are kids who will use the day to cut class but the exception does not invalidate the principal effort.
Kudos, and Power To The Youth Leaders of Today.
7
And will the students have to make up the day?
I remember the 60's and 70's when we protested without permission because we were passionate about it. Now NYC just gave kids the day off, suggesting that they protest. But if not, well take the day and have fun.
Not a good decision on behalf of the NYC DOE. Politics in school.
If this is ok, why was the school in AR being criticized for a trump banner at a football game?
10
@bored critic
On the contrary - it's certainly as valid a reason for studemts to miss a day as attending the Yankees ticker tape parade without being counted absent courtesy of R Giuliani back in the aughrs.
Of course this is even more valid... it has educational value as civic action.
6
Great, seriously, great!
But a gentle reminder that perhaps posters and flyers which end up in the trash or landfill are defeating the purpose.
11
@novoad What use will jobs and a good economy be if we don’t have clean water and clean air? What’s the point of a good economy if all profits are plowed into disaster remmediation? world? “What profits a man if we gain the world but lose our souls?”
We can have a good economy w/out fossil fuels if we stop breeding and greeding. Nature is our soul and life support. I hope you are young enough to experience the disaster you are promoting, only then will reason prevail.
12
@Samantha Kelly
"if we don’t have clean water and clean air"
CO2 emissions have little to do with clean water and clean air, or wildlife.
Under Obama every wind farm was allowed to butcher without questions 4000 bald eagles a year (which are not eaten by cats), which is 1/30 of the total. So you either love eagles or wind turbines, but not both.
https://www.apnews.com/b8dd6050c702467e8be4b1272a3adc87
If you prefer to have all the US bald eagles roasted instead of chopped, the solar thermal Ivanpah plant in the Mojave desert does that.
And the EPA obsession with climate led to it neglecting superfund cleanups and keeping Flint MI water lead free...
4
That at least one commenter claims climate change, reality, truth are somehow left-wing, “politically correct” ideas speaks volumes about the deeply delusional, dysfunctional state of what passes for the Republican Party today.
11
Wow. Quite a few cynical comments here.
10
@Moby Doc Exactly. The youth are trying to reverse climate-environmental trends that these adult commenters were part of creating. They're vowing to clean up your/our mess. Give 'em a break.
13
Novad- the chart you refer to shows that sea level at The Battery from 1860 to1890 was pretty stable, then a gap in data, and then begins to rise sharply. Coincides exactly with the industrial revolution, and rapid population growth. And in any case, sea-level rise varies around the world, being more extreme in some areas than in others.
Perhaps ‘strike” is the wrong term-“demonstration” would more accurately reflect what young people across the world want to express-support for an all out effort to switch to non-polluting sources of energy, and scorn for the lack of political will to do so. The technology is available, and the kids know that it is a crisis situation-congratulations to all who demonstrate, in New York and around the world. Masses of adults should show up to demonstrate that they, too, get it. It’s about the future of our children and grandchildren.
12
@Janet Van Sickle
Sorry Janet, but that is not how you read a graph.
Look at the NOAA data again. The Battery, NYC.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
In 1850-1860 sea level was around –0.35.
Around 1940, 80 years later it was around –0.15, that is 20 cm higher.
Around 2020, 80 years later, it's around 0.05, that is THE SAME 20 cm higher.
The world emissions for 1940-2020 were about 100 times bigger than 1850-1940, when few countries had any industry at all.
That shows that if we reduced population AND industry by 98%, which nobody can even conceive short of a giant asteroid hit, sea levels would STILL grow at THE SAME rate.
What the students are not shown is that "decarbonization" by ALL countries, not by the US alone, would have just about the same effect as putting ropes across the San Andreas fault to stop earthquakes.
You say "the technology is available."
There is not and there never will be technology to make wind energy from where there is no wind. And our young generation, and our politicians, are as geographically illiterate as they are scientifically illiterate.
According to NOAA, there is usable wind only in 1/5 of the country, in the Great Plains, from the Dakotas down to Texas. And some sea breeze. See the map below.
In Yonkers NY, a factory installed best personal wind turbine, costing $11,000, produced in a year a grand total of $0.35 worth of power...
https://www.boem.gov/uploadedImages/land%20based.jpg
5
You do realize the vast majority would skip school for any possible reason and most have no idea what hey are supposed to be protesting
13
There is an international climate emergency and we need to act on this ASAP. Good job mayor and students lets make this a day to remember!
11
There is no valid excuse to do nothing. HOW you do it is up to you, but please do something.
11
None of those million students was so curious as to check.
In their own city, at The Battery park, there is a cabin with a floater which checks the sea levels for 160 years now. The official data at NOAA shows that seas were rising in the time of Lincoln, with no industry around the world and no cars, at EXACTLY THE SAME rate as now, 3mm/year or a foot/century. So humans couldn't have caused it, 100 years BEFORE the big emissions. That also shows, by dilation, the temperatures. Same around the world.
There are lots of published papers on that, but people are too scientifically illiterate to look at a simple graph.
We are raising a generation of deliberately scientifically illiterate mindless activists.
But it's OK, I guess. We can always import the thinkers. In my honors college class, a quarter of the students are from India, and another quarter's parents are from abroad. And I came from Eastern Europe at age 25.
"Saving the Earth for our grandchildren" means destroying the US economy and condemning these grandchildren to become janitors at universities abroad...
The NOAA data at The Battery (in blue, the wiggly line.) You can access from there all the NOAA data on sea levels. No long time gauge shows any acceleration.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
The million students were told that their city will be swallowed by waters. And THEY are guilty and that THEY can stop it.
Without ever bothering to check it. One click away.
12
@novoad
You're 100% correct. One click away. If you had made a single click on the page you linked to, you'd see that oceans rise at different rates in different places:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/regionalcomparison.html?region=USNA
More to the point, the IPCC reports summarize tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers. Tens of thousands. Show me tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers that refute man made climate change, and then we'll talk.
Now, what were you saying about "scientific illiteracy"...?
6
@Frank As I said, you can look from there at ALL the data.
NO PLACE shows any acceleration.
Different shores move up and down at different speeds, but that doesn't accelerate either.
The point is that if you destroyed 95% of the population, and 99% of the industry, to return at the population and industry from 150 years ago, the effect on temperatures and on sea levels would be zero: they would rise at the same rate as now. Since 150 years ago they rose at the same rate as now.
That is what our scientifically illiterate children and adults don't grasp.
3
@Frank "Show me tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers"
Religion is based on the number of believers. They kept careful track of those numbers, in centuries past.
Modern science is simply data based. Anything which is contradicted by data is simply wrong. As Feynman said, that sentence is the essence of modern science. A million papers won't change that...
Scientific illiteracy is precisely mistaking science for religion.
The sad fact is that those million students, and our politicians who want to spend tens of trillions (that would be about $300,000 from your family, which I encourage you to give ASAP), none of these people have checked or ever will check the simple data of 160 years from a floater on the sea in The Battery park in Brooklyn...
Just like you, they apply to climate the parable of Thomas the Doubter. If you check, you lose your faith, and you are lost...
3
Have it on a Saturday. Participation would drop at least 75% if it wasn't a free day out of school.
17
@Mimi
In Germany this discussion is already over. During holidays the participation was stable if not higher and kids organized huge workshops. So let's see if you're right. I don't think so.
8
@Diane--thats germany, not the USA
1
Best of luck students-we need you.
17
1. This would never be permitted for the Right to Life march in DC. 2. There are hundreds, if not thousands of parents who need a full school day so their children can be educated and fed while they work. 3. Half the kids skipping out will not be anywhere near a protest site and will use this day as a free day off.
Privilege at its rotten best.
12
@Chris--but dont you see? There is only 1 set of issues that are important--the liberal progressive ones. There is only 1 right way to address any issue or cause--the liberal way. There is only 1 right way to think and speak--the liberal way. When will you succumb to the indoctrination? Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
6
I think it is great that these kids will be given hope and then have their hopes and dreams crushed all by the time they leave high school.
Human beings will be unable to reduce their carbon emissions, re-capture is the only hope. The liberal elite is far too materialistic to make the changes it needs to make - the need to visit 52 countries in 52 weeks!
5
@Silly
Re-capture. Plant trees. Nearly 68.000.000 have been planted by the German search engine ecosia.
@Silly
Re-capture. Let's plant trees. Use ecosia.
I thought every day was climate warming protest day in our public schools. That’s what my kids tell me.
5
These strikes need to keep happening until we see large scale global plans for action, so let's all get out there and march. The UN needs to get to work on building an action coalition with a real mandate. Hope and prayers will get us... nowhere good.
9
It's the right thing to do, given proportionality alone. Missing a day's lesson won't matter if you're dead in a decade (if not much sooner!) because you didn't stand up to fight the fossil-burners' climate attack.
The law of sines can wait. The laws of nature will not.
7
@SR--dead in a decade? Really? A little alarmist dont you think.
3
It's not the sixties, this is ridiculous. Maybe a good calculus class so they can understand math and calculate a rate of change instead.
8
Dear young people of New York,
Congrats on your day off. Calling attention to climate change is worth missing a day of classes. That said, unless your 'save our planet', etc signs include demands for family planning, you'll be nothing more than just another generation of Polyannas.
6
i'll feel more encouraged about our future when i read the same story about schools in florida.
4
Here kid, take this sign, here's a script for chants, go to it! Don't trouble yourself with learning the sciences. It's complicated. Oh, and be sure to bring plenty of bottled water and that bag of fast food.
13
What is the point of a strike that is supported by the institution in which you are striking? How could it even be called a strike?
6
The best way for these magnificent kids to further their climate goals for our country:
Big signs proclaiming: Vote Democrat 2020!
6
Solar powered yachts for the masses! What a rallying call. Talk about suffering for the cause. Today’s kids.
5
@John Doe
Yeah, and it looks like those Millionaires out in East Hampton don’t want the transmission line from the off shore wind farm going through their town. Millions on lawyers and lobbyists to stop it. Lots of people talk the talk....
5
I wonder. Are these kids being taught that climate change is the result of CO2 in the air from cars and manufacturing? Or, are they being taught that population expansion, especially in regions that cannot sustain growth, are the cause of climate change; the cause of forests being clear cut, waters being unnaturally diverted, the loss of habitat for palm oil and metals needed for their cell phones? I hope it's the latter, but doubt it.
5
@Ma
"Are these kids being taught that climate change is..."
I don't think they are bing taught. I think they are thinking for themselves, teaching us.
Listen!
9
@Scientist
I think your entire reply could be shortened to, "I don't think they are bing (sic) taught."
But, sure, let them take a day off of school so they can virtue signal, it's not like they're actually being taught anything in "school." Our students will just keep falling further behind India and China but will definitely keep the lead in woke SJWs.
3
@Lord of the Dance--1 kid in college, 1 in HS. They are not being officially and scientifically taught anything. What the teachers do tell them, unofficially, is emissions; dont drive a big suv, ride a bike instead of driving. All nonsense. And 90% of the kids are sponges and just soak it up as truth and spit it back out. Ban plastic straws, give me a break. Parents--tell your kids to keep a list of everything they see for a whole day that is plastic. Pens in school, water bottles, the snaps on their backpacks, their phone cases, their cleats, their football/hockey equipment, literally 90% of the supermarket, the list is endless. After they have that list, then let's talk about straws.
1
I’ve been in numerous student protest actions: since the late 1950s in grammar school through 1960s protest in college.
For instance, one teacher in my Catholic high school discontinued playing rock and roll music during lunch period, saying the lyrics could be suggestive.
I helped organize a boycott of the lunch food that we paid for. (No free lunches back then.)
On the day of our strike, everyone brought in their own lunch and thousands of dollars of food went unsold. We got the administration’s attention.
As punishment, we all had to attend school on a Saturday. But we got our music back the next week. We won but at a small cost. We sacrificed a free day for our goals.
Why not simply hold this current protest on a weekend or holiday? No one loses a precious day of learning, but can still protest.
Or that still too much for our mayor in absentia to comprehend?
10
Teaching about environment is what is important. Many children do not know about conservation and preservation that can be done in daily life, such as not using bottled water and/or plastic bottles. Little things like showers instead of baths, not running water while brushing teeth, etc. Use the day as a teaching moment.
3
@Irene
That's true. Maybe you would like to use "ecosia" as search engine. This is a search engine that plants trees.
Lots of out of towers here commenting on a local issue of school attendance. I think for high schoolers, fine. They are used to taking the subway to school anyway, or should be. Below that, grammar school, there are a lot of practical considerations. Does the mom get a paid day off from her job to brings the kids to a demonstration? Will there be social stigma for not doing so? The cost of living is very high here in NYC, and the average New Yorker whose kids attend public school is not rolling in dough unlike in many other places. Maybe all the out of towers can crowdfund the moms’ lost pay.
6
Student protests are a wonderful civic education and show the value of freedom of speech and engagement.
However, which issues will the state allow students to be absent from a required school day?
The public schools allowing students to be absent for a certain issue protest on a day they would ordinarily be required to attend is essentially state sanctioned speech.
Supporting civic engagement and freedom of speech generally, yes. Picking and choosing which issues merit an absence, no.
18
@CNNNNC
This is clearly something that happens only once in a while. No one is suggesting an ongoing policy of allowing students out of school to protest this or that.
2
@Nat
Until the next politically approved social justice protest that fits with the campaign policies of the absent mayor.
3
Good for the kids: if they want to demonstrate, have at it. If the climate situation alarms them they should express that alarm.
But they should also learn about what civil disobedience really means: announcing the importance of your cause by willingly accepting the consequences of the "disobedience". Its the sacrifice that drives home the message - not just showing up.
If they otherwise must be in school then they should welcome - or more to the point - be instructed to welcome whatever disciplinary consequences follow their absence. No, nothing harsh or truly biting, but something that instills the knowledge that some things are important enough to endure a cost to personal security or comfort: compel the kids to think it through, weigh the risks and then make a stand or stand down.
Its a vital lesson for any civic minded child to learn.
The people of Hong Kong are examples on a grand scale.
19
I heard that Mario Savio was excused from classes at Berkeley for free speech protests :) Seriously though, is it really protest when it's more or less sanctioned by the state?
Who then decides what protests a student might be excused for?
16
The kids are alright. Its their lives and children lives that are going to be most affected. They need to hold those in power accountable for the destruction they are raging on the earth. They need to make the current generation pony up for what they have done.
As the Indian proverb states " We do not inherit the earth, we borrow it from out children" Time to pay up with interest!
47
There is as much real education about civic duty, responsibility, engagement, environmental science and meteorology wrapped up in such a day’s activity as there is in any day of school. Besides, it’s also an opportunity for children to educate us, to be, as it were, the adults in the room.
35
Well, there will always be some people who naysay a good, beautiful, and urgent thing. The demonstrations are more important than anything that can be learned in one day at school.
52
Power concedes nothing without demands. It never has, and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass
54
I wish I could post a poetic, insightful and humorous but biting essay. But everything is distilled to one simple, prosaic, question: Can the kids vote or own shares in 'my' comapny?
3
Huh? Vote or own shares in your company? They will be the caretakers of a ruined world and the people that will care for you when you are feeble and old. I say good for the kids and I hope they block the streets and have a giant party of it.
2
Doesn't New York actively support climate changes and regulations? Who are they protesting to? Shouldn't they be going into areas where people are anti-climate changes and protesting there?
Anti-climate supporters are just going to ignore these protest as many of them do not live in New York City. So the real pain is suffered by the people in the city of New York trying to go to work but blocked by these movements. Even the prior greats like Martin Luther King Jr. protested by having marching into areas that were against his movement to get his point across.
2
This is a worldwide strike. It is particularly important in New York City because the UN, based in NYC, is meeting about climate that week.
60
The climate emergency is the biggest threat today to this country and too young and old people alike. Learning firsthand about civic participation is an invaluable lesson and part of a great education! Good job DOE.
43
All summer I have waited for announcements from the Democrat politicians. Everyone knows that Trump doesn’t believe in climate change and that the terrible climate effects are all due to his time as President. But not one Democrat said that to do their part in reducing climate change, they were turning off the air conditioning in their homes and offices and discontinuing the use of cars for transportation. Do as I say, not as I do?
7
So if it were a protest about the level of Federal Debt would that qualify for an excused absence? Just one of the other problems we are leaving them to solve.
8
@Robert Broun
Yes. Corporate welfare and military excess are bankrupting the nation.
7
Other than sending out an email, nothing has changed. DOE policy has always been to accept such absences as excused. My concern is not with the policy. Rather I worry about students who are unsure about whether an absence on their record is an acceptable price to pay for saving the planet.
11
@Christopher
Granted, its not like this march will actually do anything to "save the planet." Whether or not attends or does not attend the march, or even whether or not the march even occurs, the conditions of the world climate will still spiral downward out of control. There isn't anything that can be done about that now.
2
I can only imagine the howls of outrage from the left if students were allowed to skip class for a right-wing nut idea instead of a politically correct idea. The public schools missed a great opportunity to use the school day to actually educate students about climate science instead of giving them an excuse to do whatever they want for the day. Protest is important, but so is education about the issues.
28
@A concerned citizen Why is averting the climate crisis a left wing idea? Shouldn't everyone want to avoid catastrophe regardless of political leanings?
78
@A concerned citizen The kids already know what they need to know about climate change, it is predominantly caused by the behaviors of man and only by changing those behaviors can the world be saved for them. And, by "right-wing nut idea" are you referring to things like separating children from their parents at the border and putting them in cages? Or perhaps it's the tax cuts for billionaires idea? Or is it AK-47's for all?
32
@A concerned citizen Well, yes, because right-wing ideas are just that, nutty. Climate change is just real. Reality shouldn't be a partisan view, but it obviously is.
42