UNESCO officials in Fiji received positive feedback from secondary teachers on a climate change workshop. The workshop focused on a survey called SPARCK that will help raise awareness of climate issues and resilience in the Pacific. Through discussions, teachers provided input on knowledge gaps and needs to effectively teach climate change. UNESCO will visit schools and communities to administer the survey.

1. CC News Contribution Module 14 (21st
May 2013)
1. TEACHERS WELCOME CLIMATE CHANGE PROJECT
CAPTION: Teachers sharing views. Photo: MINFO.
A climate change initiative by UNESCO officials here in Fiji have received some positive
response from secondary teachers at a workshop.
The UNESCO team was delighted to hear views of selected secondary school teachers in a
workshop on climate change issues in the Pacific.
The focus of the meeting was to conduct a proposed survey on climate change called SPARCK
with secondary schools teachers in Fiji in May. SPARCK stands for Sharing Perceptions of
Adaptation, Resilience and Climate Knowledge.
“The SPARCK project will support in raising awareness about climate change issues and
increasing knowledge on climate literacy and resilience in the Pacific,” UNESCO representative,
Dr Adams Bumpus said.
“Communities will be able to work together and learn to adapt and focus on long term solutions
by adapting to the changes of climate change.”
Through collaborative discussion teachers were able to understand gaps in climate change
knowledge and what is needed for them to become effective educators on climate change.
The UNESCO team will visit schools and communities to survey for information required in
order to carry out the project.

2. “Projects of similar nature is carried out in Samoa and will also be done in Vanuatu which will
use innovative new technologies such as mobile-phone to survey participants,” Dr Adams said.
(The Jet. Posted date: May 20, 2013 In: Government, News. Retrieved on 21st
May 2013 from
http://thejetnewspaper.com/2013/05/20/teachers-welcome-climate-change-project/)
2. GLENN GRUENHAGEN, MINNESOTA STATE LEGISLATOR, BLAMES U.N.
FOR CLIMATE CHANGE 'LIE'
Minnesota State Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen
A Republican state legislator in Minnesota is blaming the United Nations for spreading a "fraud
and lie" regarding climate change.
State Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) told the state House of Representatives on
Wednesday that alternative energy is part of a U.N.-backed plan to push climate change theories,
saying it has caused pollution and high energy costs.
Gruenhagen made the comments during a discussion in which he said the state House should
reject legislation promoting alternative energy in the state. A video of him making the remarks,
recorded by theuptake.org, surfaced Sunday on Think Progress.
"There is more and more evidence that it is a complete United Nations fraud and lie,"
Gruenhagen said of climate change during the debate.
Gruenhagen cited a series of evidence to back up his claim, including an article in Forbes written
by Howard Rich, the chairman of Americans for Limited Government. In the piece, Rich said
that Germany's alternative energy program was "dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy,"
words Gruenhagen used in his speech. Americans for Limited Government is a conservative
group, funded in part by the Koch brothers' network of donors.

3. Gruenhagen also said that data from the Conservative Political Action Conference showed that
global warming has not occurred for the past 16 years. He also cited a 2010 InterAcademy
Council audit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-formed organization,
saying it showed problems with the science behind climate change. The audit report said that the
IPCC has made mistakes with climate change data and recommended changes in the
organization's management, but it also praised IPCC for its work.
This is not the first publicity Gruenhagen has received for controversial remarks. In February, he
called homosexuality "an unhealthy sexual addiction."
The United Nations and its work on climate change has been a regular target for conservative
state legislators around the country. In multiple states, lawmakers have proposed legislation to
prohibit the implementation of the U.N. sustainability plan, known as Agenda 21. Lawmakers in
those states have claimed that Agenda 21 is a U.N. plan to seize private property and force
people to live in walkable communities.
The U.N. plan was developed in 1992. It has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate, and is not
law in the United States. The John Birch Society has been leading opposition to Agenda 21 in the
United States.
(By John Celock. The Huffington Post. Posted: 05/20/2013 4:12 pm EDT. Retrieved on 21st
May 2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/glenn-gruenhagen-
minnesota_n_3307898.html?utm_hp_ref=politics. Video can be watched at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDkGfO0BopE&feature=player_embedded)
3. MORE RESEARCH ON CLIMATE CHANGE NEEDED, BUT TOO LATE!
Just how severe will the predicted severe weather, from IPCC and others ,become- or are they
being "conservative" in their attitudes and their reaction to new methods?; Climate image;
Credit: © Shutterstock

4. The University of Oxford's Alexander Otto and the old Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)have stirred and issued a prediction about climate, based on how the earth is
currently warming. Unfortunately, since the IPCC last said anything, people have realised that
trends are accelerating and the future will probably have more pollutants than at present.
The prediction is a 4°C warming (above pre-industrial levels) and less severe effects than some
claim. Professor Otto still states that catastrophe across the planet will take place He suggests
droughts, storms, floods and heat waves with secondary effects such as people getting' the hell
out! In the journal, Nature Geoscience, we have seen more honed predictions, but this paper at
least admits that the 1998 pause in warming is strictly temporary.
The problem is that these scientists admit they cannot factor all possibilities into their equations.
Recent warming has been absorbed by the sea subsurface, but more heating will release energy
from the oceans. Thermal expansion of the water will increase the rise in sea level predictions.,
but so far sceptics have been able to claim that despite average rises, the temperature has
somehow peaked!
Alexander Otto has claimed, "Given the noise in the climate and temperature system, you would
need to see a much longer period of any pause in order to draw the conclusion that global
warming was not occurring." The problem is that while admitting the equations used to predict
change and the resulting models are accurate, we have to wait even longer September) before the
Panel submits its first major report since 2007.
Agreeing with Otto, Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute denies the last decade is any
guide. At the University of Reading, Richard Allan puts it in a nutshell. A minority of
simulations, he claims, may be responding more rapidly towards overall warming than the
others, and these are the type that culd prove really accurate. The effect of all of our pollutants is
almost impossible to judge, as we don't know their individual or combined effects fully. He does
agree however that, "with work like this our predictions become ever better."
(By Paul Robinson Paul Robinson - 20 May 2013 14:45:0 GMT. Earth Times. Retrieved on 21st
May 2013 from http://www.earthtimes.org/climate/faulty-research-guys-late/2356/)