The Christian Vacation Camp Where Kids Are Taught by Notorious Climate Science Deniers

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Each morning at Camp Constitutionโ€™s summer camp, the kids and parents go off to classes while staff members do a roomย inspection.

โ€œWhat we look for is not just cleanliness, but a patriotic and Godly theme,โ€ says camp director Hal Shurtleff in a video of the 2016ย camp.

โ€œWe are looking for creativity โ€” are they learning what we are teachingย them?โ€

And what are they being taught?ย Conspiracy theories about the United Nations (UN) and how climate change is a hoax, and they’ve drafted in two of the world’s most notorious climate science denialists to do theย job.

The rooms โ€” named after โ€œplaces of refuge in the old testamentโ€ โ€” are covered with U.S. nationalistic garlands and flags.ย A โ€œMake America Great Againโ€ (MAGA) hat is perched on a wooden bunkย post.

Children take quotes theyโ€™ve learned from classes, and turn them into posters. One encourages the United Nations to keepย out.

Another lists โ€œbuzzwordsโ€ including CO2, climate change, environmental justice, and endangeredย species.

โ€œYou hear these buzzwords and you know the bad guys are behind the scenes,โ€ says a commentatingย Shurtleff.

Shurtleff is a former regional director of the John Birch Society โ€” the UN-hating, right-wing conservative group known for, amongย other things, pushing a conspiracy that the UNโ€™s promotion of environmental sustainability was in fact a sinister plot to install a worldย government.

But as well as learning about the evils of sensible resource use, the kids at this summerโ€™s Camp Constitution attended classes by climate science deniers Lord Christopher Monckton and Dr.ย Willie Soon.

Campย Conspiracy

In an interview on conspiracy-loving Infowars, Shurtleff said how Soon had spoken to campers the previous year and would โ€œbring his whole familyโ€ to the event at Lakeside Christian Camp and Conference Center in Pittsfield,ย Massachusetts.

At the campโ€™s 2017 event, Soon gave a talk claiming that the sun was controlling the worldโ€™s climate, and dismissing the role of CO2.ย NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has been among the scientists to carefully unpick Soonโ€™s claims, describing his scientific contributions as โ€œsingularlyย poor.โ€

In 2018, the camp schedule shows Soon was to give two talks โ€” one about the โ€œclimate change hoaxโ€ and another that attempted to undermine the measurements showing sea levels around the world are rising, and how that rise isย accelerating.

Research from Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center has shown Soonโ€™s work to be heavily funded by fossil fuel industry interests, including more than $1 million from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, American Petroleum Institute, and Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Also on the agenda was former John Birch Society president John โ€œJackโ€ McManus, who told the youngsters, some who stay withย their parents, how the U.S. should โ€œGet Us Out of the United Nationsโ€ while explaining his full anti-UN โ€œworld governementโ€ conspiracy theory. He even sold them a booklet for the discounted price ofย $2.

Eccentric British climate science denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, was also at the camp to regale the kids with tales of how climate change science is one bigย con-job.ย 

Monckton has been claiming for about two years to have discovered a fatal flaw in climate science (the worldโ€™s temperature gauges and polar ice donโ€™t seem to have gotten Moncktonโ€™s memo) and he did not spare the youngsters any detail with a slideshow chock full of formulas.

While Monckton might sound like he knows what heโ€™s talking about, actual climate scientists have long-debunked hisย claims.

In 2015, scientists looked at one of his very few scientific papers to make it into the peer-reviewed literature and found it was โ€œriddled with errorsโ€ โ€” and published a response in the same journal.

Camp Constitutionโ€™s Facebook page shows Monckton sitting down for a meal with some of the young campers, perhaps to discuss the themes of liberty and freedom ofย speech.

You have to wonder if he told them about the various people heโ€™s threatened to sue or have arrested (none of the threats ever seem to materialize) for saying or doing things he didnโ€™tย like.

All in the spirit of freedom, ofย course!

Donate here to support DeSmog’sย investigations

Main image: A screenshot of Lord Christopher Monckton speaking to young campers at Camp Constitiution in August 2018. DeSmog has blurred the faces of the youngย people.

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