FORMER Prime Minister John Howard has launched a controversial book teaching students to be climate change sceptics.

Climate change sceptic Ian Plimer's book "How to Get Expelled from School: A Guide to Climate Change for Pupils, Parents and Punters" arms children with 101 questions to challenge their teachers.

It has been billed as an "anti-warmist manual for the younger reader".

Mr Howard attacked the one-sided teaching of climate change in schools.

"People ought to be worried about what their children are being taught at school," he said.

"It's a matter of real concern".

Prof Plimer said said he had a lot of parents write to him about this topic.

"They were saying that their kids are being fed environmental activism at school, rather than the basics of science, which gives them the ability to analyse activist arguments," he said.

The 250-page book includes a list of questions intended to embarrass poorly prepared teachers.

Questions include: "Is climate change normal?" and "In the last 100 years, has there been global warming and global cooling?".

"They're questions that kids should be asking of teachers, because if the teacher can answer it means they might know something about the subject," Prof Plimer said.

"If they can't, or start to promote ideology, it shows that our schools have been captured.

"Parents are telling me that schools have been captured by a lot of activists and kids are being fed stuff that is not relevant to the real world."

But climate scientists, including the University of Adelaide's Professor Barry Brook, say Prof Plimer is perpetuating contradictions, inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the science.

University of Melbourne complex system scientist Professor Ian Enting claims there are scientific errors, flawed diagrams and missing references in Prof Plimer's book.

John Cook of Sceptical Science, a website designed to explain what peer-reviewed science has to say about global warming, has branded Prof Plimer "a one man contradiction".



Originally published as Howard helps author recruit anti-climate kids