If you've been inside a shopping mall in the last ten years, you're probably familiar with Build-A-Bear. Build-A-Bear stores allow children to "build" their own teddy bears, complete with stuffing, sound effects, clothing and accessories. We've taken our kids to Build-A-Bear stores several times in recent years and aside from their confiscatory prices, we've always enjoyed our time there.

Until today.

Someone at Build-A-Bear decided that it would be a really neat idea to combine their child-friendly brand with a "Day After Tomorrow" type scenario involving Santa Clause.

These videos must be seen to be believed but the basic premise is that mankind has burned too many fossil fuels and as a result, the North Pole is rapidly melting leaving Santa Clause, his elves and the polar bears (naturally) fearing for their lives. If your time is limited you should watch the 2nd and 3rd installments (below).

Build-A-Bear is a private company and if they want to produce propaganda videos that brainwash young children, that's their business. Allahpundit over at HotAir believes that we should counter this type of militant propaganda with propaganda of our own.

Stuff like this used to bother me, but it’s not going away so we might as well adapt and take advantage. Try this on for size: "Dora the Explorer Bombs Ahmadinejad’s Reactors." Eh? Too violent? How about a special episode of Hannah Montana in which Miley’s family takes out a subprime mortgage they can’t afford and ends up bankrupting the whole town? Teach 'em early, that’s what I say.

Allahpundit got me thinking... how are Build-A-Bear's videos stylistically different from the videos produced by Hamas featuring Mickey Mouse? Both organizations used cartoon imagery to push their political agenda on innocent children. Both targeted children because they represent the future and they can be easily brainwashed.

Again, please keep in mind that I am in no way equating Build-A-Bear's climate change advocacy with terrorism. I am simple comparing the execution and style of their videos.

As a general rule of thumb, I do not believe in organized boycotts. We live in a free country and people should decide for themselves what is and is not appropriate. For us, we decided that we won't be building any teddy bears at Build-A-Bear stores in 2010. What about you?

Update on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 11:54PM by Jeff

Build-A-Bear CEO Maxine Clark released a statement regarding the global warming propaganda videos shown above.

I couldn't agree more. If Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a real then we need to take appropriate action in order to regulate global temperatures. However, before I will let that happen, I need to know that the data our government is using to justify regulations is sound. Secrecy among scientists undermines public confidence in the science and makes it more difficult for the government to enact sound public policy.

From the Financial Times...

With no disrespect to sausages and laws, Bismarck’s most famous aphorism clearly requires updating. “Scientific research” is bidding furiously to make the global shortlist of things one should not see being made.

Understandably so. Sciences at the cutting edge of statistics and public policy can make blood sports seem genteel. Scientists aggressively promoting pet hypotheses often relish the opportunity to marginalise and neutralise rival theories and exponents.

The malice, mischief and Machiavellian manoeuvrings revealed in the illegally hacked megabytes of emails from the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit, for example, offers a useful paradigm of contemporary scientific conflict. Science may be objective; scientists emphatically are not. This episode illustrates what too many universities, professional societies, and research funders have irresponsibly allowed their scientists to become. Shame on them all.

The source of that shame is a toxic mix of institutional laziness and complacency. Too many scientists in academia, industry and government are allowed to get away with concealing or withholding vital information about their data, research methodologies and results. That is unacceptable and must change.

Read more at the Financial Times website.

From Christopher Booker's column in the UK's Daily Telegraph:

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

You can read more at the Daily Telegraph's website.