Blue Like You

Archive for the ‘Kyoto Kult Klaptrap’ Category

David Suzuki at McGill:

He urged today’s youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change, even suggesting they look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science – drawing rounds of cheering and applause. Suzuki said that politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science.

…He gave a scathing critique of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, chastising them for neglecting the environment in favour of economic growth and development of the tar sands...

Well, I suppose if we are supporting Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn in their fight for free speech, we have to allow David Suzuki the right to spout such inflammatory tripe too.

And isn’t his organization supposed to be non-partisan so that it can receive public funding? Can someone please confirm that?

(Update: “…donations from individuals and by grants from other charitable foundations. The David Suzuki Foundation does not accept government grants, except in relation to the direct funding of scientific research through the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.” - FAQ)

In any case, I agree with Lorne Gunter - Shun the hate-merchants.

I’ll be shunning Suzuki. No ‘Nature of Things’ for me, boy. I’ll be shunning the advertisers too.

This morning Lorrie Goldstein shows us the underlying contradiction in the recent report presented by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy’s (NRTEE) - Only one place for this report:

…Indeed, the NRTEE paper, Getting to 2050: Canada’s Transition to a Low-emission Future warns 10 times that its proposals won’t damage our economy only if the U.S. and our other major trading partners are simultaneously implementing similar measures. Its optimistic economic modelling is based on that.

And yet bizarrely, it also concludes, without qualification, that: “It is not the NRTEE’s view that any of this should be justification for not taking action now to either reduce emissions now, or put in place the most effective policy framework for deep, long-term reductions in the future.” Excuse us?

Exactly.

So while our own efforts alone would likely return negligible results on a global scale and would likely damage our economy if the U.S., China and others refused to join the cause, we should still soldier on with the proposals in the faint hope that everyone else will follow our example?

Well, here’s the problem. Not every country in the world has a Lemming mentality. If Canada’s economy is going down the tubes, that is of little concern for the rest of the world. In fact, it could be a plus for China, which is already getting the benefit of our collapsing manufacturing sector.

I see little incentive for the others to join our little march over the cliff.

Perhaps the environmentalists should follow their own advice and try to tone down the gaseous emissions rising from this pile of manure.

Whenever I read anything on global warming, climate change or Kyoto, I am struck by how the whole topic of what should essentially be a scientific issue is often framed in terms of a belief system - much like a religion or faith.

People on both sides of the argument attempt to use their own biased data to attempt to convince others that they are right.

If that doesn’t work, then they try guilt and shame. (Ironically, these folks usually tend to be moral relativists in most matters, but when it comes to climate change, their position is ABSOLUTE TRUTH!)

In today’s Sun, Lorrie Goldstein attempts to shine a light of balance and reality into an otherwise murky, emotional debate - Skip the Kyoto Snow Job.

I trust and respect Lorrie’s work on this subject. After doing a great deal of reading and research, he seems to agree that there is some degree of man-made component to global warming (AGW), but remains skeptical of Kyoto as the means to accomplish any real results. That is a position with which I can support.

Kyoto was a seriously flawed treaty from the start in terms of credibility:

…Russia is in compliance with Kyoto and has billions of dollars of “hot air” credits to sell to countries like Canada — not because of its environmental policies, but because the base year for Kyoto was deliberately set at 1990, just as the economy of the former Soviet Union was imploding, causing the shutdown of many GHG-producing industries. Similarly, Germany and the European Union benefit from the collapse of the East German economy.

Kyoto envisions the First World paying billions of dollars to the Third in the faint hope the latter will use that money to reduce its rapidly-growing GHG emissions…

When some countries realize the economic reality that meeting the targets would entail, they often balk at the commitment. The Kyoto Kult activists use guilt as a weapon to try to shame them on the world stage (remember Bali?):

…we must ignore simplistic environmental rhetoric that portrays nations which meet (or try to meet) their Kyoto targets as “good” while those that don’t as “bad.” In reality, all countries act in their own perceived best interests.

China rejects GHG cuts (as has the U.S. through both the Clinton and Bush administrations) not because it favours global climate catastrophe several decades from now if Al Gore’s apocalyptic rhetoric is correct, which is unlikely.

It does so because it has more pressing problems, such as feeding its 1.3 billion people today.

It’s pointless to condemn China for acting in its own interests, just as it’s silly to portray Canada as an energy glutton, a favourite guilt-inducing tactic of environmentalists…

You see this guilt meme rise up often in global warming enterprises.

Scott Stinson of the National Post pointed out yesterday in “Buying your way out of carbon debt“, that the carbon-offset market is becoming big business.

Just how scientifically effective it is, however, is another matter:

…The carbon-offset market was non-existent just a few years ago, but it is big business now, with researchers estimating the activity in North America at more than $100-million last year. So, what are the buyers getting for all that offset money? At best, they are spurring investment in an enterprise that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. And at worst, critics say, they are simply practising chequebook environmentalism, ­salving guilt by investing in a scheme whose benefits are negligible…

Here’s the inherent glitch:

…But in order for such a transaction to be truly “carbon neutral,” the seller would have to use the offset money to create an environmental benefit that would not otherwise have happened.

Robert Stavins, the director of the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard University, says that is the key problem with offset programs — that the companies that generate credits must do so by “doing something that they otherwise would not have done.“

“It is a comparison with an unobserved — and unobservable — hypothetical,” he said in an interview…

So it all boils down to faith. You are paying to assuage your guilt and look virtuous.

And here’s the kicker. In BS alert! BS alert!, Lorrie Goldstein discloses this little gem:

Finally, if idiot celebrities jetting around the world claiming they are “carbon neutral” because they buy carbon offsets understood the Kyoto Accord, they wouldn’t bother, considering what hypocrites they already are.

That’s because Kyoto doesn’t count GHG emissions caused by flying, although it’s one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of GHG.

Oops!

Goldstein ends today’s column with a suggestion that we skip the rhetoric and look for real solutions:

…Despite what Kyoto propagandists and opportunistic politicians pretend, this isn’t about making an easy choice between “good” and “bad.” It’s about making intelligent choices from the options we have, all of which have positive and negative consequences.

So let’s leave the morality rhetoric to issues of religion and faith.

Or perhaps we should all pray for Divine guidance.

Is it fair to expect members of the Kyoto Kult to practise what they preach?

In today’s National Post, Kevin Libin uncovers a scathing exposé of hypocritical actions by so-called environmentalists and green advocates- Emissions omissions.

He cites the Kyoto high priests themselves, Suzuki and Gore, whom we all already know emit more hot air when giving speeches than most ordinary Canadians do in a lifetime.

But he also hones in on Liberal Environment critic David McGuinty, of the Flying McGuinty Brothers. (Great blog there, BTW)

Libin provides a stinging list of David’s environmental sins acquired by access to information. Just check out McGuinty’s carbon footprint! You’ll be blown away by the greenhouse gases.

Anyway, as we all know brother Dalton is having his own problems - especially lately with news leaking out of his own Environment Minister Laurel Broten’s unpopular plans to build a huge two-story garage to accommodate “one of their four vehicles, baby gear and bikes.” Neighbours are not happy due to the threat to a large nearby tree and the perceived visual impact of such a monstrosity.

Then there is the matter of those fours vehicles, which Broten defends as something her husband is entitled to, after having become a “mining town boy made good”.

Ah, so if you achieve some financial success in your life, you’re allowed to drive a bunch of fancy cars. Or maybe they’re just saving them for the boys, who should be ready to drive in around 15 years or so…

Anyway, back to the Post article. An actual Doomsday Believer is frustrated with these high-profile, so-called green advocates who make convenient exceptions for themselves:

“It’s arrogance. It’s a sense of entitlement. A lot of people in the environmental movement, and in government, are so convinced that they’re smarter than everybody else, a certain amount of behaviour just comes from that.”

What do you think? Do you feel it’s acceptable for these environmental saviours to preach one thing but do another?

If you’re rich enough to purchase carbon credits to offset your lifestyle, does that seem fair to others that are being asked to make huge personal sacrifices with cutting back on the A/C in the summer, shivering in the winter, letting their lawns go brown and taking the bus to work?

Or are such questions considered to be an act of heresy?

Now the Post has letters responding to letters regarding shutting down the classroom debate on global warming, and using Gore’s film as gospel truth.

From B. Mark Podolak of Ottawa:

Kenneth Paradis of Wilfrid Laurier University states in his letter that opponents of Al Gore’s views should “be given an amount of classroom time in proportion to their representation in the scientific literature,” before he rather contemptuously adds, “there certainly might be a minute or two presentation of alternative theories.”

It is this attitude that causes academics to be held in such low regard in the real world. The professor should remember two important points: 1. Academics are granted tenure in order to ensure that debate of the common orthodoxy can take place in the universities; and 2. the common academic orthodoxy once held that the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth — and debate on that idea was not allowed.

If the professor is unwilling to allow debate on climate change, then one must conclude that he fears the results of that debate.

Well, Gore’s fans seem to be saying that any further debate is a waste of time; that it is ignoring the obvious:

..Isn’t it enough that there is a significant consensus among scientists that human activity is contributing to global warming? Doesn’t reason suggest that there is a greater likelihood that the prevailing scientific view is right? And given the consequences if we continue to ignore what they are telling us, isn’t it the worst kind of folly to just sit back and hope against hope that they are mistaken?

However, Professor R.M. Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University in Townsville, Australia states:

Al Gore’s film conveniently ignores that we live on a dynamic planet, and that all of the phenomena about which he raises alarm fluctuate naturally all the time. If teachers are to show An Inconvenient Truth in classrooms at all, then they must inform students that the ex-vice president’s arguments are very weak.

As an example, take Mr. Gore’s statements on glaciers. Students must be taught that glaciers flow. The rate of advance or retreat of their snout is a function of the overall mass balance of the glacier and the rate of flow. The mass balance includes the melting or breakaway at the bottom end. That parts of the Larson B ice shelf broke off from Antarctica in 2002 is part of the natural process of glacier flow off Antarctica that has gone on for eons.

Teachers must also explain that both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are thickening, and that the temperature at the South Pole has declined by more than one degree Celsius since 1950. And the area of sea ice around the continent has increased over the last 20 years.

It is incredible that this scientifically unbalanced “docu-ganda” is commanding any public attention at all.

“Docu-ganda”. Heh.

But this one by Jack Sands of Markham, Ontario is my favourite; probably because it resonates so well with the quote posted above my blog profile:

A brilliant scholar once told my class, “It’s not the truth that makes you free; it’s the search for truth.” People who want to impose their “truth” without discussion, about climate change or anything else, are a menace not only to science but to a free society.

I couldn’t agree more.