The $8-billion global-warming swindle Before rushing into a climate-change panic, we need a real public debate
Paul MacRae TimesColonist.com Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Last month, in a free-time political broadcast on the CBC, Langley Tory MP Mark Warawa observed: "Without question, climate change has become the No. 1 environmental concern for all nations. Some have even called it the greatest environmental challenge the world has ever faced."
The greatest environmental challenge the world has ever faced? Greater than the series of ice ages that dominated the world's climate for the past million years? Greater than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago?
For a scientific (as opposed to political) perspective, here's what University of California archeologist Brian Fagan has to say about global warming: "About 15,000 years ago, the ice sheets began to melt in earnest. The dramatic environmental changes associated with this warm-up make the climactic changes predicted by doomsday-sayers for the next millennium look puny in comparison."
Warawa also stated: "Science has shown that Canada could be affected by climate change more than other nations."
True, Canada will be affected by climate change. But the overall effect on this country will be positive, not negative. Canada is a northern nation; warming will open up lands to cultivation and habitation that have previously been inaccessible. Global warming problems such as drought may be severe for the countries nearer the tropics, but not for Canada.
The climate-change nightmare for Canada and the planet is not global warming but global cooling and a return of the glaciers, which is expected in a few thousand years or even sooner.
In the shorter term we can expect cooling trends like the Little Ice Age (1500s to 1800s), which followed the medieval warm period when Greenland really was green and global temperatures were higher than today's. Which is odd, isn't it, since those higher medieval temperatures couldn't have been triggered by human-caused greenhouse gases.
But, then, Warawa's boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, knows all this. In 2002 as leader of the Canadian Alliance he noted: "We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership. I'm talking about the battle of Kyoto -- our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord."
He was right in 2002, but his government has done an almost complete about-face in 2007 to bring in Kyoto Lite, an exercise that will cost Canadians about $8 billion a year and have no effect at all on global warming. We might as well be doing a rain dance.
Why has Harper changed his mind? Possibly because so many Canadian voters have bought into the "science" behind doomsday-sayers like former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately, much of Gore's data is dodgy at best. For example, anyone who reads the newspapers knows by now that the polar bears are not endangered, as the movie says -- there are more polar bears in the Arctic now than have ever been recorded.
Just as disturbing is the way Gore uses science to attack science in his book Earth in the Balance, the basis for An Inconvenient Truth.
In his chapter on climate change in Earth in the Balance, Gore offers no explanation, beyond volcanic eruptions, for why Earth's climate for the last million years has warmed and cooled before human beings appeared. He is silent on causes (the occasional volcanic eruption won't cause long-term climate change) because looking at the facts would destroy his case for human-caused warming.
However, a recent British TV documentary, The Global Warming Swindle, takes a close look at Gore's science (there's a 10-minute condensation of Swindle on YouTube) and should be must viewing for Canadians.
For example, Swindle notes that in An Inconvenient Truth Gore has got his cause and effect wrong in claiming that more (human-caused) carbon dioxide is causing higher global temperatures. In fact, the geological record shows rising global temperatures come before increases in atmospheric CO2. And what causes global temperatures to rise? The scientific evidence points not to human activity but to fluctuations in the sun's activity.
The British film basically demolishes almost every one of Gore's points, yet it is Gore's movie that is being considered as part of the curriculum for Canadian schoolchildren.
That's not surprising. Canadians have been widely exposed to only one side of the global-warming debate. As a result, no Canadian political party feels it can get a majority without bowing to the environmental lobby.
Harper could have taken another course. His government could have educated the Canadian people about the scientific truth: That the current global warming is part of a normal planetary cycle, that the human role in global warming is peripheral and that human beings are quite capable of handling climate change without hysteria (as our ancestors have done for the past million years).
At the very least, before Canadians spend $8 billion a year for no practical effect, shouldn't there be a vigorous debate in the House and among the public that looks at all sides of the issue? So far, that debate hasn't happened. If it did, and was based on the climate facts rather than fear-mongering like Warawa's and Gore's, I believe the doomsday-sayers would lose.
And who is this Paul MacRae anyway. And who does he represent? He's obviously not a Times Colonist reporter ... but after googling, I discover he is a former editor of the paper, who has recently been doing some teaching, where I don't know.
It's usually helpful to know where opinions like this stem from, in order to factor in any perceived bias in the point of view. Of course, it's always possible that he is just John Q Average like me .. lol!
But then, I never have come to terms with why this topic deserves space on PSR....
Global warming OK for Canada Times Colonist Friday, May 25, 2007
Re: "The $8-billion global-warming swindle," May 22.
Approximately 20,000 years ago, Canada was under a massive ice sheet, two-kilometres thick in the Hudson Bay region. As the ice receded 15,000 years ago, flora and fauna quickly moved in. Lesser climate variations followed: 6,000 and 1,000 years ago, the Earth was warmer than today prompting aboriginal people to move north. However, starting in approximately AD 1300, the Earth entered into a cool period known as the Little Ice Age. It was a time when agriculture, as practised in Canada today, would have been impossible.
History shows that warming offers plants, animals and people greater chances for development and survival. For Canada, benefits include reduced heating and travel costs; a longer growing season with a greater variety of crops; less crop loss due to frost damage; quickly growing forests; the opening of northern ports; and a longer summer season for tourists, cottagers and campers.
What's so bad about that?
Dr. Tim Ball, Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Victoria
Nice blue-sky, rose-coloured-shades theory, but you can't cherry pick the benefits of climate change. With warmer temperatures there will be shifts in rain and ocean currents (just two variables). These change will in turn alter rivers, cloud cover etc.
So really not much of an argument - sort of like how the one time that the Calgary media actually admitted that climate change was happening it was because it WOULD mean a boost to the Alberta ski hill industry as BC's hills would be green.
They sort of left out the effect that a drought, the dried up Bow River and Pine Beetle might have on the other parts of the economy.
And who is this Paul MacRae anyway. And who does he represent? He's obviously not a Times Colonist reporter ... but after googling, I discover he is a former editor of the paper, who has recently been doing some teaching, where I don't know.
It's usually helpful to know where opinions like this stem from, in order to factor in any perceived bias in the point of view. Of course, it's always possible that he is just John Q Average like me .. lol!
But then, I never have come to terms with why this topic deserves space on PSR....
why? This issue called Global Warming has become a type of religion, those who even question the credibility of Gore and company do not receive appropriate, if any coverage in mainstream media. Mainstream Media News already has a stranglehold of control over what is published. We have lost the independence of local radio, television and newsprint to a chosen few of like-minded thinking big-box type of control over our air-waves and local newspapers.
As for Mr. MacRae, it continues to boggle my mind why the messenger is always the one to be shot down. I thank this man for his boldness in going where few want to go, uncover this scandal. As Mr. MacRae's header says, he wants to see a public debate, what is wrong with that?
Puget Sound Radio will continue to publish stories others won't
Unfortunately, we're not in anyway 'balanced' about this topic on this board in anyway, it's 99% "global-warming swindle" and other "global warming isn't real"-type opinions. Sometimes I wonder if FOX news helps pay the bills for the board.
An actual real balanced approach to this topic on PSR would be refreshing instead of the usual right-wing, semi-fundamentalist take on global warming and other topics. Unfortunately, the 'editors' appear not to be interested in the secular, scientific world view.
Then again, I suppose, who cares? I come here for the RADIO portion of this board and I have learned to try to ignore the rest.
Unfortunately, we're not in anyway 'balanced' about this topic on this board in anyway, it's 99% "global-warming swindle" and other "global warming isn't real"-type opinions. Sometimes I wonder if FOX news helps pay the bills for the board.
An actual real balanced approach to this topic on PSR would be refreshing instead of the usual right-wing, semi-fundamentalist take on global warming and other topics. Unfortunately, the 'editors' appear not to be interested in the secular, scientific world view.
Then again, I suppose, who cares? I come here for the RADIO portion of this board and I have learned to try to ignore the rest.
More RADIO topics and gossip please!
is this the typical response we are going to hear from Central Canada? What are you talking about sir?
"...this topic certainly deserves a fair, balanced debate..."
I agree. I just don't think we're going to get it here on PSR.
While some here, specifically those who control the board and the ones who delete 'offensive' posts, claim they want balance on this topic, they are just as guilty of being once sided as those they criticize.
I have one question for the Administrators that in a round-about way will answer a few questions for me.
Approx. how old is the earth?
What will you use to answer this question? Science or some 'ancient text' with it's own theory of this planets age?
I usually find that those who answer this question with "approx. 6000 years", to be the same people who think that global warming is complete fiction.
Anyhow, that's it for me on this thread.
Back to radio topics. Maybe I'll start a thread on radio TV commercials or something ....
Is your "how old is the earth" question an attack on church goers, armpit? Most churches have strongly embraced the eco-movement, and in fact have always been "green." If you're troubled by the noisy minority, the Fundamentalist Christian Right, say so. And get your whining straight: Believing the globe is warming and believing Al Gore are two completely different things.
Now that's something we REALLY need to see on a board purportedly devoted to broadcasting issues. A war of words and theological beliefs between various factions of Christendom.
Is your "how old is the earth" question an attack on church goers, armpit? Most churches have strongly embraced the eco-movement, and in fact have always been "green." If you're troubled by the noisy minority, the Fundamentalist Christian Right, say so. And get your whining straight: Believing the globe is warming and believing Al Gore are two completely different things.
Well I don't feel offended as I don't belong to any Right Wing Christian group. I consider myself to be Agnostic...I swear to God!! And science has "prooved" the earth to be about 4.55 billion years old, that I don't dispute. I am skeptical that the earths warming is due to man, and not due to Earths cyclical pattern of some sort. I do agree that we should try to lessen the amount of polutants we put in the air, and try to conserve water and green space.
Now that's something we REALLY need to see on a board purportedly devoted to broadcasting issues. A war of words and theological beliefs between various factions of Christendom.
Why can't we just stick to radio & TV issues?
"Seems to me that the forum that this "Off Topic" topic is posted in is called: General Chat. Post your thoughts on anything that's not radio related
Seems to me that if you don't want to deal with non-radio topics, you wouldn't come here.
Why the hell would you go to an off-topic forum and bitch about off topic posts? Kinda stupid"
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