As all hell breaks loose in the world of Global Warming, Canada’s leading voice for environmental protection and climate change seems to have suddenly gone quiet. Where is the reaction to last week’s bombshell revelations from Dr. David Suzuki?
Did he know about any of this?
And if he did, what does he have to say now?
For those who still get their news from the mainstream media, on November 19, 2009, a large amount of climate change related data was stolen from servers at the University of East Anglia by a hacker and subsequently posted on the web.
Contained in the hundreds of purloined documents, verified as authentic by Phil Jones, director of the institution’s Climate Research Unit, are scientific papers, research test results and emails overwhelmingly suggesting that Global Warming has been a well orchestrated fraud.
The released files include emails between some of the most respected scientists researching climate change in which they collude to make certain their findings support their Manmade Global Warming thesis when the actual test results do not.
Instructions are given on erasing any email trails that might reveal their collusion. And in some cases, people are instructed on how to destroy the reputations of fellow scientists who might question their findings.
The material contains countless passages like this one, “I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which were not always the same. I worried that you might think I gave the impression of not supporting you well enough while trying to report on the issues and uncertainties.”
In other words, researchers aware that peer approval and billions in research grants were only there for those who supported the concept of Anthropomorphic Global Warming were willing to skew or bury contradictory results and maybe find ways of helping the cause at the same time.
You can find more thoughtful explorations of the implications of all this through the links at the end of this post.
But I still want to hear from Dr. Suzuki.
Like most Canadians, I learned most of what I know about Science through the CBC radio show “Quirks and Quarks” which Dr. Suzuki started in 1974 and “The Nature of Things” his CBC TV series that has been a network mainstay since 1979.
I’d venture to say there is barely a Canadian with any environmental awareness who doesn’t owe it, in whole or in part, to the good doctor. He’s long been one of our most admired citizens and in the past years has also been our point man on Climate Change, hammering one local or foreign government after another for dragging their heels in addressing Climate Change.
A couple of years ago, however, I was stunned when Suzuki angrily walked off a Toronto radio show after being asked a fairly benign question about the so-called “Global Warming Debate”. As far as Suzuki was concerned, the debate was over, the science was settled, man-made emissions were the cause of the problem and without an immediate change to the way we live, the planet was doomed.
He wasn’t wasting his time changing minds anymore.
It was the phrase, “the science is settled” which bothered me and bothered me more as I heard it from other environmentalists and political activists like former US Vice President Al Gore.
It was a phrase that seemed to be spit in the face of people sincerely asking what they felt were legitimate questions. It was the way environmental activists pulled informational rank on anyone who would dare question their facts and predictions.
We know this is true. There is no longer any debate. The science is settled.
There have been several times in history when the science was apparently settled. There were times when 13 year old virgins were prescribed by doctors as the only way for a man to get rid of Syphilis, times when every Victorian era doctor carried a jar of leeches in his medical bag to alleviate depression and a famous moment when the Catholic Church settled science by giving Galileo the choice of repudiating his proof that the Earth revolved around the Sun or being turned over to the Inquisition.
Science is never settled.
But for David Suzuki and others in the environmental movement it was. And anyone who dared question them was humiliated or shunned.
Meanwhile, the movement evolved from doing scientific research to dictating social policy. How many times have you heard somebody slam Stephen Harper or some other world leader for wanting more information before initiating “Cap & Trade” and “Carbon Offset” legislation that promises to make some people very rich and others far worse off than they are now.
That’s always been swaddled in the promise of a cleaner planet, a planet free of all kinds of impending catastrophes and a planet that will then be able to support several future generations of our species.
But now it appears the “settled science” was entirely something else.
And I’m not sure that comes as a complete surprise. There’s something about the way Climate Change advocates have conducted themselves lately that has caused many people to wonder if they really knew what they were talking about.
About a week ago, Al Gore, former VP, Nobel Prize winner for his Climate Change work and owner of an Academy Award for the grand-daddy of all environmental films “An Inconvenient Truth” appeared on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien. Here’s a snippet…
Let’s take the misinformation in order here…
“Geo-Thermal Energy is a relatively new solution to our energy problems.”
Actually, in places like Iceland, it’s been in use for more than 300 years. And the ground source heat pump was invented more than 100 years ago.
"Two kilometres or more down there are these incredibly hot rocks.”
Geo-Thermal energy can be accessed by drilling as little as 75 and at most 300 feet. And if you want to get to the “really hot rocks”, you’ve actually got to go down about 3000 kilometres.
“The Earth is extremely hot, several million degrees.”
Well, nobody’s been down there with a thermometer yet, but best estimates from bouncing sound waves off the center of the planet say the temperature is probably around 5000 degrees Centigrade.
“We have a 35,000 year supply of energy just from Geo-Thermal.”
Actually, since Geo-Thermal energy is stored energy from the Sun, it’ll last as long as the Sun does.
“They’ve figured out how to do the drilling with new drill bits that don’t melt in that heat.”
At 300 feet, you’re looking at a ground temperature of around 200 degrees. Hot for us, but not damaging to most metals. The metal with the highest melting point is Tungsten, which begins to liquefy at 3410 degrees Celsius and that’s been in common usage since the 18th Century.
“Deeper than we’ve ever drilled before.”
BP has one oil well in the Gulf of Mexico that is already 5 km deeper than the hole Al wants to drill.
How smart am I to know all this? Not that smart at all.
I found it all on Mr. Gore’s last invention, the Internet, in about 20 minutes.
Better question might be, “Is it possible that the guy running against George Bush in the 2000 American Presidential election was even dumber than the eventual winner?”
And it kind of makes sense that this is all spewed out to a TV host whose parent company, GE, will be one of the big winners in Cap and Trade legislation and probably isn’t equipped to know the holes in Gore’s argument in the first place.
And since much of the show’s audience was already half asleep or hooked to a bong, Gore’s “facts” just automatically get accepted as fact.
Just like what appears to be a lot of Global Warming “Research”.
But I want to hear all this explained by Dr. David Suzuki. If he was duped by the research in the same way we were fooled, I’ll understand.
But if he’s been lying to me, lying to Canadian kids and supporting those lies with the taxpayer money that funds “The Nature of Things”, I think we have a right to know.
Speak up, Doc. Tell me the Emperor actually has some clothes.
Background on the CRU Hack can be found here and here. Both of these links now include additional links to mainstream media who have been slow in responding but must know this is not a story they can afford to ignore.
