Obama Calls Out Climate Deniers, & Other Good News

It’s always enjoyable (and all too rare!) to share good news, and I’m pleased that there’s some to share on this, the last Friday in April:

  • The Ontario government under newly elected premier Kathleen Wynne announced on Wednesday that it will be partnering with the government of Manitoba and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to keep the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northwestern Ontario open. The federal government of Stephen Harper made the controversial decision last year to withdraw funding and shutter the 40 year-old world-renowned freshwater research station. As the SaveELA website describes,

“Studies conducted at the ELA have provided sound scientific knowledge for the development of environmental policies both nationally and internationally. Some key areas of influence have been in understanding and managing algal blooms, acid rain, climate change, mercury pollution, greenhouse gas fluxes from hydroelectric reservoirs, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.” 

I understand that ELA scientists were gearing up to study whether or not emissions from the Alberta tar sands reached beyond that province’s borders. While carefully worded, the press release from the Ontario government does seem to underscore the importance of science to their government, in contrast to the anti-science bent of the Harper Conservatives. It will be interesting (in an appalling way, I’m sure) to see the spin Greg Rickford, the increasing elusive CPC Member of Parliament for the region (and my own MP) puts on the whole ELA disaster when he attempts to run for re-election in 2015. Here’s part of what the Ontario Government press release said:

Experimental Lakes Area is a one-of-a-kind, freshwater research region in northwestern Ontario that attracts scientists from across Canada and around the world. 

The important science and research performed in this area informs our pollution reduction strategies, our understanding of climate change and how we can protect our lakes and rivers here in Ontario, across Canada and around the world.

Supporting science and research is part of the new Ontario government’s plan to build a fair, prosperous Ontario for the benefit of all. (Click here for full press release)

Kudos to Diane Orihel, who got the Save The ELA campaign off the ground last summer, and to Peter Kirby, the Kenora lawyer who has been working tirelessly to keep the momentum going when Diane pulled back to finish her studies. And of course Dr. David Schindler, the founder and former director of the ELA, has been a tireless and outspoken advocate for the ELA and against this reckless decision. A friend and fellow environmental activist wrote yesterday, “I’m in a bit of a shock because we actually succeeded” but it may still be too early to break out the champagne. As Dan Lett wrote in the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday, there are still stiff obstacles to overcome – mostly in Ottawa – before the ELA is secure. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

Rickford in happier days, at funding announcement in 2009
MP Greg Rickford (centre) in happier days, at funding announcement in 2009

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  • This news may fall under the category of “too little, too late” but it’s still progress; President Obama tweeted around pointed attack on the climate deniers in Congress. The link went to a page on his website headlined “Call out Climate Deniers in Congress”.  It reads:

The science on climate change is clear

But many members of Congress are in complete denial, and they’re standing in the way of progress.

We need to call them out.

Watch this embarrassing video – and join the fight to get serious on climate change:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/biUc0D6_UPA]

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Sweet!  Have a wonderful weekend.

Chasing Ice: Fox News Fan Discovers Bill O’Reilly Lies About Climate Change

Here’s a video that’s going viral. When I first watched it on Tuesday, it had just over 3,000 views. Late on Tuesday it was posted on DeSmogBlog.com , and when I saw it there yesterday it was up to 18,000. This morning it’s up to 44,571. So if you’re interested in what a diehard Bill O’Reilly fan has to say after watching the documentary Chasing Ice, check out this video and then share it yourself:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzw1dZNWiL8&feature=player_embedded]

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Here’s the trailer for Chasing Ice. It is now showing in major cities across North America – go to their website, ChasingIce.com for details. For those of us who don’t live in any of those cities, I guess we’ll have to wait for the DVD. The film synopsis is:

Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. Using time-lapse cameras, his videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/eIZTMVNBjc4]

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McCarthyism, Canadian Style

In Tuesday’s Huffington Post Cameron Fenton, National Director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, wrote an excellent article about the Harper government’s hounding of environmentalists and First Nations opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline. In Harper Government Can’t See the Forest For the Trees, Mr. Fenton starts off by describing a repetitive nightmare he is having these days (and he’s not alone):

The light in the hearing room is bright, hot and pointed right at me. The heat is suffocating, and I am visibly sweaty, the senator leans over, taps his microphone and begins to read questions from a typed sheet.

“Mr. Fenton, Have you ever donated to or been a member of the Sierra Club of Canada?”

“Do you own a book or books written by Dr. David Suzuki?”

“Did you or did you not write blog posts that were critical of the oilsands?”

That’s usually about the time I wake up, but instead of relief that my nightmare is over, I make the mistake of turning on the radio or picking up the paper to find my speculative fiction becoming more and more real.

Environmental groups in Canada are in the crosshairs of the government, not simply under investigation for fiscal mismanagement, but the targets of criminalization, misinformation and a smear campaign.

Most recently, Canada’s environment minister started to use the term “money laundering” to criminalize the acceptance of foreign funding by Canadian organizations.

At first I was taken aback by this, but the more I think about it, it’s a great idea. If you will permit me to change metaphors for a moment, it’s high time that we find our own Elliot Ness and unleash a Canadian team of Untouchables to root out this corruption, to find those charitable groups using foreign money, to hijack our legislative processes and hold my generation’s future hostage.

Let’s start with the Fraser Institute.

A recent investigation by the Vancouver Observer showed that the Fraser Institute received half a million dollars from the U.S.- based Koch Foundation. As the philanthropic arm of Tea Party darlings and fossil fuel industry billionaires Charles and David Koch, this foundation has been linked across the globe to campaigns that promote climate denial, lobby against clean energy legislation and stand in the way of global progress on curbing emissions. To read the full article, click here.

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More links:

RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show

Government Pipeline Rhetoric Reminiscent of Cold War, McCarthyism: Prof

Suzuki Quit Foundation Over Fed ‘Bullying’

If you’re Canadian, you can go to the Lead Now site to sign a petition against the Conservative government’s rush to push through the omnibus budget bill that would strip our environmental protections, silence our environmental watchdogs, and damage our economy: click here.  Or better yet, call your Member of Parliament and tell them enough is enough.

Clinton: Climate Deniers Make U.S. Look Like a Joke

Via Think Progress, Bill Clinton, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, blasting the Republican Party for supporting denial of climate science:

“The best thing you could do is make it politically unacceptable to engage in denial,” Clinton told a questioner about what Americans can do to fight climate change. “We look like a joke,” he continued. “You can’t win the nomination of one of our parties if you admit that the scientists are right. It’s really tragic. We need the debate between people who are a little bit to the left and a little bit to the right what’s the best way is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We can’t have this conversation because we’ve got to deny it?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg0hc1y7JQk&feature=player_embedded]

More links:

Think Progress.org

Clinton Global Initiative

University of Calgary Prostitutes Itself To Big Oil & Gas

Canadian journalist Mike DeSousa first wrote three years ago about the anti-science group with the Orwellian name “Friends of Science” funding a PR blitz meant to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Friends of Science paid for their ad campaign out of a University of Calgary research account controlled by Professor Barry Cooper, but the university and the Calgary Foundation (who also received donations and transferred them to the research account) refused to release details at the time that DeSousa broke the original story. DeSousa appealed that censorship, and won.

DeSousa wrote last week in the Ottawa Citizen:

A pair of “research” accounts at the University of Calgary, funded mainly by the oil and gas industry, were used for a sophisticated international political campaign that involved high-priced consultants, lobbying, wining, dining, and travel with the goal of casting doubt on climate change science, newly-released records have revealed.

The records showed that the strategy was crafted by professional firms, in collaboration with well-known climate change skeptics in Canada and abroad, allowing donors to earn tax receipts by channelling their money through the university.

All of the activities and $507,975 in spending were organized by the Friends of Science, an anti-Kyoto Protocol group founded by retired oil industry workers and academics who are skeptical about peer-reviewed research linking human activity to global warming observed in recent decades.

DeSousa has also revealed that an Alberta-based oil and gas company, Talisman Energy, helped to kick-start the elaborate public relations campaign with a donation of nearly $200,000.

The donation from Talisman Energy was the largest single contribution to a pair of trust accounts at the university that received $507,975 in donations to produce a video and engage in public relations, advertising and lobbying activities against the Kyoto Protocol and government measures to restrict fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Talisman is pleased to be a part of this exciting project and wish you success in the production of the video,” said the letter, dated Nov. 4, 2004, to university account administrator Chantal-Lee Watt, that accompanied a $175,000 cheque.

Something smells fishy around here, and it’s not just the leftover pickerel chowder in my fridge. Aren’t universities supposed to be bastions of learning and scientific inquiry? When did it become okay for a public university to accept private corporate funds to spread misinformation and lies? And then try to suppress the truth, only revealing it when forced to by access to information laws?

If you, like me, think something stinks about this, contact University of Calgary President Elizabeth Cannon by email at: president@ucalgary.ca.

In the meantime, Friends of Science is at it again, bringing in journalist (and now climate expert??) Rex Murphy to the University of Calgary on September 29th. Murphy has been spouting his uninformed  views on climate change for a while now, and I’m sure the FoS is happy to have him spread more doubt on the science. Like the tobacco lobby, who for years delayed action on tobacco regulation by confusing the general public about the science linking tobacco and health effects, the Petroleum Lobby is busily repositioning global warming as theory rather than fact. Want to learn more? Head over to DeSmogBlog.com – they do a great job of separating climate fact from climate fiction.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/29107248]

More links:

University Funds Used in PR War, Files Show

Oil Money Funnelled To Climate Denier Group

Talisman Energy Kick-Started U of C Climate Skeptic Fund

Climate Skeptic Monckton Claims to Have Discovered Cure For HIV, Multiple Sclerosis

Introducing the new, amazing “MonckWOW”:

It turns out that the August and Exalted Lord Monckton ‘s scientific expertise (despite the fact that he has no scientific education) is not limited to being the world’s foremost climate expert — he is also a medical practitioner of the highest caliber.
He claims to have developed a cure for HIV, the flu, malaria, muscular sclerosis, and the common cold.

Check out the latest video from Climate Crock debunker Peter Sinclair. I found the most ironic part to be anti-science climate denier and journalist James Delingpole complaining about being “intellectually raped” by scientist and President of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse after Delingpole was unable to respond to Nurse’s “unfair question” on the scientific consensus on climate change.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl2lShU6zD0&feature=digest]

Stephen Hawking: Human-Caused Climate Change Dire Threat To Future Of World

Renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has stated that climate change stands alongside the use of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats posed to the future of the world. Speaking at the Royal Society in London in 2007, Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it. In his remarks, Hawking stated:

As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces…As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth…

Lord Rees of Ludlow, president of the Royal Society, speaking at the same meeting, said humankind’s collective impacts on the biosphere, climate and oceans were unprecedented. These environmentally-driven threats ­ ‘threats without enemies’ ­ should loom as large in the political perspective as did the East-West political divide during the Cold War era.

The board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said the threat of nuclear apocalypse was now almost matched by the environmental threats posed by climate change:

“As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilisation. We have concluded the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm.”

Read the full article here.

More links:

Hawking warns: We Must Recognize The Catastrophic Dangers of Climate Change

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: How Skepticism Became Denial (subscription required to read full article)

Climate Crock: Climate Skeptics Have As Much Leg to Stand On As Monty Python’s Black Knight

Peter Sinclair over at Climate Crock Of The Week has just released this video, which demonstrates how little fact or science the anti-science climate skeptics have to back them up. Yet just like the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, who refused to admit defeat even when dismembered, they keep on shouting that they really are legitimate opponents!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WvasALL-hw]