The Great "Climate Change" Debate

I have been skeptical for some time about the position the most strident proponents of "global warming" have taken, mostly due to the inordinate amount of effort they have expended to limit debate on the subject. When the rhetoric took on the tone of religious debate about three years ago, I was fairly convinced that we were being sold a bill of goods. When my wife began working for a major western Canadian university she told me that professors indicated to her that they had to write their research proposals with an intentional eye on keeping their lines of research within the sphere proscribed by the "green" science cabal - or at least avoid asking questions that might ruffle feathers - or else they ran the risk of not receiving the funding they need. When the lines of scientific research are constrained by what amounts to social and political policy - however well-intentioned it may be - then it has lost it's academic independence and, I would argue, much of its usefulness to humanity.

One of the writers who has consistently poked holes in the "global warming/climate change" conclusions and proposals is Patrick Bedard, a staff writer for Car and Driver (Yes, yes I can hear the cat-calls and hissing saying "Vested interest!" - SHHH CHILDREN! Listen and LEARN!). Mr Bedard is an engineer, and his mantra isn't "cars at any cost" it's more "does this add up?". If you take the time to survey a few of his articles you'll quickly come to see that he does his homework and he doesn't fudge the figures. Now his perspective is going mainstream thanks to a recent article by Lorne Gunter.

Of course, if one has been paying attention to stories on the fringes of the media and the subtle shifts in the rhetoric of the "green" movement, these revelations should come as no surprise. A recent report suggested that the climate change movement was heading for a "tough decade" because global temperatures were trending down, not up - a fact Gunter's article supports. And the label "global warming" has been shifted over recent months to "climate change" - a suitably non-specific moniker that can be interpreted in any fashion to fit the facts. It seems that political expediency, power and money have co-opted the science community, the media and our political leaders. And we probably shouldn't be surprised.

I am a Christian, and as such I am deeply concerned that we take seriously how we use God's creation. I believe we are charged with stewardship of this planet, and all places we may touch - but if we are to be able to do this we need truth in the information we use to help us make our decisions. We need scientists, academics and researchers who are politically, socially and economically independent so they can pursue the lines of investigation they want to without fear of reprisal or censure. And helping maintain and protect this independence must be the first and the constant goal we should pursue in science.

Sadly, most people want the "academic eggheads" to provide us with solutions that we can understand with eighth-grade education and that can be explained in 30 seconds by some "talking head" on the six-o-clock news. And we want solutions that will not require much from us. We are the common denominator in this power struggle and it is by and to our low expectations and selfish lifestyles that the arguments and policies of our leaders are shaped and directed. We are getting what we demand - just like angry, hungry babies. We should be getting what we need.

So my exhortation to the one or two of you who read this blog is this - do some more reading on this. Don't let me or others make up your mind for you. Question those who are sanctimoniously using their authority to dictate what questions may be asked and what answers may be accepted. And talk amongst yourselves. Then talk to your local politicians, write letters to the editors of newspapers, email the news directors of broadcast news, comment on the electronic news sites and share the info. Because - and here I agree wholeheartedly with the leaders of the "green" movement - we ALL need to get involved.

Up to this point there has been no real debate on this subject - it's high time we had one.

To Debate or Not To Debate

Simply put, I do not believe what we will experience in the so-called "leaders debate" will be of any use to anyone, except the TV networks and their advertising departments. If the debate is 1 hr (with commercials) that means we will see 44 minutes with 5 candidates (8.8 minutes per candidate). Even without commercials it will only allow 12 minutes per person, but we all know that what we will get will be an hour of poorly controlled mayhem. No one uses dictionaries anymore - we're just like Lewis Carroll's caterpillar, "When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean." "Debate" indeed!

At the risk of offending - I'm not quite sure who - neither M. Duceppe nor Ms. Mays has any business being in a national leaders debate. I'll not go into depth here, but I cannot vote for a candidate from either party in my riding (as far as I know at this time) so they are, in the strictest sense of this word, irrelevant.

Our political system has devolved into a media circus that can only communicate in 5 second sound bytes. Watch the debate if you want - I suggest taking two Excedrin beforehand to ward off the inevitable migraine it will produce - but remember this, the media has absolutely no interest in providing you with anything in the way of useful information. They just want you there to watch the ads and prop up their market share numbers.

As Liam Neeson said to Clint Eastwood in "The Dead Pool", "Bums on seats, luv. That's what it's all about."

Wrenching Analogies

Another tick in the column headed "The Death of Debate" was marked down this week by leader of the Canadian Green Party Elizabeth May's unfortunate attempt to compare Stephen Harper and his new environment policy with WWII era British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement towards Hitler and his rise to power in Germany. As I have suggested in other blogs and writings, the art and skill of reasoned debate has died a convincing death only to continue to shuffle on as a zombie animated by personal diatribe and fueled by scathing invective.

Ms. May, who at one time purported to be the champion of political change and constantly encouraged her audiences with her vision to "do things differently" in Ottawa has entered free fall in the credibility ratings (in this pundit's never-to-be-humble opinion). Her slip began with the cynical and opportunistic deal she made with Stefan Dion to ensure that she could run uncontested against Peter McKay in his maritime riding in the next election. It is now closely followed by this gaffe which has the Canadian media debating Ms. May's dubious oratory skills with greater fervor that they are using to explain the Government's new environment policy. This kind of public debate "bait and switch" is fundamentally disingenuous as Maisonneuve Mediascout points out is becoming all too common in today's exchanges between political, social, cultural, religious and ethical rivals. Debate has devolved to the gutter where the best any of the participants can seem to do is bludgeon one another with accusations of being evil incarnate rather than offer an alternative vision or policy. If the voters remain only modestly attentive and informed I expect that Ms. May will remain in the political wilderness after our next trip to the polls. It will hardly be a shame as she has demonstrated, as far as i can see, that she doesn't bring anything that would make me believe she could influence Parliament to "do things differently".

As an aside; while preparing the links for this entry I discovered that Googling Mr. Harper and Ms. May led me to, respectively, the Government of Canada's site for the Prime Minister and the Green Party website easily, while doing the same with Mr. Dion's name led me nowhere near the Liberal Party of Canada's website - at least in the first few pages of results. I was aware that the Liberals are in disarray but I am shocked that they can't manage this bit of technological promotion and communication. As a long-time critic of the Liberals I am perhaps a little too happy to see that the confusion within their organization is so pervasive. While I am no fan of Liberal policy generally, I am always concerned when the opposition cannot be effective in their role and present a viable alternative to the current government, be it federal or provincial. My 42 years as an Albertan schooled me in the pitfalls of a constituency being governed by a party that fears no opposition and takes its power to govern for granted. No one will hear this but somebody with some intelligence in the Liberal Party better WAKE UP! And soon.

Back to the issue. The death of debate is having serious consequences for our nation. With the media jumping on the tactics, or lack of tactics, employed by politicians in denouncing one another we find less and less news coverage devoted to the issues at hand. Every policy announcement and program launch is met by inevitable slurs and sarcasm. The reporters wind up reporting who called who what and how both sides reacted. The paper, radio and TV reports are increasingly filled with articles about words said rather than ideas communicated. And thus we are all made an little more ignorant by the ignorance of the politician's comments and the duplicitous ignorance of the reporter's choice of focus.

These analogy bombs that get used almost every day need to be fixed. We need to step down the rhetoric. We need to call our politicians on this stuff. In Saskatchewan the opposition Sask Party has begun what I expect will be a series of ads, most likely anticipating an upcoming election. They have begun with a negative message right off the top. My disappointment is very great and I am going to the MLA's riding office today to tell either him or his assistant so. I'm not trying to throw a wrench into their communications plans. I'm only trying to suggest they need to take their policy wrench out and fine tune their message a bit. I guess this is participatory democracy.