The Agenda
I was on Steve Paikin's fine new show The Agenda Thursday night, talking about how to reconcile economic growth with the environment, or whether that's even possible. Fellow panelists: John Duffy, Elizabeth May, Robert Costanza (a professor of ecological economics) and David Robertson from the CAW.
Here's a link to the web page for that episode. You can watch the video here, or listen to the audio here.
I was also on The Agenda the previous week, this time talking about how to reconcile Alberta and Quebec. See the page, video and audio.
2/24/2007
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Is our way of life and Kyoto compatible ?? If you listen to Suzuki and Maurice Strong the answer is a resounding NO !! After all MS is on Suzuki's board.
MS has said there are too many people on earth. Have to save the world because man is bad, according to his Earth Charter. (google it)
Mo has said 'in order to save the world we have to collapse the western economic world.' (this, from the one who is really in charge at the United Nations)google him.
Kyoto's carbon-credit scheme is not about polution but a money transfer scam. (see Ontario Hydro/Costa Rica rain forest, 1990s)
Suzuki said Cuban agriculture is a better way to go than Canada's. (Except that many people would starve. Part of the plan ??)
Al Gore and David Suzuki and Maurice Strong all know that the Earth's climate has always been changing and has been warmer than now. Many times. Colder too. For Canada, isn't warmer better ??
Chretien's right-hand man just revealed that, even though the Liberals signed on to Kyoto, they knew they could not implement it.
And when one thinks about it, the reason all this hullabaloo on the environment/man's-way-of-life thing came to be was because of the infamous 'Hockey Stick Graph'. Which has been thorouly discredited as a UN Hoax. google it.
And the host of the show asks if our way of life is compatible with the fanaticism of Gore Suzuki Strong ?? Andrew was the only one in the whole farse to make any sense. Take heart AC, the MSM may be trying to discredit you but Canadians deep down know you are correct.
Along with Terrance Corcoran, Peter Foster, Lorrie Goldstein, Dr. Patrick Moore(greenspirit.com), Nancy Green-Raine, Bjorn Lomborg, Dr. Tim Ball and millions more.
B. Hoax Aware: "Along with Terrance Corcoran, Peter Foster, Lorrie Goldstein, Patrick Moore...Bjorn Lomborg, Tim Ball et al." Are you serious? This list is a "who's who" of who doesn't make any sense.
Andrew advocated for the use of market mechanisms (e.g. cap and trade) to control Green House Gas emissions. He's a reasonable guy.
Visit www.desmogblog.com to see why he doesn't deserve to be grouped in with the pack of liars and fake scientists you list at the end of your post.
It would have been nice to have a real economist on the show.
Thanks to AC for at least pointing out the obvious.
mostly mush. it is amazing how muddled the environmental understanding of most people - and even most pundits - really is.
In defense of Malthus, the Malthusian view has been vindicated in the case of the destruction of the global fishery. Next up: oil, fresh water and space to dump our CO2.
The massive expansion of the human project over the last 1,000 years, say, is unlikely to be replicated over coming centuries without bumping into some serious limits.
I explained why the fanatics do not make sense. And worse.
Please explain why you "think" Dr. Patrick Moore and others don't make sense.
tick tick tick ...
Just like Al Gore, eh ?? Since he was asked to debate his preaching 1 year, 1 month, 3 weeks, 1 day, 7 hours, 20 mins, and 16 secs tic tick have passed.
Patrick Moore; DDT ban stupid. It was and now countries are reinstating it to fight malaria. (Uganda)
Tim Ball researched the hundreds of years of climate data from The Hudson Bay Company archives. Didn't ask the fruit flies how climate works.
Bjorn Lomborg has shaken the kyoto fanatics to their core. He took them on and won. No 'chicken little', he. Danish scientists have vindicated Lomborg by proving that the sun is a major climate driver. Always has been. What do you think melted the 2 kilometers of ice covering Canada ?? Only 10000 years ago.
Terence Corcoran wrote on the folly of Kyoto years ago. google him.
I an Peter Foster and Lorrie Goldstein have major book material ready for a book that could be called something like; 'The Most Dangerous Man In The World' ... Maurice Strong. Book publishers, though, say he is not noteworthy. google him and feel the Earth Gaia shake.
".... human project" ?? Latest one is falling birth rates.
Russia, Italy, Spain and others are far below replacement. The world's population will begin falling in the decades ahead. And that without all the world's calamities that are supposed to 'wipe us out'. So much for bumping up against the 'population explosion' thingy.
Canada's fish stocks were depleated because gutless Liberal Prime Ministers would not stand up to the Europeans. The Amazon basin will keep, keep the world's grain supply in surplus for decades. Centuries with falling birth rates.
Speaking of grain, the greens want to 'burn' the grain. Gave it a fancy name. 'biofuel'. A field of grain is a poor solar collector for energy purposes. Solar power is not feasible either, without govmit subsidies. The cost of wind power is double hydro costs. (My livelihood ?? Grain Farmer)
Doomsayers said we would run out of oil shortly after the first well was discovered. Said it every decade since.
Fresh water. Simple. Catch the melt water from all the glaciers the alarmists say are melting. Would also prevent the sea level from rising the 17 (downgraded UN prediction)inches that fanatic Al Gore says will submerge cities.
CO2 ?? CO2 levels have been much, much higger in the past (Holocene) and life thrived. We're here, aren't we ??
Funny thing, the world was supposed to have ended about 53 times already, 54 with GW.
Just one more time. The IPCC, despite its popularity with the Gore/Suzuki crowd, has not yet been able to explain why previous global warming episodes have occurred despite the absence of 20th century industry levels of CO2 and other GHGs.
The implication, of course, is that something other than GHG emissions is causing the climate to become somewhat warmer - most likely variations in solar radiation and cloud cover influenced by cosmic radiation, etc. There is still no definitive IPCC answer as to whether today's climate is warmer, the same as, or cooler than the climate that existed when the Vikings lived on their farms in Greenland.
So what will happen to the world economy when, after going through all sorts of upheaval to control CO2 emissions, the climate keeps on warming? The resources that might have gone into adapting to climate change will have been spent building massive wind mill farms and the like.
Will Mr. Gore still be around touting his "Inconvenient Truth" message then?
Well, the problem in the current debate and political jousting is that it is widely accepted that if you don't agree with Kyoto you don't care about the environment.
Meanwhile Kyoto is a horribly flawed agreement - even more so for Canada.
Firstly, MNC's can easily locate from Canada to a country that hasn't signed Kyoto, or that has no targets under Kyoto.
Secondly, it allocates pollution based on 'who has the greatest history of pollution?' - so if you were able to produce 35% of the world's pollution in the 70's - let's reward that by allocating a similar level now. Pollution allocation should be based on production. If you produce 25% of the world's products, you should get to produce 25% of the pollution. Nations should focus on being more efficient.
As for Peter Foster, I have seen the extent of his arguments, and he got absolutely dismantled when he went up against Elizabeth May.
Andrew: I saw the Agenda episode and was pleased to hear you finally advocate a position that I can agree with.
Work against the market and you will fail. Address the externalities in the market and it will price fossil fuels accordingly. As pricing changes, so will behaviour.
That said, I favour a carbon tax more than using a "cap and trade" system. Revenue from a carbon tax can be set aside in a dedicated fund to offset the capital investment needed to improve energy efficiency. Dumping this tax into general revenue is tempting, but won't do the job as effectively.
As to the argument about the poor's need for energy subsidies, solving poverty by subsidizing energy for everyone is a non-starter. This is just an excuse made by people who don't want their own behaviour affected by way of their own pocketbooks- they don't give a rat's @ss about the poor. Take some carbon tax money and use it to retrofit public housing units, most of which are heated with ELECTRICITY- use yet more to fund public transit, which is used by people too poor to afford cars, even old ones. Do those things and you'll do far more for the poor than current energy pricing is doing.
B. Hoax
Bjorn Lomborg? Give me a break. He's been criticized by dozens of very reputable groups (Scientific American, Union of Concerned Scientists) and I've read the point by point battle between himself and Fog. There is no way in hell he "destroyed" his critics.
Secondly, what "Danish researchers" have vindicated his view on solar emissions and climate? The #1 study that is continuously quoted about this is the 1997 Lasse study, which has been re-done with the original data on two different occasions, by two different sets of researchers, both of which found that Lasse's group applied intermittent statistical smoothing to his data that changed his results. When they removed it, they found that the originally published rise in solar output that clearly matched the rise in the Earth's average temperature ... disappeared. What they saw aftewards was, surprise, surprise, the same 11 year Schwabe cycle that most solar emissions scientists see.