Hi,

I’m from Montreal, Québec. Here there is no debate about GW. In fact, other than the french sientist Marcel Leroux, I don’t know any other french speaking scientist, or journalist that shows even a moderate views. To give you an idea Stephen Guilbault from Greenpeace is the only voice we hear in the media for any environmental subject.

Québec has been honoured today by the french minister for the environment Nelly Olin in Nairobi, while she bashed on Canada. Yet Québec contribution to GHG mitigation is that we have one of the slowest economic growth accross North America, the lost of a large part of our pork industrie (to the profit of Manitoba), and a special taxe of $250 millions to the petroleum corporation (which we end-up paying at the pump).

If I’m not mistaken, (maybe someone can explain better) GHG by countries are based on the growth of economic activities in each of these countries. It just happens that for Canada a large part of the economic growth has been from the high price of petroleum.

Here is a strange situation: people in Québec want to pay less for their gas (oil company are so evil), for that to happen more oil has to be extracted to elevate the offer yet they complain that Alberta pollute to much and that they should be more enviromentally friendly, well that is as long as they don’t have to pay more for their gas.

A good anecdote would be that radio show host who is retelling all of the worst scenario and that we need to do something about it. His actions speaks for themselves this summer he bought a brand new mustang GT on which (in 3 month) he put around 30000Km (more than the 20,000Km/year the average people drive).

I believe that Global Warming is happening and I believe that industry and Governments need to enact appropriate policy decisons.

I live in a suburb of Vancouver BC Canada that lies on the Delta of The Fraser River.

A few months ago the Sierra Club issued some graphics that were apparently prepared with various warming models that showed that much of the Greater Vancouver Regional district would be flooded in the not so distant future.

Local media and National news are reporting the “looming catastrophe.”

This morning, George Monbiot was touting his book on a popular morning radio program. He is considered a hero by one of our local commentators http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=cd38c552-8ad0-4952-9ad2-3dcef8b83828

In his first utterance this morning he asked us to remember “Hitler” and what happened there. He then asked us to deal with this “Beast” and he went on to lambaste Canada’s record for failure to keep up with its obligations under Kyoto.

Within a few more minutes MR. Monbiot listed temperatures and dates that “had” to be adhered to in order to prevent “catastrophy”.

It may just be me but I do not have any respect for this type of rhetoric, especially from someone affiliated with the “Royal Society”. I wonder how average people trying to do some research on their own are supposed to govern their lives and pragmatically make decisions. An important one is who to vote for in the next Federal Election.

Is the electorate expected to vote on the basis of imagery surrounding melting glaciers, flooding, hurricanes and polar bears scrambling for a piece of ice to stand on?

I think that our new Conservative Government is realizing that Kyoto goals cannot be met and that they will attempt to re-evaluate their position. Is this so wrong as to garner the “fossil of the day award’ (twice) in Kenya?

In any case I would be interested in hearing comments on the news article in the link above.

I very much enjoy this discussion.

Thanks for listening.

Mike Schneider

Thanks for the link. The issue of industry scientists on advisory panels is a subject I would like to return to here sometime soon.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has been lobbying for a policy that would per se exclude from federal advisory committees (including peer review panels) scientists who work for industry or who have been paid by industry to do most anything.

CSPI also maintains a database of such scientists; it is quite transparently a blacklist. It is hard to figure out what effect the blacklist has had on scientists, but I have anecdotal evidence indicating that some highly respected scientists have been intimidated.

The blacklist extends to nonprofits and universities that have received corporate funding.

I blogged on the subject here:

http://neutralsource.org/content/blog/detail/583/

MOST RELIABLE

1. Unsponsored Academic research – rarely found anymore since no one will get a post doc if they can’t bring in “extramural” funds as the employment ads in the back of Science put it.

2. Industrial or Industrially sponsored Academic research by large multi-nationals with huge product lines – If Company A can’t sell you product B today, they’ll sell you product C tomorrow unless they’ve ruined their reputation by lying about product B. Unfortunately, some of this is only available if you are consulting for Company A.

3. Academic research sponsored by non-regulatory agencies – they generally don’t have any axes to grind (other than the usual academic/governmental political wrangling)

The above three are actually pretty close; there is then a huge gap to number 4.

4. Industrial or Industrially sponsored Academic research by smaller firms whose profits or existence depends on the sale of only a few products. If Company D can’t sell you produce E today, they’ll go out of business before they can develop product F.

5. Academic research sponsored by regulatory agencies – If a researcher finds nothing requiring regulation, they’ll have to look elsewhere for their next grant.

6. Research done by or sponsored by non-profit organizations – If they can’t convince the public that a serious situation exists which can only be remedied by sending the organization money, they cease to exist.

LEAST RELIABLE

Jim Kanuth

Many years ago, 16 to be exact, I was a member of an ‘activist group’ that took up the AGW banner. At the time, I was deeply concerned about the threat of AGW and felt the new focus was a good thing. Then I started to notice a disconnect between the scientific papers I was reading and the fundraising mail I received from the organization. Any science that didn’t support the organization’s world view was ignored, or misquoted and dismissed. Papers that did support the world view were heralded, but also misquoted, making the potential crisis seem worse than the science actually supported.

Nothing has changed in the last 16 years regarding activist groups who depend on contributions to survive. The first rule of fund raising seems to be ‘exaggerate the crisis’. I believe this holds true in politics and in the government funding of scientific research as well.

Whenever your group’s financial survival or level of influence, depends on convincing people to give up their money to prevent them from experiencing a serious calamity, it always pays to exaggerate the threat. At least until they become wise to you. Then you are toast!

I believe this is exactly the point Roger is making when he laments the comments of Paul Clements-Hunt of UNEP.

Of course, in a world of 6 billion people, it takes a while for everyone to get wise; and as the saying goes, “There’s a sucker born every minute”.

Report like this one and the Stern review a few weeks ago have always, and continue, pushing me away from any justification to mitigate GHG.

I got interested in By GW after I read the book by Micheal Crichton “States of Fear”. Since then I read several books from the reading list provided at the end. Including books by Patrick J. Michaels and the book by Bjorn Lomborg.

These books that are highly criticised by people that prefer to sell action by gloom and doom scenarios, are the books that convinced me that some action were needed and justified.

My first access to the debate was through media news and report. The lack of understanding and the one side reporting of the media outlet made me very skeptical of the scientist mentioned in these text. Since then I started to read this blog, the climate science blog and a few other sources. I have learned to be less critical of the scientist but I have also learn to be very skeptical of the media reporting (sorry mr Yulsman)and very critical of any interest group interested in the subject.

My hope is that the people who are selling the doomsday scenario will realise that they are not helping their cause. Unless their cause is to prevent action, so they can profit from the scaremongering (Very sorry for this harsh criticism). In fact I would be curious to know the impact of catastrophic event on the financing of activist group.