David Suzuki: Climate change deniers are almost extinct

[Ron in Regina]

David Suzuki: Climate change deniers are almost extinct???

Really? Does that mean that they deserve to be protected yet then?
Even if just to preserve the biodiversity of the biosphere or something
along those lines.

 

[beaker]

David Suzuki: Climate change deniers are almost extinct???

Really? Does that mean that they deserve to be protected yet then?
Even if just to preserve the biodiversity of the biosphere or something
along those lines.

I wouldn't want to make it too easy. Other species actually have obvious natural talent or characteristics of value to the rest of the biosphere. Not something the hard core deniers as deniers have shown to the world. Still, we could find a devils advocate that could speak for them.

 

[taxslave]

I think that hate is too strong a word. For example, I don't expect that the people willing to lose salmon streams in the name of development hate salmon. Or people willIng to lose the Kermodi spirit bear in the name of jobs hate the white bears. Et cetera, et cetera, et f'ing cetera. No, I expect they don't see any value in keeping other species alive. Maybe we could work out a system of cost/benefit analysis that would allow deniers the opportunity to prove their worth.

You know of course that the so called spirit bear is just a genetically defective brown bear?
We have to decide what is more important, peoples jobs or a couple of fish that could be raised in a tank. Since I have to work for a living I'll take the jobs.

 

[skookumchuck]

You know of course that the so called spirit bear is just a genetically defective brown bear?
We have to decide what is more important, peoples jobs or a couple of fish that could be raised in a tank. Since I have to work for a living I'll take the jobs.

It happened that a few Black Bears, Ursus Americanus, who carried the unusual recessive gene which promoted the color change, were in close contact in that area.
Some peeps with an agenda endowed the animals with a near supernatural monicker. Even though my heritage reflects it i do not sign on. Same as i do not ascribe to my savage Druid ancestry on the other side.

When you bring superstition into a dialog you ultimately lose, same as being a rigid disciple of any controlling and non evolving religion.
I have no issues with elevating the need for protection of these areas but i do have a problem when it is conjoined with a rabid form of protectionism that does not address the fact that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Apparently, the incredible ability of modern society, driven by technology, trade and commerce, to keep the anti everything group healthy, eating, communicating, and mobile, does not apply until their Ox is getting "Gored".

We won't see sanity and balance until we are done following the money on both sides of the argument.

 

[beaker]

You know of course that the so called spirit bear is just a genetically defective brown bear?

Ok, so then if a sub-species is defective we shouldn't have to worry about it. But since every species and sub species is just a genetically defective offspring of a parent species that would mean we don't have to worry about anyone except number 1. And yet we know that for the ecosystem to work there is interdependency and we are as reliant as any of the most dependent species around. So that doesn't work.

We have to decide what is more important, peoples jobs or a couple of fish that could be raised in a tank. Since I have to work for a living I'll take the jobs.

How far does that go? There was some people working at a gravel operation by the Fraser not long ago. estimates are that 3 million fish died as a result of that operation. Would it have made sense for those people to have investigated the nature of their impacts and choose some other location? Some years back the Federal government (of the LibCon variety)decided wrongly that there was too many farmers on Canadas farms. Well they got economic genius advice. so they provided a small cash fund to help some farmers retrain.... Any reason we can't do that for oil workers? or loggers? or economists?

 

[gopher]

Even George Bush believes in global warming so it has to be true. After all, he never made a mistake in his life, right?

 

[beaker]

It happened that a few Black Bears, Ursus Americanus, who carried the unusual recessive gene which promoted the color change, were in close contact in that area.
Some peeps with an agenda endowed the animals with a near supernatural monicker. Even though my heritage reflects it i do not sign on. Same as i do not ascribe to my savage Druid ancestry on the other side.

When you bring superstition into a dialog you ultimately lose, same as being a rigid disciple of any controlling and non evolving religion.
I have no issues with elevating the need for protection of these areas but i do have a problem when it is conjoined with a rabid form of protectionism that does not address the fact that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Apparently, the incredible ability of modern society, driven by technology, trade and commerce, to keep the anti everything group healthy, eating, communicating, and mobile, does not apply until their Ox is getting "Gored".

We won't see sanity and balance until we are done following the money on both sides of the argument.

I can have my cake and eat it too? Do I at that point still have that cake? Even if that were possible, wouldn't that fly in the face of the idea that responsible people should be grateful? And if one person, or even a community can have its cake and eat it too, does it follow that all of mankinds burgeoning population will always be able to? I'd like to see some proof of that kind of future possibility before I sign off on the waste and abuse of the resources we are currently wasting and abusing.

Some good points there skookumchuck, follow the money, and put it on a set of balances and determine where the most money is, But we already know that the financial system is based on the desire for money and what it will buy. The eco-system is based on the fight to survive and often money doesn't even enter into that. To the point where people will turn to other, even superstitious, belief systems in an attempt to show others the value of what is possibly going to be lost.

I did not understand this comment, "Apparently, the incredible ability of modern society, driven by technology, trade and commerce, to keep the anti everything group healthy, eating, communicating, and mobile, does not apply until their Ox is getting "Gored". " But I presume that you think that there is an anti-everything crowd, that they are ungrateful for the good life, neither of which is the case in my experience working in opposition to really stupid development.

Even George Bush believes in global warming so it has to be true. After all, he never made a mistake in his life, right?

errr.... just how many George Bushes have there been?

 

[skookumchuck]

@Beaker,
I agree that the earth needs a massive cull, problem is finding volunteers. I kinda thought all the progressives and their handlers would be first to raise their hands. No? Let us look at it from only one different perspective. How many people do we allow to suffer and die from a lack of the medical research, technology, and equipment that comes only from mining in it's many forms. Not to mention taxes.
You choose, and don't bother with the "green" mantra it would come way too late for many. Wanna volunteer to help offset the problem?

 

[beaker]

@Beaker,
I agree that the earth needs a massive cull, problem is finding volunteers. I kinda thought all the progressives and their handlers would be first to raise their hands. No? Let us look at it from only one different perspective. How many people do we allow to suffer and die from a lack of the medical research, technology, and equipment that comes only from mining in it's many forms. Not to mention taxes.

I don't know who you are agreeing with, a cull of the few remaining deniers isn't going to make that big a difference to the amount of food left for the rest of us. And if you get right down to it those few would probably change their tune if it came to that. What does your point about mining have to do with it? Are you under the mistaken belief that environmentalists want to stop all mining?

You choose, and don't bother with the "green" mantra it would come way too late for many. Wanna volunteer to help offset the problem?

Choices, why would the green mantra be too late? I think you have been getting your information about greens from the reds and blues. Kind of a strange approach to knowledge.

 

[taxslave]

Ok, so then if a sub-species is defective we shouldn't have to worry about it. But since every species and sub species is just a genetically defective offspring of a parent species that would mean we don't have to worry about anyone except number 1. And yet we know that for the ecosystem to work there is interdependency and we are as reliant as any of the most dependent species around. So that doesn't work.



How far does that go? There was some people working at a gravel operation by the Fraser not long ago. estimates are that 3 million fish died as a result of that operation. Would it have made sense for those people to have investigated the nature of their impacts and choose some other location? Some years back the Federal government (of the LibCon variety)decided wrongly that there was too many farmers on Canadas farms. Well they got economic genius advice. so they provided a small cash fund to help some farmers retrain.... Any reason we can't do that for oil workers? or loggers? or economists?

Retrain for what? We mostly all make +$80000 /yr. What can we do in remote areas that pays like this? Or anywhere else for that matter. I already have 2 red seal trades and am getting a bit long in the tooth to spend 4 or 5 years in school. Unless you want to pay for the training, wage loss and price difference in houses between where we live and where we might have to move to. None of which does anything to lessen the need for those resources that are required to keep your cities humming along.
What you really need to do is reduce the demand for natural resources as reducing the supply and making them more difficult to extract only drives the price up.

 

[beaker]

Retrain for what? We mostly all make +$80000 /yr. What can we do in remote areas that pays like this? Or anywhere else for that matter. I already have 2 red seal trades and am getting a bit long in the tooth to spend 4 or 5 years in school. Unless you want to pay for the training, wage loss and price difference in houses between where we live and where we might have to move to. None of which does anything to lessen the need for those resources that are required to keep your cities humming along.

You have many of the same concerns as aging farmers have had when faced with the option of moving on.

What you really need to do is reduce the demand for natural resources as reducing the supply and making them more difficult to extract only drives the price up.

Driving the price of a product up, ie reflecting the true cost of sustainable management of the resources involved, is one way of reducing demand for the product. It is called price elasticity, so obviously when the price goes up people think more before buying. It is like land values around our major cities.

But my object wouldn't be to reduce demand, but to see that resource use is justified, economically. There is also a theory which states that informing people of the real cost of their actions will make them informed enough to make better decisions about how much of a product they use.. So if water use in a community is becoming an issue the town could say to people, "If we don't cut back our water use by 1/2, we will have to limit our population, or build new plant that will cost each of us x amount of money every year"

Nobody is saying that we shouldn't do any more logging. Perhaps there would be more good paying jobs in a logging system that reflected the replacement costs of forests. Of keeping some areas just for the wild. I think that would be the case in agriculture.

 

[B00Mer]

The debate is over about whether or not climate change is real. Irrefutable evidence from around the world—including extreme weather events, record temperatures, retreating glaciers and rising sea levels—all point to the fact that climate change is happening now and at rates much faster than previously thought.

The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, involving more than 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the national academies of science of all G-8 nations, as well as those of China, India and Brazil.

Who are the climate change deniers?

Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change "skeptics" or "deniers", these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly—for example, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public and policy-makers with the goal of delaying action on climate change.

Not surprisingly, the deniers have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. They also have well-documented connections with public relations firms that have set up industry-funded lobby groups to, in the words of one leaked memo, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

Over the years, the deniers have employed a wide range of arguments against taking action on climate change, some of which contradict each other. For example, they have claimed that:

• Climate change is not occurring
• The global climate is actually getting colder
• The global climate is getting warmer, but not because of human activities
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but this will create greater benefits than costs
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but the impacts are not sufficient to require any policy response

After 15 years of increasingly definitive scientific studies attesting to the reality and significance of global climate change, the deniers' tactics have shifted. Many deniers no longer deny that climate change is happening, but instead argue that the cost of taking action is too high—or even worse, that it is too late to take action. All of these arguments are false and are rejected by the scientific community at large.
To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, one study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening and is human-induced.

These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media's reporting on climate change. One study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the deniers.

This discrepancy is largely due to the media's drive for "balance" in reporting. Journalists are trained to identify one position on any issue, and then seek out a conflicting position, providing both sides with roughly equal attention. Unfortunately, this "balance" does not always correspond with the actual prevalence of each view within society, and can result in unintended bias. This has been the case with reporting on climate change, and as a result, many people believe that the reality of climate change is still being debated by scientists when it is not.

While some level of debate is useful when looking at major social problems, society must eventually move on and actually address the issue. To do nothing about the problem of climate change is akin to letting a fire burn down a building because the precise temperature of the flames is unknown, or to not address the problem of smoking because one or two doctors still claim that it does not cause lung cancer. As the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledges, a lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous consequences in the climate system.

Learn more:

Who are the deniers?

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Merchants of Doubt
'Some Like It Hot' — Mother Jones article on climate change skeptics
Responding to Global Warming Skeptics — Prominent Skeptics Organizations
DesmogBlog.com's Disinformation Database
'The Denial Machine' — CBC's the fifth estate program Who funds the deniers?

What Exxon doesn't want you to know
ExxonSecrets: How ExxonMobil funds the climate change deniers
'Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank' — Mother Jones article on ExxonMobil funding The science of climate change

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Joint science academies' statement: Global response to climate change
RealClimate: Climate Science from Climate Scientists
Scientific Consensus on Climate Change — Science Magazine
The Science of Global Warming — Union of Concerned Scientists Climate change reporting in the media

Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias
'Snowed' — Mother Jones article about the media's reporting on climate change
'The Fossil Fools' by George Monbiot More information

DeSmogBlog.com — Excellent blog on the deniers
Skeptical Science.com — Database and refutation of common skeptic arguments
How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptic arguments Grist.org
Editorial on stolen climate change emails — Nature Journal
A review of the distorted science in Michael Crichton's State of Fear
'Hostile Climate' On Bjorn Lomborg and climate change
Recent news stories on deniers

Climate change deniers | Climate change basics | Climate change | Science & policy | Climate change basics | Issues

 

[taxslave]

You have many of the same concerns as aging farmers have had when faced with the option of moving on.



Driving the price of a product up, ie reflecting the true cost of sustainable management of the resources involved, is one way of reducing demand for the product. It is called price elasticity, so obviously when the price goes up people think more before buying. It is like land values around our major cities.

But my object wouldn't be to reduce demand, but to see that resource use is justified, economically. There is also a theory which states that informing people of the real cost of their actions will make them informed enough to make better decisions about how much of a product they use.. So if water use in a community is becoming an issue the town could say to people, "If we don't cut back our water use by 1/2, we will have to limit our population, or build new plant that will cost each of us x amount of money every year"

Nobody is saying that we shouldn't do any more logging. Perhaps there would be more good paying jobs in a logging system that reflected the replacement costs of forests. Of keeping some areas just for the wild. I think that would be the case in agriculture.

Replanting is carried out by the logging companies on TFL land as a contractual obligation. Same with their private lands under management. BC Timbersales(crown land) the price of replanting is reflected in the upset stumpage bid price. So the cost of reforestation is borne by the consumer. The big problem is when forest land is turned into subdivisions.
For any non renewable resources the term sustainable isn't really relevant except to keeping the price high enough to cover extraction costs so we don't have huge boom bust cycles.

 

[beaker]

Replanting is carried out by the logging companies on TFL land as a contractual obligation. Same with their private lands under management. BC Timbersales(crown land) the price of replanting is reflected in the upset stumpage bid price. So the cost of reforestation is borne by the consumer. The big problem is when forest land is turned into subdivisions.
For any non renewable resources the term sustainable isn't really relevant except to keeping the price high enough to cover extraction costs so we don't have huge boom bust cycles.

Replanting is covered, what percentage of BC cuts are reforested?

BC

"In less than a decade, British Columbia has gone from environmental leader to environmental laggard in stewarding one of our most important natural resources. And it could not come at a worse time, as we grapple with climate change and its horrendous impact on our forests.

In what was once one of the greener jurisdictions on earth a major reforestation crisis is underway. A backlog of lands in desperate need of replanting has doubled in a decade, while public investments in tree planting have plummeted."

So apparently more can be done. Also more care can be taken of reforested areas, prompt replanting of saplings that aren't making it, composting of waste, individual cutting, ie horse logging, privatization to small committed owners/loggers like in Germany, fertilization, species diversification, etc. There are lots of things that can be done by forestry people that would make more sustainable use of the forests.


But to get back on topic as you and Boomer pointed out a large part of the problem is in the use of non-renewable resources. I don't think that the primary need is to cover the costs of extraction so that we don't suffer from booms and busts. From my point of view we have a need to cover the development and deploying costs of the fuel that will replace, and that we will use as, we run out of and cut back on fossil fuels because of the side effects, ie global warming. As a logger you wouldn't try to run your business so that your resources either poisoned you, or wore out before you could fund a replacement.

And yet the oil sector is more worried about opening up more markets at low prices. It doesn't make sense to me.

 

[petros]

In the mid 1980s, BC had a substantial problem on its hands. Years of neglect following logging, forest fires and pest outbreaks had left vast swaths of land with too few trees — a condition known in industry and government parlance as Not Satisfactorily Restocked or “NSR.”

Should a new tree be planted immediately after one is harvested?

 

[beaker]

Should a new tree be planted immediately after one is harvested?

More trees should be planted than are being harvested, just to catch up with the need for sequestration. In that sense it isn't relevant to when a tree is cut. It would be a good idea to plant before cutting the tree. In fact it would be a really good idea for example to plant a thousand trees for every one that is cut to make room for mining more bitumen from the tar sands.

 

[petros]

Stress the soil before it is capable of handling a new tree? GREAT IDEA!

WTF are tar sands?

 

[beaker]

So, if climate change deniers are almost extinct, there are probably at least a couple of reasons for that, some have likely learned that the science is valid, that we are launching into the proverbial creek without a paddle, and have wisely decided to look at options for the planet.

And then there would be some who worked for the climate change denier conservation society who have had their zoo supports removed and have changed their opinion out of brutal necessity of making a living.

And then there would be some who haven't got a clue, who can't fathom beyond a certain depth, so to speak, who have volunteered to go down with the ship because they don't realize that there are enough life rafts for everyone. People in short for whom there is little hope.

Extinction is such an ugly word.

 

[taxslave]

Replanting is covered, what percentage of BC cuts are reforested?

BC

"In less than a decade, British Columbia has gone from environmental leader to environmental laggard in stewarding one of our most important natural resources. And it could not come at a worse time, as we grapple with climate change and its horrendous impact on our forests.

In what was once one of the greener jurisdictions on earth a major reforestation crisis is underway. A backlog of lands in desperate need of replanting has doubled in a decade, while public investments in tree planting have plummeted."

So apparently more can be done. Also more care can be taken of reforested areas, prompt replanting of saplings that aren't making it, composting of waste, individual cutting, ie horse logging, privatization to small committed owners/loggers like in Germany, fertilization, species diversification, etc. There are lots of things that can be done by forestry people that would make more sustainable use of the forests.


But to get back on topic as you and Boomer pointed out a large part of the problem is in the use of non-renewable resources. I don't think that the primary need is to cover the costs of extraction so that we don't suffer from booms and busts. From my point of view we have a need to cover the development and deploying costs of the fuel that will replace, and that we will use as, we run out of and cut back on fossil fuels because of the side effects, ie global warming. As a logger you wouldn't try to run your business so that your resources either poisoned you, or wore out before you could fund a replacement.

And yet the oil sector is more worried about opening up more markets at low prices. It doesn't make sense to me.

Your source for this is suspect. Been in the forest industry most of my life and I know what the obligations are for logging and reforestation.
Eventually someone will come up with a cheap or at least acceptable energy source other than fosil fuel and Nuclear. The oil companies spend lots on this problem because they are actually energy providers. Does not matter to them what the energy source is as long as they can make a buck off it. We have several hundred years worth of coal in the ground so it might as well be used before it becomes worthless. Every year there is some progress on making fossil fuels more efficient and clean burning. Who knows what might happen next year?

I'm still more concerned about profitable reuse of materials we throw out as I believe this is of far more immediate concern than a bit of CO2.

 

[Ron in Regina]

So, if climate change deniers are almost extinct, there are probably at least a couple of reasons for that, some have likely learned that the science is valid, that we are launching into the proverbial creek without a paddle, and have wisely decided to look at options for the planet.

And then there would be some who worked for the climate change denier conservation society who have had their zoo supports removed and have changed their opinion out of brutal necessity of making a living.

And then there would be some who haven't got a clue, who can't fathom beyond a certain depth, so to speak, who have volunteered to go down with the ship because they don't realize that there are enough life rafts for everyone. People in short for whom there is little hope.

Extinction is such an ugly word.

And then there would be those that're sick to death of the doom & gloom
preach'n along with dismissive attitudes with anyone who objects or
questions the Global Warming/Cooling/Changing/Settled-Science mantra,
and just want to get through the conversation/pole/whatever and get on
with their day so answer whatever to avoid aother doom & gloom lecture.