Despite having no use for Conrad Black the convicted felon as a human being, he
is a very good researcher and writer. I have enjoyed some of his books and
usually learned things from, and sometimes agreed with his guest commentaries
in the National Post. His excellent use of the english language to address
complex topics reminds me of Rex Murphy, another frequent National Post
contributor who I try to follow.
If the point of this article is to suggest we not rush into massively
disruptive policy decisions without a more accurate understanding of the exact
problem, then I fully agree. That does not mean I am suggesting we do nothing.
I have learned from experience that making big decisions in situations where “I
don’t know what I don’t know” has generally not worked out well.
The energy industry is under attack and has been responding with measured
changes to their impact on the environment. It takes many years to plan large
infrastructure projects like pipelines and shipping terminals. LNG plants are
also historically very complex and difficult to start up. Canada has had many
LNG proposals fall to the wayside during the planning stages but the primary
reason has been the inability to convince buyers that Canada will be a credible
long term stable provider of LNG, when any plant we eventually build will be
the first of it’s kind in our variable political and regulatory environment.
Our energy industry is not shutting down completely nor is it changing as fast
as some would wish, but it is changing. The current high energy price situation
is also not something the energy industry is responsible for directly, so it
should not be used as a reason to go back to business as usual. Earlier this
summer I commented on the massive new greenhouses that have been constructed in
Central Alberta. I was suggested that the intention was to grow marijuana but
that has not been the case. Further research revealed a new type of energy
partnership is happening where energy companies partner with greenhouse
operators to deliver gas from the wellhead to a plant located on the greenhouse
property. The gas plant generates electrical power with a turbine and the
greenhouse uses the power, the heat AND the CO2 in the greenhouse. The specific
greenhouse I first noticed has operated for traditionally for 50 years growing
vegetables. It now has 24 acres under glass and is about to add 13 more acres.
They are now talking to potential buyers in the southern USA, where the ongoing
drought and lack of water has reduced production.
Bottom line, yes I believe humanity has put our climate at risk but I still
have not seen a clear and compelling scientific model that has proven to be
accurate over any time span. So if “we don’t know what we don’t know”, it seems
even more risky to be making massive policy shifts that could cause even more
harm. I am currently in England where the new Prime Minister has just announced
massive energy subsidies for both homes and industry. An earlier decision to
phase out Britain’s nuclear plants, which have had an excellent safety record,
is now being reconsidered. And the ban on the dreaded hydraulic fracking of oil
& gas wells is also being reconsidered in European counties like Germany, which
have their own hydrocarbon reserves in the ground, but chose to rely on Russia
as their principal energy supplier. That decision is now being questioned by
everyone and seems to me like another big policy decision made when “they
didn’t know what they didn’t know”.
Just my thoughts,
Bob T
On Sep 22, 2022, at 8:05 AM, Donald Hoyda <donaldhoyda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A rational, unemotional analysis of the issue.
Don Hoyda
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 16, 2022, at 10:47 AM, DSP.EA.Large.Messages@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:DSP.EA.Large.Messages@xxxxxxxxx> <dsp.ea.large.messages@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dsp.ea.large.messages@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
From: <> Wynn Payne <wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>>
Sent: September 16, 2022 10:46 AM
To: DSP.EA.Large.Messages@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:DSP.EA.Large.Messages@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Fwd: Conrad Black: A measure of dissent
Interesting followup to my question of yesterday.
Beware this is a right wing newspaper.
Wynn
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: NP Comment <npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Date: Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 5:06 AM
Subject: Conrad Black: A measure of dissent
To: <wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>>
Commentary from the National Post's Conrad Black
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Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg
More than 1,000 signatories, including climate scientists and other experts,
have endorsed a "World Climate Declaration," asserting that there is no
present climate emergency. The foundation Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL)
produced a one-page statement arguing that climate science should be less
political and more open about the many uncertainties in predictions of global
temperature changes and more comprehensive in judging the costs and benefits
of proposed policy measures, especially radical reductions in the use of
fossil fuels. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by geophysics professor Guus
Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. Both men are Dutch and Prof.
Burkhout is an 82-year-old former petroleum engineer; Kroc is a journalist
who has frequently criticized what he regards as the incompleteness and
deliberate inaccuracy of alarmist reports about the climate.
They are not convinced that CO2 is the principal agent of contemporary
climate change, but whether it is or not, they have concluded that increases
in CO2 emissions and the very modest rise in the world's temperature over
the last 90 years are not harmful to nature. Crok stated in an email to the
Epoch Times that, “The climate hysteria surrounding the topic is totally
unjustified (and) the ‘cure’ — getting rid of fossil fuels ASAP and
replacing them with renewables — probably will be worse than the ‘disease.’
” They circulated their succinct summary and as of Aug. 23 had received
1,152 signatures.
Crok acknowledged that advocates of proactive fossil fuel reduction had
objected to CLINTEL’s findings and had particularly made a point of the fact
that many of the 1,152 signatories are not now active climate scientists and
that many are retired. He said that both these claims ”are true and very
understandable,” by which he meant that the status of many of the paper’s
supporters is understandable, not the activists’ objections to them. He
explained that the majority of working climate scientists today rely on
government money for their income and that climate activists are so zealous
and aggressive, those who dissent from the conventional wisdom do so at risk
of their jobs. Crok made the point that activists dominate the media and
academia and almost never engage in direct debate with those who consider
the possibility that a less alarmist view than the conventional wisdom is
not just a cranky denial of “settled science.”
The activist leadership rely on their domination of the media to discredit
the dissent as coming either from parties financially interested in
traditional energy sources, or eccentric or even mad contrarians. Many
commentators, however, have pointed out that these decades of mistaken dire
predictions of imminent climate disaster are bound to incite skepticism. The
climate disaster has supposedly been imminent for over 50 years.
Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, who has made himself a centimillionaire
from his decades of doom-laden climate jeremiads, produced his film "An
Inconvenient Truth" 20 years ago. It made a number of alarmist claims,
including whole cities under water and frequent super-hurricanes, that never
materialized. It has been well over a decade since the Prince of Wales
warned us that the end was nigh and that we would all be doomed within "less
than 100 months" without drastic conservationist measures. It has been more
than 15 years since then-British prime minister Tony Blair, otherwise a
sensible man, wrote to European leaders warning that, "We have a window of
only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic
tipping points."
Of course, the fact that all of this has proved to be nonsense, as many
people at the time evidently believed it to be, does not mean that there is
no truth to any of it. Not a single person in the world approves of the
pollution of the air and water, and in many countries, great and gratifying
progress has been made in cleaning up the environment. But it is becoming
increasingly obvious, especially in western Europe and more recently in the
United States, that the sensible majority of citizens will not tolerate the
unsustainable increases in the cost of normal life inflicted on all of our
societies by a headlong rush into sustainable energy. Fossil fuel, carefully
contained and incentivized to have as little damaging impact as possible on
the environment, is about to make an irresistible political comeback. The
appointment this week of climate skeptic Jacob Rees-Mogg as Britain's
secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, which is
responsible for energy and climate policy, is a portent of this.
The eco-zealots have refused for 30 years to acknowledge that we absolutely
do not have any precise predictions of where present climate trends may
lead. It is hard to argue with CLINTEL’s statement that “the gap between the
real world and the modelled world tells us that we are far from
understanding climate change.… Climate models have many shortcomings and are
not remotely plausible as global policy tools."
The CLINTEL paper continues to attract learned supporters and it warns that,
“Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on
sound self-critical science.” What we need is research; the current bum’s
rush toward the suppression of petroleum-based energy is a potentially
mortal self-inflicted economic assault conducted by a ramshackle spontaneous
coalition of authentic conservationists, naturalist fantasists, credulous
faddists, resourceful Marxists and a generality of anti-capitalists. No
country has been more profoundly afflicted by this planetary blunder than
Canada, and no large country is less offensive to the environment or better
placed to lead serious objective research to assure that humanity responds
constructively to climate issues. It is needless to add that the current
federal government has not only missed the policy bus; it has embarked on a
dysfunctional policy leading away from where we should be aspiring to go:
achieving adequate knowledge to enact the best policy.
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