From: Wynn Payne <wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: September 16, 2022 10:46 AM
To: 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
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From: NP Comment < <mailto:npplatformed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 5:06 AM
Subject: Conrad Black: A measure of dissent
To: < <mailto:wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx> wynn.payne@xxxxxxxxx>
Commentary from the National Post's Conrad Black
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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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