The Real Results of "Combating" Global Warming

In the Senate Economics Committee tonight, when most of you were watching the State of Origin, Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate was trying to discover where the green jobs are. He questioned Meghan Quinn, Manager, Climate Change Modelling Division, Department of the Treasury.

Senator Barnaby Joyce: In your modelling as your transfer people into jobs, where were those jobs, Ms Quinn?

It's not a hard question....

or is it?



Meghan Quinn: The general shift from higher intensive emission industries to lower intensive emission industries. So there is a table on 6.12.

SBJ: Give me an example of the Top 3.

MQ: Increases in the electricity supply for renewable energy.

SBJ: The supply for renewable energy, so what are those people doing?

MQ: The supply of renewable energy covers all types of energy, hydro, wind, geothermal potentially by 2050.

SBJ: These people want to turn up to work what are they actually doing. What do they look like, are they construction workers, are they electricians, are they accountants.

MQ: The actual electricity supply … the people working in the industries. People who are looking after the production of the actual wind farm, the operation of the wind farm. The construction component would be captured by the construction sector.

SBJ: What is the person who is operating the wind farm? What is he or she doing?

MQ: I am not a technical engineer so I don’t think I can answer that question.

SBJ: Have you been to an actual wind farm lately?

MQ: I’ve seen a wind farm, yes.

SBJ: How many people did you see working there?

MQ: Well there was a person taking me around.

SBJ: Generally no one?

MQ: Well I don’t know. There must be some.

SBJ: Been out to a coal mine lately?

MQ: Not lately.

SBJ: From what you have seen on television does it seem like many people working there?

MQ: There has a been a reduction in the share of people working in the mining industry generally.

SBJ: What’s your next big one?

MQ: Forestry

SBJ: Forestry? OK, so what are the people doing there in forestry. What are the people doing there?

MQ: I presume they are looking after trees.

SBJ: Have you been to a forest lately?

MQ: Yes.

SBJ: Did you see many people wandering around there, any people working?

MQ: I am not an expert on the particular industrial structure of these industries.

SBJ: What’s your third one?

MQ: They are spread over a number. Other manufacturing,

SBJ: What are they actually manufacturing in the other manufacturing?

MQ: A whole range of manufacturing. I can give you a breakdown. I would have to check the categories. I know what it is not. I know it is not motor vehicles, metals or metal products.

SBJ: Can you think of anything they would be manufacturing in the other manufacturing?

MQ: I would have to take it on notice.

SBJ: I am just going looking for those green jobs, I have to start finding them now.

MQ: Employment redistribution in the employment model is not necessarily what you would think of as green jobs. There are shifts in employment in what you might not think of as green jobs as we move from high to low emission industries.SBJ: That’s constructing wind towers?

MQ: There is a reallocation in the Australian industry from high emission to low emission. It doesn’t necessarily relate to renewable energy, it’s simply producing goods that are low emission.

SBJ: It stands to reason. You take someone out of a mine you give them a brush cutter and tell them to start to wander around the forest. This is all fanciful.

Media Contact: Margot Date 02 6277 3698


Windchimes in Nimbin it is...

Thanks to Mehaul

Thrown at the page by kae at 4:29 PM
Labels: agw, ALP, green, LNP Qld


8 comments (Don't feed trolls!):
Wand said...
Senator Barnaby Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate was trying to discover where the green jobs are. He questioned Meghan Quinn, Manager, Climate Change Modelling Division, Department of the Treasury.

Of course the green jobs just aren't 'there'. Meghan is using a model - yes a computer model (another one) and a Treasury one at that. A week or so ago I watched some of the Senate Committee investigating the ETS. Someone being interviewed by the committee was asked about the Treasury modelling and the way it works. Apparently one of the parameters in the model is a change in employment and wait for it, the model is always set to bring about a zero net change! So within all the variables, the model will create green jobs and just move people to them! Incredible!

So of course Meghan doesn't have a clue about numbers of green jobs or where they will be, just that her model tells her it will be so!

Barnaby is right in probing the green jobs because to the extent that any are 'createdd' as a result of the ETS, they will be at the expense of thousands of normal jobs. A word springs to mind: fraud.

SBJ: Did you see many people wandering around there, any people working?

California: Harbinger of National Doom?

If you were given the perfect country, could you mess it up as bad as California? Begin with fertile, productive, well-irrigated soils capable of growing just about anything. Add vast agricultural tracts and miles upon miles of wine country with lush, bountiful vineyards. Include majestic mountain ranges containing rich deposits of gold, silver and other useful metals, and covered with thick, immense forests with every type of timber imaginable. Toss in critical navigable rivers to move these resources to market. Insert vast oil and natural gas deposits while you are at it, along with wind, water, geothermal and solar resources. Give it a long coastline with beautiful beaches, plentiful fresh water, ocean fisheries, many natural harbors, a well-connected transportation grid with first-class roads, rails and airports too. Don’t forget universities at the cutting edge of technology and an unparalleled educational system.

Bestow all the natural building blocks necessary for a well-balanced, diversified, leading economy that is virtually guaranteed to bring unparalleled prosperity to your people—a smorgasbord of natural blessings. Then on top of it all, throw in days spent skiing at sunrise on Lake Tahoe and swimming at sunset in San Francisco the same day. This is the Golden State.

Yet California is imploding. And it is dragging the rest of the country with it.

California is home to America’s leading manufacturing belt, the nation’s largest high-tech center (Silicon Valley), and one of its most productive agricultural areas (the Central Valley). As a stand-alone economy, it is bigger than Canada, Brazil, India and even Russia. It is also the most populous state, with one in eight Americans calling California home.

But just look at the next headline you see that says “California.” Whether it’s an article on finance, economics, government, crime, morals or some other subject, the glaring question is: What went wrong?


[...]

A crisis of another sort is strangling Californian industries. California has some of the most progressive environmental laws in the world. It needs environmental laws, because vast swaths of the state are a polluted mess.

However, misdirected and poorly timed environmentalism is also inhibiting job growth and sending jobs out of state—as well as out of country.

The New York Times reports that Californian businesses are being slammed by new requirements to curb carbon dioxide emissions at a time when they are already struggling to survive in a very tough economy. In 2006, the state passed laws to curb carbon dioxide emissions from all economic sectors, including transportation, manufacturing and real-estate development. The result: People are paying more to travel and make purchases, manufacturers are moving out of state or to places like China (taking jobs with them), and just look at the real-estate industry.

CalPortland’s formerly profitable Mount Slover limestone cement facility is a powerful example. The state of California says the company must reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent per ton of cement. The company estimates that to retrofit its operations will cost in excess of $220 million—for just one plant. But there is not nearly enough limestone in its quarry to justify such an expense. The result is that the plant, which has produced cement for over 100 years, will probably be shut down. People will be laid off, and the state will take a tax revenue hit. Future shipments of cement will probably be imported from Mexico.

Every manufacturer across the state will be subject to what is essentially a massive carbon tax. So multiply CalPortland’s problems by the thousands.

On June 18, the New York Times gave another example of environmental activism gone awry. Apparently, unions are exploiting environmental laws to blackmail companies into signing labor agreements and becoming unionized. The latest developments in this regard are taking place in the solar energy field.

To reduce California’s dependence on polluting-but-inexpensive fossil fuels, which it has in abundance, state legislators decided they would promote solar power plant construction. However, an unpredicted turn of events has resulted. Laws designed to protect the environment are being used to hold up projects designed to help the environment. How so? California’s giant worker unions want a foot in the door.

If a company proposes to build a plant, but does not agree to be unionized, unions inundate the company with demands to study the effect of their proposed project on all kinds of endangered creatures, from the short-nosed kangaroo rat to the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly. The studies add hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of delay to a development plan—if the plans pass at all, since the unions are sure to produce their own scientists at public hearings.

Not only are Californians forced to pay the higher cost of solar energy, but they are forced to pay the higher cost of union labor when the plants are constructed and operated. The unions get their plants and union jobs, or else Californians get no jobs at all.

All this environmental regulation and strangulation couldn’t come at a much worse time for California.

Last week, I discovered that the nature of things can be extremely unpleasant when you challenge the wisdom of the arrogant.

I was attending a reception when suddenly the host of CBC TV's The Nature Of Things was in my face.

"I want to talk to you!" a red-faced and agitated David Suzuki said, finger pointing at my chest.

"You have no right to demonize me!" he yelled, causing people around us to back away.

How did I manage to "demonize" the internationally known celebrity scientist?

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Pen is mightier than the sword

Apparently it's not that hard. All I did was write a column in 24 hours and online at The Tyee on April 22 saying that Suzuki, Tzeporah Berman and other environmentalists had launched a "well timed attack" on the New Democratic Party over its opposition to the BC Liberal carbon tax as the provincial election began.

Here's what Suzuki said, April 17: "If [B.C. Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell] goes down because of axe the tax, the repercussions are the carbon tax will be toxic for future politicians. No politician will raise it. That's why environmentalists are so upset."

I wrote: "Neither Suzuki nor Berman have yet endorsed Campbell outright but they knew their assault would hurt the NDP and help the BC Liberals."

Scientific assault

Hardly rocket science, but perhaps Suzuki was more upset that I quoted Alexandra Morton, the respected biologist who is fighting BC Liberal expansion of fish farms that destroy wild salmon with sea lice.

"As the living systems of this part of the world are under the final assault by the BC Liberal government, you make headlines. You seem to have no idea of what Gordon Campbell is bringing down on us," Morton wrote to Suzuki and others in an open letter.

Morton's first angry response to Suzuki was followed by another less-publicized but equally strong criticism.

"What concerns me is the larger enviro groups have become an unelected bureaucracy that consults no one," Morton wrote. "Both the recent Great Bear Rainforest announcement and the incredibly stupid headline threatening to Punish Carole James are two points on a continuum which seem aptly explained below."

'Do or die'

"Clearly everyone has figured out this election is do or die for our province and while we can create change, we can't do it if the environmental bureaucracy supports Gordon Campbell. You guys have made our job nearly impossible," she said.

"The folks doing this no doubt think this is the way to save earth, but unless they are blind they know others have already thrown their weight in the opposite direction. And so this tack of greening Gordon Campbell is going to produce a standstill. You folks who are supporting Campbell have not factored in the power that the rest of us have and that will negate your own results," Morton wrote.

"Salmon farms in B.C. are a thing of the past, as they do not even own their fish now, but they are sitting pretty under a green umbrella and weathering this storm in comfort and with Campbell elected they will metastasize and don't think for a second that the wild salmon can take this forever," Morton concluded.

In my own column, I also argued that Suzuki and others were assisting a BC Liberal government that: "Promotes offshore oil and gas drilling, privatized rivers and streams for power projects, slashed wildlife protection, ended a ban on trophy hunting for grizzly bears and offers hundreds of millions in tax incentives for fossil fuel exploration."

Green allies

But Suzuki didn't see it that way, obviously. "I've always been an ally of the NDP!" Suzuki claimed.

"No you haven't," I replied, noting his endorsement of Campbell's unfair gas tax and several other facts.

Certainly if Suzuki has been an "ally" of the B.C. NDP, there's no sign of it through personal financial contributions -- none were made in Suzuki's name in the 2005 election year.

Nor in this election did Suzuki endorse the NDP's Mel Lehan, a well-known environmental supporter who challenged Premier Gordon Campbell in his own riding.

And as I reminded Suzuki, back in 1996 he played word games when Jim Green, the former city councillor, ran against Campbell in Vancouver-Point Grey, saying only that he would be "voting Green" in the election, an obvious sop to the Green Party.

It's 'mutual'

After more of Suzuki yelling and me responding calmly but pointedly, he tried to put me in my place.

"I don't give a shit about you..." Suzuki almost screamed.

"Then that's completely mutual," I interrupted before the great man could say more.

Suzuki spluttered, threw up his hands and rushed away, leaving the event immediately.

Ironically, the reception was for a book about conducting good public relations -- something Suzuki clearly has yet to learn.

calmage wrote:Leave it to humans to screw up any great idea if it's at all possible....

Of course.. I can't pass up reminding that California is staunch leftoid... and as such .. cause any effort to end up dysfunctional..

But.. there are successful examples of greening where companies have found innovative ways to cut costs, emissions, support sustainability and not crap all over the landscape...

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/23/the-power-of-going-green/

The Lower Mainland's health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.'s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints.

Critics say the payments mean the government's strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding.

"You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency," NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.

"That just doesn't make sense."

The Fraser Health Authority will pay $616,000 in carbon tax this year, rising to $821,000 next year, officials there said.

And by 2010 Fraser will also be paying $1.3 million a year to the province's Pacific Carbon Trust to offset its projected 52,600 tonnes of carbon emissions released.

The trust pays out money to offset projects – for example to help a firm upgrade its industrial heating system so less carbon-based fossil fuel is used. The carbon emissions saved are counted against what the paying arm of government emits.

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority also expects its costs will be close to $2 million next year in combined carbon tax and offset payments.

Fraser Health officials are grappling with a budget shortfall of more than $100 million and potential cuts to patient services, while low on their list, have not been ruled out.

Dix warned that some of the potential cuts – such as closing the ER at Mission Memorial Hospital – would actually increase carbon emissions by sending patients further afield.

"Obviously when you shut down regional centres it makes people travel farther to get to their health care facility," he said.

Vancouver Coastal chief financial officer Duncan Campbell said his health authority believes the payments are appropriate and isn't asking for any exemption from Victoria.

"For us to go back and ask for an exemption wouldn't fit in well with our green care plans," he said.

Vancouver Coastal and Fraser are working closely together on their climate strategies, he added, concentrating on finding ways to conserve energy to reduce their carbon emissions.

"We're working very hard to reduce that number to zero if we can," Campbell said.

Vancouver Coastal offers employees subsidized transit passes through TransLink's Employer Pass Program while charging for pay parking to encourage staff to commute by transit.

Campbell noted that's more difficult in Fraser Health, where transit service levels often aren't as frequent.

Vancouver Coastal is also buying low-emission vehicles for its fleet and setting up bike racks and shower facilities for employees who can cycle to work.

"We've been doing quite a lot on that side already, but we'll be doing more," he said.

Global Warming Destroys Maple Syrup Industry

The dreaded Global Warming is destroying the Maple Syrup industry ... so says this report:



The Branons, who savor their life as well as the syrup, find it difficult to event think about a future without their trees.

"We'll probably both live through it," said Cecile. "But I hope our kids can. You know, we've got four sons and we want to be able to see them take over their business."

But Tim Perkins, who lives every day with the disturbing scientific reality, doesn't think the trend can be reversed.

"It would be very difficult, I think, at this point," he said.

"The loss would be really a very large blow to the psyche of the state," he added sadly. "It would affect a large number of sugar makers, obviously, but it would also impact the way that people see themselves as Vermonters. It's an emblem of the state."

... oops ... wait a minute, that was in 2007.

Now in 2009, things seem to have changed:


With Vermont leading the way, US maple syrup production in 2009 totaled 2.33 million gallons, up 22 percent from 2008 and the highest on record since 1944. The number of taps is estimated at 8.65 million, 4 percent above the 2008 total of 8.33 million. Yield per tap is estimated to be 0.269 gallons, up 17 percent from the previous season. Vermont led all states in production with 920,000 gallons an increase of 30 percent from 2008 and the highest on record since 1944. Vermont produced more than a third of the national total.

I wonder if Maple Syrup was included in the most terrifying report to come out of the Obama White House ... don't read this unless you are stout of heart:


Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama's presidency in the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House.

Global warming has already caused more heavy downpours, the rise of temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers and altered river flows, according to the document released Tuesday by the White House science adviser and other top officials.

EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study, CEI Says
By: Kevin Mooney
Commentary Staff Writer
06/24/09 6:29 PM EDT

Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.

“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”

The agency has never made the study public or included it in official reference materials, according to CEI. As part of a recently concluded EPA public comment period on a proposed rule, CEI submitted a set four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, as evidence that the suppressed study included a critique of the agency’s global warming position.

CEI has asked EPA to make the study public and to allow public comments on it. CEI has also asked that EPA to prevent any reprisals against the study’s author who has been employed with the agency for 35 years.

Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare?
By Robert Tracinski and Tom Minchin

As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade. The story of this legislation's collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US—and to the whole global warming hysteria.

Since the Australian government first introduced its Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation—the Australian version of cap-and-trade energy rationing—there has been a sharp shift in public opinion and political momentum against the global warming crusade. This is a story that offers hope to defenders of industrial civilization—and a warning to American environmentalists that the climate change they should be afraid of just might be a shift in the intellectual climate.

An April 29 article in The Australian described the general trend—and its leading cause.

There is rising recognition that introduction of a carbon tax under the guise of "cap and trade" will be personally costly, economically disruptive to society and tend to shift classes of jobs offshore. Moreover, despite rising carbon dioxide concentrations, global warming seems to have taken a holiday….

With public perceptions changing so dramatically and quickly it is little wonder Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and is into its third print run in as many weeks. [It's now up to the fifth printing.]

The public is receptive to an exposé of the many mythologies and false claims associated with anthropogenic global warming and are welcoming an authoritative description of planet Earth and its ever-changing climate in readable language.

One of the most remarkable changes occurred on April 13, when leading global warming hysteric Paul Sheehan—who writes for the main Sydney newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, which has done as much to hype the threat of global warming as any Australian newspaper—reviewed Plimer's book and admitted he was taken aback. He describes Plimer, correctly, as "one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists," and praised the book as "brilliantly argued" and "the product of 40 years' research and breadth of scholarship."

What does Plimer's book say? Here is Sheehan's summary:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."…

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly.

In response, this is Sheehan's conclusion: "Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." This cannot be interpreted as anything but a capitulation. It cedes to the global warming rejectionists the high ground of being "evidence-based," and it accepts the characterization of the global warming promoters as dogmatic conformists.

http://kevinmccullough.townhall.com/blog/g/09ec450b-8c7a-4929-afa5-89074de16253

219-212 on the Global Hoax Bill... and 8 GOP'ers were the margin????
Posted by: Kevin McCullough at 12:32 AM
"Duh!!!!!!!!"

Friendly fire is a hard thing to swallow particularly when the odds are stacked so definitively against you in pure numbers. And tonight eight Republican congressman for absolutely no good reason, voted in favor of the worst tax increase in American history, as well as the biggest regulatory penalties to ever hit the private business sector of the economy and thusly the most impacting legislation towards job reduction, recession inducing, personally bankrupting, not to mention wasteful to have ever been put forward for the vote.

That vote ended up being 219-212 in favor of passing this horrendous wreck of a bill that the congress had not even read.
Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Chris Smith of New Jersey were two of the eight.
What is particularly damning is that they evidently do not have sound reasons for doing so.

I've interviewed both men. Both have stood for traditional smaller government conservatism in the past.
Now Kirk is postulating a run for the United States Senate seat vacated by Obama's election to Presidency.

Kiss it goodbye Kirk. You're hopes for higher office right now are in the proverbial toilet and not looking good.
Disappointing... is vastly understating the feelings towards these eight horrific cowards.

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

Paul Krugman

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.

In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?

Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Posted: June 30, 2009, 2:35 AM by Lawrence Solomon
Lawrence Solomon, Climate change, global warming, polar bears, Arctic, IUCN
Lawrence Solomon

“Polar bear experts from all over the world have been invited by Greenland to meet at the Greenland Representation at the North Atlantic Bryggen in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 29 June and 3 July 2009,” announces the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “Under the chairmanship of Professor Andrew Derocher from University of Edmonton, Canada, the Species Survival Commission Polar Bear Specialist Group of IUCN (The International Union for Conservation of Nature) will meet to evaluate the status of the different polar bear populations in the Arctic.”

The announcement does not mention that biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor, one of the world’s foremost experts on polar bears who for 22 years was a member of the same IUCN Species Survival Commission and of the Polar Bear Specialists Group, was disinvited by an email from Professor Derocher because of “the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.”

Professor Derocher’s email also explained that Dr. Taylor’s views that climate change has natural causes “are extremely unhelpful” and that his public position to that effect is “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG [Polar Bear Specialists Group].”

Chairman Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, looks forward to a meeting at which a consensus can be reached on a number of important issues, including “how polar bears are affected by the rapid decrease in sea ice due to global warming, the effect of high contents of pollutants in some polar bear populations, and how polar bears can be managed under rapid Arctic climate change.”


lawrencesolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/06/29/solomon-can-t-bear-opposition.aspx