Richard Zurawski

In less than a month, climate representative of countries from around the world will be convening in Copenhagen to try to iron out a comprehensive plan that will deal with the heating of the planet. But ye of faint heart should take no solace or comfort that Canada’s environment minister will be there representing the interests of Canada. The words coming out of Jim Prentice’ mouth could just as well be coming from his predecessors Baird and Ambrose. In fact, the hot bluster they spew comes from the oil lobby of Alberta, in whose interests they revel and continue to flog.Let’s begin to do a bit of a trace of who’s who and where the money interests are. A scurrilous group called “Friends of Science” (FoS) who are running climate change denial ads on radio stations across Canada, is a Canadian not for profit group based in Calgary who believe that Anthropogenic Global Warming is bogus. They get their money in a complicated flow-through that would make a Columbian coke cartel envious. This group is able to get funding from the oil lobby through the University of Calgary. The university has since shut this money sluice down, after the being embarrassed, but not before almost 200,000 smackers found their way into the FoS coffers. And part of their philanthropic good works is to fund the climate skeptic shill, Chris Monckton, a UK lord of BS who is touring central Canada and the west to promote his pack of made up bafflegab masquerading as science. I won’t go into the full breakdown, but will instead point you to the wonderful web site http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science. These people have done the heavy lifting and looking under the rocks where these people live.Now what does this have to do with our good minister who will be representing us in Copenhagen? Stay tuned dear reader. FoS is closely aligned to the Federal Conservatives. The same people who fund Lord Haw Haw are in bed with our Feds. In fact, as has been widely reported, many of the advisors and confidants of the Federal Conservatives are either members of, past supporters or on the board of directors of FoS and similar groups swimming in the same skeptic waters. The PM as late as 2005 was on record as having doubt in Global Warming and put forth an opinion that is indistinguishable from FoS. Not surprising since many of his supporters and advisors also support FoS. Recently the PM has gone to great lengths to hide this fact, saying that he always believed in global warming. Does a leopard really change its stripes? Or is he spot on in 2005, in terms of the real PM. Hmm…let me see? What has done recently?This october PM Stevie then gets his current Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, to put out a climate plan that says it will reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, from 2006 levels. Now this is truly crazy. Reducing from 2006 levels, which by the way is higher by almost 30% than they were in 1995, is precisely doing nothing, less than nothing! At almost 30% above the Kyoto levels, ten years from now, do we seriously expect to dupe the science facts of climatology into responding to this chicanery? Is it possible to use rhetorical BS to change the course of science? And at the same time fool Canadians that we are doing anything at all about climate change?So are the Conservatives crazy, liars or deluded? Or some of all of the above. Is PM S the 2005 version or the slicked up and 2009 version who “always” believed in global warming?

1. Any sane person who believed the climate was changing to the degree that the IPCC says it is would have a psychopathic disorder to not do something serious about it, instead of associating with obviously frauds like the FoS.
2. Or do they think that all of the rest of science OK, but that which pertains to global warming suspect? Does the veracity of science change because of politics? Can rhetoric and a fundamentalist belief trump science?
3. Can you sell your children and their children down the river for a few years of profit and easy votes and the good will of the oil industry?
4. I don’t what to think? We have a bunch of politicians who have no understanding of science and are whistling past the graveyard in spite of the facts. This I know. Why is the question?

One month and counting.