Political Vendetta

"Mr. Speaker, in no democracy in this world," cried Van Loan as the questions persisted for days, "does a prime minister and a party use their power to conduct political vendettas against their political enemies."

Oh really what would you call this then.....

Climatologists puzzled at rationale for ending research fund
"I truly think they don't understand what research means," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth

Feds cutting climate studies: Nobel winners
Nobel Prize-winning scientists from Canada say the Harper government has shut down a federal climate change research network and blocked new studies on the ...

Nobel scientists deliver stinging criticism of federal government
"I can only put it down as one of two things," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

Canadian scientists sharing Nobel prize
University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.

The Conservatives of course may be upset over their flat earth 'pals' getting short shrift on CBC's Fifth Estate, the same program that exposed the Mulroney Schrieber affair that Van Loan was actually referring to in his quote.

From basic statistics mistakes to subliminal language tricks,
The Denial Machine disgraces the CBC

Another less severe, though still significant subliminal trick used by the Fifth Estate is the way they identify scientists on each side of the debate:

Climate alarmist Dr. Andrew Weaver is identified as a “climatologist” at the University of Victoria and “one of the authors of that definitive international report.”

Climate ‘skeptics’ are ascribed lesser credentials. I (Tim Ball) am just “a retired University of Winnipeg Professor”, a “so-called expert” “who hasn’t published original research in years”.

SEE

Junque Journalism

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

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Canada, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, Environment, UN IPCC,
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Kyoto, UN, IPCC

Junque Journalism

The National Post and its resident flat earther; Terence Corcoran attacked Nobel Prize winner Al Gore over Global Warming on their front page in yesterdays paper with another of their Fox News style Tabloid Headline; A coup for junk science

They forgot to mention that there were Canadian climate scientists on the UN IPCC committee who shared the Nobel with Gore And those scientists don't believe as the National Post and Corcoran do that;

"Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time."

Nor would these Canadian scientists accept Corcoran's assertion that;

Onto this heap of forgotten causes and marginalia the Nobel has just tossed Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's official climate science group. What a blow the award must be to the IPCC, self-proclaimed home of scientific rigour, to now be lumped in with Reverend Al and his Travelling Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.

The Post and Corcoran of course have engaged in junk journalism making political statements that they assert are facts. And in making Gore their straw man they forgot the Canadian Scientists, the guys who share the Nobel with him, who assert that their two decades of warnings about Global Warming are only in trouble because of lack of media and political attention to the problem. In other words because of articles like the Post published. Not only is it junk journalism it's failure to mention the Canadian scientists is sloppy journalism.

Unlike Al Gore, University of B.C. climate change expert John Robinson won't be going to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

But Robinson, who has been called "Dr. Sustainability," still felt like a winner when the award was announced early Friday.

"I've been in this area of research since the late '80s and it's been a long struggle to make the case that climate change really matters," Robinson, a professor at UBC's Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, said Friday.

He is one of thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including about two dozen Canadian scientists.

"It's unbelievable how climate change has risen to the top of the policy agenda and hopefully not in a flash-in-the-pan kind of way," he said.

The panel uses scientific reports and data to explore man-made climate change and ways to fight it.

Five Victoria scientists also contributed to the reports.

"It brings more awareness to the biggest issue facing humanity today. The consequences of global warming are huge," said Andrew Weaver, Canada research chairman in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria.

The IPCC has been releasing regular reports on the state of climate change since it was established by the United Nations in 1988. In an IPCC report earlier this year, top scientists from 113 countries agreed unanimously that the mass burning of fossil fuels, land use and agriculture practices are melting polar ice caps.

"We are treating the atmosphere like a landfill and we're not paying for it," said Weaver.

University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.

"I hope it will help people and government take action. It makes the work worthwhile," he said. "If we accept collective responsibility for this it can be empowering. If we have created this, we have the capability of reversing it."

The Post and Corcoran further slighted Canadians when they deliberately overlooked Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian Inuit woman who was in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, and who has seen the real effects of the theory of Global Warming.

The Post front page 'news' was all about attacking Gore, and promoting the myth that Global Warming is not a fact. Hence facts would just get in the way of such partisan pontificating.


H/T to Mentarch

SEE

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, Environment, UN IPCC, Al Gore,

It's Not Who Won, But Who Lost

While the Canadian blogosphere right and left are posting on Al Gore and the UN IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize they seem to forgot who else was in the running. An Inuit woman from the Canadian Arctic.

An environmental activist may be the first Canadian to win the Nobel Peace Prize since former Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1957.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit activist, has been nominated jointly with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, the author of the book and narrator of the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

She lost which is a great shame since hers was an authentic voice for the reality of climate change unlike the winners.

Canadian Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Iqaluit-based environmental activist, was also nominated for this year's prize and had been considered one of the favourites to win. Her work has focused on the effects of global warming on northern communities.

"She has done so much work representing the interests of her people, the people in the north," Drexhage said.

Many conservation organizations are rooting for Ms. Watt-Cloutier, who they say has done more than anyone to create international awareness of the special plight that global warming has inflicted on people living in the Arctic.

She also has a remarkable personal story, of travelling in a dogsled around Northern Quebec, where she was born, to travelling the world speaking out about climate change. She's frequently said that she's gone from the ice age to the space age in one generation.

Earthjustice, a U.S.-based environmental group that has worked with Ms. Watt-Cloutier, praised her “for bringing the story of the Inuit people to the world stage, demonstrating that global warming is an issue of human rights as well as of the environment.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, arriving in Iqaluit on Thursday, said the awareness of climate change being raised by her nomination is the best prize she could have.

How Canadian.

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No Rush

The Harper Green Plan was to come into effect by 2050. No rush. By then we will also have Ice Breakers, but they will be redundant.

Most polar bears could die out by 2050

Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 — and the entire population gone from Alaska — because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

Florida airboats glide on thin Arctic ice

As climate change thins sea ice around the Arctic, making travel by snowmobile during the spring precarious even for practiced hunters, one solution may be to borrow technology from the swampy Everglades of Florida.

Arctic Kingdom Marine Expeditions is reporting success in using airboats to guide tours to the floe edge outside Pond Inlet this summer.

A study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that the Arctic ice is melting faster than expected and will decline by 40 percent by 2050.

The estimate is based on a study of national and international computer models keeping the period 1979-1999 as a base. An earlier report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had found that sea loss was greater in the summer in Arctic Sea located north of Alaska, Canada and Asia.

The IPCC report had placed the blame on greenhouse gases and had said that unless these emissions were controlled, the Arctic Sea would almost disappear by the turn of the century.

In a year when the Arctic ice cap has shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded, a new analysis from Seattle scientists says global warming will accelerate future melting much more than previously expected.

About 40 percent of the floating ice that normally blankets the top of the world during the summer will be gone by 2050, says James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Earlier studies had predicted it would be nearly a century before that much ice vanished.

"This is a major change," Overland said. "This is actually moving the threshold up.

"If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said it wouldn't happen until 2070 or 2100," said Serreze, who was not involved in Overland's project.

Even a 40 percent loss of ice would be devastating to ice-dependent animals such as walruses and ringed seals, said Overland, who shared his data with federal officials considering an endangered-species listing for polar bears.

Gray whales will suffer if the ice-loving crustaceans they feed on disappear. But some commercially important fish species, like pollock and salmon, could thrive in warmer water — a possible boon for the Seattle-based fishing fleet that plies Alaska's Bering Sea. There are also hints, though, that the disappearance of ice would favor predators that undermine fisheries, Overland said.

Shipping will benefit if the Northwest Passage across the Canadian Arctic melts out each summer — as it did for the first time this year.

Of course that is why we are having the international race to declare sovereignty over the arctic because heck there is a silver lining to global warming after all.

Exploring for Oil in the Arctic's 'Great Frontier'

"We think it's a great frontier ...." Fox says. "The belief is that about 25 percent of the world's remaining reserves are in the Arctic. And I think it's a major play for us."

Even the climate seemed to be cooperating with that major play. Polar ice retreated this summer from the spot where Shell plans to explore for oil.

Shell would hardly need its reinforced hulls, or rented Russian icebreakers.

Global Warming May Cancel Next Ice Age

The effects of burning fossil fuels today will extend long beyond the next couple of hundred years, possibly delaying the onset of Earth's next ice age, more properly called a glacial period, says researcher Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

SEE:

Polar Bears Threaten Tories Arctic Sovereignty

Tories Ignore Arctic Climate Change

Petrocan's Arctic Sovereignty

US Declares War For The Arctic

Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

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Whose Arctic

Twenty years ago it was proposed that Canada needed a nuclear powered submarine fleet to defend Arctic Sovereignty. Post War Canada once boasted the lead in submarine hunter killer helicopters and planes to protect its sovereignty. Along comes Harper with much sturm and drang about protecting the Arctic with Ice Breakers. But then the Russians challenge his bluff.

In the next day or two a mini submarine will plant a Russian flag hewn from titanium 14,000ft beneath the North Pole, along with the country's coat of arms.

Although it will be a symbolic gesture and carries no legal weight, it is designed to send the West a clear message: Russia has shrugged off its post-cold war weakness and will be aggressively defending and pushing its national interests from now on.

If it goes smoothly, the flag planting, reminiscent of the kind of propaganda coup beloved by the Soviets, will feed a rising state-orchestrated sense of patriotism and national pride.

It will also be the beginning of what is likely to be a lengthy international struggle for the Arctic Ocean's riches, with Canada, Denmark, Norway, the United States and Russia all having competing interests in the hydrocarbon-stuffed area.

The 1987 military review highlighted Canada's abysmal capabilities of enforcing sovereignty on its Arctic coast. It was therefore announced that MARCOM would receive a fleet of 10-12 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) suitable for operating for extended periods under the Arctic ice. The proposed SSN fleet would force any nation, friend or foe, to possibly think twice before using Canada's territorial seas in the Arctic for operating nuclear submarines. During 1987-1988, MARCOM examined several British and French SSN designs. The planned procurement, however, was cancelled in 1988-1989 during a time of increased defence cuts.

In 1998, the Canadian government made a deal with the United Kingdom to acquire four mothballed, but state-of-the-art Upholder-class diesel-electric submarines that were made surplus by the Royal Navy's decision to operate only nuclear-powered submarines such as the Trafalgar-class boats. The Upholders were considered too valuable and technologically advanced by the Royal and US navies to allow them to fall into the hands of a non-allied nation. Therefore Canada was encouraged through significant discounts to acquire the Upholders. The four submarines were eventually purchased after much foot-dragging by the federal government for $750 million CAD.

The transaction was supposed to have included some reciprocal rights for British forces to continue using CFB Suffield for armoured-unit training and CFB Goose Bay for low-level flight training, while Canada received four well-built and very lightly used high-technology submarines to replace the 1960s-era Oberon class. (It was later revealed that there were no reciprocal rights. It was a plain lease-to-buy arrangement.) After a costly update program which took longer than expected, along with several public and highly embarrassing equipment failures, the Upholders are being successfully reactivated following a decade of mothballing and are now being integrated into the Canadian navy as the Victoria class. Technical problems still seem to plague the fleet however. Part of this deal will see MARPAC receive its first submarine in four decades and returning an active submarine presence to Canada's west coast.

SEE:

Polar Bears Threaten Tories Arctic Sovereignty

Tories Ignore Arctic Climate Change

Petrocan's Arctic Sovereignty

US Declares War For The Arctic

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