Canada’s climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government…

Harper is the guy that once claimed that global warming was nothing but a socialist conspiracy after all. And Harper is from Calgary. But, in defense of Calgary, there are many scientists that live there and there are even a few that don’t work for Big Oil. I guess that’s why Harper decided to just muzzle them. A scientist from Edmonton, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, said this:

It is clear that muzzling under the Harper government is the most oppressive in the history of federal government science. Incredibly, some of the most eminent scientists in Canada have been forbidden to speak publicly on scientific matters where they are recognized as world experts, ranging from climate change to pollution of lakes and rivers. Instead, the public is referred to media-savvy spin doctors, who usually know very little about the science of these topics, spouting the party line.

The report that got this all started was written by the Climate Action Network and can be found here. There is much that is interesting in this report and one detail that I found particularly  interesting was the fact that Harper has appointed climate change skeptics to the boards of two super important granting bodies: NSERC and CFI. So just to explain how this works, students in Universities that are working at the graduate level in the sciences are funded by granting agencies like NSERC. In fact, I believe the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is responsible for the funding of all of the PhD scientists I know. And NSERC has the difficult position of selecting and denying applications for funding. Not everyone’s research gets funded and not all research gets the green light. So the significance of Harper’s appointments to the board, is very very real.

One of these appointments is Mark Mullins. Mark Mullins was the Executive Director of the Fraser Institute for four years.

Another one of the appointments (to CFI) was John Weissenberger. He’s a geologist from Calgary who worked in oil and gas for twenty years. He’s actually a friend of the evil-overlord himself and was a chief of staff for the evil-overlord’s government. The author of the Climate Action Network report, Andrew Cuddy, took the time to include a quote by John Weissenberger and I’ll sign off by quoting the quote. But first, you should know that Weissenberger didn’t write the following soundbite alone. He was joined by George Koch, who I’m assuming is from the Koch family of Koch Oil. The Koch family are all pious followers of Ayn Rand even, I believe, requiring that their employees and executives read Rand’s books. The Koch’s, in short, are libertarians and conservatives.

“[T]he great weakening of the Stalinist intellectual monument of global warming theory continues in regular increments.” — George Koch (from a blog published jointly with Weissenberger), September 13, 2008

Of course, that wasn’t enough to convince me of his points of view and eventually he said, “Meteorologists can’t predict the weather next week, how can scientists claim to predict global warming?” Now when he said this, some kind of alarm bell starting to ring deep down in my brain stem. Maybe he was just a little too slick. Or maybe, since I was so often speaking from a script, I was in a heightened state of script awareness. So at that point, I fell out of my own script and stuck out my hand and introduced myself. And he introduced himself. His name was Tim Ball.

We had an animated conversation about peer reviewed publishing, the dimensions of relative objectivity in science, global cooling, and socialism. Actually he accused me of being a socialist. And that was when my moment of glory came to pass in the form of a question I would ask in return. See, when he accused me of being a socialist I was provoked first to a moment of confusion – it just struck me as a non sequitur. But after the confusion, came clarity. And I asked him, “Do you work for the Fraser Institute?”

I still remember that moment and I remember exactly where we were standing – corner of Government and Yates in front of Eddi Bauer.

His eyes widened a little and he stepped back. Pointedly, he said no. I told him that equating concern for global warming with socialism sounded like something the Fraser Institute or the Heritage Foundation might do. He mumbled something and walked away. I quickly made some notes about the exchange, including writing down his name and went on with my day.

But that night I did a name search online for ‘Tim Ball’. Then I did a name search for ‘Tim Ball’ on the Fraser Institute website. And maybe he wasn’t an employee but I did find his name on lot’s of their communications. I was so excited! I met an important person who was clearly a hired gun for climate change denial and made his cover on one try! It was easy.

But unfortunately, many reporters and journalists have found him convincing over the years. Unfortunately, many so-called journalists continue to find him interesting. As of today, he’s still listed on the Fraser Institute website:

This is how his bio reads on the Fraser Institute website:

Dr. Tim Ball, one of the first Canadians to hold a Ph.D. in climatology, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of London (England) using the remarkable records of the Hudson’s Bay Company to reconstruct climate change from 1714 – 1952. He has published numerous articles on climate change and its impact on the human condition. Dr. Ball has served on numerous committees at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels on climate, water resources, and environmental issues. He was a professor in the geography department at the University of Winnipeg before retiring. He has written a regular column on weather in the agricultural magazine. Country Guide, for 14 years. He is currently working as an environmental consultant and public speaker based in Victoria and has written, with Dr. Stuart Houston, 18th Century Naturalists on Hudson Bay, a book on the science and climate of the fur trade (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003).

But this is how he’s described in James Hoggan’s recent book, Climate Cover Up, The Crusade to Deny Global Warming:

There are few “skeptical scientists” with as little actual expertise and as much ambition as the Canadian geography professor Dr. Timothy Ball. Never a climate scientist per se, Dr. Ball quit his position as an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg in 1995, apparently ending an academic career that featured a lifetime output of just four peer-reviewed journal articles, none of which addressed atmospheric science. Yet ten years later, Ball-the-climate-expert seemed to be everywhere – on the radio, in the newspapers, on the lecture circuit, even testifying before a committee in the Canadian parliament.

Turns out that Tim Ball is paid by the Friends of Science that is funded through the University of Calgary Science Education Fund, set up by Barry Cooper who is friends with Stephen Harper, which is funded by the Oil patch. He’s also connected to the National Resources Stewardship Program, Tom Harris with APCO Public Relations, High Park Advocacy Group, Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association. He’s effectively a paid mouthpiece with fewer credentials than he and the Fraser Institute claims he has. But I met him and he’s quasi famous and so I guess I met an almost famous guy! And I made him. That was my moment of glory.

Then I scored the articles, on a scale of -10 to +10, on the following criteria:

How many soundbites are from libertarian, big-business think tanks? How many soundbites are from published scientists who work in the field of climatology? How many soundbites challenged the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by humans? How many soundbites encouraged or supported the notion that Canada ought to meet it’s carbon emission reduction goals? How many soundbites create confusion about the fact of climate change? What is the educational and informational value of this article? Is it evidence based?

Conclusions

All scores range from -10 to +10, where a positive score is a good article and a negative score is a bad article. This score is than multiplied by the word count to factor in the relative volume of the article. The scores are then added. If the sum total is a positive score than the Calgary Herald has been publishing good and informative articles. If the sum is negative, than the Herald has been publishing bad articles.⁴

Only three article scored in the positive end of the spectrum. Interestingly, the articles that were better in terms of their content were generally the shortest articles. There is one exception to this: the first article (and the shortest at only 117 words) scored a minus five. The average article length was 578 words. After factoring for the article length, the final average value of the articles from the Calgary Herald on the topic of climate change, on a scale of -10 to +10, is -4. Which sucks.⁵

The total negative points by the seven bad articles came to: -27369
The total positive points by the three good articles came to: 5404
The grand total is: -21965
The average value of each article is: -2197
The average article length: 578 words
The average value of each article: -4

Take climate change for example. The fact of climate change, by itself, is not perceived as a threat by Big Oil and their bottom line. But public opinion and the subsequent possibility of government taxation and regulation is a perceived threat by Big Oil and their profit margin. So organizations like the Conference Board of Canada, C.D. Howe and the Fraser Institute step forward to disrupt public opinion.

The first step is to get air time. To do this they call up their media buddies with the National Post or Cross-Country Checkup. Either by getting quoted directly or by influencing the analysis of the overworked, job-threatened and under-educated reporter, the underlying message and the framework for that message gets public exposure.

The second key ingredient is to pretend to be trustable. This happens through the use of expert titles and heavy reference to the number of researchers and academics employed by the think-tank. Crucially, they’re usually economists or communications people, but they never say this. The representative will generally pretend, and Rex Murphy will pretend along with him, that they are all experts in climate change science. Add to this the years of branding by the National Post and Cross-Country Checkup that they’re impartial and authoritative news sources serving our democracy and you get a potent recipe for believability. And this brings me back to why I think Rex Murphy is a jackass. He creates a call in show, branded for everyday Canadians, but brings in well paid representatives from right-wing think tanks to represent the wealthiest and biggest businesses in the country. He poses as a show for the people. But it’s not.

With this access to a trusting public ear the key message has propogated: climate change and it’s causes are uncertain. The underlying message has been confusion. The result is a public opinion that we shouldn’t jeopardize our mortgages and our jobs and our habits of consumption. This brings me to the December edition of FOCUS and a great article by Gene Miller. Rex Murphy has perhaps too eagerly defended Big Oil and too eagerly added his voice of dissent to the environmental movement. Rex calls the movement Big Green. Miller says:

“Big Green?” Those the ones associated with Big Feminism, Big Peace, Big Anti-Land Mines, Big Racial Equality and Big Anti-Child Slavery?

…you sound like the South before Lincoln, or the British before Gandhi. You sound like the flatearthers in Calgary. You sound like some gaseous table-pounder bellowing about how good-paying jobs in the oil-patch now are worth more than some speculative issues that maybe our great grandkids will have to deal with—woo-woo stuff like the bankrupting relocation of coastal infrastructure around the globe, global loss of freshwater, global loss of arable land, global desertification, the migration north of a couple of billion people, and the end of national boundaries and the nation-state. Deal or no deal, Rex?

Actually, we won’t be getting our energy from Alberta within 25 years anyway (my guess); and red deer will wander through the silent, empty office canyons of downtown Calgary. (Take oil out of the Calgary economic equation and the city folds like a suit from Kresge’s.) The world by then will be operating on a mixed-source energy regime that conspicuously excludes oil.

Miller is great. Partly what makes his article such a great example of a solid communications strategy is that he first focuses on the environmental and moral considerations of ignoring global warming. He then reconsiders his argument from an economic perspective for the sake of those that only understand these issues through the lens of economy. Stephen Harper and Rex Murphy seem to think that the economy has greater reality than our environment or climate. Miller, acknowledging their psychological impediments, attempts to parse his message in a way that they will understand.

I checked today and we’re currently posted right beside David Suzuki’s own call to Harper! Can you tell I’m a fan of David Suzuki?

In case you’re interested, here is where you can find the report that the Suzuki Foundation co-authored with the Pembina Institute. Let me summarize for you: 1. the current Canadian plan to deal with climate change is not working, 2. there is a way to do something that does work. The report also lays out a detailed and thorough plan but I won’t summarize that. The idea is that if we change our climate by more than 2°C (or Kelvin) from the pre-industrial levels we’ll face a harsh reality. To prevent that, industrialized countries need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 25% lower than the 1990 levels. Here’s the kicker: we need to do it by 2020. But what is amazing about the Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina institute is that they actually show how we can do that, while maintaining a vibrant economy. It requires strong political leadership to do it. So let’s make that happen, shall we?

P.S. if anyone needs help taking video of their phone call to the PM or posting their video to Youtube, you’re welcome to contact me, and, time and space depending, I will endeavor to help you.

Life here on Earth has been around for about a billion years. Humans have been around for about two hundred thousand years and the life stuff and the human-life stuff both rely heavily on the fragile mixture of the chemicals and various fundamental forces of our universe at play here on Earth.

This fragility is what I want to comment on today. Somehow we’ve developed a cultural story, here in North America and elsewhere, that our life support system isn’t fragile. The cultural story is that humans have some kind of God given right to exist. We think our life support system is something we don’t have to care about. We think that the life support system is in constant and eternal regeneration and that humans are too important to go away. We are adoring of our consumptive practices. The story is that we are entitled to our consumptive practices.

But our Earth is not eternally regenerative. That is, the way our Earth is organized to support human life, is not eternally regenerative. It is possible for our life support system to fail. It is possible for our life support system to collapse. It is likely that if it does, we won’t be able to fix it.

Anyone that has scrambled an egg knows that some things can’t be undone. Anyone that has mixed paint until they ended up with a grey-brown smear has a personal experience with entropy. Anyone that has watched a loved one battle against disease and lose, knows first hand that there are things that we can’t undo or fix or do over or reset or restore. It’s never the simple presence of chemicals and forces in our bodies that matter. It’s their very specific arrangement that allows or disallows the body to live.

I think the Earth is very much like a human body in this way.

Anyone that has watched a loved one battle against disease and lose, knows first hand that there are things that we can’t undo, reset or restore. Sometimes there’s no do-over.

It’s not the simple presence of various chemicals and forces at work on Earth that makes our Earth a life support system. It’s the unfathomable arrangement of the stuff that keeps us alive. This complex, interconnected arrangement of stuff can be helpfully understood as a metastable system.

Our life support system is a metastable system in the sense that it can withstand a certain range of strain. Like our human body, it’s not like you give it a shove and it simply undergoes a radical and irreversible collapse. But neither can you keep shoving it without the system finally succumbing. Eventually the system undergoes a shift so dramatic that it’s no longer functioning in a recognizable way.

Climate Change

How resilient is our life support system in the face of climate change? This is a zillion-quadrillion dollar question.

I believe our life support system is not infinitely stable.² So our life support system is metastable. How stable is it? I believe that our ability to answer this question is extremely limited. We don’t really know. Let’s face it, the Earth and it’s vast delicate interconnectedness(es) is beyond our current science.³

I’m not suggesting that climate change could cause our life support system to stop supporting all life. Well, actually, I think that is within the realm of possibility. But mostly I’m suggesting that climate change could result in a life support system so changed that it no longer supports human life.

All of this points towards change our sense of entitlement and our approach to consumption.

In essence, I am making the really rather conservative argument that we should now be prioritising human welfare, security and indeed survival over the pursuit of short-term economic growth, and not, as at present, the other way around. This is hardly a radical proposition…Yet to date, all discussion of emissions reductions strategies at the level of national and international politics has been circumscribed by the growth agenda. We are predicating our ability to avoid catastrophe on our ability to make money out of doing so. That strikes me as totally insane. — Leo Murray

Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.