It’s a terrible public relations and advertising tendency. I would also speculate that on a more basic psychological level, it’s also a common human behaviour that we utilize almost instinctively. It’s not exactly rational and I think it probably happens more often and more subtly than most would care to admit.

But sometimes it happens not so subtly.

To underscore the point, Russ Campbell has several posts generally denying human caused global warming. So he loves Tim Ball. So he tries to affirm Tim Ball’s status as an expert in the field, claiming that, among other things, “Dr. Ball has the bona fides to talk about global warming.” The DeSmogBlog’s goal is to remove public relations spin from the climate change debate so they have a different take on Tim Ball’s credentials. Tim Ball is in the employ of those whose short term fiscal interests are diametrically opposed to making policy changes to help mitigate human caused global warming. Oi. But Russ Campbell never mentioned that.

It is interesting that Russ Campbell quotes Wikipedia on Tim Ball. But there is currently (at the time of publication) no entry on Tim Ball. I can imagine that this entry has been very controversial and the Wikipedia community can be very tenacious about this sort of thing. I am a little curious why the page was deleted. The pages on both climate change and global warming are very good. ¹ Russ Campbell doesn’t mention these either.

Check out http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Widget/ to find an assortment of widgets that you too can post on your website. Yes, they have a WordPress widget.

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

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.