Cooper: Finally, greenie alarmism has become
passe
By Barry Cooper June 27, 2012
The Rio+20 conference on sustainable development ended last week with the
production of a document. The original Rio Earth Summit document claimed that
fossil-fuel-induced global warming would end human civilization. It led to a
number of treaties, declarations and agreements, including the now-repudiated
Kyoto Protocol.
With Rio+20, global warming has been replaced with what Financial Post columnist
Terence Corcoran called “ideologically toxic material” typical of “UN
proceduralism.” This is good news because it makes it easier for governments to
ignore the whole thing.
Not everyone saw things this way. A Greenpeace spokesperson lamented the “epic
failure” of the conference. Even before it opened, Francis Kissing and Peter
Singer criticized the Brazilians in the Washington Post for serving organic
foods, including meat. Apparently UN delegates are partial to osso buco. The
authors were appalled because cattle raised organically produce more methane
than “their less-well-treated brothers and sisters.” The solution, as
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri has long
advocated, is vegetarianism.
To date, alas, only the EU has tried to set a quota for gas emissions from
flatulent, belching cows. Someone should draw this grave matter to the attention
of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, so the next time he opens his mouth about Alberta,
he can insult the cattle industry, too.
In contrast to such silliness, Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment minister,
announced that the government was “very happy, very satisfied” with the final
document, chiefly because of “what’s not in it.” Specifically, he said, there
are no “unrealistic, inappropriate binding commitments” to “instant
confections.” In fact, real news from South America focused more on the
impeachment of the president of Paraguay than saving the world.
The main reason for this stunning return to common sense is that greenie
alarmism has become boring and passe. Worse for the alarmists, the evidence has
tipped decisively against them.
Remember that iconic and touching picture of polar bears apparently stranded on
an iceberg? They were disappearing because Arctic ice was melting. But since
2007, low levels of ice cover have rebounded to a 30-year average, and according
to Dirkus Gissing, director of wildlife management for Nunavut, at around 25,000
head, northerners are enjoying the highest polar bear population ever.
We also know, as Australian paleoclimatologist Bob Carter pointed out to
audiences across the country in May, that climate change takes place on
geological time scales, not decades. Thus, the instrumental temperature record,
which is little over a half-century old, is incapable of indicating any
measurable trend.
The word has also leaked out that computer models rest on assumptions that are
simply untenable. Ross McKitrick, who helped expose the famous hockey-stick
fraud that purported to show an amazing rise in global temperatures over the
past few decades, has shown in a series of papers that climate data provide as
useful an explanation of temperature fluctuations as a random numbers table.
That is: none. Likewise, Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Centre for
Sun-Climate Research in Denmark, has added to his work showing that various
sunspot cycles influence global temperatures and offers compelling arguments
that exploding stars have the same effect.
Canadians have also connected the political dots: U.S.-based charities fund
B.C.-based environmentalists. This has nothing to do with the malarkey about
helping a spirit bear, whatever that is, or fishing in the rainforest, to say
nothing about preserving the ways of Indians in the Chilcotin. It’s all about
preventing Alberta oil from reaching any market but the U.S., which means
cheaper fuel for Americans.
All this evidence has produced recantations. Most famously, James Lovelock years
ago predicted that global warming would mean that “billions of us would die” and
a few “breeding pairs” would survive only in the Arctic — presumably to be
hunted by polar bears. Last April, he admitted he was wrong and offered an
insightful observation: “the green religion is now taking over the Christian
religion.”
This explains why the Christ the Redeemer statue atop Corcovado Mountain above
Rio was bathed in green light for the duration of Rio+20. Christopher Monckton
said it looked “like a giant jelly bean.”
What a perfect end to two decades of nonsense: misguided alarmism over organic
osso buco has turned into a green jelly bean farce.
Barry Cooper is a political science professor at the University of Calgary.
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