Saturday, October 25, 2008

Liberal Jim Bradley shoots crap

Norm Kalmanovich wrote in “Debunking global warming”, (National Post, Oct 24, 2008):

“Re: Skeptics, Unite!, Lorne Gunter, Oct. 20.
Global warming is first and foremost about global temperature, so it raises the question: Why is this the first time that actual global temperatures have been shown in the media?

Why is this critical temperature data [shown with this column] not readily available on the taxpayer-funded Environment Canada Web site? More importantly, why hasn't Environment Canada informed Canadians that the globe has been cooling since 2002, as is shown in the raw monthly temperature data underlying the smoothed curve?

There has been no actual global warming since 1998, yet Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol four years after global warming ended without doing any independent scientific investigation that could have prevented this costly mistake.

Lorne Gunter and the rest of the National Post should be praised for exposing this fraud.”

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Regarding Environment Canada, here’s what Tim Ball wrote in “Environment Canada's Climate Change Fiasco, Global Warming rivals Sponsorship Scandal” (Aug.24, 2007, Canada Free Press):

“Many years ago, I warned Henry Hengeveld of Environment Canada (EC) that, if he thought it was difficult to convince ministers and MPs that global warming was due to human carbon dioxide (CO2) production, it would be twice as difficult to change their minds once they were convinced. The theory was, and still is, unproven of course, but by adopting it so completely so early on, Hengeveld would find himself on a treadmill virtually impossible to get off. After all, it would be very dangerous for a bureaucrat to go back to those same politicians with the message that their political positions were wrong because they were based on wrong information.

Yet Hengeveld made a career out of CO2 by producing a monthly magazine on the topic. Instead of following the scientific method of trying to disprove the hypothesis that human CO2 was causing climate change, Hengeveld and other EC employees were essentially directed to find evidence that it was correct--despite increasing indications it wasn't.

The person mostly responsible for the singular and devastating direction the department took for several years was Gordon McBean. He came to EC with a PhD and so achieved high rank quickly, bringing to the department a particularly skewed view of environmental issues and particularly. McBean spent his career promoting dogma, wasting billions of dollars ($6.3 billion between 1997 and 2005 was committed to climate change programmes by the Federal government, according to former Environment Commissioner Johanne Gelinas) while virtually destroying the Canadian weather service.

There are less weather stations in Canada now than in 1960, and many that remain are merely Automatic Weather Observing Stations. These were so bad that when NAV CANADA was formed to take over the airports they refused to accept them, triggering a Senate investigation under Senator Pat Carney.

While EC was awash in money for global warming work, many other important activities and data collection practices were abandoned. For example, when I chaired the Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board in Manitoba the worst flood on record occurred. When we asked the Water Resources Branch why they didn't forecast the event, they said they had no data on the amount of water in the snow in the valley. We learned EC had canceled flights that used special radar to determine water content of the snow. Savings, as I recall, were $26,000. The cost of unexpected flood damage was $7 million to one level of government alone. The loss of basic weather data means the long term continuous records essential to research into the patterns and causes of climate change are completely unavailable.

Climate is different than weather. Weather is the atmospheric conditions at any given moment; climate is the weather in a region, or how it changes, over time. Climatology was a very minor and unimportant part of EC's operation until very recently; government 'climatologists' were usually people who wanted out of meteorological forecasting. People hired into meteorology were required to have a Masters in Physics because meteorology is the study of physics of the atmosphere, a very small component of climatology. New recruits received a brief, (I believe ten- week) training program in Cornwall, Ontario, in which there was apparently very little climate instruction. This means most EC employees have little, if any, training in climatology. The most extreme example of this ironically involves the person with the highest public profile, David Phillips. He is listed as a Senior Climatologist by EC but actually has a BA in Geography.

McBean established his new post-government career by using $61 million of government money to set up the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), a climate research organization that he took over as Chair with a salary of $140,000 a year in the month he retired. From that position he directed funding and resources into studying global warming mostly intended to support the alarmist hypothesis. I realized what was going on when EC spent $300 million on computer modelling incapable of accurately simulating global climate or climate change. In addition, they spent $2 million trying to produce better long-range forecasts but abandoned the idea when they achieved less than 50% accuracy.

Another egregious example of EC's failure under McBean was the canceling of support for "Climatic Change in Canada During the Past 20,000 years", a joint program run under the auspices of the National Museum of Natural Sciences (now the Canadian Museum of Nature). This program brought together a multitude of experts in various aspects of climate and climate reconstruction and produced volumes of collected papers that put Canada at the forefront of climate research and reconstruction. To my knowledge none of these experts were ever called to testify before Parliamentary hearings on Kyoto or climate change. EC followed a deliberate policy of excluding most Canadian climate experts – something that continues to this day. Consequently, the issue became purely political, controlled entirely by bureaucrats at EC.

McBean's influence went beyond his role with EC. He was a principle participant in the formation of the highly political UN body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at Villach, Austria in 1988. Of course, only those scientists who supported the alarmist view of climate change were selected to participate, a practice that continues to this day.

Fortunately, the present government has cut off funding to the many of the Canadian agencies McBean helped establish, groups which had few, if any qualified climate experts on staff. Their role had been to support EC's position through public propaganda and so it is appropriate that they have been disbanded.

McBean, Hengeveld and others at EC led the department to take the singular and unsupportable position that climate change due to human CO2 was established fact. They were a perfect example of MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard S. Lindzen's observation that the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. They, and many of their EC colleagues, effectively thwarted the standard methods of science to promote a political agenda at taxpayers' expense, causing extensive damage to the entire environmental program, leaving much important environmental work inadequately funded. Diversion and misuse of funds meant EC didn't even achieve their own pollution reduction targets, especially in Southern Ontario.

Environment Canada's climate change saga makes the activities of Chuck Gité and others exposed by the Gomery Commission look tame. It is time for the Government to step back from the abyss – withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol in February 2008, as we can do legally under the terms of the treaty, suspend all activities to "fight climate change", a ludicrous objective, and commission a full enquiry into Canada's climate change fiasco. Only then will we have a chance of developing environmental policy our descendants will respect.”

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For Phillips, the climate is a crap shoot…as he likes to say. Or is it?

Tamsyn Burgmann quoted Phillips (in “Winter forecast could go either way, says Environment Canada climatologist”, Canadian Press Aug.28, 2008) saying:

"We never really advise people in our seasonal forecast to bet the family farm on it, because it is a bit of a crapshoot, especially here in Canada."

A bit o’ the crappe shoote, eh? Who’s really shootin’ the crappe?

Continues Burgmann: “Still, Phillips said, Environment Canada uses a massive supercomputer to crunch data such as sea surface temperatures, ice and snow conditions and soil information for 10 days before forecasting weather for a coming season.”

Ahhh…  yes… the massive supercomputer – of shooting CRAP, is it?!
Is this the computer, by the way, which Stephane Bumbledore Dion may have perhaps used to formulate his super crappy Green Shift debacle?

Does Phillips really come out and say that global warming is anthropogenic, or, does he let others take his “data” and his 'crapshoot' predictions, and run with them to their own conclusions, as they see fit?

Here’s a report by Nicole Trask, “Atlantic Climate Change Conference gets green.Climate change conference puts local spin on a global crisis” (The Coast, Halifax, Feb.28, 2008):

"In the weather deck of cards, there is a joker around every bend. Our weather is dangerous and volatile. We have to come to this less romantic conclusion that we are going to have a different climate and now is the time to prepare for this," explains Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips.

Phillips will host a lunch at the upcoming Atlantic Climate Change Conference, taking place at the Westin March 3-6. The conference will feature lectures on topics such as energy choices, carbon markets, greenhouse gas management, corporate and public policy and land use planning. (See esans.ca for conference info.)

As Phillips demonstrates, it is now accepted that "climate change" is not just some zany myth made up by modern-day hippies and fervent environmentalists, but that it's really happening and our planet is sporting the bruises to prove it.

Halifax is certainly not immune, so the conference will take an in-depth look at some of the startling figures and issues at hand. Sponsored by the Environmental Services Association of Nova Scotia (ESANS) and Dalhousie University, the conference will be a Mecca of information for the public. Screenings, lectures and discussions will reveal the damaged, but not yet broken, state of the earth.

But should we simply acquiesce to this looming catastrophe and hope for the best, or do we still have a fighting chance?

"We have seen the future and there is no way to reverse what will happen but we can learn how to cut back and buy ourselves some time," says Phillips. "In terms of weather, there is no 'normal' anymore. It's all a crapshoot and there is no way to figure out what the next season will bring."”


What the hell is Phillips actually saying in this stilted article? For that matter, what is the reporter extrapolating from Phillips’ utterances? “As Phillips demonstrates, it is now accepted that “climate change” is not some zany myth made up by modern-day hippies and fervent environmentalists” writes Trask – but is this what Phillips actually said?!

What did Phillips actually “demonstrate”? Trask really doesn't mention that!

Did the Environment Canada spokesman demonstrate that “climate change”, or global warming, or whatever he’s calling it, is man made? And, how did Phillips demonstrate that this thesis is “accepted”?!

What does Phillips specifically recommend we “cut back” on… does Trask take Phillips to task asking for specifics? (nope)
Maybe we should cut back on, say, collectivist green shift crap?

In this article, Phillips - Canada's Cagey Climatologist - again used his “crap shoot” catch-all-don’t-blame-me phrase. (Is it any surprise that this conference also included a screening of Al Gore’s film, Inconvenient Crapshoot of Climate Deception?)
Where is Phillips’ ‘looming catastrophe’?
How can anyone “reverse what will happen”… what freakin' dimension of the space-time continuum is Phillips prognosticating upon?!?
 “There is no ‘normal’ anymore” says EC’s man – but, was there a ‘normal’ before?!
 “Now is the time to prepare” for a “different climate”… Different from what, Dave?!
 “Our weather is volatile and dangerous”… but, when has it NOT been so, Dave? Come on…!! Crap shoot, indeed.



Speaking of Cagey Crap Shooting, Jim Bradley, the St. Catharines, Ontario Liberal MPP, badgered the Ernie Eves Conservatives in Ontario in 2002 to ratify the Kyoto protocol. (see also: Jim Bradley, Kyoto's pipsqueak; see also: Liberal Dalton McGuinty's environmental position of hypocrisy)

I wrote in Liberal Jim Bradley and the "Mystery of the Secret Kyoto files:
“Bradley dismissed Kyoto-skeptic experts as "rogue scientists". (Brock Press, Nov. 19, 2002) What are Bradley's scientific credentials? Is this guy fit to pontificate on the science of climate change? In 2002, as Bradley shrieked about his alleged Kyoto "secret" documents, what actual science was he basing his beliefs on at the time - the Mann "hockey-stick" graph, since discredited? Should we believe a "pipsqueak" politician like Bradley, as Ralph Klein once described him (St. Catharines Standard, Oct. 23, 2002); or, should we believe scientists around the world (lovingly known as 'deniers') who question the climate models, methodology and data interpretations used by fear-inducing, pro-Kyoto tax-grabbers?”

Jim Bradley has still not publicly answered on what scientific basis he was pushing Ontario into his collectivist Kyoto scheme in 2002. Was it the Mann graphs? The ice-core data? What??

On what basis did Bradley blithely dismiss the concerns of, as he smugly says, “rogue scientists”? Could it be that Jim Bradley was fear-mongering based on dogma supplied by rogue socialists?

Does Bradley think that all the scientists listed in The Bluster in Bali: Kyoto-crats posture while 'a new call to reason' is made are “rogue scientists” as well?

Does Bradley still believe in his shifty green man-made global warming malarkey?
Or is Bradley just a windy, crap-shooting joker in a weather deck of cards?
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