I have to admit, I can’t wait to see how this unfolds…

On the one hand, you’ve got Stephen Harper making a fool of himself and Canada in Copenhagen, on the other hand you’ve got his “base” who are such rabid denialists that they consider his words and actions, inadequate as they are, grossly negligent and traitorous.

For even more fun, consider KAIROS-gate (as far as I can tell, I’m the first one to use that, obviously the “-gate” thing should just go away). In my opinion, Harper has smeared a good portion of his base as anti-semitic.

http://www.paherald.sk.ca/Opinion/2009-12-30/article-321739/Kenney-should-learn-to-Google/1

It looks like a simple enough mistake. I’m waiting for an apology from Jason Kenney, Rosie DiManno and the Toronto Star and everyone on Blogging Tories who’s been slagging KAIROS for the past month.

Fair disclosure: I am a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, but do not work for the party. I used to usually vote Conservative, but Stephen Harper and my local MP, Bob Dechert, fill me with such disgust that I will do what I can to try to ensure that neither get elected again.

From the Liberal Party of Canada, 2009-12-17:

Under the previous Liberal government, Canada played an international leadership role in the fight against climate change. How did Canada fall to its current status as international climate change pariah in such a short period of time? Here’s how:

January 2006. Canada’s Conservative government is elected. Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister. The Harper government cuts or freezes up to $6 billion in environmental programming upon coming into office.

May 2006. Canada becomes the only Kyoto signatory to publicly renounce its Kyoto targets and reject emissions trading when Environment Minister Rona Ambrose claims Canada would have to ground every train, plane and car in the country to meet its target.

May 2006. Conservatives vote against a motion in Parliament to commit Canada to honour its Kyoto commitments. The motion passes.

May 2006. Leaked documents confirm Canadian negotiators at the COP conference in Bonn, Germany, are instructed not to support attempts by other countries to set deeper emission-reduction targets for the post-2012 Kyoto period. Instead, Canada wants voluntary targets to replace the legally binding targets in the climate change accord.

October 5, 2006. Environment Minister Rona Ambrose says Canada will not participate in an international carbon market nor will it use public money to buy carbon credits in lieu of meeting its Kyoto targets.

October 19, 2006. Minister Ambrose introduces the Clean Air Act, which sets intensity based targets for greenhouse gas reduction of 45-65 percent of 2003 levels by 2050.

December 2006. Prime Minister Harper fires Allan Amey, a special environmental advisor appointed by the former Liberal government to kick-start Canada’s attempts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions under the Kyoto accord.

February 8, 2007. New Conservative Environment Minister John Baird reiterates the government’s position to a Parliamentary committee that Canada will not participate in a foreign carbon market.

March 2007. A Special Parliamentary Committee finishes revamping the Clean Air Act. The amended legislation includes a domestic cap and trade plan with hard caps that sets a price of $20 to $30 per tonne, with targets for greenhouse gas reductions in line with Canada’s Kyoto obligations. The act also sets out new fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. The Bill dies when the Harper government refuses to bring it back, as amended, to the House of Commons.

April 2007. Environment Minister John Baird tables “Turning the Corner,” the Harper government’s second environmental plan in six months. This plan calls for emission reductions of 20 percent below 2006 levels by 2020, and between 50-65 percent by 2050. Every independent analyses of the plan finds that it lacks the capacity to meet its own targets.

June 2007. Prime Minister Harper supports President Bush’s unexpected proposal to host talks involving the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases to discuss long-term strategies for combating climate change. Bush’s plan, announced on the eve of the G8 conference that year, was met with mixed reviews among European leaders, some of whom saw Bush’s move as an attempt to sidestep Chancellor Merkel’s call for an international agreement on tough new emissions-reduction targets.

June 2007. Prime Minister Harper says, “Canada has an ambitious plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, over the next 13 years, our targets are more ambitious than those of the European Union.” This statement fails to impress world leaders, including Chancellor Merkel who criticizes Harper for abandoning Canada’s commitment to Kyoto.

June 2007. At the G8 Summit, environmentalists accuse Prime Minister Harper of running interference for the United States as Canada joins President Bush in refusing to sign on to binding GHG reduction targets, unless large developing nations like China do the same.

September 2007. Prime Minister Harper seeks to distance Canada from a UN-lead effort to reach successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol by announcing Canada’s invitation to attend the next meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership, where Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and United States would set their own climate change goals, but with no binding targets or enforcement mechanism.

December 2007. At the Bali Climate Change Conference, the Harper government is again accused of blocking Kyoto countries from reaching a renewed agreement on binding targets. Environment Minister John Baird bails on crucial negotiations, while Canadian negotiators erect obstacles to stop the rest of the world from acknowledging the importance of binding targets.

April 2008. Minister Baird announces that climate change regulations will be published in late 2008 and will come into force on Jan. 1, 2010. This commitment is later abandoned; to date not a single GHG regulation has been passed by the Harper government.

May 2008. The UN Climate Change Secretariat reportedly says Canada has been notified that it would be investigated for allegedly violating a Kyoto reporting requirement.

October 2008. Jim Prentice becomes Canada’s third Minister of the Environment in three years.

December 2008. The Harper government bans Don MacIver, Director of the Adaptation and Impacts Research Division at Environment Canada, from organizing a gathering of prominent world experts on global warming. He is forced to resign when the government tells him to cancel a key appearance and presentation at the UN climate change summit in Poland, where Canada is named the most obstructive country by Climate Action Network International.

May 2009. By conference call with reporters, Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice effectively announces the Harper government’s third climate change plan in three years by indicating that climate change regulations will not be developed until 2010 and may not take effect until 2016, to match a proposed U.S. timetable. Minister Prentice says it’s “a fair question” how the new, delayed timetable will impact the 2020 target, but says “that continues to be our objective.”

July 2009. With new emission-reduction targets set to be agreed upon in Copenhagen later in the year, the United Kingdom’s former Chief Scientific Adviser sounds the alarm about Canada blocking the process.

At the same time, the World Wildlife Fund’s 2009 Climate Scorecard ranks Canada last in terms of greenhouse gas emission growth and planned measures to reduce them.

Canada’s Environmental Commissioner concludes that that the Conservative climate change plan will not come anywhere close to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Finally, despite recognizing the “broad scientific view” that global temperatures must not rise two degrees above pre-industrial levels, Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice says the goals are merely “aspirational” and do not necessitate a change in government policy.

September 2009. Prime Minister Stephen Harper fails to show for a special meeting of world leaders at the United Nations to discuss climate change, opting instead to conduct a doughnut factory tour.

November 2009. Caving to public pressure, Prime Minister Harper agrees to attend the Copenhagen climate change conference, but only after President Obama announces his attendance.

December 2009. At Copenhagen, a series of public relations disasters embarrasses Canada on the world stage:

* A leaked Cabinet document reveals how the Conservatives plan to exempt the oilsands from GHG reduction targets, and how emissions would actually increase, not decrease.
* Instead of engaging in real action on climate change, the Harper Conservatives receive four consecutive “Fossil of the Day” awards as the nation leading the obstruction of a deal on climate change.
* The Prime Minister’s spokesperson attacks one of Canada’s most respected environmental leaders, Steven Guilbeault, wrongly accusing him of being responsible for an elaborate hoax news release and press conference announcing tough new emissions targets for Canada.
* The U.S. Secretary of Energy snubs Canada by refusing to participate in a hastily arranged photo-op that Canadian officials hope will “change the channel.”

I’ve had a couple trolls comment on my post about the individuals and institutions involved in global warming denial, one in particular accuses me of “slandering” Ross McKitrick and Bjorn Lomborg.

Here’s what desmogblog’s “denier database” has to say about McKitrick and Lomborg. Therefore, they are both high enough profile deniers to warrant my including them in the original post.

The commenter makes the perfectly valid point that economists should be involved in analyzing the economic impacts, but that actually reinforces my point. McKitrick is an economist, not a climate scientist, and is in no position to make claims regarding the reality of climate change, only the costs involved in taking action compared with the cost of doing nothing. The fact that McKitrick is associated with both the George C. Marshall Institute and Fraser Institute implies to me that he’s deliberately confusing the science because of his right wing ideology. This is part of what I find so completely fraudulent (I use that word deliberately) about this point of view – conservatives are so obsessed with free markets, deregulation and lowering taxes that they think it’s okay to counter the real climate science with their distortions and pseudo-science. The comment itself reveals this mindset,

a suspicion that some of the leftists taking the alarmists position want to use the global warming issue to bring in socialistic government by the “Back door”

so it’s ok to lie, because it’s just politics. The problem is, just as with tobacco and health care, they deny reality purely because of their ideology.

And they’ve been successful – instead of the debate being what level of CO2 do we need to stabilize at (350 ppm) and how do we get there, we debate the costs of doing anything at all.

A classic tactic the deniers use is “I haven’t seen any research that shows…”

Take Michele Bachmann’s mind-numbingly stupid “There’s not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is harmful, it’s natural, it’s only 3% of the atmosphere” rant (I know those are not her exact words, but YOU know that was the message) . It’s so appallingly stupid, I’ll let others address it.

I’ve been accused by a commenter of hating people who disagree with me, but to be more accurate, I agree (to some degree) with Alonzo that global warming denialism is evil because of the devastating impact it will have on future generations, including my descendants and those of so many people whose lives will be ruined because anti-regulation free-market capitalists want to make more money today.

Here’s a story about a climate change denier organization’s own scientists accepting the global warming science, in 1995!!!

Ok, to those who claim to never have seen the research, I’ll do your homework for you. Google “global warming research”. For me, the #1 hit was the Stanford Solar Centre. Page down to the FAQ’s, and follow some of the links.

Beware, the real research gets very technical, very fast. For the non-scientist, like me, I let the experts figure it out. This gets back to my original post – on one side, we have almost every credible climate scientist on the planet, and on the other, we have James Inhofe’s debunked list of economists, TV weathermen, dead people and people who even objected to being on his list. Before you give both sides a chance to express themselves, you have to decide if both sides are credible, and the deniers flatly are not credible, for reasons that I addressed in my original post.

Anyway, believe what you want, because I think the tide has turned and you are now on the wrong side, just like you (or at least many of your fellow global warming deniers) are wrong about evolution, gay rights, vaccinations and crimes against humanity (torture and starting illegal wars). Don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen for it all, the Republican lie machine is a very powerful force of malevolent hatred, all designed to manipulate ignorant, bigoted people into keeping them in power.

I don’t need to re-hash everything, if you want my general opinion on issues, read my shared items from the blogs that I read.

And remember, I’m not here for readers and I don’t want to get into arguments in the comments. My comment section is for respectful, intelligent discussion. I’ll discuss any issues, but “I haven’t seen any research” is no longer good enough.

I’ve met enough people who’ve said, in effect, “I’ve done the research and I’ve concluded that global warming is not real/not caused by humans/not such a bad thing.”

Before you start your own research, I suggest you look into some of the people and organizations involved in global warming denial.

I’ll tell you some of the individuals you’ll find:
Sen. James Inhofe, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, Ross McKitrick and Bjørn Lomborg, among many, many others.

Or, don’t believe Wikipedia? Check SourceWatch.

Among the organizations involved in global warming denial, four of the most prominent are: George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and Cato Institute.

Let’s be clear, these are primarily conservative think tanks, aimed at reducing regulation. We all know how that worked out for the banking industry…

For example, CEI (though their website is off-line as I write this) believes “that people improve their lives not through government regulation, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.”. So they’re not about science or climate, they’re a conservative think tank and they’re all about deregulation. They strive to deny the science behind global warming, in the interest of corporate profit.

Now, check out ExxonSecrets.org, once you’re past the intro, check out the pre-saved maps, sucn as “Biggest Exxon $$ Winners”, “Fred Singer, Skeptic-in-Chief”, “CEI web”, “Sen. Inhofe and friends” or my favourite, “Climate Science Skeptic Roundup”.

If you’re not convinced, try googling “seitz singer tobacco“, 2 of the top hits today are “The Indisputable Corruption of Frederick Seitz“, “The Corrupt S. Fred Singer, corrupt Fred Seitz…” and “No apology is owed Dr. S. Fred Singer, and none will…” The last one is interesting, as it shows the connection between S. Fred Singer and tobacco lobbyists, whose “product” was doubt.

Or google “inhofe 400 debunked“.

If you still want more reading, here are the environment posts from my other blog, or one from What I Learned Today or, if you prefer, a video.

I can save you a lot of time and confusion in doing your research, because there’s only one factual conclusion: The parties involved in climate change denial are well-connected, well-funded, highly-motivated and not at all concerned about lying or distorting facts. Their ideology is based entirely on free markets and reducing regulation, not about science or protecting future generations. Their method is the same as was used by the tobacco industry, create doubt.

or in the words of TimesOnline, societies are worse off when they have God on their side

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortal

From LA Progressive,

Now, the Republicans are relegated to the South — an extremist backwater party of white heterosexual Christian fundamentalism, cultural intolerance, and political irrelevance. They embrace xenophobia, islamophobia, and homophobia as America becomes a browner, more diverse nation. They uphold the plutocratic interests of free market capitalism at a time when the public demands greater government intervention in the economy, as a check against corporate excess and upward wealth redistribution.