RE: Uxbridge resident asks township to declare climate emergency
I read with interest the report submitted to council re: the need to declare a climate change emergency and the subsequent letters to the editor. I had wanted to also comment, but I decided to hold back on any comment since I had a suspicion that the full reason for the request to council had not been revealed, and that there was another agenda at play here.
Well, the shoe dropped as I read the response by June Davies (Cosmos, Dec. 19 Letters to the Editor).
What we have here is a prime example of the Marxist/Socialist diatribe using climate change as a means to impose an ideology which has been proven in the past to be utterly devastating to humankind. One only has to look at the incredible failure of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union and the suffering imposed on its people for decades. If that isn’t enough, consider Nazism, Maoism, or the impact of same type of government which created the killing fields of Cambodia.
Also, the writer claims that it is social causes alone that are causing this catastrophe. This is where the real reason for the request is revealed and where the writer blames everything bad that happens in the world on the capitalists. Whether she likes it or not, capitalism has lifted a significant percentage of the world’s population out of abject poverty, and has increased the middle class standard of living. The ingenuity and inventiveness associated with capitalism has increased the lifespan of humankind from 50 years to 80 years in just under a century. Does anyone really want to go back to the abject poverty and daily struggle to survive that faced our ancestors just a scant century ago?
You cannot create a sustainable economy based on social enterprise. Its been tried before and failed. The most productive farmers in the Soviet Union during their socialist period were the individual farmers who secretly cultivated and sold their produce privately instead of to their socialist supervisors.
Then the writer advocates the abolition of the party system of politics, whose members she claims have more allegiance to each party’s platforms and to the corporate elite, whoever that might be. Of course, that opinion denigrates the value of every person who casts a vote at each ballot box for the person of their choice. Can you just imagine the results of public committees attempting to run our country and make decisions? If you need an example of this, just take a look at the processes and decisions generated by the Human Rights Commissions.
What we do not have here is a reasonable attempt to discuss climate change. Can we have an intelligent discussion wherein we can look at the situation in a realistic manner and examine both sides. Whether we like it or not, there are at least two sides to the climate change debate, and on all sides we have scientists who espouse a set of theories, complete with comprehensive charts and models that leave the average citizen in a quandary. However, certain identity groups would rather assemble a mob to take anyone down if they don’t agree with them.
We are bombarded almost every day with new studies which either claim that we have 10 years to solve climate change catastrophe, or studies that show exactly the opposite. I for one will not react to the hypocritical pronouncements of Greta Thunberg, a spoiled child who is being abused by her handlers to the extent that she now wants to “put you up against the wall.”
What we need from Ms. Davies are real-life examples as to how she intends to contribute to the overall reduction of greenhouse gases in her little Township of Beaver River and not some grandiose scheme to adopt a style of government which has been universally rejected by thoughtful people who treasure our democracies.
Robert Kernohan, Uxbridge
Like many, I am no fan of conspiracy theories; at best they provide some light entertainment and little else. However, conspiracy theories occasionally turn out to be conspiracy facts.
When looking at the “Climate Emergency” debate, it’s useful to separate the facts from the rhetoric. In 2009, “Climategate” (described by the Telegraph as “The worst scientific scandal of our generation”) came to light when hacked documents revealed thousands of emails between key authors of the climate movement. Members of the same group were instrumental in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Among the topics discussed in the emails were: how to minimize the effects of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in order to produce the “correct” computer models for climate projections; how to keep the computer algorithms used for projections totally secret and away from peer review; how to suppress and discredit opposing viewpoints. These are hardly examples of rigorous, objective science where contrarian views are welcomed as a means of theory validation.
Verifiable data tells a somewhat different story to the climate alarmists. According to ice core samples, during the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300 A.D.), global temperatures were approx. 1.5 deg. C warmer than today. During The Little Ice Age (1300-1850), global temps were 2 deg. C cooler than today. It has been less than 200 years since we emerged from the last ice age and, by definition, we are still on a warming trend.
The average global temperature increase from 1880 to 2012 was 0.85 deg. C, but according to NASA data (reported by Investor’s Business Daily) global temperatures dropped 0.56 deg. C between 2016 and 2018. These figures are crude global averages subject to local variability, but still not exactly indicative of a climate emergency.
In their struggle for eyeballs, the mainstream media are complicit in pushing an alarmist agenda (remember the axiom “good news is no news”). For example: widely publishing a picture of a starving polar bear without reporting that polar bear populations are actually rising; completely ignoring independent 2018 studies by the American Meteorological Society and Nature Geoscience showing that IPCC climate projections are wildly exaggerated; attributing every natural disaster or anomaly to climate. The list goes on and on.
The constant stream of disinformation, suppression of differing views and increasingly shrill rhetoric tends to foster the idea that climate alarmism is based more on politics and ideology than on objective science. Right on cue, Ms. Davies (initiator of the current Uxbridge climate emergency debate) states in her Cosmos letter of December 19, “We need to let go the capitalistic, consumer-based way of conducting our lives founded on growth, resource consumption and the class system. We need to move to a social economy…”
Would the preferred choice be the Venezuelan or the North Korean model?
Mike Stones, Uxbridge