 Mark FournierMember
Joined: 06 Jan 2001 Total posts: 15602 Location: Kingston, ON Gender: Male
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 Posted: 12/ 20/ 03 9:26 pm Post subject: Kyoto impartiality government-driven |
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Lorne Gunter
Edmonton Journal
December 19, 2003
Kyoto impartiality government-driven
Doug Whelpdale, Director, Climate Research Branch, Environment Canada's Meteorological Service of Canada; Doug Bancroft, director of oceanography and climate, Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Karen Brown, assistant deputy minister, Environment Canada; Irwin Itzkovitch, assistant deputy minister, Natural Resources Canada; Sue Milburn-Hopwood, Health Canada; Gordon McBean, former assistant deputy minister, Environment Canada and chair, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (funded by a one-time, $60-million grant from Ottawa); Margaret McQuaig-Johnson, Finance Canada; David Oulton, head of Ottawa's Climate Change Secretariat; Tom Pedersen, head of earth and ocean science, University of Victoria; Paul Sampson, Privy Council Office; Norine Smith, assistant deputy minister, Environment Canada; John Stone, associate director general, Environment Canada; Richard Anthes, President, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder. Colo.; Georges Beauchemin, chair, Consortium on Regional Climatology and Adaptation to Climate Change (OURANOS in French, a joint project of Ottawa's Meteorological Service of Canada, the Quebec government, and Quebec-owned Hydro-Quebec); Don Strange, manager, Ottawa's Climate Change Action Fund; Eric Taylor, Natural Resources Canada; Peter Victor, chair, Science Advisory Board, Environment Canada; Janet Walden, Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Greg Graham, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (a fund established by Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada to invest in technologies that reduce greenhouse gasses, now also including many industry "stakeholders"); and Andre Isabel, Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Last spring, Environment Canada hired a Toronto consulting firm to conduct an "external" review of the climate science research plan of its Meteorological Service of Canada. If I told you the above 20 persons were the only ones interviewed, would you conclude the review had been an "external" one? Thirteen are federal bureaucrats or advisers. Seven -- one-third -- are members of the committee which initiated the review. Three come from foundations largely funded by government, two from an arms-length funding body whose annual budget comes from the federal government and two are academics who share Ottawa's view of environmental issues.
If I also told you the three people who drafted the contract -- all Environment Canada employees -- also instructed the consultants on whom they could interview, might you question the objectivity and impartiality of the review? Wouldn't you wonder what its value was? Why bother doing such a review?
It's as if Environment Canada's senior climate-change bureaucrats decided one morning, "We want to know if our research priorities are good ones. Hmm. Let's ask the people who draw up and administer our research plan, the people who used to be in charge of it, other government departments committed to the same environmental policies we are, foundations we are funding to do much of the research that backs up our position and foundations that stand to benefit if we stay the course on our position, and academics who largely agree with our position."
Ah, yes, that sounds like a good, comprehensive, unbiased assessment of whether one's plan and overall position on the environment and Kyoto is a good one.
Not one critic of Environment Canada's position. Few people not directly employed by the federal government, which has made no secret about its position on climate change and Kyoto. Fewer people, still, who are not beneficiaries, in one form or another, of Ottawa's billions in Kyoto-based research monies. And two academics for whom much of the question of what's behind climate change has been settled.
I'd be surprised if there was a skeptic of big government, centrally planned environmental and economic policies in the bunch.
Yep. Get right on that. Sounds like the right mix of interviewees.
Tim Ball, a climate science professor at the University of Winnipeg for 32 years and a doubter of the man-made global warming theory, writing in the Calgary Herald on Thursday, asserts that this review is "convincing evidence that Canada's climate change science is driven by a preordained political agenda. Instead of basing policy decisions on the best available science ... the government is clearly directing its scientists to find the evidence the government needs to substantiate its policy -- completely the reverse of how science-based policy should be determined."
Using a copy of the review obtained through access to information requests, Ball revealed that on June 12, at a meeting of senior Environment Canada bureaucrats, the committee was reminded "that climate change science activities in the federal government are mission-driven."
"Shouldn't the federal government's environmental mission be science-driven?" instead, Ball wondered correctly.
Environment Minister David Anderson -- newly reappointed to that position by Friend-of-the-West Prime Minister Paul Martin -- insists the science of Kyoto and climate change is "settled," that there is no doubt human beings are causing the planet to warm dangerously and that human activities must be curtailed to prevent catastrophe, especially activities near and dear to western Canadians and their economy.
And Anderson and his officials seem to have devised a convenient way to convince themselves the issue is "settled."
Make an imaginary tent. Place in that tent only those ideas and people who reinforce your views. Close the flaps tight against any opposing ideas or zephyrs of doubt. Then claim the inside of the tent comprises the entire known universe. Pretend there is nothing outside and periodically fund studies to confirm that view.
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Lorne Gunter
Columnist, Edmonton Journal
Editorial Board Member, National Post
tele: (780) 916-0719
fax: (780) 481-4735
e-mail: lgunter@shaw.ca
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Edmonton AB T5R 5P2 |
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