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Not willing to be herded on climate change

We all know that politicians are entirely honest, would never lie to us or try to manipulate us
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Not willing to be herded on climate change

In the Citizen printed on Nov. 10, David Slade wrote a column, challenging people who did not believe that climate change was largely caused by people, to explain why they had those beliefs.

It should be understood that the science community is funded to do specific pieces of research, and that failure to produce results that meet the expectations of the funder (primarily governments) could lead to a loss of funding in the future, so the bias among researchers is to manage the results of their research. These scientists then band together to try to suppress the research of other scientists who might reach different conclusions. It takes a lot of courage for the scientists in the minority to stand against the majority mob, so that instead of informed debate among the different viewpoints, we get the majority trying to overwhelm the minority. The problem is, of course, that normal people like us are not able to understand the science, so we depend upon the politicians and civil service to interpret the science and bring forward credible plans.

We all know that politicians are entirely honest, would never lie to us or try to manipulate us, will always do what is right for the long term, have no thought for their own futures and want to only serve the electorate and our country.

So let’s review a few examples. As far as scientific credibility is concerned, an example that is easy for us to understand is it was scientists that gave us thalidomide, and Canadian government scientists that approved it for use in Canada.

The biggest single source of carbon emission in Canada in 2015 was carbon released from our forests, but you won’t find that in the Environment Canada data (the publishers of the emissions data) because the politicians don’t wany us to know that the single biggest problem is not man-made, it is forest fires caused by lightning strikes that account for nearly a quarter of Canadian emissions. If our climate is actually warming then we can expect even more carbon released from the forests in the future, so saving a few per cent of carbon elsewhere will be overwhelmed by our forests burning — but we don’t need to know that.

Closer to home, we have an unelected NDP government in Victoria that is playing games with the future of our electricity supply. You would think that if we are going to try to reduce our carbon footprint with electric vehicles and electric heating for both homes and business, and reduce the use of oil and gas, then we will need all of the clean electricity we can get, both hydro-electric and windmills.

I don’t know if people are contributing to climate change, but I accept that we might be, and I’m not prepared to be blindly herded in a direction that might be wrong, and I won’t accept being sneered at by people who have a different opinion.

I respect David Slade’s right to his opinion, and I do believe he is right about one thing — like David, I believe that we are destroying this planet, and I do believe that we are passing on to the next generation a planet in worse shape than the one we inherited.

Michael Walkley

Duncan