Spreading Ignorance about Global Warming

Global warming deniers are really starting to annoy me. I've already compared them to Holocaust deniers because of their techniques and self-serving conflicts of interest.

Now I get to lump in the Media Research Center with them all. The MRC is a neutral, almost academic sounding institution that "tracks liberal media bias" ["liberal" used as a pejorative like commie] in their never-ending pursuit of "truth". They are a hyper-conservative spin organization whose regular emails inflame in me a clear sense of just how far the global corporate elites will go to maintain their stranglehold on power.

I enjoy the irony of rich, well-funded conservatives claiming there's a great media bias. With such intense corporate concentration of ownership in the media in the western world, there still exists a remnant of the liberal journalist. And I truly believe that many in the media are more liberal or left-wing than not, for why go into journalism if you don't believe in the responsibility of a free press for rooting out corruption, from the left or right.

And while self-censorship is clearly alive among journalists as they continually remember which corporate neofeudalist owns them and their work, there is occasionally some good work in the press.

But the MRC's approach to hunting down the liberal bias and balancing it out with another truth is astonishing sometimes. Today's missive from our MRC friends is called NBC's Today Show Champions Global Warming Alarmist. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

They introduce their criticism thusly:

On Monday's Today show, NBC's Bob Dotson profiled Will Steger, a polar explorer who is indoctrinating America's youth about "collapsing" ice shelves and global warming. Dotson never doubted the explorer's theories, instead he chose to portray Steger's crusade as nothing short of much needed charity work: "Pitching back in between and forth between the Poles, Will began to notice our warming world, wrote one of the first books about it. Now the old explorer has set himself a new challenge. Here in his home of the great northern Minnesota woods he's teaching the next generation how to rally support and solve the problem."

Dotson didn't ask any skeptical questions or air any soundbites from global warming critics, preferring to set up Steger to pontificate about climate change.

Misrepresenting controversy about global warming, opponents who gain from denying it do a disservice to the truth and humanity's responsibility to fix our mess by cleaning up how we are treating our planet like a sewer.

What the MRC doesn't get is what Amira Hass does get: "being fair and being objective are not the same thing. What journalism is really about--it's to monitor power and the centers of power." They don't get it because they reflect the centres of power.

Fairness in reporting does not mean treating both sides of an issue as equally merited with equal time to both. Demanding identical treatment mis-represents the merit of the argument for the global warming deniers who are wildly outnumbered and often funded by corporations that profit from global warming.

It's important to watch the MRC though, because watching the watchers helps us all. And to top it off today, I just joined Ann Coulter's email list. That should be exciting.

NASCAR Dads and "Canada's New Government"

Well, the NASCAR dads are definitely wearing the Prime Sinister's college ring this year [see below]. Not only are they into one of the best global warming sports around, they work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules.

The height of pandering to some red state United States Everyman is a shallow ticket used, however, to operatic degree by George w.Caesar twice now.

This from the party of Peter MacKay, king maker of the Reform/Alliance-Progressive Conservative shotgun wedding with the big lie to David Orchard: stealing his delegates at the leadership convention to become PC leader on the promise that he would not merge with the Reform/Alliance, would review Canada's participation in NAFTA, and a host of other internal party cleansing rituals. Of course, MacKay was not to live up to his agreement, leaving us in the mess we have now.

So, go car 29! The disastrously ignorant hopes of a party [and all its deluded supporters] unwilling to really deal with climate change are riding on your tailpipe, like Slim Pickens from Dr. Strangelove! But in the end, as our climate chokes our symbiotic relationship with our ecology, rest well that you play fair...even if your party doesn't.

Conservative Party Supports Grand Prix of Trois-Rivières

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 19, 2007

TROIS-RIVIÈRES – Today, Conservative Party Members of Parliament unveiled the Conservative Party NASCAR car at the Grand Prix of Trois Rivières.

The partnership between the Conservative Party of Canada and Whitlock Motor Sports includes the Conservative Party of Canada logo being placed on the hood and front side panels of car number 29 in the Canadian Tire NASCAR Series.

“This is a unique opportunity for the Conservative Party to reach out to Canadians,” said Conservative Party Member of Parliament Christian Paradis. “The Conservative Party supports Canadians that work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules and those are the same Canadians that watch sports like NASCAR.”

“I am proud to be part of this partnership,” said Whitlock Motor Sports owner, Dave Whitlock. “It is great to see the Conservative Party support an entry into a series that is growing in popularity in Canada.”

The partnership included three Canadian Tire NASCAR Series races in Bowmanville, Ontario, Edmonton, Alberta and Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.

"Progress", Redux

Before I post my larger review of it, George Monbiot's new book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning has a poignant line about our sense of progress:

"We have come to believe we can do anything. We can do anything....Progress now depends upon the exercise of fewer opportunities." [p. 188]

If progress is an ever-improving standard of living, then faster double-decker jets, SUVs [or FU-V's], the mere existence of cruise ships, and 5000 square foot homes are just plain titillating. But if our recent centuries' industrial progress is destroying our environment, air, biodiversity and climate, we'd be fools to continue on as we are. If our relationship with ecology is going to suffer, we should stop doing things that will impede our survival.

Thus, progress means voluntarily embracing fewer freedoms if those freedoms are killing us. It's a no-brainer.

As one put it, "progress isn't always inevitable":

Click Me:

Psst, Wanna Buy a BC River?

September 30, 2007 is British Columbia Rivers Day!

This is a time to celebrate the role BC rivers has played in the history of our province, from before Europeans came [though we don't really seem to actually care too much about that] until today: British imperialism, economics, recreation, [ecology, yes], etc.

Wouldn't it be great in celebrating BC's rivers that you had the opportunity to, I don't know, buy the water rights in perpetuity for up to $10,000?

If that sounds like a nice way to spend $10k for the chance to make your own electricity plant, you know how to spot a bargain! Well, the government, anyway, sure knows how to offer a bargain...everyone's water at fire sale prices. Then you too can contribute to rolling brownouts, regional blackouts and price gouging just like the fatcats!

Green tags represent many of the 62 current water licenses for power generation or storage. Yell tags represent many of the 350+ pending applications. Red lines indicate parks.

Hurry! The offer doesn't last forever! Once BC rivers have all been bought up, there literally will be none left for you to snatch up. Get on it!

And if you aren't so much in favour of selling our water rights for any price, let alone less than $10,000, they it's time to get involved in stopping the continued privatization of the commons: Citizens for Public Power is a good place to start.

Gordon Campbell's Greedy, Sticky Fingers in Riverview and Tsawwassen

On Friday, July 27, 2007, Rich Coleman set his status on his Facebook page as "thinking big about Riverview." Once a mental health facility, it closed down in the 1990s as the model for mental health administration changed.

But now, Coleman, Minister of Forests and Range and a-ha! Minister Responsible for Housing, sees great things for the vast under-[market]-utilized tract of land: condos!

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, not one to embrace humility, consensus, community-building or progressive social change, has embraced the province's decision to develop Riverview. And why not. Why bother with pesky social housing in Vancouver itself. Why bother with dealing with social decay, homelessness, abject poverty and drug addiction by accommodating people actually in our city when the province is thinking of sucking land out of decades of imprisonment at Riverview for market housing...oh yes, let's send the ne'er-do-wells out there. NIMBY institutionalized!

Why bother developing the land solely for mental health and social needs when you can plunk some market housing there. After all, people live on the former BC Penitentiary site.

Coleman mentally meanders about like this: "We should blend in some social housing and seniors housing for folks [folks=the kind of people George w.Caesar talks to/about] who need it, and also some types of supportive housing for families and for seniors and the health side [and the health side? this is now in the running for political vagueness sound bite of the month] and then you have a lot of land there that may be allowed to where you could maybe do some market housing would help pay for those facilities on behalf of taxpayers, I think it's something that we'd have to look at." [my emphasis]

Absolutely, Mr. I-Want-To-Defeat-Carole-Taylor-As-Next-BC-Premier, we kinda think that maybe there's land there so maybe kinda we could I dunno, sell it?...and make some cash to pay for, you know, all the cost and stuff for taking care of like old people and the mentally and socially challenged...yeah.

God only knows that taxes are an evil burden, even to pay for, hmmm, "supportive housing for families and for seniors and the health side" because the taxpayer wants value for their money. Value in the form of massive tax cuts so we don't to pay for them. Shudder.

But not to be outdone by the Riverview condo fire sale, we also have the new treaty between the province and the Tsawwassen First Nation. Sure, there are many points on the political continuum of First Nations relations with this "Canada" thing and while the Tsawwassen First Nation will certainly gain from the deal in some tangible ways, many see it as a sell-out doing dirty deals with occupiers in many other ways.

Despite whatever spin whoever wants to put on the treaty, a potent template for urban treaty negotiations, there are several facts here that make Gordon Campbell et al grin. Land will be removed from the socialist Agricultural Land Reserve. That land will be paved so containers coming in and out of DeltaPort can rest on their long Pacific Rim journey inside BC's great golden Gateway Plan of fossil fuel worship that includes twinning the Port Mann Bridge. Instead of just pulling land out of the ALR despite legislative processes, it is certainly less politically ugly for the province to sign a treaty and co-opt one of so many generationally oppressed First Nations to get the land out of the ALR for container storage.

In all, it has been a good week for the BC Liberals neoliberal land reform program.

I see it as a bad week for mental health programs, socially progressive housing, government as service provider for the needy and disenfranchised, social and economic justice, sound ecological stewardship, respect for aboriginal title, and universality and equality in society.

Or maybe I should just stop complaining, invest in a container shipping firm and buy a river view condo in Coquitlam.

The Nexus Between Garbage Media and Climate Change

Rupert Murdoch, a ghoul of corporate concentrated media ownership, is appearing to be moved by criticisms that Fox Network is irrational and damaging to society, particularly on their flat earth approach to global warming opposition.

Brave New World Films has produced a 2.5 minute piece [above] in their ongoing campaign against the rationality-challenged, sensationalist Fox Network.

It is combined with a campaign to encourage green-positioned Home Depot to stop advertising with Fox. More information is at Brave New World Films' Fox Attacks site.

And if you have never seen the movie Network, or if it has been more than a few years, you truly owe it to yourself to see how this 1976 film predicted the irrational soup of media today that currently shackles the role of an intelligent, free press in a representative democracy.

Chevy, the Vanguard of Climate Change Activism!

I'm getting quite excited about Live Earth coming up on 7.7.07 next Saturday. I'm having a day-long open house house party. I'm pumping the pledge and I'm always encouraging people to go car free.

The Live Earth website is full of important information, but the MSN portal for Live Earth is a serious bother.

Chevy is the key sponsor of the online coverage. It's much like how Translink buses sell car advertising in and on its buses and trains. Irony? I think not.

Hyper consumerism...cars...greenhouse gas emission...I must be missing something here.

Canada Races to the Bottom with Pesticides

The Four Horsemen of Structural Adjustment in the global neoliberal world of 21st century corporate neofeudalism are free trade, free capital flows, and government deregulation and privatization. They are the most insidious elements of the pathetic and discredited Washington Consensus development model: neoliberal toadie and current w.Caesar Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has declared that neoliberalism has not reduced poverty in our hemisphere. Despite this, neoliberalism marches on, and not just in destroying lives in the majority world.

But that doesn't stop minority world countries like Canada from seeking harmonization with its master, the US. Our government regulations on pesticide limits are "too high" because they are higher than someone else's.

Government regulation is bad. If some state has lower regulations, we should all meet their level. Ideally, no regulation is best. Let the market god take care of us all. I sprinkle DDT and Thalidomide on my Mini Wheats[tm] each morning.

But below we read of the necessity of lowering our regulations because that's an inherent good. So much for the race to the bottom being just majority world nations wooing global capital with lower wages and environmental standards, and better union busting. Now we've joined the race.

By the way, a "trade irritant" is an excuse in neoliberal-land for one nation to spank another because the other isn't being as free a trader.

Canada boosts pesticide limit
More residue to be allowed on fruit, vegetables to match U.S. levels; current strict rules pose a 'trade irritant'

Kelly Patterson
CanWest News Service

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canada is set to raise its limits on pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables for hundreds of products.

The move is part of an effort to harmonize Canadian pesticide rules with those of the United States, which allows higher residue levels for 40 per cent of the pesticides it regulates.

Differences in residue limits, which apply both to domestic and imported food, pose a potential "trade irritant," said Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules.

However, Canada will only raise its limits "where this poses no risks," he stressed.

U.S. pesticide residue limits are often higher because their warmer climate means they are plagued by more pests, Aucoin said.

Canadian caps are higher in only 10 per cent of cases, he explained, adding these may be lowered under the harmonization plan. Aucoin said Canada won't be raising its limits for all of the cases where its rules are stricter, but "will likely be asked to raise them" for cases now being identified as priorities by growers.

The agency is reviewing its limits on a case-by-case basis, he said.

But Canada should never lower its standards in the name of harmonization, said David Boyd, an environmental lawyer and author of a 2006 study of international pesticide regulations.

"We should look to equal or surpass the best in the world, not only measure ourselves against the U.S.," where regulations are weaker than in jurisdictions such as the European Union, he said.

Canadian regulators and their U.S. counterparts have been working to harmonize their pesticide regulations since 1996, as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Now the effort is being fast-tracked as an initiative under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a wide-ranging plan to streamline regulatory and security protocols across North America.

The SPP's 2006 report identified stricter residue limits as "barriers to trade."

Boyd's report, published by the B.C.-based David Suzuki Foundation, raised concerns about the levels of pesticide residue allowed both in the U.S. and Canada.

Comparing 40 U.S. limits with those set by Canada, the European Union, Australia and the World Health Organization, he found the U.S. had the weakest rules for more than half of the pesticide uses studied.

In some cases the differences were dramatic: The U.S. allows 50 times more vinclozolin on cherries as the E.U., and 100 times as much lindane on pineapples.

Canada fared no better: For permethrin on leaf lettuce and spinach, the Canadian and U.S. limit was 400 times higher than in Europe, and the Canadian cap on methoxychlor was 1,400 times the European limit.

Both countries also allow pesticides that have been banned not only in Europe but also in some developing countries, Boyd noted.

Methamidophos, for example, is permitted in Canada but banned in Indonesia and other developing nations, he found.

The pesticide is now being re-evaluated in Canada.

Aucoin said residue limits are set according to exacting standards in Canada, adding that differences in ecosystems and patterns of use can account for the variation from country to country.

Raising the limits "will not change the amount of pesticides coming into the country," he said, noting the residue levels on imported produce are usually well below even the Canadian limits.

"The trend in both Canada and the U.S. is to use less, not more," he said, explaining the high cost of bug-killers has prompted farmers to cut back.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which monitors residue levels, has found "a relatively small number of violations" of Canada's maximum levels in recent years, he said.

But Boyd's study also raises questions about Canada's monitoring system.

He noted the federal food inspection agency found residues in only 10 per cent of the produce it tested in 2004-05. In the same period, U.S. regulators found residues in 76 per cent of the fresh fruit and vegetables they tested.

British officials found pesticides in 40 per cent of their produce in 2006.

In the cases of Canada and the U.S., less than one per cent of the residues exceeded the legal limits.

Time to get off our fat asses, folks.

I know this will scare people, but it's time to talk about the truth that Al Gore is only softly, not-too-inconveniently peddling. Peak oil along with global warming and their combined consequences mean radical changes to our alleged birthright. And I'm quite relieved to hear Kunstler talking about these things; I've been discussing many of them for a few years now to chimes of alarmism. I like the vindication. Consider these points:

1. Cars are not part of the solution.
2. We have to produce food differently, locally.
3. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature.
4. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient.
5. We have to transform retail trade. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff.
6. We will have to make things again. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.
7. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls.
8. The next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable.
9. We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring."
10. Enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you.

He ends with this bit of juice: "The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances."

Time to get off our fat asses, folks.

Canadians: Far More Than Global Warming Victims

"A much anticipated and some say definitive report on global warming is due to come out of Paris tomorrow. What could this mean for our country, our province, our future?"

This is what I heard tonight, February 1, 2007, on CTV promoting the 600pm news on February 2nd. They are refering to the UN's release of nearly conclusive evidence that humans are a significant source of global warming.

"Some say" suggests a large number of people, but "some" is less than "many". And "some" suggests less than half. "Most" would be more than half.

Since the science is supported by a virtual consensus of scientists not funded by the fossil fuel industries, I'd say that is more than "some".

What could this mean for our country, province and future? I think the whole problem with how most of "us" deal with "some" who think the report is definitive is that it's all about us. Bangladesh will likely largely go under water like much of many Oceania countries. Or would that be "some" of Bangladesh...

The focus on us is the problem: Canadians, OECD-world folks, us inhabitants of the industrialized rich world, and the comprador rich of the majority world. We can afford to move somewhere if our bioregion changes too much. Most people [not some] will be victims of global warming without the means to easily find a healthier climate.

And since "we" are by far more responsible for global warming than the majority world, I get a little tired of "us" talking about how this all may affect "us." it's time to wake up to the rest of the world and see how we're abusing it all. Then we need to admit [to ourselves and the rest of the world] our complicity and guilt and scrub the whole Gateway Program...just as a start. If we think we really need to twin the Port Mann Bridge for more auto traffic, our worship of personal liberties is becoming homocidal. Getting rid of your car will help too. It's going to take far more than just putting on a sweater, Mr. Gore.

And in watching the news since the Paris release, watching the person-on-the-street interviews, we have a long way to go. My favorite idea to help the environment was that someone said they recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycle is the residual LAST thing to do after we reduce our consumption [especially resource hogs in the industrialized world like us] and reuse far more than we do. And when I was writing about it being in our own best interest to not embrace a drastic reduction in standard of living to make up for our [the industriazlied world] great responsibility for global warming, to avoid a significant critique of our own system, we say that we recycle.

How completely inadequate.

The truth is not inconvenient for us. It is utterly damning and when CTV news continues to say "some" think this is a definitive report, we have still a long way to go.

The Thing about Deniers: Holocaust and Global Warming

My daughter, who is a toddler and loves to dance, is addicted to the Weather Channel, particularly the local forecast because the music they play is fantastic to dance to. So while we do not quite have the TV on as wallpaper, often it's on for her to dance.

This morning I saw on that channel yet another chat with David Suzuki talking about global warming. This time he was talking about how the media does a poor job of covering global warming. He says that as a member of the media we always try to be balanced and provide both sides of a story. That can be a problem.

His view, the correct view [and I know the risk in saying that, but keep reading], is that humans are contributing to global warming. He talked about thousands of academic studies that support that the planet is on a warming trend and we are part of it. Never before in human history have we had the power to influence the planet's operation. And he talked about 980 recent studies that ALL agree that we are part of global warming. Further, many scientists who do not agree with the vast majority of those who recognize the truth of global warming are not climatologists and many of them are funded by fossil fuel industries, so they are possibly [or almost certainly] biased. I would add that many of the global warming deniers also have a stake in the status quo and don't want to give up our lifestyle that direly exploits and abuses the planet [and the 4 billion or so of the poorest serf humans we keep impoverished with our global political economic system].

George Monbiot's book Heat is considered to do a much better job than Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth in addressing far more than the ridiculously cosmetic solutions Gore argues for, in part I think because Gore falls into the category of being concerned, but not enough to recognize that Americans and the OECD world are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the sources of global warming so it is our responsibility to absorb a disproportionate amount of the lifestyle change to stop the problem. But Gore can't argue that because doing so means telling Americans and the rest of the OECD world that our birthright is based on economically enslaving billions of humans and critically wounding our planet.

But back to the deniers. In its attempts to be balanced the media [which also has a stake in the status quo and is funded/owned by global corporations that even though they aren't always in the fossil fuel sector depend on their products for the operation of the global feudal economy and their profit] spends far too much time presenting the skeptics' side. Just by sheer numbers, the vast majority of scientists are recognizing the truth, which is far more than inconvenient, so you would think the media would reflect this. Not so much. The deniers and the politicians and celebrities who base their arguments on them get a ridiculously large share of air time.

And then I remembered Dan's post about the Holocaust conference in Iran. If the media gave as much air time to the biased, often anti-Semitic, self-serving Holocaust deniers as they do global warming skeptics, the FCC and CRTC would not be able to answer all the phones or ever open their email ever again. The uproar would destroy media empires.

And when I said before that Suzuki's view is the correct one, I mean that with all the sincerity of someone who says that the Holocaust did exist while there are some who for self-serving motives argue that it is something else entirely.

I now have a new level of disdain for global warming deniers. I just lump them in with Holocaust deniers and act accordingly.