Another rant

A friend was goading me on Facebook. This is my reply to him, edited for a wider language:

Re: lying scientists - There are real people on all sides. Some of the scientists are jerks, and exaggerate, and that needs to be watched too. I won't pretend otherwise.

That said, the likes of Rex Murphy and Margaret Wente and Lorne Gunter are, in my mind, going well beyond the realm of good taste in their cynicism on climate change. We've already seen the first impacts of anthropogenic climate change, and we can't just shut our eyes when massive typhoons that are virtually unfamiliar are hitting Australia every three years, when Iqaluit spends the month of December at 21C above their average, when the lodgepole pine is receding from my new home and heading northward so that it can survive because those lousy beetles are destroying them because, even when I moan about the cold, it's no longer cold enough to kill the beetles... the balance of evidence shows that it's already here. They're wrong, and for knowingly spouting their falsehoods, they should be in front of a judge for lying in a public forum or whatever we call it in this country (and which was recently upheld, thankfully).

But you're right, I shouldn't worry about us Canadians, while the Chinese are gonna mess it up for all of us. Except they are getting pushed towards cleaning things up, because environmental destruction domestically is the greatest threat to the existence of the Communist Party. The scariest part is if, when we do get our act in gear, we'll be buying our things from China, because they'll have taken the lead on the green economy. What if their obstructive position is all a ruse for them to gain advantage, and when they say, you know, that climate change thing, it's kind of a big deal, we'll sign a serious treaty, and, oh, by the way, how much will you pay us for the technology that we've developed to avoid it?

Canadians are still, on average, four times more polluting than the average Chinese person when it comes to greenhouse gases, even without much of the coal they've got. So while I disagree with China's outward do-nothing position, there's the smallest bit of validity to it. Not much; they have to get going now because they emit more on average than the average person, and about 3 times what the planet is able to assimilate, but their long-term emission reduction commitment on a percentage base should be less than ours (70% vs. 90%).

The science is there. The evidence is there. The threat is there. It's not the day to day slight temperature increases globally we should worry about, and I won't pretend we should. It's not the polar bears, either, for me. It's the extremes and what they'll do to humans, and a still increasing number of humans (luckily, that trend will soon end, and it's one of the places I'm positive about). I worry about the refugees from flooding in low-lying places like Bangladesh, Egypt, the Netherlands, the Mississippi Delta. From the forest fires just south of here, and in Australia, and California, and in the Mediterranean. I'm worried about food prices going up. Doesn't bother me, but when you're spending 60-70% of your income on food, and it goes up, you might just say "take off" to your tyrant of 30 years (Go Egypt!) only to realize that what would replace him won't be able to solve the problems immediately either. Though it'll likely be better than the tyrant.

Anyhow, I don't want to think too much about the problems either. I'd rather be one of the ones who are working on the solutions. I wouldn't have moved here if it wasn't to work on solutions. I guess while I'm cynical about the PETA types, and the corporate types, I'm generally not cynical about finding solutions. I think we can do it if we get the brightest brains thinking about it and working towards it, instead of wasting their time on useless pursuits.