Monday, February 15, 2010

Lies of global warmists: Goldstein

Monday, February 15, 2010

Lies of global warmists: Goldstein
And why, unlike many of their media cheerleaders, I actually know what I'm talking about

By Lorrie Goldstein, Senior Associate Editor

Last Updated: 12th February 2010, 8:14pm



I also suggest that whenever Canada’s warmist media lamely defend increasingly discredited anthropogenic global warming orthodoxy, you should ask them — directly — how much they know about the subject.

Contrary to the smears of the “everything I needed to know about global warming I learned from Al Gore” crowd, I’ve never been paid a cent by the fossil fuel industry to write about climate change. Anyone who says I have is a liar.

Everything I’ve written has been as part of my normal duties as a Sun columnist.

No one from Quebecor, the Sun’s owners, has ever told me what to write. Anyone who says they have is a liar.

I began researching climate change in late 2006 for a couple of reasons.

First, a reader told me she’d heard Europe’s cap-and-trade market was forcing hospitals and universities to buy carbon credits, instead of hiring nurses and teachers, while energy companies were making huge profits. She wanted to know if this was true.

Second, I was curious about news reports Canada could theoretically comply with the Kyoto accord by buying billions of dollars of “hot air” emission credits from Russia. How could Russia, I wondered, possibly be “greener” than Canada?

I found out Europe’s cap-and-trade market had not only done what my reader said, it also wasn’t cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Russia, I learned, had billions of dollars of hot air credits not because of any environmental initiatives it took, but because its economy collapsed after the Berlin Wall fell in late 1989. That’s why Kyoto’s main drivers — the U.K. and European Union — retroactively chose 1990 as the base year for cutting emissions.

This meant they could credit to themselves the reduced emissions following the economic collapse of the Soviet Union post-1990, as Soviet satellites were absorbed by Europe. (There are fewer emissions in a recession because people buy fewer things and thus it takes less fossil fuel energy to make and transport them.)

Basically, Kyoto was an accounting trick that did nothing for the environment, aimed largely at hobbling the U.S. economy, and, in the process, ours as well. So I kept on researching.

Below I’ve listed the 23 books I’ve read on global warming, so far. The first 14 would pass muster with David Suzuki. Trust me. I’ve also spent many hours reading government and environmental reports. Not press releases — reports.

That’s why, unlike so many in the warmist media, I actually know what I’m talking about.

(1) The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.

(2) Heat, How to Stop the Planet from Burning by George Monbiot.

(3) Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm

(4) The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery

(5) The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock

(6) The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspan

(7) The Suicidal Planet by Mayer Hillman, Tina Fawcett and Sudir Chella Rajan

(8) Stupid to the Last Drop by William Marsden

(9) Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk

(10) Under a Green Sky by Peter Ward

(11) Stormy Weather by Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza

(12) Climate Cover-up by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore

(13) Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Mike Hulme

(14) Carbon Shift, edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon

(15) The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon

(16) Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer

(17) A Moment on the Earth by Greg Easterbrook

(18) Taken by Storm by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick

(19) The Emperor’s New Climate by Bruno Wiskel

(20) Climate of Extremes by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr.

(21, 22) Red Hot Lies and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism by Christopher C. Horner

(23) Green Hell by Stephen Milloy

Now reading: The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg

Up next: The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock

lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca

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