A Polite Discourse with Professional Climate Alarmist David Suzuki
Guest post by Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute
Back in March, The Heartland Institute sent professional Canadian climate alarmist David Suzuki – formerly on the board of Canada’s notoriously left-wing David Suzuki Foundation – a copy of Rael Isaac’s excellent book, Roosters of the Apocalypse. Today, while rummaging through my over-filled inbox, I saw an envelope from this “esteemed scientist” that arrived two weeks ago. Even in the address he put down for Heartland’s world headquarters, Suzuki exposed his childish contempt for those who disagree with his faith-based climate views.
(See the envelope below)
Then there is the note Suzuki wrote on our cover letter for the book.
In case you couldn’t make that out, let me type it for you:
I am a scientist and I take great umbrage at being sent such a load of crap from a bullshit shill organization for the oil industry. You are the most anti-science group I can imagine.
David Suzuki.
Quite an imagination, considering. But Suzuki left off the Xs and Os. I’m crushed. At least I set him back $3.70 Canadian.
I guess David didn’t get the memo that we should tone down the rhetoric and try to get along. Of course he’s wrong about us, but defaming people who disagree is the only trick aging alarmists like him have left.
==============================================
WUWT Readers might recall this research effort by the same esteemed Canadian scientist:
More here.
I believe that it was during the controversy over launch of Cassini-Huygens, with the plutonium powered RTG, that Suzuki and Kaku were forever impeached. Let them join Mann and Bellesisles in obscurity.
Quite a reasoned, scientific response. I’m sure it is being given all the consideration it is due.
Whatever, still loved him in The Karate Kid.
I can see Suzuki’s postal address quite clearly–you might like to blur that out.
Amazing how history cycles. The events change but the participants do not.
I can imagine the Suzuki’s of the world dressed in Red cardinals cloaks expressing outrage that people did not believe the world was flat or Earth revolved around the sun.
HOW DARE YOU QUESTION DOGMA??
Those Cardinals too were amongst the best educated beings of their time. For what?? Idiocy??
Forgive him and his ilk, they are a demographic phenomena that has poison their chosen field.
regards
When I first read it I thought it said…Iam a socialist…
Did he read the book???
Gee! A really nice personal letter from David Suzuki with an autograph at the bottom. That autograph might be as valuable as a James R. Hoffa one some day. And sent via snail mail to boot.
I was just yesterday treated to very same kind of intellectual dishonesty. Perfect timing by suds-sucker. (should I have [snip]ped that last bit?)
Funny, I read “I am a Socialist” when I first scanned the photo above. Hilarious! I am reminded of 20 years ago when I was trying to make a right turn from Arbutus to West 4th Ave. in Vancouver, on a red light, when a very irate and potty-mouthed Suzuki took umbrage that I would interrupt his jay-walking. Holy [snip] he can spew some good old stroll-speak.
Hang on, Suzuki may be a scientist but he’s no climate scientist just another biologist who’s jumped on the big green eco slush funded bandwagon to push his own whacky agenda.
We really should start marking up the difference between climate scientists, environmentalists and fruit cakes…
I’m glad you typed that out. I thought it said “I am a socialist”.
I ride a Honda. Need I say more 🙂
I am a scientist and I take great umbrage with people like Suzuki who are neither open minded nor a critical thinker and therefore lack two requirements of being a scientists.
Actually, reminds me of a letter written by a scientist to Alfred Wegener. It went something along the lines that his theory of continental drift was a complete load of nonsense. Funny how history repeats.
Don’t count him or his fellow travelers out. Politicians – especially lefty politicians – far outnumber true scientists and fact-observation-and-logic-based thinkers, and they have plenty of other people’s (taxpayers’) money to fund their movements and activities (while the overwhelming majority of people are somnambulant).
Beesaman~ Fruit(fly) cakes…
What a coincidence. My postman rides a Suzuki.
climate scientists, environmentalists and fruit cakes…
1. hypochondriacs with absolutely zero idea about anything except what their owners tell them.
2. people who actually care about the environment
3. an even loopier extreme version of 1, who actually believe what their owners tell them.
Suzuki fits in 3, and hence in 1,
.
.
.but certainly NOT in 2.
BTW: Was that message penned in ink or bile?
What I would give to have that framed on my wall…
David Suzuki smoked too much dope in the 70s. He is the alarmist’s alarmist. Mr Maggot.
I hope you’re planning on adding that endorsement to the back cover of the book. Its sales would skyrocket.
That’s hilarious… Will it make the Friday Funny’s?
Wow! This guy must really be something. Please keep him in the ice box, as we have a significant number of similar minded ones down here in the states already.
LOL. “At least I set him back $3.70 Canadian.” Classy stuff Jim. I’m glad you did that.The cruelest cut of all, having a laugh at them. Saving the world is such a grim business, they’ve no time for a sense of humour.
Pointman
Come clean
Lance ArmstrongAl GorePhil JonesMichael MannDavid Suzuki***
Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says:
November 9, 2012 at 3:58 am
Funny, I read “I am a Socialist” when I first scanned the photo above.
****
Me too. He was prb’ly channeling the word socialist.
“rikstarling says: November 9, 2012 at 3:46 am
I can see Suzuki’s postal address quite clearly–you might like to blur that out.”
Strange, I can see Heartland’s address that someone has tried to blur. Looks like blurring is out of favour lately.
This behavior is so typical and predictable. When I started following this issue, I was appalled by such behavior of supposedly esteemed learned men. Nothing that has happened in the last 3 years has convinced me they will ever change.
Note: the address is for the “David Suzuki Foundation” This is interesting because he “officially” has no affiliation with the Foundation (although his wife is the Chair and Daughter the CEO) because it is a registered Charity and as such is prohibited from acting as a lobbyist. He is worried that he will need to pay taxes on donations (which he should – it is a lobby organization like the WWF) and is afraid of an audit by canada revenue.
Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist specializing in fruit flies (PhD Zoology, University of Chicago, 1961).
I will be sure to seek his expert opinion next time I need guidance on insect breeding.
On matters of global climate, probably not.
“I am a scientist and I take great umbrage at being sent such a load of crap from a bullshit shill organization for the oil industry. You are the most anti-science group I can imagine.
David Suzuki.”
—
Mr Suzuki is an idiot and obviously does not know how the world economy, climate and politics really works. Try educating yourself, Mr Suzuki, before making such stubid comments in the future. For example, the AGW scam was promoted and subsequent European Emissions Trading Scheme set up by the marketers and PR advisers at BP in an attempt to get ahead of the “green” lobby and make themselves look good. Read all about it in “Spills and Spin” by Tom Bergin.
You should take great honour in the fact that the fruit-fly guy (his actual area of study) blew up on you, you have great company. Like all the parents of school children in Canada he stated should go to jail for what their generation had done to mother-gaia (stated to schoolchildren in an assembly (elementary aged kids if I recall correctly)).
The good doctor jumped the shark decades ago.
Because his handwriting isn’t very clear I think you didn’t quite get the transcription right:
“I am a socialist” not [scientist]
And “skill organization” not [shill]
🙂
rikstarling says-
“I can see Suzuki’s postal address quite clearly–you might like to blur that out.”
I just typed “david suzuki vancouver address” into Google, and the full address came up. It looks like it is his foundation’s address. I see no reason to blur it out.
An interesting address for his foundation
http://newcity.ca/Pages/capers_building.html
Ha! I thought it said socialist too.
This is an example of Suzuki’s competence in science (chemistry, physics and climate). The 2 paragraphs below are a column he wrote for the Vancouver Sun.
“It has been known since the last century that carbon-bearing compounds are transparent to sunlight but opaque to infra-red. In other words, sunlight passes through carbon-containing air whereas infra-red heat rays tend to be reflected by the carbon.
We are familiar with this effect in a car that has sat in the sun. The interior becomes hot because the carbon in the glass keeps the heat in.”
Suzuki made these 5 elemental scientific errors, in two short paragraphs.
1. Carbon in glass? Maybe in the front windshield, sandwiched between 2 sheets of glass. As glass is mostly opaque to infrared (IR), its moot.
2. Carbon compounds may or may not trap heat. Polyethylene, for example, is transparent to IR.
3. Heat in the car is from modifying convection, not radiation. Decreased convection = increased radiation. Polyethylene vs glass in greenhouses shows no difference in heat retention, in spite of the different IR properties of the two barriers. The heat retention is from preventing convection.
4. Glass is mostly opaque to IR, not the supposed carbon in it. Suzuki assumes it’s not opaque, by needing the “carbon” in it to stop IR.
5. Suzuki says carbon bearing compounds REFLECT IR. Some carbons compounds allow IR through. The ones that don’t, ABSORB IR photons, then re-emit photons. They don’t reflect.
rikstarling says:
November 9, 2012 at 3:46 am
I can see Suzuki’s postal address quite clearly–you might like to blur that out.
———————–
That address is published on “fanmail.biz”
Kaku was impeached when he became a media clown (that’s not the term I actually use, but you can’t print it here.) Every scientist and physician who appears regularly on TV should have their credentials stripped. You cannot be an entertainer/expert-so-I-can-get-my-face-on-TV and still be a scientist. They are mutually exclusive (for Suzuki, Kako and other scientists, that means these two things cannot exist in the same person). You shred your credibility and ethics as a scientist when you become an entertainer. Then you’re just another lying face on the big flat screen.
This Suzuki stating that corporations were “not interested” in contributing to his Foundation.
When one looks at the tax records that year though, one sees contributions from many large companies; including energy and pipeline companies.
Suzuki meets Heartland. Wolf, meet shark.
I did a search on my phones map app “Suzuki foundation Vancouver”
And it found the location and other information as follows:
“David Suzuki Foundation
219-2211 W 4th, Vancouver, BC, V5Y
(604) 732-4228”
So the address is not Suzuki’s home, and the information displayed is easily publicly available.
beesaman says:
November 9, 2012 at 4:00 am
There is a difference?
Wait, did Suzuki use air mail to send that back? Oh the Carbon Footprint!
But you can bet that Suzuki drives a car, uses electricity, heats his home, eats food, just like the people that he calls ‘deniers’. He wants others to sacrifice, but not him.
When was David last a working scientist? Does he publish peer review anymore? Does he lead a science institute? Does he serve as an editor or peer reviewer of science work?
Does he teach in an academic setting anymore? How long ago?
reading wiki’s bio sketch, he is a scientist only in the sense that a retired football player working as announcer is still an athlete.
“Suzuki received his BA in Biology from Amherst College of Massachusetts in 1958, and his Ph.D in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961.
Early in his research career he studied genetics, using the popular model organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). To be able to use his initials in naming any new genes he found, he studied dominant temperature-sensitive phenotypes (DTS). (As he jokingly noted at a lecture at Johns Hopkins University, the only alternative was “damn tough skin”.) He was a professor in the genetics department (stated in his book Genethics: The Ethics of Engineering Life, 1988) at the University of British Columbia for almost forty years (from 1963 until his retirement in 2001), and has since been professor emeritus at a university research institute.[3]”
From Suzuki’s scientific response, I have my doubts about his science.
this article goes over much the same ground about Suzuki.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/16/david-suzuki-insults-but-wont-debate/#comment-721521
beesaman,
Sadly the Venn diagram of those three sets has quite a bit of overlap.
And being a scientists makes you smarter than other people how …?
Why don’t you return it as ‘Not known at this address’?
🙂
Unfortunately, as we can see from the recent U.S. election, defaming your opponent is a trick that works more often than not. It’s a powerful tool for deceiving those who can’t or won’t make the effort to educate themselves on the issues or don’t have minimal common sense enough to dismiss the manipulation. The best recourse is mockery as is done so well here at WUWT. Nice touch by Jim Lakely to refund Suzuki’s postage — in Canadian currency. Heh.
I think it’s great he can still express himself so eloquently…………/sarc
Good thing Saint Suzuki didn’t address the letter to “One North WHACKO Drive” or it may have ended up in the dead letter office. ;->
Saint Suzuki has a long, documented history of potty-mouthed and intollerant responses to any criticisms of his dogma:
http://youtu.be/ZQE2XiDxN5U
Surprised that epistle didn’t get stamped “UNDELIVERABLE. RETURN TO SENDER“
The really sad thing is lots of people in Canada actually believe the crap Suzuki spouts. He gets plenty of airtime on Canada’s national television network and is considered a media darling by the rest of the networks up here. Whenever I see the man, which isn’t often because I avoid watching or listening to mainstream media propaganda, I get nauseous. Demagoguery has no place in science. And I wish Canadians would learn to think for themselves.
If I asked nicely do you think he’d send me a mailing list of all the oil companies that might pay me money to express my low opinion of the scientific rigor of IPCC models predicting cAGW?
It’s just that right now I’m doing it for free and, like many other people, I could provide a good home for quite a lot of money.
The success of Obama shows that Suzuki’s type of behaviour will likely continue to succeed. As strange as it is, it has to be accepted.
Hey David, “Statements you can’t back up with with either solid facts or solid reasoning will at best be ignored and at worst poked fun at in ways not many people would describe as nice.”
Besides, grow up!
Seriously though, are “we” actually expected to have any type of an adult, rational, intelligent discourse with people like that?
I wonder if this paper was ‘peer-reviewed’…..hmmm
“November 9, 2012 at 4:53 am
Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist specializing in fruit flies (PhD Zoology, University of Chicago, 1961).
I will be sure to seek his expert opinion next time I need guidance on insect breeding.
On matters of global climate, probably not.”
Correct. Suziki hasn’t been a scientist since his days with Drosophila. He surrendered science to become a media presenter, decades ago. All he is now, is a tax burden, through his advocacy foundations and the CBC.
I’ve seen his rampant dishonesty up-close and first hand: About 20 years ago I saw him taping a bit at my local Toronto transit bus station. When I watched the show in which the bit appeared, it was about gridlock and how terrible pollution is (duh). Now for the context: at the time, the Toronto Transit Commission (i.e., the local public transit system) was renovating one of its transit stops; a move that included the destruction of a park and community garden, with the resultant traffic chaos. But, hey, tape some nasty private cars honking, and you they say, flip the narrative…
Some one should draw Revenue Canada’s attention to this evidence that he is still conducting his activists activities from and using the resources of his foundation. Clearly his “resignation” was a scam to mislead the tax agency and a fraud to evade the loss of charitable tax status. A conviction for tax evasion was be a great final laugh on him for his rant.
What is a private letter doing on a public blog?
You have Gore and the Oblame-Bush,we have Suzuki.Sigh.Oh.And he owns three houses,which all use evil oil/gas for heating.Goggle map has them.The fruit fly “DR”.And yes,he is a socialist.
Surprised the Suzuki and Mann see climate skeptics in the pay of big oil. Big oil stands to benefit from CO2 policy. It is coal that stands to lose.
Because coal has higher CO2 per unit of energy as compared to oil and gas, it is coal that stands to lose. Since most countries have more coal than anything else, CO2 policy will drive up the price of oil and gas around the world.
As a bonus, CO2 sequestering means that oil companies will now get paid to pump CO2 into the ground. As things are now, oil companies have to pay to pump CO2 into the ground, which is how they extract oil from low producing wells.
The big winners over the next 4 years will be the oil companies. Any increased taxes on CO2 they will simply pass along to the consumers in the form of higher prices. It is the reduced demand for coal that will drive up the demand for oil and gas, and drive up oil companies profits.
Even though the US has hundreds of years of coal reserves, CO2 policy will force US companies to export coal to China, where it will be used to produce low cost goods and services, driving the US further and further into debt. So ends the worlds last super power.
Actually I don’t think he is a scientist, is he? He’s got an advanced degree and he was a geneticist way way back when. But does he hold any current scientific credentials? When is the last time he held an actual position as a scientist or even a University professor? Does he hold any memberships or affiliations with any actual scientific organization? When’s the last time he actually published anything or did any kind of a scientific study? The man has been an environmental activist and a television host and voice over artist for decades (The Nature of Things). he hasn’t done any real science in decades. His claiming to be a scientist is about as valid as Mann claiming to be a Nobel Laureate. We ought to call him on that.
Sean says:
November 9, 2012 at 6:36 am
Some one should draw Revenue Canada’s attention to this evidence that he is still conducting his activists activities from and using the resources of his foundation.
==========
Looking at the address on the envelope above, it shows #219-2211 w 4th avenue. This is not Suzuki’s home address. He has waterfront property in Vancouver, about 6 blocks from the above address.
However, a quick search shows this:
David Suzuki Foundation
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about/contact/
Our offices. Vancouver (Head Office).
219 – 2211 West 4th Avenue Vancouver, BC V6K 4S2
It would appear that the letter originates from “David Suzuki Foundation”.
David “We are all fruit flies and maggots” Suzuki. What a guy! The CBC still loves him.
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/arts-entertainment/media/david-suzuki-scientist-activist-broadcaster-1/david-suzuki-with-his-students-we-are-al-fruit-flies.html
Where’s his dignity?
Suzuki is the ‘scientist’ who gave the most shrill and unscientific assessment of Tropical Depression Sandy I saw. It was simply uninformed hype, designed to scare. If anyone can find it, it is worth posting (it was a CNN interview).
Real scientists should be very concerned that Suziki is an embarrasement to science, and diluting the ‘brand image’.
“Socialist” clearly makes more sense than “scientist”, which is the way I first read it as well.
The concepts of: “throwing toys out of the cot” and “little minds stamping little feet” come to mind.
Anyhow, this from Canada’s Financial Post on April 19, 2012.
The largest project of the Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada and their U.S. funders, has been the creation of the Great Bear Rainforest, a 21 million hectare “no trade zone” on the north coast of B.C. It’s the size of Switzerland. Now, in the name of protecting the kermode bear, the so-called Great Spirit Bear, environmentalists say that oil tanker traffic must be banned on the entire north coast of B.C. No tankers means no oil exports to Asia and that the U.S. gets to keep its virtual monopoly on Canadian oil.
I guess it all makes perfect sense if you are a ‘climate scientist’ and want to re-enact the War of 1812.
Perhaps, a little curious and far from me to suggest anything the slightest bit dodgy about this, Tides Canada does not list the Suzuki Foundation amongst its donors:
http://tidescanada.org/about/program/
…but Heartland is an oil-funded ideological organisation that denies science (not just climate science remember) when it threatens the profit-margins of their benefactors. Is there anything factually inaccurate in this statement.
They also paid the owner of this blog.
I guess in this alternative universe this can all be turned into a Friday funny. Hilarious.
Are the Met Office still “spinning” their data Antony?
I heard Suzuki on the radio a few weeks ago and he sounds old and crotchety. I’m surprised the CBC hasn’t found a suitable replacement for him, he needs to be retired. He is still Canada’s preeminent popular scientist. Though he is not a politician he is considered Canada’s version of Al Gore regarding environmental activism, and many Canadians still hang on his every word. As long as the CBC continues to give him a voice, Canadians will follow him like sheep. Its embarrassing really.
He also has 26 honorary doctorates. Not sure what that says about the guy, or about the institutions that bestowed them.
ScepticalTom: Are serious? Duke Energy “loaned” 2 million to the DNC and Duke made their money in oil and nuclear. So Obama is a puppet of the oil industry???? Oil companies build wind plants, so wind plants are part of the evil oil companies???? There really is no thought involved in what you write, is there? Check who gets oil money. Unless you are claiming that only the people who don’t like are not affected by oil money and everyone you like is not (a ludicrous, illogical claim at best) you are totally wrong.
I think some one needs to remind Dr. Suzuki that his science education and former profession may qualify him to be called scientist but he has been an activist journalist/entertainer for a very long time now. If you are taking a social/political stand you loose the scientist label. The philosophy and methodology of science in incomparable with journalist/entertainment.
RE:“Suzuki received his BA in Biology from Amherst College of Massachusetts in 1958, and his Ph.D in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961.. . ”
And;
RE: “WUWT Readers might recall this research effort by the same esteemed Canadian scientist:”
You’re unlikely to find a more anti-American up here in the Great White North than The Profit Suzuki (that’s not a typo, RE: The Profit). You’re also unlikely to find another ‘scientist’ (w/PhD or otherwise) who apparently believes in Santa Claus.
But when you’re a believer I guess, you’re a believer . . .
What a foul mouthed and arrogant individual he is. I’m sure most true scientists will find his demonstrated tenets abhorrent. He truly is “a legend in his own mind”, if only he was capable of seeing himself as others do he would realize what a sad, pathetic, irrelevant and embittered figure he has become. I genuinely feel sorry for him, what does he see when he looks in the mirror? What are his last thoughts as he drifts into sleep each night?
That said his behaviuor does more to help expose the lies and spin behind alarmist propaganda than a lot of other things I can think of.
It’s long been a saw that Psychologists eventually succumb to their specialty, i.e. Psychologists who specialize in bipolar disorders become bipolar, etc. This is the first observation that this rule applies to other fields … 🙂 🙂 🙂
As soon as you hear one of these guys screeching about sustainability he means your wallet, your lifestyle, your comfort, not his.
Vintage clip of Guru Suzuki calling humans maggots. What else would a fruit fly beget?
Suzuki displays no curiosity on how his own perception of reality might be wrong. Therefore, he is not a scientist despite any claim to the contrary.
This may sound silly, but how do we know that is David Suzuki’s handwriting?
Does anybody have a sample?
Could be one of his DSF minions that scribbled out the reply to Jim Lakely.
Just playing the devil’s advocate… Although I have heard that David Suzuki can be a hothead.
Also, Donna Framboise and Vivian Krause have several articles about Suzuki worth checking out.
David Suzuki Says
“I am a scientist …”
Forget the rest of it. That’s your Friday Funny right there.
ScepticalTom says:
November 9, 2012 at 7:10 am
Adding an insult to the host of the blog in a no-content no-purpose and not-even-humorous rant serves only to waste time of which most of us need more of. It has also flagged the name of the writer, such that future posts under the same name will not be read. So, ScatologicalTom, may you ever after be cursed to face into the wind.
Vivian Krause
This is exactly what we need. Smart, articulate, attractive (yes, it is important for TV) young woman to argue the facts. At the moment, sorry chaps, but the current batch of skeptics on telly just aren’t as telegenic.
klem says:
November 9, 2012 at 7:45 am
“He also has 26 honorary doctorates. Not sure what that says about the guy, or about the institutions that bestowed them.”
About the institutions — it says the graduation ceremony planners were hoping for a commencement speaker who would generate buzz, attract attention of students and parents (aka donors), and promote the school. Politicians, comics, and fools fill this need. The honorary doctorate cost the institutions pennies – a small investment from which a massive positive multiplier effect is assumed.
Concerning the Santa Claus thing. That’s just silly, everyone knows (at least all the democrats) that Santa lives at the White House.
This is hysterical.
Jim “Climate Scientists Are Just Like the Unabomber” Lakely thinks someone else’s rhetoric–in private correspndence, no less–is over the top?
Heartland just gets funnier and funnier.
He has a multimillion dollar house in exclusive Kitsilano, a compound on Quadra Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands and a house in northern BC.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/011990.html
He supposedly resigned to avoid Revenue Canada audits against lobbying in a charity:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/14/david-suzuki-resigns-to-save-foundation-from-bully-charitable-status-threats/
He did a national tour a couple of years ago – in a diesel bus. A couple of weeks ago in his propaganda hour on CBC he explained how the earth was gonna flip on its access because of the loss of “magnetic particles”.
His foundation – which may not do lobbying is significantly funded by US “foundations” http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/28-usa-grants-to-dsf-for-more-than-100-thousand.html
And when John Oakley interviewed him on CFRB a few years ago he stated that he received no funds from oil companies. Oakley started reading out a list and Suzuki yelled at him and walked out.
Last but not least – who is the Suzuki Foundations PR firm? Hoggan Communications who produces Desmog Blog. Think any of the Foundation $ goes to produce this?
Bernd Felsche says:
November 9, 2012 at 4:17 am
BTW: Was that message penned in ink or bile?
Neither, crayon
Jeremy says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:13 am
“Suzuki displays no curiosity on how his own perception of reality might be wrong. Therefore, he is not a scientist despite any claim to the contrary.”
That Suzuki didn’t merely discard the book but took the time to write a snarky, childish reply and pay return postage “out of his own pocket” without public fanfare shows that he is no mere rent-seeker. This is personal. I detect a clear case of “Battered Worldview Syndrome”. He and climate/envirozombies like him are truly madly deeply emotionally codependent with their worldview. Even when it beats them mercilessly they keep crawling back.
Watts isn’t paid for his blogging. A Heartland document describes a request he made last year for funding for a different, value-neutral project:
Watts later reported on the progress of this project:
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/07/an-update-on-my-climate-reference-network-visualization-project/
rikstarling says:
November 9, 2012 at 3:46 am
The address is that of the DS foundation…not far from…Arbutus and W. 4th, Vancouver.
David Suzuki is still a scientist? I thought he’d abandoned fruit flies long ago for the arts. In any case, he is surely an accomplished BS artist.
He has also advises African leaders about the “evils” of GM foods and this “expert” opinion along with the Euro “blockade” on GMO has prevented the import of GM based food aid and seeds by all but three African countries and this has made their famines much worse. In other words his arrogance has contributed to hundreds of thousands of the poorest people on the planet suffering and dying unnecessarily but he shows no remorse or regret.
And like Al Gore he has gotten very wealthy on this and other green science boondoggles.
IMHO: he is.a despicable human being and an embarrassment to all Canadians.
Suzuki had the same sentiment to me about my homeland when I noted his upcoming first visit to Australia; “I am not looking forward to it…they’re are all nothing but a bunch of red-necked racists!”
His $10,000,000 Vancouver waterfront home ( he has another in Haida Gwai of recent earthquake fame and has/had another in Australia) is a 3 minute Prius ride from the building housing the Suzuki Foundation. This block long building was heavily promoted as one of Vancouver’s first “Green” developments as it used heat exchanger plumbing loops driven into the soil below the building. This ended up in the press as “drawing it’s heating from the earth’s molten core!” Al Gore engineering perhaps? The racket from the in-room ceiling compressors was a constant irritation.
You have to cut him some slack though. He is obsessed with finding a green solution to his cremation. Perhaps the solving the problem of the extra carbon footprint of the “several pounds of dissolved plastic we all carry around in our bodies” is distracting him.
Les Johnson, i cant believe Suzuki said that in public.
Im glad i don’t read the Vancouver Sun – obsessed as it is with “celebrities” and “Real Estate”- if I did I would have fallen off my chair laughing and I would now be nursing a concussion.
David Suzuki, what a moron and an embarrassment to science.
David Suzuki hasn’t done any science since his fruit fly research in the 60’s. By his own metrics as a geneticist he has no qualifications to comment on climate science. The CBC is not an institution of science !!
http://jr2020.blogspot.ca/2012/03/david-suzuki-funded-by-canadian.html
suzuki at his best. notice the source of his funding
What is utterly frustrating is his total grip on the CBC science desk. It has been this way since I was a kid. I think his work on fruit flies was great. But it is time to hang up the gloves on the climate debate. Let a younger and more informed generation take his place, CBC.
Where the heck did Suzuki get his education? If I didn’t know who authored that little note, I would assume that it was written by a young, high school dropout. I normally associate such language with ignorance–definitely not with science.
The address on the envelope and the note were written by different hands. The note though was written by a member of the ‘green ink brigade’, someone who suffers from the paranoid delusion that his enemies are organised.
“The expression is the more-or-less affectionate description given by journalists and politicians to the people who write them eccentric letters, often in block capitals and frequently underlined in multicoloured inks. For some reason I have never heard satisfactorily explained, the most obsessive of these correspondents seem to prefer green.”
Ian Aitkin
“The term refers to a particular kind of letter writer, who claims that he is the victim of some injustice, or who composes long and vehement complaints against a person or an organisation, or who believes that a numerical calculation based on the name of the Prime Minister shows he’s an agent of the devil, or who is sure that invisible rays are being beamed into his house by his next-door neighbour to cause him injury, or who puts forward a thsis which, if adopted, will lead inevitably to world peace.”
Michael Quinion
“There came in the post an eighty-five-page handwritten letter, written in green ball-point ink, from a gentleman in a mental hospital in Ottawa. He had read a report in a local newspaper that I had thought it possible that life exists on other planets; he wished to reassure me that I was entirely correct in this supposition, as he knew from his own personal knowledge.”
Carl Sagan
Incidentally, the use of green ink was once favoured by MI6. The first chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mansfield Cummings, established a tradition of signing documents with a C in green ink.
You know, the conservative author Mark Steyn once used a similarly offensive quote from the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia as a cover blurb for his book. You might want to conside the same approach.
Tony Hansen says:
November 9, 2012 at 3:50 am
When I first read it I thought it said…Iam a socialist…
_____________________________
That is how I read it too.
Lancifer says:
November 9, 2012 at 5:41 am
I’d say in a phase diagram, Suzuki exactly defines the triple point.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/19/vivian-krause-suzukis-funding/
http://drtimball.com/2012/david-suzuki-and-scientific-and-social-responsibility/
Matthew W says:
November 9, 2012 at 6:26 am
Seriously though, are “we” actually expected to have any type of an adult, rational, intelligent discourse with people like that?
_________________________________
No.
If you read between the lines David Suzuki and his buddies would much rather put us into “reeducation camps”
He is a picture of the real David Suzuki. Too bad the general public does not see him that way.
ferd berple says:
November 9, 2012 at 6:45 am
….Even though the US has hundreds of years of coal reserves, CO2 policy will force US companies to export coal to China, where it will be used to produce low cost goods and services, driving the US further and further into debt. So ends the worlds last super power.
____________________________
I would change that to so ends the last free super power.
It looks like Khrushchev was correct.
“Whether you like it our not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”
“Your children will live under communism.” Khrushchev said.
“On the contrary,” Secretary Benson replied, “My grandchildren will live in freedom as I hope that all people will.”
Khrushchev then retorted: “You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright; but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
(Ezra Taft Benson was Secretary of Agriculture under the Eisenhower Administration.)
Dear Doctur SocioZukee
Thank you for your scintillating expose into the mindset of a hick who thought after all these years, mankind hasn’t been able to check for a rise in gas-specific infrared light in the atmosphere.
Criminal posing scumbag.
Here’s the kicker…. and yet this is what I did not find a way to mention on today’s show. When a highly controversial study of contaminants in farmed salmon and another highly controversial study of sea lice were published in the prestigious journal SCIENCE, the editor in chief, Dr. Donald Kennedy, was a trustee of the Packard foundation. The current editor-in-chief, Dr. Bruce Alberts, is a trustee of the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
Below, here’s the grant for an “antifarming campaign” involving “science messages” and “earned media.” By the way, shortly after I raised concern about this grant for $560,000 from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, this grant and three other grants for $3.6 million were quietly re-written by the Moore Foundation.
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/2011/06/2nd-tv-interview-ezra-levant.html
The crux of the matter (as always) is vested interests.
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
Oh, but Suzuki has strongly endorsed IPCC’s AR5 WG1 Lead Author, Andrew Weaver’s candidacy as a deep Green Partisan in BC’s spring election. Such a noble guy, eh?!
Although if he had any sense, Suzuki would tell Weaver to step aside from one or t’other, since it doesn’t appear that the IPCC is likely to recognize this glaring conflict of interest which compromises the “objectivity” of their “gold standard” report.
New, improved “gold standard” IPCC: Business as (conflicted as) usual
Suzuki “going postal” isn’t news.
Wake me up when he goes pastel!
In case you’ve not seen David Suzuki in full alarmist doomsday rapture emotionalism in a two part interview on the CBC a few years back, and it is an epic rant by my, embarrassed to say, fellow Vancouverite rapture soothsayer. Quite the sght to behold.
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/12/17/david-suzuki-rants-epic-on-global-warming-and-copenhagen/
Shades of the Fly. Maybe Doctor Fruit Fly really was the inspiration of the SF tale of a mann mingling his genes with a common house fly.Cause he has sure turned out to be a buzzing irritant, that flies around on CBC endlessly. Another reason to defund CBC.
[snip. Multiple user names. —mod.]
I remember as a student of the University of Western Ontario I was renting an apartment from the mother of David Suzuki. I held him in very high esteem, because through the CBC he popularized science. He became my hero!
Fortunately the science education from that school gave me the necessary skill to be a skeptic . I have long ago given up my adoration of David as a scientist and realized that he was more than that but was a scientist with a political agenda. There should be no room in the Canadian Broadcast Corporation for his monopoly on presenting his political views. He has underhandedly highjacked the CBC into presenting him as Canada’s preeminent scientist. They do not understand what they have done. I have been ashamed as a Canadian scientist at the politics of David Suzuki and I am enraged that he presents himself as a practicing scientist. He popularizes science but does not practice it. He is an environmental activist first and foremost. There is no grey here it is clearly black and white.
I am a geophysicist who explores for the very oil and gas he uses every day, that he uses to fly about the globe, captain his boat, where his clothing, heat his home, house his family and generally make life comfortable and enjoyable. He has no respect for this! He is reaching the final segment of his life and his behavior is that of a bitter old man with an agenda rather than that of an inquisitive and objective scientist!
My heart aches that science is so misused and misunderstood. His behavior is sadly and extremely disappointing!
I see that people here are using the modern term that Suzuki has jumped the shark, I personally would tend to go back further to explain Suzuki and his ramblings. The old TV program. The Twilight Zone explains Suzuki. He long ago entered the twilight zone and many followed him in there, sad really, not for Suzuki but the dimwits that followed him.
Suzuki’s creates a apocalyptic future to justify government forced conversion to environmental nirvana which is that we live as cavemen in his fairy tale best of all environmental worlds.
http://heartlandstore.org/Roosters-of-the-Apocalypse-How-the/M/1934791377.htm
Suzuki is most definitely a “Rooster of the Apocalypse”. The following is the Rooster’s not so hidden agenda.
Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General who chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse…isn’t it our job to bring that about”
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention…and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself….believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or…one invented for the purpose.” Quote by the Club of Rome.
Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, seconded Strong’s statement: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace”
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” – Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
In retrospect, I suppose I do owe Dr. Fruitfly something as it was a talk he gave at the University of Ottawa in 1973 or 1974 that started me on my path away from eco-lunacy. Prior to his talk, I was a rabid environmentalist but had disputes with my fellow environmentalists over nuclear power which I viewed as the cleanest form of energy available.
At one point during Suzuki’s talk, I turned to the person sitting next to me and told them “this guy is an idiot”. At the time he was warning of the dangers of global cooling. The “danger” he’s been ranting about has changed, but his message that human technology is unspeakably evil and that it’s probably too late to save the earth hasn’t.
After close to 40 years I primarily retain the emotional memories of that evening and I couldn’t believe how someone who was supposedly a scientist could be so anti-scientific and anti-technologic. It was one of the most profoundly negative talks I’ve been to and an hour of my life that I can’t get back. I didn’t get many positive comments at the next science council meeting when I pointed out how many cases of wine we could have bought with the money that we had paid this charlatan. (I was doing my best then to get the compulsory student council fees we had to pay back then returned to us in some form – preferably as tasty 2 carbon fragments).
Suzuki was way past his prime even then and I’ve found it mystifying why he has such a positive image in Canada. That’s probably because 99.999% of Canadians haven’t personally met him and he is an egotistical hypocritical arrogant Cassandra with total amnesia for the disasters he predicted that it was “too late” for the world to deal with 40 years ago. He also seems to have quite a loathing for the human race and talking to graduate students seemed quite beneath him at the few scientific conferences where I made the error of approaching him.
What I would love to see is the Suzuki foundation charged with tax evasion as the foundation appears to be a way to launder money from foreign sources such as the Tides foundation which is illegally interfering in Canadian politics by attempting to block a pipeline to carry oil sands oil from Alberta to the Pacific via BC.
Unfortunately Suzuki’s kind aren’t rare in Vancouver which is the moonbat capital of Canada. At one time I thought it the best place in Canada to live which it would be – if it weren’t for the watermelons who seem irresistibly attracted to the place.
I stupidly thought the address must be Suzuki’s own as he resigned from the Foundation’s board in April–I should have checked before posting. I suppose “active volunteers” (his current role) might be entitled to use the official address stamp. He stepped down, his letter states, so that his unvarnished statements would not “harm the organization of which [he is] so proud.” And then he puts the official stamp on this?
Maybe he’s just jealous of Michio Kaku, who somehow gets his head into every documentary, sucking the life from science. Kaku knows his physics, from what I’ve seen many times. However, he also continues the Cagwist meme, which is obvious fraud. They deserve each other and should be ridiculed in the annals of history..
Ummm David is a zoologist and geneticist. That qualifies him to understand climate science how?
Forecast Earth In Depth: David Suzuki, Part 2
At link above Dr Fruit Fly correctly identifies himself as a journalist, and relates asking his scientific mentor, none other than Al Gore ( /sarc), what he can do to help advance the cause.
Suzuki’s other “scientific mentor” (/sarc) was none other than Lucien Bouchard:
“I interviewed Lucien Bouchard two months after he was appointed, and I said, Mr. Minister, what is the most important issue we face? Right away, he said global warming. In 1988! I said, how serious is it? And he said it threatens the survival of our species.”
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canadians-ready-for-a-carbon-tax-david-suzuki-1.238317
Environment hurt by Quebec separatism: Suzuki
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2007/02/08/qc-suzuki20070208.html
Notice the dynamic, the supposed scientist, Dr Fruit Fly, accepts the opinion of Al Gore, and Lucien Bouchard as to CAGW way back in 1988. Neither Al Gore, nor Bouchard has any known scientific background.
The CAGW agenda was always a political agenda in search of a (pseudo) scientific justification.
all the best
brent
P.S. on a positive note Suzuki in first link does explain exactly what the process has been. Politically contrived from the get go, with tame (supposed) scientists having the role of scaring the public until they demand action from the pols.
Although 97% of climate scientists may not be convinced of global warming, a fair number of them are. They can’t all be totally focused on obtaining grant money. Some of them must be convinced by the arguments. Setting aside the question of supporting empirical evidence, what is the theory underlying their conclusion? Put another way: can anyone objectively state the arguments in such a way that those who subscribe to the notion of AGW would agree that they succinctly and irrefutably define the theory?
Hey Jim,
I think you have a couple of mistakes there in the translation from gibberish to English, I think he was trying to write with his crayon and misspelled socialist and carp, I’m still trying to figure out why you sent him a load of carp, WTF is UWT
john lemon~ The current phase of global warming is a FACT.
It is the ‘man-made’ part- what little there is of it- that some of those scientists are convinced of.
Instead of conflating NATURAL climate change with a theory, why don’t you try to prove the theory to us?
Regarding Suzuki and social responsibility;
http://drtimball.com/2012/david-suzuki-and-scientific-and-social-responsibility/
Otter: FACT means it agrees with your pre-existing belief, right? Otherwise, I believe there is a large volume of data indicating it is not a fact at present. Feel free to enlighten me how only the scientists you declare to have godlike understanding of the phenomena know anything about climate change and how it WILL get hotter, just wait and see. However, none of this FACT in the scientific sense of the word.
Reality check says:
November 11, 2012 at 9:54 am
You forget that these guys are able to “forecast the facts”. 8^D
Otter~ Please note that I used the acronym AGW. I am not conflating natural variability with supposed human causation. My question is simply, what are the arguments, the expression of which would be approved by proponents of AGW, that convince some scientists that AGW is a problem? Some sort of scientific principle must be involved.
My modest understanding is that Suzuki and wife live on a nice property on one of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland of B.C.
I think he’s losing it – media suggest he is despondent over his lack of success getting his way, he or his ghostwriters are trying various hooks to promote his views (especially economic ones).
He has a record of removing claims from his website when publicly challenged.
Looks like David Suzuki is to climate science as Zahi Hawas is to Egyptology. They’re both arrogant, tend to shout a lot and 100% assured they are correct and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is 100% wrong.