From the Canadian Newspaper:
An inconvenient letter to the editor, from a “green librarian” no less. h/t to Kate at SDA.
David Suzuki disappointing
To The Editor:
On Saturday, Nov. 20 I went to see David Suzuki speak in Moncton at the Green Home Builder’s Show. I was hoping to ask him during the question period that normally follows these types of talks for advice on how to help me promote environmentalism to my group of largely apathetic students at Hampton High School, where I am the librarian.
Unfortunately, there was no question period. Directly following Dr. Suzuki’s speech, where he emphatically urged the audience to form strong interpersonal connections with their neighbours, family and local ecology, there was a book signing. I waited until the line was gone before I approached. I did not purchase any books, since I either have them at home, or have read them through our public library service. There was only one other man at the table, talking about a Prius, and he stopped and said he should go since I was waiting. Dr. Suzuki said it was alright since there was “no one there.”
I assumed since he was 75, perhaps his eyesight was poor and he did not see me. When the man left, I approached Dr. Suzuki.
He looked up and said, “book?” I said I didn’t have one but I wanted to ask him a question. He said, “I don’t have time for that,” and waved me away like a king dismissing a commoner.
There was absolutely no one else around the table except the security guards.
Then he shouted out, “Books! Books!” and continued waving me out of the way. There was no sign indicating no questions were allowed.
Only minutes before he had been espousing the value of slowing down and making time for each other and he didn’t even have the decency to say, “I’m sorry, I’m tired . . . or I’m not allowed to answer questions . . .”
Instead here I was, an educator and great promoter of his books, looking for help with the generation he claimed was most important, but because I was not spending money (other than the $45 I spent to hear him lecture), I was waved off.
I used to be proud to call Dr. Suzuki one of my heroes, and now I can see that he is a hypocrite.
I am in no way turned off the environmental causes I have always believed in, simply disappointed to have to tell my students, once again, that celebrity and integrity seem to be mutually exclusive.
Jenn Carson,
Hampton
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Pat,
Book recommendations:
Global warming – every 1500 years
-Fred Singer-
The Chilling Stars
-Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder-
ahhh…the ‘Hamptons’… Now THAT was the ‘clincher’ that finally made sense.
She’s a disillusioned librarian…(probably ’cause the kids can’t read?) yet, she remains stalwart! …she’ll firmly hold on to her illusions as she and her neighbors trudge into eco-doom and gloom simply ’cause it’s fashionable…while her former hero ‘bites the dust’. (But, then again – wasn’t that HER problem for being a bad judge of character before assigning hero-status?) Best try to channel John Dewey about that one, Honey.
But, rather than search her out and burst even MORE of her eco-bubbles ~ I’ll be ‘good’ ’cause it IS Thanksgiving and share gratefully with you guys that notoriety/celebrity is NOT mutually exclusive with those (normal mature) humans who ‘have a clue’. *We either have a ‘better than’ mentality or we don’t – plain an’ simple.
I do wonder, however – if this babe couldda just offered that Mr. Sus/z her arm so that he’d autograph it, and then he could’ve been happy and she’d still be able to feel ‘politically correct in innocent ignorance’ and allow all the other bubbles being made in this world to burst – instead of hers.
Ahhh…BUT (she muses) what CO2 would’ve been actually generated by the arm-writing process??? Well…….of course, that DEPENDS. (NO! It doesn’t depend on the way I feel one a certain day – at a certain time!!!)
The CO2 would be LESS – significantly less, in fact, it were a ‘Bic Biro’ pen rather than a magic marker…which is called a textacolour in Australia…Now I wonder if changing the name of something reduces CO2??? Oh, SURE! I’ve studied it for YEARS!!! (Send cash for my research to….)
You want to actually SEE the data before you send me cash??? Oh, certainly!!! Just give me a moment… I’ve got all the relevant data to prove it! Don’t you trust me??? Are you……..A RACIST??? It’s somewhere around here…….. Awww… you guys could just TRUST ME to have that data stored correctly… Oh Yeah! I remember! I put the data in the glove box of my hired limo that’s idling for an hour just outside of this room! I’ll be right back… Hey. Before I go – Happy Thanksgiving ( I even smoked a turkey once – in Tooele (that’s near Salt Lake City, Utah)) Even (choke!) to those of the ‘eco-faith’ in the Hamptons and elsewhere.
C.L. Thorpe
David Suzuki can lecture me when he’s back down to 2 kids.
Until then, he should shut his trap.
Dear Jenn, here in British-Columbia, where Suzuki is from, we always knew he was a fake.
“Bill Thomson says:
November 25, 2010 at 5:12 pm
It was David Suzuki who turned me into a skeptic. I saw him in a TV interview when he was asked whether solar cycles might not account for global warming. When he dismissed the question with a huff without even a word of response I knew he wasn’t a scientist.”
I saw something similar on a newscast one evening where he seriously went off on somebody that asked him a similar question at a Q&A after one of his speaking engagements. Outburst like that to “inconvenient” questions are probably the reason Jenn didn’t get ask her questions. I tried to find it on Youtube but I couldn’t. I was already sceptical of the AGW thing, as I am of anything being rammed down my throat by the media, but it was that incident that solidified it for me. Here was a man that many Canadians grew to admire and trust as a scientist being extremely unscientific to a simple question that had merit and deserved a rational response. His response was anything but rational and I haven’t trusted a word out of his mouth since. As a Canadian, I am embarassed by Dr. Suzuki, he is a hypocrite of the highest order. He should be stripped of his Order of Canada.
Greenpeace’s 12th century technology
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/greenpeaces-12th-century-technology/
It is time like these that I really admire and appreciate Christopher Hitchens as a public intellectual. He would always have time for anyone as long as there is a promise of food, drink, smoke and talk. Why do we have so few intellectual celebrities like Hitchens?
David Suzuki came to New Zealand a couple of months ago and got interviewed on our State TV channel. Honestly, he came across a a complete enviro. nutter. The interviewer, Mark Sainsbury (who doesn’t have a reutation for asking hard questions) eventually started to take the piss out of him. I had never heard of him before that moment and after the interview thought oh dear and promptly forgot be even existed, until now.
Here’s a great article about David Suzuki and AGW in general:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/28/dan-gardner-the-essential-error-of-david-suzuki/
Happy Thanksgiving to all those south of the border!
One of the most important things that you have to teach to your students, and sons and daughters, is the following:
WHATEVER YOU READ, SEE OR HEAR, CHECK IT OUT. Don’t believe it outright because CNN said it, or I said. 99% of all the things said are incentivised by money. A journalist is paid for publishng a report, an editor too, the more they sell the more money they make. Hence the more interesting or bad the news is, the higher probability that it is snake oil. This holds also true for (pseudo) scientific reports, published by paid public-servant scientists, who would lose their pay check if there is nothing to discover or say. Publicly-funded scientists are none better than journalists. Both will lose their job if they don’t publish.
As for me, I have learned this by experience. I’m fed up of hearing:
Oil will be finished by 1970…80….90…………..
We are entering an Ice Age
We are all gonna burn due to global warming…………
We are all gonna drown from oceans rising……..
Antarctica melting
Mobile phones cause cancer
Bird flu
Swine flu
Ocean acidification
Lack of food
But the surprise of my life is that I will soon die of…………..old age.
Re: eating a cookie…
I sorta understand the cookie thing, it might have been a tasty Tim Hortons chocolate chunk… couldn’t tell from the video. Nobody wants to interrupt their cookie-eating for mere media. Never get on the wrong side of Stelmach, he’ll throw you under the bus even quicker than 0bama.
And I’ve met Suzuki, over 20 years ago. I can’t say if it’s his normal MO, but I do know he smelled like the enviro-hippy that he appears to be.
By the way, he has the “order of (liberal) canada”, for them he’s like a god (lower case g).
pat says:
“November 25, 2010 at 4:56 pm
ironically, i was logging on to ask anthony and others on WUWT if they could please list their top five essential CAGW sceptic books, as my library in australia is willing to order them in to counteract their shelves of tired old alarmist literature.
any assistance would be much appreciated. thanx in advance.”
Can I suggest ‘Chill’ by Peter Taylor
I gave a review of it here which sparked off an interesting debate;
http://www.harmlesssky.org/
Go to ‘search’ box on right hand side then Chill-Peter Taylor.
His great advantage is that he is a recognised environmentalist.
tonyb
Oh dear: I’m surprised all you—guys especially—missed the warning flag: “… there’s no one there.” From that utterance, Mr Suzuki appears to have labelled himself as a genuine, for real, 24 carat misogynist, also known (a couple of decades ago) as an MCP …
Anyone who can treat the wonderful other half of the human species like that is not worth even wiping one’s shoes on!
Books – “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”, by Czech President Vaclav Klaus has a good reputation (though I’ve never had a chance to read it).
Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth – the Missing Science” is an excellent read – a bit dry at times, but full of interesting facts and references. Got the skeptics into a frothing frenzy, which is a good sign.
Suzuki is NAZI scum – he wants to jail people who disagree with him.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=290513
David Suzuki is a professional narrator, not a scientist.
“I am in no way turned off the environmental causes I have always believed in…”
You are rather green (i.e. naive) aren’t you, Jenn.
He has been talking to Gore. Questions only expose ignorance through incomplete answers.
Jenn,
stop worrying about AGW. It’s just the latest manipulation of government by fear. We have bigger problems.
What you and your peer group now need to worry about is the dissolution of democracy. All the global warming hype is a smoke screen to occupy the minds of a generation while they take us back to a globalised version of the middle ages.
Our children will not hate us for climate they will hate us for doing nothing as democracy was taken away.
If you want to “save the planet” you need to ask from what it needs saving.
Without democracy your ecological concerns (that I do not deride) will be IRRELEVANT.
Some-one gave me an old Suzuki once, it was I heap of [/snip]. I took it to the tip 😉
[Vulgarity removed…bl57~mod]
Jenn, I feel for you that you were badly and rudely treated by someone you regarded as an icon; it’s always tough when the scales fall from one’s eyes as the result of a bad experience. And as you use the term ‘icon’, I am led to assume that you have, perhaps unknowingly, allowed enviromentalism to become a part of your belief sytem. In the light of your experience with Suzuki, perhaps it’s a good time for you to re-examine that faith and read the books that the posters above have suggested. Anything that purports to be based on science cannot be a matter of either faith or consensus.
I wish you all the best as you seek enlightenment.
“Interpersonal”?
TomRude says:
November 25, 2010 at 7:22 pm
OT: That bit on Steve McIntyre in Tim Ball’s latest Free Press is a tad over the top… not his finest in my opinion.
“Steve McIntyre provided valuable evidence of the corruption in climate science when he identified the misuse of data and statistics in the graph dubbed “the hockey stick.” He refuses to say the errors and actions taken by Michael Mann and his associates were deliberate despite overwhelming evidence. He distances himself from those more forceful in identifying their actions as deliberate.
He claims, “CA (Climate Audit) readers know that I express myself carefully and try to make my opinions as narrow and precise as possible.”
The problem is when he had opportunities to speak out, even in a narrow way he failed. At the hearing chaired by Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, he was upstaged by Mann. It’s reasonable to consider errors genuine or a result of ignorance. However, the consideration must include all the factors involved. How many errors are necessary before a pattern emerges?
*********************************************
I have to say that I agree with Tim Ball……
Regardless of Steve McIntyre’s considerable strengths when analysing data, he completely fails to deliver the real message whenever he has the opportunity to do so in front of a TV camera, or, it would seem, a public audience.
He also steers clear of stating what is obvious to committed skeptics (like me), but which requires much stronger emphasis to the waverers (like my wife), that fraud and misinformation has taken over the CAGW agenda.
The CAGW loonies continually ram their fraudulent message home and unless the truth is rammed home, with the same strength and frequency, most of the world will just keep on accepting the lies of these nutters.
Climatism! by Steve Goreham
A great fast-survey of the entire debate. Complete, no wasted words, lots of charts, up to date.
The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon
Very readable and insinuating.
The Great Global Warming Blunder by Roy Spencer
He’s found the flaw in the warmists’ case, it looks like. Powerful.
Jenn Carson, did you realy expect to be treated with anything but contempt by a high-priest and eco-warrior if you did not bring any offerings, meaning cold hard cash in the form of a book purchased, to the temple?
Stick with Honda Jenn because we oldtimer bikers know from way way back-
“You meet the nicest people on a Honda”