David “fruit fly” Suzuki goes ballistic, and advocates retracting all rights from skeptics. I’m mentioned as some sort of baddie central, but at least I don’t dress up with Santa Claus to scare the kids and ask their parents to send me money. Where’s that DDT when you need it?
From the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-suzuki/climate-change-denial_b_1325198.html
…
“This public responsibility is especially important in light of the stepped-up efforts to deny the reality of climate change, or the role humans play in it. Cases in point are illustrated by the “denialgate” scandal revealed by the release of Heartland Institute documents and the revelation that Ottawa’s Carleton University hired Tom Harris, a PR man for a number of “astroturf” groups with a mechanical engineering background, to teach a course on climate change.
“There are many credible sources of information, and they aren’t blog sites run by weathermen like Anthony Watts, or industry-funded fake science organizations. One place to start is at Skeptical Science. Click on the tab that says “Arguments” for scientific responses to all the main climate change denier talking points.
=============================================================
Apparently, I’ve irritated the fruit fly. WUWT must be having an effect then. In truest fashion, he can’t be bothered to name the website much less link to it, but it is nice to see that I’m irritating him.
– Anthony
UPDATE: It seems all is not well in Fruit Fly land. His foundation website doesn’t even register on Alexa.com due to it having a traffic rank greater than 100K. Lower number is better:
And, “skeptical science” is down in the grass.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/davidsuzuki.org+wattsupwiththat.com+skepticalscience.com
Here’s Suzuki’s traffic ranks by country (lower is better, for example, Google is #1)
And here’s mine:
Must really bite when a web site run by some “evil denier TV weatherguy” kicks your butt in your own country. WUWT actually does more than twice as well in Canada as Suzuki.
Maybe I should send him some “denier swarms” to boost traffic.
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Suzuki: “Cases in point are illustrated by the ‘denialgate’ scandal revealed by the release of Heartland Institute documents and the revelation that Ottawa’s Carleton University hired Tom Harris, a PR man for a number of ‘astroturf’ groups with a mechanical engineering background, to teach a course on climate change.”
When Tom Harris next offers his “denialist” course on climate change, he should bill it as “The course David Suzuki doesn’t want you to take.” My guess is he’ll need a stadium to fit in all the applicants. 🙂
I am disappointed in the level of discussion about David Suzuki on this thread. He is a far more complicated individual than the caricatures pilloried here. If we skeptics wish to gain traction on the issues, we should be understanding much better who and what we are up against. Suzuki Foundation hits may be much lower than WUWT but Suzuki’s relative influence in Canada and Australia would be hugely greater
In Canada his status is close to sainthood and for the CBC he is a very significant part of the Canadian national broadcaster’s image and reputation: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/
The science program he has hosted for decades produced many worthwhile episodes with lots of good content. His anti-American and anti-capitalist tendency, (a normal legacy of a 60’s U.C. Berkeley degree) has been an undercurrent of course, but the weirdness of describing the heart as “pumping the dirty blood back to the lungs to have the carbon removed” and endorsing Environmental Defence claim that “we are all walking around with several pounds of plastic dissolved in our bodies” has been in the last decade.
There is an interesting biopic http://www.nfb.ca/playlist/force-nature-david-suzuki-movie/ which would be well worth studying to understand how he developed his views and influence.
Suzuki is an easy target as the “small footprint” guy with the three wives, five kids, three waterfront homes, massive travel budget, self admitted racism etc. but that does nothing to advance our knowledge of how opinions are formed.
Mod – clarifying addition:
Also remember that this “extremely concerned about the fate of the world” scientist is in fact so concerned that he pays himself an annual salary, from the funds collected by his foundation, of $C4 million per year, plus travel.
David Suzuki, the metaphorical moped of climate scientists!
Forced to peddle the same tired old AGW drivel because the hot air has leaked out of ‘global warming’, as the planet has naturally cycled back to global cooling.
Max Hugoson:March 9, 2012 at 4:13 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/09/apparently-ive-irritated-the-fruit-fly/#more-58743
“….the Japanese AMERICANS made Lemonade out of Lemons….They were allowed to make their living quarters their HOMES …”
Geez Max, you make it all sound so lovely – that was a GREAT thing to do for them, right?
I’ll just say, as per the overall subject of this site, there is a lot of propaganda, revisionism and general bending of the truth in this world.
Ron says:March 9, 2012 at 4:48 pm
“…An Alexa ranking measures popularity (number of hits), not correctness of opinion….”
Aah, um, thanks Ron, I think we all get that bit.
It’s so nice that “deniers” are getting press time. The world is being made aware of them! It’s a win for the “deniers”! Thank you David.
This is something we should not laugh at.
It is very obvious that governments (and others – big business?) are finding that the ready access by the general public to information and other opinions on the internet is drastically undermining their usual modus operandi of ‘fooling some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time’.
I predict there will be very determined efforts to limit what we can all do and find online in the future, and it will mainly be levered on the failure that is occurring now, (hopefully later to be known as “The Great Global Warming Indoctrination Failure”).
I followed Suzuki’s advice and went to Skeptical Science, clicked Arguments. Amongst all the strawmen we find something of substance, “Climate sensitivity is low”.
“What the science says…”
“Net positive feedback is confirmed by many different lines of evidence.”
Bull crap.
Wayne Liston says:
March 9, 2012 at 6:28 pm
I am disappointed in the level of discussion about David Suzuki on this thread. He is a far more complicated individual than the caricatures pilloried here.
No he’s not. He’s become the caricature. There is nothing complicated left about him. What you see is what you get. There was an eanest attempt to be somebody in the early days of his taking over The Nature of Things on the CBC long ago, but decades of association with that network has done to him what it has done to them all – sucked all the DNA out their neurons. He is fully and completely entropied.
And this was on the HuffPo, that bastion of free speech rights. You just can’t help but laugh.
;Great post, Anthony. Suzuki’s alarmism does not sell anywhere.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill.
No, Michael H. Anderson, you are incorrect. What’s worse, you are committing the very same fault of which we accuse so many CAGW-ers (with good reason, too). You are demonizing an opponent and mischaracterizing him. We should be above that here.
In his early years, ink still wet on his PhD, Suzuki did a lot of useful and thoroughly scientific work on fruit-fly mating habits and genetic characteristics. That was back when he really was a scientist.
My own theory of his subsequent career is that he got hooked on two drugs: microphone and camera lense. He started off on CBC radio, pioneering a weekly half-hour science programme. That was the gateway drug. Then came the hard stuff: weekly TV. He found that he couldn’t resist either of them.
Couldn’t resist, that is, except for one situation: he could resist both microphone and camera lense if offered them for purposes of debate, especially on CAGW topics. Then: “The debate is over!” and “The science is settled!”.
That’s when he stopped being a scientist. A pity, really.
Man, the comments on Suzuki and his article at the Huffington Post are amazing! They are totally reaming the guru of the north. My favorite so far is this one:
Dang … what is it with these AGW supporters?
w.
David Suzuki is pissed because he recently got trashed in an issue of the Georgia Straight, his Vancouver hometown’s left leanin’, gay lovin’, uber liberal weekly newspaper.
Quite hilarious of a comeuppance. I guess even the left coast has had enough of his hypocritical anti-people rants.
The AGW tenth level
blackbeltmaggot has spoken. All bow to the Sensei.The most amazing thing is these people are oblivious to the data. I will again post this link, for not only are the temps turning around in response to the PDO, but the idea that CO2 CAN NOT POSSIBLY CAUSE WARMING looks to me to be based on sound scientific ground as per this:
http://co2insanity.com/2011/09/04/top-scientists-in-heated-debate-over-‘-slaying-of-greenhouse-gas-theory/
I used to always wonder how entire populations, such as Germany in ww2 could follow madness the way they did but this global warming situation and these people have opened my eyes as to how such things were done
David Suzuki of course lives in Vancouver, where the Canadian winter is less extreme.
The IPCC’s AR-3 estimate of the economic impacts of AGW includes less sunbird tourism. So far no worry of that. Canadians who can are taking winter vacations to get a break from winter.
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=escaping_the_canadian_winter_200111
I have to go away in January. I’ll never make it through the winter without going,” says one traveller we caught up with at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. “I go to get away from any signs of snow and the 40 below weather,” said another anxious traveller ready to head south. January- March is a busy time for booking vacations to sunshine destinations
January- March is a busy time for booking vacations to sunshine destinations
Lisa Vincent, Manager of Travelpath in Burlington, Ontario says the agency definitely starts to see a spike in vacation sales in January.
“Most people that call to book a vacation usually say, ‘I’m tired of the cold, I’m tired of the dreary weather’ and they’re usually over the hustle and bustle of Christmas,” notes Vincent.
“Students in University and College have their reading weeks come up in February and then you’ve got March Break so a lot of families book their vacation in March as well.”
Vincent adds that bookings to Caribbean destinations usually start to die down by mid March, when the spring season begins to move in and residents gear up for summer weekends at the cottage.
According to the Canadian Tourism Commission, there will be about a 14 percent increase in Canadians travelling outbound in the next couple of years, with the majority of the destinations being to the Caribbean.
I thought Suzuki was a biologist. Odd that he has not investigated CO2 and plants. No CO2 no plants. More CO2, plants are grow faster, make more efficient use of water, increased yield, and so, biosphere expands. Warmer planet, with most of the warming at higher latitudes, biosphere expands.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090218135031.htm
Published today in Nature, the 40 year study of African tropical forests–one third of the world’s total tropical forest–shows that for at least the last few decades each hectare of intact African forest has trapped an extra 0.6 tonnes of carbon per year.
The reason why the trees are getting bigger and mopping up carbon is unclear. A leading suspect is the extra CO2 in the atmosphere itself, which may be acting like a fertiliser.
African forests have the highest mammal diversity of any ecosystem, with over 400 species, alongside over 10,000 species of plants and over 1,000 species of birds. According to the FAO deforestation rates are approximately 6 million hectares per year (almost 1% of total forest area per year), although other studies show the rate to be half that (approximately 0.5% of total forest area per year). The African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network, Afritron brings together researchers active in African countries with tropical forest to standardise and pool data to better understand how African tropical forests are changing in a globally changing environment.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030509084556.htm
Greenhouse Gas Might Green Up The Desert; Weizmann Institute Study Suggests That Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Might Cause Forests To Spread Into Dry Environments
The Weizmann team found, to its surprise, that the Yatir forest is a substantial “sink” (CO2-absorbing site): its absorbing efficiency is similar to that of many of its counterparts in more fertile lands. These results were unexpected since forests in dry regions are considered to develop very slowly, if at all, and thus are not expected to soak up much carbon dioxide (the more rapidly the forest develops the more carbon dioxide it needs, since carbon dioxide drives the production of sugars). However, the Yatir forest is growing at a relatively quick pace, and is even expanding further into the desert.
Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, which leads to the production of sugars. But to obtain it, they must open pores in their leaves and consequently lose large quantities of water to evaporation. The plant must decide which it needs more: water or carbon dioxide. Yakir suggests that the 30 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution eases the plant’s dilemma. Under such conditions, the plant doesn’t have to fully open the pores for carbon dioxide to seep in – a relatively small opening is sufficient. Consequently, less water escapes the plant’s pores. This efficient water preservation technique keeps moisture in the ground, allowing forests to grow in areas that previously were too dry.
Ron says: March 9, 2012 at 1:56 pm
While viewing the video in Ron’s comment, for a minute I thought I was watching a documentary of the Manson Family. Did anyone else have a similar reaction?
Max Hugoson I am not in defense of Suzuki or the removal of the Japanese from the coast to inland areas, it was the times and there were reasons. But here in Canada Japanese fishing boats and property were taken away from them and they were not compensated. Suzuki when he talks of those times it seems he is trying to rewrite history.
It’s very encouraging that Suzuki”s HuffPost article is receiving the response it deserves. Watching the entire liberal/progressive/media/government structure (that own AGW) crash and burn this year will be highly entertaining.
Max Hugoson says:
March 9, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Re you comment “SO, sorry…NO, can’t excuse D.S. for being a psycopath. That’s his own CHOICE,” re
Al Gored says:
March 9, 2012 at 2:23 pm
“To fully appreciate Suzuki, one needs only look at his childhood…”
No attempt at an “excuse,’ just an observation which DOES explain him. Your ‘happy’ anecdote is irrelevant to his experience. His suppressed anger is obvious whenever he is challenged and his nonstop potty mouth off camera says even more.
And I suggested that he was a sociopath, not a psycopath, which is rather different.
Either way, I’m guessing that we will be seeing some real wild rants from him now as the world fails to be suitably manipulated. Something absolutely spectacular would be nice.
“Now, one sobering forecast is that the Arctic Ocean will be seasonally ice free by the summer of 2013.”
David Suzuki
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2009/arcticmeltdown/
David;
If you though that you missed the CBC article about the Northwest Passage being open or Ice Free last summer, you didn’t, it wasn’t.
The National Post newspaper was first published in Canada on October 27, 1998. This is a MSM conservative newspaper that has published many articles skeptical to global warming and climate change. It is where I first learned of such things as the way Wikipedia articles where manipulated by one individual as well as what the Climategate emails revealed, and it continues to publish articles informing the public of the true nature of todays climate science. So the Sun TV news isn’t the first conservative news to be produced in Canada, only the most recent. I have never seen a broadcast of Fox news or of the new Sun news, though I have seen a couple of videos on blogs.