Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
The cover story of the November 25, 2013 Canadian weekly magazine Macleans pictures self-appointed Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki.
The caption reads, “Environmentalism Has Failed”“David Suzuki loses faith in the cause of his lifetime.”
Suzuki doesn’t realize he‘s the cause of the failure as a major player in the group who exploited environmentalism and climate for a political agenda. Initially most listened and tried to accommodate, but gradually the lies, deceptions and propaganda were exposed. The age of eco-bullying is ending. Typically Suzuki blamed others for the damage to the environment and climate but now he blames them for not listening to him. He forgets that when you point a finger at someone three are pointing back at you.
Environmentalism was what academics call a paradigm shift, which Thomas Kuhn defines as “a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.” It was a necessary new paradigm. Everybody accepts the general notion it is foolish to soil your own nest and most were prepared to participate. Most were not sure what it entailed or how far it should go. Extremists grab all new paradigms for their agenda but then define the limits for the majority by pushing beyond the limits of the idea. Environmentalism and the subset climate are at that stage pushed there by extremists like Suzuki. Instead of admitting the science is wrong they double down and make increasingly extreme statements, just like the IPCC. It underscores the political rather than the scientific agenda. For example, Suzuki, apparently frustrated that politicians were not listening to his demands for action on climate change said they should be jailed.
Environmental groups grabbed environmentalism and quickly took the moral high ground preaching that only they cared about the Earth. Suzuki set up the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) with tax benefits that required it to be non-political, but after active involvement in an Ontario election he was forced to resign. His major theme in the election was to push the climate change and alternate energies put in place in that Province when Maurice Strong was in charge of Ontario Hydro, the state controlled energy agency. Ontario is the perfect example of how and why climate energy policies promoted by Strong as Founder of UNEP are a disaster.
The Foundation campaigned on environmental issues most presented in deceptive or incomplete ways. An example was the attack on salmon farming and corrupted research on PCBs and sea lice. This was the focus of an interview of researcher Vivian Krause by Ezra Levant. Another was Suzuki’s parade across Canada pushing extinction theories and claims of DSF Board member E.O Wilson that 3 species go extinct every hour. He never named one. He never listed the plethora of new species found. He refused to discuss the issue and in his visit to schools pre-arranged and wrote a question for a selected student to ask. He promoted threats of global warming, but refused to debate the issue or answer questions. When asked questions on a radio interview in Toronto, he swore and stormed out of the studio.
He hired former Federal politician NDP (socialist party) David Fulton as Director of DSF. James Hoggan has been Chairman of the Board for many years. His PR Company has major alternate energy companies as clients. Hoggan is the proud creator of DeSmogblog a web site that claims it is “Clearing the PR Pollution that clouds climate science” but mostly involves personal attacks on people asking questions. The objective was to denigrate people by creating “favorable interpretations” to the following questions. “Were these climate skeptics qualified? Were they doing any research in the climate change field? Were they accepting money, directly or indirectly, from the fossil fuel industry?” This doesn’t answer skeptics questions about the science.
Their real agenda was disclosed in a Climatic Research Unit (CRU) leaked email dated December 2007 from senior writer Richard Littlemore to Michael Mann.
Hi Michael [Mann],
I’m a DeSmogBlog writer [Richard LIttlemore] (sic) (I got your email from Kevin Grandia)* and I am trying to fend off the latest announcement that global warming has not actually occurred in the 20th century.
It looks to me like Gerd Burger is trying to deny climate change by “smoothing,” “correcting” or otherwise rounding off the temperatures that we know for a flat fact have been recorded since the 1970s, but I am out of my depth (as I am sure you have noticed: we’re all about PR here, not much about science) so I wonder if you guys have done anything or are going to do anything with Burger’s intervention in Science. (emphasis added)
(* Grandia was a former writer for DeSmogBlog who moved there after serving as a research assistant for a Liberal Minister in Ottawa.)
Do as I say, not as I do is the hallmark of extreme environmentalists behaviour. Al Gore is the poster boy for this hypocrisy. It appears Suzuki is only different in scale. They were enumerated in programs by SUN TV Reporter Ezra Levant. They include the familiar list of funding and financial activities and personal wealth accumulated, especially in properties.
A major part of Suzuki’s attacks relate to global warming. His refusal to debate or even answer questions is legendary. He ignores his lack of qualifications on climate, but uses that challenge when it comes to his supposed expertise in genetics and genetically modified food. A possible explanation for his “environmentalism is a failure” claim is a PR move to divert from the exposure of his climate ignorance in an Australian interview. He could not answer questions about information fundamental to any understanding.
Suzuki abandoned his academic career in genetics decades ago explaining why in a 1999 Seattle speech. His concerns related to the internment of his Japanese Canadian family during WWII. Here are his words:
In the exuberance of the excitement over the discovery of new principles of heredity — that seemed to apply across the plant and animal kingdoms — geneticists began to make wonderful, wild statements about the implications of their discoveries. I’m sure most of you know that it ultimately led to what was considered a legitimate area of science called Eugenics.
Some of our most eminent geneticists taught courses in eugenics, wrote textbooks in eugenics, published articles in eugenics journals. Eugenics being the attempt to apply the new-found knowledge of heredity to improve the genetic quality or makeup of human society.
It seems more logical to maintain standing as a geneticist and work to prevent such drifts occurring. Instead he quit and became a tele-evangelist using state television (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) to push his environmental/political agenda.
His television series became his undoing as a classic example of how extremism is its own undoing. It’s why Suzuki’s exploitation of environmentalism, as he defines it, caused failure. Most programs in the series were unjustified, misleading condemnations of different components of society. I identified some of the misinformation in a presentation to farmers in Saskatchewan a few years ago. Afterward a woman told me that a month earlier she would have disagreed with my comments. Now she understood because Suzuki did a program on farming and as a farmer’s wife she knew how wrong and biased it was. Each new program exposed another segment of society to the deception. This created a populace open to and not surprised by the exposure of his hypocrisies. The same is happening to climate alarmism as more and more segments of society are negatively affected. His actions and climate driven energy policies close industries, decimate communities, cause job losses and force business closures, virtually all unnecessarily.
As Suzuki’s campaign to use environmentalism for a political agenda fails he lashes out, blaming others for the failure. It parallels what is happening in the climate alarmist community. The comments and claims become more extreme, but achieve the opposite of their goal. It is necessary to consider the further negative effects of their exploitation and deceptions. What is the damage to the credibility of science? Can we pursue environmentalism with rational, science based, prioritized policies?
Related articles
- CNN mocks Greenpeace’s “Save Santa’s Home” video (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Climate change: Fear based messages don’t work (psychbot.wordpress.com)
- The nature of David Suzuki (macleans.ca)
If you cry wolf too many times , people no longer take you as credible. Pollution control which was and still is a valid goal got replaced by the flawed climate control agenda which has now morphed to the ever present people control ambitions of the scientific elites.
Suzuki doesn’t just keep to the science He is virulently anti-capitalist, openly suporting the most left-wing Canadian parties even when doing so seemingly violates laws concerning charitable foundations.
And despite this, he lives an affluent life, jet-setting around the world charging exhorbitantt speaking fees, and then returning to one of his three (or is it four?) of his expensive homes.
I think psychologists call this “compartmentalization”.
usurbrain says:
December 7, 2013 at 8:10 am
To answer your question……….Follow the MONEY.
A fine piece Tim. Suzuki is a finalist in this years Prat awards.
Pointman
Read the articles. Sounds like he is disappointed in his efforts to move the world towards his version of what it should be. It also sounds like the usual “taking stock of one’s life” stuff that happens as we get older. I have dabbled in it myself. He just happens to be more famous than the rest of us and gets to have his whining session up on the marque. Nothing note worthy here. None of us are as great as we think we are.
I took the time to attend the “debate” between Suzuki and Rushton at Western University (Orientals are smarter than Whites who are smarter than Blacks). Suzuki didn’t “win the debate” because there was no debate. Suzuki said from the outset that he wouldn’t debate Rushton because Rushton’s science was racist. I guess Suzuki won the debate because the crowd was obviously anti-Rushton. I had taken the time to read up on Rushton and his amazingly stupid science. I was hoping for Suzuki to knock him out in the first round. What a tremendous disappointment Suzuki was. Rushton actually sounded rational in his own defense criticizing Suzuki for attacking him and not his science (sound familiar?) and that made me even more mad at the wonder-boy of genetics. Even when you put Suzuki on the right team he screws it up. Ideology makes the mind opaque.
Suzuki wavers somewhere between a crackpot and a conman.
Great story, great news, the tide is turning, my gut said the whole scam would implode and now it is happening, this is a major mile stone. Long live WUWT! Cheers!
Otter: I am flattered by the request. Please feel free.
David Suzuki is a thoughtless, ego maniac, a ‘greenpeace’ type environmentalist a zealot. The greenpeace zealots do not understand or do not care that environmental ‘protection’, health care, roads, schools, bridges, basically very entitlement program, our entire standard of life requires prosperity, stable governments, and surpluses.
The 350.org and greenpeace types have been successful in spreading fear, confusion, and mistruths/lies. Engineering and economic facts matter. There is no EAGW problem; there is a green scam problem; developed countries are facing economic collapse due to deficits which is in part due to a massive loss of jobs and tax revenue due to purposeless 350.org/greenpeace type policies. Policy based on lies leads to chaos, madness, collapse of countries.
Developed countries have spent trillions of dollars on green scams which was resulted in almost no significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Spending money on scams is madness, at a time when developed countries are facing economic collapse due to continual deficit spending. The planet has started to abruptly cool. It appears we are going to experience a Heinrich event. It is almost impossible to imagine what the public, media, and political reaction will be to significant unequivocal cooling.
Quotes from other thoughtless, ego manic, zealots:
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“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 only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” – emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“We require a central organizing principle – one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change – these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” – Professor Maurice King
Whining sessions you should have with your psychotherapist, Pamela. Susuki should do what our Diderik Stapel did after the discovery of his mega science fraud. He immediately went to a psychotherapist and is now a taxi driver in Tilburg city. In his taxi you can have philosophical debates with him, perhaps about his motives or whatever you like.
David Suzuki is a hypocrite. People on his side of the fence tell us to consume less to lessen ‘climate change’ but what is this? (emphasis mine)
Just like Al Gore, film directory James Cameron and the other heavy consumer global warmists – hypocrisy is there trademark.
I have for years called myself a conservationist. This is because I’m all for intelligent and smart protection of nature and the local environment. You don’t try to freeze nature into a static never changing thing but you do try and keep it healthy.
Environmentalists on the other hand want to take nature and freeze it into a static never changing never growing thing. They want to take a picture of nature and freeze it just like that.
Years ago I had a discussion with a friend of mine about AGW. He said I was probably right but it made a great tool to force people to care for the environment. I point out to him then that this will backfire in the long term. Since the climate tends to cyclic patterns when it turned to cooling in a few years people would associate environmentalism with the failed and false AGW meme thus undermining any good they had achieved by attaching to it. People would throw out environmentalism along side AGW when AGW failed because they are linked together now in people’s minds.
Suzuki leaves genetics because of ties to eugenics and pics up with environmentalism with an unrepentant ‘Earth First’ wing? So making people better (even if misguided) is wrong but killing off ‘billions and billions’ is fine?
David Suzuki rails against humans:
Yet he has 5 children.
Suzuki … isn’t he the one running around telling people that Fukushima is going to now kill the entire Pacific Ocean and West Coast?
Frederick Colbourne says: December 7, 2013 at 2:29 am
…Ashamed because I am also a humanist and I object to extremists telling me that frogs and glaciers come before people.
I like the way Robert Heinlein put it:
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.'” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature” — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.
In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.
As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women — it strikes me as a fine arrangement — and perfectly “natural” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.”
Another terrific piece from Dr Tim Ball. You are so much on the right side of this ‘debate’ it’s almost embarrassing.
A question if I may? What is there left for alarmists now? Seriously, what is falling their way?
Arctic, Antarctic and global sea ice extent isn’t.
Polar bears aren’t.
Runaway temperatures have, erm, run away, as have any signs of positive feedbacks and amplification at the levels required to drive ‘catastrophe’.
What about ocean acidification? What about it indeed! There’s orders of magnitude more CO2 already in the ocean, so the miniscule quantity put in the atmosphere by man is, dare I say it, a drop in the ocean.
No missing heat, no hot spot, almost complete computer model predictive failure. Climate sensitivity has been dialled back – albeit now with a wider margin of error than ever before, and that’s before we consider that the IPCC have refused to put a definitive estimate out there. (Translation: after 3 decades and untold billions they either genuinely don’t know, or they suspect it’s so low as to scupper the catastrophic element of AGW right there)
So I ask again; what is there left to be afraid of?
Pamela Gray says:
December 7, 2013 at 7:35 am
Is there a link to the article?
here Pam http://drtimball.com/
oops I see now it is not up on his page yet but there is ssome good reading there.
“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/natureofthings/episodes/arctic-meltdown-adapting-the-change
This is actually very good news. The CAGW radicals know that their movement is dying, and they are going through the classic stages of grief:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
It isn’t difficult to see all of the elements of the CAGW movement working their way through these stages over the last couple of years. I think it is a very positive development to see that someone as prominent in the movement as Suzuki has already reached Stage 4!
from the Wiki summary: “During the fourth stage, the grieving person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving.”
Yup, any of the “true believers” who haven’t gotten there yet, soon will be!
p.s. Which CAGW proponent, a subject of discussion on this blog over the last few days, fits into this category? “Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Anger can manifest itself in different ways. People can be angry with themselves, or with others, and especially those who are close to them.”
heh heh.
Reed Coray says: December 7, 2013 at 9:19 am “I like the way Robert Heinlein put it: There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’[ … ]”
Time Enough for Love (1973)
Excellent essay Dr. Ball
This isn’t complicated. There’s nothing wrong with supporting the notion that we should not unnecessarily damage our environment. And even enhance it when that opportunity arises.
However, environmentalism has been hijacked. The movement is now totally controlled by scammers, whackos, and folks with extreme political and social agendas. It has completely lost it’s way.
The fact that these charlatans were able to execute this take-over is rather extraordinary and due, in no small part, to the mainstream media. We might want to think about their role and which of their policies and behaviors we want to support in the future.