Climate change in the spin cycle

Ms. May, you tell the truth. Such a wonderful quality.

Julie Gleadow

Your absolutely right Elizabeth! We need action now, not useless haggling. Lets put up wind turbines and solar panels. That’s what we need now!

“We should be talking about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions as
fast as possible in hopes of avoiding ever-more-likely runaway global
warming.” But it sounds from the immediately preceding sentences that runaway global warming is already upon us. I think we have to start from some kind of recognition of what effects are irreversible due to the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere and what we can hope to achieve in what kind of time frame by what kinds and scale of reductions in the present. If we can ever get ourselves to do that.

The fiddlers play on while the planet burns.

Thanks Elizabeth, this will get shared. Just finished Paul Gilding’s “The Great Disruption” (Bloomsbury Press, 2011) – he lays out a map, with directions. A must read.

Thank you Elizabeth – we need more parliamentarians willing to recall history and stick to facts over spin. keep up the good fight – we’re behind you.

Elizabeth, thank you for talking about the issues. I’m rather tired of my elected officials making parliamentary theatrics during the times when these discussions are open to the public to view (questions period). I’d like to actually see them do what they are paid to do, which is talk about the issues and make a plan forward. So thank you Elizabeth, for doing your job and beyond.

Absolutely – NOW is the operative word.

…but here we are, the converted. where is anyone else?

I support you in calling for open and honest talk about climate change and policy.
Regarding your comment:
“Greens favour a carbon tax as the best way to reduce GHG and put money
in the pockets of Canadians. On the other hand, if a cap and trade plan
was properly designed, I wouldn’t oppose it.” ….
… I’m not an expert, but everything I’ve heard and read thus far says that cap and trade is not the solution, based on the history of this system elsewhere. That cap and trade is inferior to a carbon tax system: it’s not straight forward and is difficult to implement, there are problems with oversight, easy for corruption through loopholes, and next to impossible to accurately measure results. So, I don’t understand what a “properly designed” plan would be. If that essentially describes cap and trade, shouldn’t the Greens be pushing for a carbon tax?

Thanks Elizabeth! I empathize, I can imagine the constant dizziness and nausea that you must experience toiling within the spin cycle that our Parliament has become. I’ve never understood why ‘bullshit baffles brains’ and how ‘money overpowers logic’. How could Canadians have gifted a majority government to the Harper Conservatives? Surely after experiencing a Reform Party majority, hopeful Canadians will demand that the NDP and the Liberals get past their egos and work together with the Green Party to defeat the Conservatives.

The image of the melting Arctic ice cover in today’s Vancouver Sun is shocking. What does it take to WAKE UP the politicians and the masses? Everyone should be pressuring the Conservatives to take action.Yesterday the news about oil rights to a vast area of the Canadian seabed being sold for a mere $7 million to a 2-person company in Britain, who can resell it for a profit to any buyer. Canadian sovereignty and protection of our coast and waters from spills gone in a pen stroke Please protest this dangerous mistake. We have to protect the Arctic from burgeoning oil exploration to preserve what ice and clean waters are still left.

Elizabeth, you continue to be an inspiration in the mad house we call parliament. Unfortunately it seems to be another example of how apparently sane and intelligent individuals behave irrationally when in a crowd. In sports arenas it’s worrying but in a parliament that we depend on to steer the country it’s truly scary. Please don’t lose heart and keep fighting the good fight. Even though it may often seem hopeless it would be far worse if there was no-one there to inject sanity.

Thanks for the great information updates,

It seems an impossibility to bend Harper’s ear, but we haven’t tried hard enough. When are the real protests going to start? Will someone let me know?

I certainly think that Elizabeth May has the most integrity of any federal leaders, but I believe the science shows that man made warming is negligable. Most warming is from natural cycles, such as solar flare activity; and most co2 in our atmosphere is also natural, such as volcano activity. A good volcano, in a day, can equal a year’s worth of man’s input to the issue. Certainly, man does contribute largely to pollution, but that is seperate from warming. It seems that most of the carbon tax plans only penalize the developed countries, and send the monies collected to third world countries (with a large amount siphoned off by the “administrators”); while the third world countries continue to pollute, without penalty. Moving a dirty factory to China accomplishes nothing for the global environment; it is just another form of wealth redistribution (read socialism/ communism).
As I said earlier, I do like Elizabeth May. Harper is a fascist (conbining corporations and state) and the others have yet to show me the sincerety of their convictions.
I like you Elizabeth, but get off this “man made” warming kick; it ruins your credibility.

You must be the only intelligent person in Ottawa. The rest of our elected officials need to show that they have brains and the will to use them. I wish we could clone you!! Thank you, Elizabeth.

Each of your blogs, Elizabeth, is like an island of sanity in a sea of disinformation. Please keep on writing them.

Elizabeth thank you so much for standing up for the Environment and for us. There is a shift happening all around the world and the time has come for our government to wake up.

Did anyone notice this recent graph….

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/files/2012/09/naam-ice-12.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Chaos/187700434593711

I’ve been thinking of calling Stephen Harper’s office to tell him exactly what you (Elizabeth may) are saying – that instead of criticizing the NDP regarding their cap and trade plan, we need to price carbon in some way and that ‘what are you (Harper) thinking’ by not even mentioning the record melting of the arctic ice sheet (which broke the 2007 record which broke all previous records) when you were in the Arctic. I want to ask him what he thinks is going to happen when the ‘air conditioner’ of the arctic is gone (see Globe and Mail article last week) and we are inundated with violent storms and our agriculture is broken because we have lost the stable weather we have had for 4 thousand years since the end of the last ‘little ice-age’. I want to ask him what he thinks his legacy is going to be if he doesn’t start levelling with the Canadian people about this catastrophe and start leading. I want to tell him about my 9 grandchildren and my worries that they have a bleak future – not because of some financial deficit but because of the environmental deficits that Elizabeth mentions – that will make life difficult if not impossible for all of God’s creatures. Thanks for speaking so eloquently Elizabeth. Now how can we get action?

People do not read. They believe what is told on TV. Yet, no one ever explained to masses what the carbon tax is, and what is it significance.

Elizabeth, why don’t you have a private meeting with Thomas Mulcair and come to some sort of agreement that you and the NDP will support each other against that villain who claims to represent a majority of Canadians?

“Masters of the Universe”
We have to wonder about the corporate types who also stand to lose from global warming. They are “going to go down with the rest of us” so why don’t they get on board with emissions reductions? [almost every year we break the record for more CO2 emissions, and CO2 levels in the atmosphere are, as we speak, surpassing the dreaded 400 p.p.m. mark!!] – I am thinking that it is because the CEOs get the big bucks to be right all the time, and to acknowledge the mistake they made in denying AGW [man made global warming] would reduce their credibility. They backed themselves into a corner.

They are ignorant, not well read – they pass around reading material to each other and so all they know is what their peers tell them. They never read the alternative news online!!

Since it is the CEOs of energy companies that make the decisions on where to invest their company assets, changing course now by comitting money to renewables and efficiency would indicate their mistaken belief about global warming.

Also, it is, under corporate law, imperitive for them to seek the biggest return on their investments, and fossil fuels are still the one.
They think in terms of 3 to 5 years for ROI [return on investments], so despite the fact that renewables compare with fossil fuels over 7 to 10 years, they stick with oil and coal and gas investments.

However, if the price of gasoline were gradually increased to $10 a liter as we implement “polluter pay” costs – including tailpipe emissions as well as industrial emissions – then renewables would be the only game in town.

The other hope to ending this insanity of ever-increasing CO2 emissions is that the rumours of a pending “total economic collapse” will mean money has no value, and therefore everything of REAL WORLD value will be valued again – water, air, sustainable environment, food…

With scientific evidence showing that we can anticipate ice-free summers in the arctic within a few decades, it is sheer madness that much media, business and political chatter is focusing on the ‘opportunities’ that climate change is thus opening up for shipping oil through the arctic. Yes, let’s get more oil flowing and consumed worldwide so that we can increase carbon emissions even further. Yes, let’s test just how ‘robust’ and safe the oil tanker industry is in one of the most environmentally fragile areas of the planet. Yes, let’s see how quickly we can achieve an ice-free arctic year-round, and the massive global climate instability that will bring. Thank you, Elizabeth, for continuing to challenge mainstream thinking and offering sound alternatives.