The Gormley Papers: I'm Right & You Know It

By John Gormley

Gormley’s follow-up book to his Canadian bestseller Left Out is a compilation of various perspectives and opinions based on his Post Media columns from the last decade, with personalized margin notes, mini rants, and a few I-told-you-so’s. Touching on the major events that have shaped the public consciousness and the milestones that make a life worth living, this collection of thoughts goes beyond the politics of right and left.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781927714041

Book preview

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1 The End Is Always Near

It’s probably generational. When we’re young every setback or downer is magnified in our own mind because we have no frame of reference, and also because everybody else we know is in the same boat. And there’s some sniffing derision about how parents and grandparents don’t understand because they have it so easy — well, of course they do. . .now. But when they were young it was just like it was for us, perhaps even worse.

But I’ve noticed one difference now. In my own coming of age, just after the Arab oil embargo and into 10% inflation, wage and price controls, the death of the U.S. Rust Belt and then 20% mortgage rates — there was plenty to be worried about. The grown-ups, the older people, generally assured me that things would get better. This, too, shall pass. But many of today’s Generation Y/Millennials aren’t getting much help from us. In fact, they’re being bombarded with dire warnings by fear-mongering Baby Boomer activists, who foretell a grim future of climate change, war, economic collapse and pending pestilence.

Never before have so many been told that the end is near.

It isn’t.

Sometimes a seemingly insignificant event makes everything clear. In the Spring of 2008, a tipping point came as I sat with my friends on a rooftop patio, near some college students knocking back celebratory drinks.

I overheard the young woman: passionate, outgoing, enthusiastic, talking a mile a minute about the big environmental issues facing us. As an example, she cited the factthat since the election of a new government in Saskatchewan six months earlier, the big oil companies had moved in and were raping our province of our oil.Clearly not a fan of either informed debate or Brad Wall’s newly elected SaskParty government, the woman’s politics are her own business. But underlying the youthful passion was a sense of bitter resignation, the realization for her that we are living in the environmental end times.

Then I wondered what it would be like if we actually took seriously the often apocalyptic predictions that pass our way these days. As oil hit another all-time high — and the predictions mounted of $200 dollars a barrel — Jeff Rubin, the CIBC bank’s expert on alarmism, foretold a price at the pumps of $2.25 for a liter of gas. Then the Bank of Canada weighed in with an economic forecast described by gloom merchants as Canada grinding to a near halt.

At the same time, as rice shortages in Asia prompted rationing, the Consumers Association of Canada (CAC) foretold rising food prices for all of us. Not necessarily predicting mass starvation and food shortages — that was left up to the media to exaggerate to levels of nuttiness — the CAC nevertheless adds to our collective trepidation.

In today’s media world no longer is there a one-day news cycle spinning from the daily newspaper to the supper TV news. Now, from headlines on your cellphone to the insatiable appetite of Internet news sites, social media and 24-hour cable news, news stories are forever one-upped, as they churn to more frenzied heights. Trend spotting often turns into full-blown apocalyptica, playing on all our fears.

America’s sub-prime slowdown brings crisis talk and speculation of a continental recession rolling over Canada any day now. Looming water wars, a planet heating up and turning us into desert dwellers, a record high Canadian dollar — it’s all there to scare the hell out of us, though we’re not sure why. And for all the fear mongering, there’s usually not even a factual explanation of how all these bad things are going to occur.

Apologies to William Shakespeare. . . The scare’s the thing

For those who let it get to them, the Chicken Little World — where the sky is falling — is the only world they know.

And for many people under age 40, from as early as they can remember, it’s been a constant bombardment of doom-speak and fear. There’s been acid rain, the hole in the ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases, genetically modified Franken-foods, the spectre of Monsanto governing the planet and relentless fear over global warming, or climate change, as it’s now called.

It is an awfully gloomy place to live, this doomed planet Earth.

And for a generation earlier, don’t forget the bold 1970 predictions that air pollution would reduce sunlight by one half, overpopulation would cause a worldwide famine, and, the earnest consensusin 1970 that global cooling was bringing on a new ice age at a remarkable pace.

Combine these apocalyptic predictions with nuclear proliferation, political uncertainty, the Cold War, the Arab oil embargo, HIV/AIDS, inflation, stagflation, high interest rates, too low a Canadian dollar, too high a Canadian dollar — the constant fears never subside; they only change.

And, like many things in life, keeping people afraid boils down to money, power and control.

Like the Y2K hype over computers in 1999–2000 that went from hysteria to non-existence within one day, a good reason for constant fear-mongering is that there’s good money to be made. On the power front, if people can be kept gloomy, fearful and uncertain, it discredits a political opponent’s achievements and keeps voters primed for a saviourcampaign to wrest back power.

In some cases, enough anxiety can cause an issue to be kept, or placed, on the public agenda. This way government funding and programs can justify creating jobs — or at least allow certain people to hang on to their phony-baloney jobs — and be perceived as fighting the dragon that threatens us.

For some people there’s just something in their psyche that needs to be scared, apprehensive and convinced that we’re on the precipice of destruction. In an oddly comforting way, it helps keep some people reassured that despite what others say, it really is always that bad out there.

And, by the way, experience and every possible benchmark tell us that the sky is not falling — it never has been. Humans adapt. And we keep improving.

If the last few centuries have taught us anything, there are instructive lessons to be learned on mob rule, intolerance in the name of religious belief, and muzzling those who dare speak against the orthodoxy of the day.

Canadian TV personality David Suzuki is turning into the modern poster boy for some centuries-old practices that we should avoid.

After earning a Ph.D. in Zoology in 1961, Suzuki has done little hands-on work in the lab since his taxpayer-funded CBC TV show The Nature of Thingstook off in the late 1970s. And he’s used his celebrity as a media darling to crusade on all things environmental. A committed and often alarmist campaigner, Suzuki aptly describes himself as cantankerous, opinionated and narrow minded.And evidently he is not an economist or a trained environmental scientist either.

Lately, Suzuki’s zeal may have crossed the crazy line with his suggestion of jailing people who ignore science. In the midst of regaling an obsequious student audience at McGill, Suzuki turned his bluster to economic growth, saying that using Gross Domestic Product to measure growth is, in his world, nutty. And he turned his trademark hyperbole on biotechnology, claiming that any scientist who says that it’s safe is either ignorant or lying. Then Suzuki unleashed his bombast on politics, urging students to look for a legal way to throw our political leaders in jail for ignoring science, and stating emphatically, Politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science.

Look as hard as you might, there is no legal way to throw people in jail for disagreeing with, or ignoring, the opinions of others. Oddly, it seems lost on Suzuki that the marketplace of ideas, where people are free to agree and disagree, is one of those quaint and useful notions that make democracies work.

Presumably, Suzuki would also jail those who consider themselves climate change skeptics. So the issue is not ignoring science. It’s ignoring his science that will land you in the slammer.

And, what about those scientists — real, peer-reviewed people with tenure — who don’t embrace Suzuki science and the quasi-religious fervor of eco-faith? What should be done with them? Surely, in Suzuki’s world, they also must be ignoring science. Jail them too, Dave — political prisoners can never have enough company.

If anyone else in Canada advocated jailing people for the crime of disagreeing with them they’d rightly be called bigots, fascists or dismissed as kooks. It’s time that the high priests of the Church of the Environment, like Suzuki, started reading up on history.

And for the rest of us, it’s time that we started calling this stuff what it is.

Climate change hype

As the 2000s have progressed, climate change hype has ruled. The United Nations’ 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was worth a close look.

In an attempt to transfer wealth from rich countries to poor and to eventually wipe out the fossil fuel economy, all in the name of global warming, there’s been unprecedented hoopla. And if hyperbole is any measure, we hit some new highs on my radio show as the world’s eco-warriors descended on Copenhagen.

Ex-Saskatoon guy and professional environmental organizer Jeh Custer phoned from Copenhagen and declared, Climate change is the human rights issue of our generation,while comparing it to slavery, genocide, colonialism, racial segregation and the denying of women and minorities the right to vote.Whew!

We also heard from Guy Dauncy, self-described green activist, author and sustainable communities consultant, who warned of the collapse of human civilization, wars, planetary chaos, death and disaster from imminent global warming.

Even more than usual, the global-warming-hype crowd seems to have ratcheted up their fear mongering to red-line levels. Maybe it’s to get us really panicked as Copenhagen gets going or it’s a desperate Hail Mary pass amidst growing revelations from Climate Gateat East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit, where documents and emails suggest that someone’s been cooking the books on global warming.

Carefully choreographed to coincide with the opening of the Copenhagen meetings, the same UN that is sponsoring the climate treaty talks — and ironically relying on the dubious data from East Anglia — proclaimed that this decade will very likely be the hottest on record.

In Washington, again on the same day as Copenhagen opened — what an amazing set of coincidences — the US Environmental Protection Agency got in on the act, declaring greenhouse gases (GHG) to threaten the public health of Americans.

The most prominent GHG is carbon dioxide, at about 75%. Methane comprises about 13%, nitrous oxide 6% and fluorocarbons 5%. Not knowing much about methane — beyond cow farts — or nitrous oxide, unless you’ve had a laugh at the dentist’s office lately, even the lowly fluorocarbons turn out to be the safe ones we adopted when we saved the ozone layer back in the ’80s, except they ended up being not so good for climate. But carbon dioxide (CO2) is something everyone knows. It’s what plants need to survive. It is a trace gas that is essential to life on this planet.

So, for the sake of argument let’s accept that global warming is occurring (or climate change, if you prefer) and it’s all happening because of CO2. So how much carbon dioxide is there in the Earth’s atmosphere that is causing this? By volume, current CO2 levels are.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, less than four-one hundredths of 1%.

For all the talk about CO2 being spewedinto the atmosphere it doesn’t even make up a measly 1%, but merely 1/25 of 1%. And of that, 97%of the CO2 occurs naturally.

So, humans contribute 3% of. . .03%. Canadian humans — said to be among the worst human contributors — contribute 1.9% of the entire mass of human-generated CO2. So, if you’re still with me here, we’re responsible for 1.9% of 3% of .03% — an infinitesimally small proportion of the earth’s atmosphere.

Take a deep breath for a moment (careful, though, you’ll be expelling CO2 when you exhale) and consider something else.

In future generations, long after the children of our great grandchildren’s children are but distant memories, historians will look back at the turn of the 21st century and they will marvel at how reactionary, apocalyptic and over-the-top crazy our society was — the very same society where people had the longest life spans, most wealth, prosperity and opportunity than at any time in history. And it will surprise these historians that we couldn’t seem to handle our good fortune.

And, yes, those historians will be comfortably living on planet Earth, complete with its ever-shifting climate.

Launch the lifeboats

Oppression is in the air. The sense of imminent defeat. . .the negotiations are like the Titanic. We are sinking. It is time to launch the lifeboats but we cannot because one of our crew has decided the ship is not sinking. These negotiations need rescue.

— CANADIAN GREEN PARTY LEADER ELIZABETH MAY IN COPENHAGEN

At least Lizzie May can take consolation that if the crowded global warming hysteria ship goes down there’s even controversy over whether it’ll sink in seas that are rising or falling.

A research group from the U.S. has endorsed climate fright-meister Al Gore’s prediction that sea levels will rise by six meters in the next century as a result of global warming. Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — no strangers to considerable fear mongering — estimates a much lower 50-centimeter rise in sea levels.

At the same time, Swedish ocean levels expert, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, remains skeptical, projecting a likely sea rise of just 15 centimeters. Mörner, who twice examined the IPCC’s computer-based projections and called them fraudulent, also points out that of the 22 IPCC authors doing oceans work, not one is a sea levels specialist.

It’s all part of the long overdue debate on the science of global warming which — according to Gore and the warmists — has been settled since the late 1980s. But with the world being asked at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen to sign a binding international climate change treaty which would force developed nations to slow their economies and transfer billions of dollars to developing nations, many citizens are only now saying wait a minute!

In the name of dramatically cutting levels of carbon dioxide and ending the fossil fuel economy, the hype of the climate alarmists seems to have as much to do with attacking capitalism as it does thinking that human beings can alter the planet’s climate cycles.

As the UN’s Copenhagen global warming summit progressed, more than 140 private jets crowded the tarmac in Copenhagen. At the same time, fully-loaded commercial jetliners unpacked thousands of delegates, environmentalists and the curious — all objecting to everyone else’s CO2 emissions. These jets, along with 1,200 private limos, 200,000 meals, 900 kilometres of computer cables, and 50,000 square miles of carpet will result in more than 41,000 tons of CO2 being emitted.

With all the concern over CO2 spewing jets, wasn’t Copenhagen the perfect opportunity for a videoconference summit? In fairness to the 192 nations represented by 1,500 negotiators, perhaps a face-to-face event was preferable, but when this includes an additional 9,000 bureaucrats and politicians plus 22,000 activists, protestors, environmentalists and various hangers on, this entire gabfest was a bit much!

The truly weird part was the justification for the publicity-seeking climate change warriors all winging their way to Copenhagen on jets and then lecturing the rest of us on the supposed evils of CO2. Couldn’t Al Gore, Elizabeth May, actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Daryl Hannah, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and even the ever-earnest green Prince Charles just have watched the proceedings from home?

And the proof is...

In addition to the growing number of thousands of scientists now emboldened to speak out against the long-touted consensus of 2,500 IPCC advocates who have claimed that human-generated CO2 is dangerously heating up the earth, in late 2009 a letter from 141 scholars to the UN asked some compelling questions.

The scientists, including University of Saskatchewan geologist Brian Pratt, asked supporters of human-caused global warming/climate change to demonstrate some of the assertions they’ve made, including that:

1.  Variations in global climate in the last 100 years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

2.  Human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs)are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

3.  Computer-based models can replicate the impact of all the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

4.  Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

5.  Malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

6.  Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

7.  Worldwide glacier retreat and melting sea ice in polar regions is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

8.  Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;

9.  Hurricanes and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency, and

10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

These questions raise some basic issues of science that are dismissed by the global warming advocates as settled. If that’s the case, perhaps they can indulge those of us who are slow learners and play back for us all the evidence and data that led them to their final conclusions. Surely for them it’s a no-brainer.

If they cannot or will not, given what’s at stake, Copenhagen may be remembered as the first of the icebergs bumping up against the good ship Climate Change.

Twisted over twisters

Tornados are one of the most common weather phenomena seized upon by the climate change crowd. If they can’t prove that the climate is hotter, they take any anomaly like a twister and use it to argue that unusual weather must be climate change. The only problem is, twisters aren’t unusual in these parts.

The great American writer Wallace Stegner, in his 1962 autobiography Wolf Willow, wrote of the formative years of his childhood from age seven to 12 when his family farmed near Eastend, Saskatchewan during the years 1916 to 1921.

He observed how his character was formed by living on the prairie, which he described as a country to breed mystical people, egocentric people, and perhaps poetic people. But not humble ones.The year after Stegner’s family left the area a tornado touched down near Eastend and killed two people.

For many of us, as prairie people, a defining feature of life is weather — weather that can change on a dime. And it’s as enticing and inspiring as it is punishing and unforgiving. For every crisp, bright, winter wonderland storybook day there is the antithesis; the spectre of howling blizzards, blinding snow and wind-chills of –40°C, or worse! In summer, the promise of gentle moonlit nights and wondrous sunny afternoons beneath a huge canopy of blue sky can be threatened by a punishing storm.

As is true all over the globe, weather has shaped our people. In Saskatchewan, it has made us tough, rugged and individualistic because we are prepared to face down the worst. But when trouble comes calling, Saskatchewan people will drop everything to help a neighbour in the spirit of cooperation that built this province.

Since the dawn of time — and certainly since the first wave of settlers arrived in the 19th century and began documenting weather — summer storm season starts in June and continues until August. Dark and ominous clouds, rain, damaging winds, lightning, thunder and hailstones tell us that the evil twin of our beautiful summer has arrived. . .and so it is