Saturday, March 28, 2015

Ontario public consultations on climate change: See no realism, Hear no realism

The Ontario government is conducting public consultations "to prepare a new strategy for fighting climate change".  Tom Harris and other climate realists attended the Ottawa sessions and presented about ten minutes of testimony:



Not unpredictably, the government's public summary for the Ottawa event completely ignored that testimony.  So Tom Harris wrote a complaint to the Environment Ministry closing with:
"... Given that the Ottawa "Public Summary" has been sanitized in this way, how can the public trust the government to accurately reflect the public input given in other town hall meetings across Ontario?"
Good question.

4 comments:

Martin said...

I posted on this "consultation" before.One could say that a government who amends the name of the department to Ministry of environment and Climate Change might just have some preconceived ideas about the causes of changing weather patterns. They also might be more receptive to certain types of submissions.My own which was e-mailed to them certainly met the same fate as Mr Harris's report, although he made an effort to show up in person. If Wynne doesn't even read dissenting opinion, she could save large sums of money by not pretending to do so.

JR said...

Yes. And I doubt that Tom Harris et al were too surprised by the reception they got. The government's public "consultations" are really little more than a political propaganda exercise.

johndoe124 said...

Tom Harris et al weren't reciting Progressive scripture so they may as well have been blasphemers. Can't really expect to be taken seriously if you are insulting the Progressive church.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of what one thinks, polls show overwhelmingly Canadians want action on climate change, off course as long as they don't have to pay. Which in my mind is hypocritical but thats generally what the public wants. Also most people have limited knowledge of the climate system. In fact two back to record cold winters in Eastern Canada are being blamed on climate change by many even though global warming was supposed to mean such winters would either never happen or become rarer.

My biggest problem though with the climate change debate, is not think I think its a hoax, because I don't, but rather two fold.

1. There are other environmental issues like protecting forests, species, less water pollution which are being ignored due to our obsession on this.
2. Its not an all or nothing, better to set realistic goals and targets that can be done with not too much economic hardship like replacing coal fired plants with nuclear ones than making absolutely ridiculous targets that are impossible to achieve.