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John Oakley and David Suzuki

Do temper tantrums cause global warming?

By Judi McLeod

Thursday, February 22, 2007

David Suzuki became a walking advertisement for global warming proof positive when he angrily stormed out of a radio interview with Toronto AM640's John Oakley one week ago today.

Suzuki, a prominent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television commentator, who motors around Canada in a bus garishly painted with climate change logos, registered hot air when Oakley suggested that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki is out there shilling.

Outbursts that shut down information-seeking interviews don't shed any more light on the subject that Suzuki and his American counterpart Al Gore have turned into: The Big Issue of the Day.

Why are global warming crusaders becoming increasingly intolerant of global warming skeptics? (Click here and here)

Did Suzuki lose his global cool because global warming guru Al Gore was due in Toronto within the week of the Oakley-Suzuki interview?

Are Suzuki, Gore and Company trying to ensure man-made global warming as a fait accompli so that Kyoto Protocol architect Maurice Strong will be able to see his life's achievement up in neon lights, among persistent rumours that the elderly Strong is in failing health?

Why would Suzuki fly into a rage if he were only telling the truth?

Suzuki's bizarre behaviour brought him rare criticism from the mainstream media, including the Globe & Mail's Barbara Kay: "The remorseless pressure on Canadians to sign up for environmental orthodoxies that they are not cognitively equipped to judge is demoralizing and divisive. Tantrums by self-anointed prophets do not help the situation. Whatever the eventual outcome on the global warming front, we could all use a little non-partisanship, maturity and attitudinal cooling on the behavioural front."

Joseph C. Ben-Ami, Executive Director of the Institute for Canadian Values and Director of Policy Development defrocked Suzuki as a capitalist masquerading as an environmental activist in his column, Global Warming Charlatan.

"It's hard to imagine any Canadian being unfamiliar with David Suzuki and his long career as an environmental activist. Indeed, Suzuki has, over the years, managed to parley worry about the environment into a multi-million dollar business, making him one of Canada's great contemporary capitalists," Ben-Ami wrote.

..."Suzuki was a guest on the John Oakley show as part of his cross-Canada tour drumming up support for the Kyoto Protocol, (or more accurately, stirring up opposition to the federal Conservative Government for its environmental transgressions, real and imagined, specifically its apparent reticence in implementing the provisions of the treaty).

"During the course of that interview, Suzuki makes a number of claims that are, shall we say, dubious.

"To begin with, he suggests that if Canada fails to meet its Kyoto targets, we will become "international outlaws".

This assertion is stunningly ignorant. The Kyoto Protocol is not criminal law by any standard. It is an agreement -- in other words, a contract, not unlike those that people enter into all the time. Parties to contracts sometimes find, for any number of reasons that they are unable to meet their obligations, forcing them to re-negotiate the terms of the contract, abrogate the contract, or simply repudiate it. Sometimes the act of breaking a contract is accompanied by penalties as stipulated in the agreement, and sometimes penalties are imposed by courts -- but when they are, it is always civil courts that impose penalties, never criminal courts. It seems that in David Suzuki's world, you would be branded an 'outlaw' if you lost your job and could no longer afford the mortgage payments you believed you could.

"It gets worse.

Having demonstrated how little he knows about the workings of international treaties, Suzuki dismisses questions about the scientific integrity of Kyoto, characterizing as "a lot of baloney" Oakley's observation that "a lot of scientists feel they're intimidated from speaking out..."

"2,500 scientists signed the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change) Report on February 2!" Suzuki exclaims.

"My suspicion already aroused by his false allegation of 'outlaw' behaviour, I decided to check this out for myself -- and discovered that, in fact, only 51 individuals signed the IPCC Report released on February 2.

"It seems that the Great Suzuki got that one wrong too. Quelle surprise!

"There's more.

"After Suzuki insinuates that scientists who disagree with him are "shilling" for big corporations, Oakley asks him where he gets his funding. Suzuki replies that his foundation takes no money from governments and complains that "corporations have not been interested in funding us."

"Corporations uninterested? Is it possible that the Great Suzuki has failed to attract a single corporate donation to his feel-good campaign to save the earth? Not one?

"Actually, the David Suzuki Foundation's annual report for 2005/2006 lists at least 52 corporate donors including: Bell Canada, Toyota, IBM, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Microsoft, Scotia Capital, Warner Brothers, RBC, Canon and Bank of Montreal.

(Suzuki's mentor Maurice Strong incidentally is on the Suzuki Foundation's board of directors and was before joining up as a business partner with George Soros on a scheme to flood the American market with Chinese manufactured Chery cars, on the board of directors of Toyota).

The David Suzuki Foundation also received donations from EnCana Corporation, a world leader in natural gas production and oil sands development, ATCO Gas, Alberta's principle distributor of natural gas, and a number of pension funds including the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) Employees' and Pensioners ' Charity Trust. OPG is one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the world operating 5 fossil fuel-burning generation plants and 3 nuclear plants... which begs the question -- is Suzuki now pro-nuclear power?

"If I were less generous, I might be tempted to accuse Suzuki of hypocrisy for accepting donations from corporations that he must believe contribute significantly to the production of greenhouse gases, but that would miss the point entirely. The real issue is that, contrary to his clear assertion, the David Suzuki Foundation does receive funding from corporations," says Ben-Ami.

"The jury may still be out when it comes to assessing climate change and global warming; it's not out when it comes to assessing David Suzuki and the reliability of his testimony. Suzuki is a charlatan, a shameless self-promoter who foments fear in his audience before promising them salvation -- but only if they buy his miracle cure. The only difference is that in his case, Suzuki's miracle cure is deadly to those who take it.

"If you'd like to listen to the entire 7min. 26 sec. conversation between David Suzuki and John Oakley, (www.canadianvalues.ca/audio/Oakley_Suzuki_complete.wav") click here."

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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