Categories: Inside the Queensway

Wait, there are rumours circulating that have nothing to do with Guy Giorno and the coming purge at PMO?

Huh.
And yes, it’s true: Michael Byers is planning to run for the federal…

by kadyomalley on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:59pm - 0 Comments

And yes, it’s true: Michael Byers is planning to run for the federal NDP nomination in Vancouver Centre, currently held by Hedy Fry. From an email he sent out earlier today:

I’ve decided to run because of my growing concerns about the lack of Canadian leadership on critical issues such as climate change, the war in Afghanistan, health care, housing and human rights.

I’ve studied the various federal party policies on climate change. The NDP policy makes the most sense. And it respects individual citizens. The Liberals want to force Canadians to change their behaviour through taxes; the NDP wants to help Canadians to change with solutions.

We need real political leadership, with bold and effective public policy, and Jack Layton is the only one in Canada offering that.

Michael Byers
Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law
University of British Columbia

Restore Text

Tags: hedy fry, hot rumours, Michael Byers, ndp is the new black, what does guy giorno think of this?

More by kadyomalley

Bob

Well, I suppose anyone who doesn’t know the difference between climate and weather will find ideas (realities) like climate change “nebulous.”

Then again, such a person will also likely find things like drought, vanishing lakes, unseasonal floods, disappearing sea ice and the like “nebulous.” Some people live in strange little worlds of their own. Can’t be helped, really.
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

Bob I am not certain but you seem to be implying that I don’t know the difference between weather and climate. I know the dif, but I wonder if you do?

Everything you cite ,”drought, vanishing lakes, unseasonal floods, disappearing sea ice”, is all weather related.

Climate is ‘the average and variations of weather in a region over long periods of time’. The climate is behaving as it has always done unless you believe droughts, floods and disappearing sea ice only started happening in the past 20 years so somesuch.

Climate changes over time, always has done, and I am not sure how we are going to stop mother nature doing her thing. However, I am fairly certain these cycles the planet goes through are not going to stop due to me paying $600 more in taxes next year.
T. Thwim

If you’re paying $600 more in taxes on the green shift, then that’s because you’ve deliberately chosen to live in a non-renewable lifestyle. I can understand it, it’s certainly convenient, and moving to a renewable lifestyle can be uncomfortable until the new habits are formed. But don’t blame your choice on the government.
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

T Thwim I am not blaming the government, I am looking sceptically at a tax proposal made by the opposition who claim they can change how mother nature operates by increasing my taxes.
Bob

To my cost, jwl, I know something about climatology and other earth sciences. I won’t waste further time arguing the point, except to note that permafrost — like multi-year sea ice, mountain glaciers and many other things — is unaffected by short-term weather variations. It responds only to significant climate change. And it demonstrably *is* so responding.

At the moment I wish I knew more about psychology, and specifically how it is that people — who otherwise give every sign of lucidity — are able to deny obvious realities they should be able to perceive easily. It would be more amusing and remarkable were it less depressing and common.
catherine

Bob, about denying obvious realities, I don’t find it so surprising. Like almost any science that attracts enormous public attention the field will also attract non-scholarly types who are good communicators with an agenda and the oil companies have been happy to fund them. For people who do not have doctorates in relevant areas, they may not know who to listen to. I typically refer people who don’t know whether human effects on climate change are real to the US National Academy of Sciences (http://dels.nas.edu/basc/climate-change/).

JWL, the NAS membership includes essentially all Nobel Laureates and the top echelon of scientists. They have been putting out an annual report on climate change in layperson language for many years. You can track how the science has progressed over those years. They do not overstate and will not say something is certain when it isn’t.
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

Catherine I typically refer people who don’t know whether human effects on climate change are real to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition of over 30,000 scientists who say man-made global warming is not occurring.

I also think its interesting that anti-global warming studies must be funded by nefarious oil companies with an agenda but any study that is pro global-warming must be on the side of angels and have no agenda at all.

I am a student of history and that leads me to the belief that climate changes over the decades /centuries and until someone can conclusively prove that ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ is caused by man, and not nature going through its regular cycles, than I will continue to be a skeptic.
catherine

JWL, science is not done by petition.

The vast majority of science is funded by the government and the funding decisions are made through international scientific review. If you are not interested in knowing the actual science, then that is your choice.
Bob

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, hey?

Hmmm. From http://www.sourcewatch.org:

“The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) describes itself as “a small research institute” that studies “biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging.” It is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools” and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war….

The OISM website’s homepage [1] says:

The Institute currently has six faculty members, several regular volunteers, and a larger number of other volunteers who work on occasional projects.

The Home Page’s current navigation bar lists 8 individuals under the “Faculty” heading. Two of those listed are deceased, and two are sons of OISM’s head, Arthur B. Robinson. Yet even though the OISM credentials 8 persons as “Faculty”, it has no classrooms, or student body.”

Perhaps you’re right, and I should reconsider this global-warming business, after all.
Bob

But never mind all this. If you’re a student of history, JWL, can you think of a precedent for (a) rapid warming happening simultaneously with (b) human activity returning fossil carbon to the atmosphere at about 1,000,000 times the rate at which it was sequestered?

Yes; each year we burn fossil fuels that took around 1,000,000 years to form.

But please, take your time about answering. After all, we have all the time in the world. Don’t we?
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

Bpb Yes, we do have all the time in the world. Quotes from Source Watch are just as ridiculous to me as Oregon Institute is to you.

I find it interesting that you have to use ad hominem arguments on me and others instead of arguing facts.

Once again, rapid warming is not happening. The average temp of the earth has fallen since 1998. Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph was proven to be manipulated in order to achieve the results he and his team wanted.

Just because you wish for something doesn’t make it true.
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

Here is a letter from 1817 from President of UK’s Royal Society to the Admiralty. They wanted to send ships to find out the cause:

“A considerable change of climate inexplicable at present to us must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated.”

“2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and 80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years entirely disappeared.”

“The floods which have the whole summer inundated all those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened …”

What caused the changes? And how do you know what ever you think is happening now is not part of the same cycle that caused the problems in 1817?
T. Thwim

If you’re going to discard the consensus of scientists, why on earth would you accept a single letter?
http://www.todaysautonews.com jwl

T. Thwim What consensus? Many scientists say global warming is happening, and many say it isn’t. I am just pointing out that climate changes over time, that’s what it does naturally. And now some of us, global warming believers, want to muck around with mother nature’s natural cycles and I think that’s a spectacularly bad idea.

Sorry, kady, we seem to have gotten into the weeds down here.
Mark

Catherine,
“Are there any NDP candidates or MPs who will openly say that a carbon tax and cap and trade are simply two ways of pricing carbon, both are good, and Canada would benefit enormously by implementing one or both as soon as possible?”

I think they’ll get on that when Dion apologizes for being a part of a government that did a big fat load of neither for a solid 8 years.
Pingback: Michael Byers, NDP at Leslie Young