Manning: Environmental Portfolio and Gaffes hurt Conservatism

[TimG]

In addition to the scientists who feel they are being muzzed, science reporters are reporting that it is harder and harder to get access to Canadian scientists.

What reason could a scientists possibly have to talk to the media other than to promote a personal political agenda? After all, when non-scientists comment on scientific topics they are always told the proper forum to conduct science is in peer reviewed journals. On demand media access is not required for that.

I have made serious attempts to limit my ecological footprint. I cycle to work, drive little and make a concerted effort to consume as little as I can. I would be happy to support carbon taxes and other pollution taxes that would repair or otherwise pay for the damage that my behavior causes.

Ah - but would you support policies that required every person to pay 100% of the cost of their pollution no matter what their income? or would you instead argue that the clean up be taken care of by government as a public good? If you argue for collective responsibility for pollution produced by people why wouldn't you argue for collective responsibility for pollution produced by companies?

[TimG]

I don't know anyone who has ever suggested that "we should change nothing".

You did in your retort claiming companies should pay whatever it costs to restore the environment to whatever it was before they came along.

That said, I am not against environmental standards even if there is a cost - what I am against is the presumption that if something has changed it must be bad. There was a recent study on lakes near the oil sands that was spun as evidence of pollution but when you looked at the details the pollution levels were actually lower than what you see in lakes near major cities. Why should the oil sands operators be expected to attend standards which are higher than what people are willing to live with if that means they can use their cars?

There must be a cost benefit analysis to applied to all environmental measures and sometimes the cost of the measure will exceed the benefit and we should simply forget about it. CO2 mitigation is a good example. There is no credible CO2 reduction policy that will have any material reduction in the alleged harm caused by emissions yet these policies are extremely expensive so it makes no sense to pursue them. If someone came up with a technology that changes the economics then I would re-evaluate my position but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Edited March 11, 2013 by TimG

[shortlived]

0.1% OF GLOBAL EMISSIONS IS ALOT

This is pretty much just an industrialized countries issue though. The G20 would need to address this issue themselves since they are pretty much the source.

If there are no pressures there is no change, because it is cheaper to do less.

Even Sudbury improved their smokestacks.

The only initiative that needs to be taken is to kill the use of fossil fuels uses which account for over 95% of all co2 emissions.

This can be done by simply making co2 processing plants run by the government and billed to fossil fuel companies.

This would mean converting all co2 creating combustion points into a system that had to incorporate a compressor and these compression tanks could be flushed at gas stations etc.. or exist at the industrial sites themselves.

Smaller combustion things could be converted to electric most of this stuff is from industrial plants though so simply requiring conversion plants is what needs to be put into law.

Forget everything else for the co2 problem.

Edited March 11, 2013 by shortlived

[waldo]

What reason could a scientists possibly have to talk to the media other than to promote a personal political agenda?

nonsense! Clearly, your predilection for post-normal science (aka "blog science") has given you away... once again. Clearly, your favoured expert blog "scientists" have no desire to speak with real scientists. Why should anyone else, says you! However, in the real world, in the mainstream, journalists have a regular need to speak with scientists... to have scientists help journalists convey news/information for the layman audience. Of course, that kind of mainstream access to scientists presents a real quandary for HarperConservatives in their efforts to misinform, disinform, hide information and outright lie to the Canadian public.

a little over a year back now Postmedia News did some excellent work on this HarperConservatives muzzling of scientists... work that played off FOIP requests:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government introduced new rules to control interviews with journalists by Environment Canada scientists in 2007 that resulted in an 80-per-cent drop in media coverage of climate change science, according to internal analysis released in 2010.

an 80% drop in media coverage of climate change science! Well done HarperConservatives... controlling the message by denying information to mainstream media outlets - mission accomplished!

[BubberMiley]

It's funny how all this whining about the environment only seems to have started since the Tories came into power.

Preston Manning has always secretly been a Liberal? That explains it!