- <li class=”imageCreditAllan Bezanson
- Sam Lorincz , 6, delivers Christmas card to Peter MacKay’s office Friday
Small groups of peace activists rallied outside Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s constituency office in New Glasgow on Thursday and Friday to voice their opposition to the Conservative government’s plan to spend $16 — $21 billion on F-35 fighter jets made by Lockheed Martin.
“The US military-industrial complex and especially Lockheed Martin have put tremendous pressure on the Department of National Defence,” Pictou County peace activist Paige Kennedy told the Coast in a telephone interview. “We understand how large this pressure is.”
Kennedy referred to confidential cables from Wikileaks showing how the US government pressured Norway to buy the controversial F-35s in 2008 when it appeared that Norwegian officials favoured buying Swedish military jets instead. One cable reveals that high-level American officials conveyed “forceful” behind-the-scenes warnings to Norwegian politicians that failure to buy the fighter planes would damage relations between the two countries. The cable shows that at the same time, the US and Lockheed Martin worked together on an intense PR campaign to sway public opinion in favour of the F-35s and against the Swedish Saab Gripen aircraft.
Tamara Lorincz, who helped organize the rallies outside MacKay’s constituency office, says it appears the US government and Lockheed Martin have adopted similar tactics to sell the F-35s in Canada.
“The Canadian peace movement and concerned citizens are not just up against the federal government and our defence minister making the wrong decisions, but there’s a ton of pressure coming from the US government and Lockheed Martin in our country,” Lorincz says. She points, for example, to a federal website touting the F-35 that conveys similar messages to a Lockheed Martin site calling the F-35 “Canada’s Next Generation Fighter,” even though no final contract for the planes has yet been signed.
“Representatives from the Canadian Department of National Defence just did a cross-Canada tour trying to convince sympathetic audiences like the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie and industry groups,” Lorincz adds. “It’s the first time in history that we’re aware that Department of National Defence representatives are going across the country to try to soften the public up on a military procurement.”
Lorincz points out that the diplomatic cables describing the tactics used to sell the F-35 in Norway were written by Kevin Johnson who then served as a senior official in the American embassy in Oslo. Johnson is now head of the US Consulate in Toronto.
“This is going to be a huge challenge for the Canadian public to prevent our tax dollars being wasted on the F-35s when we have the US government, the Canadian government and the world’s largest weapons manufacturer…working very hard on the campaign to try to turn the tide in their favour.”
“The three main points we wanted to make to Peter were to cancel the stealth fighter order,” Paige Kennedy says, “not to extend the Afghan mission and bring the troops home and finally, to cut oil subsidies and invest that money into action on climate change and the environment.”
At the rally outside MacKay’s office on Thursday, Kennedy carried a banner which quoted Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Costa Rica: “Military spending represents the single most significant perversion of worldwide priorities known today.”
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2010.
Does this F35 single engine stealth jet really do the things they say it will ??? I think they should prove it first before any country commits to buying them.
Posting here because the kid in the photo accompanying this article wants the CDN Govt to “take action on Climate Change”. Governments often like to chase after solutions for problem that don’t infact exist. Quite pleased that the Harpur govt has been restrained about the Global Warming / Climate Change Theories – and they are theory to put it kindly.
It is now Dec 21 2010. Britain is covered in record amounts of snow. Air travel in England is at a standstill. The Global Warming / Climate Change propaganda machine gets it’s experts to proclaims that the snow fall is due to Global Warming. If it’s a hot summer then they scare people and say it is due to Global Warming. If it’s a freezing winter with record amounts of snow, hey they will say that too is due to Global Warming.
For a moment lets put down our Koolaid and reflect back on what a Global Warming senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia had stated back in the year 2000:
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
By Charles Onians
Monday, 20 March 2000
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.
Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent. This year, for the first time ever, Hamleys, Britain’s biggest toyshop, had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store. “It was a bit of a first,” a spokesperson said.
Fen skating, once a popular sport on the fields of East Anglia, now takes place on indoor artificial rinks. Malcolm Robinson, of the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club in Peterborough, says they have not skated outside since 1997. “As a boy, I can remember being on ice most winters. Now it’s few and far between,” he said.
Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up “without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world – open-air skating”.
Warmer winters have significant environmental and economic implications, and a wide range of research indicates that pests and plant diseases, usually killed back by sharp frosts, are likely to flourish. But very little research has been done on the cultural implications of climate change – into the possibility, for example, that our notion of Christmas might have to shift.
Professor Jarich Oosten, an anthropologist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, says that even if we no longer see snow, it will remain culturally important.
“We don’t really have wolves in Europe any more, but they are still an important part of our culture and everyone knows what they look like,” he said.
David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
The chances are certainly now stacked against the sortof heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in “London Snow” of it, “stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying”.
Not any more, it seems.
Original posted at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/s…
CRU Fan: you might want to read the second two-thirds of that article you included – it comprehensively destroys your argument. Either you read the whole article, which makes you functionally illiterate (and hence makes me wonder who you are to try to debunk anything scientific), or you didn’t read most of it before citing it, which makes you foolish.
If you do re-read it, and still don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, fuggedaboudit. Just have a merry rainy Christmas…just like we get more and more often these days.
Reply to “Realist in Dartmouth”
I enjoyed reading your insults.
Hope they made you feel better about yourself.
I’ll try and stay within the last two thirds of said article, as you suggested:
****** quote from article ******
“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
****** end of quote from article ******
Further down we have the following:
****** quote from article ******
“David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.”
****** end of quote from article ******
The following quote refers to approx 2020 and not 2010:
****** quote from article ******
“Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”
****** end of quote from article ******
Yep, you are correct. It “comprehensively destroys your argument”
Also wishing you a Merry Christmas in return.
I love wikileaks, but I HATE people using children for political reasons and protesting. That is fucking disgusting.
I don’t see it as “using kid’s”
Its more of the constant upgrading of the tools of War. What those tools if used , who loses the most ?
Our children !
We as a Race on this planet are in danger of total extermination of ourselves & the constant never ending build up of War Engines of massive destructive power has to stop.
Just by constantly arming & re arming….without even using these destructive tools for which they are designed, is still KILLING people, by starvation, diseases etc.
IF Say in 2011, Every defense budget was slashed in half everywhere in the World, the money not spent on more war mongering, was instead spent on Health Care & food Production we could wipe out starvation on this planet…Just by cutting our Military budgets in half….
What’s really scarey isn’t so much we won’t do this…. its that the budgets for War are increasing !
Along with disease, starvation, poverty ~:'(
The Abiding Faith Of Warm-ongers
Posted 12/22/2010 07:07 PM ET
Freezing weather: Just another example of global warming?
Climate: Nothing makes fools of more people than trying to predict the weather. Whether in Los Angeles or London, recent predictions have gone crazily awry. Global warming? How about mini ice age?
The sight of confused and angry travelers stuck in airports across Europe because of an arctic freeze that has settled across the continent isn’t funny. Sadly, they’ve been told for more than a decade now that such a thing was an impossibility — that global warming was inevitable, and couldn’t be reversed.
This is a big problem for those who see human-caused global warming as an irreversible result of the Industrial Revolution’s reliance on carbon-based fuels. Based on global warming theory — and according to official weather forecasts made earlier in the year — this winter should be warm and dry. It’s anything but. Ice and snow cover vast parts of both Europe and North America, in one of the coldest Decembers in history.
A cautionary tale? You bet. Prognosticators who wrote the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, global warming report in 2007 predicted an inevitable, century-long rise in global temperatures of two degrees or more. Only higher temperatures were foreseen. Moderate or even lower temperatures, as we’re experiencing now, weren’t even listed as a possibility.
Since at least 1998, however, no significant warming trend has been noticeable. Unfortunately, none of the 24 models used by the IPCC views that as possible. They are at odds with reality.
Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, “falsifiable.” That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it’s false. That’s what scientific experimentation and observation do. That’s the essence of the scientific method.
Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It’s global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it.
Nothing can disprove their thesis. Not even the extraordinarily frigid weather now creating havoc across most of the Northern Hemisphere. The Los Angeles Times, in a piece on the region’s strangely wet and cold weather, paraphrases Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert as saying, “In general, as the globe warms, weather conditions tend to be more extreme and volatile.”
Got that? No matter what the weather, it’s all due to warming. This isn’t science; it’s a kind of faith. Scientists go along and even stifle dissent because, frankly, hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants are at stake. But for the believers, global warming is the god that failed.
Why do we continue to listen to warmists when they’re so wrong? Maybe it’s because their real agenda has nothing to do with climate change at all. Earlier this month, attendees of a global warming summit in Cancun, Mexico, concluded, with virtually no economic or real scientific support, that by 2020 rich nations need to transfer $100 billion a year to poor nations to help them “mitigate” the adverse impacts of warming.
This is what global warming is really about — wealth redistribution by people whose beliefs are basically socialist. It has little or nothing to do with climate. If it did, we might pay more attention to Piers Corbyn, a little-known British meteorologist and astrophysicist who has a knack for correctly predicting weather changes. Indeed, as London’s Mayor Boris Johnson recently noted, “He seems to get it right about 85% of the time.”
How does he do it? Unlike the U.N. and government forecasters, Corbyn pays close attention to solar cycles that, as it turns out, correlate very closely to changes in climate. Not only are we not headed for global warming, Corbyn says, we may be entering a “mini ice age” similar to the one that took place from 1450 A.D. to 1850 A.D.
We don’t know if Corbyn’s right or not. But given his record, he deserves as much attention as the warm-mongers whose goal is not to arrive at the truth but to reorganize society in a radical way.
Original Posted on:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/A…
CRU Fan: I stand by my comments. The original article from 2000 was talking about a trend towards less snow in the future. And you’re jumping all over a set of snow storms in a small slice of time in one year, only ten years after that article, to claim that global warming cannot therefore be happening? You’re committing the classic error of someone not educated in science – tunnel vision.
If it’s important to you to believe, for political or religious reasons, that global warming is impossible, that’s your right. But please don’t insult our intelligence by misquoting articles to support your ideas.
****** Realist typed ******
“The original article from 2000 was
talking about a trend towards less snow
in the future. And you’re jumping all over
a set of snow storms in a small slice of time
in one year, only ten years after that article,
****** End of quote *****
You might want to actually read that article.
I’ll quote from it to refresh your memory:
“”According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Dr. Viner was talking about this happening in a few years.
Dr. Viner stated that back in the 2000.
What kind of winter did the folks in England experience last year?
What kind of winter are they experiencing this year?
In 2010 do UK residents know what snow is?
2009 and 2010 are at least a few years away from 2000 are they not?
Was Dr. Viner saying there was a trend towards less snow in the future
or was he saying that “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” in a few years ???
***** Realist typed ******
to claim that global warming cannot therefore be happening?
***** end of quote ******
Where exactly did I make that claim?
****** Realist typed ******
If it’s important to you to believe, for political or religious reasons, that global warming is impossible, that’s your right
****** end of quote ******
Where exactly did I state that I believe that global warming is impossible?
****** Realist typed ******
But please don’t insult our intelligence by misquoting articles to support your ideas.
****** end of quote ******
You used the word “our”. Try speaking for yourself, or are there more than one of you?
Where exactly did I misquote the article?
To prevent such claims I had initially quoted the complete article.
You spoke about the second two thirds of the article in your reply.
So in my response to your reply, I listed
the quotes from the final two thirds of the same article.
****** Realist typed ******
You’re committing the classic error of someone not educated in science – tunnel vision.
****** end of quote ******
It’s funny how you claim tunnel vision on my part and yet have no problem whatever with Dr. Viner’s preposterous statements. One must assume that since Dr. Viner was educated in science then there is no way that his statements could possibly have indicated tunnel vision. Since he was educated in science he of course should be followed, trusted and more Tax Payer funded Grants should flow his way. I’ll quote from the article again to refresh your memory:
“”According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Folks might also look into the research done by those educated in science, into Cow Farts as a newly found cause of Global Warming (Stern issued a report on that – that was Lord Stern and not Howard Stern) or Cow Burps (a US study). All done in the name of Climate Research and all on the Tax Payer’s dime of course. Funny how they don’t bother to look further into Urban Heat Islands as being a possible cause of any temperature rise during the industrial age. Nope the increase in the numbers of Urban Centers and their increasing sizes during the industrial age, is not worth studying as its all the fault of CO2, oh and don’t forget methane from Cow Farts and Burps. The science is settled. No tunnel vision there.
Cap and Trade will hit everyone’s wallet. Next up I guess will be trading in Cow Farts in London and Cow Burps in Chicago. Bet ya the summer BBQ will cost an arm and leg after those educated in science are done telling the farmers to kill the cows to save the planet from Global Warming – err I mean Climate Change.
Tax Payer not educated in science should never be allowed a voice in the discussion but should keep their wallets open to pay for it all.
Cdn Government pissing away
$150 million of YOUR Tax Dollars,
thanks to Global Warming Alarmists.
Why did the Cdn Govt not just ask the Inuit residents
of Northern Canada about Polar Bear populations??
Because the Inuit people are “not educated in science”
they must be “dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.”
Those who are educated in science should be given $150 Million in Tax Payer Funded Grants to study the Global Warming Alarmists claims about the decline of Polar Bear populations (due to Global Warming – darn forgot again, meant to type due to Climate Change).
The Truth about Polar Bears
compared to Global Warming propaganda
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.htm…
“If the polar bear is the 650-kilogram canary in the climate change coal mine, why are its numbers INCREASING?
The latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.”
“The Inuit have always insisted the bears’ demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.”
******
Now read what the Global Warming Alarmists have said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhage…
“The loss of the polar bear’s natural habitat is said to be threatening their existence. “
New Univeristy of Waterloo study finds CFCs, not CO2, to be the cause of recent global warming
By Lawrence Solomon
Climate change is real and man-made, explains University of Waterloo professor Qin-Bin Lu, author of a new study published this week in the peer-reviewed journal, Physics Reports.
Professor Lu also explains that the climate change crisis is over. Thanks to an international environmental treaty, the planet is no longer in peril. We have, in fact, begun a long cooling period that will bring Earth’s temperatures back to normal.
The man-made cause of global warming is not CO2 and the international treaty that saved the planet is not the Kyoto Protocol. Rather, says Dr. Lu, the true cause of global warming has been CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that was once widely used in aerosol cans and refrigeration. As CFC use soared in the decades following World War II, he explains, the globe started warming dramatically. The world stopped warming dramatically when government regulations began to phase out CFCs, an event that culminated in the western world in 2000. Almost immediately afterward, in 2002, the world began to cool as CFCs started to diminish in our atmosphere.
The heroes in this tale are environmentalists and world leaders such as U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who got together to sign the Montreal Protocol of 1987. This protocol was designed to stop the Ozone Hole from developing above the Antarctic by ridding the planet of ozone-destroying CFCs. Little did either the environmentalists or the world leaders recognize at the time, explains Professor Lu, that their actions would also eliminate the threat to the planet of global warming.
Professor Lu, a path-breaking scientist in the field of ozone protection, made his CO2 discovery by accident — he was looking for culprits in the formation of the ozone hole over Antarctica. A chief suspect was CO2: Climate models produced by climatologists showed that CO2 would have devastating effects on the ozone layer, significantly enlarging the ozone hole over Antarctica and dramatically enlarging it over the Arctic. But when Dr. Lu compared the imagined output of the climate models with the actual measurements taken real-time by satellites and weather balloons, the models turned out to be soaring failures.
Ozone layer
Ozone hole over South Pole: “Warming on Earth’s surface between 1950 and 2000 is pretty much due to CFCs,” says Prof. Qin-Bin Lu. Photo credit NASA.
“I didn’t see any CO2 effect on temperature or ozone depletion over the South Pole from 1956 to 2008,” explained Dr. Lu, surprised at how totally different the real-world measurements were from those that the climate model predicted. The real-world measurements showed CO2 to be largely irrelevant – “the global warming on Earth’s surface between 1950 and 2000 is pretty much due to CFCs,” he concluded. “The models say that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas but the facts show otherwise.”
In contrast, CFCs have long been known to be a greenhouse gas that, on a molecule per molecule basis, is 10,000 times more potent than CO2. Professor Lu’s satellite and balloon measurements showed that factor of 10,000 to have been a gross underestimate!
Had CFCs never been widely used in our air conditioners and refrigerators, Dr. Lu believes, the Earth would not have warmed in the last century. And had CFCs not been banned, he would not be predicting a period of global cooling.
But with the CFC ban, and the subsequent phase-out of this ozone destroying chemical, global warming stopped and, early this decade, a period of global cooling began. This cooling will last “at least 50 years, and possibly 70 years” as the global temperatures return to their pre-CFC levels, he explains, barring the rise of an alternative to CFC, or the introduction of another greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
The cooling, he predicts, will be gentle – “after 2010 or so, the globe temperature will experience a small bounce back but a general declining tendency will not change.” Neither will the new levels be worrisome – Earth will find itself back at the levels of the 1950s, which themselves hadn’t changed much over the previous century.
Dr Lu’s study is now published and the reviews he has received to date have been favourable but he may find himself writing a postscript in three year’s time. Like hundreds of other scientists around the world, Dr. Lu may have unwittingly relied on invalid data for a portion of his study. His real-time satellite and balloon data, which shows CO2 does not cause climate change, is not in dispute. Not so for the historical temperature data, on which he based his estimates of how much global cooling we face as Earth’s temperatures return to their historic pre-CFC levels. “My temperature data comes from the UK – the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University,” he reveals when questioned.
As a result of the Climategate Scandal, this temperature data is now in doubt. Investigations into the Climategate emails are underway at East Anglia and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More significantly, CRU’s data is so suspect that the UK Met Office, which partnered with the Climate Research Unit in producing datasets for researchers, is undertaking a mammoth three-year investigation during which it will re-examine 160 years of original temperature data to determine to what extent, if any, CRU cooked the books.
Because of all this uncertainty, “I cannot say how reliable their data is,” states Professor Lu, who has done his best to reassure himself that all is in order. When the Climategate scandal erupted as his study was being completed, he cross-checked the CRU data to that of NOAA, another prominent organization, and then he cross-checked his data again when CRU’s partner, the UK Met Office, released more data. “All of them look similar,” Professor Lu says. Professor Lu’s cross-checks provide scant reassurance, however, because all these data-handling agencies had drawn their data from the same tainted pool. Although Professor Lu declines to comment on the Climategate scandal, he cannot be confident that his study will not need to be redone in three year’s time, when the UK Met Office completes its re-examination.
One calculation in his study that may change with revised CRU data: His 50-70 year estimate of the coming global cooling may change by two or three decades. One calculation that won’t change: CO2’s contribution to global warming remains approximately nil.
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.
Original can be found at:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f…