Dear Editor:
Re: Environmental issues growing, Letters to the Editor, Burnaby NOW, Nov. 23.
Mr. Victor Finberg is certainly consistent in the way he is pursuing his passion of choice. I do not believe that he will be influenced for even a second because of anything I have to say. He has drunk the Kool-Aid and will only relate to what fits in with his preconceived concerns.
I will, however, reply anyway. Because when a lie is repeated often enough, the lie becomes the truth. My response will hopefully speak to others who might be coaxed into thinking for themselves and start to question, instead of regurgitating not so accurate information that is available from the environmental industry. Considering what we must do in order to move the province forward, it is all related and rather important.
If Mr. Finberg took some of his own medicine and studied the information available, he would soon find there are scientists, such as Professor Ian Clarke of Ottawa, and many others who confirm the connection between CO2 and climate change. They studied drill cores of ancient glacier ice from Greenland and Antartica.
They found that at all times of past global warming periods the planet always heated up first. Then the atmospheric amount of CO2 increased.
At one point, the CO2 buildup took 900 years after the fact before it reversed itself again, long after the next cooling process had set in. This is, of course, just one of many considerations which, however, casts enough doubt on the so-called settled science, that even the presidential debates in the U.S. decided to drop the issue all together, as we all saw.
I had a cute story about droughts and rainmakers. But let's take it down a notch and look at the Al Gore Rainbow and Furnace Company instead.
Their furnaces operate on CO2. Same as all other furnaces: the more CO2 we put in, the warmer the house gets. That's what their salesman, Al Gore, said. As a consumer, none of us would ever put up with what follows: Even though man has never ever pumped as much CO2 into the atmosphere, the average global temperature has not budged for the last 14 years! Is that food for thought? But, on top of that, we still catch as much heck for our CO2 emissions as if they meant something.
Our local politicians sit at the table when Mr. Finberg and his friends tell us how the sea level will rise five metres by 2025. They nod seriously and look concerned because it will get them votes from certain people in the room. They then sneak out the side door and order our dikes to be raised by, get this, 30 centimetres. This is based on reality and a provincial flood projection which is meant to be in effect for the next 200 years.
If my words ever sound annoyed, it has a lot to do with Mr. Finberg's claims that "deniers" refuse to accept climate change. In all my books and binders, I cannot think of one voice that would have ever made such a stupid remark.
"Deniers" question all statements but especially those who claim they have answers when they don't.
I must also assume that Mr. Finberg's fat cat looks totally different from mine. His is probably really fat, wears a black suit from the 1920s and a gold chain across his belly and smokes big Cuban cigars. Mine goes to work in jeans on casual Friday and was hired by Mr. Finberg's union as pension fund manager. S/he has no money of her/his own but gets a salary that puts her/him into the one per cent bracket Mr. Finberg despises so much. But this person is extremely good at picking companies which will make lots of money for Mr. Finberg's pension fund without landing anybody involved in jail.
If profits are so disgusting, let's hear how many times he has organized his colleagues and occupied his pension fund office to stop it all, demand that from now on it's to hell with profits, all their money should go to green projects regardless of the outcome, and if there is no money left for Mr. Finberg in the end, so be it.
Most of us know how to make sacrifices. However, most people need an acceptable reason before they can rise to the occasion, such as learning a trade, which will guarantee a job.
Ziggy Eckardt, Burnaby
