“We’re Smarter than This”: Michelle Stirling’s Rebuttal to Tzeporah Berman’s Speech to the Alberta Teachers’ Association

Contributed by Michelle Stirling © 2018

Friends of Science Society’s Communications Manager delivers some real talk in the heart of Canada’s oil country. These are her opinions based on available evidence.

Speaking in response to the presentation by Tzeporah Berman at the Alberta Teachers’ Association Conference, Michelle Stirling calls out teachers, elected leaders and the public for allowing foreign-funded anti-oil activism and interference in domestic energy and climate policies to overrule common sense and science.  Watch the video and read the full notes of Michelle’s speech below.

MICHELLE STIRLING – REAL TALK ON ALBERTA ANTI-OIL ACTIVISM 

Add your name. Together we can open up a real debate about foreign interference in Canadian oil and climate change policies. Become a member and donor to Friends of Science Society – make a difference!  DONATE!

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Responding to Tzeporah Berman’s presentation to the Alberta Teachers’ Association

Part 1 – Introduction and Treaty 7 Discussion

Thank you for watching. Deep thanks for being open to listening to my perspective, particularly as the ATA’s Science Journal, in 2011, labelled the people in my group “Friends of Science Society” as ‘deniers.’

My colleagues are Professional Geoscientists, Professional Engineers, solar physicists, and energy policy experts and economists. Most spent more than 20 years in the education system, graduating, gaining their degrees and certifications through advanced education.  They deserve your respect. They embody the purpose of education. Many have a lifetime of field experience in the real world.  These are the kind of expert, scientific and technical people who made it possible for Ms. Berman to fly to Alberta to be part of the ATA conference and speak in a warm, well-lit building, with modern sanitation and air conditioning.  That’s all thanks to engineers, geoscientists – the people Ms. Berman came to denigrate before the ATA.

Our core science team also works with policy experts and economists who have decades of experience.  Unlike Ms. Berman, all these people know how things really work. But oddly, there is intense pressure to shut us up and delegitimize us because we demand open debate, free scientific inquiry, and substantial, evidence-based cost-benefit analysis on climate and energy policies over ideology like that of Ms. Berman, founded on ‘hope and change.’  That’s what I will talk about today.

I want to say….We’re smarter than this.

On a personal note, I’d like to start by recognizing that I live in Calgary and it is part of Treaty 7 land. I am proud that Canadians like Colonel Macleod and the first 300 Mounties came west and stopped the genocide of aboriginal people.  Before I began working on climate and energy issues, years ago I spent a decade or so engaged in studying, writing and co-producing a series of documentaries about Western Canadian history.

Most people have forgotten that the US was deeply engaged in “Indian Wars” in the late 1800’s. The US had a million-man standing army at the end of their civil war in 1865. Canada was confederated in 1867. The US was spending $19 million a year just on Indian Wars alone post-Civil War.  Canada’s entire budget was $18 million.

Yet once the Canadian government heard that the Assiniboine tribe had been slaughtered in 1873 in the Cypress Hills – massacred with extreme brutality – the chief beheaded and his head staked on a lance; the women raped and children murdered by the Benton Gang of the US – the Canadian government decided enough was enough.  They sent 300 Mounties West to make treaties – not to wage war.

The Mounties got here in the knick of time.  American Whiskey traders had come over the border and set up shop, many of them were hardened ex-Confederate soldiers. They were taking rude advantage of the Blackfoot Nation.  Here are the words of an ex-whisky trader:

“If we had only been allowed to carry on the business in our own way for another two years, there would have been no trouble now as to feeding the Indians, for there would have been none left to feed: whisky, pistols, strychnine and other like processes would have effectively cleared away these wretched natives.”  – Alexander Staveley Hill, Ex-whisky trader, Southern Alberta

That was not the view of Colonel Macleod – who became the emblematic icon of the North West Mounted Police. He loved the aboriginal people, he learned their language, danced their dances, ate feasts with them. He understood the human tragedy of these proud, once self-sufficient, formerly nomadic people, who had been decimated by small pox, terrorized and mistreated by whisky traders, and whose way of life was ending as the buffalo – their mainstay of life – rapidly vanished. The buffalo went from perhaps 60-100 million across North America, to a small herd of maybe 1000 in the space of 20 years. In one of the last buffalo hunts of the 1870’s, Saskatchewan records show many braves died of starvation on the hunt.

Colonel Macleod extended the hand of friendship, compassion and hope to a people whose traditional ways relied almost entirely on the buffalo.  They named him “Stamixotokan” – “Bull’s Head” and to this day, the Mountie crest bears the symbol of a buffalo bull’s head.

Based on over a decade of research in the Glenbow Archives and three years on the road interviewing pioneers and historians, I believe in my heart that Canada saved the First Nations people from absolute decimation and physical genocide.

Stirling researched and co-produced 41 x 30 min documentaries on Southern Alberta history under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator at the Glenbow Museum.

This fact does not dismiss the wrongs that were done to many aboriginal people in the years that followed. I am well-aware of the racism against aboriginal people and the challenges faced on and off reserve.  As you will see and hear in my talk today, I frequently reference history in order to understand where we are today on many issues.

Part 2

Does Tzeporah Berman know her stuff?

Facts on climate and energy.

I will be honest with you. I think that Tzeporah Berman is completely misinformed on climate and energy.  I believe that she is a hypocrite for flying here to condemn the oil and gas and oil sands industries of Alberta.  When I look at the history of the attacks by anti-oil activists on Alberta, the roots go back to Ms. Berman, and I will show you why that is my opinion.

It is unclear to me whether she is an unwitting agent of foreign funders or as some say…a ‘useful idiot.’ I do not know if she is aware of her role in this geopolitical trade war against Canada.  Perhaps she really believes she is saving the planet.  If so, she should stop flying so much to climate conferences and speeches.

Ms. Berman stated to the ATA that it is “conflict over Trans Mountain and over the oilsands that is forcing this conversation today.”

That is not true. What is forcing today’s conversation is over 2 decades of foreign funded anti-resource development activism in Canada.  This curious phenomenon was first noted by journalist and author Elaine Dewar, in her detailed account “ Cloak of Green” published in 1995.  Dewar had innocently been drawn into a ‘saving the rainforest’ event – if you recall, this was about the time of the Rio di Janiero Earth Summit of 1992.  Dewar was struck by the combination of corporate parties hanging around with eco-activists and began exploring how these multinationals liked to use eco groups as a front, to establish preferential relationships with aboriginal groups, typically to get special access to minerals or resources, often circumventing national sovereignty.  That’s a pretty short summary of her work – read it yourself.

That is the foundation of why we are in this situation today. Canada is a land rich in resources – other people have noticed that – we are locked in a geopolitical trade war that, in my opinion, based on the following evidence, is fronted by environmental activists who are now well installed within government and industry – not to mention, living in the rent-free heads of most citizens.

My objective in this talk is to evict these unwanted eco-squatters from their claimed position of moral high ground and ethical purity and expose them and their role in this geopolitical charade.

Before we go any further. Let’s take a quick look at some facts.

This slide is from US climate and energy policy analyst Roger Pielke, Jr. This shows that in the age of ‘climate diplomacy’ – the use of fossil fuels has only grown worldwide.

This graph, from BP, which can be cross verified with similar stats from the International Energy Agency, shows that renewables occupy a vanishingly SMALL segment of the world’s energy supply – and there is no likelihood it will increase substantially in the near future.

And this image shows you why. This shows the comparative energy equivalencies to one cubic mile of oil.  Just so you know, the world uses THREE cubic miles of oil equivalent energy every year – and one of those cubic miles IS oil. That demand is only expected to grow.

So – the world is not getting off fossil fuels anytime soon – and the world is not making a disruptive move to renewables, no matter what ideologues like Ms. Berman tell you.  These are the facts.

Much of today’s problem on climate and energy issues have their roots in Enron.  As noted by Lawrence Solomon, in 1993, Enron was a keen driver of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2009, Solomon described it as this: Enron

“had figured out how to make millions in a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide emissions, thanks to changes in the U.S. government’s Clean Air Act. To the delight of shareholders, Enron’s stock price rose rapidly as it became the major trader in the U.S. government’s $20-billion a year emissions commodity market.”

Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993. To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide…”

Solomon continues:

“Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely, all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed. An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried.”

Solomon goes on to say:

“Between 1994 and 1996, the Enron Foundation donated $1-million to the Nature Conservancy and its Climate Change Project, a leading force for global warming reform, while Lay and other individuals associated with Enron donated $1.5-million to environmental groups seeking international controls on carbon dioxide.”

Now, in the 1990’s a million dollars was a lot of money.

Lay was very good at lobbying the Clinton Gore government.

One of Enron’s employees sent the “Palmisano memo” from Kyoto.

“The memo, entitled “Implications of the Climate Change Agreement in Kyoto & What Transpired,” summarized the achievements that Enron had accomplished.

“I do not think it is possible to overestimate the importance of this year in shaping every aspect of this agreement,” he wrote, citing three issues of specific importance to Enron which would become, as those following the climate-change debate in detail now know, the biggest money plays: the rules governing emissions trading, the rules governing transfers of emission reduction rights between countries, and the rules governing a gargantuan clean energy fund.”

Enron’s employee proudly stated:

“Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute] and Worldwatch. This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monetized),” Palmisano explained.”

As most of you know, Ms. Berman began her activist career with Greenpeace.

You may not be aware of Donna Laframboise’ book – “The Delinquent Teenager…” wherein she revealed that the people writing many of the IPCC reports are activists from Greenpeace and WWF – not ‘the world’s leading climate scientists’ – as Ms. Berman would have you believe.

With these initial insights, let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

As you probably know, Vivian Krause  has been tracking foreign funding to Canadian environmental charities and non-governmental organizations for over a decade.  Vivian has found that mind-blowing millions of dollars have been funneled into this country funding groups associated with Ms. Berman.  Most of these funds are dedicated to blocking pipelines, phasing out coal, blocking resource and forestry development and pushing for renewables and a price on carbon.

Matthew Nisbet has been tracking a group of billionaires who, in 2005 set out to change the world.

These billionaires and their foundations had been investigated in the US in the 1950s for precisely the reason that they were deemed to have far too much power, with no oversight.

My information here comes from Nisbet’s peer-reviewed work and the ClimateWorks Wikileaks document which includes a case study on the success of their “Design to Win” program.

ClimateWorks Foundation – WikiLeaks

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/57594/16165

Design to Win

http://www.climateworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/design_to_win_final_8_31_07.pdf 

Too much power? No oversight?

They have proven this to be so. Literally – these billionaires decided to cause a ‘sea change in the global economy’ through forcing a global cap and trade policy world-wide, as Nisbet reports.

They intended to achieve this by funding local ENGOs, making it appear to be a grassroots movement – just like Enron did. They have vested interests in renewables and they want to put $12 trillion in wind and solar on the grid world-wide. They appear to have no concerns that they will be interfering with domestic policies world-wide. They are billionaires and don’t seem to care. They formed the ClimateWorks Foundation and paid the world’s most influential management consulting firm – McKinsey and Company – some $42.4 million in consulting fees.  They came up with a plan called “Design to Win.”

Was this all a big secret? Nope. Much of it is online – but connecting the dots is the challenge.

Nisbet reports that they met with some 170 environmentalists, scientists and activists in about 2005 who assured them that the technology existed to replace fossil fuels.

That is false. There is no replacement for the use of coal, oil and natural gas in contemporary society.  This is probably why the oil company CEOs that Tzeporah met with – as she told you in her speech – seemed to be a bit blunt or harsh with her.  This may be why she feels resistance, rejection or outright hatred from many people in the oil patch in Alberta and elsewhere.

Because Tzeporah Berman is either blissfully or willfully ignorant of the facts of how the world runs and what constitutes climate change – yet her ideological stance, her social media platform and Greenpeace stunts over the years, have gained her global status as an ‘expert’ on something she clearly either knows nothing about or she is deeply indoctrinated in an ideology not based on facts.

As I will show, there are clear conflicts of interest related to the funding of the organizations she has worked with.

Part 3 –

Praise for early environmentalists – Brickbats for foreign funded influencers

Before we get too far into this, I would like to say, I have some praise for the original environmental groups, just as Tzeporah praised the oil patch. The world initially benefitted from the work of environmental groups.  Since the 1970’s, due to more public and policymaker attention on issues of pollution, western nations – particularly Canada and Alberta – have set very high environmental and air quality standards, which are well-observed, for the most part.  Most companies are compliant and many are extremely proactive. They almost never get credit for that.

However, since the ClimateWorks Foundation has been pushing climate catastrophe via ENVIRONMENTAL groups, policies have become very destructive to the world and have damaged the most vulnerable among us – I will detail that later.  Today, environmental groups have tremendous sway over policymakers and the public – yet they are unaccountable, unelected and engaging in economic and geopolitical warfare on behalf of their corporate and anonymous donor-advised sponsors.

In particular, they have focussed their efforts on Canada.

The ClimateWorks Foundation – Podesta Wikileaks documents revealed the details of a Case Study on the very program that Matthew Nisbet had written about back in 2013.

It revealed that 13 foundations had been paying some $600 million a year to environmental groups around the world for over a decade, via ClimateWorks, to push their agenda of a global cap and trade system.  It revealed that some $750 million had been applied to the European region.  That ClimateWorks had hired the world’s most influential management firm – McKinsey&Co – to consult on this program, paying them some $42.4 million dollars. It revealed that each billionaire foundation – outside of participation in the ClimateWorks projects – often granted their own additional funds to pet causes.

The ClimateWorks “Design to Win” case study revealed that the funders had garnered valuable intelligence – either from their contracted data analysts – and…or…their fundees.  It is not clear, for instance, to what extent groups that were reporting back to ClimateWorks may also have been conveying what might have been considered privileged information from so-called ‘stakeholder’ groups – like those that Ms. Berman spoke about setting up with CEOs of major oil sands firms.

So – I have to ask the question? Were the 4 years of CEO dinners that Ms. Berman discussed where environmentalists and oil sands executives met, a means of building trust and then having the foreign-funded ENGOs cull insider information, pieced together from their talks….and I ask, was that reported back to ClimateWorks partners who were then in a position to use it against Alberta, the Alberta government, and to use it against the same Canadian Corporations who took steps to ‘do the right thing’ on the environment and ‘engage’?  I believe this is plausible.

I do not have an answer to that question, but circumstantially, I do have things to say that suggest this is true.

I won’t have time to go through all the grant details that I think are relevant to this story – but let’s pick a few.

Ms. Berman used to be with Greenpeace.  In 2009, Greenpeace was funded by the Oak Foundation, a ClimateWorks partner.  The grant document says:

“To initiate three distinct but interrelated efforts concerning tar sands in Alberta to enhance the ability of Greenpeace Canada to more effectively launch and deliver its ‘Phase Out Tar Sands Campaign’; secondly to leverage the growing interest of ranchers and landowners in limiting unbridled oil and gas exploration and production in southern Alberta; and thirdly to conduct specialised opinion research and media work to identify messaging for these and other efforts that will generate maximum information value among Albertans.”

For this they got $436,475.00 from the Oak Foundation.  But that’s just the beginning of Greenpeace attacks on the oil sands.

In 2010 they got $424,373 from Oak for the following:

“To create awareness of the financial, regulatory and political uncertainty that surrounds investments in the tar sands so that prominent financial analysts, media, opinion leaders and Members of Parliament will publically express concern about the lack of government regulation of the tar sands industry. Greenpeace Canada aims to publicise the controversy around the tar sands both within and outside Canada. This will encourage the withdrawal of major institutional investors from the tar sands by 2012; the end of France’s tar sands subsidies; and the passage of a feed-in-tariff in Alberta utilised by farmers, ranchers, landowners and investors to develop the province’s huge wind power potential.”

 

And then associated groups went on to create and exacerbate that alleged risk – though things like the 2008 Tar Sands Campaign, which Vivian Krause found and reported on…. the “Rethink Alberta” campaign, the UK Tar Sands Network, BankTrack and more.  In Quebec, millions of dollars have been granted from Oak and other climate works partners to the anti-oil Global Climate Change Action group, known as tcktcktck.org , which now claims to have an alliance of 470 ENGOs in 70 countries opposed to fossil fuels.

No wonder Energy East could not go anywhere.

Ms. Berman spoke proudly of Alberta’s 2016 climate plan implemented by the current government – but not a word about Alberta’s First Climate Change legislation of 2002.

This was the leading climate and environmental legislation in North America, implemented in response to the Kyoto Protocol.  In fact, Albertans had also done due diligence on the issue of climate change.  The Alberta government engaged Dr. Madhav Khandekar in 2000 to do a study of the climate science claims of Kyoto.

Unlike Dr. Suzuki, who was granted an honorary doctorate by the U of A earlier this year, Dr. Khandekar is a real climate scientist, a former regional expert for the World Meteorological Organization, a former Environment Canada researcher of some 40 years, author of numerous peer-reviewed papers and a peer-reviewer himself.

Dr. Khandekar noted that there were many uncertainties in the theory of greenhouse gas induced climate change in his report in the year 2000 – which was commissioned by the Alberta government.  And in an interview this spring – he noted that those uncertainties are still the same…perhaps greater…some 18 years onward.  This is from a scientist, not an activist. Is anyone listening?

Tzeporah Berman claims it’s not fair that people have to flee fires and floods. Well, Tzippi. Move to another planet. Life is not fair and natural occurrences happen all the time.

Looking at history is a good way to put this in perspective.  On the topic of wildfires, the largest wildfire in North America was in 1950 – right here in Alberta and BC.  The Chinchaga Firestorm.  It burnt 3.5 million acres of forest in northern Alberta – near where Premier Notley grew up – and the smoke pall was seen around the world.

Part 4 –

Carbon dioxide: Great Satan? Climate control knob?

Tzeporah Berman tells you that ‘we are now able to calculate the amount of CO2 – carbon dioxide emissions – that can be released into the air to keep us within a certain temperature.

No we can’t.  I’ll tell you why. Mother Nature.

Look at the recent tragic California wildfires.  Do you think California’s multi-billion dollar investment in electric vehicles, solar panels and wind arms reduced carbon dioxide? No. And how much CO2 was released from those wildfires?

I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that the release from the Slave Lake Wildfires of 2011, here in Alberta, was HUGE.

More detail here: https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_BurningQuestions_Health_Coal_Wildfires_Jan2015.pdf 

I can tell you that in Indonesia, where the ‘climate change’ proponents want to grow palm oil to ‘save the planet’ – they are burning off native plants and causing a CO2 and soot cloud equivalent to the entire year’s emissions of the US.

Do you see how Tzeporah’s math doesn’t work?

If any of you ATA teachers studied earth sciences….geology…. you can confirm that carbon dioxide is a consequence of climate change….only nominally a cause.  You can confirm that over geologic history, there is NO correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature.  Mother Nature has moved earth’s temperatures from minus 70 degrees Celsius during glaciation to plus 70 degrees Celsius during periods of evaporitization. Is it credible to think that you and I can control earth’s temperature by half a degree by cutting carbon dioxide emissions from industrial activity?

We have some 4.5 billion years of earth’s history to learn from; instead you invite an activist to speak to teachers, not a geoscientist.

Part 5 –

Climate and carbon obsessed investors and green billionaires run amok

Tzeporah also references Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and former Governor of the Bank of Canada on climate catastrophe – last time I looked, he is not a climate scientist.  In fact, in his speech to Lloyds of London in 2015, Steve Kopitz of Princeton Energy Advisors went through Carney’s speech point by point and found that his climate change data was wrong – so wrong – that Kopitz called it: “a critical failure of analysis.”

As an analyst, I find Mr. Carney’s speech is truly dismaying.  For the Governor of the Bank to claim that climate change is leading to rapidly rising insurance claims is, at best, a critical failure of analysis.

Tzeporah tells you that three years ago, various groups were warning of stranded asset risk.

Where did this information come from?  Well, there are two groups – one called the UN PRI – Principles for Responsible Investment, and another called the CDP Worldwide.

One of the founders of UNPRI is Generation Investment Management group – along with many academic and government pension funds – including that of the UN Joint Chiefs of Staff. Generation – or GIM – is Al Gore’s renewables investment firm.

Another influential group is the ‘charity’ Carbon Disclosure Project – now known as the CDP Worlwide. This was a Rockefeller project – the Rockfeller foundation is part of ClimateWorks and Vivian Krause has tracked their funding of anti-oil activism in Canada.

Where once governments used to report the national GHG footprint by sector alone, without identifying individual companies – the CDP Worldwide asks companies to VOLUNTARILY report their carbon footprint.  By volunteering their energy use in good faith – the companies made themselves a target for investor “climate extortion.”

Since the UNPRI institutional investors, who hold some $100 trillion in assets under management, rely on the CDP reports for direction about which company to invest in, most corporations complied…IN GOOD FAITH.

But what happened?  In 2016, CDP issued this report: “In the Pipeline” which graded all Alberta oil sands companies and their investments as having a failing grade in terms of preparing for ‘the future’…meaning the alleged move to a ‘greener’ future.

Investors began fleeing the oil sands like rats from a sinking ship.

How ironic that TOTAL came out smelling like a rose – a company that pulled out of the oil sands and put $5 billion into Iran – that paragon of virtue and human rights.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the term ‘vulture investor.’  A vulture investor is a party that looks for…or creates conditions…that drive down share value and market demand with the express intent of snapping up those shares as they crater and getting a larger chunk of the market.

Think about that as you think about Tzeporah is telling you about Alberta’s oil sands.

We have the third largest oil resource in the world – but only Canada’s oil sands are blocked from market – consistently blocked by green billionaires like Tom Steyer.  He spent millions blocking Keystone XL.

Here he is in Fort Chipewyan helping put solar panels on a lodge.

Really?  Meanwhile back home, his ‘green jobs’ plan that he so pushed for is a big fail – you’d wonder why he has the time and energy to come this far north for a few solar panels.

This report in Power Line says Mr. Steyer’s company Farallon is busy buying up coal stocks in Asia.  By the way, if you are a private fund, you cannot be signatory to the UNPRI – so all the dumped and divested fossil fuel stocks are yours at a cheaper price and scot-free in terms of Environmental Social or Governance considerations.

Who else has spent millions blocking Keystone XL?  Well, let’s look at the International Funders of Indigenous People.  Here it is – they state here, as part of the Michael Marx Tar Sands Campaign and Rethink Alberta campaign…that environmental groups and aboriginal groups will work together to block Keystone XL and shut down the oil sands.

Here are the people who sponsor this group.  No questions?

Do you think the corporations/orgs listed here are not using oil, natural gas or coal?

What about Alberta’s coal phase-out?  Was that to clean the air? Or, as noted in the Tar Sands Campaign – to drive up costs of production – again, as a means of shutting down the oil sands.

Alberta industry consumes about 70% of the electrical power in the province. Coal is a vast resource that we OWN – it is price stable and we have lots of high quality coal.  Used to be that the grid was powered about 45/50 by coal – sometimes 70% of our baseload came from affordable, reliable coal – and we had some of the most advanced coal fired power plants in North America.

Look at how renewables investors have spent hundreds of millions to demarket coal – why? Because wind and solar are too erratic to operate on the grid with coal…and coal is so cheap, no one in their right mind would phase it out unless they thought it would kill you or kill the planet.  Adding a carbon tax to coal prices it right out of the market.  Voila.  ClimateWorks billionaires strike again.

Part 6 –

Climate justice or crimes against humanity?

But wait – what about Tzeporah’s comments on Africans dying of climate change?

No. They are dying for lack of affordable power, sanitation and pumped water.  They are being denied coal power by environmental groups who are attacking banks and stripping their reputations.  Why?  So the Anglican Church pension fund can make money off the world’s poorest….their $13 billion dollar pension fund has invested a paltry $75 million in a solar panel company so they can put poor Africans on a lend-lease program for tiny solar panels.

Hey, better than no power at all….but is that CLIMATE JUSTICE?

Tzeporah told us she met the poor man from Liberia on a plane while on her way to a climate conference.  On a plane.

Tzeporah also told us in the future there would be more climate refugees and that food prices would skyrocket maybe 30-50% in some poor regions by 2050.

Baloney.  Food prices have already double and tripled in poor regions of the world – primarily due to idiotic biofuel policies that have pushed 6 megatonnes of corn off world markets and into the gas tanks of North Americans.

UN Special Rapporteur of the right to food, Jean Zeigler, as early as October 26, 2007 said in an official UN communique that called for a 5 year moratorium on biofuel production said: “It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces foodstuff that will be burned into biofuel.”

Since 2011, the New England Complex Systems Institute has studied the issue of the correlation between food prices and civil unrest – they got to the point where they could predict where the next conflict would break out. This was due to the steep rise in global food prices due to biofuels and food speculators.

In these poor countries, if you live on a dollar a day and that doubles…you can’t get another job to earn more….because in some places unemployment is 40-50%.  And so…you leave for greener pastures, perhaps crossing the Mediterranean because you have nothing to lose.  That’s not climate change. That’s the economy.

And why is there such unemployment – especially in the Middle East North Africa region?  Because these are NOT democracies and there are no property rights to enable a person to leverage their ‘dead money’.  This is discussed in Hernando de Soto’s “Mystery of Capital”

It’s not climate change.

And why are there so many young men leaving the Middle East for Europe?  Two reasons.

One is the Hirsi Jamaa ruling. In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Italy, which had returned a number of migrants back to North Africa – requiring them to pay each of the nine some $17,000 USD – equivalent to about 10 years of work in their homeland – as compensation for ‘moral damage.’

So …aside from no work and rising food prices at home, the migrants from the Middle East have two incentives…jackpot justice or asylum…and one risk – death by starvation or death at sea.  For many of these people, they hold the belief that ‘it is written’ and their fate is already sealed either way.

But climate change is not the driver of this crisis.

And further…since 2006, the World Bank has reported that by 2020 a hundred million young Arabs across the Middle East North Africa region will come of age….and will be unemployed.  But most Middle Eastern countries are not democracies. Even in a democracy with balanced capitalism, it would be hard to create a hundred million jobs.  It is impossible in a place where the ruler looks at the citizens as peasants.

But that’s not climate change. That’s culture.

Perhaps Tzeporah doesn’t know these things that I just told you – but you can see that there is a much larger story to tell than simply prattling on about climate change and pipelines.

We don’t see Germany shutting down natural gas pipelines from Russia to save the planet.  We don’t see the UK turning away the imports of Liquefied Natural Gas from Qatar to save their pants in the winter when their thousands of wind turbines grind to a halt.  We don’t see South Korea, manufacturer of wind and solar devices, going to 100% renewables or shutting down their refineries that accept oil and gas from all of our competitor nations.

It would be funny, if it was not so sad, when Tzeporah says:

”The difficult but far more practical reality is that Alberta bitumen is a high-carbon, high-cost product that can’t compete against U.S. shale oil on price, and won’t survive the coming era of absolutely necessary climate change action on emissions intensity.”

Who made it high-cost to extract oil from the oil sands?  These activist groups and the Tar Sands Campaign, which devised every way possible to drive up costs, add more regulation, draw out environmental reviews, create public objection to mythical problems, foment public hatred against the oil sands and the people who work in the business, and to smear the reputation of the oil sands – not just here, but worldwide.

Perhaps Alberta’s oil sands can’t compete on price – but if we have access to markets, our product will sell because oil demand continues to grow worldwide.

Certainly, our competitors don’t want us to take a chunk of their market. Why do you think someone paid West coast Environmental Law $97,131 to push for a legislated tanker ban on the west coast.

Homepage

What a bargain, eh? They got it.

Here’s the grant document – clearly shows the intent was to shut down Northern Gateway.

Likewise, Canada is a push-over for causes – since we’ve been watching David Suzuki and The Nature of Things for 40 years.  Interestingly, it turns out David Suzuki Foundation has been funded by Power Corporation since 2007.  Suzuki Fund pushed for coal phase out and for wind to replace it in Alberta…and voila, Power Corporation renewables subsidiary is building a wind farm in Jenner Alberta.

Power Corporation is the 358^th largest corporation in the world – an investor in Total, SA by the way. Some grassroots, eh?

Part 7 –

To Recap: The Ghost of Enron Lives

So let’s recap.

The premise is that climate change is a catastrophic risk to human kind. This view has been propagated originally by Enron, which funded environmental groups to lobby on its behalf.

After Enron’s demise, a group of billionaire foundations picked up the work and used the same model. Their objective was to cause a sea change in the global economy by pushing cap and trade worldwide and pushing for $12 trillion of renewables on the grid.  They have funded environmental groups like Tzeporah’s for over a decade, spending more than $600 million a year.

Nisbet also reports that these billionaires are the lead funders of academic research and also funders of non-profit journalism.

DeSmogBlog…now called The Narwhal…has been funded for hundreds of thousands by these billionaire philanthropies – here is one grant from Switzerland that is more than Friends of Science Society’s entire annual budget! And our budget comes from a collection of members sending in $100, $300 and occasional few thousand dollar donations.

This is also why conventional newspapers and media outlets have some trouble competing… They are not funded by billionaires but now compete with non-profit ‘journalism’ outfits that are….and now conventional media in Canada will be propped up by the federal government. So much for the free press.

That may be good news for some people in the ATA – the first news story I ever found about our organization, Friends of Science Society, was in your science journal where we were called deniers and where the author thought the media should not present more than one view on climate change….because the science is settled.

LINK: ASEJ Vol 42 No 1 ata science bissell

As I hope you have learned from my talk today, the science has been manipulated by people with vested interests in renewables, global cap and trade and probably, vulture investing in plummeting oil sands shares or divested assets.

We have let these people in the door and let them walk all over us.

We have not questioned them when they say things “as electric vehicles take over the market” as Tzeporah suggests.

Tzeporah is not a Professional Engineer, but an activist. She believes the EVs will take over the world. Perhaps one day they will, but the chance is vanishingly small.  Professional Engineers called battery storage a “Holy Grail” – and to put more than a few EVs on the grid, you would need to build dozens more power plants and spent trillions of dollars on grid upgrades….for cars that don’t work in winter and that make up a very tiny percentage of the world’s demand for cars.

To paraphrase Everett Dirksen, “a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” 

Tzeporah has told you there is a rapid transition away from oil and gas going on in the world where there is none.  She has told you the Alberta Climate change Plan was a breakthrough, when it was actually delivered on a platter from NEI investments and a group of UNPRI signatories who are in thrall to Al Gore’s vision of ESG.  Tzeporah told you climate change is the reason for suffering in Africa; I have shown you otherwise.  Tzeporah claims climate is causing a refugee crisis and food price rise – and you have seen that is not the truth.

Do humans affect the planet and the climate? Of course we do – in so many ways – but we also LIVE here on earth and are part of it.  Bjorn Lomborg has surveyed the countries of the world and nowhere is climate change a priority for the people….for perhaps a hundred billion dollars, most of the world’s sorrows and needs could be addressed if we just apply the money wasted on climate change to practical needs of people.

I have shown you that foreign funded influences are intentionally stifling the economy of Canada – specifically targeting our oil sands – and they are using environmental non governmental groups, like those Tzeporah is part of, as the proxies for their green trade war against Canada, and that they typically use climate change as the front.

This is not the first time in history that mass public delusion has embedded itself in society.  People are highly susceptible to suggestion – especially if they don’t ask critical questions….or if they are not allowed to ask, by being smeared and silenced as ‘deniers.’

Sadly, I personally believe that this really is Enron all over again – but on a global scale.  If there is any ‘climate crisis’ …that’s what it will be, nothing to do with the weather.

And I’m not alone.  The chief of Iberdrola says the global renewables market is facing an ‘Enron style melt-down’.

And, no wonder.

Renewables drive carbon markets and carbon markets are built on the ‘lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one.’

At one point, someone will notice.

As teachers, I hope you will focus on critical thinking, scientific inquiry and encouraging freedom of speech, not the embedding of dogma.

Because…we’re smarter than this.

Thank you.

Climate Science Insights:

Our brief to the Prime Minister:

https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/lt-to-PM-justin-Trudeau-july-18-2018-FINAL.pdf 

Climate Change Science Essay: (technical)

https://friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=681

97% Consensus? NO! Global Warming Math Myths and Social Proofs:

https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/97_Consensus_Myth.pdf 

Dr. Nir Shaviv on how the Sun Drives Climate, IPCC and 97% Consensus:

https://youtu.be/3vCxxecs4hk?list=PLZcRTdbkGEnEvyYz4eHL_GLmJNQZd-XmI