predictive failure does not deter
DAVID SUZUKI
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear,
O Israel! (Mantua Books). His editorials appear
regularly in FRONTPAGEMAG.COM and
PJ Media. His monograph, Global Warning:
The Trials of an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada)
was launched at the National Archives in Ottawa in September,
2012. His latest book of poetry, Habibi:
The Diwam of Alim Maghrebi
(Guernica Editions), is now available as is his most recent
collection of essays, The
Boxthorn Tree. Also a singer and songwriter, David's
CD is scheduled to be released later in the year.
Predictive
failure does not deter an ideological zealot, who feels sure
that a disaster must arrive someday to confirm his forecast
and justify his program for salvation. It matters little if
his timetable is off by 10, 20 or 1000 years since, under the
aspect of eternity, a cataclysm is bound to happen in seculae
seculorum. The mathematics can always be redone in the
light of a grisly but accommodating future to which only he
has privileged access. It is he who stands before the burning
bush of the world and hears the voice of the Lord. For this
eccentric mentality, being wrong over and over is a sure sign
that he will be right once. The end-of-the-world fanatic merely
keeps revising his calculations, relying on a new revelation
to perfect his reckoning and reinforce his delusion. But what
he has really accomplished is to turn rational thought into
spurious divination. This is as true of those who gaze into
the crystal ball of Nature as of those who claim insight into
the mysterious workings of the Lord.
Enter
David Suzuki, Canada’s leading climate guru, who predicted
some 20 years ago that we had only 10 years remaining before
environmental collapse. In the meantime what has collapsed is
Dr. Suzuki’s objective credibility—though his prophetic
authority persists among the naïve and impressionable.
Abetting the strategy of endlessly renewable computation is
the complementary trick of selective disinformation. A good
example of this technique is provided by the controversy over
the discovery of a mutant fish near Lake Athabasca which, as
University of Calgary economist Frank Atkins wrote, was jumped
all over by “the David Suzuki crowd” (NP
Posted, March 12, 2009). Of course, the presumed find was immediately
blazoned in the media and among environmental groups as indisputable
evidence of oil sands pollution. Unfortunately for the proponents
of this factoid, the mutation was nothing of the sort but a
natural development that follows on decomposition (Fort
McMurray Today, the only news source to report on the scientific
reassessment of the canard).
Similarly,
one recalls Suzuki’s comrade-in-arms Al Gore who, in Earth
in the Balance, blames the Antarctic ozone hole for causing
blindness in animal populations: “hunters now report finding
blind rabbits; fishermen catch blind salmon.” Reality
check: not only has the Antarctic ozone hole begun to close
(NASA Science, December 12, 2000; Nature,
May 16, 2011), but Chilean scientists investigating the phenomenon
had already accounted for the blight as owing to an epidemic
of pink eye disease (NewScientist, August 21, 1993).
So
it goes: bad math, wrong predictions, the application of a Bozo
filter to disagreeable facts, and profitable indoctrination.
There can be little doubt that, like aspiring carbon billionaire
Gore, David Suzuki is a master in the lucrative field of environmental
exploitation. Ezra Levant of Sun News Network has uncovered
evidence that Suzuki is allegedly stuffing his coffers with
money from multi-national organizations that finance his campaigns
against Canada’s oil sands production (The Source,
February 7, 2012). Suzuki received a million dollar gift from
Canada’s Power Corp, which operates in totalitarian China,
one of the world’s leading carbon emitters. This may explain
why Suzuki, lecturing by video feed to two hundred Canadian
schools, has praised China as a nation “committed to developing
a green economy.” Indeed, Suzuki, as Levant has shown,
grosses $10 million per annum for his mega-Corporation, apparently
only a fraction of which is spent on hands-on environmental
concerns.
In
an informative talk at the National Archives in Ottawa on March
19, 2012, independent researcher Vivian Krause confirmed the
details of Suzuki’s windfall from the U.S. based Moore,
Hewlett and Packard foundations. Writing in the Financial
Post for April 21, 2012, Krause goes on to state that Suzuki’s
American funding was for many years “underreported or
not reported at all.” This is rather telling, especially
when one considers that since 2009, the Canada Revenue Agency
“requires nonprofits to report the total amount of funding
that they receive from foreign sources.” For 2009 and
2010, the Suzuki Foundation reports “accounted for 5%
or 6% of total revenue.”
No
less interesting, the great Canadian redeemer has no compunction
against soliciting funds from children. His Foundation appeals
for help from the toddlers of the world, letting it be known
that “Santa Claus is in trouble! Due to climate change,
the North Pole is not safe enough for his elves to make the
millions of toys he delivers to nice boys and girls.”
Kids and parents are exhorted to “purchase a gift to help
Santa and the elves temporarily relocate their workshop elsewhere
in Canada” (sofii.org). As radio/TV personality and newspaper
columnist Rex
Murphy comments, “there’s something
of an all-points bulletin,” and, without leveling charges
of immorality, concludes that “Scaring kids and guilting
parents is monumentally tacky” (FullComment, December
3, 2011). It is certainly that, and possibly more than that.
Does
Suzuki really believe what he preaches? After all, he did buy
carbon credits to run his supersized, emission-belching tour
bus—though, according to reports, it carried only eight
people (The London Fog, February 23, 2007, etc.). And
seeking to avoid media embarrassment, his Foundation released
a statement to the effect that “the carbon emissions associated
with the tour are offset through its investments in sustainable
energy projects, such as wind farms, solar installations, or
energy efficiency projects” (Canadian Press,
January 29, 2007). The reasoning is circular and smacks of self-justification.
Producing what you condemn in order to condemn what you produce
seems distinctly disingenuous. Nor does Suzuki seem at all fazed
by his predictive incompetence or his cavalier attitude towards
unassimilable facts.
Ultimately,
only Suzuki really knows whether his convictions are genuine
or not, which is no consolation for the rest of us. Perhaps
we can take some comfort from the fact that he has just stepped
down from his Foundation’s board of directors “over
fears that his political views could put its charitable status
at risk” (National Post, March 14, 2012).
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