The Heartland Climate Conference in New York in 2008 was one of the first that presented the skeptics view. I was privileged to hear the keynote by Vaclav Klaus former President of the Czech Republic. His opening remark was, “We have just gone through 70 years of communism, why the hell would you want to go back to that?” He recognized and was the only world leader to speak out against the use of environmentalism and global warming for a political agenda. He set out what was happening in his book, “Blue Planet In Green Shackles.” The subtitle asks, “”What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” Klaus used a 2003 quote from the medical doctor and author Michael Crichton as the basis of his book.

The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”

The problem is aggravated and ultimately leads to the collapse of societies when leadership can’t or won’t distinguish truth from propaganda. Leadership failure creates a vacuum quickly filled by demagogues and political exploiters with nothing but raw ambition. They purchase control with the people’s money.

The following quote from 1857 is attributed to British historian Lord Macaulay and possibly Alexis de Tocqueville but is more likely the work of Alexander Tytler. Regardless, it is appropriate for what is happening in Canada and the world through what is planned for the Paris Climate Conference.

A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority who vote will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed with a dictatorship.

My climate interest involved the impact of climate change on the human condition. A particular interest included the rise and fall of civilizations. This involved studying the works of Will and Ariel Durant but especially British historian Arnold Toynbee and French historian Fernand Braudel. Generally the pattern from birth to decline is 300 years. The trigger is usually a climate-induced ability to produce surplus food. Tytler reached a somewhat similar conclusion when he said,
The average age of the world”s greatest democratic nations has been 200 years.

Canada is already strapped with the socialist control and redistribution of wealth between the Provinces by the federal government through Equalization payments. Harper didn’t run a perfect government, partly because he didn’t explain the problems fully or what conservative action was or why it was necessary. A majority will accept even unpalatable actions if they are clearly explained and evenly and openly applied. Harper failed in most cases because he was unconvincing and acted surreptitiously with actions that were then easily used against him.

For example, he knew the climate science that Environment Canada pushed was incorrect. He said so before his first election. After the 2008 election, he took a very insipid position that made it appear Canada was doing something. As with so much of what he did it was a compromise and satisfied nobody while annoying almost everybody. Instead of getting the details and support required and explaining what he was doing, he chose what he thought was a more palatable and politically less damaging route. Predictably, it was a disaster.

Amazingly, the evidence supporting an independent investigation of climate science was produced as an internal investigation of Environment Canada known online casino as “The Impact Group.” Instead, Harper decided to go through the backdoor by cutting funding to Environment Canada without explanation. The headlines were predictable, inevitable, and appeared quickly accompanied by a fully orchestrated campaign. The headlines said that Harper was trying to muzzle scientists. The details of mismanagement at Environment Canada for a political agenda were well documented. He failed to explain it to people to justify his actions.

Environment Canada was deeply involved with the IPCC from the start. Gordon McBean, Assistant Deputy Minister of Environment Canada, chaired the foundation meeting of the IPCC at a1985 meeting in Villach Austria. It took a massive diversion of funds within EC to pursue their goal. The Auditor General said EC spent $6.8 billion from 1997 to 2005 on climate change. Almost all of this went to people and programs supporting the government position. This diversion of funding to climate change left other legislated requirements incomplete. To cover these diversions they took money from other programs.

Environment Canada failures caused public protest. They commissioned an internal study and report titled “Action Plan for Climate Science Research at Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC)” prepared by a private agency called The Impact Group. Their report identified all the failures but was suppressed and only revealed through Canada’s Access to Information (ATI). Ken Green wrote an article in the National Post on December 12, 2003, identifying some of the issues. They show why Environment Canada did not the Impact Report disclosed.

Elements of an “Action Plan for Climate Science Research at MSC” (obtained through an Access to Information request) indicate that Canada’s climate change science program is being driven by a predetermined political agenda with a clear disregard of scientific needs. The Impact Group observes for example, that Canada collects “less climate science data per-square-kilometer of any other major country.” It observes that “the archiving of climate data is so highly fragmented that it is difficult to find out what datasets are available, let alone how to access them.”

Yet the report shows that our (EC) resources are not being directed to remedy those information gaps. Rather, our climate resources are being directed toward finding ways to “mitigate” climate change before it’s even adequately measured. The Impact Group also points out that we are only just beginning “to unravel the complexity of the physical, chemical, and biological interactions that determine climate” and suggests that the manmade component of climate change is still to be discerned. Coming from a contractor to Environment Canada, that’s a pretty sharp divergence from the claims by Environment Minister David Anderson that the science of climate change is “solid” and “settled.”

That’s why Harper was cutting funds from Environment Canada. All this information was available to him. Too bad he didn’t use it to explain what he was doing. As a result of this and many other failures, Canada lost an opportunity to confront and possibly delay the Tatler projection. Harper created the vacuum now filled by a demagogue who promises salvation with the people’s money. Sound familiar? Oh, by the way, Canada is 148 years old this year.