Robert Fraser's Dream

Published on CBC news on November 30th, 2019, it's called A Letter to the West:


"Let's put aside the climate change thing for a bit and focus on some realities

Why Alberta and Saskatchewan should pay attention to Ontario's painful economic lesson

 

 

This column is an opinion by Robert Fraser of Hamilton. He is a service technician in the scientific industry, a musician, amateur astronomer and political junkie.

Dear Westerners,

I'm one of the people many of you in Alberta and Saskatchewan likely despise. Yep, I plugged my nose and strategically voted Liberal on election day.

I don't think much of our prime minister. Though well-intentioned, he doesn't seem to have the intellect or vision of his father. And we could all use some of that in these complex times.

I've lived in Ontario all of my adult life and I'll soon be 60. Never worked in the public sector. Never had a unionized job. Always a wage slave lining the pockets of my corporate masters to keep my family afloat.

Well, almost ...

Back in the '90s it didn't matter who you voted for – free trade and NAFTA were being pushed on us like Buckley's cough syrup (tastes bad, but it works). Even Jean Chrétien caved after Bill Clinton told him it wasn't negotiable.

The ink wasn't even dry on these radical trade deals when the jobs started disappearing. Lots of them.

As I recall, we lost around 200,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario during that miserable decade and beyond.

"...earning a decent living

 isn't a right in this world — it's a rare privilege."

Unlike the "boom and bust" oil jobs out West, we knew our jobs were never coming back.

Adjustments were made. Families sold the second car, made do on one income for long periods of time. Frequently there were no incomes.

I was an under-employed middle-aged man for almost four years, and my polished resume meant nothing. We came so close to losing our home. I remember delivering papers in my beat-up car and unloading trucks at the local Walmart at night.

I'll never forget my wife accepting charity one time because the floor under the Christmas tree was going to look sparse to our kids that year.

Even today, the skeletons of the old manufacturing plants are all around us in Ontario. I know the anguish you're feeling in the West.

The sad reality is that earning a decent living isn't a right in this world — it's a rare privilege.

In case you're wondering, my family is OK now, but things changed.

The economy isn't what it used to be, and an argument can be made that it's worse.

But eventually, Ontario adapted.

Industries like service, information technology, and logistics picked up some of the slack. Finance and real estate values boomed. Many Ontarians discovered their entrepreneurial skills — some saw success.

People out West like to work and earn a decent living, just as we do elsewhere in Canada. No argument there. But I never heard anyone in Ontario say that the source of our troubles lay elsewhere in Canada.

Let's put aside the climate change thing for a bit and focus on some realities.

The truth is, the pipelines are stuck in the courts. In Canada, the government doesn't get to do an end-run around the law — just ask Justin Trudeau how that SNC Lavalin affair turned out.

What if the pipeline cases wind up in favour of the First Nations folks? All of that oilsands crude will stay landlocked. Any politician who tells you the government trumps the courts is a liar.

Another truth is that the good times in the oilpatch were going to come to a grinding halt within a generation or so anyway. The supply isn't endless, and there's a good reason we're now mining oilsands and drilling offshore to incredible depths.

The smart money is getting out of oil. Even Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to diversify its economy away from oil.

Our misguided government bought the Trans Mountain pipeline project because no one taking the long view of the industry wanted it. The world will eventually run out of petroleum and you won't be passing along those great jobs to your grandchildren.

Again, any politician who tells you otherwise is a liar.

And about that climate-change thing: Yes, I'm one of them. I drive an electric car. It cost me $40,000 after a $14,000 rebate from Ontario (before Premier Ford). I haven't spent a dime on gas in two years and the car blows the doors off most on the road. More and more people are going to realize that the benefits of going electric go far beyond reducing CO2 emissions.

That said, the climate-change thing is important.

I checked this out with a calculator and it's about right: If the world is a basketball, all that is precious to us — the deepest oceans to the thinnest air above us — is in the skin of that basketball.

We will change our energy system or give our grandchildren a legacy of death, it's that simple.

And I know western Conservatives love their grandchildren as much as I love mine.

The Liberal plan is to build pipelines and use the royalties to invest in green projects. What a great strategy: The house is on fire, and we're literally going to pour gasoline on the fire and hope this will make enough money to buy a hose to hook up to the hydrant before everything burns down.

Make sense? It doesn't make sense to me either.

There's hope for all of us, though: I read an article saying that a smart company is investing $200 million into wind farming in Alberta, for example.

It's a start. The world is going to have to transition to alternative energy very quickly, and you need to get a jump on it.  And it's high time we make the privileged wealthy people and companies help pay for it. With privilege comes responsibility.

Want to know what I want?

I want our government to insist Bombardier sets up a mass transit manufacturing plant in Edmonton next time we write them a big fat cheque. I want to see Saskatchewan entrepreneurs get grants to set up wind power projects over those vast grain farms. I want the West to lead the way in the new transition. And I want Canada to lead the world.

Charles Darwin said it best: Evolution doesn't favour the strongest — it favours the ones who best adapt to change.

From one Canadian to another,

Robert Fraser, Hamilton"

 

 

Dissenting Climate Change Opinions

Another thoughtful and well-expressed letter to the editor.
Morning Star newspaper, Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 by K. Jameson, of Vernon.


"This letter is in response to yet another round of Morning Star letters on climate change that say it's our fault, who is responsible (Boomers), and what we should do about it.  Oh yes, and also about Greta Thunbert (sigh).  It boggles the mind that society can even have this conversation.

We have 150 years of hard science that shows it is impossible for CO2 to create climate change.  We've known that for 150 years, ever since Melvill discovered absorption/emission spectrums back in 1752.

All this has been routinely taught in university science courses for a hundred years or more.

"...there is no mechanism for CO2 or H20

 to trap heat like a blanket around the Earth.

  It is impossible for them to store heat, period."

The main point is that all gases (like everything else in the universe) must absorb or emit head (radiation) to reach thermal equilibrium with everything around them.  Here's a simple and scientifically accurate example using coffee and your microwave.

Your coffee contains H20 water.  The cavity in your microwave is tuned like a radio to the rotational energy levels of H20 molecules.  That's so the microwaves can efficiently zap the H20 molecules and make them spin faster.  (Hotter molecules spin fast; colder molecules spin slower.  Frozen ice molecules spin even slower).

It's the same with CO2 molecules in the sky.  Zap them with some heat (radiation) from the Earth's surface or from the sun, and they start spinning faster.  

Out of the microwave, your coffee immediately starts cooling down (striving for thermal equilibrium with the air around it).  Ditto for CO2 (and for H20 water vapor, and for everything else in the universe).  Hot things cool down by radiating energy.  Cold things warm up to reach equilibrium.  The zapped, spinning CO2 molecule immediately tries to radiate the heat away so that it can go back to spinning at a normal speed.

Measurements show it takes about 75 feet of CO2 to completely absorb (block) radiation in their absorption bands that are incoming (from the sun) or outgoing (from the Earth).  Double the CO2 concentration, and it would take 12 metres or 30 feet instead.

I emphasize there is no mechanism for CO2 or H20 to trap heat like a blanket around the Earth.  It is impossible for them to store heat, period.  All they can do is temporarily block radiation in both directions and re-radiate it in both directions.

It is impossible for CO2 and H20 top trap heat and cause climate change.  Then, what does?  What's really happening with our climate?

So far, my impression is that students and people and politicians and newspapers would rather not learn about the simple truths about CO2 that I have tried to explain above.  I suppose they all have their reasons.

K. Jameson, Vernon"


Oh...so NASA could've provided an explanation, rather than just this graphic (click on graphic to enlarge):

The very interesting NASA blog is here.

A big thanks to K. Jameson, for his letter.

Geophysics

What is geophysics? 

According to wikipedia (my favourite go to), it is:  Geophysics (/ˌdʒiːoʊˈfɪzɪks/) is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term geophysics sometimes refers only to geological applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational and magnetic fields; its internal structure and composition; its dynamics and their surface expression in plate tectonics, the generation of magmas, volcanism and rock formation.

from Wikipedia

 Graphic:  Computer simulation of the Earth's magnetic field in a period of normal polarity between reversals.    The wikipedia link is here. 



Now the outstanding article from Jerry Mitrovica:

"Pocket Worthy  Stories to fuel your mind.

Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong

A geologist explains that climate change is not just about a global average sea rise.

Jerry Mitrovica has been overturning accepted wisdom for decades. A solid Earth geophysicist at Harvard, he studies the internal structure and processes of the Earth, which has implications for fields from climatology to the timing of human migration and even to the search for life on other planets. Early in his career he and colleagues showed that Earth’s tectonic plates not only move from side to side, creating continental drift, but also up and down. By refocusing attention from the horizontal of modern Earth science to the vertical, he helped to found what he has nicknamed postmodern geophysics.

 Mitrovica has revived and reinvigorated longstanding insights into factors that cause huge geographic variation in sea level, with important implications for the study of climate change today on glaciers and ice sheets. 

We caught up with Mitrovica in his airy office next to Harvard’s renowned mineral collection. Though a practiced public speaker and recipient of numerous awards, in person he speaks softly and deflects plaudits. He refers frequently to the colleagues, graduate students, and mentors who have inspired him and contributed to his work. 

Caption on a photo of melting ice:  Global Melting: Though it may seem counterintuitive, melting glaciers in one area may cause local sea levels to drop—while causing a rise in sea levels farther away.  (photo not reproduced here).

Some of your research follows from the attraction of ocean water to ice sheets. That seems surprising. 

This is just Newton’s law of gravitation applied to the Earth. An ice sheet, like the sun and the moon, produces a gravitational attraction on the surrounding water. There’s no doubt about that.

What happens when a big glacier like the Greenland Ice Sheet melts?

Three things happen. One is that you’re dumping all of this melt water into the ocean. So the mass of the entire ocean would definitely be going up if ice sheets were melting—as they are today. The second thing that happens is that this gravitational attraction that the ice sheet exerts on the surrounding water diminishes. As a consequence, water migrates away from the ice sheet. The third thing is, as the ice sheet melts, the land underneath the ice sheet pops up; it rebounds.

So what is the combined impact of the ice-sheet melt, water flow, and diminished gravity?

Gravity has a very strong effect. So what happens when an ice sheet melts is sea level falls in the vicinity of the melting ice sheet. That is counterintuitive. The question is, how far from the ice sheet do you have to go before the effects of diminished gravity and uplifting crust are small enough that you start to raise sea level? That’s also counterintuitive. It’s 2,000 kilometers away from the ice sheet.

So if the Greenland ice sheet were to catastrophically collapse tomorrow, the sea level in Iceland, Newfoundland, Sweden, Norway—all within this 2,000 kilometer radius of the Greenland ice sheet—would fall. It might have a 30 to 50 meter drop at the shore of Greenland. But the farther you get away from Greenland, the greater the price you pay. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level in most of the Southern Hemisphere will increase about 30 percent more than the global average. So this is no small effect.

"The last time we were as warm

as we are today, the ice sheets that we think of

as the least stable disappeared."

What happens with melting in Antarctica?

 

If the Antarctic ice sheets melt, sea level falls close to Antarctic. But it would rise more than you’d otherwise expect in the Northern Hemisphere. These are known as sea-level fingerprints, because each ice sheet has its own geometry. Greenland produces one geometry of sea level change and the Antarctic has its own. Mountain glaciers have their own fingerprint. This explains a lot of variability in sea level. It’s also a really important opportunity. If you have people denying climate change because they say there’s geographic variation in sea level changes—it doesn’t go up uniformly—you can say, “Well, that is incorrect because ice sheets produce a geographically variable change in sea level when they melt.” You can also use that variability to say this percentage is coming from Greenland, this percentage is coming from the Antarctic, and this percentage is coming from mountain glaciers. You can source the melt. And that’s an important argument from a public-hazard viewpoint.
 

Why is the source of the melt important?

 

If you’re living on the U.S. east coast, or Holland, you don’t need to worry what global average sea-level rise is doing. I was in Holland a few summers ago and was trying to convince the Dutch that if the Greenland ice sheet melts, they have less to worry about than the Antarctic ice sheet melting. But it doesn’t register. When I give public talks, people just shake their heads. They don’t believe it when I show this bull’s-eye around the melting [Greenland] ice sheet, which is an area where sea level will fall. Our intuition is built from walking along a shoreline or turning a tap on. It isn’t from considering what would happen if a major large-scale ice sheet melts.

Why are you so confident that the world’s glaciers, including the polar ice sheets, will keep melting? 

One way to understand where we’re heading in this warming world of ours is to run a climate model. The other way is to look to the past and ask what the ice sheets did the last time we were this warm or a little bit warmer. We’re currently in an interglacial—a warm period between glacial cycles. If humans weren’t warming the climate, Earth might be poised to enter into another Ice Age in the future. The last interglacial prior to the present one was about 120,000 years ago. Of course, 120,000 years ago, humans weren’t having any impact on climate. That was natural climatic variability. 

What did the ice sheets do the last time the climate was this warm?

 

The last time we were as warm as we are today, the ice sheets that we think of as the least stable disappeared, albeit over a protracted period. So why should we expect that the issue is going to be any different in the next few hundreds to thousands of years? There’s no reason to believe it, unless we do something to reverse what we’re doing. 

OK. So we’d expect warming to cause ice sheets to melt and raise sea level. But what’s the evidence that we’re seeing that now?

 

The average sea level change in the 20th century was 1.2 millimeters per year. What we’ve seen in the last 20 years is an average of three millimeters per year—that’s a factor of two-and-a-half increase from the 20th century to now. So that’s a nice way to address the skeptic’s argument that it hasn’t changed or that it’s not getting worse. It’s already gotten worse. And if you look back thousands of years, you have a wide range of tools at your disposal. One is eclipse records, and one is the Roman fish tanks.

What do Roman fish tanks tell us about sea levels? 

Wealthy Romans at the time of Augustus were building fish holding tanks. The fishermen would come in with the fish, they’d put them there so that the fish were fresh when they ate them—they wanted to keep them alive for a few days or weeks or whatever. The Romans were engineers, so they built these fish tanks at very precise levels relative to sea level at the time. You didn’t want the walls to be too low because at high tide the fish would swim out; you didn’t want it to be too high because you wanted tides to refresh the water within the tanks. 

Kurt Lambeck, a professor at the Australian National University, recognized that by looking at the present day elevation of those fish tanks, we could say something about how sea level had changed over the 2,500 years since then. If sea level over the last 2,500 years was going up at the rate that it went up in the 20th century, those fish tanks would be under 4 meters of water—12 feet of water—and I can assure you they’re not. You can see them. You can walk along the coast, they’re visible. What that tells you is that it is impossible that sea level went up by the rates that we saw in the 20th century for any extended period of time earlier than that. Sea level has not gone up over the last 2,500 years like it has in the 20th century.

"This is an entirely different way to show

that ice sheets are melting."

What can records of Babylonian eclipses 2,500 years ago tell us about climate change?

 

When we look at eclipse records, we can say “here’s when a Babylonian eclipse was recorded.” Now, I can do a calculation and ask when that Babylonian eclipse should have occurred if the present rotation rate of the Earth had stayed constant in the time between the eclipse and present day. And you can do that for Greek, Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese eclipses, and this is what a professor in the U.K., F. Richard Stephenson, did. He tabulated, as others did before him, a large suite of such eclipses that show a clear slowing of the Earth’s rotation rate over the last few thousand years. Say you have two clocks synchronized 2,500 years ago. One kept time perfectly and the other was connected to the Earth whose rotation rate was slowing. Over 2,500 years, they would go out of sync by about four hours. That’s kind of the level of slowing. So what we know is that the Earth’s rotation rate has slowed over the last 2,500 years. But the Earth’s slowing isn’t what we would predict exactly.

Why would you expect the Earth’s rotation to slow at all?

I published this paper in Science Advances on something called Munk’s Enigma. What we showed is that it comes from three different effects. One is what’s known as “tidal dissipation.” Tides crash into the shoreline and each time they do they dissipate energy, and for a variety of reasons they slow the Earth’s rotation. Another thing we talk about is that there is a very subtle coupling between the core of the Earth, which is iron, and the rocky part of the Earth, the mantle, which acts to change the Earth’s rotation rate we see sitting on the surface of the planet. 

Is it like the friction of the fluid in a car’s a transmission; it has to do with how viscous the connection is between the inner and outer parts of the planet? 

It’s not friction, but it’s pretty darn close. It’s the fact that you’ve got one fluid moving against another fluid that’s moving at a different rate. If they come out of sync, their rates will influence each other. But it is as you say, a connection.

So, this is another effect. We have the tides crashing in and what geophysicists would call core-mantle coupling. We can predict both of those pretty accurately, but you’re still left with a difference and that difference is due to the ice age and we model that. We’ve got tidal dissipation, core-mantle coupling, and now we add the Ice Age Effect, which I’m the expert on. And lo and behold, when I add that to these other two effects, I get precisely the four-hour slowing I saw. 

What is the Ice Age Effect? 

The Earth is growing more spherical because 20,000 years ago we had a lot more ice at the poles. When ice sheets were at the poles they kind of squished the Earth from both poles and the Earth flattened a little bit. When those ice sheets melted, that flattening started to rebound and we’re becoming spherical, so our spin rate should be increasing, like a ballerina or a figure skater. The ice age correction is a speeding up of the rotation rate. 

 

So these three factors—core-mantle coupling, post ice rebounding of poles, and tidal dissipation—explain changes in the speed of the Earth until the 20th century. What’s happening now? 

We want to take that same ice age model and correct for 20th-century changes in Earth’s rotation. When we do, we get a difference that we haven’t explained yet. So now we say; well, maybe that’s due to polar ice sheet melting or polar glacier melting.

The way to do that is to go to the IPCC, their last assessment report, and look at the calculation of mountain glacier melting, because those tabulations suggest that the ice sheets weren’t changing that much in the 20th century. Ice sheets have only really started to melt in the last 20 years or so, but the glaciers were popping off all through the 20th century. We take that glacier melting that the IPCC tells us, compute its effect on rotation, and one effect would be to slow the Earth’s rotation just like the figure skater, and compare it to these ice-age corrected observations. 

Is water moving off glaciers, slowing the Earth’s rotation, this time analogous to a figure skater putting arms out?

Right. Glaciers are mostly near the axis. They’re near the North and South Poles and the bulk of the ocean is not. In other words, you’re taking glaciers from high latitudes like Alaska and Patagonia, you’re melting them, they distribute around the globe, but in general, that’s like a mass flux toward the equator because you’re taking material from the poles and you’re moving it into the oceans. That tends to move material closer to the equator than it once was. 

So the melting mountain glaciers and polar caps are moving bulk toward the equator? 

Yes. Of course, there is ocean everywhere, but if you’re moving the ice from a high latitude and you’re sticking it over oceans, in effect, you’re adding to mass in the equator and you’re taking mass away from the polar areas and that’s going to slow the earth down. That’s the calculation we did. We also computed how those glaciers would affect the orientation of poles. In both cases, when you do that calculation and you compare it to this ice age corrected satellite and astronomical observations, you fit them precisely.

What we showed in this paper is that when you look at the modern data on rotation and you correct for ice age, you have a leftover, and that leftover is precisely what it should be if it were due to the kind of melting that global change scientists believe happened in the 20th century.

"There are some things that you can explain,

but as a scientist you’re always going to face things

that are counterintuitive"

With all those steps, it’s amazing that the calculations work out.

 

This is an entirely different way to show that ice sheets are melting. It’s a very good way because if you’re looking at Greenland and you say, “Oh, it’s melting in the southern sector, I can see ice diminishing,” you don’t necessarily know what it’s doing in the northern sector. You don’t get a good integrated view of what the Greenland ice sheet is doing. But rotation doesn’t care about north vs. south, it just cares about how much mass is moving from Greenland into the oceans. And so rotation provides what a scientist would call a really elegant integrated measure of the mass balance of polar ice sheets. 

What inspired you to become a scientist? 

In my family, we had more discussions about Renaissance history than we ever did about science. I’m the only scientist in my family. I went into what’s called an engineering science or engineering physics program. I took a course in plate tectonics in my third year, and I thought, “Whoa!” And my first paper—it wasn’t my idea, it was my advisor’s idea—about what caused the flooding of the western part of North America 50 to 80 million years ago—that was quite a thrill. You’re a few years into research graduate school, and you’ve just published a paper that explains why North America was underwater, the western part.

What is the explanation? 

 

Some said it was some ice effect, that ice volumes had changed. More often people thought that it was linked to changes in the rate at which tectonic plates were created. But in my work and that of some colleagues we’ve shown that those sorts of events when continents flood typically are due not to some global change in sea level. Rather, it’s due to the vertical motion of the continent itself reacting to the flow that’s driving plate tectonics and driving continents up and down.

So many of your results seem abstract and counterintuitive. Is that a coincidence? 

There are so many interesting problems in our science that you can see with your eyes. But your eyes can fool you. Richard Feynman, the great physicist, used to start his physics lectures by showing students their intuition could take them a long way. They could do things just through intuition that would get them roughly the right answer. Then he used to throw some counterintuitive examples at them. Then he said, “This is why you need physics. You need to understand when your intuition might go wrong.” I firmly am a Feynman acolyte. There are some things that you can explain, but as a scientist you’re always going to face things that are counterintuitive. You’re never going to understand that water is falling near an ice sheet from your everyday experiences of the bathtub. You need to bring in something more; in this case, Newton’s second law of gravitation. You have to bring in physics; otherwise, you’re never going to explain that.

Where do your “A-ha!” moments come from?

 

I think some scientists would disagree with me, but I think you really do have to give yourself time to think. You need to have some way in your life as a scientist to mull over what you’re seeing. And I strongly encourage my graduate students to have other interests, because the best way to have that time is to take a break from science. I’ve had moments where I’ve seen something in my models that I’d never seen before and I think, “Well, you know, a good scientist is never going to walk away from that.” A good scientist at that point sort of burrows in and says, “Why am I seeing that?” Because to see the unexpected is the reward of science. 

Daniel Grossman is a freelance science journalist and radio producer based in Boston. "

from Pocket Worthy (no date given).

 And....

 

Greenpeace Letter

Acquaintances know I relish receiving information on both sides of topics, covering issues the mainstream media may (or may not) be offering readers.

And so it was today when I received a copy of this letter to Greenpeace from a Canadian resident:

To be fair, the graphics were my choice.

I am a very concerned 41-year old Canadian family man (yes, male, I can still distinguish.) born in a small village in Saskatchewan and currently residing in Medicine Hat, Alberta. I would love to assist your organization in making the world a better place.

I recently read a quote from Mr. Keith Stewart that ‘oil in Alberta is unnecessary’ and something about ‘only clean energy’ (of course I am mildly paraphrasing but it was the gist of the CTV article).

Now, I can tell you that I was angered by these comments. So, as Greenpeace has all the answers, I thought who better to contact other than the fine individuals of your organization.

Issue #1: Transportation. As almost everyone in Canada is not living in the GTA, (Greater Toronto Area) what is the cleanest form of transportation that you could recommend for my family (which includes my wife, 2 teenage daughters, and the family dog)?

 Public transportation across the prairies (to visit family) is almost non-existent since the closure of Greyhound and STC (Saskatchewan Transport Company). Even when the bus lines were fully operational, 10 to 14-hour bus trips to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ were way too long and fares for the family were too expensive. I should also mention a normal drive time for a personal vehicle is approximately 6 hours. So, with public transportation out of the question, I need to own a vehicle.

Please recommend a vehicle on the market that has no oil products in it. Maybe, if I can get personal on some level, what kinds of vehicles are most commonly owned by Greenpeace executives/employees?

I only ask because as I read the news (and any other publication that posts the comments of individuals such as Keith Stewart), apparently Greenpeace has no use for oil and oil produced products, as they all pollute the earth. Climate change, you know.

 So, should I buy an electric car ... NO, I can’t. As a rational, reasonable thinking Canadian, I am aware that electric cars are full of ... NO, wait ... Almost COMPLETELY composed of, and manufactured with/by oil-based products. I guess electric cars are out too.

 Horseback? NO. Riding on horseback would get me into all kinds of trouble with the good people over at PETA and WWF. Don’t want them trying to shut me down. My best guess is that none of you folks over there own a personal vehicle. Well let me know which way to go on that one.

Issue # 2: Food. Now I’m sure that no one from the world of Greenpeace buys that grubby food produced on and from farms across Canada.

 Those farmers use an abundant amount of diesel to produce every scrap and morsel of food that can be found in every grocery store across this great nation.  I mean seriously, how is it that all Canadians can’t understand this simple truth. Milk, bread, meat, vegetables, etc. have all come from a farmer, who I can promise you, owns a tractor. Tractors burn a lot of fuel.

If you were or are unaware of this revelation, I will guarantee these facts, as I was born and raised on a Canadian farm.   ALL the food consumed from the store has come from a farm somewhere. Then to top it off, those grocers have everything packaged one way or another to keep food fresh and sanitary (God knows we can’t have someone else’s germs on our food). Again, oil issues, ALL that packaging (to keep the food safe) is made with, and by, oil products. 

Honestly, it feels like I can’t win. So, like activists, I have a garden for all our food. However; protein (you know, meat) is a real issue. City bylaws say I’m not allowed a pig (for pork products such as bacon and such), or a cow (steaks). I can have five chickens. I guess those teenage girls I mentioned earlier are going on a diet. I am very concerned for the well-being of people living in apartments (where gardens are impossible).
By the way, where do you get all your food from?

Issue #3: Heating.
This is a touchy subject. How would a man as intelligent as Keith Stewart and other lead activists heat their homes? Now I am only somewhat intelligent as I only have a Grade 12 education from a small prairie high school (not big city educated), but I can’t figure this one out for two reasons.

Natural gas ... I don’t think so! Pollution! That clean burning gas from the ground is still produced by Big Oil (we hate those guys). 

I was going to switch to coal but, carbon tax (pollution, again).

Wood burning is not the way to heat our homes, it’s soon going to be illegal to cut down trees (emissions, again).

Solar energy, well, that doesn’t stand a chance in Canada.

Geothermal would almost be the way to go if it didn’t require drilling and glycol-based fluids. I don’t need to tell you folks the ecological effects that a glycol spill has on the environment and animals.

Wind turbines would be almost effective if they weren’t so expensive to set up and not to mention the amount of poor birds that would die as a result. PETA, again, would not be pleased. 

So, please help, I currently have no way to heat my home that isn’t a pollution issue.

    
Issue # 4: Electronics. As we all hate Big Oil, we must destroy all electronic devices. No computers, phones, tablets, etc. If it has a computer chip, a plastic-coated wire, a power cord, I mean if even one component of any device/machine contains oil and/or oil by-products, it must be destroyed. 

Big Oil is not going to keep you and me from our dream of a better planet.  No more electronics ... I can’t write this letter, businesses everywhere can’t operate, you can’t get your points across. Maybe we need oil? What do you think? 

If we (as a country) are not going to produce oil, whom/where does Mr. Stewart want us to buy it from - as I think we have established that it is currently a requirement in every Canadian household including yours? The obvious answer must be the Saudi’s, America or maybe Venezuela
(all environmentally-conscious places, right ...?).

Which does leave me curious, if all our oil is imported, does the carbon tax go up or down?  Maybe imported oil is carbon free? The Liberal government would have Canadians believe that the carbon tax will stop global warming.

You men and women are smarter than that, right? I’d like to think that as Canadians we should support Canadian oil as it is one of the most regulated oil producing countries on the planet. 

Is everyone at Greenpeace living in a time warp? Are you all individuals who are living off the land, being 100 percent self-sufficient? If you are, you wouldn’t be able to read this email.

However, we both know that you have the ability to do so, which means Greenpeace is also on the Big Oil wagon. Please don’t be ashamed. Just own it. Stop preaching to the masses.

When your organization and personnel are willing to walk your own talk, then I guess we’ll have something to discuss.

Are you so blinded by tofu loving hippies that you can’t see the plain truth? Let us all be honest, organizations such as yours and the ones like it are not willing to make the hard sacrifices to accomplish any real change.

Like almost every lobbyist group, you’d prefer to bitch and whine about everything until the donations stop coming in and then move on until the next money-making issue swings around. Granted; Greenpeace started with admirable beginnings, but like all good ideas, it always ends up about
the money. Or am I way off base? 

I do expect a response, for if I don’t get one ... you’re going to find this letter on every news feed and publication that will print it. I will send it to Ottawa (not a threat with the current ‘leadership’, but the Conservatives might listen). I’ll post it on every social media outlet I can sign up for and people will read it. I know that the loudest voice is the one the public hears the best. 

By now you must understand that you can’t be the only voice for people to listen to.

Sincerely

Leon W.

cc Greenpeace Canada

454 Avenue Laurier East,

Montreal, Quebec

H2J 1E7

cc Greenpeace Canada

1726 Commercial Drive

Vancouver, BC

V5N 4A3

As you may have guessed, there has been no response from Greenpeace, so, here we go.

If you agree with my thoughts, please feel free to discuss, forward, share, post, etc. We can no longer sit back and let others be the only voice that the public, activists, government, etc. are listening to you. I think that with our oil-built electronics, we must circulate this letter. Let's get people talking.

Thanks for your help.

Click on graphic to enlarge:

I too would like to read Greenpeace's reply.