Climate change
We are being duped by the climate change doubt manufacturing industry, which is putting this and future generations at risk. They have money and public relations smarts. Their tactics are unfortunately working. Too many citizens are doubting the risks of climate change.
There is not a debate among the climate scientists whose papers on the subject are published in peer reviewed publications. Climate scientists are doing climate research and writing papers. They are not on the road informing the public about their findings. They are not being paid by any corporations to push their scientific findings. They have nothing to gain financially.
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The denial industry is largely financed by the fossil fuel industries. Phony “grassroots” organizations are set up and willing spokespersons are recruited. These spokespeople are not climate scientists. They do not do climate research. …
Meanwhile, the loss of Arctic ice is well ahead of predictions, with nations jockeying for position on the possible fossil fuels below. Satellite measurements of Greenland’s mass show that it is losing 52 cubic miles per year and the melt is accelerating.
Too often the media do not check the credentials and expertise of the spokespeople and do not challenge the dubious facts presented. Deniers make the well read editorial/letters page while abbreviated climate change stories, which should be headlines, end up on the last page of the sports section.
Somehow, illegally hacked e-mails from a small group of climate scientists (made) headlines day after day. Careful and complete analysis of these e-mails does not match the news stories. This story gives some people relief – “phew, we really do not have to change anything after all.”
Meanwhile, climate change accelerates and the feedback loops become more probable.
Climate Change Cover-Up by James Hoggan gives the full story. Read it and decide where the truth is. It will curl your hair.
Mike Bray,
Indian Head, Sask.
Understanding ‘no’
No matter what government is in power, there are within it those who cannot or will not understand the word “no.”
In 1989 I went through all the paperwork to receive grants for the construction of a sizable combination dam/dugout. I told the equipment operator to save all topsoil and there was a lot.
When I sent in the bills, Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration immediately paid the promised sum. The Saskatchewan government was a different story. The equipment used was a dragline, a cat and a flat deck to transport them. The government water body said they wouldn’t send the promised money as it was obvious, since a flat deck was involved, that I had made money from selling topsoil.
I said no. Who hauls topsoil on a flat deck? And it was my topsoil. I could sell it if I wanted, which I didn’t, and it was nothing to do with the deal.
It didn’t matter how often I said no, no one was listening. For their own purposes, whether ignorant or deliberate, I was a liar….
In somewhat more recent times a large number of farmers got together to get some fair treatment regarding the huge power line crossing our lands to serve the oil upgrader beside Lloydminster. We were moderately successful, although not in receiving an annual rent for the large double poles….
Now Sask Power is trying again and this time some oil company landmen tactics have been used, with Sask Power representatives telling some landowners that others have been contacted, when they haven’t.
What part of no do governments not understand? A huge number of us have said no to a nuclear power plant but the government of Saskatchewan claims that we have just said “go slow.”…
C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
Media duped
Re: “Go green, go biotech, says university study,” (WP, Dec. 17.)
It is with some confusion when I first read the article by Sean Pratt on the front page of the WP.
(The) opening sentence mentions social activist groups in Copenhagen. I have seen only one social activist group (that would be Greenpeace) and a non-government organization coalition of David Suzuki and Al Gore, and I followed the summit intently.
The jig is up, Sean, or haven’t you heard about the leaked/intercepted e-mails? Yes, I know, the mainstream media is having a really tough time reporting this news because they were duped by Gore, Suzuki, Greenpeace, Sierra Club et al.
Media outlets may have to eat crow for blindly hooking their star to the global warming/climate change bandwagon for the last few years.
This whole fiasco may well turn out to be the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind.
The mainstream media should not be so embarrassed as to choke the news, and the sooner they eat that crow, the sooner they can start reporting the facts to the people.
On to the rest of Sean’s article: I have never heard of Paul Nicholson and his international peasant movement, but seeing as I am a peasant farmer, I may just join his group.
Likewise, I have never heard of Stuart Smyth, who “categorically” calls Nicholson a liar. Pretty strong words, I must say, especially coming from a scientist who probably has part of his grant money coming from Monsanto.
Some of his research money probably comes from my hard-earned tax dollars. I would like him to survey his 580 farmers and ask them how much less Roundup they used in 1995 as compared to2006.
But wait, is Roundup so benign that it is no longer considered a chemical? Oh yes, I am sure Roundup use has gone down since the introduction of Roundup Ready canola in 1996. How ludicrous.
Smyth goes on to say canola is now grown on land subject to soil erosion. Well, may I be so bold as to suggest he get out of those stuffy buildings on campus and have a look at grasses and legumes that these marginal lands should be growing?
Is his view of agriculture so narrow as to not include livestock? …
I need to comment on biofuel. Sean fails to keep separate alcohol and biodiesel. They are vastly different in their production and their imprint on the environment is different….
We all need to scrutinize the media and carefully pick the “experts” we believe in.
David Sawkiw,
Preeceville, Sask.
Corners cut
Hats off to the Conservatives on one count for blocking specified risk materials aid to Cargill and XL.
Why do we, as taxpayers, farmers and ranchers, want to give these big packing industries more money when they are controlling our market? I suggest people in government look at Cargill and XL’s bottom line in the years since BSE …
Cow-calf guys have cut every corner possible and we are still showing huge losses. There are cow-calf operations vanishing every day around us like an epidemic. A way of life and families suffering because of these giant syndicates.
I’ve been ranching 33 years. Our bottom line is the worst ever.
When the pastures are empty of cattle and yard sites abandoned in this country, everyone will pay.
Rene Cadrain,
Glaslyn, Sask.
Big Sky owes
Big Sky owes $96 million (WP, Dec.17) and naturally farmers who sold them feed are at the bottom of the unsecured creditors list.
Big Sky is still operating. Why? Only because other producers are willing to sell them feed.
Why would a farmer support a company that is refusing to pay another farmer for delivered feed? Get together, work together.
The hog barns and the secured creditors need your grain. Demand that farmers be paid. The few million owed to farmers will be a terrific investment for the secured creditors unless they want the barns closed and the likelihood of a bigger loss.
We are not independent, we are interdependent. We can work together for our common good. Figure it out.
Lyle Wright,
Kerrobert, Sask.
Continual calamities
It’s mostly frustration that makes me reply to the letter by Ann Coxworth in the Dec. 3 issue. It seems that if anyone has an opinion that does not agree with the global warming theory, they might as well have the plague.
The trouble is, I’m old enough to remember the string of inevitable earth changing calamities.
First, I recall, was the global cooling theory of the 1970s. They told us the earth was going to be in a grip of an ice age by 2020.
Then came the energy crisis. Without oil we were going to freeze even faster. Then things calmed down for a while. But we can’t have that, so it was back to the climate again, only this time it was warming.
Funny thing is, I recognize some of the same names who years before said the earth was cooling. Another energy crisis, $140 oil and we were running out again.
Well, not really. Here we are with $70 oil and yet the oil in storage is larger than it was in 1998 when the price dropped below $20.
Frankly this old bird is getting tired of running for the chicken coop every time someone says the sky is falling.
The only reason the warming theory has lasted longer than the cooling one is technology, not scientific, but that of the media. In the 1970s it was mostly newspaper, radio or TV. Not every household had a computer, cellphone and iPod, and facebook was a family album.
The global theorists realize that you don’t have to be right. Just have the theory that can sell the most air time. Just remember that in a week when suicide bombers killed dozens, the top story was “Tiger Woods hit a tree.” Go figure.
Alfred Fleming,
Irma, Alta.
Hayek and durum
Renowned economist F.A. Hayek earned a Nobel Prize by exposing the folly of central planning, that planners can never know enough to do it well. The latest Canadian Wheat Board blunder in durum wheat, one of the biggest in the board’s long history of mistakes, reconfirms his view. As long as the CWB retains its monopoly, we can expect more of the same.
Over the past two years, the market posted record-high prices in durum and the potential for great returns for farmers was clear. We have “customers over a barrel” bragged the CWB’s media maven, Maureen Fitzhenry.
Then in all its wisdom, the CWB decided to take only 74 percent of the crop offered to it by western Canadian farmers in 2008-09. Perhaps the central planners at 423 Main Street believed that by limiting supplies, they could goose the price even higher, or prolong the time prices would stay up, or maybe they fell prey to both conceits. …
What happened next? The board’s own pricing signals had encouraged overproduction of durum in Canada and the price collapsed. Returns this year are now projected at more than $4 per bushel below prices received last year. To repeat, that’s $4 per bu., not $4 per tonne.
Internally, the CWB’s mandarins must be regretting their decision to hold back durum sales last year. Externally, they’ve discovered something magical and new called “the market” and are now going to great lengths to explain all of the fundamental factors beyond their control that affect prices. …
The CWB is blind to its own complicity in the price collapse. But, as Agri-week recently noted, “the board has created a multi-year buyer’s market for durum and it will not be surprising if the bizarre durum discount widens further. Buyers the world over know all about the Canadian glut of durum and the feebleness of the board as a bargainer.”
We now have seven million tonnes of the stuff sitting in bins in Canada. Lo and behold, the total volume of annual world trade is seven million tonnes.
Normally the CWB captures about 50 percent of that trade, so it could well be that this year we move out only half of what we have. Durum growers might want to start thinking about pricing out some new bins.
Hayek had a lot to say about competitive forces and the inability of central planners to stay on top of them. He argued that they inevitably fail for two reasons.
First, information regarding supply, demand, individual preferences and the availability of resources is all extremely diffuse, with a lot of it never recorded. It’s not sitting nicely organized on some all-knowing, all-seeing planner’s desk.
Secondly, this information is not static. It’s constantly changing without any kind of warning. No matter how many planners we have, nor how many degrees they have hanging on their walls, nor how brilliant and well-intentioned they may be, it doesn’t make any difference. …
Some may shrug and think the same or worse would have happened had durum been in a free market environment. They would be wrong.
During the same period, free market canola saw record production, record prices and record exports with only a modest carryover when all was said and done.
As farmers, it’s worthwhile to remind ourselves that the folks at the CWB have no skin in the game. It’s not their livelihood that’s at stake when they make wrong decisions.
As Hayek would say, we should trust our own judgments far more and the planners’ a lot less. The collapse in durum confirms the lesson. ?
Rolf Penner,
Manitoba Vice President,
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association,
Morris, Man.
Remove shackles
The finer points of the CWB issue have become increasing complicated to producers and I am no exception. What I do know is that I am a captive of the system, and told that I would be worse off with the freedom to market my own wheat and malt barley.
I don’t believe it, since I enjoy marketing my other crops as I see fit, and as such the idea that the grain companies will somehow ruin my profitability under a free system is preposterous.
To claim, as they do in the recent advertising campaign, that the CWB monopoly equals farmer control is to add insult to injury, both because the reality is that if I sell my grain as I choose, I will most likely land in jail, as have others in our recent past.
Secondly, I’m the one who pays for the advertising – expensive full-page, full-colour layouts.
I’m tired of the manipulation and I’m tired of paying for a bureaucracy that costs my business money while it claims to increase my profitability.
The truth is just the opposite of the rhetoric. We will be more profitable without the CWB, and if our Conservative government can’t or won’t remove the shackles, let’s hope the World Trade Organization will.
S. Wilson,
Edmonton, Alta.
Farm romance
Re: “Farmers feed families, including yours”, (Opinion, Dec. 17).
You are ignoring or forgetting a very important issue. I don’t believe we are put on this earth just to serve. We are here at least in part to have a life that means something.
When farmers produce food for the world, they should be doing (it) because they enjoy it and get personnel satisfaction from it….
Sure, there are exceptions but for the most part I believe people are doing it because they enjoy it and that they are giving to society.
What you are proposing or promoting is humungous farms that have nothing to do with people except to produce food and treat people like machines.
It’s (a) pretty sad state of affairs if we are all treated like machines. What kind of news media would we have if you people were robots and there was no romantic side to your careers as correspondents?
When you talk about eliminating (the) romantic idea (of) small farms, you are talking about eliminating people and a society. So if you eliminate the farming society, what other societies of people do you think we should eliminate? …
Ken Leftwich,
Esterhazy, Sask.
