This Day In Clarkland: The Sheep Farmer Speaks To British Columbians about...

...Morality.

Via Rob Shaw's piece in the VSun:

Premier Christy Clark’s hand-picked advocate for liquefied natural gas says British Columbia has a “moral obligation” to develop the industry to save the lives of Chinese residents dying of air pollution.

Gordon Wilson, the controversial former leader of the B.C. Liberal Party, made the comment during a heated presentation to a crowd of almost 600 people in North Saanich this week, many of whom had attended the community meeting in opposition to a proposed floating LNG plant in nearby Saanich Inlet.

“So let me just say this, when you’ve got 500,000 Chinese dying each year attributed to air pollution specific to coal — and somebody finds that funny, I don’t,” Wilson said, interrupting himself to shoot back at a heckler...


That word...

I do not think it means what the good Mr. Wilson thinks it means.

Ergo...

Inigo!

****

And, as you might expect, given who is paying Mr. Wilson to say these things, there was also this:

Wilson’s comments were greeted with a mixture of applause, laughter and boos by the audience. In an interview, he said he was trying to point out that we are all global citizens who have a moral obligation to address climate change, but it was difficult to get the point across while he was being heckled by a small group of protesters he said repeatedly show up at his events.

“I certainly didn’t mean to lecture anybody and was certainly not trying to be disrespectful to anybody,” he said. “But I’ve now hit 37 different communities and you hear the same materials presented which are factually incorrect … at that point I think it detracts from the merits of the entire discussion.”...

To which we can only say, based on actual scientific analysis done by actual scientists and rigourously peer reviewed by other scientists that actually know something about the science...

Codswallop! 

...Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas (obtained by fracturing) on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy–economy–climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope or its coverage of greenhouse gases. Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. 

{snip}

...Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy...


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Honestly, I do not understand why this paid shill is not dismissed, out of hand, by the local proMedia every time he opens his mouth...And speaking of purveyors of 'he said/she said' journalism...Why didn't Mr. Shaw go to the actual science instead of seeking an 'opposing' view from the politically opposing side, thus furthering the false equivalency?
Charlie Smith digs into the curious (proMedia-free) case of Mr. Wilson and his partner in biography, Ms. Tyabji....Here.
On the Twittmachine, PSquires notes that Mr. Wilson lost the crowd in the first two minutes, which is a good thing...But, never underestimate the deflector spin power of a lightning rod, no matter how woolly-headed.


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