{"id":3749,"date":"2020-02-16T23:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T04:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2020-02-16T23:00:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T04:00:09","slug":"banned-in-regina-the-deplatforming-of-patrick-moore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3749","title":{"rendered":"Banned In Regina &#8212; The Deplatforming of Patrick Moore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Patrick Moore: I was banned from speaking in Regina over this alternative CO2 point of view<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">There is no doubt in my mind that on balance our CO2 emissions are 100 per cent positive for the continuation of life on Earth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/financialpostcom.files.wordpress.com\/2020\/02\/greenhouse.jpg?quality=80&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" alt=\"Commercial greenhouse growers around the world inject CO2 into their greenhouses to double and triple the concentration compared to present atmospheric levels.\"\/><figcaption>\n\t\t\t\tCommercial greenhouse growers around the \nworld inject CO2 into their greenhouses to double and triple the \nconcentration compared to present atmospheric levels.Philippe Huguen\/AFP\/Getty Images files\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Late last Friday I was deplatformed for the first time in my 45 \nyears of giving keynote speeches at conferences around the world. The \nCity of Regina, which through my speaker\u2019s bureau had signed a contract \nwith me to kick off their Reimagine Regina Conference in May, caved to \nlocal activists and told me I should stay home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In its \nannouncement regarding my banishment, the city said it did not want \u201cto \nspark a debate on climate change.\u201d It said the stated goal of the \nconference is \u201cto make the city\u2019s facilities and operations 100 per cent\n renewable by 2050.\u201d In other words, municipal officials wanted me to \nsay what they wanted me to say and not what I wanted to say to them. \nThat\u2019s just not how I operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regina is one of at least 54 cities\n and towns in Canada that have declared a state of \u201cclimate emergency.\u201d \nThis is political virtue-signalling at its disingenuous best: the only \npeople fleeing any emergency from these cities are doing so to escape \nthe frigid winter by flying to a warmer country further south. Not a lot\n of Canadians from our southern regions are heading to Yellowknife or \nInuvik, N.W.T, to escape global warming. The climate emergency is at \nbest a bad joke. It might even be amusing were it not threatening to ban\n the primary energy sources \u2014 natural gas, oil and coal \u2014 that provide \n85 per cent of global energy and make our civilization possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the 195 countries recognized by the United Nations, \nCanada is the coldest, with an annual average temperature of -5.35 C. \n(Russia is number 2 only because it doesn\u2019t have islands situated near \nthe North Pole.) It strikes me as odd that the world\u2019s coldest country \nworries more about warming than the people of India, Brazil or Saudi \nArabia, where it really is warm. These countries don\u2019t have carbon taxes\n that punish farmers for fuelling their tractors or policies that are \naimed at destroying much of their country\u2019s natural resource sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why\n do I believe CO2 emissions from using fossil fuels to power modern \nsocieties are not \u201cpollution\u201d that will bring about the apocalypse? Let \nme count the ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First and foremost, CO2 is the most important \nfood for all life on earth. On both land and in the sea all the carbon \nfor carbon-based life, which is all life, comes from CO2. All green \nplants on land and all plants in the sea, phytoplankton and kelps, \ncombine CO2 with H2O and by photosynthesis produce the sugars that \nprovide the energy source for all life, including ours. The increase in \nCO2 due to our emissions has resulted in a greening of the planet and an\n expansion of forests. This is not contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Second, during the \nhundreds of millions of years since modern life evolved from primitive, \nsingle-celled life in the sea, CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans has \nsteadily declined. This is primarily due to the advent of calcifying \nmarine species that use CO2 and calcium dissolved in the sea to make \nprotective shells of calcium carbonate (limestone) for themselves \n(corals, clams, mussels, shrimp and many planktonic species, etc.). As a\n result, CO2 in the atmosphere fell from at least 0.6 per cent to 0.018 \nper cent only 20,000 years ago at the last glacial maximum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Third,\n both cement production and our use of fossil fuels are putting CO2 back\n into the atmosphere and the oceans. Both its very long-term depletion \nand the return of CO2 to the atmosphere by our burning of fossil fuels \nand production of cement were inadvertent. There is no credit or blame, \njust pure scientific facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no doubt in my mind that on \nbalance our CO2 emissions are 100 per cent positive for the continuation\n of life on Earth. Commercial greenhouse growers around the world inject\n CO2 into their greenhouses to double and triple the concentration \ncompared to present atmospheric levels. By doing so they increase the \ngrowth and yield of their crops by 20 to 60 per cent. This, too, is \nuncontested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I realize this is a hypothesis that not many people \nhave heard about, thanks to the wall of \u201cdenial\u201d that has been created \nby the climate emergency crowd. But I know that this analysis of CO2 \nhistory will eventually win the day, as it is a provable fact. I could \nhave presented my ideas to the Regina audience \u2014 after all, science is \nabout continual discovery \u2014 but they turned me away rather than listen \nto an alternative point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Patrick Moore, a past president of Greenpeace Canada, is chair of the CO2 Coalition in Washington, D.C<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patrick Moore: I was banned from speaking in Regina over this alternative CO2 point of view There is no doubt in my mind that on balance our CO2 emissions are 100 per cent positive for the continuation of life on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3749\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3750,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions\/3750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}