Some stories just make a person want to jump on her 2-stroke and burn circles in the street.
Environmentalist David Suzuki, best known for his television programs on nature and the environment, is ready to step out of spotlight and live the simple life, lamenting that he has not had a greater impact.
I admit, though, the news has this one-time "Nature of Things environmentalist" feeling a little nostalgic...
I recall the summer of my epiphany and the moment I backed away from the doomsday cultists.Background - Against the flow - Rafferty-Alameda and Politics of the EnvironmentIt happened during a sermon delivered to the helpless residents of Southeast Saskatchewan on the disaster about to befall them, if someone - anyone - did not throw their bodies of legislative work before the bulldozers destroying the fragile ecosystem of the Moose Mountain waterway.
The province was national news. We were glued to our sets as the Rafferty-Alameda dam project was hotly debated by personalities and premiers, reporters and researchers, lawyers and locals - often standing with endless seas of prairie grass in the background.
What the television cameras never showed was the glorious Moose Mountain.
I grew up a mile from the river of the damned. I had splashed in it with friends, ridden the banks on horseback. Each spring the snow melt in the hills of its headwaters flooded the banks, and you could catch the brave little jackfish that raced up from the Souris. Small and not worth eating, they were still good for a bit of sport on a warm summer day. Catch and release.
Not that it mattered - the creek froze to the bottom every winter.
When his speech was over, Dr. David Suzuki drove back to the airport, climbed in a jet and flew to his next performance; the national media packed up the cameras, and the great destroyer Grant Devine just went ahead and built the thing anyway.
Left in privacy, the water behind a dam that opponents declared would never fill collected into a lake in the space of a few months.
Today, Dr. Suzuki's one-time congregation in the dry Southeast enjoys a recreation area and water reservoir, the good people of North Dakota are protected from flooding, while a new generation of "greenies" proselytize the religion of "sustainable agriculture" to farmers who have successfully cropped land for over a century.
And upstream from the Rafferty-Alameda dam, "Moose Creek" still floods its banks in the spring and goes stale by late summer, as it has for thousands of years.
Didn't he already retire twice?
I remember David Suzuki. When I worked nights I used to tape his programs so that I could view them later and not miss any of what he had to say about everything. After all, he has a doctorate and must therefore know much more than I do about everything. I felt that every program taught me something that all of us should know, and about which we should all be concerned if not worried sick. Then came the wakeup call. He did a show about a topic of which I claim to have some knowledge. Farming. The half truths and innuendo that were put forward were presented in such a skillful manner as to misinform anyone not familliar with the topic, so that they would form a totaly distorted idea of how farming really works. My next thought was that if all the stuff I had previously learned from the "Nature of Things" was as accurate as the presentation on agriculture, I had been "had". Thank goodness I hadn't donated any money to the foundation. Wasting my time was bad enough. After that I began to pay more critical attention to the "information" he presented and concluded that he should have stuck to fruit flies. I will now try to forget David Suzuki.
Len Pryor...
David Su-who?
Oh yeah! Great bikes, although I had a Kawasaki way back when.
Oh, THAT David Suzuki. He'll probably take his millions and move to Arizona, so he can queue-jump health care waiting lists in his old age.
Entertainers like Suzuki are needy people, their large yet fragile egos crave attention like a drug. Unfortunately, he's not retiring, it's just dramatic flare...
"The simple act of eating a pizza reverberates around the world". Please, Kate, tear that statement apart.
Maybe David wants us to beg him to stay. Better yet maybe he'd like a consulting job with the Conservatives dealing with Environmental issues. It would certainly steal some thunder from the Opposition environment critics. It would be a great move.
i remember dr suzuki doing his show on agriculture in saskatchewan. he was flying over an area around saskatoon telling the world how the farmers had cleared all the trees so we could farm. what a load of bull... there never were any trees where they were, it was an out and out lie and i never watched that clowns show again. left wing bs is what he is all about.
residents of Saskachewan got off unscathed from the spectacled naked jetsetter. He does promote sustainable agriculture! using donkey carts to move nightsoil from the outhouses to the fields aka Cuban style agriculture.
If he is retired we wont have to see him naked anymore.
Some close family members of mine are Suzuki's neighbours on Quadra Island B.C.
They tell me he is an unfriendly egotistical grump. He now has the time to build a 'Saddam' like statue of himself undoubtly strategically placed at the entrance to his compound.
I always enjoy driving my David Suzuki Samurai 4x4 to the foreign auto mechanic for costly repairs.
Gee ... gosh I suupose we are all supposed to send donations to the Suzuki Foundation ( of which I have never been able to determine how much money they sihoned out of the tax trough).
Suzuki is just a grandstander who got his start with the CBC.
I recall one program on "The Nature of Things" where he proclaimed the Amazon was the "lungs of the earth". Most would know this was an outright lie , as the ocean planyton generates most of the oxygen , but that didn't matter to Suzki.
... good riddance.
It is true, as previously posted, David Suzuki was one big HOAX.
I, too, was a fan of The Nature of Things. I remember saying 25 years ago that it was my favourite TV show. And I, also, saw the scam for what it was when he did a so-called Documentary on a subject that I had first hand knowledge on.
Suzuki has been wrong all along on many subjects.
DDT
Farmers destroying their land
Cuban agriculture better than Canadas
Wind power's feasibility
Kyoto
Forestry
Hockey stick graph
Backing the scam Al Gore
But what is really depressing is that this decades long misinformation scam (if not outright lies) would never have taken place if the CBC had not been infiltrated with those flunky Hippies. Or if our Canadian gov't had not given the CBC a BIllion $$ every year, no questions asked.
Environmentalism yes. But not Fanatic Environmentalism. Why does the CBC not pay more attention to Outstanding Canadians like Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace International, and now with Greenspirit .com ?? And leave the con-artists to the check-out tabloids.
Gee ... gosh I suupose we are all supposed to send donations to the Suzuki Foundation ( of which I have never been able to determine how much money they sihoned out of the tax trough).
Suzuki is just a grandstander who got his start with the CBC.
I recall one program on "The Nature of Things" where he proclaimed the Amazon was the "lungs of the earth". Most would know this was an outright lie , as the ocean planyton generates most of the oxygen , but that didn't matter to Suzki.
... good riddance.
Gee ... gosh I suupose we are all supposed to send donations to the Suzuki Foundation ( of which I have never been able to determine how much money they sihoned out of the tax trough).
Suzuki is just a grandstander who got his start with the CBC.
I recall one program on "The Nature of Things" where he proclaimed the Amazon was the "lungs of the earth". Most would know this was an outright lie , as the ocean planyton generates most of the oxygen , but that didn't matter to Suzuki.
... good riddance.
Good luck on your Senate seat, Mr. Suzuki.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi
UK and CBCpravda headline.
Address climate change or risk global depression: economist
that sounds like an upgrade on the dire predictions of the past years.
The world health org has recently reversed its stand on DDT, saying it is not dangerous if used properly and will again be used to control malaria in Africa. How many died because David lied. To really discredit this man Harper should hire him. Listen to the leftist kooks cry then. It took the WHO 30 yrs to see the truth, so in about 25 years we will learn that Bono has also been lying re aids in Africa. We are in the midst of a great global warming, 12 inches of snow on the patio. I am starting to believe the crap about global cooling and the coming ice age. By the way, Newsweek recently did an apology for a story it did 30 years ago re global cooling, saying they were wrong. See, it does take 25-30 years for the truth to come out.
Contest - nicknames for David Suzuki
The Naked Naturalist
The Nude Natureboy
The Naturalist Nudist
The Naturist Naturalist
The Raisin de Ender
"Catch and release.
Not that it mattered - the creek froze to the bottom every winter."
Kate - It mattered. Those little fish you released went on downstream to the Souris to overwinter, and then came back up the next spring to feed again, or to spawn, sending more little fry to feed in the shallows all the way down the banks of Moose Mountain Creek to the river again.
I didn't know about the value of the creek for fish spawning until a few years ago. Even people who are active in sport fishing don't seem to know about it. I once stood with a member of the local chapter of the Wildlife Federation, watching fish trying to swim up the sheet of flowing water over the concrete low-level crossing in your photo. She commented about the "stupid fish, trying to go upstream."
Look for "Navigable Waters" at my place for my reaction to your post about the creek.
A great flaw in the environmental movement is that they have so closely aligned themselves to the political extreme left, thereby alienating so many who might otherwise support their cause.
An environmental movement which
might actually be something I could support.
"Kate - It mattered. Those little fish you released went on downstream to the Souris to overwinter,"
Actually, no they didn't. In all but the wettest years the water levels drop so low by mid-summer that flow stops. Natural and man-made crossing fords create barriers to anything that swims from proceeding up (or down).
The photo you see is taken from one of those structures about 5 miles southeast of Arcola. It's not a bridge, it's poured concrete with two culverts.
It was taken in October - the culverts were high and dry. Nothing from upstream was going to get back to the Souris unless it could walk.
Amazing how far a Tse Tse fly study will take you....actually it was quite groundbreaking in its day. Didnt he win a nobel in science for that?
He moved from educator to activist....always a dangerous thing. Makes you wonder if he stopped looking at the science beyond a cursory view.
The global warming stuff is not a done debate. There is only one fact on which there is large scale agreement, that the amount of CO2 in the air has increased. After that there is lots of discussion.
There are always these little niggling doubts, like in Sptemeber 2005 the north pole ice sheet was significantly smaller than it had been, but in Sept 2006 it was much larger than it was in Sept 2005....other than a good scare story what does that mean?
Sea Surface Temperatures are significantly lower in 2006 than 2005....what does that mean? I thought we were on a runaway train?
Oh, the ozone hole in the Antarctic is bigger than last year, despite controlled amounts of CFC's...reason stated, significantly lower temperatures in the troposphere? Huh????
Finally, from what I have seen there is a better correlation between Sun Spot cycles and temperatures than between Co2 levels, the hockey stick is pretty much discounted now due to all kinds of proxy issues and statistical ledgerdemain.
There has yet to be ONE decent prediction from the apocalyptic side that came true. Not One. I am not saying they arent right in their underlying theory, they may be...they havent proved it yet on a general basis rather than the point solutions they give, i.e. shrinking glaciers in the Alps or the Rockies, which have other explainations.
I would LOVE to believe that we are the cause of global warming. Boy what a powerful species we would be, controller of planets etc etc. I just havent seen a normal proof, which is evidence that leads to a testable hypothesis.
Dr Suzuki should be demanding the same....he can say he thinks this is likely but to say it is proven he is not being true to his profession....
Well said Rabbit. Some POV's are worth considering. Where I quit listening is the medium(CBC), and when he strayed into politics. If he'd kept his politics to himself...
How many of you are still waiting for the Y2K disaster to hit. How much money did shysters make off of this, and how many fell for it. Can anyone tell me one prediction made about impending disaster of anykind that has come true. Predictions of traffic accidents on long wkends don't count. Watch Manitoba and their lawsuit re smoking and the Charter. A govt lawyer is arguing that the Charter was never intended to be equal for everyone. A non native bar owner is fighting the exemption for native reserves, prisons etc. Exempting the above was overturned. Imagine, the Charter being challenged that it does not mean equality for everyone. If that is true, it means the Charter allows discrimination for various reasons. I hope the bar owner wins. End of quotas re hiring, university entrance and so many other things. Could mean the end of french speaking people in Que getting all the good govt jobs. White males may have a chance.
Kate, like I said in my comment, I have stood on that crossing and watched fish. I know where it is and what it is like, and I know that not every fish will make it back downstream. Some years perhaps none of them do. But some years, some of them do, or there would be a lot less fish to catch.
I have noticed that some environmentalists are very selective in their concerns.I know of one that gets on a plane,flys halfway around the world using more fuel than my 2000 acre farm does in at least three years,to educate people that could get the same information from a book or the internet.He then comes home and says how well THEY treat their environment.I believe that he is a graduate of the CBC-David Suzuki school "of the other guy make changes" school of environmentalism.
MaryT,
I agree most doomsday scenarios are way overhyped. Y2K was a real problem but an eminently solveable one. It got attacked and solved, mostly because it was in companies own interests to fix the problem.
Was it overhyped, sure it was in the sense that nothing happened on Y2K because the issues were fixed.
Now the environment is a totally different issue. It is being overhyped, see todays report on impending recession if we DONT do anything. This is to go against alternative arguments that doing something is too expensive.
Problem is the report today still relies on the assumption that something bad will happen....but always in a non specific generalized change from day to day is evidence.
For soemthing that is allegedly so stupefyingly obvious the doomsayers are having a hard time making their point. In the ancient days a clever soothsayer could point to a coming eclipse as evidence of their power. Well, as I said, I await the pre stated testable hypothesis.
The worst argument I have heard to date points to Venus. Venus has lots of C02 and look how hot it is.....well Jaysus look how close to the sun it is....
and yes the earth is warming, but it hasnt passed previous warm periods.
My bet is on Solar Forcing via sunspot cycle, there is good theory behind it, evidence to back up the hypothesis and we now appear to be entering the downslope of the cycle, meaning we should begin to see lower temperatures vs the ones in the last 3 to 4 years.
In other words a testable hypothesis. Lets see how it works out. In the meantime, of course we should pollute less and use our resources efficiently.
I think the overhypeing doesnt do science or the environmental movement any good and you lose the good messages they have with the cassandra nature of the movement.
I remember him, wasn't he the point man for junk science? It used to be that what scientists said had meaning, now you can lump them all together with economists, politicians and soothsayers. To bad, but when you need the money you better get a paper out or no more funding.
Re: the 70-year-old Japanese-Canadian says he is looking forward to spending more time in the Canadian wilderness, carving wood and fishing.
That sounds like what people were doing while interned at New Denver, B.C. during WW2.
My Dad was 17 in 1942, when he joined the Navy and went to war in the South Pacific. He visited the Japanese internment camp in New Denver when he first retired and traveled around some. He said he would have much preferred to spend the war at a camp in New Denver but for him it was either join the Navy or get drafted into the Army.
IMHO, Dr. Suzuki, we also should not forget that millions of people suffered and lost much, much more during that war than those Canadians who were interned at New Denver or Nakusp. And many parents whose young sons were killed never got anything much more than a telegram from their government.
I had the chance to talk to David Suzuki a couple of times over the past few years. He was plugging his book "Good News", and I turned the subject to something that was happening in our region: RM's were offering strichnine poison to farmers to help control the gopher population. I could tell he was a bit ticked off that I switched the subject from his book to this issue, but I wanted to hear what he had to say, being the great environmentalist and all. He told me he was appalled the poison was being used saying that it made it's way down the food chain (from gophers to coyotes and so on). He made a couple of statements then hung up on me. I suppose I deserved it since his book was the issue but I had to ask. I wish him well--he may have been wrong about some things but no one can doubt he brought some important environmental issues to the masses.
"Re: the 70-year-old Japanese-Canadian says he is looking forward to spending more time in the Canadian wilderness, carving wood and fishing."
Maybe we'll see him down at the Quadra / Campbell Island ferry docks selling hand-carved wooden statues of himself.
Suzy is out to fetch some H2O from the pond outback for the tea ceremony.
He will be right back.
Tea Ceremony Protocol: Watch your C&D.
For most gatherings, shoes are removed, so it is suggested that socks be worn. For both comfort and discretion, women may want to wear pants while sitting in observance of a tea ceremony. ...-
Laura and Kate - I lived in S. Sask. also, in the beautiful Cypress Hills. Laura, I think you just walked through the area Kate is talking about one day.
We had a dam on our place because we had geese who liked to swim. In the spring the coulees ran like mad and filled up our man made dam, the coulees only ran as long as the snow lasted. The dam offered a refuge for our own geese and wild birds all year, it also supplied us with water for our garden and our trees.
The reason I question your fish story is because I, like Kate, know that in Sask. creeks and streams often dry up over the summer. The people who live or have lived in Sask. know this fact.
Jema54 (and Kate) - it doesn't matter if the creek dries up; what matters is timing. As soon as the eggs hatch, the fry start drifting downstream, feeding along the way. I think the figure I heard was three weeks - if the water runs for three weeks, some of the fish will make it.
I didn't just walk through there. I live less than six miles by road from where that picture was taken. I've fixed the link at my place if you want to read more.
From the title I almost thought for a second "Yipee! someone put an axe in Trotsky's head!"
Had Suzuki lived in Roman times not a single aquaduct would have been built. Suzuki (Suzukus?) would have been sporting a hemp toga and warning people not to light too many campfires because of CO2 emissions and global warming.
"Laura and Kate - I lived in S. Sask. also, in the beautiful Cypress Hills."
I love Cypress Hills. Beautiful place.
But he expresses regret that most people still live out of step with nature.
I wonder if Suzuki means the nature that is hot/cold/wet/dry; the nature with hurricanes, floods, landslides, fires, blizzards and volcanos; with animals with claws, teeth, and stingers; with animals and plants that are poisonous; with billions and billions of nasty bacteria; with animals that object to being speared or clubbed and eaten - that nature?
Humans have spent their entire existence trying to get away from, or tame, nature.
Suzuki is more than welcome to go live in step with nature any time he wants. He might last a month.
I hope this isn't too off topic but since we are talking about hot air and Dr. Suzuki's Kyoto love affair:
3w.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20672982-2,00.html
"PM defiant over global warming" is the headline. It seems that PM Howard in Oz is running into the same gloom and doom gang down under. now it is Australia's fault the Amazon rainforest is disappearing. That is refreshing because I thought it was all Canada's fault.
Concrete, thanks for relaying your fathers comments, these words need frequent repetition. If he is still alive please forward my profound gratitude for the sacrifices he made.
David Suzuki obviously got a great education and could have served mankind in his chosen field of geneticist with distinction. Instead, he chose a life of self promotion, jumping on every wrong-headed environmental bandwagon.
His comment that nobody understands or can agree what sustainability is, is revealing. He, and like minded zealots cannot even define the problem accurately. No wonder that any of their proposed solutions have been disastrous.
Now that he's retiring, perhaps he can join the Club of Rome -- remember them? -- the ones who were predicting abject doom and gloom and the exhaustion of all resources by 1999?
Global Warming is Junk Science but Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. Pure genius.
A few hundred years ago, people like you guys were arguing how stupid it was that the libruls were trying to get them to stop shitting where they ate.
"You crazy libs! There can be no harm in dropping one where we eat! Illness is clearly punishment from god! Hahahaha! Little bugs live in our poo! Who ever heard of such nonsense! Besides, I haven't the time to run to yonder field. Time is dubloons you know!"
"John" - is that the official position of the CBC, or just your own personal opinion?
key phrase from the original posting:
"for thousands of years."
yep.
p.s. is that a nude statue??? LOL !!!
and maryT wins today's door prize for the most accurate statements, over the span of 2 replies.
wind power?
my hunch is even if everything works out, it will never provide more than 10% of electricity requirements.
keep huffing and puffing there davie boy !!!!
Red "The simple act of eating a pizza reverberates around the world". Please, Kate, tear that statement apart."
Are you incapable of doing so yourself?
It's frankly a rather straight forward effort to demonstrate how everyday North American acts, can impact life on the planet everywhere. It's pretty clever, because at first glance the uneducated may dismiss it, until they think about it for a bit, or ask what it means from someone who can explain it to them.
Here, you can "tear it apart" on my discussion too about Suzuki.
So are there still fish swimming in the creek Laura? Are your cattle drinking that water? If they are they might be stepping on the fish.
Up here, in the Yukon, all the placer miners were forced off their claims because environmentalists said the fish could not see and navigate in waters made silty by miners who disturbed the water beds by sluicing. Now the Yukon is a 'park' and you people down south pay all of our bills through your egregious taxes. Who have you in mind to 'tap' when all productive people have absquatulated from Calvert never, never, land?
"Kate" - No clue. I don't read the group-think memos posted in the bathroom stalls here at the ceeb. It's usually just good policy not to poo where one eats. Radical I know, but I swear it makes a difference in one's health.