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Oilpatch CEO buys ad calling climate change a ‘scam’ Debate heats up as Copenhagen summit takes ho
News Articles | Richard Cuthbertson | The Calgary Herald | December 09, 2009
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CALGARY – As world leaders gather in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, a Calgary businessman has taken out a full page newspaper advertisement calling global warming “nonsense.”
Bill Bell, the 77-year-old president of oil and gas company Bellport Resources, said it was out of frustration that he decided to write an article and place it in an advertisement that appeared Tuesday in the Herald.
“It just all seems so totally stupid what we’re doing,” Bell said of measures being taken to control climate change.
The ad is entitled: The Scam of Our Lifetime. Global Warming Caused by Human-made CO2?
Bell said he’d received about 50 e-mails in response by Tuesday afternoon.
David Keith, the Canada research chair in energy and the environment at the University of Calgary, says he’s not surprised there’s resistance from climate change skeptics.
“I think it’s normal that when you’re close to actually regulating something you get a lot of pushback from the community that’s about to get regulated, claiming that all the science that the regulation is based on is wrong,” he said.
Keith said skeptics rely on rhetoric or irrelevant information.
He said he believes climate change skepticism is gaining traction but it won’t really change the debate.
The dominant issue, he said, is not climate denial, but the self-interest of countries, as scientists like him are calling for large investments of money into something that won’t reap benefits for a couple of decades.
But climate change skeptics received some ammunition in recent weeks after e-mails and other documents surfaced from the Climate Research Unit( CRU)at the University of East Anglia in Britain.
The e-mails between scientists in the U. K and the U.S. suggest contrary information might have been suppressed and data rigged.
Some do believe public opinion is being swayed and there is a growing divergence in what people think of climate change.
“I do think it’s starting to change and that’s why I think you’re hearing more contrary opinions. I think the public, to some extent, is showing the way,” says Diane Katz, director of risk, environment and energy policy at the Fraser Institute, a free market think-tank.
But the director of climate change programs at the Pembina Institute says there is an overwhelming scientific consensus concerning climate change.
“There’s been a continuing attempt by small groups to try to oppose the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that man-made climate change is real. I’m sure it will carry on for some time to come,” Matthew Bramley said.
Tagged with: climate change, copenhagen, bill bell
