028 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 028

Air Date: October 25, 2007

Host: Bob Metz

Program Disclaimer: The views expressed in this program are those of the participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Andromeda):
Rev Bem: The jury found the rest of these innocent. Indeed, the cycle was broken when public justice replaced private vengeance, just as you are trying to do.
Dylan Hunt: There’s only one problem with your analogy, Rev. Apollo was a god. I’m just a man. Hmm.

Bob Metz: Good morning, London. It is Thursday, October 25. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right. On CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon. No, no, not right wing. Just right.

Welcome to the show today. I’m going to talk about a number of subjects if I can squeeze them into the hour, including why City Hall can’t see the forest city for the trees. We want to talk about Al Gore, Nobel Prize winning Al Gore now. And what does this mean both to Al Gore, the global movement of warming, and to the Nobel Prize itself? And you can call 519-661-3600 if you want to join in on any of the conversations or have any comments, or you can email us at justrightchrw.gmail.com.

But first, I want to talk about justice. You heard the opening clip there about the symbolic representation of Apollo and the idea of moving public justice or replacing private vengeance with public justice, and the concept that underlies all that. It’s funny because I hear lately there’s no justice in the court system, in our court system. I’ve been hearing an increasing number of people suggest from criminal law to family law, real estate, labor laws, about personal disputes. It’s been said that once you’re in the courtroom, you’ve basically already lost your case.

I remember Jeff Schlemmer, when we used to debate on left, right, and center here on this station and on CJBK over the years. He made the argument many times. And just yesterday I was speaking to my good friend and also a lawyer, Paul McKeever, who expressed his concern that increasingly there’s almost no concept at all about the nature of justice or the proper rule of law in our courtrooms. You basically have no idea what the judges will do. He was sort of lamenting, and it seems to be getting more and more about personal opinion than it is about reliable law and reliable precedent.

So unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, though I once successfully acted as a paralegal once in a locally notorious case that went before an Ontario human rights commission. We won our case, but that’s a story for another day. Nevertheless, I don’t think I’m in any position to address the direct malaise in our court system. But with a little luck, maybe I can establish some kind of idea of what justice is supposed to be, maybe. In theory at least, if not always in practice.

I always start with a definition. I go to a dictionary or I go to an encyclopedia. And this is what I found on the word justice, and it always opens the door to further discussion and ideas. Justice, the term originated from the establishment of obligatory rights due to any member of a social group from the other members of the group, of that group. Roman law developed first as an obligation to be rendered, and then as it became an established custom, it became a demand. Law originated from the enforcement of justice.

However, what constitutes the proper rights due a person in a particular case cannot always be defined because of the rigidity of laws. Laws are not elastic enough for the proper administration of justice in every instance. Therefore, bodies have been formed and given legal authority to administer justice beyond the reach of regular law. Among such bodies are courts of equity, humane societies, and many kinds of commissions, which of course is what I was before, was the Human Rights Commission.

And I regret to say that what I saw during the process of that commission was not anything that I would have even remotely called or termed justice. It didn’t even operate on fundamental principles of evidence. Hearsay was accepted. Innuendo was accepted. Third parties could be held liable for the actions of someone else. It’s a ridiculous circus. And I fear from what I hear, at least, that some of these defaults and defects are starting to creep into our regular court system.

I’m a big fan of, and have been for a long time, of a fellow named Frédéric Bastiat, who was a French statesman circa early 1800s. I think he died in the mid-1800s, 1850 or so. And he wrote a book. It was just literally called The Law. And of course he wrote many other books as well. And basically trying to straighten out his, as he said, I dedicate this book to the socialist members in all parties. And he was trying to straighten, and this is in France, by the way, not Quebec French, but in European French.

And he wrote some of these things about the law that were very insightful. And I think it helps to keep them in mind when you’re trying to figure what’s just and what’s not just. This is one of his quotes, Frédéric Bastiat quoted, it is not because men have passed laws that personality, liberty and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty and property already exist that men make laws. And that’s a great point because the law is created to protect your rights to life, liberty and property, which already exist. And the problem is to defend that, of course, in the ultimate. If it’s threatened by someone with a force, you have to respond in force.

And that’s why Frédéric Bastiat also says, and I quote, law is the organization of the natural right to legitimate self-defense. It is the substitution of collective force for individual forces to act in the sphere in which they have a right to act, to do what they have the right to do, to guarantee security of person, liberty and property, to cause justice to reign over all. And so there he’s saying it clearly, justice is the end goal of the law.

So, again, you have the issue of the use of force. What does Bastiat say about that? He says that government acts only by the intervention of force. And by the way, that holds true with respect to not just law enforcement, but welfare programs, healthcare systems, anything the government does, it does by the intervention of force. That’s how it gets our taxes and our money from us. Hence, its action is legitimate only when the intervention of force is itself legitimate.

No society can exist if respect for the law does not, to some extent, prevail. But the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable, says Bastiat. Maybe that’s where that saying came from. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or losing respect for the law. Two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose, he says. No kidding.

And he says, now here’s where it gets interesting, and this is what where we see the trend, not just here in North America today, but apparently in France in the mid-1800s and of course earlier and around the world. And he says, no greater change, nor any greater evil, could be introduced into society than this, to convert the law into an instrument of plunder. See whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give it to others, to whom it does not belong, suggests Bastiat. And then he suggests repeal such a law without delay. It is not only an inequity itself, it is a fertile source of inequities, because it invites reprisals, and if you do not take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself and develop into a veritable system.

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways, hence there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it. Tariffs, protections, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc., etc. And it is the aggregate of all these plans in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism. And that is what Bastiat wrote way back in 1850s. And of course we still call it socialism today, or as some people are using here a term social justice.

I always used to wonder, social justice, what is that about? Aren’t we dealing with normal justice? Do we need an adjective on justice? Of course I found out, through what I do of course, being in politics and things like that, that generally social justice means some form of economic injustice. It is generally associated with issues like government funded housing and poverty issues.

In the field of justice, social justice for example would argue that criminal activity is a consequence of social conditions, not of individual responsibility for one’s actions, which would be the premise of the old fashioned kind of justice. And of course you hear this all the time, coming out of both the conservatives and liberals strangely enough, the violence in Toronto, oh we need more social programs, more things for the kids to do. Meanwhile they’ve already made it illegal for them to work, they put minimum wage rates up, they put all sorts of barriers in the way for young people to get into the market on their own, and then they wonder why there are all these anomalies.

In the field of economics, social justice argues that for the redistribution of money earned by some to be given to those who didn’t earn, and of course you do that by force, using government. And social justice is driven not by objective laws and things you can count on so that you know where you stand, but by whims and wants and desires and all sorts of supported through this phony form of altruism that attempts to disguise itself as charity, which it is altruism through government can’t be charity, because by definition charity is voluntary.

And so, I always wonder when I talk to people about government, what do they think of government as? They seem to think of it as this provider of like, government the father almost has the role of God in a way. And yet when I think of government, I think of government as a gun. What is the proper moral use of any weapon and that’s self-defense and to ensure justice, which goes beyond self-defense, that’s when you get into the retaliatory use of force.

And of course, the first is the proper prerogative of the individual and of government to self-defense, whereas to ensure justice that that part necessitates a government so you can make sure that the retaliatory use of force is being placed under sort of some objective set of laws and principles, which by the way do exist. Yes, it’s not every man for himself out there, it just takes effort and understanding.

You know, if you look at government that way, you might see a lot of issues in a totally different light. For example, would you use a gun to go down the street and you know, you want to help your neighbor feed his family, maybe he lost his job yesterday or have to pay for some medical treatment. So you pick up a gun, you go down the street to some other neighbors, you point it at their head and say, hand over half your pay and it will help Joe down the street and they’re forced to hand over their pay.

Now, how is government redistribution of wealth any morally different from doing that? Literally, and some people will say, oh well, government doesn’t actually point a gun at anybody, it only taxes or fines or expropriates what it needs. And it only comes from the relatively well off and not from the poor. This is the altruism excuse that you hear all the time. And it stirs me greatly to hear it because, first of all, I don’t know why so many people seem to believe that it’s okay to violate the rights of the middle class or the well-to-do because they are in the middle class or the well-to-do. I mean, is that your reward for working hard and being relatively successful? Is that the kind of a society you want to live in?

Because that, in fact, is what our society officially and collectively basically believes in, though few would say so openly or without embarrassment. Property taxes and income taxes specifically punish productivity in proportion to the degree of their productivity. The non-productive are not only not punished but are in fact rewarded for their status under our system. And not just through people helping, that’s an entirely separate issue, but by governments systematically taking from people who have earned more and giving it to people who have less. Not even an issue of poverty anymore. It’s an issue of egalitarianism and trying to make everyone equal.

And the real principle that operates here when it comes to taxes really is blood from a stone. It’s all about the taxpayer’s ability to pay and that’s why they charge taxes and the way they do. It’s not about what you may owe for any services that you’re purchasing or even about what you are or aren’t doing. It’s about literally your ability to pay and if you’re able to pay, you pay. And you’ve heard the saying from each according to his ability to each according to his need, it’s a very bastardized but widely practiced Marxist bromide.

I’ve often run into people who say, well, it looks good on paper but it doesn’t work so well in practice. That’s one of the things you hear or they’ll say, oh, it’s good in theory but so and so screwed it up, Lenin screwed it up, so and so screwed up, Hitler screwed it up. I’ve heard these sentiments expressed innumerable times over the years but what they all miss is this, the idea of from each according to his ability, etc. It’s not good in theory. The theory itself is a nightmare and it’s a blueprint for flagrant injustice and it doesn’t even qualify as a theory.

You want to talk about the law of the jungle, that’s the law of the jungle. Take it from the guy who has it and keep it for yourself. That’s just outrageous to me in any case. And if you even slightly thinking this way, follow this logic through, everything the government does is through the ultimate use of force. Try not paying your taxes sometimes. The fact that it’ll take a long time before the government either gets what it wants from you with interest and penalties or that it’ll eventually kill you and it will, should you decide to resist strongly enough, it doesn’t change the nature of the use of force.

Even the legitimate rights we have are rights only because we are permitted to use force in their defense, life, liberty and property. In fact, if you can’t use force to defend your life, your liberty or property and in a just way, you actually don’t have those rights and you can’t even claim to have such a right. And of course, speaking of justice, beyond the criminal and the direct confiscation by government plunder, as Bastiat would call it, there is of course the system we’re under. And you want to be under socialism or capitalism and basically capitalism is a just system and all the others are unjust.

Capitalism basically says pay only for what you get, get only what you pay for. As opposed to all the other systems that say get what you pay for, what you don’t pay for and pay for what you don’t get, which is literally how it works. You may be paying a lot of money into the healthcare system but you can’t count on having it because you don’t have a contract.

And a few weeks back I was interviewing London North Centre NDP candidate Steve Holmes right here on this show and I briefly suggested to him that we get nothing for our taxes. And I think he was kidding. I think I thought he thought it was outrageous but I want to point out that I was being quite serious and literal. So let me repeat, we get nothing for our taxes. They only pay for government services. But you have no written guarantee or assurance that you yourself will be able to access the service you’re paying for when you need it.

You know, back when David Peterson eliminated the OHIP premium, which I think everyone had to pay 30 bucks a month to qualify to be covered under OHIP. He severed a contractual link between the insured, which is the patient, and the insurer, the government. And the health tax being charged today is just that. It’s just a tax. It’s not a premium qualifying anyone for anything.

And even back then when we had premiums at 30 bucks a month, they only covered about 20% of the cost of OHIP. Ontario’s income tax was established in 1969 by the Progressive Conservatives to pick up the 80% slack, which is today well over 100% since we’ve got the money. And we cover so much with government spending rather with deficits and debt.

And remember, all government services are rationed based on political consideration, whereas private services are performed or delivered based on the moral concept of trade and private contract. So, basically capitalism is voluntarism, and all the other isms resort to the use of coercion, force, and compulsion to basically achieve what are, as we have seen demonstrated over and over again, very unachievable ends.

So, basically, when it comes to justice, it’s just, I guess that it’s not all about justice anymore. It seems to be more often about just law. And unfortunately, that’s where we’re headed today. Now, when we come back on the other side of this break, we’ll be talking a little bit about why I think City Hall can’t see the forest city for the trees, and we’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Steve Paikin and Paul McKeever):
Paul McKeever: What do we owe each other? We owe each other justice. In other words, we should be getting what we pay for and we should be paying for what we get. But we should be paying only for what we get, and we should be getting only what we pay for. Education is, again, a perfect example. With the Liberals, they would say, well, you should pay for it whether or not you get it. Whether or not you send your child to the public system, you should be paying for public system. And build hospitals in Toronto when everybody started shipping in for everybody else.
Steve Paikin: You don’t like that idea?
Paul McKeever: I think that people who want to ride a bus should pay for the services that they consume. I’m not riding the bus all the time. I pay for the bus when I do ride the bus.
Steve Paikin: That’s back to my question. Do we owe each other?
Paul McKeever: I think we owe each other justice, and that’s all we owe each other.
Steve Paikin: What does that mean? Just justice, and that’s it?
Paul McKeever: We owe each other respect for one another’s life, liberty, and property, and that means that we don’t turn each other into a source of living. In other words, if we have things that we’d like to use, consume, and enjoy in life, we have to have responsibility enough to pursue or take the actions necessary to purchase those things ourselves. It’s not to say that you can’t choose to help people out. There’s nothing wrong with charity. But when charity comes at the point of a gun, that’s no longer kindness. That’s theft. I think we owe each other justice, and that means that we owe each other justice.

Comedy Clip (Unknown Comedian): You know, Shakespeare said first, kill all the lawyers, and I’ve been doing some thinking. And I think we could get away with it. Because if we killed all of them at our murder trial, we wouldn’t have adequate representation in the eyes of the court. Just something to think about. Just something to think about.

Bob Metz: Welcome back to Just Right. I’m Bob Metz, and you’re listening to CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, where we’ll be with you from now until noon. By the way, that was Steve Paikin in conversation with Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever during the past election. And, Mr. Paikin certainly does ask some fundamental and basic questions that you rarely see from other commentators and interviewers. It’s refreshing to see him on the scene, even though I might have a lot of criticisms about the nature of the station he’s working on. But that’s another story.

On Tuesday morning, this past Tuesday morning, I was listening to one of the news stations around town. I heard Joni Batchelor, one of our city councillors, actually having a serious discussion in a radio interview about the subject of forcing London homeowners to get a permit before they would be allowed to cut down a tree in their own backyard or on their own property. Now, what was the reason for this? To keep London known as the forest city, because we don’t have enough trees. In other words, pure aesthetics or marketing, maybe. I don’t know.

I couldn’t even believe that the subject was being seriously discussed. Other municipalities have similar bylaws, said Batchelor, using the lemming argument to justify an unjustifiable law. Apparently, Oakville and Toronto have similar laws, and of course they’re facing financial crises, so they start looking for ways to raise funds. It may seem like a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but I know now, I think I know enough about Joni Batchelor just from hearing what she said about this, that I could never vote for her, even though I may have found myself agreeing with her on certain issues in the past.

That’s because when someone has such a fundamentally revealed misunderstanding, as far as I’m concerned, of the nature of property rights and the relationship of the corporation of the City of London to its, unfortunately, they’re not shareholders, but they’re citizens. They pay taxes. That’s a very dangerous thing to do, because then you’d have other legislation by these people being enacted on the same incorrect principle. This is an idea that shouldn’t even be thought of, or not even considered. We should actually think, hey, people have rights, it’s their yard, it’s their property.

If our elected representatives are not fully engaged in protecting our property rights, then they can only be engaged in violating them. It’s not about trees. That’s just the latest symptom. I mean, we’ve seen pesticides banned, we’ve seen reduced municipal services and increased taxes constantly. And when it comes to trees, rational people only cut down trees when they have to, because most people know trees add to your property value. It adds to the aesthetic beauty of a property. Do you really need to go out and find people if they want to cut down a tree on their property? It’s usually because they have to.

I think it’s good. We should preserve all the trees that we can, said an open line caller on one of the subjects. He’s just not even thinking about it. He’s thinking about preserving trees, but doesn’t think for a minute about preserving the rights that people have that make it possible to preserve trees if you want to look at it that way.

Once again, a lone voice emerges on council, Paul Van Meerbergen, who, like me, is similarly amazed that City Council would even consider so flagrant and serious a violation of private property rights. And he reminded us that London homeowners have experienced a 33 and a third percent property tax increase since the year 2000. And I actually heard him say these words. It’s a violation of fundamental rights, and private property is precious. How right you are, Paul, and how few people seem to even understand it.

On the same day, again, in the City of Toronto, its City Council instituted a municipal transfer tax on the sale of homes and a $60 per year vehicle registration fee. But the city still won’t have enough money to operate, and it’s still well on its way to bankruptcy, and the whole world knows about it, by the way. Toronto’s financial mismanagement has attracted international attention, and you read about it in the National Post, and you read about it in all the Canadian newspapers, and you’ll even read about it in The Economist.

But, and by themselves, of course, transfer tax or registration fee might not be a bad idea, but when you’re also paying property taxes, income taxes, and all the other taxes you’re paying, how can they justify all of these other fees, when in fact all those general taxes were actually imposed to originally do away with your having to pay individual costs for the services that you get. Now we have the problem of both having to pay the tax and going back to the way we did it before socialism paying directly. Only now we’ve got this whole bureaucracy that we have to support on the side.

And I know from experience that the City of London has been the enemy of trees for years and years. When I built my own house in the 1980s on Springbank Drive, the City wanted me to demolish every tree on my property, and I exclusively purchased the property for the trees. And despite my protests, several trees had to come down by city order, but I was able to save a beautiful locust tree by repositioning my house a little closer to the road than I would otherwise have liked.

So, there is a situation where the City says, oh no, you’ve got to tear that tree down, and thank goodness that they didn’t have the permit system in place yet, because the next time they tell the developer he’s got to take down the tree, he’ll also have to pay a permit fee. So I can see the future now. If we need a permit to remove a tree, how long before you’ll need one to plant a tree? I mean, why not? It’s all part of the environment. If your property is not yours and it belongs to the City, they might as well license everything you do on it.

And who would enforce the prohibition on tree cutting anyway? I can see the tree, or the City, they could start a tree registry, right, and have officers visit homes annually for a fee charged to the homeowner. If you think I’m being a little hyperbolic here, this is exactly how the City operates with respect to many of its quote services. And of course, you might expect to see a lot of trees disappear in the weeks preceding any expected bylaw, because anyone even thinking about cutting down a tree right now on their property would immediately see the benefit. No City Hall hassle, no permissions to get, no permit fees to get, goodbye tree. Hello, unintended consequences, the first of many.

But of course, there are really no homeowners in the City of London or in any other Canadian City anymore. I mean, property taxes have almost seen to that, haven’t they? Even after you’ve paid off your mortgage, take a look at your property taxes, doesn’t it look like a mortgage payment? Isn’t that exactly what it is? The problem is that you never pay them off. You never pay these taxes off, they don’t go away and they’re not related to any services you might directly receive. So you can’t look at it even as a mortgage payment, really, it’s rent, isn’t it?

Every property owner in the City of London effectively is in joint ownership with the Corporation of the City of London, because failing to pay your property taxes for three consecutive years will actually give the City the right to sell your home and your property. So you can see the danger in that kind of an idea that do you actually own your home? It’s one of the reasons I don’t support the whole concept of property taxes. I think sales taxes and consumption taxes are the only way to go and that you shouldn’t have the other taxes.

What scares me is that I hear a number of politicians nowadays also saying that sales taxes and consumption taxes are the way to go, but they want to keep all of the other burdensome taxes very strongly in place. So anyways, that’s just an example again of City Hall not seeing the forest city for the trees and again not even considering the private property rights of people.

Now when we come back after this, I want to talk a little bit about Al Gore and having won the Nobel Prize and what this means to the whole global warming movement and we’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Unknown Economics Lecture): Let me just give one more to show you how grown up economists say that private property rights forces people to internalize externalities. That’s that grown up economics terminology and what that really means is that private property rights forces people to take into account how they use something on its future value. Let me just give you one more example. I have a beautiful 1990 Volvo Bertone Coupe. You know, Bertone Coupe Volvo that was shipped to the Volvo factory, sent it to the Bertone coach factory in Italy and they made a specially designed car. One of my problems is that I love to do jackrabbit starts at traffic lights. I like to hear wheels spinning and smoke going and things like that. But I never do that with my car. I always wait till I get a rental car to do it. And that’s just another effect of what private property does to us. Okay, so summarizing our private property, it forces, it performs at least two very important functions. It encourages people to do voluntarily what’s in the social interest and it minimizes the course of power that one person can have over another.

Clip (John Stossel Report on Global Warming): And the Oscar goes to an inconvenient truth. The global warming documentary featuring Vice President Al Gore has been seen by millions. People have proclaimed him a prophet, a cultural icon, a conquering hero. You are a true champion for the causes of war. And last week, he won a Nobel Peace Prize. The Oscars were followed by other worldwide media events. You are live Earth. With all this hoopla, it’s no surprise that 86% of Americans say global warming is a serious problem. Global warming is now by anybody’s measure a crisis. But is it a crisis? Yes, the globe is warming, but is it really all our fault? Is it true that the debate is over? No. What you think you know may not be so.

For example, in an inconvenient truth, Gore says if we allow the globe to warm, terrible things will happen. And sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet. Yeah, maybe like the height of this building will probably just like drown and will die. This is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen to San Francisco Bay. Maybe, maybe in thousands of years, says the IPCC, the group that shared last week’s Nobel Prize with the vice president. But in a hundred years, the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches, not 20 feet.

A faster buildup of heat here. Mr. Gore also talks about melting ice caps. That’s not good for creatures like polar bears. They show this heart-rending cartoon. A new scientific study shows that for the first time they’re finding polar bears that have actually drowned. But I bet you didn’t know that polar bears appear to be doing alright. Future warming may hurt them, but right now the World Conservation Union and the US Geological Survey say most populations of polar bears are stable or increased.

Bob Metz: Welcome back. You’re listening to Just Right with Bob Metz and it’s CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, where you can call in at 519-661-3600. And it’s a coup for junk science, says Terence Corcoran on the front page of the National Post October 13th, following the award of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize for, of course, putting out his film, An Inconvenient Truth, and of course the activities associated with it.

Interestingly, Corcoran says, and I quote, due to the timing of the award, a sharper focus may end up highlighting the gross scientific inaccuracy in Al Gore’s work, thereby making millions of people wonder about the validity of climate science and of the Nobel rather than rush to join its crusading proponents. Just hours before the Nobel announcement, Gore was busy spinning his way out of a devastating United Kingdom court case that found nine substantial science errors in the film version of An Inconvenient Truth.

The nine errors are truly major. Given his scientific gaps in his political liabilities, the Nobel may be more of a liability, not just to Gore, but to the entire global warming community. The prize has elevated junk science gross exaggeration and outright misrepresentation to high international stature, the most prestigious award in the world, discrediting all who honest, who work honestly to find the facts and to do the right thing, says Terence Corcoran in that front page editorial.

And of course, he’s been basically crusading on that whole issue of junk science and the way the media just promotes, including his own paper he admits, so many false notions that are just not scientifically true. And this certainly fits into his basic overview. And it’s interesting that another article in the post, October 11th, Save Our Kids, a court case may block misuse of Gore’s film in the UK school, written by Lawrence Solomon.

And it’s interesting, before they actually had the decision come down, they were actually dealing with 11 inaccuracies found in An Inconvenient Truth. And I noticed a couple days after out of the decision came out, they ended up with nine. And I went through the list to figure out which two didn’t make the final rendering in the judge’s decision, but it didn’t really make much sense. I’ll get to that in a moment.

First, the article points out that in the UK where school standards are a little more stringent than in North America, and certain abuses are prescribed by law, one determined parent took the education system to task over the Al Gore climate change film, an inconvenient truth, which of course is widely distributed throughout the schools in England, as it is in Canada, the states and other countries.

Last week, the verdict came in. This is an interim decision at the time. The British High Court ruled that such partisan works cannot be presented in schools without identifying them for what they are. Teachers who mislead their pupils into thinking that Gore’s film accurately represents the science of global warming are in violation of the Political Indoctrination Section of the Country’s Education Act of 1996, which explicitly requires that, quote, the local education authority governing body and head teacher shall forbid the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school, end quote.

Just looking at the so-called inaccuracies or untruths as they were printed after an October 13th article, actually it started off with 11 that I guess they had in the interim decision, and when they came out with the final decision, they stuck to nine of them as being solid. Well, let’s go through the 11 as they first came up, and I’ll tell you which two didn’t make it into the final decision.

Just quickly, first of all, number one, the film argued that the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro were a demonstration of global warming, and basically this is not correct. The film suggested that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 caused temperature increases over 650,000 years. In fact, the court found that very misleading over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800 to 2000 years. Of course, that makes sense, doesn’t it? CO2 is a byproduct of heat, of burning. So why would it come first? It’s like having the smoke before the fire, it doesn’t even make sense, and people abide by this. I think there’s a cause and connect.

And number three, the film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina, which it suggests was caused by global warming. The government’s expert had to accept that it was not possible to attribute a one-off event to global warming. And of course, the disaster of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t anything unusual about the storm. What was unusual was a city that was being hit. It was built under sea level with deteriorating infrastructure. All a man-made disaster from day one had nothing to do with our effect on the climate, but our inability to meet our own responsibilities for our own infrastructures. And that’s really what caused the Katrina situation.

Number four, the film attributes the drying up of Lake Chad to global warming. Apparently this is not the case. Five, the film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing Arctic ice. This apparently is not true. They did find four polar bears who were drowned because of a particularly violent storm, and apparently used them for the film, I guess.

Number six, the film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age. And the claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility. Number seven, the film blames global warming for species losses, including coral reef bleaching. The government could not find any evidence to support this claim. Number eight, the film suggested that Greenland ice covering could melt, causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence was that even at the current rates, Greenland would not melt for a millennia.

And number nine, which did not end up being an untruth, but this was one of the ones in the interim decision, it suggested that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, while in fact evidence is that it is in fact increasing. And by the way, there’s more evidence coming out now too, that what we’re calling global warming may not in fact even be that. It might just be that the northern hemisphere is getting the heat. The southern hemisphere seems to be having record cold reports that we’re hearing lately. So there just might be a shift. Who knows, maybe the magnetic poles are about to flip, because I understand that can happen in a day. The north pole suddenly becomes a south pole. It’s like this field of energy. I don’t know if that affects the weather though.

And number 10, the film suggested sea levels could rise by seven meters, causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact, the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise only about 40 centimeters over the next hundred years, which in fact was exactly what you just heard John Stossel report in the clip that opened up this part of the show. And number 11, the final one, and number nine in terms of the court’s decision, the film claims that rising sea levels have caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The government was unable to substantiate this claim, and the court observed that it seems to be a false claim. There haven’t been any evacuations that anybody knows about.

So it’s amazing how many, and a lot of, I covered this show. I watched Al Gore’s film. I have it on DVD at home. I’ve watched it myself. And you know what? When I went through it and I found a zillion things wrong with it, not one of these things crossed my attention at the time, because I wasn’t looking for specifically science evidence-based things. The thing that decisions like this miss in a huge way is the logic that is being employed by some of the arguments that could be used in the movie. So essentially the court might be saying, well, okay, you can make any argument you want, but at least stick to the facts. That’s a good starting point. But facts can be, of course, presented accurately, and then some case or argument around it could be presented completely inaccurately.

Gore’s propaganda film has been distributed widely through Canada, Australia, Spain, and parts of the United States. And in the UK, in fact, it was the labor government that distributed his film to each of 3,385 secondary schools in England. In the UK, the judge’s final decision promises to change how and what students are taught and to empower teachers and students alike who choose to think for themselves. Wow, that’s something new. In classrooms in Canada and elsewhere around the world, meanwhile, our children are not empowered to question the conventional wisdom on climate change. And teachers continue to show an inconvenient truth without any guidance, generally, at least that’s required to the kids in their charge.

Now, following this court case in England, there was another article, National Post October 13th. UK judge rules Gore film exaggerated, written by Allison Haynes. And after commenting on the things that I’ve just read to you and talking about an inconvenient truth, labeling it as a political film and calling many of its claims about climate change alarmist and exaggerated, the ruling just two days before Mr. Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize did not undermine the overall premise of the work and stopped short of preventing screenings. So despite all these inaccuracies, the court is saying, well, overall, yeah, good idea, and we’ll let people still see it.

And here in Ontario, the National Post went and got the reaction of Ontario Green Party Deputy Leader Victoria Serda, who basically has been trained to deliver the slideshow presentation on climate change that Mr. Gore gives in the documentary. Apparently, she’s done this 67 times in Ontario in front of over 17,000 people, including school children. And she dismissed the UK court decision as being minor. How can a judge in England make a determination on whether something is scientific fact when he has no background in it, Ms. Serda says. This is a judge that doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t work in the field. He’s not a climate scientist. He’s not a peer-reviewed scientific journalist. He has no basis in order to even go forward with this decision he’s making. It’s just kind of silly.

And I’m thinking, yeah, right. Like every judge is an expert on the cases that come before his court. I guess if he oversees a murder case, he’s got to be a murderer or something? What’s the logic there? He is judging evidence as it’s presented to him by whatever the sides are in the case and basically assuming again that it’s not politically motivated, it gets back to the whole justice issue we were talking about earlier in the show.

Strange enough, also defending Al Gore. I just couldn’t ignore this one because it just was such a classic defense. And it was actually made again in a national post in a response kind of a feature written by John Moore, who apparently is host of the Drive Home show on News Talk Radio 1010, CFRB in Toronto. And his article was headed, Hate Al Gore All You Want, Global Warming is Real.

And he writes this, and I think it’s worth hearing because we hear this a lot, quote, to continue to deny global warming, you have to first believe that the overwhelming majority of the planet scientists are stupid, misguided, or lying for personal gain. The skeptics look on Gore and his movie as a proxy for the greater theory. If they can just tear Gore apart, the whole theory will come tumbling down. Deniers were thrown a bone last week by a British court ruling. It was a Pyrrhic victory when the judge failed to block screenings but ruled that children should be warned that it is a political film. And so it is. This is a film as much about Al Gore and his political aspirations as about the fight that he has made his life’s work. And boy, that’s for sure true. That’s one of the things I pointed out. It was less a film about global warming than it was about Al Gore.

But to continue with John Moore’s comment here, If the deniers want to consume themselves with finding holes in Gore’s film like obsessive compulsive looking for the deliberate error in a pattern of Arab floor tiles, they can knock themselves out. The science that supports global warming exists independent of any errors or exaggerations in a would be president’s movie. For the deniers, that’s where the inconvenience really begins, end quote.

Well, that was an interesting comment. First of all, I don’t even know anybody who’s denying global warming. That just doesn’t come up. The issue isn’t about global warming. He hasn’t even turned open the cover to the issue yet. He hasn’t got the page one. He’s not even on the right subject. It’s not about whether the planet is getting warming. We know that from measuring. That’s not scientific. Measuring is just taking a measurement. A scientific explanation goes far deeper than that.

Clearly, the National Post Readers’ response to Moore’s views was 100% against. They put them in a little box, said, Letters of the Day, not buying into the global warming cult, read the headline. Some of these comments sort of hit the point. Charles Kahn of Mississauga writes, Sorry, John Moore, no one is denying that the earth is warming. It’s been doing that for about 180 years.

And Peter Folger of Ottawa writes, Mr. Moore’s defense of Al Gore reminds me of Monty Python’s Black Knight. Limbs have been hacked off, but according to the Knight, it’s just a scratch. Have you ever seen that movie? It is a funny scene.

And Klaus Rahig of Coburg Ontario writes, The debate over man-made global warming is far from over. And contrary to Mr. Moore’s assertion, the overwhelming majority of the planet scientists are not on board as bandwagon in regard to the current warming trend, which is very true. Remember, there’s the Oregon Accord, which outnumbers any supposed Kyoto Accord by thousands. If you’re counting numbers and if you think that’s what makes good science, if you’re running like a political party, well, you’re going to be in trouble. I wouldn’t be getting into any rocket invented by scientists on a board like that. That’s for sure.

And then there’s Alister McKenzie of Toronto, who writes, Moore is giving us a completely nonsensical view of so-called global warming deniers as if such a group existed. It seems that legitimate skepticism of the flawed science surrounding this issue and the willful inaccuracies of the likes of Al Gore are received with derision by the fanatical followers of this new cult.

So that was basically a healthy sampling, I’d like to think, of what some of the folks in the National Post had to say about John Moore’s defense of Al Gore. Now, you won’t believe where the whole global warming thing is heading now, but I’m going to get into that right after this break when we get back, believe it or not, they’re actually heading for a war, and we’ll tell you what we mean by that when we return.

Clip (John Stossel Report on Global Warming): I wanted to ask Mr. Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn’t agree to talk about this. Why should he when he and others say… The debate’s over. The scientists agreed upon. The debate is over and the science is in. It’s absurd for people to say that sort of thing. It’s really wrong. These scientists are among those who say the debate is by no means over. Right there. John Christie and Roy Spencer won NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites. They agree that the Earth is warmed. We all agree that it’s warmed, I think. The big question is, and the thing that we dispute is, is it because of mankind?

Climate changes, they point out. It always has, with or without man. Early last century, even without today’s big output of carbon dioxide, the Arctic went through a warm period. The media fretted about that then too. And Greenland’s temperatures rose 50% faster in the 1920s than they’re rising now. Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun or ocean currents or changes in cloud cover. Or other things we don’t understand. The debate is not over.

And anyway, who’s to say that yesterday’s temperature was the perfect one? If temperatures keep rising now, these scientists say we don’t know that that will be all bad. The fact is when the climate changes, there are gains and there are losses. But Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change, points out that all we hear about is the bad news from the IPCC. That massive group of global warming scientists. 2,000 scientists. 2,000 scientists. 2,500 scientists say the globe is getting warmer and we are to blame. There is the most unmitigated rubbish talked about.

Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute and John Christie say they were members of the IPCC. That so-called group of scientists, they say, is not what people think it is. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is governments who nominate people. You’ll find in many chapters that there are people who are not scientists at all. Who are they? They were essentially activists. Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. And when the IPCC report came out, not all its members agreed with what was said. We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it at all. I got very frustrated and I resigned. But the IPCC still listed Reiter as part of the so-called consensus. I contacted the IPCC and said, look, I’ve resigned. I don’t want anything more to do with this. And they said, well, you’ve been involved, so you’re still on the list.

Bob Metz: Welcome back. Bob Metz here on Just Right, CHRW 94.9 FM. Where 519-661-3600 is not only the number you can call in to express your comments, but it’s also the number you can call to make a contribution to the station CHRW. This is one of their fundraising weeks and CHRW is here servicing the community and putting up with people like me and all sorts of other volunteers who do a lot of different alternate kind of programming on this station. You can also visit the station from Monday through Friday during general normal hours. And again, that number is 519-661-3600 if you would like to contribute to CHRW’s fund drive.

Now, just finishing up in the last couple of minutes with this whole global warming debacle here going on. I saw the most remarkable article written by Stefan Ferris, I think. It’s called, It’s Not Easy Being Green Critics Question Whether Al Gore Deserves a Nobel Prize in the London Free Press, October 21. And apparently, Nobel Prize Committee Chairman, after Al Gore was awarded the prize, made the alarming comment that indications of changes in the Earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts in wars within and between states, all as a result of global warming, he is arguing.

And the article asks, well, does global warming really start war? And they start looking at areas of the world where they’ve had droughts and all sorts of natural disasters, which caused reactions by the people in those countries. They might have started wars and they give all kinds of examples, which I just don’t have time to go here in the last five minutes, but they were talking about hot spots that are already looking bad, or sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and the Caribbean. And they generally say places where institutions are weak, infrastructure is deficient, and the government is incompetent or malevolent.

Well, that seems to me a little bit more with what the cause of war is than the climate itself. But what’s amazing is now that all the other arguments are being ripped down one by one, now you see the plan that they want to start looking for the next argument in the scale. They’re up in the stakes. This is almost a faith funding issue for global warming, and that is that hot weather will cause wars. Can you see where this is going to go? Here they’re arguing that a completely political phenomenon is caused by the temperature of the air? Boy, that’s just taken it beyond any acceptable issue.

I mean, you’ve heard of junk science. Well, this is junk science mixed with junk history and junk everything, junk logic, junk science, and just everything. It’s unbelievable what we’re getting away with here. Junk morality, junk politics, add it all in there, and you’ve got this new argument coming up.

And of course, I already did a whole show on the issue of what does cause war and the nature of war. It’s basically because people think it’s perfectly okay to use force and government to get what they want from each other. And as I also dealt with many times in shows past, it’s always important to remain aware that what motivates and drives the whole global warming climate change cult is all part of that anti-industrial and anti-technological left-wing movement that can trace both its intellectual and organizational roots back to the völkish movements of mid-1930s Germany.

Many of the movement’s advocates and spokesmen have openly led attitudes towards technology, including David Suzuki, who have actually heard you use that word and defend it. And, basically they believe that technology and innovation destroy jobs, et cetera, et cetera, when actually the opposite is true. Expanded technology always creates more jobs. But of course, these are not the things that the global warmers want us to say. But Al Gore just wants us all to just shut up about the whole thing.

So I will, at least until next week. So until then, be right, stay right, think right, act right and do right. And take care. We’ll see you next week.

Comedy Clip (Unknown Comedian): I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m afraid of sex ever since safe sex and all that. Wouldn’t it be great to think about this for a second? If our bodies were designed so instead of bad things, good things could be transmitted through sex? Like skills? Baby, I’m going to do you till you’re an architect. Oh my God, don’t stop till I’m a juggler. How was your date last night? Did you get lucky? I think my resume speaks for itself. And I’m pitching for the Expo’s tomorrow.