After facing an ocean of controversy last year over their original billboards as reported in SLATE on June 12, 2014, Friends of Science Society is once again ‘taking it to the streets’ with a new Calgary billboard campaign, this one featuring five key points of climate change uncertainty, as posted on their blog.
The campaign is running on a collection of digital and static billboards around the city.
“We hope to educate the public about climate change science uncertainties, so that they can stop policy-makers from being overly generous with taxpayers’ money on climate policy at the upcoming Paris COP21 talks,” says Michelle Stirling, Communications Manager for Friends of Science Society. “The public has been misled about reports of catastrophic human-caused global warming.”
“Global warming paused more than 18 years ago, before the Kyoto Accord was ever ratified,” says Norm Kalmanovitch, P. Geoph. and resident science adviser to the Friends. “In the meantime carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have gone up, but warming has not. This means there is a flaw in the theory of human-caused global warming.”
Statements by German climate expert Hans von Storch reported in Der Spiegel, June 20, 2013 confirm this view.
Friends of Science billboards outline the issues in five easy key points. Quoting American atmospheric scientist Judith Curry, from her Senate testimony of Jan 16, 2014, one message says “CO2 is not the control knob that can fine tune climate.”
The second message shows the surface temperature record as a flat-line trend where temperatures bobble about with the statement “Global Warming? Not for 18 years” as reported in The Australian, March 30, 2013.
The third piece of the puzzle shows a representation of the Canadian Climate Model compared to observed temperatures. The model prediction rises high, but the actual temperature measurements are far below it with the message “Global Warming? It’s cooler than you think.”
Having made the case that carbon dioxide is not the control knob on climate, that there’s been no warming for 18 years, and that there is a large discrepancy between projections and real temperatures, the next billboard message features a Canadian flag on the Eiffel Tower and reads “Say NO to Climate CO2 coercion.”
“If CO2 is not the cause of warming, why have a carbon tax?” asks Stirling. “Why have targets for greenhouse gas reductions when real pollution is not being addressed; instead offsets and other kinds of carbon trading allow polluters to emit at will while carbon traders make money from their pollution!”
And finally, what causes climate change? According to Friends of Science, it’s the sun acting in direct and indirect ways on various earth and cosmic systems. The final billboard shows the sun and earth in a representational proportion to each other with the message “Climate ‚Äì Change your mind.”
Friends of Science hopes the series will stimulate a global discussion on how to address pollution and that these messages will take the scare factor out of the climate change debate.
Norm Kalmanovitch says, “Look at history. There are historical warming and cooling periods long before humans started using fossil fuels. Politicians can’t stop climate change. But we can all adapt, as we have done over the centuries.”
