For years, Canadaโs most famous climate denier โ- a national broadcaster, columnist and author -โ hasย railed againstย science.
Heโs positioned himself as a kind of noble dissident, one of but a few remaining voices of โreasonโ questioning the motives of the more than 450 lead-author scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Now heโs inched further out on his already cracking and splintering limb with a column that equates climate activists such as Al Gore with crazed zealots. The occasion is the release of Canadian Liberal leader Michael Ignatieffโs new green-economy platform, which the parliamentarian calls โthe most significant investment in clean energy jobs this country has ever seen.โ
To support his case that this sort of patently irresponsible talk could lead the nation into hemp-nutter land, Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials orย expertise.
Hudsonโs report regurgitates the same old arguments that fossil-fuel-industry front groups have been feeding us for years in an effort to sustain the illusion that the jury is still out on global warming.
Clearly, Murphy is grasping at straws. โThis is, or may be, the church of global warmingโs Galileo moment – when observation of what is happening trumps the gloomy choir of consensus,โ he writes.
I almost feel bad for theย guy.
Here we have a man who has quite literally yammered himself into a corner. As the nation and the world finally begin to grapple with the reality of our situation and the hard work and new opportunities that lie ahead, Murphy has left himself no dignified exit strategy.
And so, like a cornered raccoon, he resorts to officious spitting and hissing about climate zealots, heresies, and piety.
Like his past work along these lines, the prose is all very arch and clever. But isnโt it ironic that to challenge science, Murphy resorts to painting its advocates as tar-and-brimstone-spiting preachers ruling over zombie-eyedย flock?ย
The truth is, it is not the climate scientists and green-economy advocates like Gore and now Ignatieff who are the blinkered fanatics screaming from the pulpit.
It is the extreme free-market libertarians, like Rexย Murphy.
