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Sierra Club Canada was called extremist last week by a Saskatchewan radio personality in an article published in the Regina Star Phoenix.

Why is a bald father of three who is concerned about what kind of future his daughters will have an "extremist"? Why is wasting a billion dollars of taxpayers' money not a matter of concern to a person with Mr. Gormley's political outlook? These are questions that had my head shaking this week.

For our society to progress and flourish we must eliminate: ignorance, attachment and aversion. Mr. Gormley appears to be clinging tightly to all three. His path of pointing figures and calling names is a symptom.

The well-funded disinformation campaign of the climate change deniers is playing on our ignorance of science, our attachment to our lifestyle and our aversion to change.

In Mr. Gormley's rant on what he calls climategate he leaves out most of the facts. In his ignorance of the issue he appears to accept as fact a disinformation campaign from unqualified professional skeptics. Since the 1980s, so called ‘skeptics’ have been selling out. First to coal interests by questioning acid rain, then to the tobacco industry questioning the impact of second hand smoke. We all remember how we laughed out loud at the sight of all the heads of tobacco companies standing up swearing tobacco doesn't cause cancer. The climate deniers appeared in the 1990s using the same tactics and in many cases were the same people.

The theft of ten year old emails have revealed that scientists are human, make mistakes and sometimes write angry imprudent emails and not much more. Who among us would look good if every private correspondence we have sent or received was suddenly made public by people looking to make us look bad?

But do the emails mean climate change science is wrong and we need not be concerned? To find the answer we must cast aside our ignorance and look at the facts. There has been a decade since those emails were written and the science has not been standing still. The relentless pursuit of knowledge has never stopped.

Last fall Sierra Club Canada did a review of the climate science since the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and posted it on our web site. We found rising acidification of the oceans as they absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are now 40% more acidic than normal, threatening the oceans' ability to sustain life. Arctic sea-ice melt over the last four years has been significantly greater than predicted in the IPCC report and we may see an ice free Arctic Ocean by 2025 or before. Greenland and Antarctica ice-melt is accelerating and the latest science projects a sea level rise of at least one meter by 2100, compared to the 0.59 meter rise predicted by the IPCC in 2007.

These are unchallenged observations of what is already happening not complex mathematical models making predictions a decade ago. This is St. Thomas seeing the proof and believing.

I agree with Mr. Gormley. We should be going for the gold and be proud of our achievements. Even the hearts of "extremists" skip a beat when a Canadian is on the podium. So far we have been doing well in the extreme sports. We should also be going for the gold in reducing greenhouse gas emissions too -- now that would be a legacy worth winning to leave to our children.

John Bennett
Executive Director
Sierra Club Canada