Heather Conn Blogs

For weeks I’ve been hearing about the grey whale that’s hanging around not far offshore, here on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. Last Sunday, it spent the whole day off Roberts Creek Beach, close to where I live, but I was away. People I know have seen it off Snickett Park in Sechelt; I went there the following day, but it didn’t show. A friend of mine with an ocean view has watched it almost every day in Halfmoon Bay. Several visitors I know, here just for the day, have seen it.

 

Some people claim that it’s a mother and calf. Others say that they have seen a pod. Yet another said he thinks it’s a humpback whale, because he saw what looked like ridges on its side. With all of these descriptions and stories circulating, I was beginning to think that I was fated never to view the beautiful beast. 

 

After listening to friends’ accounts of awe and admiration in seeing this wild sea creature, I felt as if I was truly missing out. After all, it is rare to see a grey whale off our shores, particularly one that remains about 15 metres or so from land. A U.S. television news report recently stated that if a whale stays close to shore, it means that it’s sick and dying, according to scientists. I don’t know if that applies to the whale in our region or not.

 

Well, this week, I finally saw it, and it was a thrill to watch it. I was driving from Roberts Creek to Sechelt before 9 a.m. and wondered why there was such a traffic bottleneck in Davis Bay. Then I noticed people on the pier and shore staring out to sea, looking in the same direction. That’s when I saw it. It astounded me how close it was.

 

In Davis Bay, a square wooden float, which people use as an informal diving platform, lies anchored about 20 metres or so offshore. The whale was between this float and the shore. You could see the length of its body underwater by the smooth water surface it left above itself. Periodically, you could see its vertical fin, encrusted with white barnacles, poke above the water. Its tail also flicked above the surface occasionally. Every so often, it would blow air through its blow hole. I assumed that it was feeding. It was moving very slowly, not like the orcas that I’ve seen.

 

A few people in a rowboat were off to its side, about 20 metres or so away, just watching it. I parked the car and went over and looked at it from the beach. What a glorious sight. I feel truly blessed to have gotten a glimpse of it. I had my camera in the car, but did not think to bring it out; I felt that I wanted to have a direct visual connection with the whale, not place a barrier between us.

 

It buoys me to know that in today’s technology-crazed society, in which a multitude of images and messages are flashed at people every day, many can still find the sight of a wild whale a remarkable treat, worthy of stopping their car. Maybe there’s still hope for our species.

I woke  up this morning with an intuitive prompt to write about the ecology flag, which I remember as a ‘tween in the 1970s. (That was when I wore white go-go boots and paisley, bell-bottomed pajamas and thought that I was cool.) The image intrigued me back then, even though I didn’t fully understand its significance.

 

The symbol first appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press (hurray for alternative media) on November 7, 1969, according to Wikipedia. Creator Ron Cobb, then a political cartoonist for the Free Press, put it in the public domain, bless his heart. One Internet source says that the Paramount Flag Company in San Francisco made the first ecology flag in August 1967, but I can’t verify that. If it’s true, perhaps Cobb adopted it for publication.

 

The yellow symbol is a combination of the letters “e” (for ecology, earth, evolution, empathy, and so on) and “o” (for organism, oneness, om, oracle, etc). Cobb was inspired by the circle or mandala as a universal symbol of timeless unity and harmony, by the yin-yang symbol, the concept of equinox, and the ellipse, “the transcendent unity that pervades all dualities.” (You can find out more details about the symbol and its meaning on Ron Cobb’s website.)

 

The ecology flag reportedly flew for the first time on Earth Day 1971 as a 4 x 6  green-and-white banner. Like her namesake Betsy Ross, who stitched the first U.S. flag, Betsy Boze (now Betsy Vogel) sewed the flag as a 16-year-old environmental and social activist in Louisiana. However, C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport denied her permission to fly the flag. Like any effective advocate, Boze refused this “no” and sought and received authorization from the Louisiana legislature and governor John McKeithen to display the flag in time for Earth Day.

 

Kudos to Boze for seeking out state power to support her cause. What a great tribute to one woman’s vision and determination, especially at an age when many contemporaries were more focused on acne angst and dating gossip.

 

I’m sad that the flag didn’t gain widespread use, and that Cobb limited his symbol to a facsimile of the U.S. flag. The concept of ecology spans far more than one nation’s borders. If he was truly thinking “oneness,” why not choose a more universal concept?

 

Even though many had ecological concerns in the 1960s and 1970s, it has taken 40 years or more for mainstream thinkers, politicians, and businesses to reflect environmental awareness. It’s sad to me that it took this long but hey, I”m grateful that at last, caring for the earth has become part of mass public consciousness.

                                                                                                                      — Heather Conn photos

Four kayaking companions and I, camped on Jedediah Island on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast,  joined the June 26 global event Hands Across the Sand  to protest offshore oil drilling. From our low-tide beach at Home Bay, we gathered around noon and stretched our hands across a shoreline to support clean energy choices. Like thousands of others around the world, we took this symbolic gesture to draw a line in the sand against the threat that oil drilling poses to coastal economies and the marine environment.

 

The Hands Across the Sand movement, founded by U.S. resident Dave Rauschkolb, began in Florida on Feb. 13 this year. Thousands of residents across the state, representing 60 towns and cities and more than 90 beaches, joined hands to protest attempts by the Florida and the U.S. governments to lift the ban on oil drilling near and off the state’s shores. The movement created partnerships with major environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Audubon.

 

The impetus for the June Hands Across the Sand event, which involved 860 locations, came from the environmental devastation of the ongoing British Petroleum oil spill. The mission of Hands Across the Sand is to draw attention to our global dependence on fossil fuels and adopt policies that encourage renewable energy sources.

 At our  idyllic location on Jedediah, a marine provincial park, tiny crabs scrabbled in the shallows while dozens of live sand dollars wafted in low waters. By the thousands, oysters and periwinkles covered the sea bed, surrounded by thick clusters of mussels and barnacles on nearby rocks. At low tide, three raccoons hunted for food in the mud while red-footed oyster catchers flew past,  screeching like banshees. Ever-present seagulls dropped shellfish onto the beach to break open their food.

 

With such natural richness hinged to the sea, it was disturbing to imagine how an oil spill in these waters could easily destroy this abundance. While hundreds of thousands of barrels of BP oil continue to pour into the Gulf of Mexico,  Chevron is drilling underwater off Newfoundland at almost twice the depth as BP’s rig that blew out.

 Meanwhile, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell wants to drill oil off the northwest coast of the province, by the Queen Charlotte Islands. Along with the federal government and Enbridge, he’s poised to create an oil pipeline from Alberta’s Tar Sands to Kitimat, B.C. This would result in oil tankers traversing the province every day through fragile ecosystems and challenging waters in central and northern B.C. (For more details, see my archived feature ”No oil tankers on the B.C. coast” posted Dec. 1, 2009 under “Environment.”)

On a more upbeat note, the abandoned wooden building in the background of this photo is the old homestead on Jedediah that once belonged to the Palmers. Mary and Al Palmer bought the island as a summer holiday destination in 1949, then became full-time residents in 1972. They both farmed the land and cherished the island’s 600 acres, which includes cedar, old-growth fir and arbutus, peaceful bays, and stunning views. Mary was determined to prevent any  development. (Palmer describes life on the island, complete with historic family photos, in her book Jedediah Days, a B.C. bestseller published by Harbour Publishing.)

The Palmers worked hard to preserve the island, helped by a province-wide fundraising campaign, started by the late Dan Culver’s Follow Your Dream Foundation. Many groups rallied to raise money to create a park, including Friends of Jedediah, the Marine Parks Forever Society, and the Nature Trust of B.C. Countless individuals and organizations provided financial support, which included $1.1 million from Culver’s estate. The B.C. government donated millions more and the Palmers agreed to sell the island for $4.2 million, far less than its market value. Thanks to their generosity and the dedication of so many donors and volunteer fundraisers, Jedediah Island became a provincial park in 1995.

Now thousands of people can enjoy this unsullied spot every year. A flock of wild sheep still roams the island and several dozen mountain goats, said to be descendants of those left by Spanish explorers, can peer down at you from rocky bluffs. The island has four registered archaeological sites, including a First Nations fish weir.

 I took the photo above from Gibraltar, a rocky viewpoint towards the north-central part of the island. A cairn of stones marks the spot with a heavy plastic tube that contains scribbled notes from hikers over the years. Of course, I added a message from our group. Towards the centre of the island, we wandered through forests pastoral and open, without tangles of thick underbrush. We saw the grave of the Palmers’ beloved horse Will, which bears visitors’ strange offerings and detritus from the sea, from a toy car and flattened soccer ball to a plastic marine float. Elsewhere, the island’s open meadows, pungent with mint-like scent, are still home to neglected fruit trees.

 Jedediah has frequent patches of startling green moss and clusters of yellow wild flowers. It was wonderful to explore this island and see only a handful of people over several days. Thanks to the Palmers’ vision and commitment to conservation, this quiet wilderness sanctuary will never see development . . .and hopefully, oil will never tarnish its shores.

A ggggrrrrrr in the glove compartment. A bear in bucket seats.  What would you do if momma bear hunkered down in your car’s front seat and decided: Hmmm, this one feels just right?

 

In my nearby town of Gibsons, BC, Canada, a mother bear recently found herself locked inside a resident’s car. Somehow, she figured out how to open the unlocked vehicle with her teeth and decided to get in for a sniff. Trapped with the door shut, she couldn’t get out but faced another, more serious problem: her cub was left alone outside, terrified.

 

The mother bear proceeded to tear up the interior of the car, probably frantic in her attempts to get to her cub. The publisher of one of our weeklies, The Local, wrote about the incident: “The bear was gingerly released from the car and joined her cub up the nearest tree.” I am not sure how to interpret that statement, although I can easily picture some cowering driver slowly opening the car door and hiding behind its glass and metal for protection.

 

I guess squatter’s rights don’t apply here. No one was hurt and the displaced momma was reunited with her treed offspring. However, the same bear apparently entered two other vehicles after this event. That’ll teach the owners to keep their car doors unlocked.

 

I’ve always been a huge bear fan and have photographed the rare kermode bear and grizzly bears in the wild in British Columbia. A bear has crashed through our wooden fence, knocked out the vertical slats in our gate, taken down our bird feeders, gotten into our garbage, and torn a slit in our soft-top Mazda convertible, but I still love the big critters. They’re so wrongly maligned and misrepresented, especially the grizzly.

 

Humans need to stay bear aware and follow simple rules:

• Keep your garbage in bear-safe containers. If your trash contains meat, don’t put it out until the last minute.
• Pick fruit readily from your trees so that it doesn’t entice bears.
• Keep your bird feeders high and out of reach of bears. Use feeders only in the winter, when bears are hibernating.
• Respect bears as smart creatures. Once they’ve discovered a food source, they will return to the same spot for years.

 

To read and see photos about a truly remarkable bond between a human and bear, click here.

A rufous hummingbird recently flew through an open window into our house, buzzing around in multi-directions. It wound up beating against an interior window, flying up and down in a vertical line, while giving its characteristic chirp. Wanting  to help without terrifying this wee orange flash of a creature, I slid the window across to create a space for it to escape, but the tiny bird continued its up-and-down motion, flapping its wings against the glass. Its deep red neck told me that it was a male.

 

At one point, the bird stopped and tucked its body into the bottom of the window frame. I thought it might have died from shock since it appeared completely motionless. Then I noticed its minute eyelids blinking every few seconds. I debated whether to scoop up its fragile form but decided that the resulting scare might kill it. (A birding-expert friend later told me that this would have been fine.)

 

I ended up grabbing a small rectangle of cardboard and aimed it horizontally towards the bird’s feet. Surprisingly, the little winged being climbed onto the edge of my offering and stayed there. I lifted the cardboard into the air, the hummingbird remained on it, and I quickly put them both out the open window. The now-liberated bird flew off. All of this took about two minutes.

 

Relieved that the bird was free again, I felt delighted to have shared some inter-species cooperation. I didn’t want to think about the symbolism of a bird in the house, as referenced in Margaret Laurence’s book of short stories A Bird in the House. According to this notable piece of Canadian fiction, having a bird fly into a home means that someone dwelling there will soon die.

 

I prefer to think of the hummingbird as a symbol of joy, magic, and a loving heart. According to the book Medicine Cards, people have used hummingbird feathers for centuries in making love charms; this bird conjures love and opens the heart. Two decades ago, while in Mexico, I remember a Mexican man giving one of my female companions a dried hummingbird as a love token. We laughed at the time, but I was touched by his gesture.

 

If you’d like to see a short video of a hummingbird mom and eggs with time-lapse footage of her babies growing up and leaving the nest, click here.

Does the term “carrotmobs” conjure a riot of raving redheads for you? That’s what it made me think of, especially since I am one of those rare strawberry-locked folks (we’re only four per cent of the population, you know).

 

But this voice-of-the-veggies phenomenon is no hair-color love fest. No, it’s a citizens’ initiative that began in San Francisco in 2008 and operates on the opposite principle of a boycott. Rather than refuse to patronize a store because of its environmentally destructive business practices, a Carrotmob targets an eco-friendly business and shops there en masse at a designated date and time. This group action encourages consumers to reward stores that have committed to reducing their ecological footprint.

 

British Columbia’s first Carrotmob action was at Discovery Coffee in Victoria in October 2009. The event tripled the store’s usual sales for the day and has attracted a younger, more eco-aware clientele, according to owner Logan Gray. 

 

Now Vancouver, BC has launched its first Carrotmob caper for tomorrow, at Salt Spring Coffee on Main Street.  (The swarm site is near Main and 27th Avenue between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) Why this business? Omar Mutashar, who founded the Vancouver branch of Carrotmob, says that he interviewed a number of coffee shops on Main Street about the concept and posted video clips on the Internet; online voters chose Salt Spring Coffee as their Carrotmob shop of choice.

 

Salt Spring Coffee won because it has pledged 110 per cent of its May 16 profits to create more efficient lighting in its store. The progressive company, which started in 1996, uses organic, fair-trade coffee and is striving to become the world’s most sustainable coffee company. Besides the Main Street cafe/store, Salt Spring Coffee has its original shop, the Ganges Cafe, on its namesake island and a kiosk at the BC Ferries terminal in Tsawwassen.

 

I think that Carrotmobbing is a fun, ingenious way to empower both consumers and businesses. It’s a grassroots action to show stores that their socially responsible practices will reap immediate community benefits and give them a financial edge. I hope to see a lot more Carrotmobs crop up in cities everywhere. Maybe we’ll  have Rhubarbmobs and Tomatomobs too. Here’s hoping . . .

 

Click here if you’d like to watch a video of a successful Carrotmob event in San Francisco, hosted by the initiative’s founder. As he says, it takes a carrot, not a stick to motivate people to positive action.

                                                                                                                       — Heather Conn photos

Why do these two subversives look so happy? They just heard wonderful news at Roberts Creek’s Earth Day event: farm-gate sales of produce and livestock are no longer illegal in British Columbia. Hurray! That means that B.C. farmers, livestock owners and gardeners can sell meat, produce or eggs from their land directly to customers. Previously, these were illegal acts in this province. Isn’t that outrageous? These women are two of our local Farm Food Freedom Fighters. Yes, they are wearing “Be subversive, Buy local” buttons, complete with logos of a masked chicken and cow.

 

Now, we can tear off those nasty masks. No more outlaw status for people selling organic wares on their farms. Nicholas Simons, our local MLA, and Donna Shugar, chair of the Sunshine Coast Regional District, made the announcement April 25 at the start of Earth Day festivities in Roberts Creek. Nicholas worked particularly hard to enact this status change in farm-gate sales. Thank you to both Nicholas and Donna for striving to reverse this ridiculous law. Nicholas is still working out the details, but the change wil be official soon.

In keeping with this upbeat news, the sun shone for the Creek’s annual funky event, which provided hours of local entertainment, eco-displays, and information tables on sustainable organizations and earth-minded products. Great Sunshine Coast food, as always, was available, from Rashmi’s popular Curry in the Creek to the fish taco stand. This year, the kids were treated to a mini petting zoo with dwarf rabbits, an adorable baby goat, pony rides, and a shaggy llama.

Dave Ryan, fondly known as “Farmer Dave” in the Creek, offered a free tour through the gardens and greenhouse he operates to supply the Gumboot Restaurant next-door with fresh organic produce year-round. Wearing a green hat with a four-leaf-clover insignia, he spent more than an hour answering questions from about 50 local home gardeners.

Dave offered many helpful tips from using shade cover over plants in hot sun to using seaweed in compost (not directly on plants). He praised mushroom compost and recommended “Dr. John” (John Paul, president of Transform Compost Systems Ltd. in Abbotsford, BC) as the top resource in the province for compost information.

Roberts Creek Earth Day offered its usual mix of practical tips and whimsy, from stilt-walkers and The Green Man storyteller to demonstrations of making cob as a sustainable method of house construction.

 

The Sunshine Coast Regional District created a giant tree of large green garbage bags to make local residents aware of waste management practices and how our trash impacts the earth.  Their display included a large sheet of paper on an easel where people could write down the ways in which they reduce their garbage. (Each household on the Sunshine Coast is allowed to dispose of one regular-sized can’s worth of garbage each week.)

Thank  you to everyone who helped make this year’s Earth Day a fun, viable, and educational event.

I have felt so overwhelmed by the short- and long-term ramifications of the recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast that I can barely hear about it. As anyone who watches the news knows, more than 200,000 gallons (757,000 litres) of crude oil are leaking every day into the Gulf since the rig sank April 22.

 

My husband thinks that British Petroleum (BP) will go bankrupt over this mess, but I’m not so sure. BP certainly hasn’t been pouring substantial money and effort into the clean-up. Countless lawsuits will definitely result from this spill, which resulted after a BP oil rig exploded on April 20, killing 11.

 

Relatives of the dead have sued rig operator BP-PLC, while Louisiana shrimpers have filed a class-action lawsuit against both BP and Halliburton, which they state was working to cement the rig’s well and well-cap. The shrimper suit claims that both companies and others were negligent in allowing the explosion that led to the spill. The shrimpers are asking for damages of at least $5 million, charging that the spill threatens their livelihoods.

 

When I think of the lost lives of the 11 men, the death and suffering of thousands of fish and fowl and millions of shell fish, the destruction of habitat, and ruining of wetlands and surrounding ecosystems for multi-years, not to mention the end of livelihoods for many, I feel too distressed to let these impacts fully sink in. As only one example, this spill threatens the future of an eco-tour boat company in Florida, of which my husband is a partner.

 

Here in B.C., some indirect good might come from this devastating event. It will make it much harder for the provincial government to push for oil exploration off the north-central coast, for one. It will also strengthen the case for those trying to prevent construction of the oil pipeline from Alberta’s Tar Sands to Kitimat, which would result in hundreds of oil tankers navigating the interior of north-central B.C., through prime ecosystems and challenging waterways.

 

Yet, I certainly don’t want to sound as if I’m looking for benefits as a result of others’ suffering. My heart goes out to the relatives of the men who died in this tragedy. These deaths seem forgotten amidst the media focus on the clean-up, lawsuits, and economic impact of the oil spill. If we ever wanted more proof that humans need to move beyond oil dependence and exploration and seek eco-friendly alternatives, to save both themselves and the planet, this event is a startling reminder. Let’s not forget the Exxon Valdez disaster either.

 

Meanwhile, on Canada’s Atlantic coast, Chevron plans to start drilling its second deepwater oil well May 9 in Newfoundland, 430 kilometres northeast of St. John’s. That rig is twice as deep (2.6 kilometres down) as BP’s Deepwater Horizon one that ruptured its well in the Gulf of Mexico. Considering Chevron’s horrendous environmental record in Ecuador and the Amazon, I hope that the corporation realizes that the whole world is watching this latest drilling venture.

As I have said numerous times on this blog, I love where I live. This is the uphill view of Roberts Creek from the bridge on Lower Road. Not far from there, northeast down the road, two bald eagles live in a tall Douglas fir with a nest at about 120 feet (36.6 metres) up. Every day, as I sit at my computer, I hear them screeching and calling and can see them gliding effortlessly in the sky.

 

My husband Frank, who had never seen a bald eagle before moving to Canada’s west coast, likes to watch this talkative pair from our front deck, using a telescope. In a recent severe wind storm, the eagles’ nest of large sticks and pine branches appeared to dislodge and break apart. In the past few days, we have seen the eagle pair build a new nest, flying in with long sticks hanging from their beaks. I love having them as neighbours.

 

Our area also has black bears and cougars. Although a few people in the Creek have seen a cougar on the beach and in their yard, Frank and I have only seen their footprints. Several years ago, a neighbour of ours up the hill had a cougar on the roof of their woodshed. I thought that we might have had one on our roof one dark night. I heard something heavy pounce and land on our roof, causing it to shake significantly. Nothing I have heard before or since equalled that shake and sense of weight.

 

Here’s the mouth of Roberts Creek, where it opens into the Pacific Ocean. Vancouver Island is the silhouette on the horizon. We get salmon spawning here every year.

Occasionally, a bear will stroll through our yard, almost always at night. One bear bashed its way through our side gate, knocking out the vertical slats, and got into our garbage. We’re really careful now about not putting out our garbage until the morning of pick-up. The same bear broke through our neighbour Cathy’s front gate three different times, leaving a large hole in the middle of it. The bear awareness official ended up putting a huge bear trap in the parking lot behind our house; it’s a large, mesh tunnel-shaped cage. They didn’t catch anything.

 

Recently, a bear knocked down our bird feeders and our hummingbird feeder, emptying them all. Frank and I feel no ill will towards the creature and are sad that humans have encroached so much on their habitat through housing developments and deforestation. We wish that everyone would be careful about their garbage and fruit trees to prevent attracting bears.

 

This week, Frank  found a small bear claw inside our Mazda Miata on the passenger side. It was below a small slash in the soft-top roof of the car. He had always thought that some vandal had knifed the roof, but that explanation never felt right to me. What a surprise to discover that a bear had caused this damage! We’re keeping the claw as a memento.

 A current lawsuit against Canada’s National Post newspaper and its publisher, editors, and three writers could have huge ramifications for both social media and online dissemination of news.

 

Andrew Weaver, a respected climate scientist and one of the world’s top climate modellers,  has sued the National Post  and related parties for “a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet.” (The suit includes both hard-copy content and information that appeared on the Post’s four related Internet sites, produced by Canwest Publishing. It acknowledges that electronic versions of the same content can appear in 11 different Canwest publications across Canada, which it names. These range from the Vancouver Sun and Province to the Montreal Gazette. The suit also names five electronic databases).

 

Weaver is a professor and Canada research chair  in climate modelling and analysis in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. He launched the suit this week (April 20) in the Supreme Court of B.C. via McConchie Law Corporation of North Vancouver.

 

Weaver’s 48-page statement of claim identifies a pattern by the conservative Post of reporting incorrect and critical material about him and refusing to provide corrections or retractions when he brought these to the paper’s attention. For example, the Post alleged that Weaver had, or was going to, quit his Nobel-winning role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He emphatically dismissed this as false.

 

I’m sure that the Post and others will scream “freedom of the press” on this issue, but that is a mere smokescreen. This matter addresses the widespread damage that “false, malicious and defamatory” words can make once they appear in multiple places on the Internet.

 

The suit includes numerous citations, including an article called “Weaver’s web” that identified the client scientist as “Canada’s warmist spinner-in-chief” and “climate alarmist.”  The piece said that Weaver “appears not to understand what solar climate theory actually involves” , makes “distinctly dodgy arguments” and ignores scientific skepticism. The suit charges, among many things, that the related media content suggested that Weaver “engages in willful manipulation and distortion of scientific data for the purpose of deceiving the public in order to promote a political agenda.”

 

If Weaver’s suit is successful, it will have a monumental impact on both online media and anyone who adds comments to an Internet forum. This will result from two elements contained within his suit. First, Weaver cites reader comments on the Post’s website as libellous.  He also asks for a court order, unprecedented in Canada, that requires the National Post  to find and remove its defamatory articles from the many other Internet sites where they were reposted.

 

Kudos to Weaver for having the guts to take on the global warming debunkers and put some legal punch behind his reputation to ensure that lies in print do not stand as truth. His suit has launched what could be a precedent-setting case in determining how media outlets disseminate news and public comment on the Internet. However, it’s notoriously difficult to make libel cases stick. Weaver will undoubtedly face a remarkable challenge in the process and the case could hang around for years. Regardless, he earns my praise.

For more information on this issue, please visit www.desmogblog.com, a site dedicated to “clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science.”