It wasn't too long ago when David Suzuki was urging young people to find ways to imprison politicians who don't interpret scientific evidence in the same way Suzuki does.

With polls showing a majority of people in British Columbia are against the provincial carbon tax, Suzuki has tried to play it a bit more casually.

The problem is that he comes off as nervous.  Like he's worried that the crowds aren't listening to him anymore.

David Suzuki has put out an opinion piece in which Suzuki admits that global warming might not be real:

I admit: we aren’t 100 per cent sure that human activity is causing global warming. So let’s all go home in our SUVs and join an “axe the tax” campaign. Come to think of it, we aren’t sure that our houses will be robbed, flooded, or burned to the ground, so let’s cancel our home insurance while we’re at it.

After all, the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists will only admit to being 90 per cent certain that our carbon emissions are causing global warming on such a scale that we face global catastrophe if we fail to change our ways. If nine out of 10 doctors said your child needed an immediate operation, would you wait until all 10 agreed?

Well, I see a bunch of numbers and non-numbers there.  Vast majority?  90 percent certain?  Heck, he talks like global warming itself has been observed, where I keep reading that the data shows temperature flat, or even dropping.

But his real problem is with those climatologists.

He speaks of the vast majority.  Is that 60% of the climatologists?  Or is it 70%?

Perhaps it doesn't matter much, but for a scientist, Suzuki is uncharacteristically sloppy with his analogies, and it highlights the problem with his non-numbers.  He says a "vast majority" is "90% certain".  Then to play to our emotions, he poses a question in which 90% of the doctors wanted to save the life of a child with an operation.  Maybe he's using emotional blackmail to hide the problem, but that never works on me.  I noticed a shift in his numbers.  He equates the 90% certainty of a vast majority of climatologists with the 100% certainty of 90% of doctors.

See what I mean?  The analogy is broken.  If I was told that a majority of doctors wanted to operate, but a minority had misgivings, then I would certainly want to hear from the minority.  It might be 4 doctors out of 10.  But then an honest analogy doesn't support his point, so Suzuki twists the analogy until it is no longer analogous.  Sloppiness born of desperation?

Then he brings out Sweden.  We know those Scandinavians are never wrong about anything:

Never mind that countries such as Sweden, which implemented a carbon tax in 1991, have proven such measures are effective and that they actually produce economic benefits; why should we change if we don’t have to? Rising gas prices due to global market forces are already hitting us hard enough; why should we add to the misery?

Consider this: If the industry shills and their followers are right and global warming is not the threat we think it is, and we act anyway, the oil will still be there for future use and we’ll also have cleaner air and greater innovation in green technologies – along with stronger economies.

OK, first, the Swedish carbon tax applied to consumers, and not to industry.  Second, Sweden gets over 20% of its power from nuclear plants, and that is causing a lot of stress as a referendum in 1980 (which gave voters three different ways to vote against nuclear energy) voted in favour of phasing them out starting right about now, leaving many Swedes wondering where future power is going to come from.  Third, the Swedish tax is equivalent to $150 per tonne, so I'm not sure how that applies to British Columbia or to Canada as a whole.

David Suzuki glosses over these points.  He also forgot to mention that the Swedes are having doubts themselves:

But not all is fine and dandy. Swedes are in love with their gas-guzzling estate cars, and are among the worst vehicle polluters in the EU. Environmentalists are also concerned that the authorities' green enthusiasm is waning. "[Swedish PM] Fredrik Reinfeldt is pushing within the EU for more emphasis on flexibility, ie that a larger proportion of carbon cuts should be done outside of the EU than inside," says Lindberg which, she argues will not help the EU decrease its emissions enough to meet the target of limiting the Earth's temperature to less than two degrees Celsius.

The Swedes think other countries ought to be doing more?  Countries outside of the EU?  Is that some sort of code phrase for China?  And isn't that what Stephen Harper has been saying?  That Canada's adherence to Kyoto is pointless if the Chinese are allowed to build a new coal-fired power plant every day?

Putting aside the Chinese problem, we'll be better off with a carbon tax, right?

Consider also that carbon taxes such as B.C.’s and the one the federal Liberals have proposed are actually tax shifts. The money collected from individuals, businesses, and industry will be returned in the form of cuts to personal and business taxes.

This bugs me.  A lot.  Some of the money will come back in tax cuts.  I would enjoy all of a 1% cut in my income tax rate.  Big deal.  A lot more of the money will disappear into non-tax programs, in which the money is doled as social spending based on criteria unrelated to the environment and unrelated to the impact of the carbon tax on me.  For example, Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion will use to carbon tax to fund his anti-poverty program.  The environmental connection is not at all clear to me.  What is clear is that this is carbon tax money that I'm not getting back.

But somehow David Suzuki forgets to mention that.  He just keeps it on the tax cut theme, which he figures people will like.  Staying on the happy stuff.

Still, his more egregious attempt at soothing people in British Columbia who are obviously angry about the provincial carbon tax comes when Suzuki tries to say that the tax is simultaneously trivial in size and yet huge in effect.  Huh?

The 2.4 cents a litre increase in gas prices that is one small part of the B.C. tax is minuscule compared to market increases, and the tax may help us move away from continued reliance on increasingly scarce and costly fossil fuels.

Wait a second.  If the carbon tax is miniscule, how could it possibly help us move away from fossil fuels?  If the market increases haven't affected any change yet (these totaling to doubling the price in a year, and no tax cuts whatsoever), why would a "miniscule" tax work, especially if it is offset with a tax cut?

Suzuki is a scientist.  He's supposed to think logically.  And yet here he engages in the worst sort of doublethink.  We'll barely notice the tax, but this miniscule and painless tax is important because it will force us to change our ways.

Again I say.  Huh?

Suzuki makes some good points, but in his effort to avoid saying anything that sounds remotely negative, he ends up sounding ridiculous.  That's a major reason I don't trust his sort.

They sound nervous.  Like they're hiding something.  Like they know something but they're not telling us.

Personally I think David Suzuki is unnerved that in his precious British Columbia, people are voicing doubts.  Not just doubts but outright opposition.  Suzuki is used to making threats he has no power to follow through on, combined with shrill nagging.  That style of public speaking works when the crowd is already on your side, because they aren't the ones being nagged or threatened.

That crowd has gotten noticeably smaller.  It is being replaced with a crowd of skeptical taxpayers who are not accepting the idea that complex climactic change, if indeed it is happening, must immediately translate into yet another excuse to create a tax.

Talking to these people requires a new approach.  I think David Suzuki is struggling with it.  Maybe it's the need for more forthrightness that is keeping Suzuki off his game.