Biography
John Robson, commentator-at-large with News Talk Radio 580 CFRA in Ottawa, National Post columnist and documentary filmmaker, is also an Invited Professor at the University of Ottawa. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Toronto. John also holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Texas at Austin and has worked as a historian, policy analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker for three decades. He is now the Executive Director at the Climate Discussion Nexus. He has been examining the climate change issue for many years, including both the science and the policy debates, and formed the Climate Discussion Nexus with a group of citizens concerned about expensive, ill-planned energy policies intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
He has worked in academia, think tanks and politics as well as doing print, radio and television journalism in Canada, produced and hosted the documentary The Great War Remembered for Sun News Network in 2014 and produced and hosted the crowdfunded documentary Magna Carta: Our Shared Legacy of Liberty in 2015.
Speech Topics
The War On Fertilizer
What once seemed like a long-term, feel-good project to prevent humans from damaging the environment in some new way, by causing excessive warming, has turned into an immediate, full-blown panic about “climate breakdown” accompanied by drastic measures to price gasoline out of reach, ban natural gas and now, it seems, get rid of fertilizer and cripple farming in the Western world. It’s past time to take a hard look at where these economically suicidal policies are coming from and whether they really are justified by a set of dogmas called “the science.”
Takeaways from this talk:
- Current climate policies really will cause economic havoc, poverty and misery not a smooth transition to a greener, more prosperous and more fulfilling way of life.
- It is possible to improve the design of some policies, and technology will improve, but not to anywhere near the point that we can stop using fossil fuels and maintain our society.
- The three central claims of climate alarmists about a supposed scientific consensus, that we are seeing unprecedented climate conditions, that humans are mainly responsible, and that if we do not drastically change our ways we will destroy our own civilization are all demonstrably untrue. But if we follow their policy prescriptions, we will.
Climate Comebacks
In this informative and often very witty keynote presentation, Prof. Robson talks about what you can say to climate alarmists when they ask questions, or are say things like:
“Although climate change has taken a backseat to the Coronavirus pandemic, it is as essential as ever that we not lose momentum in fighting the climate crisis.”
The response?
No, it is essential that we learn the right lessons from the pandemic. Those of us who have been critical of the “climate emergency” movement have pointed out that the so-called climate crisis does not look like a real crisis, especially since human welfare has improved so dramatically over the past century. The pandemic has proven our point by showing us what a real crisis looks like. It has also shown us what a severe economic downturn looks like. Radical alarmists wave away the potential for harm from wrecking the economy. During boom times they can get away with that because people forget what a nightmare an economic collapse really is.
In this compelling keynote, Dr. Robson will discuss the top 10 comebacks to the most typical tropes climate change proponents keep pushing at us in the media, every day.
John can fully customize a climate keynote to suit your audience.
Smile when you say that: Surviving in a politically correct world
Have you ever found yourself knowing you had to say something about a public problem that had somehow become impossible to discuss, fenced around by politically correct taboos? Do you want to know how to speak the truth without being vilified as a bigot or driven from the stage by the shrieks of the supposedly open-minded and compassionate?
In this seriously amusing talk, you’ll learn that you aren’t alone and should not be intimidated. And you’ll learn how to say what you want, without being offensive, incomprehensible or a target for persecution by environmental, feminist, campus or other thought police.
Other Selected Topics:
- Magna Carta: Good Then, Good Now
- Vietnam is Alabama is Berkeley and the Crisis of Western Civilization
- How to Think Like an Economist (and Have Fun Doing It)
- King Charles’ Axe: Why Property Rights are Human Rights
- Opening the Can of Worms: How We Must Fix our Constitution
- That Was Now: Why History Matters
- The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments: Why Equations Won’t Save Our Cities, Our Economy or Our Health – and our favorite here at Big Idea:
- Taming Leviathan: How to Put the Government Back in its Box.
