Madam Speaker, let me respond to both parts of the question.
Did I refer to the Premier of Alberta as a desperate demagogue? No. I referred to his complicit coterie of desperate demagogues from the petroleum club. That was the exact phrase. I will not withdraw the remarks of the irresponsible oil patch which has failed to recognize, even within its own ranks, the virtuous BP, Shell Oil, and Suncor, by scaremongering in a group I referred to as a coterie.
On the question of the science, I was lucky, in a previous life, to work with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and I was attached to the Earth Sciences Program, so I have some passing knowledge of the matter to which the hon. member refers.
Of course there has been climate change over the years which is not the result of human activity. The difference is that when we impose on the long-term climate change pattern, which certainly exists, human activity has the effect of increasing the rate of change. That is why the carbon story is so important for the last three centuries. We have records on carbon going back 430,000 years, thanks to the ice caps and so on. There is no doubt that human activity, our activity, has increased the rate of change.