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But can we wish away Al Gore?

Posted by Joanne on 2 March 2010, 7:54 am

There is no shortage of point-by-point criticisms of Al Gore’s New York Times Op-ed, We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.

My first thought after reading his steaming pile of rhetoric was why did he set himself up for the inevitable drudging?   Or does he actually believe that we’re that stupid?

And how is it that the alarmists can continue to hold him up as some kind of prophet and still keep a straight face while they warn us all of impending doom?

Anyway, here are some of the better fisks that I’ve come across. If you find more please let share them in comments. Thanks.

Al’s latest global-warming whopper – Alan Reynolds, New York Post

Al Gore’s weird, disconnected op-ed on climate change – Rick Moran, American Thinker

Al Gore Comes Out of Hiding and Gets a Fisking – Bluegrass Pundit

EXCLUSIVE: Inhofe Blasts Gore Over Climategate – Connie Hair, Human Events

But in response to Gore’s statement that “what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption”,   Bill Kristol said it most succinctly:

“Redemption comes from God, not Gore.”

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Related

More inconvenient news for the global warming alarmists:

UN’s climate link to hurricanes in doubt – Times Online

Cyclone climate link rejected – The Australian

El Nino killed Costa Rican toad, not global warming – Oneindia

British scientist in climate row admits ‘awful’ emails – Sydney Morning Herald

‘The Acceleration of Disbelief,’ Starring ‘Floor Mat’ Al Gore - Big Journalism (this is a must-read)

So is this one: Climategate: ‘a lot of common data’ – Phil Jones exposes AGW dominoes to Commons committee – Gerald Warner, Telegraph:

...And oh, yes – one further interesting fact emerged from yesterday’s Select Committee grilling. Professor Edward Acton, the Vice-Chancellor of the “University” of East Anglia, now thinks more money should be devoted to researching the Mediaeval Warm Period. So apparently it exists after all.

Who knew?

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Local ‘Green Energy’ issues:

Wind farm faces opposition – Guelph Mercury article via Windaction

Ontario power risk – Parker Gallant, Full Comment

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Wednesday Update

Welcome Jack’s Newswatch readers!  And please check out Crux of the Matter – Trust Conservative gov’t timetable to refute AGW.

Peter Foster: Climate snow jobs – FP Comment

Wind power the worst kind of mirage – Henk Tennekes, FP

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Friday – Saturday Update

Waiting to hear ‘we’re sorry’ – John Robson, Ottawa Citizen

Blowing away taxpayers – Michael Trebilcock, Financial Post

Filed under AGW, Al Gore, Arrogance, Big Environment, Big Green, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Copenhagen, Dalton McGuinty, Follow the money, Global Warming, Ontario economy, Propaganda, Science/tech, UN, Wind farms, Your tax-dollars, climate change, economy, environment, environmentalists, scandals.
45 Comments

The Audacity of Caution

Posted by Joanne on 1 March 2010, 7:52 am

Dr. Jack Kruuv, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Waterloo has a few choice words for Maxime Bernier in today’s Waterloo Region Record:

“Politicians should keep their trap shut, when they don’t know what they are talking about.”

And since politicians represent the people that elect them, then by extension he is telling us to keep our traps shut. So much for open debate in Canadian taxpayer-supported universities.

This is the kind of attitude that we’re up against.

Have at it, BLY nation.

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Update

Fantastic post at American Thinker by Rick Moran (H/T Maz2) where he savages Al Gore’s NYT op-ed – Al Gore’s weird, disconnected op-ed on climate change:

…In other words, Gore obviously believes we should sit down, shut up, and let him and his buddies reach into our pockets and remove trillions of dollars without demanding proof of the scientific basis for his power grab…

Sound familiar?

Phil Jones on the hot seat – not sharing data is “standard practice” – WUWT (H/T Maz2)

And a terrific comment  from a reader at the Daily Mail:

“Prof Jones today said it was not ’standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.”

It is standard practice in every proper science to release date and methodology in the greatest of detail so that every aspect of the research and of the argument can be ‘falsified’ (using the Popper meaning of the word).
That is how science works.
That is why science works.
Not to do so puts climate research at the level of iridology, homeopoathy, and alchemy.
Add political agenda, and finding, and you have a bastardised pseudo-science barely worth another look. Unscrupulous people making money out of the latest political bandwagon, to justify further taxation by this dreadful government.

Which many of us have suspected for a long time.

- PeterMac, Ronda, Spain, 01/3/2010 18:45

Filed under AGW, Al Gore, Arrogance, Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Follow the money, Global Warming, Science/tech, Your tax-dollars, climate change, democracy, environment, environmentalists, grassroots power.
43 Comments

Bernier rather than Charest? Mais oui!

Posted by Joanne on 26 February 2010, 8:16 am

Both Chantel Hebert and Susan Riley ponder the possibilities of a Maxime Bernier leadership bid after his awesome opinion letter in La Presse. But Riley lost me at “oil patch foot-draggers”, so we will shift our focus to Hebert’s more objective column.

Chantel’s theory is that Bernier is indeed setting the stage for a future leadership bid, and that Conservative party members would prefer Bernier to Jean Charest as the Quebec candidate. Well I can tell you that based on the readership of this blog, Charest doesn’t stand a chance in h-e-double hockeysticks.

Furthermore, Hebert suggests that the Progressive Conservative MPs may be out of touch with the larger grassroot movement, and therefore Jim Prentice may be vulnerable against a potential leader who appeals more to the base.  That certainly is a possibility. Prentice is a gifted politician but I’m not sure how much the base can identify with him:

...On Wednesday, Environment Minister Jim Prentice scrambled to distance himself from Bernier’s double-edged praise of his climate-change approach.
And the zero-growth policy the ex-minister advocated in his Calgary speech is unlikely to find its way into Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s upcoming budget.

But then auditioning for a return to the cabinet table is not what this is really about.

Bernier’s long game has always been to go after the top job.

These days, he is making the most of his unsolicited freedom from cabinet solidarity to stake out ideological ground that could stand him in good stead with the rank-and-file Conservatives who will select the next party leader…

Previously I haven’t wanted to indulge in these kinds of discussions because I’ve felt it was more the opposition and media trying to stir the pot and insert some divisions into the party. However I can tell you that the patience of the grassroots loyalty has been sorely tested in recent months and there are a few issues that will be deal-breakers if our concerns aren’t acknowledged. Less government interference, more fiscal restraint and a commonsense environmental approach are all dear to the hearts of my most of my readers and by extension a large segment of the party supporters.

And what are the alternatives if the CPC veers much further to the left?

I suppose we would have to sit home during the next election.  Pity.

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“It’s not debatable.”

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, CPC, Canadian Government, Canadian economy, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Global Warming, Jean Charest, Quebec, Voter cynicism, climate change, environment, grassroots power.
59 Comments

Stop climate change – Wear a sweater

Posted by Joanne on 24 February 2010, 12:12 pm

Yeah, but if global warming is such a problem why do I need the sweater?

Dear Loblaws – Please forget supporting the WWF and give that money to your Children’s Charities instead. I love your products but hate your politics. Thank you.

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Follow the money, Global Warming, Propaganda, climate change, environment, environmentalists.
50 Comments

You can’t have it both ways (but they still try)

Posted by Joanne on 21 February 2010, 9:43 am

Lorrie Goldstein presents a compelling argument to global warming alarmists in today’s column Global Warming Snow Job -  not that logic was ever their strong suit (or objective science for that matter):

...So, given the somewhat unsurprising news Olympic officials were trucking in snow to Cypress Mountain, site of the freestyle skiing and snowboard events, how did Canadian warmists respond?

Well, here’s our most famous environmentalist, David Suzuki, calmly commenting.

“I’ve watched in horror as the snow just melted away from Cypress Mountain and it’s even more horrifying to me to think of helicopters airlifting snow from Manning Park to fill it back up again.”

In addition to Suzuki’s apparently low tolerance for horror, climatically speaking, his foundation chimed in man-made global warming clearly had a hand in the lack of snow.

So, just to review the warmist perspective:

(1) North of the 49th parallel — global warming explains the lack of snow.

(2) South of the 49th parallel — global warming explains the snow.

Plus:

(1) Warmists can use single weather events to prove global warming.

(2) Opponents can’t use single weather events to disprove global warming.

Does it not occur to warmists that stuff like this is one of the reasons more and more people are starting to think of them as the intellectual heirs of Chicken Little?

And a few words for the Gore-Suzuki bootlicking media:

…As for Canada’s warmist media, if you’re wondering why fewer people are buying your argument neither climategate nor the growing scientific controversies engulfing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is news, ask yourself this.

How many of you (justifiably) criticized Inhofe, DeMint and Fox for what they said? Now, how many of you criticized Suzuki and his foundation for what they said? Oops.

A final assignment for warmists. Go to your video bible, Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and find in all those dramatic visual images linking global warming to present-day heat waves, droughts, floods, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and hurricanes, one image — just one — linking global warming to record snowstorms.

Trust me, you won’t find any, because that would have gotten in the way of Gore’s painfully simplistic argument that more greenhouse gas emissions simply means more heat...

Unfortunately for the Warming lobby, the public is becoming more educated and less likely to placidly accept the Green Koolaid that’s been shoved down our throats for so long.  And what many of us would like to see is some kind of redress for this massive propaganda scheme which seems to have been preying on our blind faith and naivete – and costing us big bucks.

At the very least let’s hope we have learned to view the news with a dose of healthy skeptism – and not be afraid of being labelled a ‘denier’.

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Copenhagen, David Suzuki, Follow the money, Global Warming, Goldstein, Kyoto, MSM bias, Media Watch, Propaganda, UN, Weather, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environment, environmentalists.
42 Comments

The rats are jumping ship

Posted by Joanne on 18 February 2010, 8:04 am

Yvo de Boer has just announced his intentions to resign as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Can you spell f-a-i-l-u-r-e?

Meanwhile we learn via Terence Corcoran and Lawrence Solomon that ‘at least five major U.S. corporations have pulled out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership‘. Yet several of our Canadian provinces are still hanging onto the cap-trade scheme.

Why is it taking our Canadian political leaders so long to catch up on the latest news? Why are they not at least acknowledging the mistakes?

As Lorrie Goldstein says today, We’re drowning in climate stupidity.

Demand answers, Canada!

Do not go placidly into that carbon trade cesspool.

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Related

Cap-and-Trade Cracks Up – Myron Ebell, Fox News:

…So cap-and-trade is dead. But other piecemeal energy-rationing policies are still very much alive. The Environmental Protection Agency is going ahead with regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is working with Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) on a “compromise” package that can gain bipartisan support. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has passed a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards out of his committee.

And big corporations are still circling the trough. By my count, U.S. CAP still has twenty-three corporate members plus eight environmental pressure groups that front for big business. And of course, BP America, Conoco Phillips, Caterpillar, and many other companies that don’t belong to U.S. CAP still hope to make money off the “right” sort of policies to raise energy prices.

The good news is that public opinion has turned decisively against global warming alarmism and energy-rationing. People have figured out that they, not big business special interests, will end up paying the bills when energy prices, in President Obama’s elegant formulation, “necessarily skyrocket.” And, guess what? In the November elections, the American people will have a lot more votes than James Rogers of Duke Energy or Jim Mulva of Conoco Phillips.

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In case you missed it:

Many thanks to Frmgrl and Bec for the tip about Dave Rutherford’s interview with Jim Prentice yesterday.  Definitely worth a listen.  [Click on Wednesday Feb. 17 at 11 am]

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Friday Update

Denial not just for the deniers – Peter Foster, Financial Post

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Canadian economy, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Copenhagen, Flicking politicians, Follow the money, Goldstein, Lemmings love taxes, Science/tech, UN, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environment, environmentalists, grassroots power.
54 Comments

Paying a big price for guilt

Posted by Joanne on 17 February 2010, 7:33 am

Lorne Gunter weighs in on Phil Jones’ recent revelations – They’re finally admitting the science isn’t settled. (National Post)

…Haven’t we had it drummed into us ceaselessly that the past decade has been the warmest ever recorded? Prof. Jones’s admission to the BBC then is very significant.

If, instead of bleating for the past 15 years that the sky was about to burst into flame, major climate scientists had been saying the Earth was warming, but not to a statistically significant level, would you have been as worried as you were? Would there have been a Kyoto accord? A Copenhagen summit? Carbon trading schemes? Green taxes? Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth? David Suzuki’s call to throw politicians into jail if they fail to try to stop climate change?

In his BBC interview, Prof. Jones also said that the Middle Ages may have been warmer than now, another key concession given that the CRU has for years denied the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. If the MWP can be made to disappear, then the warming that has occurred since 1900 would be abnormal and something to fear. But if there was an even greater warming 1,000 years ago — before SUVs, coal-fired plants and industrial carbon emissions — then the current warming might be part of a nature cycle and therefore unremarkable…

And yet we see that our Canadian politicians are apparently still clinging to the ’settled science’ beliefs – at our expense.

Chris Vander Doelen said it so well in the Windsor Star:

…It may have been the most brilliant business plan ever conceived: Identify an element emitted by nearly every human activity there is.

Convince the easily fooled they are committing a sin against the environment by emitting said element, carbon; offer to provide absolution through taxation.

Curiously, only the citizens of developed nations are guilty of this new original sin. Citizens of India, most communist countries and most “developing” dictatorships were to be exempt from seeking absolution for their carbon crimes.

To me, the most important lesson to be learned from climate change and its believers isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about mob behaviour and the politics of fear…

So what’s it going to take to get the news out to Canadian taxpayers that the absolution we seek  may not have a measurable impact on a perceived calamity that even the fear-mongerers can’t agree on?

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Related

Dalton McGuinty’s back and spending – Christina Blizzard (Sun):

…McGuinty says he wants to make sure the federal government supports green energy initiatives.

“As it (the feds) decides to lend support, for example, to carbon capture in Western Canada, we are asking that it provide comparable levels of support to the green energy revolution taking place here in our province.”

Oh, great. Green energy is the next bright bauble the Liberals are holding up to divert our attention from their out-of-control spending and the 8% tax hike we’ll see on everything when the HST kicks in.

The Green Energy Act will push up the price of electricity. It isn’t just consumers who’ll pay through the nose. Our beleaguered industrial sector that relies on cheap juice to be competitive will take another hit. But the more it costs to turn on the lights, the more money the goverment will rake in to its coffers through the HST. It’s all win-win for them…

Where is the outrage, Ontario?

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[Very important point around the two minute mark.]

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Update:

Olympic carbon offsets for dummies – Sun editorial

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Dalton McGuinty, David Suzuki, Flicking politicians, Global Warming, Global governance, HST, Kyoto, Michael Ignatieff, Propaganda, Stephen Harper, Your tax-dollars, climate change, economy, environment, environmentalists, grassroots power.
47 Comments

‘Zero emissions when parked’

Posted by Joanne on 16 February 2010, 5:49 pm

That was Jonathan Gatehouse’s pithy comment after reporting that a Calgary Zamboni will have to rescue those poor, broken down, green-but-inconsistent Olympia ice surfacing machines.

Michael Grange tells us more:

…After not one, not two, but three Olympia ice surfacing machines – chosen at these environmentally conscious Games because they run on electricity – spit the bit to varying degrees at the men’s 500 metres final Monday night, causing a 70-minute delay, organizers are air-lifting the gas-powered Zamboni from the Calgary oval, carbon footprint be damned.

Why?

“Zambonis work,” Canadian skater Kyle Parrott told The Canadian Press. “I realize they wanted to make a green Games … but Zambonis in the past have worked for years and years and years … “I don’t know why they didn’t stick with them, especially when we’ve had problems with [the Olympias] in training here in the past. From my experience, they’ve been nothing but problems.”

And that seems to be so symbolic of the green movement – Just go for it and don’t worry if it actually works.

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Wednesday Update

Canadian ice-resurfacer snafu highlights rivalry with U.S. giant Zamboni – WFP:

…”The most important thing right now is to put the best ice-resurfacing machine into the Richmond Olympic Oval,” Renee Smith-Valade, spokeswoman for the Vancouver organizing committee, said Tuesday.

She said the icemaker at the Richmond Oval is the same one who makes ice at the Calgary oval and he’s one of the best in the world.

“He needs the best equipment to do it and he’s bringing in the equipment he’s comfortable with and that’s the machine that’s coming in from Calgary”…

Ouch!

NBC News Notes Malfunctioning ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Machines Frustrate Olympics - Newsbusters.     Some of the comments are hilarious.

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Global Warming, Incompetence, Your tax-dollars, environment.
16 Comments

Changing the channel on climate change

Posted by Joanne on 9 February 2010, 8:01 am

In a recent column Lorrie Goldstein posited that the reason so many in Canadian MSM ignore climategate and associated flaws that are now bubbling to the surface, is because those journalists have invested so much into the subject that they are afraid of losing face:

…Why have Canadian media largely ignored this growing controversy? Perhaps the best answer is embarrassment. Having shilled for warmist hysteria for so long, having dismissed any questioning of man-made climate change orthodoxy as equivalent to Holocaust denial, they don’t know how to climb down, or cope with the tidal wave (pardon the pun) of controversy now hitting climate science all over the world…

That may be true, but I do sense a change in the wind of the climate change debate. Almost every day now we are seeing dribbles from media reluctantly leaking the steady barrage of errors in the science.

So do we abandon the whole thing? Chock it up to a huge scam?

Or how about taking a sensible approach regarding the environment? How about getting back to the basics of trying to clean up our air and water so that we can enjoy the outdoors again during our all-too-short summers in Canada?

Even Scott Brison admits that ‘the discussion has shifted from environmental responsibility to the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.’

Maybe so, but let’s focus that green energy market opportunity on cleaning up pollution. That would have an immediate impact, as well as benefiting future generations. If Canadians can come up with cutting-edge technology, so much the better.

Do I have a consensus?

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Update

Global Warming And Journalists – NCTimes.com Blogs:

…The bolded part is most revealing. Nisbet is cautioning global warming activists and their allies in the media to avoid being tied down to specific predictions vulnerable to being proven false or exaggerated. Instead, Nisbet suggests journalists writing stories that focus on general statements that are harder to falsify. So when you start seeing stories about the public health dangers of global warming, you’ll know the “framing science” PR angle behind it.

Journalists who follow the “framing science” path had better beware that much of the public will object to this as manipulation, attempting to motivate them by fear instead of objectively discussing the facts. Contempt for the public is a sure path to extinction.

Well, let’s hope so.

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Friday Update

Green Quebec government looking for oil sands investors – QMI

Filed under AGW, Big Environment, Big Green, Canadian economy, Climategate, Copenhagen, Follow the money, Global Warming, Goldstein, UN, climate change, environment.
54 Comments

We interrupt this Christmas break with a quick post

Posted by Joanne on 21 December 2009, 7:42 am

I’m sorry but I just had to point out Lorrie Goldstein’s column published in yesterday’s Sun – Copenhagen sure was a gas. Goldstein at his best, IMHO.

He’s packaged all the Copenhagen hypocrisy into one zinger of carbon-spewing roast:

Now that the enviro nuts have finished handing out their “Fossil of the Day” and “Colossal Fossil” awards, unfairly smearing Canada at the just-completed Copenhagen climate summit, let’s return the favour with some well-deserved honours of our own.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, we present the Copenhagen Flatulence Awards, honouring those who raised the art of generating hot air and gassy emissions to new intensity levels during the UN-sponsored festival of indignation.

—

The “I’m Not Really A Climatologist, I Just Play One on TV” Flatulence Award:

To Al Gore, who, having made a career out of mocking opponents for “getting the science wrong” on global warming, gets the science wrong on the melting of the polar ice cap, according to the scientist he says he got the science from.

—

The “That Old Man River, He Just Keeps Rolling Along” Flatulence Award:

To David Suzuki, for suggesting during a CBC interview — twice — that anyone worried about lost jobs if Canada’s oil sands are shut down, would also have endorsed slavery in the American south….

Please read the whole thing. Bonus chuckle near the end. I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The comments in response to Lorrie’s column are worth checking out too and include kudos for some of those who were actually looking out for our best interests in Copenhagen:

Patsplace
December 20th 2009, 10:19pm
Don’t forget to send the PM a note telling him that he did a good job. Nice that he was so polite in waiting until the Empty Suit repeated what he’s been saying for years. Nice of him not to make the big O look more frantic than he was.
HarpeS@parl.gc.ca

Jim Prentice deserves a pat on the back too.
Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca

Two men that Stood Up for Canada.

This is probably as good a time as any to thank Lorrie for all his dedication and effort in putting forward the truth regarding the true motives of the carbon-credit industry and environmentalists in general. Goldstein has done a terrific amount of research in this field and is extremely knowledgeable as well as objective. He is always ready to discuss the issues with readers, bloggers and colleagues.

Canada needs more in the media like Lorrie Goldstein.

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Related:

Then They Came for the Toilet Paper and I Did Not Speak Out – John Stossel (another one of the good guys) (H/T Moose & Squirrel).

Oh what a tangled web we weave – Falling carbon price could result in higher bills, energy firms warn - Guardian

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Now back to your regularly scheduled shopping, wrapping and baking.

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Tuesday Update:

Lorrie Goldstein gives well-deserved kudos to PM Harper and Jim Prentice – Enviro nuts blow smoke (H/T Liz J):

Congratulations to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Environment Minister Jim Prentice for receiving both the “Colossal Fossil” award and the most “Fossil of the Day” awards from the enviro nuts at the now-concluded Copenhagen climate summit.

This means Harper and Prentice remembered their duty in Copenhagen was to represent Canadian taxpayers, not radicals who would happily destroy our economy, primarily for ideological reasons...

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Canadian economy, Climategate, Copenhagen, David Suzuki, Global governance, Goldstein, Kyoto, Science/tech, Stephen Harper, UN, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environment, hypocrisy.
25 Comments
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