Skip to content
Archive of posts filed under the Science/tech category.
« Older Entries

The Scary Duo

Posted by Joanne on 16 June 2010, 7:31 am

Everytime I see Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest getting together I cringe with fear.  Their latest mission is a renewed push for cap and trade because the feds just aren’t moving fast enough – especially now that “they have dug themselves out of the recession.” (Who knew? Does that mean that Alberta can quit sending equalization payments?)

Coincidentally Lorrie Goldstein has addressed the recent inclusion of climate change into the G8-G20 agenda, (Summit will deliver more hot air) with a note of warning regarding the possible economic ramifications:

Indeed in the real world, getting the global economy moving again, presumably the main concern of the G8/G20 leaders, will cause greenhouse gas emissions to rise.

Unless, of course, they were to establish a global cap-and-trade market by putting a world price on industrial carbon dioxide emissions, thereby allowing the same giant U.S. investment banks that just finished crashing the global economy by trading in highly speculative and ultimately worthless subprime mortgage bonds, to do the same thing all over again with carbon credits.

My own suspicion is that the Green Scheme Twins see this as a golden opportunity to not only appease a very powerful environmental lobby, but also push for a new speculative industry that might cause some serious economic backlash if handled improperly (not to mention the potential for fraud.)

Lorrie Goldstein has addressed this issue many times before, for example in his March 27 column – Inconvenient Questions:

Does the fact the earliest corporate boosters of Kyoto and carbon trading were the fraudsters at Enron never cause you to wake up in a cold sweat?

How about the fact your “allies” on cap-and-trade are the giant U.S. money houses that just finished wrecking the global economy, now looking to make another quick killing by brokering trading in highly speculative carbon credits, the European market for which, aside from doing nothing to cool the planet, is awash in multi-billion-dollar frauds?

Largely ineffective

What about the 2002 report by Statistics Norway that Norway’s 1991 carbon tax has been largely ineffective in reducing emissions?

Or last week’s story in the Times of London that the U.K.’s energy regulator has found many of Britain’s wind farms are a bust when it comes to delivering electricity?

That, in the words of Michael Jefferson, professor of international business and sustainability and a former lead author of the IPCC: “Too many developments are underperforming. It’s because developers grossly exaggerate the potential. The subsidies make it viable for developers to put turbines on sites they would not touch if the money was not available.”

Gee. Hard to see that one coming, eh? Who knew that when governments insanely guarantee to pay grossly inflated prices for “green” electricity for 20-25 years, thus handing developers windfall profits from the hides of electricity consumers, many don’t deliver the goods?

Not you, obviously. Or Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

One thing for sure. Whenever you see Premiers McGuinty and Charest put their heads together, you’d better hang on tight to your wallet – until they pry it away by force.

*   *   *   *

Related

Scan of Arctic ice dispels melting gloom, scientist says – Citizen (H/T NNW)

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Dalton McGuinty, Energy, Flicking politicians, Follow the money, Global Warming, Goldstein, Jean Charest, Just trust Dalton, Kyoto, Liberal entitlement, Liberal machine, Ontario economy, Ours to Recover, Peter Principle, Premier Hudak in 2011, Quebec politics, Science/tech, Shifty Green, Too many pigs at the trough, UN, Wind farms, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environment, environmentalists, pesticides, scandals.
25 Comments

In the twisted world of Suzuki logic

Posted by Joanne on 27 March 2010, 8:27 am

There is so much wrong with this David Suzuki interview on Evan Solomon’s Power and Politics, that it would take way more typing to fully cover it than my recovering wrist will allow.

However the following portion made my head explode.

Around the  3:00 mark Evan is questioning Dr. Fruit Fly about the link between Kyoto, climate change and the economy. Suzuki is trying to make the case for an improved economy if a tax is put on carbon.

At 3:51 Suzuki responds to the Harper Government’s more pragmatic environmental stance at Copenhagen, by calling it a ‘bunch of nonsense’ and it’s just ‘all words’.

Suzuki then gives the example of how Sweden supposedly had lower GHG emissions and an improved economy after introducing a carbon tax -  and then he goes off on a very scary and angry tirade against the Canadian Government.

Solomon them attempts to provide a smidgen of balance by reminding him about the decision in France to let the carbon tax legislation die.

Suzuki’s response?

Wait for it.

“I’m not French. I don’t know”.

So what are you?  Swedish?

Keep your lights on tonight for Earth Hour, Canada!!!   David Suzuki’s are clearly dimming.

*   *   *   *

Bonus: See if you can find Suzuki’s Stephane Dion put-down further on in the segment.

*   *   *   *

Sunday Update

Big Liberal Thinkers want a carbon tax!!!    Hang onto your wallets, Canada.  (H/T Bruce and other attentive readers)

Liberals hear call for carbon tax – Gazette

Liberals across the country tweet carbon tax debate – Stephen Maher, CH

Tough issues grip Grits – Chronicle Herald:

…McKenna said Liberals are particularly “gun shy” about proposing anything controversial since the 2008 carbon tax fiasco.

Yet during an environmental panel later Saturday, imposition of a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seemed to be a popular idea.

Panellist Steven Guilbeault of Equiterre said he was pleasantly surprised.

“I’m happy that there are so many people here who are willing to talk about this because at the end of the day it’s one of the most efficient measures you can use if you actually want to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he said in an interview.

Ignatieff, who first proposed a carbon tax during the 2006 Liberal leadership, has since said he won’t revive an idea that’s been so decisively rejected by voters. He now advocates a cap and trade system instead.

But panellist Michael Phelps, board chairman of the GLOBE Foundation, said a carbon tax is a much simpler and more effective way to influence consumer behaviour.

“I’d be standing on a soapbox saying, ‘Use less carbon, you’re going to pay for it,’ ” he said.

Oh dear. What will the Waffle do?

Inconvenient questions – Lorrie Goldstein

Why Sarkozy Dropped His Beloved Carbon Tax - Time Magazine (Pay attention now, David Suzuki):

…The President maintains he is only delaying application of the tax until the E.U. comes up with a similar initiative applicable to all member states. “Environmental dumping threatens our jobs, [and] it would be absurd to tax French companies while giving a competitive advantage to those in polluting countries,” Sarkozy argued, saying he remained committed to a carbon tax as a necessary move to protect the environment — though only once nations “who continue to pollute without shame” agree to become as virtuous.

How likely is that to happen? Not very, according to media reports in France. French newspapers and television news channels said Sarkozy’s address meant the carbon tax was “dead and buried” — most of all because of the high improbability of all 27 E.U. members voting in an identical measure…

*   *   *   *

Can we trust the ‘Climategate’ inquiry? – Telegraph:

…What Lord Oxburgh kept quiet about, however, is that he is also a director and vice-chairman of a strange little private company few of us had heard of known as Globe International. The name stands for “Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment”, and it describes itself as a worldwide network to lobby governments to take more drastic action on climate change…

They try to keep a low profile.

And look who’s president of Globe Canada.

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, Canadian economy, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Copenhagen, David Suzuki, Follow the money, Global Warming, Goldstein, Green Shaft, Hypocrisy, Kyoto, Science/tech, Stephane Dion, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environment, environmentalists.
96 Comments

Bypassing the dinosaur

Posted by Joanne on 11 March 2010, 7:58 am

Don’t miss Prime Minister Stephen Harper live on YouTube at 10:45 Eastern this morning! He will be discussing the recent  Throne Speech and budget (that  just passed with a little help from his Liberal friends.)

You are also invited to submit questions for a YouTube interview on Tuesday evening (7 pm EST).  This format has been recently used by President Obama.

Going straight to the people without the biased MSM filter. Who knew we were that smart to be able to interpret things for ourselves?

*   *   *   *

*   *   *   *

Better version here on the Prime Minister’s own YouTube channel.

Friday Update

Budget aftermath: Planes, pompadours – L. Ian MacDonald (Sun):

...Flaherty’s travel arrangements became news last weekend when CTV broke the story that he had flown to London on a government jet rather than going commercial at a cost of $800.

As it turned out, one reason Flaherty used a government plane was so he could be up in time to do an interview with, uh, CTV, which initially reported he had commandeered a Challenger at a cost of $9,000, much more than the Cessna Citation he actually flew on at a cost of $3,100. Oh, and because he was doing 11 radio and five TV interviews in the morning, three staffers were along. So their equivalent commercial costs of $2,400 meant Flaherty was actually saving $100…

Filed under Barack Obama, Blog Power, CPC, CPC majority solution, Canadian Government, Canadian economy, Harper best PM ever, Harper smartest PM ever, Iffy, Iggo Waffles, LPC, Liberal Party of Donolo, MSM bias, Press puffery, Science/tech, Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper Rock Star, YouTube, grassroots power.
63 Comments

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.”

* * * *

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?

*   *   *   *

Local ‘Green Energy’ issues:

Wind farm faces opposition – Guelph Mercury article via Windaction

Ontario power risk – Parker Gallant, Full Comment

*   *   *   *

*   *   *   *

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

*   *   *   *

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.

*   *   *   *

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

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.

*   *   *   *

*   *   *    *

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.

*   *   *   *

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]

*    *   *    *

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

The debate is NOT over

Posted by Joanne on 15 February 2010, 10:06 am

Yesterday saw two huge news stories but you’ll only hear one from most of Canadian MSM.  And make no mistake.  Alexandre Bilodeau’s historic Olympic achievement is certainly worth celebrating.

But another major event may be in danger of slipping under the radar unless we force it to the forefront -  Professor Phil Jones is now backtracking on previously-held dogma about global warming and climate change. One wonders what fellow High Priest Al Gore is thinking right now.   In fact, where is he? Hiding in a snow drift somewhere on the east coast?

In any case, Tim Ball was on the Roy Green show yesterday for a brief chat on the significance of all this [click on Sunday Feb. 14 at 2 pm and fastforward to the last 10 minutes].  Roy asked Tim if ‘this thing is totally unraveling right now?’ and Tim answered ‘completely’ and the question is now ‘how long is it going to take for the politicians to realize it?’ They both agreed that the pols would be ‘breaking their ankles jumping off the bandwagon’, but they have a problem having already committed so much money to it.

Tim Ball reiterated that opinion in his column in CFP – IPCC Corruption Included Ignoring Facts and Science:

Watch the Richter Scale as Politicians Jump Off the IPCC Wagon

Jones only concedes some points but they are enough from the high priest of the CRU and IPCC to completely destroy its credibility. What will the sycophants and exploiters like Gore and the Mainstream Media do now? What about politicians who based positions and policy on environment and energy on the IPCC? What about the massive scams of Cap And Trade? What about the extreme environmental groups who have bullied and preached from the moral high ground? What about the scientists who took vehement positions without understanding? It is a very sad day for science, the people and the world.

Well I hope that politicians wake up but I fear they’ll only do the right thing once the public is made aware of the inconsistencies and contradictions. And that will only happen once the media decides to cover the stories or if ordinary citizens start taking up the fight for truth.

As Adrian MacNair brilliantly pointed out, the pols are only going to do what’s popular:

…Don’t expect our politicians to drop everything either. “Conservative” Environment Minister Jim Prentice is still sending Canada’s industry on a suicide pact with the United States’ own Obamachange legislation, and the province of British Columbia still has a carbon tax on fuel that isn’t making the unemployment rate any better right now. They don’t care. They still believe utterly that the public believes utterly in the science behind boiling pots of frogs and hockey stick graphs.

You can’t really blame them. They’re politicians. If Canadians believed that the world faced the grave danger of alien abduction and medical probing, you can bet the government would install some kind of alien-abduction and probing prophylaxis system that would make us feel better. Just like we do when we strip for the peek-a-boo cameras at the airport…

Meanwhile, expect to see some media outlets continue to stick tenaciously to the old party line until media consumers and ordinary citizens start demanding the truth.

*   *   *   *

Update:

Al Gore sticks his nose out of the ground – Al Gore sticks to his guns, says ‘climate crisis is unfolding before our eyes’ – Washington Times

Is Global Warming Dead? – Blake D. Dvorak at Chicago Now:

…All of which leads the Post’s Dana Milbank, no friend of conservatives or Republicans, to write in his column that all that talk about more frequent and worse hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts because of global warming was about as scientifically valid as the recent babble that record-breaking snow storms in DC disprove global warming. “Argument-by-anecdote isn’t working,” he says. Only too true and it’s about time someone not on the right had the courage to say it.

But Milbank takes his column further. Noting recent revelations and contradictions in the science, he writes: “The science is overwhelming — but not definitive.” There was a time when such blasphemy would earn Milbank the title of “denier.” But that time is swiftly passing and there’s beginning to be a general retreat from the global warming crowd on all the doomsday scenarios and “we have X number of years to save Earth” talk. Milbank notes that even Al Gore’s outfit is switching from TV ads about climate change to the importance of green energy…

*   *   *   *

Tuesday Update

Lots of great links out there. Too many to keep up with really.

Follow the money: BBC exposed in biggest climate racket on planet – Climategate

IPCC scaremongering is destroying its credibility – Bjorn Lomborg

Less horror and Gore, more honest debate – Paul Schneidereit, Chronicle Herald

And this is a blockbuster of a column – Climate: Politics of fear by Chris Vander Doelen of the Windsor Star:

…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.

The global warming cult came so close to taking over the free world because it mixed the fear-mongering and moral superiority of old-time religion with the central control of classic Marxism.

The brilliant mix of do-gooderism and totalitarianism explains why those huddling under the climate umbrella are an unlikely coalition of church ladies, the well-meaning, union hardliners and college-age anarchists.

The people who pushed global warming didn’t want to save the planet — they wanted to enslave it through taxation.

The money — trillions of dollars — would have been redistributed by shadowy forces at the United Nations to those with favoured political systems. Capitalism, of course, would have been dead in a matter of decades. Liberty would have disappeared along with free markets…

Filed under AGW, Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Copenhagen, Global governance, MSM bias, Media Watch, Science/tech, UN, Your tax-dollars, climate change, grassroots power.
55 Comments
« Older Entries