What I want to stress is that the alarmist scenarios are not even just naïve extrapolations of existing trends; on the contrary, they rely on large amplifications of existing trends. If global temperatures respond to human emissions in the 21st century the way they (apparently) did in the 20th, there will be no cause for alarm. It is only by assuming that there is disaster “in the pipeline” that has not yet manifested itself, that one can make a case for massive restrictions on carbon use.
—-
In both cases, really smart guys (and now gals too) built impressive models that were quite rigorous in some respects, yet woefully deficient in others. In the case of economics, this hubris led to horrible government policies. We can only hope the same doesn’t happen because of the climate models.

Apparently, 73% of British Columbians believe it’s a bad idea.  Those are big numbers.

I was talking with my carpoolie the other day (we manage to solve the world’s problems each and every day in the 35 minutes between work and her place) and in our discussion I found myself summarizing what the real problem is.

The problem is the BC carbon tax is right now 2.4 cents a liter on gas (with other amounts on natural gas etc.)  With a pump price of $1.29 that’s about 2% of the purchase price.

Historically speaking, five years ago gas prices were about 75 cents per liter.  Through market forces alone we have seen a 100% increase in price in the last 5 years.  And how much has the consumption dropped?  I think I am overstating it, but it’s about 5%, depending on what you use to measure.  Some would argue that it hasn’t dropped at all.

So, let’s compare then.  If a 100% increase in pump price = 5% decrease in usage, what will a 2% increase in pump price do?

And that’s why carbon taxes are nothing but a tax grab.

BC is the only province that has one, and the government claims it is revenue neutral.  The Surrey Leader timidly crunches the numbers.

They use two case studies: the $40 000 a year single woman, and the $70 000 a year single income 4 person family.

The numbers for the single are crunched most thoroughly, and you get the sense that more often than not, the single will come out ahead in this carbon tax scenario.  Fine.

But then look at the family.  The paper doesn’t do nearly as thorough a job breaking this scenario down, because the numbers quickly get ugly.  They barely break even, and only if you assume that they drive less than what is really a very low number for kms driven.  Especially if those kids are in sports, or any extracurricular activity.  And the number sinks still lower when you factor in that most families live in places heated by natural gas, which also has a carbon tax on it.  The number of kms becomes even more unachievable if there is a dual income, which is more and more common.

When you look hard at the numbers, it is not even close.  The carbon tax is nowhere near revenue neutral for families in BC.

Maybe we should change the name to the “Family Tax”.

Update: I’ve listened to the audio a few more times, and May may have been saying, “they think Canadian’s are stupid” - referring to all those other politicians who reject a carbon tax.

Either way, listening to this short clip and considering the relatively extreme positions May is taking on basic environmental issues I don’t think any of the other leaders should be too scared of May’s impact during the leadership debate or the broader campaign.

The more Canadians hear May, the more they’ll dismiss her as a serious player.

What do you think?

Update 2: Looks like the Youtube.com video got yanked. You can download the MP3 here.

Via: The Atheist Conservative

Update 3: This is unverified, but it looks like the Green Party is threatening to sue a blogger who posted the Youtube video above.

The move is equally brilliant on the part of Green leader May, since it allows her to beef up her case for getting into the expected leaders’ debate that will take place in about a month’s time if the election rumours come to full fruition. She will likely argue that a lone MP, Deborah Grey, was able to propel her close friend and leader, Preston Manning, into the 1993 election debate which allowed their Reform Party to become tied with the Bloc for the second-largest caucus prize after that election. Greens will also trump up the claims that they have consistently polled around where the federal MP was before Jack Layton came on the scene, and that they are on par, if not above the third place Bloc Quebecois in the weekly polls we’re exposed to. If I were May, I would have done no different in courting Wilson — her persistence in turning to every disgruntled Independent this session, from Garth Turner, to Bill Casey, and now Blair Wilson, has finally paid off!

However, before we all run off to give May her much-coveted TV time, we need to put this in historical context, which will ultimately stave off the Green advance onto the small screen. First, when it comes to the Reform example, we have to remember that Deborah Grey wasn’t just elected, but was elected under the Reform banner in a 1989 by-election. Additionally, the party elected a Senator that then-PM Brian Mulroney appointed to the Senate and they were definately going to make an impact on the outcome of the election (this last qualification is the one that the media cites when determining which parties get into the debate). If the Greens want to argue for their place in the debate, they should ignore Reform and turn to the Bloc instead: the Bloc also was allowed into the TV debates in 1993 for the first time, but they also had never elected anyone, including the dog catcher! The Bloc had two MPs, including a former cabinet minister who served in that role during the preceding Parliament. On a more realistic note, many Canadian’s outside of Quebec express dismay that the Bloc is still allowed into the English debates since all of its candidates run in Canada’s exclusively French province. To give credit where due though, at least the Bloc is able to elect a sizable caucus each time, and continue to demonstrate that they play a significant (if not destructive) role in the course of our country. May cannot honestly argue the same. Finally, we should look at one more party to put this all into context. From the dawn of TV debates, right up to 1980, a third party had consistently elected MPs in the general elections of that era, made an impact on the elections and Parliaments they participated in (including one instance where they killed the career of a Prime Minister) and yet, they never were invited into the televised debates. The party, of course, was the Social Credit Party and while they saw consistently declining support since their heydays in the 960s, they made an impact on the Canadian landscape right up to last time they were elected: Joe Clark’s minority Parliament of 1979-80.

So, in context, the Greens still have a long way to go before they can argue that they have a right to be on the screen when Canadians tune in to decide who they’ll be voting for this fall. Incidentally, the move by Wilson might just give Foreign Affairs Minister and fellow turncoat David Emerson (Con, Vancouver Kingsway) an opportunity to claim a seat in this upcoming election after all. Wilson’s riding was being floated around already as a place where Emerson could run and have a chance of not being forcefully returned to the private sector; if he and the current incumbent were both party floppers, it might soften the backlash he is likely to receive after his infamous team-trading a week after the last election. Still, if the Conservatives want to play it safe, Wilson’s decision today will almost certainly allow the Tories to retake the west Vancouver riding if they just run someone who is uncontroversial; the Liberals, barely able to win last time, will be too focused on defeating the newly-empowered Green machine in order to take the Tories on directly. As for the Greens, they will likely lose Wilson as quickly as they gained him — but as for the larger goal of actually electing a Green to Ottawa, he will serve as a potent boost in the arm!

Update:Mike (see comments) notes that the Socreds did get into the 1968 debate (an interesting affair in it’s own right, given that it showed Tommy Douglas do a pretty passionate piece against allowing homosexual marriage). However, it would still be hard for the Greens to argue that having a seat in Parliament, even if the seat was gained in an election under a Green banner, automatically entitles you to be in the debate as the Socreds didn’t get this privilege in other elections. Before we tackle that ball of wax though, let’s see them get a Green elected!

I could be wrong, though. I mean, apparently I’m a warmonger at breakfast.

It was 33-35 degrees every day we were there.  The humidity was ridiculously high.  As a Canadian, I expect when it rains for the temperature to drop a few degrees.  Not in Florida.  It just made you hot and wet.

The only respite was air conditioning.  The sad thing is air conditioning burns lots of energy.  Lots.  And every door was open.  And every ride had the A/C on full blast.  It was a welcome respite to get on a ride.  But I can’t imagine how much energy this place was burning through.

And then there are the rides themselves.  Lots are electrical, but the car ride was a smog generator all by itself - hundreds of little lawnmower engines running continuously all day long, spewing fossil fuels into the air right next to Toontown.  What kind of sadistic child-hater pumps pollution into the air where little children are hugging Mickey and Donald?

I don’t see it possible that this place can make money without air conditioning.  And if Algore gets his way, energy costs will make this place unfeasible and soon.  Enjoy it while you can.

“It’s our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now,” McGuinty said.

Wow! I am starting to feel better already!

All I see from this recent announcement is a hidden delay in any future commitment to protect the boreal forest with a token appeal to the aboriginal population tossed into the mix. I find it despicable that he would use the recent environmental fad as his main talking point:

The Ontario government says protecting this region is key to its plan to fight climate change. The forests and peat lands in the Far North store about 97 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and absorb around 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the government said.

If I owned the boreal forest, I would aim to protect it for its own sake not for the sake of protecting the world from climate change. That is why I think this is just smoke and mirrors again from a Liberal government. It sounds to me like new logging and mining contracts are in the works and the government has to lessen the blow:

Mining generated about $11 billion in Ontario in 2007, and McGuinty said he was confident the consultations on the new protected area of the forest won’t cause any damage to the growing sector.

“We don’t want to compromise that, but we do want to ensure that our mining efforts in the province of Ontario are respectful of Ontarians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.”

I think Gord is right:

The troubling part of the story as I first heard it is that it will take 10+ years to map out what area is to be declared off-limits. For the industries this is bad because it throws an incredible amount of uncertainty into their future planning.
—SNIP—
The idea is good. And admittedly discernment is needed to determine which areas to preserve. But 10 years is too long. Too long to wait, too much uncertainty.

Yes, that delay is troubling. However, the cynic in me says those ten years are long enough to sneak in government favoritism before these hypothetical future restrictions come into effect — sneak in contracts that would not bode well with the landowners nor with the public.

“The signs of climate change are all around us: from the forest fires in our forests…”

That was all I listened to.  I wish I had paid attention to the organization who produced the ad.

I had consoled myself when I read the article I commented on last week, that at least it was an off-the-cuff remark, maybe they just hadn’t done their due diligence at the newspaper.

But with this ad, clearly that reporter was parroting a new talking point for the environmentalist lobby.

I can’t begin to express my anger at this… co-opting of ordinary, regular occurrences in our world.  What’s next?  “The signs of climate change are all around us… from the browning grass in July and August to the dropping water levels of late summer…”

UPDATE: A reader of our site writes that the ads have also played on CKNW 980, and they appear to be linked to a website.  Looks like it’s actually a government ad!  I am not sure why I am surprised that Gordon Campbell’s Liberals, in a pathetic attempt to panic British Columbians into accepting the new carbon taxes, is now trying to tell us that somehow forest fires have gotten worse than in the past, of late.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  It’s pretty much the equivalent of the enviro-nuts speculating that hurricanes would become more numerous, or stronger, then having both theories proven wrong.

Here’s one more example in that file:

But the blazes are giving researchers an unprecedented close-up look at boreal fires, which are expected to grow more common as the climate changes.

Two years of Forestry at NAIT taught me a lot of things.  One is the fire history of Western Canada.  The reason fires are getting more common is because Lodgepole/Jack Pine forests (what most of the Boreal Forest is made up of) only last 80-120 years.  Then they either fall down and die from bugs (like the Mountain Pine Beetle), get succeeded by Spruce trees, or they burn.  If I recall the numbers correctly, in the 20 years between 1880 and 1900 something like 60% of the forest in Western Canada burned.  Was that global warming?

No.  It was a natural cycle of a healthy forest.

When exactly did reporters begin to leave out the “investigative” part of their job?

But I digress.

The apologists are out in full force trying to calm down irate British Columbians, helping to see that they are “acting irrationally” in response to the jack up of up to 10 cents a liter at the pumps since Campbell’s “2.3 cent” carbon tax was implemented.

Of course, in addition to slapping us in the face at the pump, we are being slapped in the face with our heating and our cooking - propane and natural gas are also spiked in this carbon tax.

Now, I’ve actually got natural gas heat and electric heat in my house.  I could just shut off the main furnace and heat my home with baseboard heaters and space heaters.  But you know what?  Natural gas is more efficient in my case.

But what will happen when British Columbians begin to shut off their natural gas forced-air heating?  Well, electrical use will spike.  And what do you think will happen to Hydro rates?  They’ll go through the roof as BC Hydro compensates for their shortfall in electrical production by buying more energy off the grid - not to mention supporting all those old coal-fired and gas-fired power plants which won’t be able to be taken out of service because of “demand”.

What a stupid tax.  If this goes national, we aren’t just going to see an NEP-style crash where Alberta collapses and the rest of the country goes into recession.  The cycle of spiralling energy costs will not be able to be offset with more public money from all the new taxes.  Government sucking money out of the economy, no matter how many public works projects they engage in to “create jobs” will never make as many jobs as leaving the money in the economy in the first place.

I think we’ll be revisiting a genuine depression.

As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

A long time ago in Vancouver, the earth was green.  Except before that, it was denuded at the turn of the century by logging companies - which is why 90% of the massive “old growth” trees in Stanley Park are less than 100 years old, and the forested mountains the give our fair city it’s emerald wreath are all “second growth” which isn’t supposed to happen according to the enviro-mentalists.

But I digress.

In those halcyon days, the evil supermarkets used these harbingers of the apocalypse: the brown paper bag to hold groceries.

Of course, the righteous ecological denizens of Vancouver rallied to fight this plague.  Our groceries were decimating the forests!  The owls, the bears!  They would have no home because of our evil bags!

Enter the plastic bag.  Ah, these little marvels cost us nothing, and they could be recycled into all manner of useful things, like fleece vests and children’s playground equipment!

But sadly, people couldn’t be bothered to recycle.  They used them as trash bags instead of stockpiling them and handing them into the local recycler.  Hence, off to the dreaded landfill, to fill up our world with non-bio-degradeable petrochemically based waste!

Now a new solution arises: the reusable cotton bags!  Now we have to worry about washing our bags, and now we have to pay for our garbage bags - plastic is still going to the landfill with every trash run, but now we can feel better about ourselves as we shop… and pack our own bags… and worry if they are dirty or not… and pay more for both them and for the garbage bags we have to use anyways…

Never mind the otherwise arable land that could be used for foodstuffs instead of growing cotton…

But I digress.

But this history is not just about groceries.  Now the history affects not just the buying of plants, but the discarding of plants.

We used to just load up our trucks, drive out to the sticks, and dump our grass clippings alongside of the road in the ditch.  Same went for sticks, weeds, etc.  We thought it was good - the green waste would just be absorbed by the forest or dirt, naturally compost back into the ground.

But no, in the big city, that is far too messy.  They started fining people for “dumping” leaves twigs and grass in amongst the naturally occurring leaves, twigs and grass.  Then they sent around “green waste” trucks and charging us for the convenience.  They demanded that we put the “green waste” in clear plastic bags.

Now, it seemed silly to put stuff that will ultimately pass into the soil in non-recyclable bags, but we did so because the pickup guys said they had to “see” that we weren’t stashing garbage in with the green waste.

Now however, the environmentalists have finally gotten wind of the evils of plastic bags.  “Cease and desist!  Evil clear petrochemicals!”  Now we must use…

Yes!  The paper bag!  Because they are bio-degradeable!  Where they used to be free at the grocery store, it’s now 5 for $3!

Funny thing is, with the old clear bags, they never cared how much I put in them.  I could stuff them as full as I want.  But now in this brave new world of paper bags and labelled receptacles, I have twice been denied pickup because it was “too heavy”.

With grass clippings.

And the forests will still be chopped down, mercilessly.

And we have to pay.  And pay.  And pay.  And pay.  And pay.

What we have after all those caveats is a shift that won’t do an iota to change the habits of Canadians, if the goal is still, in fact, to save ourselves from the sixth element of the periodic table. The fact that Dion is trying to convince us that life will go on normally also demonstrates that the professor didn’t take much chemistry in his undergrad as even the only item that doesn’t require carbon for production, computer software, still requires a bunch of energy that comes from carbon just to run the computers that make the programs. How is this not going to affect us?

Then, of course, we must consider what corporations are going to do. Being nobody’s fool, any industry that pollutes like the steel factories in Hamilton, the auto plants in the GTA or the oil refineries in Alberta, will just find a way to slip their sites south of the border where the environmental lunacy currently hasn’t hit the same heights. Under Stephane Dion’s loophole-ridden Canada, we sell our oil assets to the States, sacrifice jobs that would’ve been created to refine the black gold, then buy it back at a loss for our vehicles that aren’t going anywhere because of said lack of jobs.

So, with that all considered, can we really count on the Liberals to actually follow through with anything? Well, they’re still proposing a tax aren’t they? And since I just spent three paragraphs explaining the glories of this plan, and that your average Canadian voter stops reading after “insiders”, I’d say that Stephane Dion will successfully reduce our carbon pollution by putting the massive CO2 emitters currently in the Liberal caucus out on the street, and ensuring that their successors won’t be blowing so much hot air about a plan too gentle for environmentalists, too harmful for conservatives and too complex for a national party to win voters over on!

Carole James is launching an “Axe the Tax” campaign, attempting to mobilize strong grassroots opposition to the gas tax portion of Gordon Campbell’s greenhouse fighting initiatives.  Initially, it will result in a 2.4 cent per liter gas tax, which is going to rise over time.

Of course, the clarion call of any government introducing a new tax is “it is revenue neutral!”  Of course.  This year.  But in a couple of years, when you need the revenues, that will end.  Because, as always in Canada, there is no legal enforcement mechanism that requires revenues from certain taxes to be dedicated to specific expenditures.  Thus, there is never a guarantee that taxes will stay dedicated to what their proponents say they will be.

But I digress.  The NDP leader is fighting like crazy to keep the Green Party from becoming a legitimate force in provincial politics.  As the strength of the unions begin to wane from the rise of oil and gas (which pays so much in general, they hardly ever have unions) and the descent of the forestry industry, the NDP are seeking to find a new foothold.  They had it in the environmentalist left, but with the Green Party beginning to gain momentum, that is slipping.

Then came Campbell’s green package a few months ago.  In finest political tradition, a ruling party steals the platform right out from under their opponents.  If they take the green path, the Green Party and the NDP have no stick to beat them with.  They were right.  It has forced Carole James to do the unthinkable - engage in a populist ground war against the very people she was courting to buttress NDP support - the uncommitted Green people.  How is she going to at once maintain her party’s environmental policies while fighting against a “carbon tax”?

I agree it must be done.  As opposition leader, this is what she is getting paid to do.  This is a potentially very divisive issue and could very well help her party’s fortunes if played right.  In the vast wilderness that encompasses 9/10ths of this province, there is no greener option than the gas guzzling pickups that ride the gravel roads of rural BC.  Have you seen the axles on the “green” 4×4s?  They are made of pipecleaners!  They may be fine for city slickers who need them to go berry picking in the summer a couple of times, but when you face the winter, the potholes, the ploughs, the washouts, etc. that interior residents face much more routinely, you need something with meat - and that burns gas.

Needless to say, higher gas prices don’t sell well where there isn’t a regular bus route.  And rural citizens generally don’t vote NDP (with the exception of unionized millworkers, who are probably pretty ticked right now as they are all laid off with mill closures).  But if they were told that the NDP were standing up for the gas they have to pour into their tanks, well they may indeed change their tune.

My question is how much the NDP will lose to the Green Party or the Liberals in urban BC to gain the rural gas tax haters?

I thought I would take a look at google to find out what to expect.  First I encountered the official position: 2008 is likely to be normal or above normal - a 90% chance of either, and only a 10% chance of below normal.

What is normal?  11 named storms, with around 6 hurricanes in the North Atlantic.

I then checked out this neat page which looks specifically at storms that have hit Orlando (guess where we’re going?)  Nicely broken down into 30 year increments, suggesting that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is largely responsible for whether or not a hurricane hits Orlando.  Still, even in peak periods, the odds of a hurricane hitting Orlando are pretty low - 1 in every 3 or 4 years.  (This is low because if you’re only going for a week, and hurricane season has about 20 weeks, then basic math tells you the odds of a hurricane hitting the same week you’re there is 1 in 60-80.  You wouldn’t take those odds on an NFL team winning the Superbowl… so why worry about a storm?)

But then I thought, what do the experts know?  In the same chain of google hits I encountered this CTV report from May 2006 - “Major Hurricane Season Brewing in the Atlantic“.

In what could signal a frightening new fact of life in the age of global warming, Canadian and U.S. forecasters are warning that another major hurricane season is brewing in the Atlantic Ocean.

…”Last year we were looking at 12 to 15 storms and this year the forecast is for about 17. No one would go out on a limb and say it is going to be just as bad as last year, but the indications are there that it is still going to be another active season, almost twice as active as normal.”

Last year’s hurricane season was the most destructive on record.

Sounds scary right?  Especially mixed in with all the panicky global warming jargon.

Then right there on the same google page, I have Wikipedia’s 2006 storm season. 

“It was less active than the previous year’s Atlantic hurricane season; the first since 2001 in which no hurricanes made landfall in the United States; and the first since 1994 that no tropical cyclones formed during October.^[1]“

Hmm.  If they were sensationalizing that much in 2006, I think we have to ask ourselves, what else are they sensationalizing?

I will say this: it wasn’t the NOAA that issued the breathless notice for panic - it was the Associated Press.  But I am still not worried.  Kind of makes you think though doesn’t it?

Of course, you’d think that the powerful cannabis lobby would start fighting against this carbon tax, now that cold weather has started damaging the weed.  But then again the same eco-freaks that are fighting so hard to stave off any sort of economic or industrial growth in the province are - and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this - uniformly pot-smokers.  Will they be as ecologically interested when they can’t get stoned anymore?

The very fact that this site is designed for children makes what would be an outrageous site even worse, especially when you consider that your carbon-fattened pig explodes into a pile of blood at the end of the quiz(see image). It is also the latest evidence that the movement spearheading the climate change cause simply does not value human life and in fact sees each human as a virus leeching off the planet’s life source.

When you throw in the comments by a Elizabeth May confidante earlier this year that it would’ve been less tragic for seal hunters in Newfoundland to die and another story from Australia that I reported on earlier this year in which a doctor down under wants to tax families for every precious child they bring into the world, a clear pattern starts to emerge among those for whom the Earth is of chief importance. I don’t suppose that the original claim by environmentalists that we had to protect the planet for future generations of children holds much water anymore as they either want to tax said children out of existence or blow up the ones that slip through anyway when they reach age 8. Let’s just hope for everyone involved at the ABC that no child decides to be a good little trooper and take one for the Earth!

(welcome Newswatch readers!)

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming. It is, further, in the hands of politicians who maximize the number of votes they seek to get from the electorate. It is also - as a consequence of political decisions - in the hands of bureaucrats of national and more often of international institutions who try to maximize their budgets and years of careers as well regardless the costs, truth and rationality. It is in the hands of rent-seeking businesspeople who are - given the existing policies - interested in the amount of subsidies they are receiving and look for all possible ways to escape the for them often merciless, but for the rest of us very positive, general welfare enhancing functioning of free markets. An entire industry has developed around the funds the firms are getting from the government. [Emphasis mine]

Via: http://gayandright.blogspot.com

Every adult should be forced to use a ‘carbon ration card’ when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.

The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain’s CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.

Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.

Someone forgot to tell British Environmental Audit Committee about the fact that theses carbon trading schemes are a scam.

Update:
More carbon trading fraud:

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN’s carbon offsetting programme.

Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

No surprisingly, the UK government rejects the criticism:

The UK government last night defended the CDM. “We completely reject any assertions that [it] is fundamentally flawed,” a spokeswoman said. “We’ve worked consistently for and seen improvement in CDM processes over the past few years of its operation. We believe the CDM is essentially transparent and robust, though we will continue to press for the environmental integrity of projects.”

A fundamental component of the debate has been ignored so far though and that is whether a tax on the sixth element of the periodic table is really such a good idea after all. For example, I relayed a report late last year on how an obsessive academic from Australia proposed the sick ideal of putting a carbon tax on each baby born into the world and a yearly tax on children for the first years of their lives. As we have our national government apologizing for the Chinese head tax of almost 100 years ago, calling the practice a shameful blemish from our past, eco-liberals are gearing up to add a tax that doesn’t discriminate on race necessarily but on simply existing. The professor was never quite clear on what would happen if families either refused or could not afford to pay the tax, although he was certainly joyous in announcing how this would effectively womens’ (and mens’) right to chose to have their babies (something liberals often love to do except when they know the choice will result in one less life in the world).

On the other end of the age spectrum though, Stephane Dion’s carbon tax threatens the well-being of our society. While details haven’t been offered by many pundits so far, I’m sure more than a few of them have been sharing my imagination of a Conservative attack ad picturing an elderly old lady, huddled in the corner of a dark, snow-squalling room; as the picture pans out from the detailed sadness of this lonely old woman, a caption will read something to the effect that the retired lady wouldn’t afford heat because that nasty Scrooge of a Liberal, Stephane Dion, is taxing coal so high that she can’t afford to keep warm this Christmas/winter. Whether or not we end up seeing an ad like this run, the fact still remains that some fixed-income Canadians will be hit hard by a carbon tax, often in the case where they slaved away their whole lives under an income tax system that punished them when they were making more money. Now they wouldn’t make as much, which should reduce their burden under income tax, but would be sideswiped by the Dion carbon tax at a time in their lives where going out to make more money simply wouldn’t be an option.

Finally, we have to realize just what a ridiculous notion it is for the Liberals to propose that a carbon tax would be tax neutral. Take the mathematical equation ax + by + cz = 100, where a, b, and c are the percentages of total tax that three hypothetical taxpayers, x, y, and z, would pay into the system. If a tax shift were truly neutral (and Canadians have good reason to believe that no political party that proposes a new tax will EVER deliver on the neutrality promise), that 100 would have to stay the same since it represents 100% of the taxes the government collects now.

On the one hand, it may go down for x because he doesn’t buy as much carbon in a year, but z’s burden might go up because she lives on a rural farm where oil heating and a truck are the necessities of a farmer, not the luxury that we might think. Will *big oil* account for some of the z’s out there who will see their tax bill increase? Most definately, but who do you think will pay for it in the end? The fat cat execs who The Left is always telling us about, or the common Canadian who goes to fill up at the pump?

On the other hand, we have to ask just why the Liberal spin doctors are already playing up the tax neutral element of such a carbon tax? After all, either the government isn’t going to be collecting the same amount of money because carbon usage will go down (in which case, we have to ask how Dion plans to fund his national daycare and other new spending projects), or they will and we will be essentially using the same amount of carbon. Thinking further, what isn’t carbon out there? Bread? Wrong. Clothes? Try again. Wood? Look elsewhere. In fact, the only things I can think of off the top of my head are computer chips and software programmes that are downloaded off the internet. Not exactly the bare necessities but I’m sure the tech industry is already thrilled that our government already presumes that we’re pirates and thieves every time we buy a CD/DVD and is itching to get into the flash drive market as well (think of it as a silicon tax — maybe we should just harmonize it with Dion’s carbon tax and have a tax on all IV A elements!).

Ultimately though, if the Liberals are willing to fight for this one in an election, I say go for it. After all, it wouldn’t take long for someone to point out the obvious: if all this environmental posturing we’re doing now is meant to save the Earth and, ultimately, our existence as a species, why would we impose a tax that would be so destructive both to our children and our elderly? Isn’t the point about making our quality of life better? And once the debate is framed that way, Dion’s already ill-advised plan will be toast and we won’t have to hear any more about eco-radicalism, or at least until the summer of 2024 when we have a couple more days over 30 than usual!

Someone should tell those Asian bankers.

Nobody cares if people are starving as long as we can stave off ferns growing in the Arctic.

Because if the earth were to get warmer, dinosaurs might re-emerge to terrorize the planet, and then we all know what happens then: (besides hungry dinosaurs hunting the polar bear into oblivion faster than ice melt ever could)…

ASTEROIDS AND EXTINCTION!

Every barrel of oil steamed out of the sand in Ft. McMurray is one more barrel that doesn’t come from a misogynist, human rights-violating environmental basket case, usually a dictatorship, and often a sponsor of terrorism. The moral thing to do would be to pump as much oil as technologically possible from Ft. McMurray.

He is right, but missing one crucial problem.

People don’t care about human rights in 3rd world countries anymore.

They’ve given up caring.  It appears that to the informed west, it is futile to complain about women and homosexuals being stoned in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, so they will just keep on supporting buying oil there.  It is futile to complain about the lawlessness of Nigeria because of oil money, because it won’t change.  And so on and so on.

But for Alberta to commit the grievous sin of accidentally hurting some ducks (not endangered ducks, not ducks at-risk, but just ordinary ducks that litter the face of the earth), and then apologizing (because words can never bring back those darling ducks!) the Albertan oil industry, and by extension all Albertans, must be pilloried and shunned (or all oil imported from Alberta must be marked “Not-Green” or “Duck-Killing”).

It’s about what will actually have an effect.  I think this is also why the human rights councils at the UN spend so much time condemning the USA, Canada and Australia for their treatment of aboriginal peoples, while disgusting crimes against women are carried out routinely in places like East Africa with female circumcision and polygamy.  There are countless other much more routine and awful human rights violations in the Middle East against homosexuals and women, not to mention religious minorities like the Buddhists and Christians.  Yet for some reason, nearly every year some resolution gets passed condemning Canada for meanness to natives, who have their own land, are largely self-governing, get massive cash stipends every month, lavishly funded job training, university scholarships at their disposal should they be so inclined, just for their genetic background.

But it’s done because they know we actually care what the international community thinks and we will actually do something about it.

And it keeps us too wrapped up in ourselves, straining to pull the “log out of our own eye” that we never get around to helping out other with their specks.

Today’s events have given me that something, as a couple of friends and I hopped in my car and spent the day (fittingly “Earth Day”) traveling 2.5 hours to Buffalo to see the movie because the powers that be here in Canada feel us Canucks are too fragile to be introduced to dangerous, untested ideas that aren’t directly from former Democratic VPs or Michael Moore. It was a fine day with pristine weather, and as much as Buffalo isn’t exactly the Emerald City, it also has a certain charm for me dating back to frequent trips with my grandparents during the Reagan/Bush Sr. eras. Plus, entering the States, you feel that while people aren’t as polished, but they (be they Democrats or Republicans) are more sincere and rooted in their national values.

Regarding the Expelled movie, I start off with what I was going to suggest earlier this week had a post actually emerged: it is not about destroying evolution nor was that the purpose (see the video clip for more verification). Instead, the Darwinists, who are so scared about what this movie could do in the court of public opinion that they even attack a small-fry blogger in Ontario for merely showing interest in this movie, have failed to address the question this movie raise on why scientists (those with PhDs and impressive resumes) who discuss Intelligent Design are ostracized. Science is man’s study of nature and being a human construct is prone to faulty theories and conclusions; just as the ancients observed the universe revolving around the Earth, or the enlightenment folks developed sophisticated alchemy charts to explain compounds, so too have many scientists throughout many centuries observed, but come to the wrong conclusions because of their perspectives. Even Einstein’s speed of light barrier is now being treated as a special case these days and that mathematically-postulated equation was only invented within the last century. From a political perspective, I have to warn the Darwinian forces that continuing to ignore the argument that Expelled makes only risks their side’s own peril. Doing so only reinforces the statement Ben Stein has made that Darwinian scientists are not interested in the continuous defence of their conclusions that has been and should be inherent to the work of science.

Next, on the appearances in the movie, I noticed a striking difference between PZ Myers and his buddy, Richard Dawkins. Myers, who in the movie gushes about the day when God is marginalized in our society despite the recognition of North America’s founding fathers (not to mention even the UN’s approval…) of the freedom of religious beliefs (and not just on the weekend PZ!) was far more confident in his opinions, whereas Dawkins, who wrote “The God Delusion” was surprisingly stuttery and uncertain as he spoke. Being a political animal who specializes in electronic media, I did pay careful attention to see when cuts were made in the scene (which could suggest editing and misleading question-answer sets) and at the end of the movie when Dawkins was being interviewed with Stein one-on-one, these cuts did not exist in a way that could’ve edited the detailed answer that Dawkins gave — namely that he could see the possibility of aliens seeding the Earth via some sort of ID that they developed. In other words, Dawkins agreed on camera that ID could have merit…but as long as we’re not including God in the equation. A rather meta-physical assessment for a biology professor to make, yes, but he also failed to explain how the A* I discussed a few weeks ago came into being (remember, nothing + nothing != something!). I would also note that nothing that any of the Darwinists said in the movie, when taken at face value, could be taken out of context; one guy actually suggested that molecules attached themselves to crystals and *poof*, we had life on Earth — you just can’t splice that kind of stuff!

The movie also did deal with the Hitler-Darwin connection, admitting that not every Darwinist will become a Nazi, but suggesting that Darwinism does lend itself nicely to eugenics and the bloodbath that has been many atheistic regimes throughout the 20th century (see current news on China for more details…). Could the Darwinists counter this claim? I don’t know, but that’s only because they haven’t seriously tried yet except to collectively say “nuh-uh”!

Ultimately though, the movie sets up a dangerous potential for those who follow the status quo. If the movie does well and becomes as recognized as Bowling for Columbine did years ago, it will either force the Darwinists to adapt to a new environment wherein they actually offer a credible rebuttal to ID or, poetically, are cast off into the great waste-bin of historical movements no longer among us. This will include a healthy debate with the scientists who openly challenge the doctrine of Darwinian evolution. It will also mean contending with the large number of scientists, teachers and faculty who, though afraid for their careers now, will down the road get the protection of tenure and management, thus bringing a delayed, but more potent threat to Darwinian group-think. Who’ll win in the end? Well, it’s all about the survival of the fittest, right?

This, again, is my whole point with the exercise: “Earth Hour” may be many things, be they politically motivated attempts to one day make Al Gore President of Earth, guilt-suppressing for the feeble-minded or an excuse for the promiscuous left to achieve it’s one and only goal no matter what the issue is framed as, but it is not about saving the Earth, nor is it about changing our lifestyles. Instead, like “buy nothing day”, the UofT sit-in this week, Kyoto, the green ribbon campaign of 1997 and The Waffle, Earth Day is just another much ado about nothing that The Left has established to be high on symbolism, but waning on substance. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really about making a difference, but about feeling like we did; it wasn’t meant to change how we view the world, but how the world views us. So congrats Earth Hour warriors! You’ve claimed one hour to feel all smug about (although I really don’t know why…), but I still have 8765 more this year where common sense will take over! I might be the pariah tonight, but come tomorrow morning you’ll be the one following my lead…

I plan on turning on every appliance and lighting fixture in my place: the first hour will be to rebuke some poor soul who thinks that sitting in the dark singing koombiya will somehow prevent polar bears from sailing on ice floats; the second hour will be for the power I’d normally use during the two hours anyway; the third hour is to use more electricity than would’ve been used if the self-righteous ecowarriors didn’t bemoan their poor Gaia’s condition to the rest of us to begin with.

I mentioned this tonight when at a friend’s house; my friend (who knows me well), was probably trying to pick a fight and asked me what I would be doing during tomorrow night’s antics. After explaining the above, and hearing the expected lament on how horrible I was, I asked her why a province like ours — one whose two main sources of electricity are hydroelectric and nuclear — is awash with people going through with a silly exercise that won’t really affect the environment one way or another. Her response? “To raise awareness.” When I inquired who or what would be more aware after she conducted the above-mentioned powwow, she said that it would make me more aware. And you know what, I think it might just do that. After playing Smash while listening to some good old metal from the ’80s tomorrow night, I think I’ll be more aware of how sheepish people are as they follow through with the latest guilt-suppressant fad to come along…

UPDATE: I don’t even need to try! The Globe has a list of tweedy ways to pass through this loathsome lovefest. I especially like numbers 9 through 12 — let me know how the debate turns out guys! Of course, 24-26 is what this agenda is really all about to begin with, now isn’t it?

The commentators on that post were respectful and represent the softer wing of the group, however many of us on the information super highway, or involved with churches have witnessed a louder, more militant variety of Atheism; a group that goes so far as to accuse anyone involved in religious organizations as being stupid, devolved or abusive. These are fighting words to say the least. So the question to me now becomes, where do the militant atheists stand in light of the Thomas Aquinas reasoning with regards to the origins of existence? I have heard quite often from individuals who espouse absolute certainty that there is no God that they have figured out the puzzle and are frustrated that others have not seen the light that they have. If there are any takers, I’m sincerely interested to hear the line of reasoning on how the A* of my previous post came about without Divine intervention.

Under his picture, Wikipedia lists his religious views as “Atheist” which isn’t all that interesting in and of itself unless you consider just how fumingly hostile the internet atheist crowd (complete with their own icon) is to the idea of being called religious or having their beliefs associated with the realm of faith.

While it might be true that they aren’t seeking to build any “bridges to the Divine” as a commonly held definition of religion holds, they certainly put a great deal of faith into their beliefs (and in the hostile circles, dogma that they expect the rest of us to follow).

To demonstrate, I borrow from St. Thomas Aquinas, a high Middle Ages philosopher and Dominican friar who contributed a tremendous amount of work to the understanding of the world, universe and existence during his lifetime. In my favourite work of his, titled “The Existence of God” — a document that is still studied today for its significance and logical cohesion — Aquinas gives the following physical arguments:

1) Things are in motion, ergo Someone had to put them into motion. Aquinas wasn’t even aware of the degree to which this is true, with not only the very macro (planets, stars, galaxies) but also the very micro (gamma rays, subatomic particles) participating in motion.

2) In the world, something never brings about its own existence, otherwise it would have to predate itself. Taking things back far enough though, something had to cause the initial object, particle, energy, what have you, and therefore there must have been a first “cause” which Aquinas deems as “God”.

In other words, what Aquinas did was to look at the origins of the universe and realize that whatever the first form of existence was — to satisfy the nihilist, let’s say it was a small particle, A*, from which the rest of existence came from) — that form had to come from somewhere. Apply special theories, like it transitioning from a parallel universe, or another form of existence, or what have you and you will still have to trace things back to an A*.

A* had to exist, because our universe now exists. Therefore, A* had to come from something more than just a simple A**; it had to be created. If it was created then, the creator would be two things:

1) Eternal, since otherwise we’re back to A* again, and
2) powerful enough to call up something out of nothing

We can argue about semantics, such as if the eternal trait was direct or is passed back even further, however we still need a God existing without being created to get to where we are today (and frankly, it’s missing the point here, which revolves around atheistic understanding), or to what extent creation took place (which, again, is another topic for another day!). The point is that you cannot have existence like ours without the two above mentioned traits existing somewhere down the line.

To believe otherwise would be an article of faith, with no physical rationale or evidence to lend credit to it. So, is it wrong to call atheism a religion? Perhaps in the strictest sense, in that some believe religion requires God or a god(s). However, is it a faith movement? Well, between Thomas Aquinas, Wikipedia and the Conservation of Matter and Energy, I’d say the answer is a pretty definite yes!

Still, Don Martin reveals some ideas that the Official Abstinence wants to put in their *winning* campaign platform:

Well, insiders say they’ll include a scaled-down version of MPDan McTeague’s registered education savings scheme into a platform featuring pledges to fight homelessness, bolster infrastructure, act for a greener environment and bail out the auto sector, all allegedly without running a deficit.

Did your read that? “… act for a greener environment and bail out the auto sector…”. The Liberals want to help the environment, by which I presume means cutting down on CO2 emissions, while propping up one of the largest emitting industries in the country. Is this just an example of arrogant incompetence, or are the Liberals planning on making everyone else sacrifice more so that the auto sector can do less?

If the latter is affirmed, where will the deep cuts come from? Alberta can only bear so much, not just politically but also as far as the sheer amount of impact reductions would bring. The Maritimes are also far too small to count for very much. Quebec is already running around like a chicken sans la tête. So in other words, the Liberals will already be lying: either to industries like the auto sector (other industries aren’t going to be pleased if one sector gets favourable treatment at their expense) or to the voting public who will vote for them based on their environmental rhetoric.

Of course, well before e-day, there’s a strong possibility — around the realm of odds that the sun’ll come up tomorrow — that the current governing party will point out this paradox to voters. After all, if the Liberal strategy actually worked, why don’t they also promise to resolve the Middle East dispute by giving both Israel and the Palestinians rights to the land or that Coke and Pepsi will both share the Greatest Cola Ever award? It might have something to do with the Conservatives being quite willing to also remind voters that whichever way you cut it, under the Liberals you the voter will be paying for it!

…

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists.

Can we focus on pollution again now? I got no problem with all kinds of regulation and activism if we are dealing with real pollutants. The world is in fact getting more polluted every day, and we need to deal with it. But CO2 is not the problem.

H/T to Just Right.

Coyotes are not endangered.  They aren’t even indigenous - their territory has only in the last 100 years expanded out to the West Coast.  They are a nuisance, and can become a public danger.

Someone needs to get a backbone and start shooting these pests.

But, like almost all things that liberalism gets behind, the devil is very much in the details. A series of articles went largely unnoticed back in mid-February when we were concerned with John Tory’s fate, the Alberta election or the federal government’s lifespan. In them comes news that bread, particularly the stuff its made of (grain) has tripled in price in just a matter of months. Two factors are being blamed:

a)the rapid emergence of a middle class in the combined 2 billion-large areas of China and India (serious question: would it be improper to refer to this as Chindia from now