The media love to report on the next disaster that's going to kill us.
For a while, it was nuclear war. Then rain forest depletion. There were holes in the ozone layer, international terrorists, asbestos, trans fats, cell phones...
They try out a new one each week. When one sticks, the stories will run until people lose interest. Then the threat will go away, and a new one will take its place.
I'm opening the comments to predictions of The Next Great Disaster. Unless you believe we'll all be killed before the media moves on. If you read the Toronto Star, you probably believe we were all killed 3 weeks ago.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
America Bashing: Leftist Hypocracy in Action
I hear a lot of America bashing from the left. They take pride in it. Many of them will portray themselves as the noble underdog daring to stand against an evil superpower. That America bashing is a risk-free venture celebrated by their peers is lost on them.
But then the impossible happens. They find an American they can use. Today, it's Gore. In December, it was Howard Dean. In Montreal, it was Bill Clinton. Suddenly, it seems we misunderstood. They did not hate Americans. They hated Republicans. Americans are great!
They forget how they rallied against Clinton while he was bombing Iraq and Kosovo. They neglect to define the difference between Americans and Republicans when they are attacking all things American. Things like that don't matter anymore. All that matters is they've found someone who they can use to support their cause.
I was inspired for this post by a comment from my last one. Greg said "Let me be clear. As a lefty, I like Americans. I just hate Republicans. Carry on." So casually, you tell us you hate almost half of all Americans because they vote for a party whose views you disagree with. Having defined yourself as a lefty, you'll hate anyone whose opinions are different. So you do hate Republicans. When they tell you to, you hate Americans.
We'll never stop some people from their righteous hatred. But at least we can call it for what it is.
But then the impossible happens. They find an American they can use. Today, it's Gore. In December, it was Howard Dean. In Montreal, it was Bill Clinton. Suddenly, it seems we misunderstood. They did not hate Americans. They hated Republicans. Americans are great!
They forget how they rallied against Clinton while he was bombing Iraq and Kosovo. They neglect to define the difference between Americans and Republicans when they are attacking all things American. Things like that don't matter anymore. All that matters is they've found someone who they can use to support their cause.
I was inspired for this post by a comment from my last one. Greg said "Let me be clear. As a lefty, I like Americans. I just hate Republicans. Carry on." So casually, you tell us you hate almost half of all Americans because they vote for a party whose views you disagree with. Having defined yourself as a lefty, you'll hate anyone whose opinions are different. So you do hate Republicans. When they tell you to, you hate Americans.
We'll never stop some people from their righteous hatred. But at least we can call it for what it is.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Isn't Gore an Evil American?
Liblogs and the media are drooling over Gore's review of the Green Plan. He calls it a "fraud... designed to mislead the Canadian people." Trivia buffs will recognize the statement as quoted from a review for his film.
Memo to Gore; this is none of your business. Your country has done nothing on climate change. You were vice-president and did nothing on climate change. Now you're touring Canada, getting between $100-150K per lecture, trying to tell us how we're so bad environmentally?
To all Liberals - we have lots of Canadian environmental activists. David Suzuki, love him or hate him, has devoted his life to Canada's environmental concerns. Gore jumped on the bandwagon and is riding it to riches. Find a better idol.
Gore reminds me of Michael Moore; sleazy opportunist spouting propaganda. Who here read Moore's letter during the last election campaign? That was pure gold. I carried a copy with me, and everyone who saw instantly vowed to vote Conservative.
Memo to Gore; this is none of your business. Your country has done nothing on climate change. You were vice-president and did nothing on climate change. Now you're touring Canada, getting between $100-150K per lecture, trying to tell us how we're so bad environmentally?
To all Liberals - we have lots of Canadian environmental activists. David Suzuki, love him or hate him, has devoted his life to Canada's environmental concerns. Gore jumped on the bandwagon and is riding it to riches. Find a better idol.
Gore reminds me of Michael Moore; sleazy opportunist spouting propaganda. Who here read Moore's letter during the last election campaign? That was pure gold. I carried a copy with me, and everyone who saw instantly vowed to vote Conservative.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Environmentaists strive to make themselves irrelevant
Environmentalists don't like the Green Plan! Wow! I, for one, am shocked. Apparently, the Conservative Government is not doing enough for the environment, since they are not going to meet the Kyoto 2008-2012 targets.
I'm not going to talk about the Green Plan right now. I will later, but not now. Now is the time to talk about environmentalists. They all say they want to see the Conservatives act on the environment. The opposition parties say this is more important than partisan politics. Yet they have given the Conservatives no political motivation to achieve anything substantive.
No matter what the Conservatives do, it won't be enough unless they can meet the reduction targets set by Kyoto. There is no compromise, no "good first steps." Reductions start today, and we meet the targets, or it isn't good enough.
I watch a rant on Mike Duffy Live between Dale the Suzuki Foundation guy and Buzz Hargrove. It was hardly a clash of intellectual giants, but after Dale ranted about how it might take 3 years before we start seeing reductions, Duffy asked Buzz Hargrove "Are you every going to be able to satify people like Dale?" The answer is quite easy. If you have a Conservative party logo on your stationary, no.
Opposition parties are even worse. They call on the government to adhere to the Kyoto protocols, then when the government makes a concession to agree to absolute targets instead of intensity targets, they call it "the biggest flip flop they've ever made." Brilliant is your goal is to make the government look bad no matter what, but stupid if you actually care about the environment. I would never accuse them of the latter.
A note to environmentalists; you need a carrot to go with that stick. Stephen Harper has no motivation to give you anything you ask for. As a member of the public, I have no reason to trust anything you say. If I know what you are going to say before I know the issue, your opinion is irrelevant. And everyone knew you were going to hate the Green Plan before it was released.
I'm not going to talk about the Green Plan right now. I will later, but not now. Now is the time to talk about environmentalists. They all say they want to see the Conservatives act on the environment. The opposition parties say this is more important than partisan politics. Yet they have given the Conservatives no political motivation to achieve anything substantive.
No matter what the Conservatives do, it won't be enough unless they can meet the reduction targets set by Kyoto. There is no compromise, no "good first steps." Reductions start today, and we meet the targets, or it isn't good enough.
I watch a rant on Mike Duffy Live between Dale the Suzuki Foundation guy and Buzz Hargrove. It was hardly a clash of intellectual giants, but after Dale ranted about how it might take 3 years before we start seeing reductions, Duffy asked Buzz Hargrove "Are you every going to be able to satify people like Dale?" The answer is quite easy. If you have a Conservative party logo on your stationary, no.
Opposition parties are even worse. They call on the government to adhere to the Kyoto protocols, then when the government makes a concession to agree to absolute targets instead of intensity targets, they call it "the biggest flip flop they've ever made." Brilliant is your goal is to make the government look bad no matter what, but stupid if you actually care about the environment. I would never accuse them of the latter.
A note to environmentalists; you need a carrot to go with that stick. Stephen Harper has no motivation to give you anything you ask for. As a member of the public, I have no reason to trust anything you say. If I know what you are going to say before I know the issue, your opinion is irrelevant. And everyone knew you were going to hate the Green Plan before it was released.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Where are the Liberals?
Do they even show up in the House anymore? Is any vote important enough for them to be there?
Their bill to recall our troops in Afghanistan after 2009 got voted down 150 to 134. With all the floor crossing, it's tough to track the numbers in the House these days, but I'm pretty sure the Liberals and Bloc have more than 134 members between them. Where are they? This was a close vote. With the Lib-Bloc voting against the CPC-NDP, a single member could've made the difference.
Do the Liberals have somewhere else to be? I can understand the Conservatives not having everyone there; they're running a country. They need to be all over the country (and in some cases the world) to do their jobs. What are the Liberals doing?
Anyone who can provide a link to the voting records would be welcome. I can't find the record yet.
Their bill to recall our troops in Afghanistan after 2009 got voted down 150 to 134. With all the floor crossing, it's tough to track the numbers in the House these days, but I'm pretty sure the Liberals and Bloc have more than 134 members between them. Where are they? This was a close vote. With the Lib-Bloc voting against the CPC-NDP, a single member could've made the difference.
Do the Liberals have somewhere else to be? I can understand the Conservatives not having everyone there; they're running a country. They need to be all over the country (and in some cases the world) to do their jobs. What are the Liberals doing?
Anyone who can provide a link to the voting records would be welcome. I can't find the record yet.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Liberals sue to cover their tracks
Just saw this on National Newswatch. Go. read. Enjoy. They published the story early when the Liberals threatened a libel suit.
Update: I probably should include the background. Mark Holland is suing over the story that he illegally held the Conservatives' files. His problem? Not that it was illegal, not that the Liberal Party was culpable. He said it was staffers who actually looked through the files and reported to him, so his name shouldn't be included.
Update: I probably should include the background. Mark Holland is suing over the story that he illegally held the Conservatives' files. His problem? Not that it was illegal, not that the Liberal Party was culpable. He said it was staffers who actually looked through the files and reported to him, so his name shouldn't be included.
The Science Behind Global Warming
Climate change 'science' is currently being led by political bodies, not scientists. Political science is quite simple; the more dire the prediction, the more funding they receive.
Over the past few years, I have been striving to understand the science behind climate change. As promised, I have prepared a post on what I've discovered so far. Brace yourselves, because this is a long post. Even by my standards.
I have found that the most useful data does not come from the UN or the media. In fact, their data is not useful at all. Almost all of their studies assume global warming exists, and the most extreme predictions will come true. Then they calculate the effects on their chosen specialty, such as on nature, the sea level, meteorology, etc. This is why we hear that vast majority of scientific papers predict the devastating effects of global warming. They are not about climate change at all.
This does not, however, mean that global warming does not exist. It does. It just does not do what politicians say it does.
Basic Science
First, a really simple version of the science. Our atmosphere holds in heat. Everyone knows that; it's the reason why the Earth is not as cold as the space around it. The composition of the atmosphere regulates how much of the heat gets trapped.
The reason scientists first looked at carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is the ice age. By drilling ice in Antarctica, tree cores, sediment cores, they were able to track the average temperature and the levels of carbon in the past. Ice cores especially let them go back hundreds of thousands of years. By tracking the levels of carbon found in the samples and comparing them with the temperature, they theorized that carbon levels lead to increased temperature.
They found that the carbon increases naturally until it reaches a critical mass, then will suddenly be absorbed again and cause an ice age. Then the cycle starts over.
Man's Contribution
Global warming will exist with or without man. However, whenever we burn fuels (or pretty much anything) we are increasing the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Look at the very basic science of fire: Carbon in the fuel reacts with oxygen in the air, and carbon dioxide is released. Or: C + O2 = CO2. Very simple.
What is questioned is how much difference man's contribution makes to natures natural cycle. This cycle existed long before man. Some scientists point out that the average temperature on the Earth has decreased since we started increasing CO2 levels. That's at the very end of the graph.
However, look to the historical correlation of CO2 and temperature. When the CO2 changes drastically, it takes longer for the world's temperature to catch up. This is largely due to the stabilization effect of Earth's oceans. It takes a long time to change their temperature, and they will not allow the Earth's temperature to change rapidly. Seen in that light, the huge increase in CO2 levels is terrifying, because sooner or later the temperature will catch up.
Why Politicians Suck
Politicians love absolutes. They also love money and power. Stephane Dion and Jack Layton have a wonderful weapon. They're telling us that global warming's coming, and unless we elected them now we're all going to die. To make the weapon even more powerful, they are exaggerating the effects of Kyoto to scare us into voting for them.
They know that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a wild exaggeration with no scientific fact. (See example at end if you don't believe me). But they will constantly reference it in interviews. Why? It's scary and popular.
John Baird just came out with his dire predictions about following Kyoto. The opposition is challenging the specifics of the statement and using that to refute the obvious facts that meeting the 2008-2012 deadline will devastate us economically.
With politicians leading the climate change debate, no one has to prove anything scientific. You just have to disprove the points made by the opposition. This is easy because even they know they're full of it. Then the electorate gets divided into nice little camps and vote for the person who's telling them what they want to hear.
Conclusions:
1) Global warming is happening no matter what we do. However, we are probably speeding it up. How much is difficult to say, since everyone seems to disagree.
2) You cannot trust most of the climate change time lines because they use the exaggerated forecasts created by political bodies. On that note, we should make a concentrated effort to reduce emissions, but not at the expense of our economy. If we destroy our economy, we can't pay for those reduction plans.
3) The greatest threat posed by global warming is an earlier ice age.
4) Global warming is being blamed for everything. For example, the unusually warm December/January in Ontario was caused by a southern updraft, not global warming. If you don't believe me, note that February was the coldest in 28 years. Or as someone from Alberta or Saskatchewan - their entire winter was especially chilly. Ocean temperature will not allow the drastic temperature changes the politicians predict.
5) If man were to reduce our CO2 emissions to zero today, we would still feel the effects of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. They may reduce to their proper levels over several centuries, or they might hold where they are until the temperature catches up.
This is the result of my research so far. Over the past few years, I have gone from climate change denier to apocalyptic doomsayer and back again. There is an abundance of inaccurate information available on this issue. I learning a lot more when I ditched online research and opened an ancient relic called a textbook.
However, if you must gain some more information online, this website isn't bad.
Al Gore's bad science example:
Scientists are debating a rise in the ocean levels of between 3 inches and 3 feet over the next 300 years (I remember that one because of all the threes). Al Gore avoided that pesky science. His movie shows what will happen if the ice caps melt completely. The oceans will rise 20 feet! Then he has a wonderful computer graphic showing the effects, ignoring that fact that the next ice age will hit long before that happens. His movie is full of scare tactics like that. And he's made money, gained power, and grown popular. Everything a politician needs.
Update:
I forgot to include something. Trees turn CO2 back to oxygen. We also don't know how much of the CO2 increase is caused by deforestation.
Want to help global warming? Plant a tree.
Over the past few years, I have been striving to understand the science behind climate change. As promised, I have prepared a post on what I've discovered so far. Brace yourselves, because this is a long post. Even by my standards.
I have found that the most useful data does not come from the UN or the media. In fact, their data is not useful at all. Almost all of their studies assume global warming exists, and the most extreme predictions will come true. Then they calculate the effects on their chosen specialty, such as on nature, the sea level, meteorology, etc. This is why we hear that vast majority of scientific papers predict the devastating effects of global warming. They are not about climate change at all.
This does not, however, mean that global warming does not exist. It does. It just does not do what politicians say it does.
Basic Science
First, a really simple version of the science. Our atmosphere holds in heat. Everyone knows that; it's the reason why the Earth is not as cold as the space around it. The composition of the atmosphere regulates how much of the heat gets trapped.
The reason scientists first looked at carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is the ice age. By drilling ice in Antarctica, tree cores, sediment cores, they were able to track the average temperature and the levels of carbon in the past. Ice cores especially let them go back hundreds of thousands of years. By tracking the levels of carbon found in the samples and comparing them with the temperature, they theorized that carbon levels lead to increased temperature.
They found that the carbon increases naturally until it reaches a critical mass, then will suddenly be absorbed again and cause an ice age. Then the cycle starts over.
Man's Contribution
Global warming will exist with or without man. However, whenever we burn fuels (or pretty much anything) we are increasing the level of carbon in the atmosphere. Look at the very basic science of fire: Carbon in the fuel reacts with oxygen in the air, and carbon dioxide is released. Or: C + O2 = CO2. Very simple.
What is questioned is how much difference man's contribution makes to natures natural cycle. This cycle existed long before man. Some scientists point out that the average temperature on the Earth has decreased since we started increasing CO2 levels. That's at the very end of the graph.
However, look to the historical correlation of CO2 and temperature. When the CO2 changes drastically, it takes longer for the world's temperature to catch up. This is largely due to the stabilization effect of Earth's oceans. It takes a long time to change their temperature, and they will not allow the Earth's temperature to change rapidly. Seen in that light, the huge increase in CO2 levels is terrifying, because sooner or later the temperature will catch up.
Why Politicians Suck
Politicians love absolutes. They also love money and power. Stephane Dion and Jack Layton have a wonderful weapon. They're telling us that global warming's coming, and unless we elected them now we're all going to die. To make the weapon even more powerful, they are exaggerating the effects of Kyoto to scare us into voting for them.
They know that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a wild exaggeration with no scientific fact. (See example at end if you don't believe me). But they will constantly reference it in interviews. Why? It's scary and popular.
John Baird just came out with his dire predictions about following Kyoto. The opposition is challenging the specifics of the statement and using that to refute the obvious facts that meeting the 2008-2012 deadline will devastate us economically.
With politicians leading the climate change debate, no one has to prove anything scientific. You just have to disprove the points made by the opposition. This is easy because even they know they're full of it. Then the electorate gets divided into nice little camps and vote for the person who's telling them what they want to hear.
Conclusions:
1) Global warming is happening no matter what we do. However, we are probably speeding it up. How much is difficult to say, since everyone seems to disagree.
2) You cannot trust most of the climate change time lines because they use the exaggerated forecasts created by political bodies. On that note, we should make a concentrated effort to reduce emissions, but not at the expense of our economy. If we destroy our economy, we can't pay for those reduction plans.
3) The greatest threat posed by global warming is an earlier ice age.
4) Global warming is being blamed for everything. For example, the unusually warm December/January in Ontario was caused by a southern updraft, not global warming. If you don't believe me, note that February was the coldest in 28 years. Or as someone from Alberta or Saskatchewan - their entire winter was especially chilly. Ocean temperature will not allow the drastic temperature changes the politicians predict.
5) If man were to reduce our CO2 emissions to zero today, we would still feel the effects of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. They may reduce to their proper levels over several centuries, or they might hold where they are until the temperature catches up.
This is the result of my research so far. Over the past few years, I have gone from climate change denier to apocalyptic doomsayer and back again. There is an abundance of inaccurate information available on this issue. I learning a lot more when I ditched online research and opened an ancient relic called a textbook.
However, if you must gain some more information online, this website isn't bad.
Al Gore's bad science example:
Scientists are debating a rise in the ocean levels of between 3 inches and 3 feet over the next 300 years (I remember that one because of all the threes). Al Gore avoided that pesky science. His movie shows what will happen if the ice caps melt completely. The oceans will rise 20 feet! Then he has a wonderful computer graphic showing the effects, ignoring that fact that the next ice age will hit long before that happens. His movie is full of scare tactics like that. And he's made money, gained power, and grown popular. Everything a politician needs.
Update:
I forgot to include something. Trees turn CO2 back to oxygen. We also don't know how much of the CO2 increase is caused by deforestation.
Want to help global warming? Plant a tree.
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