Dion mocked by his own staffers over the Green Shaft

Stephane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada has been mocked by his own staffers! Stephen Taylor provides this little tidbit which he received from a source at the Liberal Research Bureau.

greenshaft - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: greenshaft

When your own paid staffers are producing stuff like this, you know you must be in trouble. Big trouble.

Related:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his minority government will be holding confidence votes in the Commons this autumn, setting up another stare-down with the Opposition Liberals.

If Dion is afraid of forcing an election by bringing votes of confidence, then PM Harper seems ready to take the initiative.

Hey, somebody's got to do the job of the Official Opposition.

We have water

NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Laboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

"We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

more here.

The so-called "smart" car

Wasn't it really just a matter of time until the performance guys set their sights on the stupid Smart Car:

Feulner: Kyoto's pointless promises

An excerpt for Ed Feulner's opinion piece Kyoto's pointless promises from the IndyStar:

China's CO2 emissions rose 8 percent last year, after jumping more than 11 percent in each of the two previous years. According to a Dutch study, China alone accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse-gas emissions in 2007, and its current lead over the United States in such emissions is only expected to grow.

Contrast that with our environmental record.

The U.S. government estimates that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by just 1.6 percent in 2007, after dropping 1.5 percent the year before. The growth in our emissions is less than the growth of our gross domestic product, meaning we've improved the economy while reducing the growth in our emissions.

And we're doing that without being part of the Kyoto treaty.

Indeed, few people would know this fact because the US is generally portrayed by the main stream media as the guilty culprit when it comes to emissions of so-called "greenhouse gases". More on the Kyoto Accord:

That 1997 agreement requires the 37 countries that signed it to slash emissions by a combined 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But the treaty is a pipe dream. Instead of falling, the United Nations reported that such emissions are nearing "an all-time high." Greenhouse gas emissions from the Kyoto signers increased 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Yet we have seen no increase in world temperatures in the past ten years and scientists are now forcasting a period of global cooling lasting maybe one or two decades.

Signing Kyoto may allow a country to claim it's a good "global citizen," but many of those citizens aren't keeping their promises. The U.N. reports Kyoto signers Austria, New Zealand and Canada have all increased their emissions over 1990 levels -- by 14, 23 and 54 percent, respectively.

In fact, the U.N. admits that the only reason the world might meet Kyoto's goal (a 5 percent reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2012) is because the economies of so many Eastern European economies collapsed when the Iron Curtain fell. In other words, only a domestic recession will allow the planet to hit Kyoto's target.

Feulner goes on to discuss the economics of Kyoto and the failure of the US congress to pass the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill because "it would slash our national GDP by at least $1.7 trillion by the year 2030".

Yet despite the failure of the majority of Kyoto's signatories to meet their emissions reductions targets, and despite the minimal effect on world temperatures that fully implemented Kyoto CO2 reductions would bring (0.07 degrees Celsius reduction in global temperatures by 2050), the world marches on toward Kyotocide with the UN leading the charge for a new "son of Kyoto" treaty which would reduce CO2 emissions even further.

I'll close with Feulner's final comment:

The world doesn't need a new Kyoto -- the treaty that accomplished nothing but takes the gold medal for uselessness and hypocrisy.

Better, cheaper LED's

Too bad Dalton. The days of the mercury-laden compact flourescent light (CFL) may be numbered...

The incandescent lightbulb that wastes 90% of the electricity as heat is dying, we all know that. But a new breakthrough in solid state lighting might also kill compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) faster than some expected. Scientists at Purdue University have figured out how to manufacture LED solid-state lights on regular metal-coated silicon wafers (more details below). What this means is: much lower costs.

More here.

Seven graphs

Andrew Bolt provides seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?


Click image for the full story or download the graphs in PDF.

Evans: No smoking gun for CO2

Dr David Evans built models for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 thru 2005. He writes in the Australian that scientists have been unable to find the "signature" of an increased greenhouse effect caused by CO2, that there is no smoking hot spot:

The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Dr. Evans is a convert, a skeptic. He quotes Lord Keynes who asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Proved: There is no climate crisis

A major new paper shows CO2’s effect on temperature was overstated 500-2000% by the IPCC.

WASHINGTON (7-15-08) - Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.

Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered demonstrates that later this century a doubling of the concentration of CO2 compared with pre-industrial levels will increase global mean surface temperature not by the 6 °F predicted by the IPCC but, harmlessly, by little more than 1 °F. Lord Monckton concludes –

“… Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

The full report, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered is available at the American Physical Society (APS) website newsletter Physics & Society: July 2008.

Lord Monckton’s paper reveals that –

• The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
• CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
• Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
• The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
• The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
• “Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
• Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
• The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
• It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
• Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
• In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years.

Update: from the APS Physics and Society website:

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

Also this report from DailyTech:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

(...)

After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.

At least the Physics and Society people at APS are encouraging debate on the science. That's long overdue.

The green shaft

PM Stephen Harper comments on Stephane Dion's shifty green carbon tax proposal:

"Dion's carbon tax is not an environment policy. It is just a wealth redistribution program disguised as an environment policy," Harper told the crowd. "The Green Shift is a green shaft and we must never let it happen to our country."

Exactly.

Update: Lorne Gunter.

By aiming his taxes at producers, rather than consumers, Mr. Dion clearly means to extract more of his new revenues from some provinces than others -- not coincidentally the provinces that seldom elect Liberal MPs.

The share of the green taxes he wishes to impose on Alberta and Saskatchewan would work out to nearly $1,500 per capita, or $6,000 per family. In the rest of the country, the load would be just $325 per person or $1,300 a family.

Is that the sound of separatism I hear coming from the west?

Dion's shifty green carbon tax

is looking more and more like it's just another Liberal tax. From the Edmonton Journal: Carbon tax would tap Alberta resources to fund Liberal social programs

CALGARY - An Ontario Liberal MP said Friday his party's Green Shift carbon-tax proposal will raid Alberta's energy riches and transfer wealth "from rich to poor, from the oilpatch to the rest of the country."

Ken Boshcoff, MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River, rekindled memories of the controversial national energy program when he stated on a blog post that the Grits' Green Shift program will inflict financial pain on Alberta and its oil and gas industry.

The carbon-tax proposal -- which is being sold to Canadians as an environmental initiative, first and foremost -- would slap a levy on greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and return the roughly $15 billion in annual revenues through a series of cuts to income and corporate tax.

Failing to say much about any environmental benefits of the plan, Boshcoff proudly proclaimed on a political news blog that the Green Shift is the "most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years," which will target wealthy provinces -- particularly Alberta.

"The shift will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oilpatch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians," he said in a post on NetNewsledger.com.

The MP explains in his post that the $15 billion in revenues will be used to pay for Liberal party social policies, including $9 billion in tax cuts for low-income earners and $2.9 billion for a universal child tax benefit.

Just where are the environmental benefits that are supposed to come from Dion's shifty green carbon tax? No mention of them. None. Conservative MP Jason Kenney adds:

"It reveals the real plan here, which is a massive new tax in order to finance increased social spending," Kenney said. "When you scratch below the surface, what you see here is a discredited, old, beggar-thy-neighbour, class-warfare politics."

What all of this talk by Dion & company about "green" taxes really boils down to is the introduction of massive new taxes and increased social spending with no environmental impact whatsoever.

Same old Liberal tax and spend. Same old Liberal plans for the redistribution of wealth from the "have" provinces (are there any left besides Alberta?) to the "have-not" provinces. This has a smell about it that's reminiscent of P.E. Trudeau and Marc LaLonde and the NEP.

Can the Liberals possibly come up with anything more divisive for this country?

Related: Company seeks $8.5 million from Liberals for use of Green Shift name.

WSJ: Kyoto's long goodbye

President George W. Bush achieved some significant changes to the global warming status quo at the recent G8 summit in Japan. From today's Wall Street Journal: Kyoto's Long Goodbye:

One of the mysteries of the universe is why President Bush bothers to charge the fixed bayonets of the global warming theocracy. On the other hand, his Administration's supposed "cowboy diplomacy" is succeeding in changing the way the world addresses climate change. Which is to say, he has forced the world to pay at least some attention to reality.

That was the larger meaning of the Group of Eight summit in Japan this week, even if it didn't make the papers. The headline was that the nations pledged to cut global greenhouse emissions by half by 2050. Yet for the first time, the G-8 also agreed that any meaningful climate program would have to involve industrializing nations like China and India. For the first time, too, the G-8 agreed that real progress will depend on technological advancements. And it agreed that the putative benefits had to justify any brakes on economic growth.

In other words, the G-8 signed on to what has been the White House approach since 2002.

more...

Dion on Dion

Is it true that Stephane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada was a political science professor?

If the Liberals win the next election, "it will be the first time in the history of Canada that the prime minister of Canada will have a PhD," Dion said.

It was a good sales pitch. But it's not true.

He ought to know better.

Climate Change Delusion

From Australia comes news that psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old male with an eight-month history of depression caused by a fatal delusion over climate change.

A real impact of the global warming fear mongers.

In our current political climate, the spread of this newly diagnosed "climate change delusion" (CCD) has the potential to surpass that other modern illness known as BDS.

Beck: 30 years of empty promises

T. Boone Pickens

Would you welcome a plan to cut the USA's demand on oil by a third in less than a decade?

In this video, Pickens explains his plan to solve America's $700 billion-a-year dependence on foreign oil: replace gasoline with natural gas while replacing natural gas-fired power plants with wind, solar, nuclear and clean coal.

More here.

Big screen TVs dwarf coal plant CO2 emissions

I'm going to have to get out my DVD copy of the Great Global Warming Swindle and watch it non-stop on my new big screen TV - which I should be able to get really cheap from some environmentally conscious tree-hugger.

News item: Plasma, LCDs blamed for accelerating global warming

The gas, widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997.

Professor Michael Prather from the University of California has highlighted the issue in an article for the magazine New Scientist.

"Not only is it not in the Kyoto Treaty but you don't even have to report it. That's the part that worries me."

He estimates 4,000 tons of NF3 will be produced in 2008 and that number is likely to double next year.

"We don't know what's emitted, but what they're producing every year dwarfs these giant coal-fired power plants that are like the biggest in the world," he said.

Like wow, man - does this guy really talk this way?

So let me get this straight: we don't know exactly how much NF3 is emitted, but we're going to scare the bejesus out of everybody by saying that it dwarfs the output of all those nasty coal plants. Alarmism at its finest.

Is there any invention of modern society that doesn't offend the environmental alarmists?

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis

via Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal:

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

Dennis Miller

"Global warming is officially becoming creepy".