Who is the real Iggy?

How well do Canadians really know Count Michael Ignatieff, the man who would like to be our next Prime Minister? Is he the Mao quoting politician who pushes progressive programs like publicly funded day-care for all and a "cap and trade" carbon tax? Or is he something else?

As a politician in Canada, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said that he was on the sidelines of the Iraq war, but new information reveals he was on the front lines of pre-invasion planning when he worked in the U.S.

Ignatieff - long known to be a supporter of the decision to invade - was part of an academic advisory team that helped U.S. state department and American military officials conduct strategy sessions.

Who are you Iggy? Canadians need to know.

Good news

Senate Democrats abandon comprehensive climate bill

The Dems have an overwhelming majority in the House and a "super-majority" in the Senate and they still can't put together enough votes on their "cap & tax" climate bill. But that's good news for consumers who won't be straddled with yet another massive tax by the Obama administration.

Watch them blame the Republicans for this.

h/t: SDA

Update: I couldn't resist adding the very cool video. Kinda sums things up.



video h/t: Allahpundit

Alarmists regroup: new strategy formulated

Climategate has taken such a toll on the global warming agenda that alarmists are taking a new tact. Academics urge radical new approach to climate change:

The UN process has failed, they argue, and a global approach concentrating on CO2 cuts will never work.

They urge instead the use of carbon tax revenue to develop technologies that can supply clean energy to everyone.

All this stems from a group of academics who have issued a paper, called the Hartwell Paper with this surprising admission (emphasis added):

The paper says that the outcome of December's UN climate summit, plus the "ClimateGate" affair and inaccuracies within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report, means "the legitimacy of the institutions of climate policy and science are no longer assured".

So, successfully tackling climate change initially means re-framing the issue.

In an article for the BBC's Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: "Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental 'problem' that is capable of being 'solved'.

"It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever."

They are advocating a new, non-United Nations approach towards "decarbonisation", which not surprisingly contains a "carbon tax" aimed at developing new "green" energy technologies while concentrating on short term reduction in carbon emissions.

Division in the ranks? Not all alarmists think this is such a good idea.

"The paper's focus away from CO2 is misguided, short-sighted and probably wrong," said Bill Hare from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

The alarmists can regroup and reframe the issue all they want. Their problem is their junk science has been revealed and they no longer enjoy the blind faith following of the public in general.

We have all become skeptics.

And we have no appetite to commit a major portion of our economy to try to solve a problem that no one can prove exists.

Challenging the EPA

The EPA isn't getting a free ride on its decision to regulate CO2. We reported earlier that Utah, Texas and Virginia had challenged the ruling. Now another big player, non-government this time, has waded into the fray:

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’

via climategate.com

Update: There's more.

Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday's deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies.

Update 2: John O'Sullivan offers general legal strategies for challenging what is fast being recognised as the greatest criminal fraud of all time.

Common law tells us that governments cannot impose climate regulations on their citizens by regarding similar facts differently on different occasions. This principle is known among legal practitioners as stare decisis (i.e. judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions). I’ve examined two of the recently filed climate skeptic petitions filed by U.S. corporations. In both there is the common argument that ‘arbitrary and capricious’ governmental climate-related decisions have been imposed upon the people. These EPA regulations, they argue, must be over turned because the science that underpins them has been proven to be fraudulent and significantly based on subjective elements. Thus, the basis of the EPA’s decision to determine that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is unlawful due to the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ components within the EPA’s fact finding process.

Virginia joins fight against EPA

Via Climategate.com:

This week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition that challenges the EPA’s recent finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases contribute to alleged climate change.

Good for Virginia for standing up to the EPA.

Previous: Utah and Texas.

EPA battle heats up

It was reported here the other day in Utah vs the EPA that there's a fight brewing between some states and the federal government's EPA.

Texas joins the battle:

DALLAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

If Obama and the Dems think they can accomplish by regulation what they cannot achieve by legislation, they may find out it ain't going to be that easy.

Utah vs the EPA

I smell a fight brewing here between states like Utah and the federal government that wants to accomplish by regulation (EPA) what it can't pass by legislation (cap & trade). This via the Guardian:

Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'

Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?

Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.

The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN's landmark report on global warming.

But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a "well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome". It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".

Sounds reasonable to me. But that language proved a little too strong for the Utah legislature.

By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word "conspiracy", and described climate science as "questionable" rather than "flawed".

However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated".

The poor reporter couldn't help herself... "against all evidence" ...is she kidding? Michael Mann's hockey stick has been long discredited.

No new carbon and cap-and-trade taxes

Here's your chance to say NO to new carbon and/or cap-and-trade taxes.

Global warming alarmists are placing tremendous pressure on the federal government to commit to draconian carbon dioxide reduction measures. Canadians already pay huge carbon taxes in the form of gas taxes, since about one-third of the pump price is tax. Carbon taxes and cap and trade would make power, transportation, and home heating bills rise higher--something Canadians cannot afford.

Go to Taxpayer.com to sign the petition and let Canada's lawmakers know you want them to stop pandering to the alarmists before they completely ruin our economy.

Global Warming or a lot of hot air?

Video of Sunday Night's special: Global warming or a lot of hot air with host Bret Baier of Fox News. Here's part 1:



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
Watch these while you can. I suspect that YouTube may pull them.

Global cooling marches on

Global cooling is chilling the summer of 2009 says Deroy Murdock at National Review Online. Let the cold times roll.

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called “global warming,” Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Consider how the globe cooled last month:

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated on July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May . . . but not in June was back in 1903.”

In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valley’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Not far away, downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.

There's more at the link above.

But of course, you wouldn't know this from the main stream media who, despite the evidence in front of our faces, would like us to believe the earth is heating up at an unprecedented rate and the only solution is more big government interference in the form of a "Cap & Tax" on carbon emissions.

Newsmax: Congress badly misinformed about Global Warming

An interview with William Happer, physics professor at Princeton University:

Waxman-Markey hot air

"Are you asking me?", Rep. Henry Waxman admits that he hasn't read the massive climate change bill that he's pushing through Congress.



Rep. Waxman says he "trusts the scientists". Of course, he's actually referring to the 51 government appointed authors of the IPCC "summary for policy makers", not the 650 international scientists who dissent over Man-Made Global Warming claims and certainly not the 32,000 scientists who last year went on the record as being opposed to the IPCC's claims of human induced global warming. No, not those scientists.

Then there's the video below from the Heritage Foundation shows how the global warming tax will kill jobs and the economy while doing nothing for the environment.

Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax: The cap-and-trade tax proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) is disguised as environmental legislation when it would have little impact on global temperatures. In fact, it is a massive energy tax that promises soaring household energy bills, major job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.

Economic Strangulation

President Obama continues to implement the most radical socialist agenda in American history. He has already nationalized large segments of the banking, insurance and automobile industries, while managing to quadruple the national deficit with his record government spending spree. All this under the guise of "economic stimulus" intended to kick start the struggling economy.

The left's "green" agenda will soon be bringing a "cap & trade" carbon tax to a neighbourhood near you. Just what the economy needs - more taxes and higher energy costs.

But the One has also managed to put a stranglehold on America's ability to free itself of it's energy dependence on foreign oil, says Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson:

The Green Left must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources.

During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor’s executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil—especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on the grounds that (I kid you not) someone might catch a glimpse of temporary drilling equipment from the national park that sits more than a mile away.

[...]

In addition to increasing American dependence on foreign oil by thwarting such domestic development, the OPR/green alliance desires the imposition of expensive cap-and-trade rules to discourage utilities from using coal, which currently provides nearly half of America’s electricity.

Read the rest at FrontPage Magazine.

Corcoran: Capped, traded and scammed by fake markets

Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post:

Not that we needed proof that the ideology of market mechanisms and carbon taxes as a cure to environmental problems is a total sham. We now have enough evidence to convict the perpetrators for first degree economic policy fraud. The evidence mounts around the world, but now mostly in the United States of America, where President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are on the brink of burying real markets in energy and automobiles under the biggest command-and-control economic experiments since the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

RTWT.

Dem admits Cap & Trade is a Big Tax

"Cap and Trade is a tax... a great big one."



And that means BIG GOVERNMENT is coming to a neighbourhood near you. h/t FoxNation.

Consensus in Freefall

Senator James Inhofe explains how a carbon tax would punish the poor, how Al Gore is getting rich selling his global warming "whopper", the failed Lieberman-Warner climate change bill and how the IPCC's so-called scientific consensus on global warming is now in full freefall.

Obama to bankrupt coal

This video interview with the San Francisco Gate from back on January 17, 2008 surfaced yesterday at Naked Emperor News. In it Barack Obama says that he will use carbon regulations to "bankrupt" anyone who builds a new coal power plant.

"So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted."

Coal presently accounts for about 49% of US power production. Preventing construction of any new coal plants will only drive up the price of electricity as more expensive replacements must be implemented.

Not only that, but consider the effect these remarks may have in coal producing states like Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. These are battleground states, key states that are needed to win the election. And that's something that didn't go unnoticed today by Gov. Sarah Palin:

Palin told supporters to listen to the audiotape. “You’re going to hear Sen. Obama talk about bankrupting the coal industry,” she said. The Alaska governor also pointed to comments that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden made to an environmental activist, promising no more coal-fired power plants in America. Biden was videotaped, likely without his knowledge.

“In an Obama-Biden administration, there would be no use for coal at all, from Wyoming to Colorado, to West Virginia and Ohio,” Palin said.

and by Senator John McCain speaking today in Pennsylvania:

"My friends, you know what Senator Obama said about a year ago, he said he had not been a, quote, coal booster," he said, as the crowd booed.

"My friends, I've been a coal booster and it's going to create jobs, and we're going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. That's going to help restore the economy of the great state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

Never mind debating about greenhouse gases. Forty-eight hours before the election and the front runner says he is going to "bankrupt" the coal industry with carbon taxes. Just what a struggling economy needs!

One in seven voters reportedly remain undecided or willing to change their votes. This might just help them make up their minds.

Update: The Coal Tango.

NoCarbonTaxes.com

Dion: the green professor

Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, is off to a bumpy start to his campaign to become Canada's next Prime Minister. Party insiders are very concerned:

Behind the scenes, Liberals worry about a "loosey-goosey" operation that staggered out of the gate, minus an airplane, to sell a complicated Green Shift plan that bears the heavy stamp of Stéphane Dion, professor. Nobody seems to have even Googled the name to see if it was taken.

[...]

"Dion is in another friggin' world," says a Toronto Liberal MP. "I could go on ad nauseam about how he won't listen to anybody.

"He's not a political animal and he just doesn't get it."

Grumblings from Toronto, normally a bastion of Liberal support, has got to be troubling. To say that Dion is out of touch with ordinary Canadians is a gross understatement. Dion has made himself and his unpopular shifty green carbon tax a major issue in this campaign and these two things will turn out to be his biggest miscalculations.

In this time of high energy costs, Canadians are justifiably leery of any new tax that would be applied on all forms of energy because of the impact it will have on not only energy prices, but on everything that depends on energy in one form or another, i.e. the entire economy. Canadians are also justifiably skeptical of Dion's claim that his carbon tax will be revenue neutral.

Only Stephen Harper's Conservatives stand to gain from Dion's ill advised Green Shift plan.

Couple that with Dion's image as an academic elite who is out of touch and who accomplished absolutely nothing as Environment Minster in the last Liberal government and Dion is in big trouble.

Dion portrays himself as the "green" leader. Unfortunately for him, that adjective has more than one meaning. And the one that's starting to stick is not the one he intended.

Even Liberal insiders are asking themselves what the heck were they thinking when they selected the dark horse Dion as their party leader:

As the Liberal Leader begins his second full week of campaigning, one veteran MP said there is “a lot of soul-searching right now about what the Liberal Party did” in choosing Mr. Dion as leader.

The Tories already enjoys a significant lead in the polls. With a month to go, the big question is whether or not Stephen Harper can grab the big trophy and land a majority government.

After October 14th, the Liberal knives will surely come out and the green professor Stéphane Dion will become a rather insignificant footnote in Canadian political history.

They're off and running

It is no surprise, but it's now official - Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 14th to elect a new federal government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Governor General early this morning and this Parliament has been dissolved.

"Between now and Oct. 14, Canadians will choose a government to look out for their interests at a time of global economic trouble," Harper told reporters on Sunday after he triggered the vote.

"They will choose between direction or uncertainty; between common sense or risky experiments; between steadiness or recklessness."

Harper consulted with all 3 opposition leaders over the past few weeks and determined that none of the opposition parties would continue to support his minority government. The Governor General obviously agreed.

Harper has been described as opportunistic, and criticized for violating his own law that fixed election dates. The criticism is unfounded as the law provides for just such a situation where a minority government can no longer function. The opposition put the final nail in the coffin of this Parliament by indicating their lack of confidence in the Harper government in their recent meetings with the Prime Minister.

I expect Harper to focus the debate on Stéphane (the current leader of the Liberal Party) Dion's plan to introduce a new carbon tax, under their "Green Shift" proposal, described by conservatives as the "Green Shaft".

I t is usually describe on this page as Dion's "shifty green carbon tax", designed not to benefit the environment but to shift wealth from the energy rich provinces of the west to the rest of Canada (i.e. Ontario and Quebec). One Liberal MP even described it as a Green Anti-Poverty Plan.

Whatever you call it, this proposed carbon tax represents the single largest tax grab in Canadian history. And it's popularity with voters is not what M. Dion would hope.

When Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion announced his Green Shift scheme three months ago, he assured Canadians that “every single penny” extracted from consumers by his new carbon tax would be returned in the form of income-tax cuts or subsidies for “going green” — incentives for everything from home-insulation upgrades to gas-guzzler trade-ins. Mr. Dion also insisted his plan was “revenue neutral”: It wouldn’t raise the total amount of tax money taken in by Ottawa every year, but merely would “shift” the existing burden from income to emission taxes.

This seems more than a little dubious. If the plan were so great for consumers already, why did Mr. Dion feel the need this week to add almost $1-billion in annual subsidies for farmers, truckers and fishermen to offset their anticipated losses?

Moreover, if his scheme is truly “revenue neutral,” where is this new money to come from -- except through higher income or sales taxes on Canadian families or companies, which would blow the strategy out of the realm of “shift” and into the sphere of “shaft”?

As with any all-gain, no-pain promise from a politician, this one is too good to be true. Among Canadians, that was Green Shift’s problem from the start: Few could be convinced that Mr. Dion’s eco-friendly dream could be achieved at zero cost.

The campaigns have already begun and M. Dion is going to find his shifty green carbon tax a tough sell to voters. Expect him to be very critical of Stephen Harper to throw attention away from his big tax grab. Plus Dion is not widely popular in his home province of Quebec and raising taxes on energy will not help him improve there.

The Conservatives will surely focus on Dion's weak leadership and his deadly carbon tax. Couple that with Stephen Harper's consistently strong ratings on leadership and the economy and that should bring the Tories back into power after October 14th.

It's going to be interesting.