I’m sorry Canada, and the world. I’ve tried to convince my province’s public utility that there are huge benefits from dialing down the reliance on coal burned electricity, but they won’t listen. They haven’t even removed or updated a shockingly out-dated “Solar” page on their website that lists information that became obsolete a decade ago. There are such great advances in research, and cost expectations of renewable power, I can’t easily accept that the business people at the utility company are so daft. (They don’t even recognize that Spain’s in the northern hemisphere, so I shouldn’t be so surprised.)
I hope others join me in asking for the tangible results the “clean energy research chair” has brought the UofR thus far, as the province’s leading clean energy research facility. Ask the UofR how many windmills, and how many solar panels it has in research or in production. The answer presently is 1 windmill and 0 solar panels. There are farmers in Saskatchewan with more of each. Is the SaskParty government funding our universities so they can get into this very important area of research? Not really.
I’m hoping another recent letter to my MLA will help prod them along, but unless more people start to put some pressure on the utility company to modernize, I don’t think we’re going to be able to collectively do our part to limit Saskatchewan’s gross impact on air pollution and climate change. I’m really very sorry for not being more effective at such a crucial point in human history.
The Financial Post is the stupid-wing of the National Post. The NatPo manages to publish some actual news, while the Financial Post publishes misinformation that is there simply to anger and confuse people. That’s why I’m angry about their latest hyping of a stunt by climate change deniers like Tim Ball. (opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/)
Scientists have definitive new evidence that shows all but one of the world’s major ice sheets are shrinking.
The study, which will be published in the magazine Science on Friday, marks the first time scientists have come up with a way to measure the changing size of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica that they can all agree on.
Clearly one group is lying or horribly mistaken. Anyone with the Internet is fully capable of looking at modern photos of places on earth that should be well frozen, but are not. There’s no good excuse for choosing Ball and his ilk of liars out to delay serious actions that drastically cut air pollution.
What are some concrete actions that can change this situation? Stop buying the National/Financial Post until they start characterizing Ball, Heartland, and other misinformation peddlers as the Eco-terrorists that they are. It’s fundamentally wrong for the Conservative government to insinuate that David Suzuki is some sort of Eco-terrorist, and not be labeled that themselves. Tell your family about the seriousness of the situation, and that they need to start putting the needs of others on their agenda.
“You don’t have to convince me that climate change is a very real and present danger and we need to address it. [...] We would ignore it at our peril.” — Peter “POS” Kent. So, thanks for imperiling us until this point, jerk.
The Conservatives’ climate killing carbon nonsense is being mocked in the House too. Yet people in positions of some power to do something about our deadly pollution problems get little support from media who’ve thrown their lot in with ignorance long ago and peddle it to consumers as an acceptable political position.
The simple fact is again and again the press have cared more about a good story than the truth and not cared who they hurt #tabloids— Noel McGivern (@Good_Beard) November 28, 2012
Truthiness is a big, deadly problem:
“We just believe that the plastic bag has never been a problem for the environment.” [link added to make my point] That quote is from a literal Bag Man. ““We’re very happy,’ plastics industry spokesperson Joe Hruska told reporters.” Toronto City lawyers, afraid of being sued by the plastics industry, backed down and council buckled too. Instead of doing what was right, they did what seemed easy, to the detriment of our land, oceans, and our lives.
BONUS IMPERILMENT: For more brain cell killing stupidity from Canadian Conservative politicians, check this out: (http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/4135 Senator Greene-Rain embarrasses herself)
“The “CO2 is carbon” mistake is a common misconception, and it unjustifiably encourages people to view this benign gas as dirty, which indeed it is not.”
Why is there such passionate debate over climate change? It’s not like many global problems tend to inflame heated debate all too often at a local level, but climate change is different because it’s such an old and unresolved serious problem. When acid rain was destroying forests, swifter action was taken to reduce the damage. Climate change, caused by global warming greenhouse gases from burned hydrocarbons, is not as small a problem as the still massively destructive acid rain. Perhaps the industries affected by acid rain legislation learned in the interim how to resist the changes that made them pay more to pollute.
Climate change is a well supported scientific fact, yet there are many people who remain skeptical to an unreasonable extent. It’s healthy to be skeptical of all facts, to a point, as curiosity leads to further discovery. It’s unhelpful to be perpetually skeptical after reasonable efforts to test alternate theories have been exhausted, or if the test poses too dire a risk. Imagine if you were skeptical of the scientific understanding of gravity. You theorize that on Tuesdays after a full Moon, you have a chance of surviving a fall from a 15 story building. That’s an unreasonably dangerous (and foolish) risk if you test that theory.
Why are people passionate over their unfounded and risky theory that climate change is not a threat to civilization or themselves? There are many reasons, but to list a few:
Job depends on fossil fuel industry, and they see a threat to their income if the required economic and lifestyle changes to reduce pollution are adopted by the masses.
Religious belief depends on undermining scientific understanding of the world.
People or media they respect experience one of the two pressures mentioned above, or another misleading influence.
Some people on the Internet, known as trolls, will take ridiculous positions simply to irritate and provoke other people to respond to them.
Feeling can supersede thought, so once someone feels a certain way about a subject, it is very difficult for rational discussion to change a mind which would otherwise respond to new data.
You have to wonder why people would oppose the understanding of a theory that predicts catastrophe if we continue on the Industrial Revolution’s course, unchanged. Isn’t humankind’s strength its ability to adapt to changing situations and new information? Isn’t it better to use advance information, rather than wait for disaster to befall some of our peers (or ourselves) before learning to take another route? The answer must lie in psychology and sociology.
It’s become fashionable for people to oppose (or present) climate change information in a passionate, emotionally charged manner, because the debate is not winnable through the presentation of facts alone. Too many people have a poor understanding of climate change, and are proud of the position they’ve taken. To step back and examine the facts would mean emotional discomfort which people tend to avoid if a situation does not appear to require immediate action to resolve it. Since climate change is a multi-decade building crisis, ‘immediate action’ rarely describes how people respond to the problem either individually, or as a nation (or globe).
What can be done to change the negative reaction skeptics and climate change deniers have toward this problem? I’m not sure scientists can out-reason the passionately misinformed, or environmentalists can outspend the misinformation machine that is well funded by the richest corporations and CEOs in the world. It’s a battle to win hearts and minds, and hearts need to be won quickly before mislead minds can start joining those working for solutions to our pollution problems.
How do we win hearts though, and convince people theirs won’t break by setting our society on a search for an economic system that can give them comfortable lives that don’t rely quite so much on hydrocarbon energy? Building systems that people can buy into, and pollute much less with, is one obvious approach. Do we have enough time? I don’t care, I’m still going to try.
Everytime you hear "job-killing carbon tax" repeat after me "climate-killing carbon nonsense." #QP#cdnpoli#climate— Elizabeth May MP (@ElizabethMay) November 01, 2012
It’s a national disgrace that 18 months after the criminal phonecalls that ruined the 2011 election, there have been 0 people charged with the fraud of misdirecting voters to fake polling locations. The urgency to solve this just isn’t there in Elections Canada or the RCMP, even though we know the browser session for Prescott matches the one used by Poutine.
There’s also no plausible reason to use the same proxy for legitimate robocall setup, as Poutine did, yet that’s something that Prescott’s computer did as well. Since he took paymentfrom Conservatives for the legitimate Racknine robocalls, we can assume that he was at the computer while the legitimate logged calls were programmed.
Sona, supposedly has limited technical knowledge, and was not among the people authorized to access the Conservatives’ CIMS database phone list. He was picked as an obvious goat when Poutine was discovered by an EC investigator and the media. If you recall, Sona had interfered with a Special Poll, causing quite a scene that made national news during the last election. So while he’s probably not directly involved in the RoboCon fraud, he did set himself up to be the goat by being the Guelph Cons’ special poll vigilante and making a name for himself in that manner.
Guelph Cons (and even the Libs there with their CRTC violating unidentified abortion issue call) certainly were a lightning rod of controversy and/or crime last election. Yet the most serious crime there, and across the nation, is unpunished. It’s a national disgrace. At least we’ve not devolved to arresting opposition leaders yet like the Americans, eh?
The largest hurricane recorded is underway, and it’s hitting the US and Canada. Is it because of climate change? The short answer is, yes. If you’re asking that question because you’re wondering if climate change is real, the answer is, yes it is real and we have to make a better effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution immediately.
Science is not a topic suitable only to a limited number of people. It’s essential that our political leaders, and our people understand it enough to make long term decisions that don’t jeopardize our health and safety. Presently, the debate is too charged with rhetoric paid for by people who have no interest in science, but have found a willing audience who gladly take hold of the escape that denial offers. You only need to read the people raving about socialist plots in my own blog’s comment sections to find people so deranged and out of touch with the reality that can literally blow them over and flood their city.
I attended Hedges lecture at the UofR on Thursday night, and I think most of the crowd was impressed as was I. He did get a standing ovation when done. Then he took questions. Here is some of what went on in Tweet form (reverse chronology):
A south Sudanese woman who studies at #UofR is thanking #Hedges for his coverage. He tells a story of being there, for a bull slaughter, a big honour. The Sudanese he visited with were gossiping negatively about short people. Then they realized #Hedges was short, and they felt so bad. The next day they went and found a Sudanese pigmy and insisted he get a photo with him so #Hedges would feel tall.
Paul, a student, asks about Tom Mulcair and the NDP. Crowd laughs. Also mentioned Lang and O’Leary video which crowd applauded. #Hedges
Goldman Sachs has bailed out every penny on the dollars and done 0% interest loans; it’s not capitalism. #Hedges doesn’t know what it is.
Government under-funds what they want to destroy. #Hedges says humanities in university are withering. Question and think. #uofr
China looking to buy a Canadian oil company. #Hedges notes iPhones are constructed using slave (“prison”) labour (making 22 cents an hour in some jobs).
$2.5B spent on US campaigns of Obama and Romney collectively when it’s done in November.
#Hedges lives in Princeton with his Canadian wife. He doesn’t have a TV. (I spoke with him after to mention The Real News because he’d not listed it when asked for good independent media, and he said he’s doing something with them again soon. He also doesn’t use Twitter (and seems to have a low opinion of social media as a whole, causing distraction and benefiting the surveillance state which takes a dim view of those who don’t toe the corporate line).
#Hedges at #UofR is saying #NDAA must be already used for illegal detention. Otherwise they are planning on using it, probably to arrest and hide away some dual citizens. It’s logical conclusion of recent appeal outcome. @d_seaman
This article is going to be fun during an upcoming election campaign, so I’m making sure that it doesn’t disappear if the website it is on goes away.
Wall muses about changes to resource royalties
The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012 7:34AM CST
Last Updated Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012 7:40AM CST
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is musing about adjusting the way the province collects money from companies that extract natural resources.
Wall says companies should have royalty stability especially after they’ve spent billions investing in the economy.
But the premier also says it’s important that taxpayers are properly compensated if in 20 years potash production has doubled.
The current complex system is based on price rather than volume and Wall says it needs to change.
However, the premier says it could be years before the discussion gets into any specific detail and there might just be some tweaking rather than any major adjustments.
Wall also says the province and industry will work together to avoid what he calls “royalty shock.”
“We’ve said that to companies that in the long-term we’re going to have to adjust as we go forward. Doubling production in Saskatchewan in 10 or 20 years is a game changer and that should be reflected in a number of things,” he said Wednesday.
Former Alberta premier Ed Stelmach took a lot of heat over a decision to revisit energy royalties in that province.
Stelmach aimed to strike the right balance of maximizing revenue for taxpayers without driving the price so high that drillers look elsewhere. But a rise in royalty rates following a 2007 report brought outrage from the sector and a drop in drilling.
Wall says that’s not what he has in mind.
“This is not what Alberta did. This is not a unilateral ‘We’re increasing royalties,”‘ said Wall.
“We’re going to have to re-adjust so stakeholders have the stability they need and the taxpayers can be kept whole. Because if we’re producing more potash and selling more potash, but making less money, that doesn’t make much sense.”
The Opposition NDP said a fair schedule for standard, independent reviews is no risk to stability. But it added musing out loud that a review is being planned could raise concern and cause instability within the potash industry and the resource sector as a whole.
“Letting it slip that a review might be brewing behind closed doors is likely to make our partners in the resource industry feel much less secure about investing here,” said NDP resources critic Cathy Sproule.
BP isn’t repairing the damage it caused in the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, it was easy to predict that. Enbridge didn’t clean up the huge spill in Wisconsin. Yet these sorts of companies get billions of dollars in government subsidies, despite huge profits they are allowed to keep even though they cost the government billions in lost economic potential from destroyed environments.
Oil companies have become the worst neighbours imaginable. They party all night long, keep bonfires going all night, trash the neighbourhood, and if you call the police on them, the police come to your door instead. They also ran over your pet duck, and blamed you for not keeping better tabs on it.
Designed as expiring news on a Friday in the middle of Summer, instead of last Winter when the report on his alleged guilt was complete, these charges come a year too late. Bruce Carson was accepted into the Prime Minister’s Office and his personal influence circle despite previous fraud convictions. Why? Because the PMO wants to learn from people with experience in the realm of conning and oil huckstering.
If you want to catch up on who Bruce Carson is, and why he’s so important to exposing the rot in the Prime Minister’s Office, you simply must read some work by The Sixth Estate.
In March, it looked to me as if this day wouldn’t come. So, what changed? I’m not sure, but I’d like to know. And I’d like to see the RCMP start laying Elections Act charges when Elections Canada fails to act in a timely manner.
