The Backlash Against Global Warming

Just as climate change was sold to the people of the world with a song and a dance, and a very effective film by Al Gore, there is now a back swing among the amount of people who are skeptical of the idea of man-made global warming. Although the science was “settled” years ago, the attempt to get countries to implement policies which would curtail the emissions believed to cause anthropogenic global warming has been more difficult. That’s why the alarmist rhetoric from the global warming crowd has grown ever more extreme, in an attempt to coerce and frighten people into compliance, and allow the passing of policies without receiving irrefutable proof of the science.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article regarding Australian Senator Steve Fielding, who asked the Obama administration for evidence on the conclusive science of climate change. When he did not receive the kind of assurance he was expecting, Mr.Fielding has been trying to end Australia’s own carbon emissions policies until more evidence comes in. The Obama administration is bringing through the largest anti-economic legislation in the history of the planet on a cap and trade system that is ill-considered and quite probably unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the propaganda associated with global warming is stigmatizing. Much like the story, The emperor has no clothes, although few politicians and policy makers actually understand the science behind climate change, they don’t want to appear to the voting public as being unconscionable to such ideas. And so without fully understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing, they claim to be able to understand perfectly the reasons for it. Failure to comply has left leaders looking weak, inattentive to science, and ultimately against the future of their own species. Such judgments are usually reserved for those who do not believe in a deity, not a scientific theory.

The fact is that the tide against anthropogenic global warming is quickly turning. The Europeans have begun to dissent against the popular wisdom of the day, with some of the most strident voices coming from those who initially supported the theory in the first place. There are now 700 scientists who disagree with the United Nations IPCC, a number that is 13 times larger than those who authored the 2007 climate change summary for international policymakers. Nobel Prize winner for physics, Ivar Giaever, called it a “new religion”. For that is precisely what the punishment is for “heresy” against the science.

Although anthropogenic global warming doesn’t have to be discounted outright, a more honest and forthright assessment of the facts would be far more helpful than the IPCC rampant speculations and fearmongering. Temperatures have levelled off on the globe after having risen in recent decades, and been relatively stable since 2001 despite the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere. It may be that the hysteria involving global warming is not dissimilar to the AIDS pandemic, disproportionately attributing every death in Africa as being a result of the disease. Governments around the world have said that polar ice cap fluctuation, hurricanes, diseases, and forest fires are all related to the ubiquitous “climate change” monster. Shockingly, it’s a load of nonsense that even our federal government in Canada seems to have swallowed.

While the concept of fighting an invisible enemy might have seemed noble a few years ago, the economic meltdown around the globe gives people pause to consider why they should support a theory that isn’t proven, and which would be an enormous cost burden. Some people use language even stronger to describe the kind of policies that were driven through by populist politicians, like B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and his carbon tax, by arguing that this is a greatest mass scam pushed on the people of Earth in history. And the longer that people have to wait for a doomsday that never arrives, the greater that backlash is going to be against that scam.

Michael Ignatieff: Not Hot, But Also Not Not Hot

Jane Taber just can’t help herself I guess. In her session-ending “hot and not” appraisal of the goings-on in Ottawa, she surprises with a “hot” designation for the Conservative Party, which breaks ahead of the Liberals in two recent polls. Her “not” designation next goes to Michael Ignatieff and the boys for being, well, for being boys:

Not: Michael Ignatieff and his boys. Equal Voice, a national organization advocating for women in politics, released a poll last week showing 85 per cent of Canadians support efforts to elect more women to Canada’s legislatures. In that poll, conducted by Environics Research Group, 63 per cent of Canadians say that women are under-represented in the House of Commons. Women make up 52 per cent of the population and represent only 22 per cent of seats in the Commons. Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien used to say about women: “I like them at the table. They are good.”

I’ve never understood the idea of counting the gender and skin colour of our elected officials, particularly as such a thing is pointless in the context of political diversity. As in, who really cares what gender a person is when they’re articulating something important to all Canadians? It’s also disturbing to me that women are only ever under-represented in jobs that might be considered enviable. I’ve never heard anybody lament that women are “under-represented” in my field of work, construction, and that we should be placing quotas to ensure their proportionate increase in an area dominated by men.

So while Michael Ignatieff is “not” hot, both because of his chauvinistic ways for not magically increasing the amount of elected women in the House of Commons, but also by virtue of being the opposition in her “hot” designation for the Harper Conservatives, Ms.Taber ensures that we realize he isn’t too not hot, or otherwise not not hot, but perhaps just right:

Hot: Michael Ignatieff and Zsuzsanna Zsohar . Sean Williamson , who is a special assistant to Mr. Ignatieff for the summer, was forced out of his home by a fire Monday that gutted part of his condo complex. The Ignatieff/Zsohars invited him to move into Stornoway, the opposition leader’s official mansion in Rockcliffe Park, while his apartment dries out. Mr. Williamson says it will be tough to go back to “an unofficial residence” after staying at Stornoway.

David Akin, meanwhile, takes Ms.Taber to task for saying that the Harper Conservatives don’t have any “senior” women in the PMO. It’s strange that we should hear about a lack of prominent women in politics at a time that women have fairly dominated the news in recent weeks. Was it not Lisa Raitt who was implicated in an embarrassing loss of documents thanks to her female aide, Jasmine Macdonnell, and the subsequent and infamous lost tape recording involving another female minister, Leona Aglukkaq? The health minister even represented a recognized cultural minority in the affair, something sure to make the demographers happy.

As for Mickey I, Mark Collins has a post about liberal principles:

“Instead of hiding behind moral certitudes or accusations of fascism, we should, he urged, try to think like ethnologists.”

This Just In: There’s Nothing New Under The Sun

If I were to tell you that a recent poll showed that the Liberals had a slight lead over the Conservative party, you’d probably shrug your shoulders. And if I were to tell you that another recent poll showed that the Conservatives had a slight lead over the Liberal party, you might just yawn deeply, attempt to stifle it with your fist, but then resign yourself to spending the next hour napping on the couch. That’s pretty much the status quo in Ottawa’s gridlocked battle between the two parties, with either one sometimes ahead or behind the other.

A new EKOS poll shows that the Liberals have suffered from their little game of chicken with the Conservatives, putting the latter at a 34.8% approval among decided voters, with 32.6% for the Liberals. The EKOS standings:

Conservatives: 34.8 per cent.
Liberals: 32.6 per cent.
NDP: 14.3 per cent.
Green: 9.3 per cent.
BQ: 9 per cent.

Now what’s the most interesting about this poll being released is that it’s exactly where the Conservative support was on October 10, 2008, but with a notable change. The soft Liberal support that went to the NDP during Stephane Dion’s chronic hand-sitting, seems to have been restored to the Liberals. It is that change that appears to be the reason why the Liberals have done better lately, whereas the Conservatives have practically remained at a constant support since 2006.

Conservatives: 34.7 per cent.
Liberals: 25.4 per cent.
NDP: 19.7 per cent.
Green: 10.3 per cent.
BQ: 9.8 per cent.

Nik Nanos, meanwhile, has a poll showing the Liberals leading, but slipping in their own survey data. He suggests that the election aversion helped Harper in Ontario at the expense of the Liberals, since Ontarians are concerned about an election delaying economic recovery. Employment insurance issues, on the other hand, resonate more strongly in eastern Canada beyond Ontario. A notable quote:

Looking at the net impression scores for the leaders it’s clear that the Tories need to focus on rebuilding Stephen Harper’s brand in the province of Quebec and that the Liberals need to focus on defining the image of Michael Ignatieff – who still lacks significant definition.

Liberals: 36 per cent.
Conservatives: 32 per cent.
NDP: 17 per cent.
BQ: 10 per cent.
Green: 5 per cent.
[Undecided 22%]

But a significant aspect of the Nanos poll that is interesting bases the popularity of the two leaders based on regional polling. Stephen Harper scores very poorly in every region of Canada except the prairies, and is very far back in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Michael Ignatieff, by contrast, has a favourable impression everywhere except in the prairies, which means that the core support for Stephen Harper remains in western Canada. It’s an interesting aspect of the poll because it is assumed that Stephen Harper’s leadership “brand” is the strongest candidacy for the party, but I would argue that as time goes on, without significant improvements, this brand will wane, and his regional unpopularity will become more and more pronounced. Obviously a leader is generally not replaced without a loss in an election, since it’s sort of like pulling your goaltender while he’s winning, but in the case of Stephen Harper it would be wise to keep an eye on this sort of statistic.

Throwing The Book At A Desperate Criminal

In Iran, the protesters throw rocks at police, while undercover revolutionary guards shoot unarmed civilians.

In Canada, a woman throws a pie at Ed Stelmach and, apparently, “the damage to a democracy is great … when this type of action occurs”.

Uh, I guess so:

Political activist Lily Phan has been found guilty of assaulting a sheriff in an attempt to pie the premier, but she’ll have to wait two months to learn her fate.

Provincial court Judge Bill Cummings yesterday convicted Phan of assaulting Sheriff Hady Hammoud while he attempted to stop her from flinging pie filling in Premier Ed Stelmach’s face at a Stampede breakfast on July 9, 2007.

Phan, 31, was found guilty of common assault, assaulting a peace officer and assault while resisting arrest in connection with the attack on Hammoud.

I hear those banana cream pies are almost as serious as a Taliban-planted IED.