The Adventures of Sweater-Vest and Sweater Boy

Dion’s new campaign promise is that he’ll raise the yearly $1200 child benefit, one he fought so hard against last election, by 350 dollars a year. Apparently, the current $100/month wasn’t enough to buy both beer AND popcorn. He also called the Conservatives liars, a term usually reserved for the later stages of a campaign, but what the heck.  Dion said he can be distilled down to six words: CUT… INCOME…TAXES…SHIFT…TO…POLLUTION. Whatever. I dearly hope someone will have a clue what this guy is talking about before the end of this election. read more…

Elizabeth May Not

The big news today was that the leader of the Green Party will be excluded from the national debate again this time around. Three out of four leaders voted against her inclusion. In a news conferance she blamed it on discrimination (being the only woman being excluded by an all men panel, oh please) and called it undemocratic. If any group of people hold a vote and the majorioty wins, how is that undemocratic? That is the essence of democracy. The reason she’s excluded is twofold: she has no elected MPs, and she is colluding with the Liberal party in her Central Nova riding, where she made a deal with Dion not to run a Liberal candidate against her. Having her at the debate would have been like having two Libral speakers there. read more…

Canadian Shield covered in moss on the Beaver Trail in Ottawa’s west end

So I did it. I boycotted the so called “Live Earth” concert extravaganza. I doubt it made a difference. I doubt it made a dent in the huge profit mr. Gore stands to make from this whole endeavor, but at least I can sleep at night. I hope Al can, too. Quick calculations peg the profit of this feast to be in excess of 100 million dollars, excluding CD / DVD sales which will undoubtedly follow shortly. A number of hypocritical artists flying in on private jets, telling us to use less energy, and putting out music of questionable morality and quality, all organized by a man who owns four mansion-style houses with power bills so high, you and I would have to remortgage our house to pay them off. All watched by and listened to by a reported 2 billion people. Most of them genuinely believe that the human race is putting out too much CO2 and is destroying our climate. Eventhough ice-core records show that CO2 levels rise AFTER the temperature on earth goes up, it is, therefore, a RESULT of temperature change, not a cause. And the sad thing is, when temperatures beging to cool down soon (and they will, for the Sun has ended its current high activity cycle, and will head towards a cooler cycle), all Global Warming proponants will say “See? We started to curb our emissions and now we’re getting cooler!”. If the cooling will take a bit longer to set on, they will say “See? We were right, we’re warming up!” So whatever happens to the climate in the future, the Global Warming Fear Mongers will always be right: they have found the perfect climate loophole. It is the perfect business opportunity: you make money regardless of which of the two possible scenarios happen. Al Gore has clued in. I take it back: Al’s not the idiot, we are. For following him.

From www.friendsofscience.org comes this section:

MYTH 1:  Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT:  Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”).

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2:  The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT:  Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

read more…

Thanks to a team of US scientists we have now learned that “dark surfaces absorb sunlight while bright surfaces reflect heat”. (“Clean up your snow to fight global warming, Canada urged”, The Ottawa Citizen, June 11). We found that out the hard way back in the seventies upon returning to the vehicle after a hot day at the beach but I suppose none of these scientists ever owned a VW Rabbit with chocolate brown vinyl seats. They now want us to clean up our snow so it is a little less dark and a bit more white so it’ll help the fight against global warming. Good plan! But why stop there? There are tons of things around us that could be a bit whiter. We could all drive white cars, and outlaw that orange Lamborghini. We could paint all of our houses white, including the roofs. The roads could be white with black lines. Purolater and FedEx would be fine, but UPS would be out of business. No more black tie dinners. From now on, it’ll be stritcly white tie affairs. Get the folks at the nurseries to cultivate a new hydbrid grass that is white, or at least one that is a lighter shade of green. Our zoos would only house albino animals. Blondes would be better for the environment than brunettes. Yay Sweden! And lastly, we could slap a label “eco friendly race” on all white people, and “carbon generator” on all darker skinned races. This global waming nonsense has been going on long enough. Let’s get back to common sense.