Front page news today in Holland’s arguably most left newspaper De Volkskrant: “Scientists shocked by attack from minister Cramer” after Holland’s environment minister Cramer said she would not accept “any more mistakes” in the IPCC Fouth Assessment Report.

After freaking out at the glacier mistake last week (“Politicians Furious After Yet Another Blunder in the IPCC Report“) , the minister could not accept the IPCC report made such a huge mistake by reporting that 55% of The Netherlands is below sea level, when in fact it is 26%. (The additional 29% is at risk of flooding from rivers). Of course, the leftist newspaper quotes a number of scientists that claim it is merely an honest mistake.

The newspaper adds:

Climate sceptics see this mistake (on one of the three thousand pages in the report) as proof that the IPCC is operating unscientifically.

Minister Cramer is calling for a thorough enquiry. Her fellow party MP Samdon is going further in calling for a resignation of IPCC boss Pachauri.

It is heartening to see that even leftist politicians in Europe are starting to question the IPCC report, even though we’ll have to wait longer for the media to follow suit.

FEB 5 UPDATE: The Dutch government has now officially asked the IPCC to explain their numbers.

What good is an Economic Dream Team, if you either 1) Do not take their good advice, or 2) take their bad advice?

Protectionism (“Buy American Only“), of course, cannot be a part of any sound economic plan: an economist will be the first to tell you international trade is the backbone of the global economy. All of our economies are too much intertwined to extricate one of them, let alone the largest one. Protectionism is the death of your economy: one cannot ween off one’s largest supplier without affecting one’s largest customer if they happen to be the same. In the case of America, Canada is their largest supplier but also their largest customer. We are their biggest supplier for over 300 billion dollars of stuff every year, and we are their biggest customer with over 248 billion dollars a year (2007). For Canada, American protectionism means: less sales means less money to buy. Very simple. Your exports go down and so will your imports. Protectionism only harms your own economy, unless you can produce all your goods domestically.

So, if Obama’s “Dream Team” came up with this doozy it’s a “Lousy Team”, and if he went against his  ”Dream Team”, why have a “Dream Team” at all?

You may not like the Obama-Mia surrounding the inauguration today, and you may not like the policies the man stands for, but you have to agree today is an historic day. It is not because of his message of “Hope”, it is not because the MSM says it is, but simply because black people in America have finally been accepted as genuine Americans. As much as Obama himself didn’t want to make it about race, and to his credit he hasn’t, it is of course about race. You can’t escape it: he represents the underdog, the blacks of America.

The people voted for “Hope” in these hard economic times, and that is a fairly superficial reason: what is wrong in America today, of course, goes deeper than mere jobs or mortgages. There is still an appalling inequality between rich and poor, black and white. I hope “Hope” extends to relieving that inequality.

As much as Obama-Mia grinds on my nerves today, I will listen to the radio at noon. It is an historic day. Can he live up to the hype? Probably not, but like it or not the man sounds and looks like a breath of fresh air.

And maybe that’s all that’s needed.

Obama has teamed up with Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar winner Al Gore to, once and for all, change the climate back to where it once was, damn it! Changing the Earth’s climate? Sounds like a bad James Bond plot to me. Gore, for all his help, does not want a cabinet post, though Obama is rumoured to have offered him Secretary of Propaganda. “The Time for Denial Is Over” they proclaimed. So is the Time for Common Sense, apparently.

Holland (or: The Netherlands) have come up with a “brilliant” new strategy to spend their climate change fighting $15 Billion/yr budget: they are now going to pay companies in Brazil to not cut down trees. And you thought our politicians were wacky.

Elizabeth May, yes that one, has been spotted in Poland on the UN Climate Change conference, officially titled “14th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Fourth Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol” – sheesh, I guess that’s one way of weeding out those pesky climate change deniers. She says in her blog:

Everyone with whom I speak is heart-broken that Canada’s government has been so unhelpful

and

I hear that the youth delegates burst into tears – from many countries around the world – when news reached them that the Canadian Prime Minister was hanging on to power by shutting down the Parliament. 

Proving once and for all that she’s a certified nut-case.

She’s peddling her book “Global Warming for Dummies“. I guess she thinks that, besides the Canadian electorate, Poles (what do you call people from Poland?), the UN and indeed the world, are stupid as well.

Bob Rae, one time Liberal Party Leadership Racer and bankrupter of the Province of Ontario, was very un-democratically pushed out of the top lines of the party this week. After claiming the country could be taken over by another PM without a vote, and then claiming the opposite when it came to his own job, the Liberal caucus decided that Rae was a liability, and they’ve had enough liabilities over the past two years. Out he goes.

And Stephane Dion, after being fired from the Liberal Leadership position (is there any other word?), has decided to launch a new series of books in the “For Dummies” style, called “Do You Think It’s Easy?”, in order to generate enough revenue to pay off his extensive leadership race debt. The first in the series is titled “Do you Think It’s Easy? – Making Priorities”. A second one is in the works called “Do You Think It’s Easy - Home Videos – Part One: Focusing on your subject”.

Yes, we need more special days to celebrate the 434th European, or 1,674th citizen of the World to “discover” America.