Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Great Way to Lower Earth's Temperature

Rather than reaching an agreement on making "carbon credit" transfer payments to developing countries, lets just call previous aid payments "carbon credits". That's gotta be good for, what, 2 degrees Celsius.

We need to be careful not to apportion too much past aid though. We don't want to lower the planet's temps too much. I'm thinking changing the name of "aid" given by the West from...say... 1986 onwards should be about right. Should cool things down in a jiffy.

However, in order to keep temperatures up in really cold places like Winnipeg and Edmonton, a portion of Canada's aid given will be withheld from the accounting.

UPDATE: Due to the incredibly strong demand by folks in Winnipeg and Edmonton to raise their respective temperatures, it's been decided that not only will a portion of Canadian past aid be withheld from the accounting, a group of Western Canadians will actually go to various developing countries and take back the aid we have given.
UPDATE II: Great ideas in the comments. Heck, we can solve "global warming" today, right here!
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Friday, December 18, 2009

"Meaningful Deal" Reached In Copenhagen... At the Hands of THE ONE

How do we know it's "meaningful"? Obama said it is so. And so it shall be written.

We've reached the epicenter of leftist media nirvana. Where AGW fever and Obama worship meet.
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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Easy Way To "Warm" the World Average Temps: Leave out Siberia

The brazenness of the manipulation is almost comical. The Russians are saying its weather stations (a lot of them) showing cooling or lack of warming, were simply left out of the global temperature accounting. Kate has it all.
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BBC Interviews Computer Programmer on Released CRU Coding - It's Not Reliable

A chilling interview (by the BBC...yes the BBC) with a computer programmer who's gone through the released coding from the CRU. To think that trillions are riding on this is the scandal of the century.

In short, the coding is an absolute mess and inherently unreliable. The video is brief, watch it all.
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Sunday, December 13, 2009

Reaction to Climategate Tells us More About AGW Than Climategate Itself

To not be at least mildly skeptical in the face of that which cries out for further answers, is to have a faith based belief system.

The shaky fundamental tenets of AGW, the unreliable modelling, the actual evidence contradicting the models, the natural warming and cooling cycles of the planet left unexplained, the incestuous relationship between the UN, key AGW scientists, and "science reporters" all with highly politicized motives, and not the least of which, the emails themselves, cry out for skepticism, if not a repudiation of AGW.

That there are so many who lack even a modicum skepticism at this point, only reifies the concerns that AGW is a politicized and dogmatic belief system that has precious little to do with the objective search for the truth via a dispassionate scientific method.
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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Richness of the Day

Several posters at Macleans Blog have been following their brethren in the MSM in serially posting on the Afghan Prisoner issue. I've been asserting that this is a pet left wing issue that doesn't move everyday Canadians.

The latest post at Macleans is one mocking Hillier's quote in the post title: "I Haven't Followed It". How fitting for all the wrong reasons. You see, Macleans has a feature on the right side of the blog page, which tracks the "most read" posts.

Notwithstanding the incessant coverage on this issue there, not one Afghan prisoner post is among the most read. It seems Macleans readers' response would be the same as Hillier's:

"I haven't followed it".
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Friday, December 11, 2009

On Retribution

Retribution – even violent retribution - has long been part of our way of life. The extent to which retribution is accepted, or at least understood, is very much dependent on the context of the antecedent offending actions. In our beloved sport of ice hockey, for instance, when a player takes a “cheap shot” against another, we condone or expect a swift violent reaction ranging from a counter slash of the stick to the immediate dropping of the gloves. In such instances thousands stand round cheering on the beating of the instigator (if he’s on “our team” that is).

Moving up the scale of retribution we see instances of violence done to others out of jealousy (a less accepted form) where one partner will cause harm to another caught in the act of cheating. We see that it is wrong but we are not surprised or shocked that it has happened. Then there are instances of vigilantism or emotional defense. I cannot imagine the prospect of my young child being molested or intentionally harmed by another, but I have no doubt that if I caught the perpetrator I would do severe violence to them. I imagine that society in general, while acknowleging the theoretical wrong of commiting violence to another, would sympathize with or at least understand my offending behavior.

War is an altogether different matter. History is replete with examples of one side exacting horrific revenge on the other side. The Russians retaking the Eastern front from the Nazis gave rise to thousands of instances of unspeakable acts of atrocity. Not much has been written about it, as history has appeared to recognize the scope of the antecedent instigation, noting that all is fair in love and war. In the Serbian conflict, under the watchful eye of UN observers, countless acts of barbarity ensued, much justified as revenge. We cannot condone savage revenge done to, say, a colonel in charge of rounding up villagers and having them shot because they had the misfortune of being Croatians in a Serbian region, but if that Colonel is later captured, hung upside down and stabbed a thousand times by the villagers (as happened to Mussolini), we understand.

Which brings us to the Taliban. A more barbaric group would be difficult to find. The savagery they inflicted on the populace while they were in control rivals anything mankind has done in a millenia. Women being stoned, gays hung, “impure” actions met with torture and death, an entire class of young women essentially banned from public life. Since being driven to the caves and mountains their barbarity has continued, with the routine targeting of innocents, including bombing groups of poor children seeking candy from UN soldiers.

It is in this context that we find our Canadian MSM reporting of allegations of mistreatment of Taliban prisoners.


Not by us, mind you. By those who’ve been suffering unimaginable acts of horror at the hands of the Taliban.

In a sane media complex, free of partisanship, and absent a base desire to oust a government they consider unworthy of leading due to its unacceptable political stripes, the real story behind the Taliban’s captors would be their incredible restraint.

Yet, in a society which cheers the violent pummelling of a defenceman for the grave infraction of a trip from behind, we suddenly find ourselves being asked by the left leaning media to ignore the context (which ignoring is aided by them not even pretending to report on the occasional Taliban barbarity as a semblence of “balance”) and rally as a country in outrage for the “mistreatment” of the Taliban.