The Most Important Thing You Need to Know About Climate Change

CBC Newsworld: Passionate Eye

It's serious – Attenborough says stop climate change - Times Online

Does "climategate" Matter

After all if the deniers didn't have hacked e-mails to misinterpret and distort they would just make something else up.

The Truth About Climate Change

For the real truth about climate change go to the best source on the Internet:

DeSmogBlog: Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science

Climate Change Is A Hoax

How do I know this. I heard some of these climate scientists being interviewed about their computer models and it turns out they are all based on AlGoreIsms.

The Carbon Tax - A Lost Liberal Opportunity

A carbon tax is a good idea, if done properly. The Liberal Carbon Tax Plan is a bad idea for a number of reasons. The carbon tax plan adds another regressive consumption tax to the tax system while reducing the amount collected from individuals and corporations through the progressive income tax system.

According to the Liberal Party brochure “Liberals will cut personal and corporate taxes by billions of dollars a year. “

The brochure also states “Liberals will tax pollution in Canada for the first time by putting a price on Greenhouse Gas emissions that cause climate change and fuels like coal and natural gas.”

This amounts to a consumption tax on goods produced, relative to the amount of greenhouse gases created in their production. It adds a cost of pollution to the cost of production. That is a good thing. But it does it by adding a new consumption tax and making the overall tax system less progressive.

The irony of that is the lost opportunity for the Liberal to actually live up to their abandoned campaign promise to abolish the Goods and Services Tax (GST). To be more precise, the Liberals promised to replace the GST, but apparently were unable to find a suitable replacement. Well here it is folks.

Replacing the GST with a carbon tax would provide a huge incentive for corporations and business to provide goods and services in a more environmentally sustainable fashion. It is such a simple idea, one would have thought that even the Liberals could have thought of it.

But there is another major flaw in the Liberals plan. The liberals state that the new carbon tax “won’t include any extra tax on gasoline at the pump”. What does this mean. The message given by that statement is that gasoline (and diesel fuel) prices will not rise as a result of the carbon tax. If that is so the plan completely misses the point.

Greenhouse gases from transportation fuels are a major, if not the most important part, of the problem. The fact that we transport goods that could be produced locally thousands of miles, adding megatonnes of pollution and greenhouse gases to the environment is an environmental crime against humanity.

Ironically at a time when our local manufacturing industries are suffering, the Liberal policy specifically excludes a measure that would provide enormous reductions in environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while providing thousands of jobs in local communities.

But “The Green Shift” is a nice slogan, even if they did have to steal it from someone.

Actually Not - Al Gore

Click image to enlarge
Today’s editorial cartoon in the Ottawa Citizen may not have been intended to be taken seriously but only meant as a lighthearted comment on the current "cold spell" but it still reinforces the stereotype that there is a good side to global warming.

The truth is global warming is ruining Canadian winters. I grew up in Northern Ontario. I know what a Canadian winter is supposed to be like - cold with lots of snow. It only became abnormally cold when it hit 40 below and then you just added more layers and went out to play.

The fact is global warming is wreaking havoc with our winters, ruining our fun and costing us money and lives. Recent years have seen a change from winters of primarily cold and snow to a predominance of up and down temperatures, with rain and freezing rain and drizzle rather than snow. I remember a couple of years in a row when almost every week early in the week we would get nice snowfalls and look forward to a weekend of cross-country skiing only to have it rain on Friday ruining the weekend.

But the excessive amounts of rain and freezing rain due to global warming not only ruins our fun but costs us money and lives. These conditions require the use of much more road salt that we pay for once as taxpayers and a second time as drivers as our cars rust out faster. It also costs us in automobile damages as accident rates increase, not to mention the injuries and lives lost from those accidents.

And, of course, growing up in Northern Ontario before global warming we never had “ice storms” that are becoming much more frequent with economic costs and more lost lives.

There is no good side to global warming. Al Gore would not be amused.

Should Carbon Offsets Be Mandatory

My wife and I are planning to travel to Vienna for our 30th anniversary, which means we will be flying. Although our specific plans are not made yet, I decided to see what the cost of carbon offsets for our return flight would be if we flew via Air Canada to Frankfurt return. At economy the flights would cost about $2700 and the carbon offsets approximately $40 (about 1.5 % of the cost). The carbon offsets would pay for a reforestation project that would supposedly offset the carbon released into the atmosphere by our share of the flights.

The problem with carbon offsets is that they can be used to buy off your guilt and to justify to yourself that your carbon emitting activities are not part of the problem. You can drive the gas guzzling SUV and take the overseas vacations and buy your way out of responsibility.

The other problem is that we need to reduce our carbon dioxide emitting activities at the same time as we undertake the kind of environmental projects, such as reforestation projects, that the carbon offsets finance.

But the fact is that some people are just not going to care and will refuse to limit their carbon creating habits, while those that are environmentally conscious are still going to have to travel by automobile or air at times, even if they consciously limit such travel.

The best way to do our part is to reduce our carbon emissions as much as possible and offset those we cannot reduce with environmental projects such as reforestation. Carbon offsets are one way of doing that, and they should not be limited to the voluntary contributions of the environmentally conscious.

Carbon offsets should be mandatory and built into the cost of air travel, gasoline and other vehicle fuels.

NewSpeak Environmental Economics

According to an article on the CBC website:

Canada remains committed to the principles of the Kyoto protocol, but meeting its promises on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would require taking Canada into a recession, Environment Minister John Baird said Thursday.

Appearing before a sometimes hostile Senate environment committee in Ottawa, Baird said a Liberal bill calling for the government to honour Canada's commitment under the Kyoto treaty is "bad economic policy" that would result in 275,000 Canadians losing their jobs by 2009.
...

The economics just don't add up," Baird said, and warned that gasoline prices would jump 60 per cent and natural gas prices would double.

There is only one way to make it happen: to manufacture a recession."
...

I do not know what definition of a recession the Environment Minister uses but it is not the one I was taught. In a recession economic activity and productivity declines as does employment, disposable income and spending. This inevitably leads to a reduced demand for energy such as gasoline and natural gas. The Minister thinks this will lead to an increase in the price of gasoline and natural gas. I do not know what definition of the law of supply and demand the Minister uses but it is not the one that I was taught, that requires a reduction in price in response to a decline in demand.

I suppose, given that level of understanding of economics, we cannot expect the Environment Minister to understand the economic benefits to be gained from a more energy efficient economy driven by new environmental technologies that will be in high demand by countries and economies that understand what the disastrous economic impact of failing to act on global climate change will be.

I suppose we should be thankful that Mr Baird is not the Minister of Finance.