Moonbox

We're not going to be privatizing health care. That's such a taboo subject to Canadians and every MP knows it. Even if Harper wanted to privatize health care (which he doesn't), his MP's wouldn't because it would be political suicide. Watching people like you write stupid crap like this is funny. On the one hand, you're more than happy to toss brainless scare tactics like: Oh no, Harper's going to outlaw abortion. Oh no, Harper's going to cancel public health insurance. Oh no, Harper's going to impose martial law and take away our freedoms. In the same breath, however, you'll criticize HIM for his campaign's brainless attack ads against his opponents. Harper learned very quickly from his opponents how intellectually bankrupt the electorate is. It's no surprise people like you, on either side of the debate, end up being such political hacks.

That's certainly one juvenile, intellectually broken way of looking at it. Workers who can only find part time jobs are going to have to get used to the reality that life isn't going to be comfy and easy. The real good news is that the NDP won't get into the PMO anytime in the forseeable future.

This really made me chuckle. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I The Germans are famous for poor technical decisions and inefficient designs. You ask them to build you a wheelbarrow and they'd come back with a hydraulic lifter, GPS, a radio and a $1000 price tag. Also, unlike a normal wheelbarrow, you'd have to take it in for a tune-up every season. This is the kind of moronic dispy-doodle that people like you like to pull on us all the time. We need to reduce our carbon footprint, so let's eliminate the only source of economical clean energy that's available, replace it with wind/solar that operates ~35% capacity, and then use dirty energy to make up the shortfall, which will be pretty much always. Wyly, I know you're not so good with numbers etc, but try and get a clue about what it would take to generate our power by wind/solar. The fact that they've both been receiving massive subsidies for the last 30 years and still aren't a relevant part of our energy mix should give you a hint. New coal technology is also an idiot-trap. Anyone trying to sell you on the fact that it's cleaner or more efficient is still ignoring one thing. It's still, by far, the dirtiest source of conventional energy, by a long shot.

That wasn't straw man. Your critique of nuclear power was based on economics, yet you're supporting the expansion of the current, far less economical, renewable energy trend. Wind and solar are still nowhere near being on par with nuclear right now, despite the latter's massive capital investment costs. It's not even close, even if you ignore the fact that wind/solar are intermittent sources of power. Coal is cheap. It's the cheapest source of energy available. The only thing that could compete with it is hydro, which, although ideal, isn't feasible in enough places. Nukes are certainly expensive to build and have been mishandled in the past (ie. decommissioning/recommissioning shortly after), but they're still, by virtually all accounts, leaps and bounds cheaper than wind/solar. Your claim that renewables are now cost competitive is flat out not true. The only way anyone's able to make wind/solar look to be in the same universe in terms of efficiency to coal/gas/nuclear is to massage the numbers. The wind/solar proponents do things like add massive carbon footprint costs to coal generation, or huge decommissioning and disposal costs to nuclear (decades away) while also failing to factor in the short lifespans of wind turbines and their replacement cost. This, of course, ignores the main problem with the technology, which is that it never operates near capacity. Wind, for example, operates at an average of 35% capacity. When the weather isn't cooperating (most of the time), you have to fire up the coal burning plants again anyways, which, if you're comparing to nuclear, is a massive added cost that proponents don't account for. Agreed, but the technology is simply not there yet. This will be looked back at just like the bio-fuel boondoggle, where anyone who actually looked at it rationally could see that it was a terrible idea, but feel-good politics and short-sightedness allowed it to happen anyways. By all means, spend billions on clean energy, but spend it on the RESEARCH to make it FEASIBLE instead of wasting it on existing technology that we know can't even come close to meeting our energy needs and cost us a fortune. Germany is going to be the Euro zone's biggest polluter, by far, in the years to follow. The shutting down of these plants will yield two notable results: more coal burning and a bigger carbon footprint, and billions in squandered money as you mentioned.

That's moving the goal-posts, and a rather galling argument for environmentalists to make. It illustrates fairly clearly how non-sensical a lot of their positions are. How can you cricitize coal for being dirty, but cheap energy, and turn around and criticize nuclear, which is clean but expensive, and still FAR FAR FAR cheaper than wind/solar. It's hilarious watching environmentalists laud Germany for planning to shut down their nuclear reactors and to invest more in 'clean' energy, when the net result of that decision is going to be that they're going to burn more coal than ever.

I remember watching an episode of 60 minutes last year that looked into this sort of thing in the USA. Apparently down south there isn't any rules about insider trading for politicians. The basic idea here was that a Congrressman or Senator could be the deciding vote in something like approving the Keystone pipeline or whatever, load up on shares of the company before any decision is made/announced, and then vote the decision through and profit. The congressman or senator (I can't remember) that 60 Minutes was interviewing wrote up a proposal to make this illegal. He needed EIGHT signatures from his fellows to present it to the House of Representatives. He couldn't get those signatures. The Democrats wouldn't sign it, the Republicans wouldn't sign it, Obama wouldn't make an issue of it. His proposal fell flat on its face. That's how much we like getting screwed in NA.

That's a pretty good article Tim. It sums up a lot of how I feel about the subject.

Sleipnir, address his claim. Implying he's a conspiracy theorist is a juvenile and pointless counter. I could just as easily call you a brainwashed climate science sheep, but that doesn't get us anywhere does it?

uh..?

TimG, he said many of the measurements are. He didn't say all of them. That's the problem here though. Some of the model predictions are supported by recent climate effects, but then some of them aren't, and in some cases, the opposite has been happening. It's such a mixed basket that I don't know people claim certainty on these matters. The climate scientists themselves are getting surprised all the time. The Arctic ice is shrinking, but the Antarctic is growing!? Whaaat? That's also explained as a global warming phenomenon. Apparently Arctic ice grows or shrinks depending on temperature more than anything, while Antarctic ice depends more on wind patterns. I can accept this premise, because I don't know any better, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable about it if the climate scientists had predicted it in the first place rather than come up with an explanation after the fact. At the very best, it shows that these guys and their models don't understand the world as well as people proclaim. Even if I took the climate models and their conclusions faithfully as the Gospel, I would still see the current clean energy strategies for the disasters they are. They're prohibitively expensive both in materials, labour and land usage. To meet current energy needs we'd have to build so many wind turbines that you wouldn't be able to turn around in any direction without seeing one. It's THAT bad, and solar is worse, especially in Canada.

A broken clock is right twice a day. I'm not saying the models are useless. I'm saying the models aren't reliably and consistently making the correct predictions. The excuse is usually that we're only interested in trends, but you start to wonder how much time is needed to establish them. The models are fallible, plain and simple, and people need to stop believing they end the debate on how quickly the climate is changing.

Everything is the problem. Corrupt unions (an ancient outlet for organized crime) and corrupt politicians (same thing) both need fixin'.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I don't really have any firm convictions on the issue, other than that both sides have turned this into an dogmatic debate similar to Democrats v Republicans or Communism v Capitalism and that nobody knows for sure what's going on. What's difficult to understand for someone like myself is what the goal posts are. Are we concerned with world temperatures, or just the ice? Is it just Arctic ice that matters? If worldwide temperatures didn't really go up, is possible that the Arctic specifically has been going through a warming period? How does the melting ice affect ocean temperatures and sea levels and what interaction does that have with ocean currents and air temperature? Obviously I have no idea. I don't, however, believe that climate scientist even really know themselves. My skepticism on the subject revolves more around the fact that there haven't really been any accurate predictions yet, whether it be trends or more short-term, and a cherry-picking of deviation from the models. It's sort of like, "Aha! The ice caps are melting even faster than we said! This proves it! No...the fact that temperatures didn't rise overall as predicted, or that hurricanes have been decreasing in number/intensity as opposed to the predictions...none of that matters." The windmills and solar panels don't provide near enough power for their cost or materials to be worth it yet. They're also weather dependent. Windmills operate at 30% capacity usually, because there's often not a lot of wind. There was an article I remember reading showing that if people wanted to power New York City with just wind turbines, they'd have to devote an area 3x the size of Manhatten Island to just building wind turbines. That's not feasible on its own, nevermind the cost. Even if NYC was to reduce its power consumption by 50% (not happening) the space require is STILL not feasible, whether on land or on water. Solar is an even bigger mess.

Hehe. Quebec is like the Greece of North America. Corrupt, lazy, and needs subsidization from its neighbours to stay afloat.

My 'questioning the science' leads to the conclusion that we're making some really expensive and really bad decisions based on predictions that so far have proven unreliable. The computer models on which we've been making multi-billion dollar decisions haven't proven anything and haven't been able to predict anything accurately, which means that nobody has as good an understanding of the climate as they're trying to say. Sure, I believe we're warming the planet. How quickly, I'm not so sure. The world warmed by around 1 degree or something over the last 100 years or so and hasn't warmed much over the last 15 years. This leads me to believe that we have time to do more research, spend money on clean energy research (rather than wasting it on primitive, inefficient and ineffective tech in its infancy) and not blow our loads on feel-good inititatives that don't solve any of the underlying problems. Paying farmers guaranteed, hugely premium rates on energy generated by solar panels they install on their farms, which won't even have an noticeable impact on the grid, was the type of idiotic idea that resulted from climate hysteria. Politicians have been taking advantage of it for votes and then companies like Samsung have milked it for all its worth. How did Ontario end up with their finances in such shambles? $7B solar/wind deals that will be screwing Ontario taxpayers and energy consumers for a LONG LONG time is a good example of how.

While the climate 'scientists' have shown consensus, and I'll respect and believe their conclusions indicating more carbon in the atmosphere can lead to warmer temperatures, they've shown a fairly obvious inability to accurately predict much of anything. The timeframe has been fairly short, so that doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does shed some doubt on the hockey stick graphs and climate models showing us a doomsday scenario. Making multi-billion dollar decisions, like Dalton McGuinty's green energy plan, based on relatively near-term end-of-days predictions doesn't seem very smart to me, especially when any of the hard data we have for the last ~15 has shown the world hasn't been warming over that time.

Ontario has been run by incompetents or crooks for the last 10 years. Mike Harris made a lot of the cuts we needed as premier in the beginning but by the end of his term something funny was going on. Dalton McGuinty was the worst premier Ontario's ever had by a long shot. I'd rather have Bob Rae, and we all know what Ontario thinks of him. He spent and spent and spent and appeased the public unions at every opportunity, blew our wad on idiotic green energy initiatives and we were pretty much broke before the recession. Is it surprising that when the recession hit, we were totally screwed? Nope. Dalton McGuinty should be a case study for students highlighting the danger of nanny-state economics.

If you'd been much a part of this thread you would already know. Go back and read anything waldo or wyly has written in here. They're not the only ones, but they're among the most rabid on this forum.

I'm not sure you've been following this thread, but there are a few specific posters that rabidly label anyone who even questions the science as a 'denier'.

An admission that the climate models aren't as infallible as they want people to believe would be nice.

I wasn't supporting this kind of statement. You've pretty much nailed it. I was taking issue with the brain-dead tendency of people on this forum to demand support or citations when it's not necessary, either because the argument is weak and easily refuted or because it's just a vague, general statement that doesn't require one. Responses like the one I quoted show that the poster is either too lazy or too dumb to think up a real argument. Asking for links/support proves nothing unless someone's written something specific that the reader either has reason to believe is not true or just didn't know anything about and wants to learn about it.

Justin would crush Dalton in a leadership race. He'll also send the NDP back to the stone age in terms of results. His good looks and Papa Pierre's legacy is all he needs aside from the ability to not say anything really stupid. Watch and see. This was pretty much pre-ordained.

People need to stop asking for facts/citations for stupid crap like this. He's saying that we end up with a bunch of immigrant scumbags. He has given no percentages or solid facts. He's merely stating that there are bad immigrants. To ask for 'facts' to back this up implies that you do not believe that there are scum immigrants who make it into the country. Do you think that they're all top notch human beings? If you had a problem with his statement, then put it into words. He made an almost purely rhetorical statement and there's lots of things to question or criticize, but asking for facts to back up his hyperbole is dumb .

Well said Jerry.

I don't think the Quebec NDP MP's will be involved. They're too young and naive.