Moonbox

That's better. We qualify jurors for a completely different purpose and for a completely different reason, and the fact that you even used this as a counterpoint is a pretty good indication of how poorly you thought it through before writing it. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device, genius. That's embarrassing. Regardless, I never said that 40% was the vast vast vast majority. I said that the vast vast vast majority of voters are uninterested and ignorant about politics, and often too dumb to know either way. 40% of eligible voters not showing up to the polls is a pretty good illustration of how uninterested the average Canadian is in general, and if we assume a full spectrum of varying degrees of smart/interested voters all the way down to the people who are too dumb and lazy even to show up to the polls, it's really not much of a stretch to guess how informed most votes are.... The only thing that will make democracy work better is a better educated and more engaged electorate. Most of your suggestions are just plain dumb and won't work for a host of reasons. Your problem with the system is that the elections don't turn out the way you like, so you complain loudly to anyone willing to listen.

Hey don't get upset when you get a smart-assed answer to a stupid question. That's your example of something dumb voters vote for? Except there'd be virtually no way to fairly 'qualify' voters in such a system that wouldn't introduce various demographic biases, not to mention the constitutional and legal debacle it would entail. Not me, but that wasn't my point. The 40% of the population that doesn't vote was merely meant as an illustration of the furthest end of the dumb and the lazy on the spectrum of eligible voters. The difference between some of those that do and don't vote is sometimes as simple as the weather, or whether the poll was really close to home or on the way back from work, or whether there was a lineup when they showed up.

What do you think it means eyeball? Do you think, MAYBE, it was for rhetorical effect? What does "as extent as you say" mean though? Could that be poor command of the language? It looks like it, but that's not what we're here to argue, is it? There's no erosion. It's always been that way. If you were a student of history (painfully clear you're not) you'd have over 2000 years of historical examples confirming the dumb and the ignorant voting for all sorts of outrageously and obviously stupid ideas and the people proposing them. Voter turnout is already pathetically low. The 40% of REALLY stupid/ignorant/apathetic people who don't vote would be joined probably by another 15-20% who couldn't be bothered with learning anything about the issues.

eyeball it has nothing to do with what they desire. It has more to do with cynicism and the knowledge that the vast vast vast majority of voters are uninterested in politics, ignorant about what's going on and often too dumb to know either way. An electorate full of suckers is doomed to get screwed over and over, and this will never change until people realize that spending 30-45 minutes a week fostering even a small amount of awareness of the goings-on in their country is time better spent than watching American Idol/Dancing with the Stars or reruns of the Big Bang Theory.

They do have the memory of gnats and under the right circumstances will forgive almost anything. You know this and everyone knows this. Will people forget this? Perhaps or perhaps not. It's hard to say. It's more a matter of whether or not something more interesting comes along. You only need to look at Dalton McGuinty's record of incompetence to see how quickly people forget. John Tory's self-destruction in the (2007?) Ontario election showed just how easily things are forgiven if there aren't better options. That said, if momentum continues on this course, and the scandals continue to pile up, eventually Harper will be crushed under the weight of them. Harper's base (Alberta and hard-righters) aren't going to go flocking to Trudeau.

He didn't derail the thread. Your tried to with you exaggerated sense of indignation. As far as personal attacks go, asking you if you're lying or just boneheaded is about as tame as it gets, especially when he followed it up with a direct question to you related to the topic and then a further clarification of his position, all of which you chose to ignore in favour of calling him out for his "outrageous" personal attack, and reposting forum rules. At least he was still trying to have a topic-related argument. Did you have a response for his main point, that health care is a provincial responsibility, or not?

I didn't say he proposed a timeline. I asked you about that. I said he proposed that tapping the tar sands would spell 'game over' for the climate. He goes on to explain that the tar sands contain enough fossil fuels to increase atmospheric CO2 by 120 ppm and that there's 2x the carbon in the oil sands as all of the oil ever burned in human history. In as provocative terms as possible, he's trying to get people scared about Alberta oil and telling everyone that Keystone approval will herald the apocalypse and ruin our children's future. It's a statement directly meant to scare and misinform the stupid. The fact that he brought these numbers up at all is irrefutable proof that he's not trying to engage people honestly. The type of numbers he's proposed here are almost literally impossible, near term or long term. Again, I urge you to avoid any discussion on the economics of the issue. You have, literally, no clue. 'Unfettered market enabling infrastructure,' might seem like a really impressive talking point you dug up from whatever website you read it on, but simple Econ 101 concepts come in to play here. 'Unfettered market enabling infrastructure' doesn't take Alberta oil production from the current 1.8 billion barrels produced per year to the colossal increases that would be required to make even a noticeable dent in the oil sands reserves. There's neither the demand for that much oil, nor the capacity for Alberta to increase production that much, now or anytime soon. I am more than happy to go over those numbers with you, but I my intuition tells me we'll see another dodge. No, I was never forceful and I've literally always been on the opposite side of the debate from you on this. Your frustration and desperation are really starting to show! I can't think of any other reason you'd start making up positions for me! My position on this was made clear many times before. The current treaties (excluding BRIC) will not serve to reduce emissions and will fail. Emissions will continue to rise rapidly regardless of whether the G8 and pals honour the treaties (I still contend they'll balk), because countries like China and India are increasing their emissions by margins FAR FAR beyond whatever reductions the USA or G8/EU can manage. You know all of this already, however, because we've beaten the topic to death. You're attempts to suggest otherwise are, once again, a sad attempt to misrepresent what I say. It's kind of funny actually. For all the criticism you're throwing around about me not being willing to substantiate my opinions (I've already told you I'm not going to get into a detailed argument about climate models because I don't understand them well enough to do so), you're not only doing the exact same thing by dodging my simple questions about realistic numbers regarding tar sands exploitation, you're also blatantly and knowingly misrepresenting my positions and lying about what I've said in the past. What pathetic new low will you next turn to...."hey"???

Pot, meet kettle. Let's go over Hansen's tar sands timeline again. Oh wait, you keep dodging that one. I'm not sure what else to call him. Let's see how many more times he gets arrested....hey? lol My emotional meltdowns? Lol...sure...As for your devotion to the topic, I don't think we'd have to look far to see how prolific you are on other threads devoted to the subject. What did Simple call you? Yeah...I'll state again that exhaustive walls of texts and quotation/citation battles don't actually win you the argument, although you seem to think they do. and again, quite obviously, you're dodging and refusing to actually go over simple numbers with me. You're more than happy to say massive expansion, but you're completely unwilling to go over the numbers that would quantify such a statement. You're happy to initially present scenarios where the tar sands would add 120 ppm of carbon to the atmosphere and tell us how scary that is, and show us frightening charts, but when asked what sort of massive (and unfeasible) expansion it would take to get there, and what timeline we're looking at, you petulantly throw it back at us saying that's not the point. Hansen presented those numbers, and so did you, not me. It's a perfect example of the type of scary rhetoric you excitedly and smugly show us, and then have to back-peddle on when you're called out for your BS. First of all, I've never been 'forceful' in recognizing the need for emissions reductions. Despite my misreading your earlier statement (touché), you're still making that up in another one of your smug 'got ya' attempts. I've never accepted the doom-mongering conclusions of Hansen or yourself, and my support for emission reduction agreements that move jobs out of the country and to BRIC instead (thus just outsourcing the emissions) is virtually nil. Similarly, I'll not support suspending tar sands development or expansion either when it simply means other dirty sources outside of Canada will be become viable (ie Venezuala, Russia etc). For various political and economic reasons, I'm much happier when some of the money stays here rather than go to Comrade Chavez. The idea that suspending tar sands development in Canada will make any meaningful impact to emissions targets is just flat out wrong when there are so many easy alternatives outside of Canada.

So...again...you're not willing to qualify your brilliant and trained scientific perspective, right? Yeah. That's what I thought. What you're asking for here, essentially, is for me to engage in a scientific debate with no qualifications of my own, against someone who has none himself, and pretend like it's going to be a productive discussion. As I'm not an expert on climate change myself, I leave my criticism to the understanding that computer and mathematical models are only so good as their inputs, and gentleman like Hansen are working with limited (sometimes incorrect) numbers and often poorly understood variables. Add the fact that the globe hasn't warmed at all for 15 years (wasn't predicted as far as I know), and how is it surprising that anyone's skeptical about this? The fact that we have to look at longer term trends might be easier for people to swallow if guys like Hansen weren't out there saying idiotic things like the tar sands = end game, or coal trains are death trains and various other headline-worthy sensational statements. The only thing that's hilarious here is how badly you wet your pants any time someone raises questions about the claims of an a-hole like Hansen. It's sad and a little pathetic how much time you're devoting to it, but it's pretty obvious that this is an overly emotional subject for you. I don't have the knowledge or understanding to have a meaningful debate on climate models, you're right, and that's precisely why I'm not prepared to do it. You, on the other hand, are more than excited to get into it, yet as far as you've been able to tell us you've zero qualifications yourself. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned before, having more time on your hands (than the rest of the board put together it seems) and obviously more emotional interest in the subject does not make you an expert on the matter! Exhausting your opponents into letting you have the last word also does not equal victory! You keep refusing to go over these numbers with me. Neither of us need to be scientists to follow them. For Canada to burn through even 50% of the tar sands over the next 50 years, we'd have to expand production by 1000% and supply half the world's current oil consumption. At present, best estimates are that we'll be able to increase Alberta production by another ~2.5 to 3 million barrels per day by 2020 (seven years from now), which will still leave us about 43 million barrels short of the daily production required to burn through those (not conservative at all) reserve estimates by 2063. Not only are these goof projections you and Hansen are hypothesizing logistically unfeasible, they completely ignore the fact that there's not going to be a market for that much Canadian oil anytime in the foreseeable future! Hansen's not going to tell anyone that, however. It's not a good headline!

You could tell us that you do not, indeed, have the scientific background that would be required to have a detailed and meaningful discussion on the mathematical models or projections. I certainly don't, so asking us to have a debate on them (on an internet political forum no less) is another one of your typically moronic "citation please" sort of fall-backs. The models and predictions have needed constant updates since 1988 and the understanding of them is not nearly as good as you or Hansen like to pretend. Well gee, another dodge. Quelle surprise! I've read plenty of Hansen's comments on the subject, including his 'end game for the climate' article in the NY times from last year, where he told us how dangerous it would be to 'fully exploit' the tar sands and release the extra 120 PPM of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (the amount equal to the total CO2 increase over the last 150 years). The graph you're presenting speaks more to the nonsense that you and Hansen are spewing than anything else. Again, I'm asking, what sort of timeline are we looking at for burning through the type of reserves that Hansen is theorizing, and what sort of expansion in development will it require from the 2020 levels of 1.8 billion barrels a day? Good back-peddle. So I guess we can conclude that the chart is complete BS and that the tar sands are, as argued previously, a pretty small piece of the puzzle despite Hansen's scary numbers. There we go. That's basically what we're looking at. I question you on my "championing on the need to reduce emissions with almost unfettered zeal." You made that up!

So...that's what? The 5th time you've dodged the question now? Can we just firmly take it that you have no qualified background on the subject material? LoL. That's what I said. Why are you parroting me now? Yeah we've had this discussion before. I mocked the initiative and how much waffling is going on and how little success they'll ultimately have. You disagreed. Let's leave it at that. Thanks. You've given me a perfect example of the type of fear mongering and idiotic exaggeration people like you and Hansen are prone to. By 2020, it's estimated tar sands production will be about 1.8 billion barrels per year. Tell us, genius, how long it would take to burn the 170 billion of proven and viable reserves available now, or better yet, how much production would have to increase to burn through all of it by 2050. Let's go back to your OIP numbers now and find out how long it would take to burn the 1.8 trillion. Yeah. That's what I thought. Pretty dumb.

This is pretty simple stuff to look up. The 'viable' tar sands reserve stands at about 170 billion barrels. The world consumption of oil is about 30 billion barrels a year. If we burned all of that at once, that equals about the same amount of oil consumed in the last 6 years ONLY. Considering that oil doesn't even account for 50% of world CO2 emissions per year, and considering that the world has burned FAR FAR FAR FAR more oil than 170 billion barrels over the last 20 years alone, the chart seems like a steaming pile to me!

Save face for what, exactly? I'm still waiting to find out what your scientific qualifications are. If you have none, as it appears just say so already instead of continually dodging. As it stands you've avoided the question about 3-4 times already, yet you seem to think you have a very solid understanding of mathematical models and such... A dodge? That's rich coming from you! As for his policy suggestions, this was the beginning of his eco-crusade, wasn't it? Really? Where did that come from? You and Hansen seem to think that blocking Keystone will somehow put the breaks on the project. It REALLY won't. Yeah, neat picture. The part showing that the portion of the oil sands that will 'become' economically viable is a nice touch. By 2020, it's expected maybe 3M barrels/day will flow from the oil sands, which would take us about 50 years to use the 170 B reserve that will likely be viable. By the way, would you care to tell us how 170B barrels of bitumen production somehow equals the same carbon footprint as all the carbon ever burned by humans? World oil consumption is about 30 billion barrels a year, so unless the oil sands burn 10000x dirtier than estimated, I'm not so sure about those numbers! The moral argument on this means next to nothing. Your opinion on it means even less to me. Voters are more interested in their wallets than your vague concepts of morality. Oh I make no absolute claims on climate science. My position has long been that it's not understood nearly as well as experts (and people like you) like to claim! This is just a really good example of a variable that wasn't properly accounted for in the modelling. The science is still in its infancy.

If that's what it takes to make you feel smart, go ahead and think that. So are you dodging the question because you actually have no scientific background to understand the material in question, or is it something else? Reading a lot of articles on the subject and beating the subject to death on an internet forum doesn't actually mean you understand the mathematical models you're discussing, or their conclusions. ...presented in as alarming a fashion as possible. Tar sands = End Game for climate. He could see the headlines as he wrote it. He's a smart guy. He knew his audience when he said it and the conclusions that would be made. The best part is that large amounts of the tar sand reserves are so difficult to extract that they won't be worth tapping anytime in the foreseeable future or perhaps ever. Hansen didn't find that relevant, however, because he was more interested in making the numbers sound as big and scary as possible! Weren't we just talking about the tar sands? Hansen should stick to environmental models, and away from economics. If the tar sands are already viable without the pipeline, which they are, the pipeline being built or not will, at best, briefly slow development. Without that oil flowing in the markets freely, the prices will go up and only make the tar sands more and more viable. That comment had nothing to do about the science. I was commenting on the unrealistic and brain-dead proposals stemming from climate treaty negotiations which would had zero chance of meaningfully reducing emissions for economic reasons alone. That's right! You still don't seem to understand the self-defeating logic of those requirements, but you're not really interested in the common sense behind it. You're here more for the self-righteous and smug feeling you get for beating this argument to death! lol nobody seems to really know WHAT the effects are! Black carbon absorbs, others reflect, the satellite data relied on before proved inaccurate etc etc etc....It's one of the many areas of the science that isn't all that well understood!

It seems you missed the joke. Unsurprising. Poor choice of words then, sorry. There was never any intention on my part to suggest he was ever against nuclear. It's one of the few subjects I can agree with him on. Ah, we're back to this. What was your scientific background again? I've read less about it than you have obviously, but from what I have read from the newspapers (not climategate websites as you would imply) is that his B and C scenarios were the closest, but they weren't accurate, and the assumptions made to generate them turned out to be incorrect as well. Thus, as far as predictions go they weren't very useful. This in itself isn't a discreditation of Hansen's scientific acumen. He was working with primitive models (relatively speaking) and limited information. The problem with it, however, is that he used that to vehemently promote specific public policy changes and he continues to do so with certainty on uncertain and unreliable models ("Oops we didn't account properly for the effect of aerosols"). The tar sands are already viable and become more and more so as traditional oil sources are depleted. There's really no debating the economic side of this, and blocking the Keystone Pipeline won't shut down Alberta bitumen extraction. I don't claim the need is anywhere near what Hansen is projecting, and I 'bemoaned' the moronic and self-defeating policy suggestions promoted by the UN and supported by 'expert' economists like you. If you're serious about reducing carbon emissions, policies should be aimed at that alone, and not at moving money around (ie wasting it on currently unviable solar/wind technology or on wealth transfers to the third world). I don't get the point of 'hey' at the end of your sentences, first of all. I also don't have a lot of faith in Hansen's projections that the world will be 3 to 9 degrees warmer by 2050, given the rate of growth we've seen so far and the previously underestimated ability of the climate to absorb heat via aerosols etc.

So I guess you're not a PhD then. Good to know. I said nothing about Hansen's support for nuclear other than that at least he's not like most of the eco-crusaders in denouncing the only clean and reliable source of energy we have outside hydro. In terms of examples of exaggeration and alarmism, I'm not sure why you keep asking. People have brought them up over and over again and your canned 'citation please' response doesn't really count as an argument. The fact that he's getting rich doing it doesn't seem to matter to you either. His 1988 predictions, as already stated, were perfect examples of alarmism and exaggeration. The fact that he hedged his bets by presenting low-end estimates along with the high-end doomsday ones that he primarily focused his rhetoric on doesn't make him any more reasonable. It just means that he's clever enough not to put himself in a position where his predictions can be categorically proven wrong. Another good example is his position of the Keystone pipeline. He starts off by telling us that fully tapping the oil sands (he calls them Tar sands lol) will spell "Game Over" for the climate. He knows that's what's going to get printed in the headlines, but then he proceeds to tell us that this is a long term outlook (beyond several decades) and that it entails burning all 340 gigatons of the carbon buried in Alberta, which is flat out impossible anywhere in the forseeable future. Hansen's not interested in telling us what the realistic impact of the oil sands is, he's only interested in telling us what would happen if we were somehow able to magically burn it all out into the atmosphere over the next couple of decades.

Waldo forgive me, but I can't recall what your work/education background is. You're a PhD in climatology and not just some guy at his computer ideologically obsessing over a topic, right?

That's probably the only thing I respect about his 'politics'. He's at LEAST dropped the purpose defeating opposition to nuclear, which is a start. His exaggerations and alarmism, however, has pretty much tuned out of what he has to say.

It's not fair to say at all. We're a federation. Each region elects a representative so that we get a fair representation of the needs of vastly different areas and people. The people who complain about this are usually just frustrated because their candidate loses or they don't understand the system.

Although I don't seem to agree with eyeball very often, I have to say I'm totally with him on this. It's almost tragic that after 35 years of divisive politics and/or corporate croneyism (let's face it, there's been almost no noticeable differences between Mulroney, Chretien, Martin and Harper) we're going to end up with more of the same BS with Trudeau steering the ship. With smart candidates like Garneau and Martha Hall Findlay in the running, it's pretty pathetic that Canadians chose the dumbest, least qualified and most divisive candidate among them -- all on the merits of a name and a pretty smile.

Rogue state is a fluffy cliché that, much like the term 'neocon', has been so often and so badly misused/exaggerated that it's now meaningless.

If there's not enough work to sustain the population, absolutely. I imagine, however, that cutting off the public teat from these lazy parasites will have numerous positive effects. Higher wages for seasonal work would potentially be one of them. I'm very glad for you. That's just suuuuch a stupid comment. It hurts everyone who pays into EI when seasonal workers abuse it every year. If not for them, hard working and contributing Canadians wouldn't have to pay such high EI premiums. We're working harder and paying extra so that losers can goof/laze around all winter. For someone who says he's been following politics since his teenage years you certainly have a pretty lame grasp on reality. It doesn't cost the government anything? Really!?? Well duh. Nothing costs the government anything. It's ultimately working Canadians that pay. I don't think any better about seasonal workers abusing EI anywhere else in Canada. Read the thread title, however, and you'll realize why we've focused on the Maritimes.

Very well said. That pretty much exactly sums up what I know about the public sector.

We can't comment on something if we're not from the East Coast? Does that mean that Quebecquers can't comment on the Oil Sands, or that Maritimers can't comment on anything outside their little world? Sorry, that's really dumb. EI for seasonal workers is REALLY not hard to 'comprehend' either, so get a clue. I hope your feelings aren't too hurt. The only reason EI is sustainable is because the people who don't abuse it put far more money into it than they should have to so that perennial seasonal works can laze about all winter while the rest of Canada works. The contributions these seasonal layabouts make are tiny fractions of what they take out, and the rest of Canada doesn't appreciate that.

If seasonal work had a rate adjustment to cover the increased cost, they'd have to pay probably something like +30% of their income as an EI premium. If that's what you're advocating, then it would probably just be a better idea for them to save 30% of their income to have something to live off over the winter. If they're not getting paid enough to do that, then those jobs aren't worth having. An industry that needs public hand-outs to survive is not worth anyone's dime.