ReeferMadness

Depressing thought. Sounds like people are generally too stupid to survive over the long term. I hope you're wrong.

Ridiculous. Do you understand the difference between evidence and proof? There is mountains of evidence to support the notion that CO2 is a net negative. I asked you for any evidence (not proof) that it is not. You've provided none because evidently you have none. Of course everyone has biases - and that includes the power engineers you claim agree with you. Anytime you consult an expert on any topic, those experts have biases. Do you ignore them all or just climate scientists. Debating you is just like debating anti-vaxxers. They tell me that mainstream medicine is is biased towards selling pharmaceutical products - and there is some truth to that. But they ignore that the naturopaths and the makers of "natural remedies" also have biases and are also there to make money. So, you need to be able to evaluate the available evidence and take a position on risks and rewards. Most normal people would side with the experts unless they understand the science well enough to knowledgeably disagree. Since you were clearly unaware of the nitrogen cycle or the fact that NOx occurs naturally (which I learned about Grade 5), you might want to brush up on your science knowledge before you take a position contrary to almost all of the experts.

You claimed NOx was pollution and CO2 wasn't because it occurred naturally. NOx also occurs naturally - some is produced by lightning but most is produced by bacteria. Go back and read it again. I didn't ask you to prove a negative. I asked you for actual evidence to support your ridiculous claim. Instead you come back with the old "all the scientists are in a big conspiracy" story. You can't find anyone with any credibility who will tell you what you want to hear so you invent some tinfoil-hat theory to explain it.

Good or bad??? Well, Tim, we know that we are changing the atmosphere at a pace that is extremely rapid compared to normal geological timescales. And we know that rapid climate changes are associated with mass extinction events. That's because organisms (and that includes people) can only adapt so fast and within limited parameters to changes in their environment. So, that doesn't sound too good to me but hey, maybe you can find a way to profit from it! But hey, what is good and what is bad? If Canada's agriculture benefits from a longer growing season but 200 million people starve to death in Asia, do you consider that good? If the result is a war involving China, India and Pakistan (all nuclear armed), is that still good? Why don't you tell us what is good and what is bad.

I'm tired of this nonsense. Defend your statement. Tell us why you are smarter and more knowledgeable than thousands of climate scientists.

If that's true, why did Trudeau phone Suzuki to ask for an endorsement?

<face-palm> NOx is part of the nitrogen cycle, which supports plant growth. NOx is produced naturally by lightning strikes, forest fires and microorganisms. Like CO2, NOx becomes a pollutant when there is too much of it. Citation? I mean aside from the usual cranks supported by the fossil fuel industry.

Hmmm.... So, how was it that smog was reduced and the water made "swimmable"? Was it done by politicians burying their heads in the sand and pretending the problem didn't exist? Was it done by finger pointing and waiting for someone else to do something? Or was it done by setting standards and holding people accountable to them? Maybe we could use those same methods to reduce GHG's.

Another 'dog ate my homework' excuse. On a per capita basis (the only fair way of looking at it), Canada is in the top 3 worst in the world. We don't need to wait for China to cut its emissions.

You're right. It's hopeless. Give up.

Wow. You're analysis is soooo brilliant. How do you do that? Taking seriously scientists who've spent their lives work studying climate and who warn against carelessly changing the chemistry of an unbelievably complex system upon which all life depends is almost exactly like predicting end times based on a literal interpretation of a 2000 year old book crafted mostly in riddles, translated from an obsolete dialect of a foreign language.... No, wait. Your post is completely ridiculous. Sorry, my mistake.

It gets worse than that. If you happen to believe that rapture depends on a war starting in the Middle East, how does that affect your policy? Maybe you take a hard line and encourage Israel to not compromise?

It is for the religious fundamentalists that are running Canada (and were running USA)

Agenda? You mean the nefarious agenda to save people from themselves? To avoid calamitous climate changes that will likely result in mass dislocation and starvation, likely resulting in war?? That agenda? Perhaps even triggering collapse of civilization as we know it? Is that the agenda you mean? Pretty devious, that environmental movement. That agenda won't be achieved within mainstream politics either. Not in North America anyway. As to whether things change, that's a tossup. There are a few ways out of this. A major weather shift could wake people up and change the conversation (although a major drought in California seems to have no effect). Or a significant breakthrough in battery/storage technology could be the tipping point for rewewables. Solar is already cheaper in much of the world than fossil fuels and is still dropping. Regardless, though, this doesn't bode well for the future of our species. It's pretty convincing that when our long term interests collide with short term interests, the short term wins out.

There's nothing to turn around. Suzuki would be the first to acknowledge that while the Liberal plan falls well short of what is needed it still beats the Harper plan of making excuses and doing nothing while emissions keep rising. One gets the sense that Harper doesn't believe that climate change is even happening - almost like he's a fundamentalist Christian or something.

And he left a much, much larger mountain of debt when he was done. Go back and look at the records. Mulroney left a debt roughly twice as large as the one he inherited. He didn't make the tough decisions - he left that to the Liberals.

Are you kidding me? Mulroney added more debt than Trudeau, despite Trudeau being PM much longer.

Oh, for gawd's sake. Just admit you made it up already.

If any of Harper's buddies were targeted, you can bet they would have made a big deal of it. So, I assume there were none. What crap-ola. If the government were serious about it, they would change the laws to make it less easy for these people to avoid paying tax. They've had no compunction inserting clauses to cut environmental laws and increase the power of police in 800 page omnibus bills. If they didn't go after offshare tax havens, it's because they didn't care to. And the most obvious reason they didn't care to is that the people who cut them thousand dollar cheques are using those offshore tax havens.

Not to mention the hundreds of billions under Mulroney?

Cite definitely required. Where did you get that from? The Onion?

You mean like the kind of economic damage that will be felt when the rest of the world moves clean energy and we still have an economy built around digging the dirtiest oil out of the ground? Honestly, I worry people will come to associate Alberta with stupid. While Norway has built a sovereign wealth fund worth hundreds of billions of dollars, Alberta gave its resources away to the oil companies and lowered taxes. Albertans are going to wake up one day and find all they have left to show for the trillions of dollars worth of oil is a giant wasteland in the northeastern part of the province and a huge fleet of dual-wheeled pickup trucks and oversized camping trailers. But hey. Having no sales tax for a few decades will make it all worthwhile.

Does it matter? You've already made up your mind. Harper has made it OK in Canada to ignore science, the same as he's made it OK for to make the type of bigoted comments that seem to be very common on this forum.

But it wasn't fraud that Harper was targeting. It was charities educating the public. Harper has never exactly been a fan of information. Or science. And it's interesting that the flow of money into offshore tax havens is still going gangbusters as Harper is cracking down on charities. I guess it's all about priorities. Harper doesn't really care about collecting taxes because he doesn't think there are any proper roles for government except to send people to war or send people to prison.

Good rationalization. I'm sure that heroin pushers say the same thing.