RNG

As I posted above, did you incorporate input energy?

Are you trying to say there wasn't a serious attempt in a part of Toronto, IIRC, to have Sharia law instituted? And turning a blind eye to that is truly scary.

So you're saying they didn't try? That is about as scary as the 9-11 was done by the CIA fanatics.

Be careful. You may get what you wish for.

With respect to General Motors, (I don't use GM because so many radicals just assume you mean genetically modified), a US based board I frequent with guys who watch these things very closely, bitch like crazy about the fact that Gen Mot have paid back Canada, but still owe the US billions.

And here it is, the true story. They have been stealing from us for the recorded history of Canada. I really want another referendum. I'm retired, on a fixed income, but on my own dime I'll travel there to campaign in favor of separation.

The most damning evidence that women should never been given the vote. :) (Please note the tongue-in-cheekiness of this post.)

And to the best of my knowledge it is still debatable whether corn ethanol is a net savings when you look at input energy requirements. Brazilian sugar cane ethanol works, various bio-diesels work, but corn ethanol is a big questionmark, other than US government pork bills from rural states.

No, just the NEP. And that is enough for me to wish that he burns in hell forever.

People don't fear the long form. But three of my friends had to do the long form last time. And each of them cursed it to no end. They considered it incredibly intrusive, and didn't trust the government in their claims of it being confidential. As anti-Harper as I have become the last two years, eliminating the long form is a good thing.

Well damn, you're right again. So both my chem prof and Wiki lied to me.

So you're really looking forward to Sharia law being imposed in parts of Ontario?

I will admit that the name sucks. But I guess you will just have to color me a LibertariCon. And I'm proud of it. I only object to the Con part if you assume I think the government can tell people who they can and can't play hide-the-wienie with. And other screwed up family value and fundie religious stuff. (Note the great self control in that last word.)

One of the scariest stats I know, and in fact I didn't believe it when it was first presented to me is that over 1% of the US population is behind bars. And apparently over 50% are drug related. I don't know how many of those are simple possession busts, but many people on a US political message board I visit say the US needs to abandon it's current war on drugs. It is ineffective and horrendously expensive.

Plus I do not believe a tax break is a subsidy. I think taxes are an anti-incentive.

You are half right. According to Wiki, leaded gas was developed in 1935. So my second year chem prof lied to me. I did read the original paper and the research was funded by the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaded_gasoline

I worked in the oil industry all virtually all my life. What great government/public expenditure? Unless you are one of those who consider a tax cut as giving money. The money doesn't belong to the government. It is either mine or a companies. The government just takes money away. The only government funded energy industry funding I am aware of was the US government funded a research project to improve octane ratings of fuel during the second world war when it became hard to produce the good gas that high powered aircraft engines needed. This resulted in the infamous leaded gasoline.

The following is something I calculated about two years ago. Data used was as up to date as possible at that time. Scary stuff. Like most people, I have been watching oil prices very closely, trying to figure out what is going on, and perhaps more importantly what is going to happen. And I have been thinking more and more about fuel cells and the push for a “hydrogen economy”. I have spouted off a few times about there not being an economically viable source of hydrogen several times. But ongoing talk about fuel cell powered cars, an aggressive advertising campaign by GM, and just my general interest caused me to do the following. ***Most of the numbers input here are from Wikipedia.*** There are 243 million passenger vehicles in the US. (2004). For ease of calculation, and probably viable given the growth in the past four years, lets say 250 million. 250 X 10E6, each driven 12000 miles and getting 25 mpg all divided by 365 = 329 million gallons a day of gas consumed. Interestingly enough, after all that thinking and math, I Googled “gas consumption” and got several hits in the 320 to 330 million gallon per day result. But I figured I’d show off a bit and include this analysis. Now a more thorny problem. What is the efficiency of a current car. I couldn’t find good data for this. One article talked about a modern internal combustion engine being 40% efficient, but I think it was referring to flywheel output on a test bed where there was no other drain on the output, not even an alternator or water pump. The best I could get was an estimate for passenger diesel engines of 22% for “source to wheel” efficiency. Let’s use that. Now, for the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells. When I started looking at that I was very surprised. They generate a lot more heat than I had thought. Their equivalent to a flywheel efficiency is thought to be 60%. But on top of that, apparently they need pumps and blowers to work so the actual output efficiency drops to about 45%. Then Wiki says the electrical controllers, motor and power train all consume some power. Wiki goes one step farther and factors in the energy requirement to compress the hydrogen gas fuel and arrives at an overall source to wheel efficiency of 22%. How is that for coincidence. Sure saved me a bunch of calculations. The net result. You would need exactly the same energy equivalent of hydrogen as of gasoline to move the same mass the same distance. Gas energy content varies slightly from batch to batch, source to source but is fairly close to 34.8 Megajoules per liter. So you would need 34.8 X 3.79 l/gal X 330 X 10E6 = 4.35 x 10E10 Megajoules per day of hydrogen to replace the gas. Wiki also tells me that electrolysis of water is about 60% efficient. So you would need 7.25 x 10E10 Megajoules of electricity a day to make that much hydrogen. Wiki also tells me that the largest nuclear power plant in the US has an ouput of 1.25 gigawatts. My physics text tells me that 1 watt-hour is 3.6 kilojoules, or 1.25 gigawatts for 24 hours is 1.25 X 10E9 X 24 X 3.6 X 10E3 = 1.08 X 10E14 joules or 1.08 X 10E8 Megajoules. So, 4.35 X 10E10/1.08 X 10E8 = 403 You would need the total output of 403 nuclear power plants to replace gasoline with hydrogen for the US only. If electric batteries get to the point where they would be practical you would still need 243 nuke plants to supply the electricity, just to replace gasoline. This doesn't include diesel or jet fuel.

Several economists have published op-eds that it is good for the economy. Several here have published opposing views. I have tried to follow this. The Feds really push it, but I'm just cynical enough to suspect it is to give them more control, they get it all now, rather than any altruistic motive. But the major flaw is the out and out lying the government did in it's implementation. You know, just like Harper did on the unit trust things. I'm retired now, but if we don't have a decent independent candidate in my riding, I will, for the first time in my eligible life, not vote in the next election.

the most recent one was the imposition of HST here in The People's Republic of British Columbistan.

I don't know if I'd call it uncomfortable. IMO, the less government does the better off I am, usually.

Yes, increased CO2 levels means increased heat absorption. But we are talking a poor absorber increasing from 200 parts per MILLION to 350 parts per MILLION. At best a small fraction. And where do you get your timeline. CO2 is absorbed by every plant and is disolved into the oceans. Water is in the atmosphere at the WHOLE PERCENTAGE level and is a way more efficient absorber. So a small increase in the steady state water content of the atmosphere would have a way, way bigger effect.

Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001. Most reports on the results are positive. Here is a clip from an article, with a link to the full story. Or google "Portugal drug laws". Included in the article but not shown below, is that incarceration is way more costly than treatment, and with less fear of imprisonment, more addicts accept treatment. The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise. The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html#ixzz10l6xgiku

The only thing keeping us from an election is that neither the Libs or Cons have had any significant lead in the polls. If one or the other gets a good lead in the polls get ready to vote again.

A few years ago I read a column, probably in the Calgary Herald which explained the rational the immigration board, in conjunction with other government departments used to set immigration levels. And basically it explained that Canada need the immigration. The existing Canadian population isn't having enough children to finance the support of our aging population so we need the immigrants to work, pay taxes and make new taxpayers for us. I don't have any hard numbers, but remember at the time that it made all kinds of sense to me.