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I have a way to achieve regional interests. Let's give different regions local governments that can make some laws to represent the local population. We can call these governments 'Provincial Governments'. Oh wait, they already exist. In addition, give every province the option to leave Canada if they don't like it (be it Quebec, Alberta, whatever). For one, it's immoral to keep a country together against the will of the people, and secondly it means that if a province feels absolutely screwed over they have the option to leave; thus the federal government has to try to keep all of the provinces satisfied or they country breaks up.

BC has a shared economy and culture with the Prairie provinces? The rocky mountains make that quite difficult. My point is that the distribution of senate seats is completely arbitrary. Even if you make it by province, the existence of provinces is purely arbitrary. If a few things happened differently in the past, they might have drew different lines on a map. If it's about representation of regions, it shouldn't be based on these arbitrary 'region' or 'province' constructs. It should be something objective such as land mass. Strawman argument. I never claimed Vancouver island doesn't have senators

Yes, that was in the distant past. Today it makes no sense. Abolish it. BC was it's own separate colony and the railway to the Pacific got it into confederation. If this is about separate colonies, then BC should be it's own 'region'.

And how are 'regions' being determined/defined? It's arbitrary.

I asked why should, not why does. So if Vanvouver Island became a province, it would suddenly be entitled to 4 seats in the senate? And PEI was not one of the original colonies at confederation; it joined in 1873. Not that it should matter. If the senate is about representing 'regions' then shouldn't these 'regions' be based on definitions that are independent of some political compromises that occurred nearly 150 years ago?

And my above suggested seat distribution is not on a per capita basis, it's based on land mass. Please explain to me why PEI should have 4 seats, but not Vancouver Island.

Except the reason the Western provinces have so few seats is because 100+ years ago when the distribution of senate seats were determined, they had relatively small populations. So the position that the distribution of seats is not based on population is nonsense. Except the choice of 'regions' is purely arbitrary. Why are the Atlantic provinces a 'region' but not BC? Why are Quebec and Ontario 'regions' but not 'Central Canada'. If Vancouver Island decided to separate from BC and become a new province, does BC + Vancouver Island suddenly deserve more representation in both the Senate and the House of Commons (due to laws like no province can have less seats than senators)? If you want some more 'objective' way of representation by region, then why not do it by Land Mass? In that case we have: Nunavut: 20.8% of seats Quebec: 15.1% of seats NWT: 13.1% of seats BC: 10.2% of seats Ontario: 10.2% of seats Alberta: 7.1% of seats Saskatchewan: 6.6% of seats Manitoba: 6.1% of seats Yukon: 5.3% of seats NFLD: 4.1% of seats New Brunswick: 0.8% of seats Nova Scotia: 0.6% of seats PEI: 0.1% of seats Does that seem fair?

Here is a question for you non-abolitionists: How do you deal with the issue of distribution of senate seats? PEI has 4 senate seas, BC has 6 senate seats. Does it make sense that PEI has over 21 times as much representation in the senate per capita as BC? Was the choice of 'regions' during the construction of the senate not arbitrary? Why does PEI get 4 seats, but not Vancouver Island for example? Why are the Atlantic provinces considered a 'region' but not BC?

So you replace federally appointed political cronies with provincially appointed political cronies. How does this help things? Also, I'm pretty sure some provinces like BC and Saskatchewan are likely to refuse to appoint anyone out of protest to the existence of the senate. Institutions like universities or think-tanks can do this. Or introduce proportional representation.

I haven't 'missed' the purpose, I just disagree with it. How about you have a constitution or charter of rights to ensure people have rights like freedom of speech that cannot be taken away by the majority? Then you don't need this useless senate.

Are New Zealand and Germany not stable countries?

But that is still is an FPS system and has it's own problems. For one, an FPS system can't support more than 3-4 parties and personally I would like more options. Secondly, you can have major parties that get zero representation such as the Green party in Canada, UKIP and Lib-dems in UK, etc. Isn't the purpose of having a house of commons to try to represent the diversity of Canada? If not, then why not just abolish the House of Commons as well and just elect a dictator every few years (I don't advocate this, I just don't understand how FPTP supporters justify the existence of the House of Commons if it is not to represent the diversity of the political positions of Canadians)? Edit: Also isn't there some law in the BNA act or something where no province can have less MPs than senators and no province can lose MPs? So as a result PEI has to have 4 senators and the number of MPs keeps increasing?

Introduce proportional representation. Problem solved. Threads like this make it tempting to vote NDP. I think once a government that supports abolition is elected, they have to play hardball with non-compliant provinces. If that means the government of the day threatens to pass policies that will disproportionately harm non-compliant provinces then so be it.

Canada is an interesting place in that the political climate is that society becomes so convinced that something can't be changed, so they never try, and it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. People are convinced that the senate can't be abolished, so never try it. Politicians in Ontario are convinced that the Catholic School System can't be abolished, so never try it (even though the majority of Ontarians support its abolition). Politicians in Ontario are convinced that the LCBO Monopoly can't be abolished, so never try it. Politicians are convinced that supply management of our dairy and poultry markets can't be abolished, so never try it. People are convinced that our Monarchy can't be abolished, so never try it. And then you have abolition of the first-past-the-post system; though I think that's more to do with people in power wanting to stay in power.

Thought I would contribute a rough calculation of sea level rise due to thermal expansion. Average global temperature is ~15 C. Volumetric expansion coefficient of water at 15 C is 0.000151/K. Average ocean depth is 3.7 km. Thus equilibrium sea level rise due to increasing global temperature by 1 C is approximately 3*0.000151/K*3700m = 1.68 m. Edit: 15 C is average surface temperature. Most of the Earth's water is well below the surface. If I use the expansion coefficient at 10 C (0.000088/K), then equilibrium sea level rise due to thermal expansion is 0.98 m/C.

yes

North Pole is Danish territory, regardless of the absurd territorial claims by Canada and Russia.

Nothing within the IPCC's AR5 supports the claim of being at least 95% certain that 'nearly all' of observed warming since 1950 is due to human emissions (at least under any reasonable definition of 'nearly all'). Even Gavin Schmidt's calculations show that 'nearly all' does not have 95% certainty. You've already done that for me. Look at the probability distribution of the percentage of observed warming since 1950 that is due to humans that was determined by Gavin Schmidt. Does it show 95% certainty that 'nearly all' warming is due to humans under any reasonable definition of 'nearly all'? No. Maybe you don't understand the difference between 'nearly all' and 'more than half'. So perhaps I should give you an example of the difference in a different context. In the recent Scottish Referendum on independence, more than half of the voting population voted No (I think it was 55%), but it would be untrue to say that nearly all of the population voted No. Unsubstantiated? It was empirically observed that solar irradiance was increasing since the Maunder Minimum to 1950. It is also known that the Earth has a heat capacity and that the time scale of decay to equilibrium due to the oceans is on the order of decades. The only thing left to do is use logic and put the two together, something you might be incapable of. Yes, I haven't quantified this value. Did I make a claim that I did? I've provided references to many papers in this thread, and others have brought up new information as well, but keep pretending I have 'single study syndrome' or whatever if you want. You seem obsessed with conclusions of papers rather than the actual data or scientific models. Emphasizing skepticism and doubt about the implications of a paper as Bjorn Stevens did is normal in science. However, Bjorn Stevens' statement doesn't somehow nullify the implications of his paper, regardless of how much you misinterpret it. Bjorn Stevens' paper came out this year, well after AR5. How is it supposed to affect a statement made by the IPCC? It can't, you have to wait for AR6. There is this thing called causality in the universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality), which as far as I am aware hasn't been violated yet (though maybe with some black holes and mass of negative energy density it might be possible). What do you mean by 'qualified detail'? You mean quantify the temperature change due to each factor? Because you are unclear and choose to make confusing statements or statements with incorrect premises. Gavin Schmidt's blog != IPCC. AR5 doesn't provide a best estimate of climate sensitivity, nor does it provide a best estimate for the percentage of warming since 1950 due to human activity. This IPCC best estimate you keep referring to does not exist.

I have no control over the moderation policy for this website. There are some threads about people being concerned about recent moderation activity here: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/forum/14-support-and-questions/. You could start a new thread or comment in a pre-existing thread about moderation policy if you want. For the most part, I'm trying to stay neutral with respect to the issue of implementation of moderation for this site. Which position is that? The IPCC has many positions, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't. For example, I agree that we are at least 95% confidence that more than half of warming since 1950 has been anthropogenic and I agree that equilibrium climate sensitivity very likely lies within the IPCC's confidence interval. Because the IPCC doesn't have a best estimate of climate sensitivity anymore. I think that the IPCC is simultaneously overestimating the effect of greenhouse gasses, overestimating the effect of aerosols and underestimating the effect of natural variability, particularly the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the Bjorn Stevens paper shows that aerosols are being over estimated in AR5. I also think that you can't just take radiative forcing changes over this period and compute the temperature changes due to each factor over this period since temperature change is a delayed response to a change in radiative forcing. Of course, you haven't provided a link to Gavin Schmidt's methodology, so I can't place much confidence in it (even if I ignore that the IPCC inputs in his calculations are likely biased). Discussion of claims made by the IPCC, which are related to climate sensitivity and the magnitude of anthropogenic climate change are on topic. Whether or not your deleted post was on topic or not, I don't know because I cannot read it.

How about people who live in Holland? They are already below sea level.

I made no such claim. Strawman argument. I've never claimed to endorse the energy budget model approach as the best approach to estimating climate sensitivity. Given that in this thread I've mostly done impulse response function approaches, which is a different approach, I have no idea where you get this idea from. Strawman argument. The magnitude of these feedbacks can easily be estimated from Pleistocene ice core data, which I've done in this thread. Of course the Pleistocene estimates will be over estimates since there is more permafrost to melt in the ice ages so the feedback is stronger, but it gives a rough upper bound. Can't you write sentences like a normal person? I don't understand what you are trying to ask in either of these two questions as they are poorly-worded/ambiguous, so cannot answer them. I didn't invent the definition of ECS, I merely use it. If you are including long-term feedbacks such as the ice-albedo feedback, then you aren't measuring ECS, but Earth System Sensitivity (ESS). Have you considered tacking a course in technical writing or something because it could greatly help you. You have a tendency to not write clearly and come up with these undefined buzz words that you repeat over and over again without either defining them or explaining how they are relevant. For example, in this post you are repeating 'flogging' and 'attribution', I don't understand precisely what you are trying to say, and I'm not even sure you do. In scientific papers people try to stick with clearly defined words and write clearly so that the information in their paper is well understood; you seem to do the opposite. Yet another example of your word choice. This statement brings nothing relevant to the conversation, except provide a character attack and make it less clear. You really like making your language unnecessarily 'flowery' don't you? Writing science isn't the same thing as writing a novel. Learn the difference please. You wrote an incorrect statement about forcing being in Celcius, not me. Maybe if you spent as much time trying to write clear and correct statements rather than try to make your language unnecessarily flowery and unclear, then you wouldn't have made this mistake. And again, the methodology to obtain the temperature changes due to forcing changes was... Strawman argument. This isn't my position. And your statement doesn't even make sense. These aerosol estimates will give a confidence interval (95% confidence interval usually), which is where the upper and lower bounds come from. The upper and lower bound express the uncertainty about the effect of aerosols. So talking about the uncertainty of the lower or upper bound of the 95% confidence interval doesn't make sense. Really? What's my agenda? Can you define it for me? I'm already aware that some people have misrepresented Bjorn Steven's work (as well as Nic Lewis). What do you want a reference to exactly? That solar irradiance increased from 1700-1950 and has been relatively stable since (as will soon decline), or that it takes time for things to reach equilibrium so there is a delayed temperature response to a change in radiative forcing? If it's the first one, here you go: http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/tsi/historical_tsi.html. If it's the second one, there is this thing called heat capacity, you may have heard of it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity). For example, when you boil water to make tea or coffee, you may have noticed that the water doesn't boil right away, it takes time. The Earth is similar, it takes time. The oceans are really big and take decades to decay towards equilibrium due to a change in forcing (I've provided estimates of the decay time in this thread). And again with your writing skills. Why all the unnecessary adjectives? Are you trying to discuss science or write a novel? What's with the ending sentences in hey? Is it too much to ask that you try to write clearly and use clearly defined words like most people do in scientific discussions to avoid confusion and to convey meaning more effectively? Nic Lewis still makes important contributions, even if his methodology or data set results in an underestimate of climate sensitivity. I've read the exchange between Robert Way and Nic Lewis and some of their previous exchanges where Way made the request before. I've read similar arguments by Steven Mosher and Kevin Cowtan. I agree with them that kriging is the best way (or at least better than the methodology of HadCRUT, GISS or NOAA) to deal with coverage bias.

Lake Ontario is the lowest lake and has a elevation of 74m above sea level. Even if you melted both Greenland and Antarctica, it would still be above sea level.

No. The scientific method is a methodology that is asymptotically truth approaching and is good for many things, but it doesn't tell people what to do. It doesn't tell me that I shouldn't eat a bunch of poison and kill myself, nor does it tell us what is good or bad.

'Climate change' in the context of your sentence is really vague. The climate has always changed, although recent warming has been caused by increased levels of greenhouse gasses. But the fact that there is climate change and humans are causing some of it doesn't tell us what the optimal policy response to the issue is. In fact, the scientific method can't tell us what the optimal policy response is because the scientific method is not capable of telling people what to do. To figure out what is the best policy response requires a set of value judgements (the pareto principle is a good place to start).

Now that I've read more into it, I don't think I should have used HadCRUT4 temperature data because as far as I can tell it doesn't properly deal with the coverage bias, particularly in polar regions. GISS and NOAA data sets also have this issue. So using one of these data sets probably results in an underestimate of climate sensitivity due to polar amplification. The Cowtan & Way (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/series.html) as well as the Berkeley Earth (http://berkeleyearth.org/land-and-ocean-data/) data sets seem to address this issue adequately by using kriging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriging).