So this is why I'll be voting Conservative

[jacee]

Having actually, briefly, considered the NDP because Thomas Mulcair can sound fairly sensible, I looked at the NDP party policy book. Anyone who is similarly thinking of voting NDP should do the same. Yes, it is scary. It talks about monetary controls, industry boards, and prohibiting companies from growing larger by engaging in vertical integration. It wants to increase business taxes and double capital gains taxes.

Keeping the sharks under control is very important to a healthy economy.

.

[blueblood]

Ooooo ... the scary "socialists"!

Are you actually falling for that scare tactic?!

Or are you one of those pushing that propaganda trying to scare others?

The NDP are no more "socialist" than Canadians already are.

We ALL like our public health care, education, etc.

Capitalism in Canada isn't going away just because the NDP win an election.

And union and non union workers all like to have jobs.

You will find the NDP very supportive of entrepreneurship, free enterprise, small-medium businesses.

We are a mixed economy, and we always will be.

.

As a small business owner i beg to differ. A lot of small business owners fall into your definition as "rich" who should be taxed more, face more expensive regulations, and are the scourge of the earth. Ask smallc how excessive regulations are for small business. That and a ndp govt in manitoba that is 420 million in the hole. As for health care, canadians dont like to wait being in line, some will even pay to cut in line, however the ndp would rather have everyone wait in line.

[blueblood]

Keeping the sharks under control is very important to a healthy economy.

.

Refer to venezuela.

[blueblood]

Depends what you're talking about.

You read the conclusions from the report above?

Downsizing, wage cutbacks, contract stripping, union busting, outsourcing, off shoring ... accomplished nothing but putting more money into CEO'S pockets!

The Harper Conservatives are still pushing 1980's ideas ... that have been proven WRONG.

.

except canada is a world leader in economic performance rich ceos and all and countries that listen to jacees way of doing things have hyperinflation negative gdp growth and out of control crime and corruption

[WIP]

Hopefully this one can be wrapped up soon, since I didn't even realize we were on a politics thread when I started posting:

So your position is that if there exists a finite resource, we should never use the resource because it will eventually run out? How does that make sense? All resources are finite. Even the sun won't last forever. Why not use those resources to increase standards of living and the speed of technological progress?

You mean: either we use everything up now as fast as possible or bury it all in the ground and never touch it again. What I'm asking for is the simple recognition of people who will come after us and inherit this Earth. That would mean not using renewables at unsustainable levels, and cutting our over-use of non-renewable resources, so that something will be left behind 1000 or 10,0000 years from now, in case all of the Star Trek predictions and crap about leaving this world and settling other planets doesn't come to fruition.

Increasing energy prices drastically in order to lower the jobs available to our children and grand children and slow the rate of technological progress. How is that helping?

How about organizing our economies along different lines that don't depend on jacking up consumer expectations to drive demand on a lot of products that even most of the buyers can't explain why they need them. Consumer deman-driven capitalism has increased the rates of industrial production more than 100 times what they were at the beginning of the 20th century....much greater than the rate of population increase since then.

I also find it ironic that you have such a pessimistic view of the future yet assume children and grandchildren as a given. If people don't have economic stability due to high energy prices, they might not bother to have children.

Birth rates are declining everywhere except in the places where women are not allowed access to abortion and birth control...making pregnancy mandatory...the penalty for having sex and getting married. It's a problem that could take care of itself, if there's enough time.

Also, sacrifices? How about not traveling around the world in jets going to South Asia? http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/24717-where-have-you-travelled-going-to-travel-open-thread/?p=1072253

I haven't been on a plane in 10 years! But, trying to shame environmentally-conscious travelers with this argument is a red herring, because the declines in conventional petroleum reserves has led to shortages and higher prices for aviation fuels....so it's another problem that will take care of itself, as fewer and fewer people in the future will be able to afford to fly. And it would be nice if the infrastructure for high speed rail was built before that time....but that would take some rational planning for the future!

There are sufficient fossil fuel reserves to last us several decades and there are sufficient uranium 235 reserves to last us like 200 years. Then you have thorium, which is several times as abundant as uranium 235, and then you have fast breeder technology. So humanity can last several centuries on fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Aside from the obvious high risks of adding more carbon to the atmosphere, fossil fuels vary by grade and content. Oil from Venezuela is not the same as light crude from Libya (the #1 reason for regime change) and kerogen (shale oil) is totally different than bitumen, so they require different types of refineries and don't all produce the same products.

Conventional nuclear is dangerous, costly to maintain, and even exacts a high carbon footprint during construction because of the huge concrete containment buildings that have to be constructed.

Thorium reactors have been promised for decades, but complications in breeding fuels and operating proposed thorium reactors has meant that the thorium breakthrough is only at the test stage even now. Sort of like the fusion reactors I've been hearing about at least since I was a teenager.

A better idea would be the Generation three and four nuclear reactors, which can burn at higher temperatures and leave fewer waste products (able to use plutonium and other nuclear wastes). The Gen. IV reactors would...in theory...provide all the benefits of fusion....if they are practical and work as promised.

Another proposal some nuclear engineers want to explore are called Small Modular Reactors. SMR's are basically conventional reactors that function on a smaller scale than the big utility reactors we have today. Big advantage would be having almost no risk of meltdowns, since they do not require pressurized, circulating cooling systems that might break down. The big stumbling block for SMR's appears to be regulatory, since licensing and other costs of nuclear reactors does not distinguish between large and small....making the incentive to build them as big as possible to get the greatest profit advantage. Although there might be other drawbacks to SMR's that its proponents aren't telling us about yet. The advocates for new technologies of all kinds tend to try to hide the negative sides as long as possible.

What I'd really like to know is why didn't renewable energy sources like wind, solar and tidal power make your list?

You mean his latest study where he skips the peer review purpose for political purposes? Where he assumes sea levels will rise exponentially, which has no basis in physical reality, especially since greenhouse gas radiative forcing is only rising roughly quadratically? Where he gets sea level predictions that not only are well outside the confidence intervals of the IPCC's predictions, but also disagree with paleoclimate data about the Eemian and make even Michael Mann highly critical? Where he doesn't even fit his faulty model to empirical evidence, but arbitrarily chooses parameters that 'feel right' and then rather than doing a properly uncertainty analysis, just handwaved a value of uncertainty that subjectively feels right?

James Hansen has had a track record for over 25 years of making bold predictions that are beyond the more conservative predictions released by committees...such as for the IPCC reports, and he has the habit of being Right! While the rest of the conservative establishment, which has refrained from trying to incorporate positive feedbacks in their prediction models, have been the ones who are wrong and their reports are usually already obsolete by the time they are handed off to the IPCC governors. 25 years ago, the first IPCC Report was worried about loss of Arctic sea ice by the end of this century. Now, it looks like we'll be lucky if we don't see blue ocean events before the end of this decade.

Hansen's point about the Eemian was that there was a period of warming and rapid loss of ice in the Arctic, at a time when CO2 never rose above 300ppm, and temperatures never above 2 C baseline. One of the great misconceptions the researchers have left in the public reading their reports, is that they almost never use a timeframe longer than this century. What about after the year 2100? The carbon that has been added to the atmosphere will be there for at least another 1000 years even if we stopped adding more today. The 400 level we are reaching right now has delivered most of its heat so far to the world's oceans, and the high CO2 levels will keep adding more heat in the centuries to come.

The 2C target has no scientific basis.

I think we've covered this before....that the 2C benchmark was a political decision right from the start, since there was no way to stop at 1 degree (the original redline 25 to 30 years ago) and politicians could pretend it was some sort of carbon bank...where we can x amount of carbon to the atmosphere before we have to stop/ rather than the way it is actually described in the scientific models - as an indicator of increasing the percentage likelihood of positive feedbacks like permafrost and methane clathrate release removing our ability to have any control over carbon increases in the future.

[-1=e^ipi]

We ALL like our public health care, education, etc.

I don't. Most of the people I know don't including many people planning to vote NDP. 100% public health system has just become one of those issues where it has become 'conventional wisdom' that any party that challenges it will lose, thus no party tries, so it never gets challenged which reinforces the conventional wisdom. It's also reinforced by a false dichotomy that there are only 2 options: the US system and the Canadian system.

[WIP]

I can see the future you talk about. The words I use to explain the problem, is we no longer produce anything real. Our whole economy is compromised Because we only are shipping and handling and retail based. I feel This consumer based economy will slowly die with the baby boomers.

The f-35 is wasted. I agree.

And we can thank Harper's grand design of turning Canada into a petrostate for the big collapse in manufacturing. Every other nation that becomes dependent on oil or on resource extraction in general, ends up dependent on resource exports. The same pattern appears to have happened in Australia, where a couple of Conservative governments put all their eggs into shipping coal and iron ore to China; and now that China's economic bubble has gone bust, so has Australia's! And just like Canada, Australia has allowed their manufacturing sector to wither on the vine and is now more dependent on imports of most manufactured goods.

[WIP]

Explain the longevity of PET.......the man was more of a prick introvert than Harper.......come to think of it, I can't think of one Canadian Prime Minster that one would peg as personable....Canadians elect Nixons, not Reagans.

How about if we just say he was lucky!

He became so unpopular in 72, that he was only allowed to govern because the lacklustre Tories and their lacklustre leader- Robert Stanfield did not want to make an attempt to go the Governor General to ask to form a government...even though the PC's had a one seat majority over the Liberals! By 1980, Trudeau had spruced up his appearance and was looking like his old Trudeaumania days. I'm sure Trudeau would not have survived in the social media atmosphere of today. When he came along in 68, he was different than any kind of political candidate anyone had seen before, and he grabbed the large, young block of baby-boomers without even having to try! It's a different world today.

[KingOfCanada]

By voting Conservative you will legitimize Bill C-51 which shouldn't have ever been proposed in the first place.

[Argus]

Keeping the sharks under control is very important to a healthy economy.

.

In the end, all you're talking about doing is taxing away the money from the successful and giving it to the unsuccessful. That leads, inevitably, to lots of unsuccessful people, and very few successful people. After all, if you work hard to get ahead but it's all taken from you anyway, why work hard to get ahead? And if you do nothing but get lots of money given to you, why do anything? Greece is the result.

[Argus]

By voting Conservative you will legitimize Bill C-51 which shouldn't have ever been proposed in the first place.

You mean the security legislation which is way milder than what the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia have?

[-1=e^ipi]

so that something will be left behind 1000 or 10,0000 years from now, in case all of the Star Trek predictions and crap about leaving this world and settling other planets doesn't come to fruition.

The probability of that is essentially zero and I put it in the same category as a giant flying spaghetti monster suddenly appearing and raining meatballs down on us, destroying cities. Should we invest billions into an anti-meatball defense system just in case? Again, you are invoking the precautionary principle to avoid looking at empirical evidence.

The people (or rather the descendants of humans) in 1 million years will have dyson sphere around the sun as far as I am concerned, so will be able to synthetically create whatever resource they want.

How about organizing our economies along different lines that don't depend on jacking up consumer expectations to drive demand on a lot of products that even most of the buyers can't explain why they need them.

I don't think this is an accurate model of reality. Could you please provide empirical evidence, preferably from a peer reviewed study, which supports your assertions?

because the declines in conventional petroleum reserves has led to shortages and higher prices for aviation fuels....so it's another problem that will take care of itself

So you are saying that no mitigation is necessary? The problem will just take care of itself.

Or are you saying that anything that affects you will take care of itself, where as mitigation policies should be implemented, but just not on you?

fossil fuels vary by grade and content.. so they require different types of refineries and don't all produce the same products.

This doesn't refute my point on how long society can last on fossil fuels and nuclear.

Conventional nuclear is dangerous

No it isn't. How many people died from nuclear reactors in Canada? 0. How many people died due to Fukushima? 0. How many people died in the 2011 Tsunami and Earthquake? 16,000.

costly to maintain

Costly to maintain? It's one of the cheapest forms of energy!

and even exacts a high carbon footprint during construction because of the huge concrete containment buildings that have to be constructed.

I wonder what your definition of high is. How much CO2 emissions per GWh of energy counts as high to you? Do you not think that wind turbines and solar panels don't also need to be constructed?

Thorium reactors have been promised for decades, but complications in breeding fuels and operating proposed thorium reactors has meant that the thorium breakthrough is only at the test stage even now.

We have enough fossil fuels and uranium 235 to last humanity at least 250 years. You don't think that's enough time to figure out how to get thorium reactors to work?

What I'd really like to know is why didn't renewable energy sources like wind, solar and tidal power make your list?

Because we were talking about non-renewables and you are the one advocating that we have to go full renewable in the near future even though there are enough fossil fuels and nuclear reserves to last humanity centuries.

James Hansen has had a track record for over 25 years of making bold predictions that are beyond the more conservative predictions released by committees...such as for the IPCC reports, and he has the habit of being Right!

No he really hasn't, and neither has the IPCC. CMIP5 predictions are 2 years from being falsified if current trends continue. Hansen continually makes ECS and ESS estimations outside of empirical evidence, and his sea level rise models can't even explain historical evidence and are unphysical.

which has refrained from trying to incorporate positive feedbacks in their prediction models

This is factually incorrect. You might as well be arguing the Earth is flat. No-feedback climate sensitivity is well understood and is ~ 1.15 C. CMIP5 models have a median climate sensitivity of 3.2 C. How do you get from 1.15 C to 3.2 C? Magic?

Hansen's point about the Eemian was that there was a period of warming and rapid loss of ice in the Arctic, at a time when CO2 never rose above 300ppm, and temperatures never above 2 C baseline.

Yes there was. It was called an interglacial. We are currently in one. There has been 'rapid' ice loss over the past 20,000 years since the last glacial maximum. Please define 'rapid'. How many mm per century counts as 'rapid'?

is that they almost never use a timeframe longer than this century.

I cannot confirm or deny this since it would be very difficult to quantify all of the reports.

The carbon that has been added to the atmosphere will be there for at least another 1000 years even if we stopped adding more today.

1. We are adding CO2 to the atmosphere, 'carbon' is vague.

2. It's a matter of how much CO2 will remain in the atmosphere after a given time. The decay time excess atmospheric CO2 is about 100 years, which means that after 100 years only 37% of the excess atmospheric CO2 will be left. This means that in 1000 years, about 0.0045% of the excess CO2 will remain. To be fair though, Oceans only absorb 85% of emitted CO2, so after 1000 years ~15% of emitted atmospheric CO2 will remain.

The 400 level we are reaching right now has delivered most of its heat so far to the world's oceans

I'm not even sure what you are trying to claim here? Are you saying that because most of the world's surface is ocean, most of the additional radiative forcing from excess greenhouse gases will occur over oceans?

as an indicator of increasing the percentage likelihood of positive feedbacks like permafrost and methane clathrate release removing our ability to have any control over carbon increases in the future.

The idea that the temperature-greenhouse gas feedback exceeds 1 is well outside empirical evidence and disagrees with basically the entire scientific community. Please back up your absurd claim.

[Derek 2.0]

What are you, kidding? Trudeau an introvert!? This is the guy who danced behind the Queen, right? Trudeau was an extrovert, a great speaker, and extremely charismatic. He also had the benefit of the French factor, which meant he started off every election guaranteed to get one third of the seats in the country simply because he was Liberal. Even so, he had lots of trouble, and finally was forced to 'take a walk in the snow' because he knew he'd be destroyed in the following election. Then he took advantage of Joe Clark's ineptitude and in combination with the NDP forced him out of power over the seven cent gas tax proposal, decrying it as damaging to the economy - until he got back in and put in a higher gas tax.

Harper has all the charisma of Al Gore, and is famously introverted.

Not the least, I don't deny that Trudeau had a feigned charisma, but personality wise, I've never once heard him described as an extrovert. In numerous books on his life, there are countless retelling of his inclusive, introverted personality..........IIRC, one of Maggie or Justin has described him as such.....

His at times foolish behavior, is ever much so a sign of an eccentric introvert.......

[Derek 2.0]

How about if we just say he was lucky!

PET? I wouldn't say that at all, he (like Harper) was a Canadian Machiavelli of his time, he nearly alone turned the Liberal Party of Canada on its head, in effect, changing the once neo-liberal party into the NDP light, with it now no longer able to afford the poles to keep its once massive tent erect.......I don't think PET's stamp he put on the country had anything to do with luck, but design.

[jacee]

As a small business owner i beg to differ. A lot of small business owners fall into your definition as "rich" who should be taxed more, face more expensive regulations, and are the scourge of the earth.

Make sure you know the NDP platform:

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news/canada/2015/06/16/tom-mulcair-assures-bay-street-he-will-champion-main-street.html

Thats why my plan starts by cutting the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to 9 per cent

...

Mulcair pointed out that he has already tried to cut the tax with a motion in the Commons.

"The Conservatives voted against it. Weeks later they put our small business tax cut plan in their budget,

.

[jacee]

You mean the security legislation which is way milder than what the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia have?

But without the oversight and public accountability of any of them.

Nice try. :/

.

[Hal 9000]

You mean the security legislation which is way milder than what the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia have?

What about the NDP"s flagship socialist country - Sweden? They have counter-terrorism legislation as well.

[cybercoma]

I want you to take a good hard look at venezuela and i mean a real good hard look.

Just to let you know, democratic socialism and social democracy are two very different political ideologies.

[cybercoma]

As a small business owner i beg to differ. A lot of small business owners fall into your definition as "rich" who should be taxed more

Not in the NDP platform. They proposed a 0% tax for small businesses a long time ago.

[Hal 9000]

But without the oversight and public accountability of any of them.

Nice try. :/

.

Bollocks! All those other countries are reading their citizens emails, checking browser history's, travel plans, events etc etc. If you're typing certain keywords into your computer, you can bet someone from the government will show up at you house or grab you off the street and make you explain.

The wording may be slightly different, but it's all the same premise.

[Argus]

But without the oversight and public accountability of any of them.

Nice try. :/

.

I don't know about all of them, but France just passed a much tougher law than ours and it will have virtually no oversight.

[Derek 2.0]

What about the NDP"s flagship socialist country - Sweden? They have counter-terrorism legislation as well.

Indeed, the Swedes also heavily believe in domestic stimulus in the form of maintaining their own Ikea-like military-industrial complex..... the Swedes, per capita, are one of the largest arms exporters in the World.

[jacee]

except canada is a world leader in economic performance rich ceos and all and countries that listen to jacees way of doing things have hyperinflation negative gdp growth and out of control crime and corruption

You might want to be careful what you believe. Some politicians lie.

Harper said:

"We have been head and shoulders above all of our G7 partners

But the truth is not what Harper said:

Canada's projected GDP growth for 2015 will put the country exactly where Harper inherited it in 2006 exactly in the middle of the pack.

.

[Argus]

You might want to be careful what you believe. Some politicians lie.

Harper said:

"We have been head and shoulders above all of our G7 partners

But the truth is not what Harper said:

Canada's projected GDP growth for 2015 will put the country exactly where Harper inherited it in 2006 exactly in the middle of the pack.

.

Yes, our projected growth rate for 2015 is being hindered by a sudden gigantic fall in the price of oil, combined with a multi year depressed market for other commodities, even gold.

Damn that Stephen Harper anyway!

[blueblood]

Not in the NDP platform. They proposed a 0% tax for small businesses a long time ago.

Thats only up to 500K. Then there are the hidden costs of complying with all the red tape synonymous with left of centre governments. Since the environment and high labour standards are synonymous with left of centre govts, how do you expect a small business to thrive.

Better to go for cpc which is reducing corporate rates and red tape and taxes in general while at the same time helps create a better environment to grow in. Theres a reason the business world shuns the ndp - big and small alike