Wednesday, May 07, 2008
ENFORCEMENT BRANCH STRIKES
Kyoto trouble in Kyanada:
Canada will be probed on suspicion of violating rules for registering greenhouse gases that are the mainstay of a UN-led fight against global warming, official documents show.
Ottawa could be suspended from rights to trade carbon dioxide if found to be in breach of the rules by the enforcement branch of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol. Greece was suspended last month, the first nation to face such a sanction under Kyoto.
Possibly Canada – lately punching out carbon at a level way above its Kyoto target – was simply trying to avoid committing New Zealand-style Kyotocide. Similar woes in the UK:
Labour’s new green targets will cost every family in Britain more than £3,000, a Government dossier has warned. The decision by ministers to sign up to “unachievable” EU pledges on renewable energy will leave taxpayers with a £75billion bill.
PRIZEWINNER REPLIES
Hillary-hatin’ Bob Ellis has his say in the Daily Telegraph. Biggest audience Bob’s had in years.
UPDATE. Some background to all of this.
HILLARY ALMOST DONE
Obama takes North Carolina, while in Indiana …
… Clinton appeared headed for a more modest 2 point or less victory. There, she won 60-40 among white voters, who made up 80 percent of the turnout, while losing black voters 8-92.
Also it appears that Hillary Clinton may be broke.
Rush Limbaugh’s assistance apparently wasn’t a factor.
UPDATE. According to the Obama campaign, Limbaugh’s work was worth seven per cent in Indiana. NASCAR votes didn’t come through, however.
UPDATE II. The New York Observer:
Tuesday was a decisive night for Barack Obama.
Sure, CBS News called Indiana early for Hillary Clinton (a verdict the network may yet regret, with many precincts still outstanding), and if she does hang on there, she will have won just as many states on the day as Obama did. And she will then soldier on to what should be a landslide win in next week’s West Virginia primary, just as she figures to dominate in Kentucky on May 20.
But tonight made clear one thing: None of that will matter.
KIWIS DOOMED
Terry Dunleavy considers New Zealand’s fate should it pursue carbon reduction:
New Zealand produces about 0.2 per cent of the world’s man-made production of CO2. Even if NZ totally eliminated CO2 emissions, the difference would be to reduce the annual rate of increase in the atmosphere by 0.2 per cent of 1.5ppm, equalling 0.003ppm which equals 3 parts per billion. This of course is a far lower amount than can even be detected.
Are we seriously going to shatter our economy, restrict ourselves to a fragile electricity system, cost every family in the land $1000 to $1500 per year in electricity expenses alone, seriously damage our agriculture industry, etc. by trying to reduce New Zealand’s minuscule CO2 contribution?
But it’s worse than that. The Government’s stated goal is to reduce our CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. So if we were to succeed in this, and thereby reduce New Zealand’s 3 parts per billion contribution to 20 per cent of this figure, the reduction in global CO2 arising from our action would amount to 0.6 parts per billion per year.
Thus will the planet be saved.
(Via Mystery)
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
SAME OLD AL
Where’s Al? Here’s Al, at Ohio State:
He said this, by way of introduction: “I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America.”
He’s been using that line for six horrible years.
“The planet has a fever,” he said.
Another Gore classic. Notably, the event was attended by “an ambassador for polar bears”.
Monday, May 05, 2008
RITTER IN A RUT
Scott Ritter, the man who argues with himself, in February 2005:
Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005.
Ritter, February 2006:
“We just don’t know when, but it’s going to happen.”
Ritter, April 2008:
“I think we’ve never been at a greater risk of American military action against Iran.”
NATION REWARDED
From the wonderful Wondermark:
(Via Dan Lewis)
O-BOB IN NEWSPAPER
This week’s compact column pays further attention to Oral Robert - and his feminist fan, featured here.
CLEAN GREEN DEBT
Tiny New Zealand generates basically nothing in terms of warmening gases, but look at the protocol payment it faces:
Treasury figures show New Zealand’s Kyoto liability is more than $1 billion ...
When the Government signed up to the international agreement it estimated that New Zealand would be in credit by $500 million, but deforestation and an increase in emissions reversed that position earlier.
(Via Andrew Bolt, currently generating monster hits)
HEY, LEFTIES
Don’t forget David Hicks’s birthday on August 7! In case you’re still searching for a gift ...
CAMERA EATEN
All this talk of Hillary Clinton being a “fighter” who “makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy” appears to be backed up by actual muscle:
On the left: Hillary! On the right: Mongo scours the crowd for photographers who would angle their cameras in such a way as to depict the Senator in some sort of weak, tilty pose. Mongo not happy when Mongo sees guy at bottom right of picture. Mongo do what Mongo has to do.
HITTING COLDENING WHERE IT LIVES
Gentle snow-beasts are advised to run for their lives:
What Icelanders call “jeeps” are actually massive, tricked-out pickups, armed with 4-foot-high wheels studded with steel cleats that allow them to climb mountains of snow and volcanic rock with earsplitting power.
Every weekend, normally placid Icelanders go wild in the volcanic highlands. Their heavily modified trucks sometimes fall into crevasses or break through ice and need winching out ...
These guys are serious:
Sveinbjörn Halldórsson, a 44-year-old real-estate agent from Reykjavík, drives a Chevy S10 pickup with a souped-up engine, 44-inch tires with spikes, and four kinds of radios and phones on the dashboard. Filling up the truck’s 240-liter tank (about 63 gallons) for the weekend costs him nearly $500, with gas costing $7.84 a gallon. He rolls with one of many so-called gangs on Iceland’s highly competitive 4x4 off-road vehicle scene.
Respect to the Icelanders. Long may they roll.
SILENT AL
A teacher friend calls to say: “I recently oversaw a class assigned to watch An Inconvenient Truth. It was so terrible I turned it off and made them do crossword puzzles instead.” Well done, teach! Meanwhile, J. R. Dunn wonders: where’s Al?
Al Gore appears to have taken a break from saving the world, having convinced large numbers of otherwise sensible people that something called “global warming” exists. He can be expected back in short order. Evidence that “warming” has in fact not occurred since 1998 is swiftly becoming public knowledge. Who but St. Al can lead the righteous in beating back this heresy?
Might Al emerge in ... Denver?
Sunday, May 04, 2008
CAMPAIGN ENDS
Melbourne’s Age, previously furious over bay dredging, seems to have calmed down slightly.
AARON IS SCARED
The New York Times continues its recent series of childhood trauma reports (a trend also observed in the Washington Post and Sydney Morning Herald):
Danny Weingart said he recently spent a week standing outside his middle school with a sign encouraging classmates to ride the bus because of his concerns about global warming. If the more dire predictions come true, he worries that his favorite cities could flood.
His favourite cities presumably include Atlantis.
“Personally, I don’t enjoy swimming everywhere,” Danny, who is 11, said jokingly as he and more than 20 other sixth graders at Seven Bridges Middle School met in a technology classroom at lunchtime to discuss a weekend trash cleanup project.
Fewer than a couple of dozen sixth-graders meet in a classroom. This is sufficient to draw the attention of the New York Times.
Danny belongs to a school club called Kids Against Pollution ... For five days, club members car-pooled to the school by 6:45 a.m. and counted the number of cars entering and leaving the parking lot. They held up signs with slogans like “Hop on the Bus, Gus” and “Make a New Plan, Stan.”
Sixth-graders are referencing a Paul Simon tune released 33 years ago? And nobody put them up to this? Give me a break, Jake. By the way, here’s the massive sixth-grade uprising that led to the NYT’s coverage:
A staff of 1,332 sure comes in handy when big news breaks. Sadly, the pre-teen protest didn’t work:
The club fell short of its goal of reducing the number of cars driving to school each day by 50 percent, said Andrew Lafortezza, 11, president of the fifth- and sixth-grade classes. But he said that at a sports practice during the week of the protests, several parents said they had to drive their children to school because the bus did not reach them.
“That really shows that parents are aware of the problem,” Andrew said. “And awareness was another one of our goals.”
Awareness is always the goal when enviro targets aren’t met. Awareness is the participation medal of goals.
The club’s adviser, Mike Debellis, 34, a technology teacher at Seven Bridges for six years, raised the idea of a club to Andrew last October. Andrew responded enthusiastically.
Don’t blame Andrew. His teacher’s message was unbelievably compelling:
Who could resist? An environmentalist frenzy followed:
With a club core consisting of Andrew’s friends, word quickly spread, and pupils were so enthusiastic that Mr. Debellis had to cap membership at around 20 because his classroom was not big enough for all of them to meet during lunch periods.
Why, it’s an apocalyptic vision of catastrophic overpopulation!
Most members said they were worried about global warming. Aaron Kohn, 11, said that he had watched the movie “Waterworld,” about a future in which the polar ice caps have melted and most of the planet is underwater, and then researched on the Internet reasons the earth could flood.
When he read about global warming, Aaron said, he got scared.
He’s not the only one:
Sarah Jane Weil, 11, said she is an animal lover and was upset by predictions that in her lifetime polar bears might become extinct as a result of global warming.
Olivia Sacker, 11, said she used to want to be a veterinarian when she grows up but now wants to be an environmentalist because she is worried about the health of the planet.
Olivia is a future member of the shower police. Happily, not all students are buying into warmtherism:
“A lot of kids blew us off, some even flipped us off,” said Zac Gelfand, 11, the club’s president.
Get used to it, Zac.