Frosty

Alberta Shivers Amid Record Lows

Canada Ranks Low on Climate Change Report Card

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Hot Headed on the Heels of Climategate

Violence erupts at the climate change conference in Copenhagen. It's a shameful spectacle of the worst kind. One thing about socialists. They hate war but they love to violently riot. The crowed has been described as groups of European leftists, naturally.

As I said in one of my previous articles, I believed that the pro-anthropogenic (man made) global warming crowd would get more militant. This was due to the fact that the anti-AGW side was gaining more ground in the debate. Of course this was before the proverbial feces hit the fan a couple weeks ago. Emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (the lead research institution for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) provided the strongest evidence yet that scientists were deliberately altering climate data and that there was an large, organized conspiracy to silence critics.

The so called Climategate scandal should have went off like the Tsar Bomba in the media, but fizzled like a dud cherry bomb. It did get reported, slowly, and has now given climate critics a huge stockpile of ammo against the IPCC. Climate activists know that their argument is weakening and they are loosing public support big time. Belief in man made global warming has dropped an astounding 20-30% in the United States. This follows on the heels of an earlier report that suggests that the majority of Brits don't believe in the AGW theory.

With these revelations, those pushing for the agenda behind climate change have gotten more desperate. The real goal of Copenhagen is to provide third world countries with huge wealth transfer payments from richer countries. It's not as if they've kept this hidden. They've been fairly open about it. The goal is not to stop climate change but rather equalize global wealth by taking money out of the hands of the G8; all based on the pretext of atoning for their eco-sins. Now that their socialist dream has come under threat, they believe they must become more militant to try and get public opinion on their sides. Nothing pulls at people's hearts and senses like beating a cop with a brick and setting cars on fire... apparently.

On the subject of wealth transfer itself. One may wonder why this is so bad. It's like setting up a global charity after all? Not exactly. Most poor people will never see a dime of the money spent from these agreements, should they be put into place. More often than not, it ends up lining the pockets of despots, organized criminals, and corrupt bureaucrats. Socialists love to cuddle up to their fearless leaders though. Leaders who don't mind taking their own peoples' human, social, legal, and economic rights away for the "greater good".

Believe me, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I know die hard liberals who think this climate change business is a huge scam. A lot of them in fact. The sceptics cannot be labelled crackpots or people buying into corporate propaganda anymore. There's just too many of us. Ultimately, we can only hope that this green madness will end and common sense will once again reign supreme.

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Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

It's that time again. We're getting bombarded with more climate change hysteria by "scientists" and activists as world leaders prepare to meet in Copenhagen. The goal of the meeting is to hash out a new deal to replace the largely failed Kyoto Protocol of 11 years ago. Arguably, there is a lot more debate now than there was, say five years ago. The problem is that the United Nations and powerful NGOs like GreenPeace have long entrenched themselves. Any argument that states that climate change may not be real, or a natural phenomenon, or that carbon reduction schemes would devastate the global economy usually falls on deaf ears. It doesn't matter how much evidence you have in favour of your argument, or how good it is. It's like trying to argue with a wall.

So far, the goal of Copenhagen seems to involve massive monetary transfers to developing countries in order to pay for them to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. This sounds an awful lot like a "social justice" wealth transfer scheme. It's not so much that I disagree with this idea, even though I do. Foreign aid has proven futile in solving poverty issues. What really bothers me is why not just call it what it is. It always amazes me that people are more moved by sad polar bears than AIDS riddled, starving African children. That is they're more willing to open their wallet if they think the "disaster" will affect them; as opposed to child poverty, which they can happily ignored without any direct influence on their own lives. I think it's a sad statement on ourselves as society, and a particularly large black mark on the "textbook" liberals.

So what should we do? Should we still push ahead with a climate agreement? Absolutely not. Rather, if you want to help developing countries, even in the name of stopping climate change, technology sharing and free trade are a far better solution for dealing with both. Money just ends up in the hands of corrupt officials. Give people something tangible.

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Hybrid Importance

I found this on Failblog. I think it speaks for itself.
Priorities Fail



I have actually witnessed this. A certain large furniture chain (let's just say they deal in cheap, DIY-assembled furniture) has their parking lot setup like this. Hybrid car parking is closer to the door than handicapped. I've always wondered why hybrid owners would get this special privilege to begin with. Then again, I own a Honda Civic which does have a hybrid model, even though mine's not. I could park in these spots. How would they know without looking under the hood?

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My Stew Tastes Like Bark

It wasn't that long ago that dog was a common sight on the menu in China. Today, most Chinese are repulsed by the idea of eating their pet. How regressive they've become!

Here's an interesting article from the BBC of course. Who else would publish this? The article advocates that eating your pets may not be a bad idea in terms of reducing carbon emissions. The article is written tongue-in-cheek obviously. It refers to a book written by Robert Vale titled "Time to Eat the Dog?", which argues that dogs and cats should be treated like pigs or chickens. They keep us company only later to be made a tasty meal. Supposedly it reduces carbon intensive ranching.

This just so typical of the climate change garbage that's published on their service weekly. So now owning a pet is being demonized as destroying the planet. Please. They're just getting even more ridiculous, as if that were possible. I guess more shocking/disturbing is that people actually buy into this rubbish.

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GW Sceptics Must Become More Organized

I was reading an article about how 150 climate change activists disrupted Parliament this week, chanting that the government wasn't doing enough to stop the looming "disaster". In the past couple of years, the argument in favour of man made (anthropogenic) global warming has been whittled away. When the infamous "hockey stick" graph was proven to be fraudulent, this was a major blow the pro side. Then came the revelation that the planet has not warmed at all in the past decade. Then it came out that NASA had been allegedly duplicating data to make climate change appear worse than it actually was. The list of scientists now opposing the pro side has also grown enormously. Despite, and likely because of all this, those in favour of the man made theory have steadily grown more vocal and are becoming more militant.

The whole goal for a lot of these groups is to create a new radical-socialist world order. It's not as if they have tried to hide that fact. The rhetoric about changing the way we live and redistributing wealth to poorer nations for green initiatives comes up in just about any major climate change discussion. Governments who oppose it, such as Canada and the United States, have been labelled as "outcasts" on the world stage. We've all seen what these radical changes can do though. Climate initiatives have played a huge role in destroying Britain's economy, long before the recession hit. We're risking our livelihood and way of life by handing over the reigns of power to these crackpots that keep telling us the sky is falling.

It's high time the sceptics began to get more vocal. We've tried to hatch things out individually or in small groups over the years. Still, we don't have anywhere near the level of organization and funding that Greenpeace, PETA, and the IPCC have. We as sceptics must create our own anti-Greenpeace. An NGO that pushes for a halt to disastrous green programs and pushes for scientific truth. We have no idea what is really happening because so much of the argument in favour of anthropogenic global warming has been built on false or poorly researched information. If these people push, there must be at least an equally large organization to push back. We sceptics don't hate the environment, far from it. However, we do hate the spin and perversion of human rights and democracy in the name of averting a fake disaster. Humanity is arrogant to think it can change the weather. The time to act is now.

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The Climate is Changing: Hell Has Frozen Over

Satan himself has laced up his ice skates this week to practice his triple sow cows on the frosty Phlegethon. The BBC has admitted that the world has not warmed 1998, in line with what climate sceptics have been saying for years. They even go as far as saying that the climate models were wrong. However, the BBC was quick to note that the "real" scientists expect warming to start back up again soon.

What happened to global warming?

The BBC is well known for their unrelenting support of the pro-AGW argument, despite claiming not to have a "bias, U-Turn, or agenda" on the subject. This is probably the first article I've seen that takes the anti-AGW side that doesn't patronize the sceptics, well at least for the first half. If they actually took the time to post an actual fact on the subject, you know things are starting to look bad for Al and Company.

Despite this admission, the BBC took the time to post this scary article that arctic ice will disappear in the next 10 years.

Arctic to Be 'Ice Free in Summer'

Satellite imagery has shown that the arctic ice sheets have in fact been growing. 2009 also boasted one of the coldest summers in recent memory despite climatologists predicting record breaking heat waves back in the spring. Autumn was also expected to be warmer than normal. October, in Ontario anyway, has been unseasonably cool, with temperatures half of what they normally are. Climate change is now considered the least important issue in the United States, suggesting that people are loosing faith in what pro-AGW scientists and activists are saying. All we have to do is cut off their gravy train to put this issue to bed once and for all. Easier said than done.

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An Ground Shaking Observation

Just a thought running through my mind lately given the recent tragedies in South-East Asia. There's one thing that particularly worries me though. You'd be surprised at how many people think tsunamis are caused by anthropogenic global warming. I've run into this misconception a few times now. I find that it's most often "educated" people that hold this belief. Tsunamis are the result of undersea earth quakes. Earth quakes are caused by activity deep under the Earth's crust, far out of reach of the influence of man and the atmosphere. All planets with a molten core are subject to quakes.

Anyway, if you want to donate to disaster relief in Asia, you can go to the Red Cross Website.

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Catastrophe! What Catastrophe?!

I need a trillion dollars to combat a vary real and vary serious dilemma facing society today. I've got a sequestering plan that's going to cost a lot but it will prevent harm to the human race. I'm going to need a lot of concrete, tax dollars, and manpower to put this plan together but for god's sake, it's for the future of humanity and of our children. Of course I'm talking about the big threat that's been looming over our head for decades now, caused directly by man's meddling with nature. Zombies. Yes, the undead are a pox on our modern society because we disrespected nature by playing football with that skull I found in the ancient Indian burial ground. It's anthropogenic zombification at its worst! All the shower heads, ice augers, and shotguns in the world aren't going to save the planet this time. We need to bury the dead deep underground and encase their corpses in concrete to prevent them from ever rising up!
Ok, I could apply the same logic to every nonsensical scenario in the book. There's no proof that zombies exist so acting immediately in order to prevent an impending apocalypse of the living dead makes no sense. Maybe I'm going too far on a limb here with this tongue-in-cheek joke about global warming and the UN's alarmist position on something many feel is a non-existent issue.

Obama went in front of the UN today declaring that the United States needs to act immediately to prevent climate change. Never mind that he's already put the country another trillion dollars in debt. I suppose we could still find more money for Al Gores schemes and the grants to biased scientists who support his weak theory. The middle classes still aren't paying their fair share after all. There are lots of holes in the anthropogenic global warming theory. Perhaps the biggest one of all, assuming they're right, is just how exactly do we reverse it anyway. I've been reading a lot of articles on the subject and so far nobody has a satisfying answer to this question. Oh sure, we can all abandon our cars, throw the industrialized world out the window, and go back to partying if it 'twas 1299. That would stop it in the sense that you're not making the problem any worse. Of course to listen to the climate hysterics, the problem has already reached critical mass. Our climate is already out of control.

Ok, so what if we pump carbon dioxide underground and "sequester" it in big holding tanks? I remember hearing about this idea last year and it seems to be the scheme de jour. I suppose it makes sense in theory. A lot of things look good on paper though. You're going to store CO2 in these tanks, but how do you collect that much in the first place? How much will it cost to build these tanks and where will they be located? I'm sure a lot of people will be thrilled to bits to have one in their town. Also, what happens if one springs a leak? CO2 is now a pollutant after all, according to his Obamaness and Sir Al of Gore. So in that case you have a leaky, expensive, pressure vessel sitting under someone's back yard, with no way to fill it. Positively lovely!

That seems to be a general trend with climate change. Lots of ideas that will never work, but they all cost a huge fortune to implement. Yet somehow all these people on the green side, such as Michael Ignatiff in his recent attack ads, all claim that it will not effect the economy. That's BS and they know it but people are too stupid to see it, and the ones who perpetrate it couldn't care less about whether somebody has a job or not. It's all about wealth redistribution and expanding the already bloated size of government. Oddly, the only people these climate schemes actually seem to benefit are wealthy politicians and activists, while the rest of us get screwed as always. We really need to stop wasting our precious time and resources on this climate rubbish. With so many other pressing problems in the world, it's become a distraction at best. The rhetoric about saving the planet is nothing more than political masturbation. Let's focus on real issues; crime, poverty, the economy, rather than blaming all of humanity's strife on invisible gases.

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Organic Food Has No Health Benefits?

Well there's another big shot at the greenies who have been pushing the eat local, eat organic mantra as both a healthier and more eco friendly lifestyle. A large study conducted by the UK's Food Standards Agency has found that organic food showed no difference in nutritional value or evidence of additional health benefits over regular produce. The findings back up a similar study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The Soil Association, a UK based environmental group which promotes sustainable eating is cautioning against the results, regardless of them being proven with proper scientific method by two separate and independent studies. The data also supports an investigation by ABC's 20/20 several years ago (when organic labelled food first started appearing) that examined organic and regular produce for toxins. The small study found that there was little difference and that organics could actually harbour more harmful bacteria. The conclusion, always wash your produce no matter how it was grown.

So why discuss this on a politics blog. Well, organic food has been a bit of a political football lately. Remember the whole fuss over raw milk earlier this year despite countless scientific studies, backed by the UN, which labelled it as a hazardous product? They used the same "less chemicals better for you" line even though pasteurization only heats the milk to kill bacteria and nothing else is added. One of the biggest problems concerning organic food is a lack of regulation. Currently, there are no set laws in Canada and the US which dictate exactly what can and what cannot be labelled organic. Therefore, something could be called organic and may not be. With consumers being asked to pay more for organic food, which has now been proven to have dubious health benefits, it's time to get some labelling regulation in place whether farmers like it or not. The current system is akin to gouging or selling snake oil.

Source: BBC News

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Foamy on the Environment (Video NSFW)

Foamy the Squirrel, star of web cartoon Neurotically Yours by Jonathan Ian Mathers, has been spouting common sense and harsh ridicule at the brainwashed mainstream masses for the last five years now. I had to post this cartoon because Foamy pretty much sums up my entire feelings on the modern environmental movement. Warning as the video does contain a lot of bad language so it's not safe for work or school.



Source: Illwillpress

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Banning Bottled Water Not Only Dumb, Dangerous Too

I've guess you've probably heard by now that the Australian town of Bundanoon has banned the sale and consumption of bottled water entirely from the small rural community. The community's residents voted overwhelmingly to ban the product on environmental concerns, citing the amount of bottles that end up in the landfill. Other communities have adopted partial bans, notably London Ontario, which does not sell the product at city owned facilities. I chided that on the basis that other, far less healthy products which are sold in the same bottles continued to be sold. Steven Malloy in his book Green Hell however says that pretty much all containered soft drinks will be next. Cans as well I presume, though maybe glass can slide by. I bet the beverage industry will be thrilled to bits that the eco-warriors are trying to put them out of business.

Another thing struck my mind though when reading the article about the total ban in this Australian town. It's not to far away from happening in other jurisdictions. Not only is it dumb and highly reactionary to a non-existent problem, it's dangerous too. Ever been to Mexico? If you drink the tap water in some places, foreign locals, you can get violently ill from it. Moctezuma's Revenge anyone? Tourists are advised to always drink bottled water no matter where they are as different regions have different microbes and drinking water standards. Also, the Government of Canada recommends that factory sealed bottled water containers be kept in emergency preparedness kits, with enough to supply your family for three days. Factory sealed bottles keep better than ones you fill on your own. In the event of another Walkerton or Hurricane Katrina, bottled water is a vital life saver when tap water becomes unreliable or non-existent. Human lives are worth more than worrying over a few bottles in the landfill. I'm not bashing tap water. I rarely drink bottled water myself. However, outright banning it is simply foolishness.

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Setting the World on Fire

I've been reading Steven Milloy's "Green Hell", a book about the politics of modern environmentalism. In it, he claims the green movement is staging almost a coup over world governments by making them believe the apocalypse is imminent and only they can stop it. Over the last couple of years, I've been trying to develop my own theories regarding the politics of global warming. Arguably, we are seeing a new kind of McCarthyism as Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun pointed out the other day. He was specifically referring to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who called US congressmen that voted against the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill "traitors". That's a word that carries with it a lot of power and is not one that should be used lightly. Both Krugman and Milloy represent the polar extremes on the global warming debate. Milloy's theories are interesting but it is easy to label the likes of such "deniers" as crackpot conspiracy theorists. However, when you have on your side the likes of former NASA boss Dr. John Theon, sci-fi great Michael Chrichton, and some 20,000 scientists who signed a petition arguing that current AGW theories were faulty, it adds a lot of weight to the argument. It's easy to get a little suspicious when pro-AGW scientists try to present a debate, based largely on circumstantial evidence and computer models where important data points was deliberately left out, as being finalized. I haven't finished Milloy's book at the time of writing this but I've begun to put together my own theory on environmental politics. In short, it seeks to create a new world order through an entirely new form of government.

Based on proposals from environmental groups, words spoken by pro-climate politicians, scientists, and activists, I've discovered that the overall goal is a total reshaping of the way governments and economies operate in order to protect the planet. If they are successful, it would give rise to an form of government known as periballocracy. I like making up my own words; this particular one comes from the modern Greek word periballon, meaning environment, and the root -kratia, meaning to rule. So periballocracy is rule by environment or more specifically rule by environmentalism. It is aristocratic collectivism with a green twist. In this form of government, you have a group of elites micromanaging society and the economy to reduce the impact of humans on the planet. It is inherently anti-individualistic, instead focusing on group social engineering and laws to force the reduction of energy usage and the adoption of other "sustainable" living practises. It may also adopt concepts of wealth redistribution, economic reduction, population reduction, socialism, and communism. It is inherently statist, requiring much larger governments than those that exist today. It is also anti-democratic, frowning on those who reject the conventional wisdom of the rulers. Furthermore, the overall goal is to create a global government based on these principles.

Pariballcratic organizations already do exist. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is probably the best known example. Numerous NGO's have also called for similar styles of government. Regardless of the form it takes, pariballocracy's goal is to drastically alter your way of living in order to stop global warming and other kinds of environmental damage. This form of government functions similarly to how nations such as the People's Republic of China and Iran do. You still have some degree of freedom, and free enterprise most likely will still exist, but the government reserves the right to make changes to your lifestyle if it begins to conflict with the party line. It's not quite Big Brother but it is still a disturbing prospect. For example, government programs that remotely manage your thermostat to reduce energy use during peak demand already exist, but are currently voluntary. The next step would be to make them mandatory. Pariballocratic governments would expand beyond this, from telling you what kind of car you can drive and how far you can drive it to extremes such as limiting the number of children you can have. It does sound similar to a communist or fascist state but instead it transcends "petty" notions of social justice and nationalism. Like a theocracy, it puts intangible concepts before that of humanity. If you obey the government now, through which you will rescind your sinful ways, you will be saved in the future. Unlike a theocracy, pariballocracy has anti-human tones to it. The idea is not to protect you or your immortal soul, it's to protect the planet. At the most extreme end of things, you are expendable, much like a flea on a dog's back. There are one of two final goals this movement seeks to achieve. First, to create a perfectly sustainable modern society in which we keep current technology levels but with limited impact on the planet. Failing that, the second goal is to force society to turn the clocks back completely to before the industrial revolution. My goal of this article is not to frighten you but just to illustrate just how far things can go if left unchecked.

I suppose I should explain the song. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire by The Ink Spots. It has been featured in several works dealing with apocalypse, notably the Fallout video game series, which deals with the world after a nuclear war. The fear of an imminent apocalypse usually results in driving people to surrender more freedoms to their leaders. Countless religious cults and churches going back millennia have known this. The likes of Joe McCarthy knew this as well. They weren't crazy; it's all about dominance and submission through fear. The powers that be are delighted to have a "real" apocalypse on their hands this time. I'm not saying that our current form of government is going to collapse in favour of a pariballocratic system. That's pretty unlikely at this point even though some elements of it are appearing in the halls of power right now. Still, it's important to beware of the true motives of those positioning themselves as the sole saviours of our society from impending "doom". Many believe that whether their ideals are flawed or not, at least the environmentalists are genuine in their goals and mean well. As trite as it sounds, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don't trust those claiming to be the solution to all your problems, when you never knew there was a problem to begin with. They are the ones who will set your world on fire.

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Weeds!

An interesting bit of enviro-hypocrisy last week. Due to Toronto's garbage strike, the city had to spray the temporary garbage dumps to keep insects and rodents from feeding on the piles and spreading disease. The problem, these same pesticides were declared to be unsafe by the city and the province and fall under the sweeping pesticide ban levied last year. Now, the city has turned around and is assuring residents that these pesticides are perfectly safe. So which one is it? Are they safe or not?

I think this speaks loads about the environmental movement. Do as we say, not as we do. Just look at Al Gore's pollution belching trips around the world and his huge mansion while he tells us to cut back. Anyway, this whole issue with spraying garbage dumps in Toronto just shows how ludicrous the pesticide law actually was. Both the Federal Government and the United Nations have certified common household pesticides as safe and warned that bans could actually make things much worse. Case in point, I don't know about you but I've noticed a heck of a lot more weeds around than last year. My grandma's garden is infested with them. Since she's 86, she is incapable of pulling them and always found using "Weed-n-Feed" to be much easier. I had removed them all by hand a month ago but when I visited again just last week, it was as if I had done nothing at all. In fact there are now twice as many! I've also noticed my allergies to be particularly bad this year. Maybe it's a coincidence but I never used to get them until the pesticide bans started going up a couple of years ago. Furthermore, the Town of Milton is currently undergoing a major infestation of Giant Hogweed. This particular plant secretes a highly toxic chemical in its sap which causes extreme photo-sensitivity. If you should get it on your skin or in your eyes, it violently reacts with UV radiation in sunlight causing painful chemical burns to the skin that require hospitalization if not treated soon enough. It can't simply be mowed down because of this. Hazmat suits are literally a requirement for the job of removing the plant. The only way of effectively controlling this dangerous weed is, yep you guessed it, herbicides that the government has now banned. Giant Hogweed is said to have caused 16,000 injuries in Germany during 2003, and allowing its cultivation on your land is banned in the UK. As I said before, the United Nations did warn that this would happen should there be sweeping umbrella bans of pesticides. We took away our most important tool for controlling invasive species that do far more harm to our environment and safety than a bottle of Roundup ever will. With no natural predators and no human intervention, populations of dangerous pests such as Giant Hogweed, rats, and bed bugs will explode. I hope Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Miller are happy for putting people's safety and well being at risk in order to appease misinformed environmentalists.

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Want to Save the Planet: Stop Eating Say UK Profs.

British climate researchers are saying that the UK population must become more lean, like the people of Vietnam, to reach the government's 80% carbon reduction targets. Heavier people eat more. Agriculture is said to be a major carbon emitter. Also, heavier people use more fuel in their cars and on public transit than leaner people do. So apparently obesity also destroys the planet. They claim to meet this goal, Brits would have to cut their food consumption by 20%. UK based technology magazine The Register offers some interesting calculations to show how ludicrous the eating less plan actually is. The problem is that obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), a division of height by weight. Vietnamese people by this measure are indeed less "fat" than British people are. However, they are also significantly shorter.

And we fat/heavy Brits eat more food than people do in Vietnam, that's true. But we aren't just fatter and heavier than Vietnamese people - we're taller too. Le Nguyen Bao Khanh of the Vietnamese School and Work Nutrition Department says that Vietnamese youngsters tend to stop growing early due to malnutrition, and "many are dwarfish". The Vietnamese government, indeed, are embarking on a national programme intended to raise the average male height to 5'5" from its current 5'4".

The Register concluded by saying...

Well, maybe. Us Brits emit almost ten tonnes per head a year, though. In order to meet the government's stated goals, much more serious efforts would be required: we'd have to halve the British population and shrink the average UK male to a height of 3'3" to achieve Mr Miliband's 80 per cent pledge, according to our calculations*. That's about the average height of a Hobbit, if we've recalled our Tolkien correctly.

The UK population needs to achieve 8 times the carbon savings suggested in the study to meet current government targets: thus they must lose 8 times as much weight, which would require vanishing altogether and then some. If numbers are cut by half, however, each person needs to lose only 80 per cent of their body volume. This equates to reducing all physical dimensions by 40 per cent, eg average UK men should become approximately 3'3".

Britain seems to be an endless source of harebrained schemes to reduce their carbon emissions to stop climate change, such as making monsters out of people who have more than two kids. The plans already imposed by the Blair/Brown government have pretty much destroyed the British economy. I've never seen such lunacy in my life. The UK is charting itself on a self-destructive course; and they said climate action wouldn't be detrimental to our society.

Source: The Register

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Noise Pollution

With all the talk about global warming and such, one form of pollution which can be just as harmful to one's health seems to get ignored. That is noise pollution. My current living situation went from a quiet neighbourhood to the equivalent of living next to the 401 in three year's time. I have found myself living in my guest bedroom just to be able to sleep at night, as it is on the opposite end of the house facing away from the road. Studies have shown that too much exposure to high levels of loud, unwanted noise over a long period can have serious long and short term health consequences. These range from elevated stress and irritability to high blood pressure and hearing loss. There has been a lot of debate on the subject and what frequently comes under attack are things such as leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and fuel powered radio controlled model cars and planes. However, what people forget is these objects are not run continuously. Your neighbour might run a leaf blower for a couple of days a year, for maybe one hour tops. The sort of 24/7 noise is rarely if ever dealt with in Canada. I've had a lot of time to consider the issue and have tracked down some common sources of this form of irritation.

The Backup Alarm
You know this one well if you've worked or live near a construction site. Beep, beep, beep. It goes for hours on end. These alarms are installed into commercial vehicles supposedly as a safety feature to let people know when you're backing up. Implemented by law, they were originally supposed to alert people from being run over. I have never heard of a single case of this happening though. The high pitched, constant beep serves more to irritate people than prevent them from being run over. People should try paying attention instead. I personally think these should be banned all together as they are a major source of noise pollution, especially if you live near new developments like I do. These do nothing to enhance safety.

The Engine Break
A feature on diesel engines, it uses engine compression to slow down the vehicle rather than using a traditional fiction break. They work especially well for large vehicles such as tractor trailers and dump trucks. However, they are considerably noises, especially on trucks that have poor exhaust mufflers. This is especially a problem in older vehicles. They make that burrr, bum bum bum, which is said to sound similar to a jackhammer but is 10-20 times louder. Laws against these are varied. Many municipalities forbid the use of them near residential areas though these laws are rarely if ever enforced. Truck drivers are a slimy bunch and often disregard these so called "insignificant" laws restricting where they can go. Tougher fines and better enforcement would nip this problem in the bud. The cops could make a mint.

The Motorcycle
My model aircraft are limited to 90dB at three meters. That's why I find it ironic that they hammer us so hard on noise limits but motorcycle engines are often significantly louder. Now, I can understand why motorcycle drivers have tuned their bikes to be loud, because not all of them are. Bikers want cars to be able to hear them coming since bikes are frequently overlooked by drivers. However, some are so loud that they go beyond reason. Stricter noise limits should be placed on bikes for them to be street legal.

The Thrush Muffler
The teenagers seem to love these. You put them on your exhaust and it's supposed to turn a 1990 Honda Civic hatchback into a 1969 Dodge Charger. Unlike what many stupid kids think, these don't improve the car's performance one bit. They also make it sound more like a bus or a tractor that a supercharged muscle car. The solution here is the same for motorcycles, stricter exhaust noise limits for cars.

The Sound Barrier, or Lack There Of
Many roads within municipalities have suddenly become main thoroughfares when they were not before. New houses also seem to be cropping up that are adjacent to main roads. The problem is that municipalities are refusing to build sound barriers to reduce the noise level for these people. In new developments, the developers usually put them up but for the older residents who suddenly find themselves living next to a main road are often crap out of luck. This has been my fight with the Town of Milton. Spend $74,000 for a sound barrier for me and my neighbours? Pass. Build a $1 million glass wall imported from UK for new City Hall? Heck yeah!

Poor Urban Planning
One of the biggest sources for noise pollution isn't the objects generating the sound but the fact that these objects are placed too close to residential areas. Take my mall issue for example that seeks to place a huge shopping plaza behind my house and widen the road to a main truck route.
More interest is being put into potential tax dollars rather than properly designed neighbourhoods that separate main industrial centres and busy commercial facilities from residential areas. Everything now is just a hodgepodge where anything can go anywhere without regards to noise or other forms of pollution generated.

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Wasting Green on Green: The Tale of the $120 Rain Barrel

Now for something completely different. Canadian Tire is selling a 180L rain barrel for $120, on sale this week for a pittance of $100! It's being marketed as a "green" alternative that could save up to 40% on your summer water bill. (we all know that "up to 40%" usually means somewhere in the ball park of 0%-1%) This is the perfect example on wasting green on green. Rather than just picking on this company for charging an outrageous amount of money for something so simple, I've decided to take up the challenge and make something myself that's identical for half the cost.

The nuts and bolts of this expensive barrel seems to be what amounts to a plastic garbage can & spigot and something to connect it to a downspout. I don't need one as big as 180L so I decided to go with either a 121L (32 gal) or 77L (21gal) plastic garbage can, which can be obtained at Home Depot for $11 and $17 respectively. A metal spigot (essentially just an outdoor tap) costs about $10, probably less, and is more durable than the plastic one on the CT barrel. A screen to keep bugs out will cost maybe $2 at most, though I might already have that. I also already have silicone caulk to assemble it. My goal is to spend no more than $50 ($30 ideally) on the entire project to build a usable rain barrel. I might have to set up eves and a downspout for where I want to put it but I'm not factoring that into the cost of the project since the CT barrel assumes you already have that in place. Why am I doing this? No, I haven't gone to the green dark side. It's more of a proof of theory that the green industry is a huge scam. Of course I'll update my progress as I go along.

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Wasting Green on Green: Green Charity Scams

World Wildlife Fund is gearing up to do it's annual CN Tower Stair Climb later this month. This event used to be in support of the United Way but that changed somewhere in the last couple of years. The WWF stair climb is to fight global warming while the United Way fights poverty and homelessness in the city. Neither are big concerns to me but I find the latter to be a far more noble cause than the former. This has got me thinking about the recent surge in the number of "green" charities. The WWF has led this bandwagon. Greenpeace is now said to rake in over a billion dollars in donations. What is this money being spent on? Well, they certainly aren't doing what you'd think a legitimate charity would do. It's not going to help people who need it. It goes to a lot of pipe dream pet projects that the group's members think will stop climate change. People in Africa need AIDS vaccines and access to clean water, not solar panels. I think it's shameful for someone to give to a green charity rather than spending it on legitimate humanitarian aid projects. If you want to donate money, I suggest giving it to people such as the Red Cross or medical charities. I'm personally a supporter of Heart & Stroke Canada and The Diabetes Association of Canada, and I gave to the Red Cross during the Katrina disaster. Rather than donating your money to the stair climb for global warming, please instead donate it to the disaster victims in the recent Italian Earthquake Disaster and Manitoba Floods. You'll be putting a smile on someone's face right when they need it the most.

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Earth Hour Fraud Round 2

It's time for Earth Hour once again, the publicity stunt created by the World Wildlife Fund to jump on the anthropogenic global warming bandwagon. You can refer to my post on it from last march. Once again I encourage readers to leave their lights on. Keep in mind that Ontarians already get their power from carbon-free sources such as nuclear and hydro-electric. Don't encourage organization that put forth fraudulent claims for money and publicity.

Earth Hour a Publicity Stunt - MMN March 2008

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Top Ten Failures In McGuinty's Tainted Legacy

How do you write yourself into the history books as one of the worst leaders a province has ever had in its history. Simple, just follow Dalton McGuinty's legacy and you'll do fine. Here's a list I've compiled of some of the more notable events of the last five years.

1. Implemented the Largest Tax in Ontario History
McGuinty ran on a campaign promise that he would not raise taxes, even solidifying it in writing by signing an agreement with the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. In his first budget, he implemented the "Health Care Premium" so that all Ontarians would pay their "fair share" to hire more doctors and nurses due to a shortfall caused apparently by Mike Harris's cuts. The premium is roughly $900 per person per year and appears within your income tax. It goes into general revenue rather than a specific fund for health care. Health care services have arguably have seen little to no improvement despite the massive funding increase.

2. Put the Province in an Energy Shortage
Get rid of your old fridge, caulk your windows, replace light bulbs with the crappy twisty ones as stated by David Suzuki in the Powerwise commercials for the Ontario Government. When McGuinty was elected in 2003, he promised to close all of Ontario's coal fired generating stations by 2007 to reduce carbon emissions. However, there were no plans to build new power plants to replace them. It turns out that closing down just one major coal station, the Lakeview Generating Station, sparked a massive power shortage in the province. Ontarians were forced to put in "Smart Meters" as an excuse to charge you more for electricity and force you to conserve. (As a side note, the debt retirement charge on your hydro bill is actually a tax that goes into the province's general revenue. It is not used to pay down the debt of the former Ontario Hydro as claimed. This tidbit was obtained from publically available budget documents which provide a breakdown of tax revenue streams going into general revenue.) Large sums of money were wasted on conservation programs and buying power from out of province. Money which could have been put to retrofit existing power plants with clean coal technology. The rest of the coal generators are still open as of 2009. It would take more than a decade to replace the plants with nuclear power, a plan that was hacked out just last year, long after the coal closure deadline had passed.

3. Destroyed the Environment
McGuinty had a lot of egg on his face after the Oakridges fiasco. For a refresher, McGuinty had promised during the election to shut down a major housing development along the environmentally sensitive wetlands known as the Oakridges Moraine, near Holland Marsh. Unfortunately doing so was technically illegal since the contracts allowing them to build had been in place since well before he was elected. Being a lawyer, he should have known this. However, I suspect he knew all along and it was said simply for token populist purposes. However, it backfired and went down as his first broken promise; first of many. In 2005, the McGuinty Government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, apparently in order to prevent urban sprawl. In reality, the Places to Grow Act has accelerated it to the point of being out of control. Outlying GTA communities have been swallowed up by massive unchecked growth, putting huge tolls on their original residents and the surrounding environment. The Greenbelt Act is impotent at best and has led to housing developments almost up to the base of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Plans even called for putting a highway on top of the environmentally sensitive cliffs at one point. Even Toronto is not immune. The city now has a street literally named "OMB Folly" as a monument to these laws. Environmentalism is only chique when it deals with fake issues like global warming and federally regulated safe pesticides. If McGuinty and the OMB had their way, they'd turn Ontario into ecumenopolis of cookie cutter houses.

4. Caught Buying Votes
An Indian-Canadian cricket club that had asked the province for $100,000 in taxpayer funding to establish their team. They surprisingly found themselves with a $1 million cheque mailed to them, authorized by the premier's staff. That's more than a little suspicious and not the first or only incident. $250,000 was given to build a massive Sikh temple in Mississauga. The owners of the Khalsa Darbar had lost their charitable organization status shortly before that, and had been linked to a radical Sikh separatist group in India. This was all part of an odd $32 million fund set aside for ethnic minority groups. A fund which had little to no fiscal transparency or accountability. Targeting specific ethnic groups, namely new Canadians citizens with free money, well, let's just say it's a little less than ethical. I wonder what the going rate for my vote is. I'm a little short on cash right now. See below for the reason why. The slush fund fiasco would have destroyed his hope of reelection if it wasn't for the incompetence of John Tory. Tory may be a nice guy, as people keep saying, but he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. More like a spoon.

5. Let People Go Blind but Put Breast Implants in a Guy
One of the first things the McGuinty government did was take away eye exams from OHIP coverage. These didn't cost the government much (a pittance of $80 a pop) but it has taken a toll on low income earners with eye troubles. I guess poor people don't need to see. Chiropractics were also delisted so I guess it's ok for poor people to be blind and have a bad back too. However, the government thought it was ok to allow sex change operations to be covered. So it's ok for poor people to be blind and have a bad back but at least they can go from male to female on the taxpayer's dime, and vice versa. Joy!

6. Nanny Statism
The McGuinty government has spent much of its time in office on developing petty bans. You can't put pesticide on your lawns, you can't smoke in the car, you can't own a pitbull, etc. Nanny statism is a tactic used to distract the public from real issues by creating issues out of non-issues. Did you get that? Good. Oh on the pesticides; what happens to all those people who do that for a living now that they're banned? I personally think we should have Liberals banned while we're at it.

7. From Have to Have Not
Ontario went into the McGuinty leadership term as the economic engine of Canada. Now the largest province by populaton is considered to fall under "have not" status and requires equalization payments for the first time in the history of the federal program. McGuinty actually positioned this as a good thing, because the government would now get the money from the feds "it deserves." I guess people loosing their jobs and recent university/high school grads not being able to find work is a small price to pay for "fairness". We're now below Newfoundland in terms of economic performance for God's sake. Ey's the by who built the ship, McGuinty's the by that sank 'er.

8. Created an Unfriendly Environment for Business
The federal government warned McGuinty to cut business taxes to encourage companies to stay. Everybody knew a recession at the time, except McGuinty. It was just like how he didn't know about the deficit in 2003 that everybody else knew about. There must be so sort of massive conspiracy afoot, that's the only explanation! Now many big corporations, such as Daimler Chrysler, and threatening to pull out of the province all together due to the high cost of doing business here. The government is now scrambling to throw money at them with no guarantees they'll remain in Ontario. This economic plan would be akin to me emptying my wallent into the toilet, fushing it, and expecting to retrive its contents from the sludge at the sewage plant a week later.

9. Raising Taxes During a Recession
According to Keynesian economics, which plays a big role in liberal theory, governments have two duties in regards to the economy. Raise taxes and save during good times, cut taxes and spend during bad times. The Ontario Liberals raised taxes and spent during good times, and raised taxes and spent during the bad times. Ontarians got a nasty surprise in the 2009 budget when they found out many staple goods would now be subject to an 8% sales tax due to harmonization. "Gee, nobody's buying anything because they have no money so you know what we'll do to fix that? We'll increase the sales tax and make them pay more!" This is just incredibly asinine.

10. Making Rae Look Fiscally Responsible
During McGuinty's years in office, annual government spending has tipped the scales at $18 billion. Rae's biggest budgets only managed to top $9 billion in the early 90s. When adjusted for inflation, McGuinty's budget is still $6 billion more than Bob Rae's! Once again this goes against Keynesian economics. McGuinty is trying to spend his way out of a recession but spent to much when times were good, so there's no money left. The province will be in deficit for six years, compared to the one year it was under Eves due to the Dot Com Burst and 9/11 crashes. It will take decades to repay that level of debt, and more government belt tightening if we manage to get someone with half a brain running the province again. Civil servants better start making their strike signs now before they're taxes so much, they can't afford coroplast and 2x4s.

Now for the top ten successes of the McGuinty Government.

1. ...........
I'd better get back to you guys on this one. I'm head first in the barrel as we speak, spatula in hand.

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