Not when he says the oil companies don’t represent the oil companies, but in his generally negative attitude towards the whole thing? Well, let’s play Devil’s advocate for a minute. What does Alberta get from the rest of the planet for…
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The Disaffected Lib: As I Stare at My Smoke-Clouded Sky, a Thought or Two About Tipping Points
A tipping point isn’t that instant when water begins pouring over the canoe’s gunwale. The tipping point is actually before that, when the canoe is heeling over and can’t be stopped. It’s summer time. Get in a canoe and try it. There’s a brief moment, perhaps not more than a
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: IPCC Chair Rajendra K Pachauri Steps Down
The right thing to do, whatever the truth of the sexual harassment charges against him. And in this case it was starting to look like there might have been some fire under all that smoke.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Arctic Gateway Route Relies On Global Warming To Thin The Ice
Stymied by opposition on the West Coast, the Alberta government has prepared a technical report outlining the possibility of an “arctic gateway” as an alternative means of getting their bitumen to market. The entire report can be found here. And below is a graphic showing some of the proposed routes out.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Mark Steyn Hires A Spy
As my readers may know, conservative political commentator Mark Steyn is in some legal trouble, having gotten himself sued by climate scientist Mike Mann. While we should be careful to judge these things before they are done, it is fair to say that things are not going well for Mr.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: UK Climate Change Deniers Forced To Clean Up Act?
The GWPF are an organized group of AGW denialists based in the UK. They are fronted by the notorious Benny Peiser, and are known more widely for the fact that one of their money men and spokespeople is Nigel Lawson, dad to the sweet and buxom Nigella. Earlier this year they
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Mann Vs. Steyn: Steve McIntyre Weighs In
I’ve written fairly extensively on the topic of Michael Mann’s defamation case against Mark Steyn. Earlier this month, having fired, or been fired by, his lawyers, Mark Steyn appealed to the Internet to help build a case for claiming that, when he described Michael Mann’s work as “fraudulent”, he was
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Cult of Living Large
2015, we’re told, is the year the developed world (that’s us) and the emerging economies (China, India, etc., etc., etc.) will close ranks to formulate an effective plan of action to fight climate change. It’s going to be Kyoto on steroids, a true hallelujah moment, a meeting of minds, a
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Cognitive Dissonance is a Lousy Political Platform, Even for the Liberals.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when an entity embraces two or more contradictory beliefs or values at the same time. As social psychologist Leon Festinger showed, cognitive dissonance in an individual leads to psychological distress. To cope, that individual or entity may simply block out information that contributes to the stress of
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Global Warming Denier James Delingpole Gets Ass Booted Out Door
Word is the UK Telegraph (the Torygraph, as they call it) felt he was an embarrassment. And of course, in his sign-off column he admits he knew nothing about science. Something most of us figured out long ago. Although I would also suggest he’s pretty ignorant even for one of
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Copernicus Publishing Terminates Pattern Recognition In Physics
Here’s what you see when you go to the home page of the journal Pattern Recognition In Physics: It looks like I may have been wrong about this being a first issue in my previous post. It was still, however, a relatively new journal. In any case, Kudos to Copernicus Publications.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: On Pattern Recognition In Physics
Pattern Recognition In Physics (PRP, I’ll call it) is a new, open access journal devoted to “experimental and applied aspects of pattern analysis, extraction, classification and clustering in all branches and disciplines of physics”. This sounds quite sciency but may mean not very much when you parse it carefully. Anyway, it’s
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Speaking Of Losing Your Lawyer: Mark Steyn Has Lost His in Mann v. National Review
A print-screen from a recently filed motion (its only two pages long): One can only speculate. But Steyn has, as Ezra Levant sometimes does, kept up with the abuse once proceedings have been launched against him. For example last week on his N.R. blog. Lawyers don’t like it when you make
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Kinder Morgan Pipeline: Might Be A Little Problem With That
Seventy-three per cent of the proposed new routing will follow existing rights-of-way. About 980 kilometres of new pipe would need to be constructed. According to my calculations, Kinder Morgan will have to buy or otherwise gain access to a strip of land 311 long (about 186 miles) and probably about
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: A Couple Of Polls On CDN Pipelines
From Forum, so FWIW: A bit surprising, or at least other polls in B.C. have shown support for NG drifting upward. And, nterestingly enough, opposition to the Keystone XL line is and remains much higher in Canada than in The United States.
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Tom Adams In Sun: Mostly Sane
There are bits of it I don’t agree with. For instance, any fair reading of Ontario history would show that the province’s dalliance with gas power predates the Green Energy Act, and wasn’t a conspiracy to cover-up (or “backstop”) the poor performance of its wind farms. But most of it
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Northern Gateway Set To Heat Up
The National Energy Board (NEB) report on the project is set to be released by month’s end. All the media hoopla around the release will occur…wait for it…in Alberta, with B.C., the province through which most of the pipe-line will run, made a mere spectator. Assuming the NEB gives its
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Denier Down: Lindzen Retires
Climate change skeptic Richard Lindzen, most famous perhaps for arguing that global warming would be naturally offset by the Earth’s adaptive infrared iris ( a theory which has been pretty thoroughly discredited over the years) , has officially retired. Perhaps, and hopefully, he will step away from various odd theories, but who
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: 23 Seconds Of Truth
…on the tar-sands, from Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths. Kooky boy thinks this will get the minister in trouble. I don’t pretend to know the politics out there well enough to say. But stay tuned for possible recantations. Update: A warm-up to a recantation? Will his career implode, or will he
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Jonathan Chait’s Puzzling Defense Of Keystone XL
He writes: Keystone is at best marginally relevant to the cause of stopping global warming. The whole crusade increasingly looks like a bizarre misallocation of political attention. My view, which I laid out in a long feature story last spring, is that the central environmental issue of Obama’s presidency is
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