Water Vapor is the Villain, not carbon dioxide.

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Dec 2018

An unscrupulous climate scientist could try to wave away the objections of a chemist by saying that the world is not a beaker.  The world is not a beaker, but the beaker and the world follow the same physical laws, and insofar as the world is a beaker, it must obey the laws as a beaker does.

Of all the con jobs offered by climate alarmist is the one that says carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that is going to drive up the earth’s temperature by three to five degrees by the end of this century.    The major climate models do not, in fact, say this.  They actually say that water vapor is going to be the villain driving up temperature.

The purpose of this article is to explain simply why this mechanism can’t happen, and won’t happen; and all it takes to understand why is some pretty basic knowledge of some chemistry and engineering.

The mechanism of global warming of the climate models is that higher carbon dioxide content in the air will in turn cause more water vapor to be present in the atmosphere.  And it is the higher absolute humidity that is going to trap more of heat that would otherwise radiate into outer space at night, not the carbon dioxide.

Why water vapor?  Water vapor is a far more effective absorber of infrared radiation than carbon dioxide is.  Carbon dioxide, a linear molecule, has only one mode of absorbing infrared radiation, asymmetric stretching, and it occurs in a narrow band around 2350 wavenumbers.  Molecular bending causes strong, broad absorption to begin at 667 cm-1 and extend into the far infrared.  The water molecule is V- shaped, is capable of hydrogen bonding, and it has three strong and broad absorption bands. (3750 – 3150, 1400 – 1100, and 800 – 600 cm-1)

As explained previously, those who speak of carbon dioxide and water vapor as “greenhouse gases” don’t know how greenhouses work.  Carbon dioxide and water vapor are added to the greenhouse atmosphere to promote plant growth, not for their heating effect.  Plants need carbon dioxide and water for photosynthesis, a process which converts these two chemicals into plant matter using the light from the sun to power the transformation.

Somehow, more atmospheric carbon dioxide is supposed to cause more atmospheric humidity, sufficient to multiply several fold the magnitude of the heat trapping effect of carbon dioxide.  So the earth isn’t going to turn into a hot, wind-swept desert, but into a humid jungle by the end of the century.  The trouble is, the water content of the atmosphere has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, or indeed, the other gases of the atmosphere at all.  The vapor pressure of water depends only on temperature of the liquid.  There is no chemical interaction between carbon dioxide and water in the gas phase that would tend to increase the amount of water in the air.

When cold air passes over warm ocean, fog tends to result.  The warm water pumps more water vapor into the atmosphere than it can hold at its current temperature, and so the water condenses as fog.  The fog “burns off” when the air warms up and the relative humidity drops below 100 percent.  When warm air passes over cold water, little humidity tends to pass into the atmosphere, though if the air gets chilled enough, fog, rain or snow can result.

All that matters is the temperature of the ocean and the temperature of the atmosphere over it.  Relative humidity and absolute humidity interacting.  The other gases in the atmosphere play no role.  For the absolute humidity of the atmosphere to rise permanently, it would require the oceans to warm permanently, and by several degrees to produce a noticeable effect.  Warmer ocean water would by itself warm the atmosphere above it.  Think of a permanent El Nino effect.  This isn’t going to happen by some feedback loop that defies Le Chatelier’s principle.

The results are observable in the climate models.  The best of them predicted twice as much warming as actually occurred since 1998.  The feed-back didn’t happen. 

The oceans are the earth’s great reservoir of heat, as well as of atmospheric humidity.   Unlike on Venus, the earth’s atmosphere is small in mass relative to the oceans and to the planet itself.  Because it consists primarily of nitrogen, the atmosphere possesses internal moderating mechanisms that prevent run-away temperature changes – quite apart from the moderating effect of the oceans.  The moderation of average atmospheric temperature is quite robust.

For the earth’s atmosphere to experience serious, long-term changes in condition, which we might call climate change or global warming – the earth’s ocean in contact with the atmosphere must increase in temperature by several degrees.  That isn’t going to happen by a feed-back loop involving atmospheric carbon dioxide.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a research scientist and occasion free-lance writer.

Ford isn't Trump, Ontario isn't America

Vincent J. curtis

14 Dec 2018

RE: Appointment of Ford friend Ron Tavener to be head of OPP

(N.B.  Mr. Tavener is presently a senior member of the Toronto Police Department)

The Spectator calls for a review of the appointment of Ron Taverner as head of the OPP.  The grounds for a review are that Taverner is a family friend of Premier Ford, and it is suspected that Ford interfered in the appointment process “for his own political benefit.”

(Let's analyze that briefly.  Why wouldn't a Premier appoint someone for political benefit?  If the appointee screws up, then the "benefit" redounds against him, doesn't it.  I've never heard of an appointment made because it hurts the Premier.  Of course a politician is going to appoint a qualified person whom he knows.  The whole premise smacks of unaware partisanship against Ford.)

Ford emphatically denied involvement, but let’s assume he made the appointment personally.  In our constitutional system, who can review the Premier’s appointment?  Not the Lieutenant Governor, for Ford would have acted in her name.  An unelected, unaccountable judge?  Do you believe in democratic government or not?

The staffing of the OPP is routine administrative business of the Ontario government.  Ford’s Conservatives were elected to run that government, and they will be accountable for their actions and choices in the next election.  Why the call for an undemocratic review of a decision made by the leaders whom we chose democratically to make that decision?

Save the legislature itself, our constitutional system has no authority higher than the government, as was suddenly discovered when the Notwithstanding Clause was invoked.  Nothing has the authority – nor should it - to arbitrarily revoke or review a routine administrative decision of the government, other than by law, and certainly not in the ad hoc fashion advocated by the Spectator.

Ford isn’t Trump, and Ontario isn’t America.  Our constitutions are different.  In ours, the government has the right, the responsibility, and the authority to govern.  And the people periodically review who staffs the government.

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Hurricanes and Global Warming

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Dec 2018

One of the prospects of global warming held forth to frightening people is increasing severity and frequency of storms, particularly of hurricanes.  Superficially, it makes sense that if there is more heat in the atmosphere there will be more power packed into weather events like storms.  But the people who offer such prospects reveal gaps in knowledge about how hurricanes work and how they originate.

Simply put, hurricanes, to take the extreme example, cannot be more severe or more frequent than they have been.  They cannot be more severe because hurricanes are not driven by the transformation of the heat latent in the permanent gases of the atmosphere: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide.  They do not originate on account of the latent heat of the permanent gases.

Let me explain.  A philosopher would describe a hurricane as a form in the matter of the atmosphere.  A mechanic would describe a hurricane as an engine that transforms the latent heat of atmospheric moisture into rain and kinetic energy, i.e. wind.  When water vapor condenses into rain, the latent heat of vaporization is released, and what this heat does is power the winds of the hurricane.  A reason why hurricanes form over tropical waters is that warm, moist air over the tropical ocean possesses enough absolute humidity  to drive a storm of hurricane size and power.

There is relative humidity and absolute humidity.  Relative humidity refers to the amount of moisture in the air relative to the saturation point, when condensation in the form of fog, frost, or clouds occurs.  Absolute humidity refers to the actual amount of water vapor in the air, and warmer air is able to hold more water as vapor.

When hurricanes pass over land, they rapidly lose strength because their supply of warm, moist air is cut off.  Less moisture, less condensation, less heat available to drive the winds.  Likewise, if a hurricane diverts northward but remains over the ocean, the Gulf Stream can sustain it for a while, but as the disturbance encounters cooler air farther north, there is less absolute humidity, and therefore less latent heat of condensation available to convert into rain and wind.

The latent heat of the permanent gases of the atmosphere play no role in this because the heat they contain is not transformed in any permanent way, as water vapor is converted into rain.  But could a change in the ratios of the permanent atmospheric gases increase the amount of absolute humidity?

The answer is no, for two reasons.  The first is that the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide is infinitesimal.  The second, and more important reason, is that the limit of absolute humidity is determined by the vapor pressure of water, which is governed by temperature, not the atmosphere above the liquid.

The intensity of a hurricane is determined by the atmospheric pressure in the eye of the storm; the lower the pressure, the higher the wind speed in the eyewall.  Atmospheric pressure is determined by gravity and the mass of the atmosphere above.  The force of gravity on earth isn't going to change on account of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Atmospheric mass is not going to change appreciably by a minute addition of carbon.

Hurricanes originate as “convective instabilities” in the atmosphere.  They are the product of the effect of the heating of the sun on the tropical waters between West Africa and the Caribbean Sea.  This is a complex phenomenon, but the heat capacity of the atmosphere over those waters is not going to be changed significantly by infinitesimal changes in the carbon dioxide content, and besides that the heat capacity of carbon dioxide is not substantially different from that of nitrogen, the primary constituent of the atmosphere.

Heat capacity refers to the amount of heat required to raise an amount of the substance by one degree in temperature.  Since the heat from the sun, and the temperature of the ocean waters will be unchanged, the origin of hurricanes as convective instabilities will remain robustly the same.

Hence, there is no need to worry about increasing numbers or intensity of hurricanes particularly, or storms generally.  The power of these do not come from the conversion of the latent heat of carbon dioxide gas.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a research scientist and occasional free-lance writer.

Alberta welcomes climate improvement

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Dec 2018

RE: Close Canada’s oilsands (by Thomas Walkom, The Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Spoken like a true Central Canadian: Ontario has a problem, and the solution is to devastate Alberta’s economy.  Thomas Walkom is probably too young to remember the National Energy Policy of Pierre Trudeau.  Ontario had a problem with soaring gasoline prices, and the answer was to devastate Alberta’s economy for years by having a “made-in-Canada” oil price.  Alberta still remembers the NEP.

The present Central Canadian problem is a fetish about climate change, and Walkom recommends shutting down Alberta’s oilsands projects, which employ scores of thousands of people and provide the Alberta treasury with billions of tax dollars.  After complaining about the environmental impact of oilsands exploitation, he then argues that resistance is futile because the world is “awash with cheap shale oil.”  Shale oil and gas are obtained by fracking, a process once loudly condemned by environmentalists but now embraced in this case.

When it comes to climate change, Walkom and many others need to take a Valium.  Even Walkom’s World is going to need fuels and lubricants.  For its part, Alberta would welcome climate improvement.

By analogy, Walcom would argue that Ontario’s wine industry should be shut down because its products are not of the quality and cannot command the prices of French or California vintages.  The market is large enough for Ontario wines, and for Alberta bitumen, if they can be brought to the right market.

Once again a Central Canadian problem is solved by devastating Alberta.

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Climate change shouters are afraid.

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Dec 2018

RE: Ford’s climate plan falls short (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Today’s media is full of leather-lunged, talking points shouting alleged experts.  They work like radios: all talk and never listen.  One such expert is Mark Winfield, a professor of one of those “-studies” courses who faithfully regurgitates the party line on climate change.

The accusation is that the Ford government’s climate change strategy is inadequate to stem the problem.  This is like complaining that tiny Luxembourg lacks an adequate strategy to defeat the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany.  Ontario’s and Canada’s contribution to the problem – assuming it exists – is so tiny by their own measure that it is simply foolish to speak of a Canadian or Ontarian strategy to defeat climate change.

This point has been made before, and given quantitatively.  It is significant that the emperor is not listening to the whispering that he is wearing no clothes.  The professional fearmongers lack an answer, and they know it.

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Alberta is screwed

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Dec 2018

RE: Alberta workers need help.  (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Alberta is screwed.  Jason Kenney, leader of the Alberta Conservative party revealed that Alberta was getting $12.50 for a barrel of oil when the world price was $52.50 – a $40.00 per barrel discount.  This isn’t sustainable.

From the moment that the Obama administration blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the government of Canada should have ordered the construction of a pipeline to the BC coast so that oil could be sold to China and Japan.   That wasn’t done.

Oil workers can’t live off unemployment insurance, and no amount of retraining is going to find them other jobs in Alberta.  They simply aren’t there.  In the nearish term, what is needed is a program to move the displaced workers to Ontario where the economy is more diverse and more dynamic.  The quality of the worker for Ontario industry will be as good as any in the world.

In the longer term, Alberta is going to have to refine its own oil, at a pace of a million barrels a day.  Finished fuels and lubes possess greater value value-added than crude oil.  There will still be the problem of shipment to markets east and south, and railroads will need to be expanded in capacity simultaneous with the construction of the refineries.  All this needs a co-ordination and concentration of effort between provincial and federal governments and within the federal government particularly.

There are few Liberal votes in Alberta.  Let’s see if that matters to Trudeau.

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Another French Revolution

 Vincent J. Curtis

4 Dec 2018

Another French Revolution is breaking out, and for similar reasons as previous.  An out of touch royalist is imposing oppressive taxes on the peasantry for the good of the nation.  The peasants are unimpressed by the claims of moral superiority and necessity.

As I’ve said before in respect of a Canadian carbon tax, any tax of a rigour sufficient to “change behaviour” would lead to an outbreak of violence.  Some “behaviors” are an all-or-nothing affair, like driving to Toronto to work; and only a tax severe enough to make work in Toronto uneconomic could change that “behavior.”

Well, French President Macron swallowed all the climate change kool-aid and imposed taxes on fuels severe enough that driving to work and driving for work are now becoming uneconomical.  A proposed future increase on carbon fuels sparked rioting in Paris.  Protests by Macron that he is putting the working and middle classes out of work for the good of the world fails to impress the rioters, who still have to pay the rent and put food on the table.

The Canadian carbon tax is also an exercise in virtue-signalling.  It won’t change behavior in the manner desired because it won’t be rigorous enough.  M. Trudeau is not as far out of touch as is le Président de la République française.  Still,….

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Ford attacked for inadequate climate strategy

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Dec 2018

RE: Ontario’s new environmental plan falls woefully short (Hamilton Spectator editorial 1 Dec 2018)

It is absurd to say that the Ford government’s plan to fight climate change is woefully short of “what is really needed.”  It is absurd to say that Canada or even Ontario needs a strategy to combat climate change.  Neither Canada nor Ontario can do anything that will alter the progress of climate change.  Our contribution to the problem is so trivial that nothing we do will have any detectable impact on the climate.

Canada contributes 1.5 % of the world emissions of carbon dioxide, and Ontario contributes about a third of that.  If Ontario disappeared, the reduction of expected global temperature increase by the year 2100 would be 0.015 of a degree – an amount too small to be measured reliably.

The most important things Ford can do for the future of Ontario is to get the provincial budget right, and to encourage economic expansion.  The tax and spend plan that the Spectator criticizes works to make Ontario’s large industries more energy efficient, and therefore more competitive.

Financial incentives by government to promote certain things are nothing new.  That is the thought behind carbon taxes.  Ford’s plan is not exactly boilerplate conservativism, and it must grate on Liberals that Ford is waving the climate change flag while helping big industry by Liberal means.

To complain that it doesn’t do enough to combat climate change is ridiculous.

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A skeptical chemist’s view of global warming

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Nov 2018

I propose to set forth my objections to the fear-monger surrounding the issue of run-away global warming.

The most important factor in the warming of the earth is the energy output of the sun.  If the sun went dark, it would not take long for the earth to assume a temperature approximating that of outer space.  The sun is where all the heat comes from. The difference between summer and winter and between day and night serve as examples of the power of the sun.  We can call the energy output of the sun the first order factor of the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.

 All the anthropogenic global warming hypotheses assume that the energy output of the sun is absolutely constant.  This is a radical and unwarranted assumption.  The earth has experienced several ice ages, and periods of great warmth, as when the dinosaurs roamed the planet.  In the 20^th century alone, the 1930s were a period of extraordinary heat, and the earth’s temperature cooled between 1940 and 1970 – setting off a ‘coming ice age’ scare.  None of these things had anything to do with man or carbon dioxide.  The sun is the first order factor of the earth’s atmospheric temperature, and all second and higher order factors react to it.

Let’s assume for the moment that absolute constancy holds, at least for brief periods of time.  We look then at the second and third order factors that affect global atmospheric temperature  .If the assumption that global temperatures are affected by atmospheric carbon dioxide is true, what can we expect as carbon dioxide increased in concentration? As a first approximation, we would expect global average temperature to increase linearly as follows: ΔT = mΔC, where ΔT is the increase in temperature, ΔC is the increase in carbon dioxide concentration, and m is the rate of increase.  With all other factors being held constant we should expect to see a consistent, linear increase in temperature with increase in carbon dioxide.  But we are not seeing anything like that, and so all other factors cannot be constant.  Factors other than carbon dioxide must also be playing a role – a more important role - in increasing global temperatures.

Let’s look at another factor.  The ideal gas law is as follows: PV=nRT, where P is pressure, V is volume, n is the quantity of gas, T is absolute temperature, and R is a constant.  Since n, the quantity of the atmosphere, is constant, and atmospheric pressure is constant, any increase in temperature would result in an expansion of the volume of the atmosphere.  The atmosphere consists of nitrogen to the extent of 78 percent, and nitrogen is subject to the Joule-Thompson effect.  This means that an adiabatic expansion of a volume of nitrogen will result in a decrease in temperature of the gas.  Anyone who has cracked open a cylinder of compressed nitrogen will have seen the valve and outlet of the cylinder get covered in frost - this is the Joule-Thompson effect in action.  Any expansion of the earth’s atmosphere due to an increase in temperature would see an offsetting response as a result of that expansion.  Since nitrogen comprises 78 percent of the earth’s atmosphere while carbon dioxide comprises only 0.04 percent, the moderating effect of nitrogen is extremely powerful as compared to a heating effect of carbon dioxide.

The atmosphere of Venus consists of 96 percent carbon dioxide.  Any likening of the earth turning into a Venus fails to observe the large differences in compositions between the two atmospheres.  In addition, Venus has about thirty times the amount of atmosphere that earth does.  Where Venus has atmosphere, earth has oceans, and the oceans have a far greater capacity to absorb heat and moderate temperature than the earth’s atmosphere does.  The earth is nothing like Venus, and the earth’s atmosphere can’t experience run-away temperatures without a dramatic change in solar output.

Carbon dioxide is ominously referred to as a “greenhouse gas,” and people who make this observation don’t seem to know much about greenhouses.  Carbon dioxide is added to a greenhouse to increase the bulk of the plants, not to heat the place.  Plants use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis to grow and develop; more CO₂, bigger plants.  The heat felt in greenhouses is produced by the glass, not the gas.

My old university residence had common rooms that used to get very hot on the coldest of winter days under a bright winter sun.  Ordinary window glass traps most infra-red radiation, and the bright sun shining on the dark carpet and furniture of the common room produced a lot of infra-red radiation.  The trapping of heat in a greenhouse relies on plain window glass being opaque to most infra-red radiation.  Greenhouses work by trapping infra-red radiation with ordinary window glass, not with carbon dioxide, which absorbs at a specific frequency of infra-red.

To recap to this point: the sun is where all the heat comes from.  The oceans are the great second order moderator of heat on earth’s surface, due to their capacity both to absorb heat from and release heat and moisture to the atmosphere.  The third order moderator is the atmosphere itself, being composed largely of nitrogen and not being all that massive, especially as compared to the oceans.

The greatest variable in atmospheric composition is humidity, and water vapor absorbs at specific frequencies in the infra-red region as carbon dioxide does.  Carbon dioxide is a minor constituent.  To the extent that carbon dioxide absorbs (and emits) infra-red radiation at a specific frequency, the global warming hypothesis requires a linear increase in atmospheric temperature, neglecting the moderating effect of nitrogen, and holding all other factors constant.  But we aren’t seeing simple, linear increases with ΔC.  Other factors must, therefore, be playing roles, and those factors are all more powerful in their effects than carbon dioxide.

Significant, prolonged changes in global temperatures must be due to natural variation in the first order – the sun.  Smaller changes of shorter duration can be due to changes in the second order – the oceans.  In the third order, nitrogen, by absorbing or releasing heat when expanding or contracting, tends to offset the effects of small changes in the first and second orders. (Another example of Le Chatelier’s principle in action, and explains why small changes do not result in run-away outcomes.)

Like water vapor, carbon dioxide doesn’t just absorb infer-red radiation – it releases it too.  At best, the potential effect of carbon dioxide is to delay, but not prevent, the release of heat to outer space, and is too small and too easily offset by nitrogen, and by the oceans to be that consequential.

To this scientist, the experts who speak most fearfully of run-away global warming are making unwarranted assumptions about all the important factors, the first being solar output.  They exhibit no understanding of how a greenhouse works.  They exhibit no knowledge of the thermodynamics of real gases, or heat capacities.  They don’t seem to understand the establishment of a new equilibrium.  Their fears of run-away temperatures confirm to me their lack of important knowledge.  They simply ignore (or worse – cover up) the failings of their theory.

Finally, they are unscientific.  A time versus temperature graph does not establish a cause-effect relationship between time and temperature, or anything else.

On the other hand, the politics of global warming are obvious and satisfying to many, especially on the left.  A lot of people have made good money playing prophets of doom.  The sheer politicization of what should be a scientific curiosity indicates to me that politics is the predominant factor in all the fearmongering.  The stench of politics hangs over climate science like a sign of something rotten.

I hope this article serves as an antidote to fears of man-caused run-away global warming.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a Canadian research scientist and occasional free-lance writer.

The hokey hockey stick

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 2018

When people think if global warming, most think of the hockey stick graph.  This graph, produced by Michael Mann from a study of tree rings, shows essentially constant temperatures from 1000 A.D.  to 1950, followed by an sharp increase upwards.  This hockey stick graph is claimed to show the evil effects on global temperature of the industrialization of the western world, particularly of the United States.

To the discerning eye, the graph seemed odd.  It failed to show the medieval warm period (950 – 1250) and the little ice age (1300 – 1850), which are well known and well documented phenomena.  The business of calibrating the thickness of a tree ring to an average annual temperature seemed to make dramatic assumptions about other growth factors, such a sunlight, rainfall, species of tree, and local accidents of fertilization.  In addition, trees only cover about 15 % of the world’s surface.  The oceans cover about 70 percent of the surface; there are no trees in the Antarctic, the Arctic, and the great deserts of the world; and the question of representativeness arises.

Then there is the problem of accuracy of measurement.  Tree rings are irregular in shape, vary greatly in thickness around the tree, and, most importantly, the boundary of a ring is not sharp.  The black hash mark on a wide-range mercury thermometer enables an observer to read temperatures reliably to within half, or maybe a quarter of a degree.  Yet the hockey stick graph confidently showed temperature to hundredths of a degree!

Some funny things started to happen.  Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph showed that the sampling and the way Mann handled the data would have produced a hockey-stick graph regardless of the input data.  Then, Mann’s original raw data set was “lost” and all that was available to other researchers was Mann’s processed data set.

Then it became clear that Mann had used not tree-ring data for the twentieth century temperatures but thermometric data instead.  The thermometric data showed an increase in temperature – while the tree ring data showed a decrease in temperature!  Mann used the thermometric data on the grounds that it was more reliable, even if the graph is lacking in consistency.

Mann’s hockey stick graph is insufficient on which to base wide-ranging political or economic decisions, for it demonstrates nothing scientifically.  In the first place, it offers no cause.  Nobody has duplicated Mann’s work.  Even more important is the failure to detect the two large natural variations in global average temperature; the medieval warm period and the little ice age.  Had these been plotted on Mann’s graph, the increase shown from 1950 could be inconveniently interpreted as another example of natural variation.

Mann’s graph, which demonstrates no cause-effect relationship, has been seized upon for political purposes, and raises the question of whether it was created to feed into a political narrative that had been fermenting since the late 1980’s.  An admission of natural variation of global average temperature would vex the narrative that immoderate economic success by the United States in particular was endangering the future of the world.

Between 1940 and 1970, global average temperatures fell, which gave rise to the global cooling scare of the 1970s.  The extinction of the dinosaurs was claimed to have been caused by the global cooling caused by a meteor impact, and a “nuclear winter” was feared as a result of a war caused by Ronald Reagan.  After it became clear that global temperatures were warming again, Dr. James Hansen of NASA in 1988 advanced the global warming caused by American industrial activity hypothesis.  Since 1998, however, satellite measurements of average global temperatures has shown no increase – a twenty year pause in global warming.

The utter politicization of the global warming issue has poisoned “climate science.”  As revealed in the climategate emails, legitimate scientists who wanted to study natural variability were driven out of the field by sordid means to protect the political narrative.

Real science doesn’t offer opinions.  It doesn’t fear contradiction.  Climate science has to dissociate itself from the hockey stick graph, from rampant data manipulation, and from far-fetched forecasts of catastrophe that cannot be scientifically demonstrated.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a Canadian free-lance writer.

Is our time running out due to climate change?

Vincent J. |Curtis

25 Nov 2018

Re: Our time for action is running out. (Hamilton Spectator 24 Nov 2018)

The article by Dr. Henry Brouwer is just the sort of fulmination that you would expect from someone new to a problem and filled with left-wing talking points.  A little homework would explain why governments are reluctant to act as he requires and why people are not as panicked about climate change as he thinks they should be.

In early 1996, in the wake of the Kyoto Treaty, I observed in the Spectator that the effect of accepting the global warming hypothesis would amount to requiring the crippling of western economies or the massive substitution of nuclear power for coal burning electrical generation.  The environmentalists of Kyoto weren’t contemplating expanding nuclear power, and no politician, whatever he promised, would allow the crippling of his country’s economy – especially on so tenuous a claim as global catastrophe.  Global catastrophe has be forecasted before.

The goal of crippling western economies is present in the Paris Accord.  It permits unlimited increase of carbon dioxide emissions by China and India, which together emit 37 percent of the total emissions already.  Asking why China and India get a pass draws accusations of racism for requiring these backward economies to be held back as western economies remain advanced.

And there it is.  The climate change game is indistinguishable from an effort to bring the great economic and cultural success of the west down a few pegs – the anti-anti-communist response to the immoderate success of the west after the discrediting and then the downfall of the Soviet empire and Marxist system.

Space prevents my going into detail of how the climate change game was discredited, but many people understand that it was.

Lip service by politicians will continue as long a climate change remains a shouting issue, but no politician would accept the crippling of an economy while he is responsible.  Likewise, ordinary people aren’t going to accept hardship today to prevent something that might or might not occur eighty years from now.

Sorry Marxists.

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Ranked balloting advocated again. Dead Horses lie everywhere.

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Nov 2018

RE: Hamilton Deserves a Better Voting System (Hamilton Spectator 17 Nov 2018)

It is not enough for Mr. Brad Walchuk to huff and puff about ranked balloting, claiming there is a democratic deficit and saying that ranked balloting is better than the system we have now – plurality election.

He has to do his homework.  Ranked balloting is not a new issue, and several decisive counter-arguments have been advanced over the years against it and against the assertion of a democratic deficit.  He has to address and answer the objections.  He does not.

One objection is that ranked balloting cannot follow its own principle.  In the by-election that saw Donna Skelly elected in Ward 7, Skelly won against 16 other candidates.  Even if voters were forced to rank all 17, Skelly’s vote count could never plausibly be massaged above 50 percent.  (And less than 30 percent of the electorate bothered to vote, creating an insuperable obstacle to the principle of 50 percent and the "democratic deficit.")

Ranked balloting can be defeated by widespread plunking.  Ranked balloting simply fails in some instances, so why not go whole hog and hold run-off elections – or is that too expensive?

You have to do your homework.  The system of plurality election, the standard method since the first parliaments of England, remains the best.  That’s why we still have it.

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Stats Can shows gun control bill won't help.

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Nov 2019

RE:  Guns, gangs blamed as homicides hit 10-year high.

Statistics Canada has spoken, and perhaps now the Liberal government and its running dog lackey, the Spectator editorial department, can end its thoughtless jihad against law-abiding gun owners.

As declared in this space, the increases gun homicides are due to gang violence in the major cities, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.  Taking guns away from Alberta rancher and Hamilton homeowners isn’t going to change the gang problem in Vancouver.

The Stats Can report also put dimensions to the size of the issue.  Briefly, the numbers are so small that gun-violence is not at a crisis level – demanding action! – and that so-called assault rifles are a tiny and shrinking part of the problem, such as it is.

The smart thing the government is doing is putting more money into intelligence gathering and border security.  These gangs are ethno-centric in origin, and they survive by preying on the ethnic community in which they live.  It won’t be easy for police to gather intelligence from these communities.  Police will almost certainly be accused of racism by pursuing ethno-centric gangs, so expect it

Nevertheless, the process of assimilation into the wider Canadian society will require these communities to accept policing and the Canadian law that that policing upholds.

Meanwhile, the law-abiding can be left alone.

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The hokey hockey stick

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 2018

When people think of global warming, most think of the hockey stick graph.  This graph, produced by Michael Mann from a study of tree rings, shows essentially constant temperatures from 1000 A.D. to 1950, followed by an sharp increase.  This hockey stick graph is claimed to show the evil effects on global temperature of the industrialization of the western world, particularly of the United States.

To the discerning eye, the graph seemed odd.  It failed to show the medieval warm period (950 – 1250) and the little ice age (1300 – 1850), which are well known and well documented phenomena.  The business of calibrating the thickness of a tree ring to an average annual temperature seemed to make dramatic assumptions about other growth factors, such a sunlight, rainfall, species of tree, and local accidents of fertilization.  In addition, trees only cover about 15 % of the earth’s surface.  The oceans cover about 70 percent of the surface; there are no trees in the Antarctic, the Arctic, and the great deserts of the world; and the question of representativeness arises.

Then there is the problem of accuracy of measurement.  Tree rings are irregular in shape, vary greatly in thickness around the tree, and, most importantly, the boundary of a ring is not sharp.  The black hash mark on a wide-range mercury thermometer enables an observer to read temperatures reliably to within half, or maybe a quarter of a degree.  Yet the hockey stick graph confidently showed temperature to hundredths of a degree!

Some funny things started to happen.  Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph showed that the sampling and the way Mann handled the data would have produced a hockey-stick graph regardless of the input data.  Then, Mann’s original raw data set was “lost” and all that was available to other researchers was Mann’s processed data set.

Then it became clear that Mann had used not tree-ring data for the twentieth century temperatures but thermometric data instead.  The thermometric data showed an increase in temperature – while the tree ring data showed a decrease in temperature!  Mann used the thermometric data on the grounds that it was more reliable, even if the graph is lacking in consistency.

Mann’s hockey stick graph is insufficient on which to base wide-ranging political or economic decisions, for it demonstrates nothing scientifically.  In the first place, it offers no cause.  Nobody has duplicated Mann’s work.  Even more important is the failure to detect the two large natural variations in global average temperature; the medieval warm period and the little ice age.  Had these been plotted on Mann’s graph, the increase shown from 1950 could be inconveniently interpreted as another example of natural variation.

Mann’s graph, which demonstrates no cause-effect relationship, has been seized upon for political purposes, and raises the question of whether it was created to feed into a political narrative that had been fermenting since the late 1980’s.  An admission of natural variation of global average temperature would vex the narrative that immoderate economic success by the United States in particular was endangering the future of the world.

Between 1940 and 1970, global average temperatures fell, which gave rise to the global cooling scare of the 1970s.  The extinction of the dinosaurs was claimed to have been caused by the global cooling caused by a meteor impact, and a “nuclear winter” was feared as a result of a war caused by Ronald Reagan.  After it became clear that global temperatures were warming again, Dr. James Hansen of NASA in 1988 advanced the global warming caused by American industrial activity hypothesis.  Since 1998, however, satellite measurements of average global temperatures has shown no increase – a twenty year pause in global warming.

The utter politicization of the global warming issue has poisoned “climate science.”  As revealed in the climategate emails, legitimate scientists who wanted to study natural variability were driven out of the field by sordid means to protect the political narrative.

Real science doesn’t offer opinions.  It doesn’t fear contradiction.  Climate science has to dissociate itself from the hockey stick graph, from rampant data manipulation, and from far-fetched forecasts of catastrophe that cannot be scientifically demonstrated.

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Whose statutes should be thrown down?

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Nov 2018

A controversial part of the “reconciliation” between Canada and aboriginals, is the disgracing of what were once Canadian heroes.  Statues to Sir John A. Macdonald are being removed everywhere in Canada because he instituted the residential schools movement. Hector Langevin and even George Ryerson are being disgraced for their connection with residential schools.

So far, no one has focussed attention on Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chretien as bad actors also to be disgraced in this reconciliation process - and their sins are more personal than those of Macdonald, Langevin, or Ryerson.

Pierre Trudeau’s great project as Prime Minister of Canada was the patriation of the Canadian constitution and to have entrenched within it a Charter of Human Rights.  He accomplished this goal in 1982.  In the opening phases of this great project, Trudeau and his Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chretien proposed abolishing Indian status, abolishing all Indian treaties, abolishing all Indian reserves, and abolishing the Indian Act.  All references to Indians would be wiped from Canadian law.  This policy proposal was put forward in a 1969 White Paper entitled, “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy.”

Why would a good, progressive Liberal propose abolishing Indian status?  To understand, you have to know the times and how they related to the aim of entrenching a charter of human rights in the constitution.  The 1950s and 1960s saw tremendous turmoil in the United States concerning civil rights.  These were the days of Brown v. Board of Education, of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, the Ku Klux Klan, the freedom riders, the Civil Rights Act, the Vietnam War and the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK.  This turmoil was over the equal treatment in law and in fact of black and white Americans by civil authorities.  The justification for equal treatment was that blacks were as much a human beings and as American as any white American.

That all human beings are equally human and that justice requires the equal treatment of equals was the irrefutable logic of the Civil Rights movement.  In Canada, Indians (and I am going to use that term of law and custom) were regarded as a people apart.  Canada had a duty of care towards Indians, but from 1867 to 1950 Indians were not Canadian.  They were not British subjects.  The passage of the Citizenship Act granted Canadian Indians citizenship status, with all the rights and privileges thereof.  But they retained these other rights and privileges as Indians.

Pierre Trudeau, to create a charter of equal human rights, sought to eliminate this anomaly in Canadian law that was based on race -  to create only one class of persons in law whose rights could be specified without qualification.  There being only one class,  all within it were equal.  Pierre Trudeau believed that after a hundred years of exposure to western civilization and with the prospect of hundreds of years more exposure, Indian culture was done - changed irretrievably; racial purity was being lost, and assimilation was inevitable for the Indian race.

Negative reaction to the White Paper killed it, and aboriginal activism and aboriginal land claims began as a reaction against the White Paper.  This failure to abolish Indian status in law is why the Charter of 1982 has anomalous carve outs for aboriginal rights.

The sense of “First Nations” status among Indians is sincerely felt.  They accept Canadian citizenship as unavoidable and convenient, but Canada is not their “nation.”  The term and concept of nation is borrowed from western culture and is used to helps the western mind understand the distinction between Canadian and Indian.  Yes, Indian and Canadian are both humans, but that is irrelevant.  Indians are distinct from Canadians on the basis of race and origin.  Indians and Canadians belong to different nations and occupy different spaces, with some overlap forced on Indians by Canada.

In February, 2014, the Liberal Party “renounced with regret” the White Paper of 1969, but the issue of assimilation, of loss of culture and of racial purity - the definitive terms of what it means to be Indian - remains, and will plague indefinitely the Indians of Canada.

If reconciliation requires the condemnation of Canadian heroes, Trudeau and Chretien, for observing the obvious, seem to deserve it as much as Macdonald.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a Canadian free-lance writer.

A Hundred Years On

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Sept 2018

They’re all dead now.  Every last one of them.  Not a single survivor of the Great War remains.  But, a hundred years ago…

November 1-2, 1918, at Valenciennes, the Canadian Corps fought its last major, set-piece battle.  General Currie, as was his wont, sought to minimize casualties, and preceded the attack with an extremely heavy bombardment upon the heights of Mont Houy, the key terrain south of the town.  When the 4^th Canadian Division swept up the heights, the German defenses of the entire Hermann Line collapsed, and the German army began a general withdrawal eastward.  The final pursuit to Mons began.

Battle then took on a rhythm.  The Germans would withdraw in the night and the Canadian Corps would advance to contact from dawn till about noon.  The advance patrols would contact the German rearguard and halt, awaiting the artillery and main force to come up.  The rest of the day was spent clearing out the defensive posts and then consolidating by nightfall.  Next day, the reserve force would pass through the forward line in leap-frog fashion and continue the pursuit.  By November 10^th, the Canadian Corps was approaching the city of Mons, the place that in August, 1914 the British army first encountered the advancing Germans.

November 10^th began as any other.  The 2^nd Canadian Division approached Hyon, south of Mons.  German machine gun posts and artillery raked the advancing Canadians.  By repeated and determined infantry attacks throughout the day, supported by machine guns and the 5^th Brigade CFA, the Canadians forced their way forward.  At dusk, forward patrols reported the Germans withdrawing from Hyon,  In the early morning hours of the 11^th, elements of the 2^nd Canadian Division occupied Hyon and pressed on to the Bois la Haut, good ground whose defense could have made further advance eastward costly.  Leapfrogging forces again, elements of the 2^nd Canadian Division pressed on in the night, and in the early morning hours of the 11^th reached St. Symphorien, three miles east of Mons.  At 5:30 a.m., the 3^rd Canadian Division linked up with the 2^nd east of Mons

Word was getting around of an Armistice, to take effect at 11:00 a.m. that day.  Mons itself was entered and occupied early on the morning of the 11^th.  At 10:58 a.m., Private George L. Price was killed, the last Canadian fatality of the war.  And then, it ended.

That was it.  Armistice. The war to end all wars was over.  Done.  Finished.  Kaput

Well, there was the business of following the Germans back into their own territory, to make sure they did.  And then, it was the long wait to get home.

Currie was not happy at the way the war ended, believing the Germans had not been taught a lesson, and fearing they would try again in twenty years.

The war to end all wars, wasn’t.  It’s funny, but war-fighting leadership is regarded as not civilized enough for supreme leadership roles in peacetime.

The French political leadership between the wars was not up to the calibre of a Clemenceau.  The French generals, Gamelin and Weygand, were not of the quality of a Ferdinand Foch.  The British political leadership was equally feckless during the crucial period of the 1930s.  Winston Churchill was in his political wilderness.

If France had mobilized in 1936 upon the occupation of the Rhineland by a single German battalion, Hitler would have suffered a humiliated and probably fatal reverse.  Later came the shameful Munich agreement.  President Edward Benes of Czechoslovakia should have fought the Germans over the Sudetenland, where all the best defensive ground and fixed Czech fortifications were.  We now know that the German army was in no condition to overwhelm the Czechs, and the fighting would have raised a political whirlwind in Britain and France.

Finally, French leadership embarrassed their heritage of martial élan by not vigorously attacking Germany from the west as Germany advanced into Poland in September 1939.  We now know that an immediate French offensive would have reached Berlin without opposition because the Germans put everything they had into Poland.

By 1940, it was too late.  A new maelstrom began – even larger than the last.

Lest we forget.

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Canada’s Leadership in NATO

Vincent J. Curtis

23 July 2018

Before the July 10-11 NATO conference, Prime Minister Justine Trudeau let it be known that Canada planned to “extend its leadership” in Latvia for several more years.  He would “deliver a strong message of solidarity” during a visit to that country.

Before the announcement, Canada was scheduled to end its commitment of 450 troops in Latvia in the spring of 2019.  The new commitment will see a presence of 540 troops until at least 2023.

Presently, Canada spends 134 million dollars per year on the Latvian deployment.  For that much dough, it is fair to ask: how many thousand medium- and heavy-machine guns have been sent to Latvia?  How many thousand medium and heavy anti-tank weapons?  How many hundreds of guns?  What about air defence against helicopters and fast-movers?

Has ammunition sufficient to sustain thirty days of heavy, continuous battle been stockpiled?  How many battle positions have been surveyed, roughed in, and camouflaged?  Iran built complexes well below ground to protect its nuclear development from air attack and surveillance from space.  How much digging has been done to harden Latvia’s defenses from a surprise bolt from the blue?

Has serious war-gaming of a Russian invasion taken place?

Has Latvia been encouraged to adopt a U.S.-style Second Amendment so that its citizens can acquire both handguns and telescoped hunting rifles in military calibres?   Latvia many not have the topographical advantages of Switzerland, but an armed citizenry can make conquering a small country as healthy as a python swallowing a porcupine.

Those are some of the measures that take the Russian imperial threat seriously.  But what do we actually see?  We see that Canada contributes a half battalion to a “battle group” that includes soldiers from Albania, Slovkia, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the Czech Republic.  The best will in the world couldn’t hold together a “battle group” so composed that was under serious onslaught.  And is there so much as a squadron of main battle tanks, i.e. Leopard IIs, in Latvia?

We see press releases that speak of the creation of a ‘divisional’ headquarters for the three NATO “battle groups” operating in the three Baltic States.  It is supposed to be established in Riga, the capital of Latvia; and Canada’s contribution would be of staff officers.

It is great that NATO would deploy a forward divisional headquarters, except that it quickly will morph from a tactical entity to a political-bureaucratic assemblage, like NATO headquarters itself, or some UN peacekeeping mission HQ.  Latvia would be crazy to subordinate its national defence to a NATO forward headquarters that would have to ask the permission of main NATO HQ to fire back.  It is quite possible that in the midst of confusion, NATO will wait long enough for serious, tactically devastating, inroads to have occurred in Latvia before issuing the order to resist.

With the drive to bureaucratize NATO’s commitment to the Baltic States, the effort takes on the appearance of a UN peacekeeping mission, which tries to crush the problem under the weight of time and bureaucratic processes.  The flaw in that approach is that it presents cobwebs against a real onslaught.  Peacekeeping missions work when each antagonist lacks the strength to overwhelm the other, and both sides are looking for a face-saving way out of a trial of strength - like Sinai from 1956 to 1967, or Cyprus from 1964 to the present.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban lack the power to overwhelm tiny ISAF, and they aren’t winning the endurance battle either.

Russia, however, is a powerful country, and it would be easy for her, at a time of her choosing, to project her military strength against the weak Baltic States.  That she has not yet is due to the decisions made by President Vladimir Putin, who isn’t going to risk his prestige on anything less than a sure thing.

Building up NATO’s combat power generally is one form of deterrence against attack.  Granting Russia and Putin the prestige he thinks they deserve could be another, indirect, form, and that explains why Trump met with Putin in Helsinki right after castigating NATO countries about inadequate spending.

The NATO effort in the Baltics cannot crush a problem under the weight of bureaucracy.  Its purpose must be to decline battle – by turning the Baltic States into such tough and time-consuming nuts to crack that their defences won’t be tested.  A real sign of leadership by Canada in the Baltics would be to demand more firepower and less bureaucracy.

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Health Experts Huff and Puff over Climate Fears

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Oct 2018

RE: Climate change is a global health emergency (published both in the Hamilton Spectator of this date and on the EvidenceNetwork.ca  The authors are Tim K. Takaro, associate dean for research and professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.  Jennifer Miller is executive director for Global Climate and Health Alliance.)

There is nothing like hysteria and panic to stampede people into acting unthinkingly.  We simply can’t do something stupid fast enough.  Writing for an opinion blog called Evidence Network the authors invoke their health credentials to opine hysterically about matters of engineering, law, climatology, economics, and public policy - all in pursuit of hack policies concerning “climate change.”  When reason fails, invoke fear - based on their authority as health experts.

And their reasoning does fail.  For educated people, their dialectics is shockingly poor; and in their hands the word health has an Alice-in-Wonderland elasticity of meaning.  There is global health, health opportunities, socioeconomic health, global and local health, health leaders, health professionals, human health, health risks, a global health crisis, health impacts, cumulative health impacts, healthy people, and a healthy planet.  As concerns dialectics, the authors should reflect upon the meaning of “far-fetched.”  I can imagine the guesswork involved in what they call for: assessing the ‘cumulative global health impacts” of expanding the Trans-Mountain pipeline.  (Of all the things to go DefCon 1 over!)

The authors assure us that ordinary epidemics, droughts, and famine over this century will be minor, because the death and illnesses caused by storms, wildfires, floods, food shortages, forced migration, and related conflict that will attend a rise of 1.5 C in world average temperature will be so great.  The Spanish flu of 1918 killed more people than WWI and WWII combined, but something like that won’t happen in the 21^st century - because the World Health Organization called climate change the “greatest threat to global health in the 21^st century.”  Ordinary epidemics like those that happened in the past simply won't happen, because they will be blamed on climate change this time around.

The article was a confection of health hysteria, appeals to false authority, and an exercise in virtue-signalling.  For all the hatred and fear expressed for fossil fuels, the real world still needs oil and lubricants.  That’s why the professor’s BMW start in the morning.

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Trudeau to fight election on climate change strategy

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Oct 2018

The global warming hysteria began in the late 1980's, after the fear of global cooling and visions of the extinction of dinosaurs and a nuclear winter became discredited.  The mad barking about global warming has continued for thirty years now.

Here’s a bit of math.  If global temperatures have been increasing at a rate of 0.1 degree per year for thirty years, then global temperatures should have risen a (we are assured) catastrophic 3.0 degrees since the late 1980's.  Well, where is the promised catastrophe?

The catastrophe hasn’t happened in part because there has been no global warming since 1998.  Never mind what you’ve heard from IPCC, NASA, or NOAA about this year being “the warmest on record.”  They’re all involved in data manipulation.  Have you ever tried to measure to a tenth of a degree on a wide-range mercury thermometer?  The climate alarmists can’t either, and they’re hoping that there is no systemic bias in the way they do measure temperature.  Their systematic error is closer to +/- 0.5 degrees.

They claim to be able to measure temperature to within a tenth of a degree, and yet say that we can’t afford an increase of 0.02 degrees per year.  In short, they have to wait five years just to be able to observe an increase, assuming there is no systematic error.  Horse feathers!

It is very big of global leaders to limit global warming to only 1.5 degrees, when what they control (at best) are carbon dioxide emissions. King Canute would be embarrassed.

If Mr. Trudeau wants to fight an election on the moral superiority of a carbon tax to limit global warming, great.  Trudeau’s carbon tax isn’t a plan to fight “global warming” either because Canada’s emissions are too low to affect world carbon dioxide levels – if you believe that nonsense.  Let’s fight an election on the wisdom of taxing ourselves while China and India emit at twenty-five times the rate Canada does.

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Justin Trudeau Compresses Nonsense in Few Words

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Oct 2018

Prime Minister Trudeau has a talent for packing a large amount of nonsense into very few words.  He performed a few personal bests in these statements “A Cleaner Environment for a Stronger Economy,” and “Starting next year it will no longer be free to pollute anywhere in Canada.”  Both these statements were said in relation to the carbon tax.

The first statement is risible on its face, and you have to have drunk deep of the Kool-aid, or inhaled deeply of the newly legal stuff even to make the connection between strengthening the economy by the means of higher taxes.

The second statement is only possible for year-zero fanatics, people who think history starts with them.  The modern era of taxes and regulation to control pollution began in the 1960s, before even Trudeau pere was Prime Minister and it certainly took off in the early 1970s.

But the real nonsense is the implication that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, when it isn’t.  Carbon dioxide is a natural component of the earth’s atmosphere and is essential to plant life.  The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since the 1960s has resulted in the greening of the planet and contributes to healthier crop yields for a growing and hungry human population.

Our former drama teacher expertly performs farce and comedy on the public stage, and there is much tragedy both in the work his government has done and not done.

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The Pointlessness of a Carbon Tax

Vincent J. curtis

23 Oct 2018

China contributes thirty percent (30 %) of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and India contributes seven percent (7 %).  Meanwhile, Canada contributes 1.5 %.  Neither China nor India are obliged to reduce their emissions under the Paris agreement until the year 2030, and they are not even obligated to reduce their rates of increase of emissions until that date.

Is there not a reporter in this country who is prepared to ask Prime Minister Trudeau to explain what he hopes to accomplish in terms of climate change by levying a carbon tax that might reduce Canada’s emissions to 1.4 % or 1.3 %, when next year increases from China or India will easily swamp that reduction?

I get that the political elite get to thump their chests and proclaim their moral superiority by imposing a carbon tax, but can they not admit that as a practical matter reducing Canada’s emissions entirely wouldn’t matter a wit to world emissions?

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Ethics and the Canadian Carbon Tax.

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Oct 2018

RE: Climate change is real, and deserves more than empty rhetoric (by John Milloy, Hamilton Spectator 22 Oct 2018.  John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at Martin Luther University College, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfred Laurier University's Political Science department.  He is also a lecturer at the University of Waterloo.  The article in question was also published on the political hum NationalNewswatch.com)

Thwack!  Thwack!  That sound you hear is of a dead horse being beaten.

It is interesting that after more than twenty years of intense, one-sided propaganda someone still has to insist the Global Warming is real, and that we have to do something about it.  Perhaps the degradation of the groves of academe may explain why the climate alarmists aren’t being taken seriously.

Ethics is right up there with metaphysics on the hierarchy of philosophical reasoning, and Prof Milloy doesn’t understand how one can “separate the concept of a carbon tax from the threat of climate change.”  Old Aristotle would have no problem separating them because taxes and threats belong to different genera. At best, they are only accidentally related to one another.  He would recognize that a statement like “endorsed by many leading experts” is an appeal to authority, a common rhetorical device that is a logical fallacy, since even experts can be wrong.

One would think that a statement like “governments have a right to govern” would declare some principle of politics, but the tenor of Prof Milloy’s article is that the recently elected Ford government lacks the moral right to change government policy on taxation of carbon, of all things.  The selective application of ethical principles is itself unethical and unprincipled.

Empty rhetoric is all the global warming issue has been getting from politicians because there is a strong stench of deception and politicization of this “science” about it.  All the solutions, including the Paris agreement, involve the crippling of western economies while allowing India and China – the two worst emitters – to raise their national outputs unchecked through to at least the year 2030.

Even stupid politicians can see the danger to their careers if the electorate found out.

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A "conversation" on gun banning

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Oct 2018

Disgusted.  Insulted.  Contemptuous.  That is how one feels when it is announced that the government wants to hold a “conversation” on something  – when the fix is already in.

Our former drama teacher has tapped the former chief of Toronto police to hold a national “conversation” in order to gage the political blowback in case they go through with Bill C-71.  They want to hear a variety of opinions, they say.  Sure.  Are they seriously suggesting that they are open to sweet reason?  Of course they aren’t.

There are only two opinions: yes, and no.  The overwhelming opinion in the law-abiding gun-owning community is that restrictions are severe enough and a ban goes too far.  There are a few fanatics on the other side of the argument.  Most Canadians don’t own guns and are either ambivalent or inclined on the basis of not knowing anything about it to go along with a ban – so long as no one is excessively inconvenienced.  And so the “conversation” is going to consist of a war of words between law-abiding gun owners and the fanatics on the other side, with Minister Blair in the middle.

Minister Blair needs to travel to Nunavut and find out how natives would respond to a ban on certain rifles.  Perhaps he should visit the interior of British Columbia, southern Alberta, and Saskatchewan and obtain opinions there.  When you add those opinions into the mix, you will see that a ban on guns will be regarded as an illegitimate imposition of uninformed city opinions on rural Canada.  A gun ban won’t hold after a change of government, and it likely will be resisted in the interim.

Our drama queen likes to prance and pose about the world stage.  He is oh-so politically correct.  An Act banning guns that are in common use and owned to the extent of millions will thoughtlessly create a drama that Canada doesn’t need.  No responsible government should create a few million scofflaws out of ordinarily law-abiding citizens in pursuit of some progressivist ideal.

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Let Quebec Be Quebec.

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Oct 2018


(The newly elected government of Quebec plans to pass legislation that would ban all religious symbols in public.  This is widely viewed as a ban on burqas and niqabs - dress of women that cover the face.  Many in English Canada are outraged at this assertion of cultural confidence on the part of the Quebec government.)

“Vive le Quebec Libre!” cried French president Charles De Gaulle in Quebec in 1967.  He set off apolitical firestorm in Canada, and we still exhibit the scorch marks today.  Quebec separatism was made politically legitimate, and De Gaulle seemed to say that an independent Quebec would be recognized and supported by France.  It was hard putting that genie back into the bottle, and only in the election just won by the CAQ can we say that separatism as a political force is now dormant.

Quebec is the center of the French fact in the Americas.  France has been the center of western and Christian civilization in Europe since Charlemagne.  Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles “The Hammer” Martel decisively defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., and saved France and Europe from forced Islamization.  Over a millennium, France came to conceive its national mission as bringing civilization and culture to the world.  Military victory and empire, though important to national prestige, were never central to who the French were.

French culture is the heritage of Quebec.  Since 1976, Quebeckers have made it clear that they understand that their mission is to be the French fact in the Americas.  Insofar as Quebec is a “diverse, harmonious society,” it is because it contains a significant English-speaking minority – a consequence of the conquest of 1759, something many French Quebeckers live with uncomfortably and would gladly do something about.

Quebec is not on a cultural suicide mission.  The Future Quebec Coalition (CAQ) won a Fordian mandate campaigning in part on ensuring the supremacy and prosperity of French culture in Quebec.  The CAQ most definitely have a right to “impose a perverse, anachronistic notion of social purity” because that is what Quebeckers chose in a democratic election this very month.  Perhaps an idea that is 1,200 years old is anachronistic, but democracy, self-government, and logic are ideas of the ancient Greeks of 2,500 years ago, and the Spectator doesn’t seem to believe in any of them, either.

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