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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Fighting a Canadian Carbon Tax

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Oct 2018

RE: Canada’s Fight against climate change. (Hamilton Spectator editorial of 6 Oct 2018)

In its own strange way, the Spectator hit a nail on the head.  It asks, what do the premiers want about the national carbon tax?  And the correct answer is: the revenue and favorable political optics.

But let’s back up a bit to gain a little perspective.  Global warming – or climate change as it is now known – is nothing more than another progressivist hysteria.  There hasn’t been any “global warming” in the last twenty years, which is why the mantra is now “climate change.”  None of that matters because such is the power of the mob that one is morally condemned for pointing out that that particular emperor is wearing no clothes.

The demand to “do something” is nearly irresistible, and judging from the level of hysteria one would think that the fate of the world hinges on what Canada does, or doesn’t do.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Canada’s contribution to world carbon dioxide emissions is insignificant, and small reductions or increases of the insignificant is quantitatively even less than insignificant.

On the scale of world carbon dioxide emissions, Canada (at 1.54 %) ranks between international shipping (1.74 %) and international aviation (1.39 %).  Thus, Canadians can improve their country’s standing in terms of carbon emissions by vacationing more abroad.  That is certainly a more pleasurable way of helping your country than by paying another tax.

As the Spectator correctly points out, the purpose of the carbon tax has more to do with tax and with carbon.  The alleged justification for the tax is that a tax will marginally change behaviour.  Sometimes this is so, but in the case of carbon it isn’t.  For example, a hundred thousand Hamiltonians travel outside the city for work every day, often to Toronto.  They have to do so by car.  This behavior won’t change unless the tax is so onerous that it no longer makes economic sense to drive to Toronto to work.  If this level of taxation wasn’t enough to spark a revolution, it would certainly have extremely disruptive economic consequences, for the individuals, for the city, and for the province and country as a whole.  The tax simply cannot be imposed at a high enough rate to “change behaviour.”

And so we are left with revenue.  Carbon emission is simply another excuse for taxing Canadians for their alleged vices, for the fate of the world does not hinge on what Canada does or doesn’t do.  If the Federal government, as was suggested, returns the revenue collected from a national tax directly to taxpayers and doesn’t give it to provincial governments, then the whole thing is reduced to a charade: the government is churning the economy for billions and transferring a small net benefit twice a year to those who drive less.  A national tax only makes sense if some level of government keeps it as revenue.

Even those who believe that climate change is caused by carbon dioxide emissions have to admit that Canada’s contribution to the alleged problem is negligible.  So, what is the point of harping on Canada’s “doing something” about climate change when practically speaking we can do nothing about it?  The act of “doing something” creates a soapbox (albeit a short one) for those inclined to thump their chests and proclaim their moral superiority – having “done something” to save the planet from the evils of mankind.  It also provides a calming sense of the possession of control on those in the grip of the hysteria.

The premiers are playing the game smart.  If they decline to play ball with Justin, he will take the political hit for imposing a carbon tax and they will get the cash.  In the larger scheme of things, none of this means a damn to the planet; it simply is a Canadian wrestling match sparked by a progressivist hysteria.

If nothing gets done, it won’t matter.  If something gets done, it will wind up being another nail in the coffin of the Trudeau government.  People are getting mighty tired of being led around by progressivist foolishness.

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Gun Banning in Canada

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Sept 2018

RE:  Starting the adult conversation (Hamilton Spectator, 29 Sept 2018)

The Spectator is to be commended for beginning the “adult conversation” on a gun ban in Canada with the article by Jon Wells.

A new law cannot solve every problem in the world.  Since before the days of King Canute, people have believed in the power of government to do nearly anything. Ne ertheless, when politicians are confronted by importunate voters demanding action on one thing or another, they are inclined to call for a new law to fix the concern.   Such is the belief that a perceived “crisis” in the criminal use of guns can be solved by the passage of some law.

The figures show that there is no such crisis of gun violence, or of any other kind of violence, in Canada.

Wells gave an excellent account of how restrictive guns laws are at present; and it shows that we are so far down the road of diminishing returns that an outright ban on gun ownership is all that is left available to tighten regulate and control lawful use even further.

Now that we have some facts and figures on the table, it is up to the gun banners to say at what level a crisis in deaths begins – 150?  200?  How does this figure compare with other causes of death?  And given that suicide in now a constitutional right in Canada, and that 77 percent of all firearms related deaths are suicides, will not a gun ban violate the constitutional right of Canadians?

A few high profile killings by gang-bangers over the drug trade is what this “crisis” amounts to.  Rather than spend millions (or billions in the case of a ban) on regulating the law-abiding, why not spend that money attacking the real problem – the drug gangs?

The reason why they won’t is the fear that they will be called racists for cracking down on the groups that control the drug trade.

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Vincent J. Curtis

24 Sept 2018

 RE: Gun Ban (Hamilton Spectator Editorial advocating such of 22 Sept 2018)

Let us have that intelligent, adult discussion about a gun ban that you call for.  We can started by removing all appeals to emotion from the discussion.  For example, paragraph 3, starting with “Year-by-year…”  We can also eliminate underhanded rhetorical tricks, like saying ‘fair-minded people can all agree there is a crisis’ when even Toronto city authorities say that the city of 2.5 million people is safe.

We also need to be certain of the facts brought into the discussion.  For example, police don’t know how many lawfully owned guns are used in crime because Statistics Canada does not keep that data, which has quite problematic definitions.  In addition, London has now surpassed New York in violent crime with knives and motor vehicles replacing handguns.

On your part, you can explain how this gun “ban” is going to operate, and then work.  There are one million handguns in private ownership in Canada.  How do you get to the banned state?  Are you going to make hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding gun owners into felons unless they give up their private property?  Will they be paid compensation?  How are these guns supposed to get collected, and who is going to do the collecting?  What is going to be done with the collected guns?  Will they be sold into overseas markets?

It is already illegal to own a handgun without a license.  It is illegal to transport, carry, or use a handgun outside a strict legal regime.  It is a five-year felony to store or transport handguns unsafely.  You say that the current laws have become weak and ineffective, but haven’t said why.  Is it due to lack of enforcement?  If the current laws are not being enforced, then what is the use of another one?  Since it is already illegal to own, store, transport, and use a handgun outside of a strict legal regime, why do you expect criminals to obey these laws with their illegal handguns?  A civilian walking around with a handgun is already subject to immediate arrest by police whether they legally own the gun or not.  It’s not tricky to distinguish between lawful and unlawful carry, so banning isn’t going to help.  Carry is already banned.

You admit that the crisis of which you speak is limited to a few areas of Toronto, so why ban the handgun of a rancher in Alberta, a forester in British Columbia, or an aboriginal hunter?  Charter rights to equal treatment become involved, and speaking of equal rights, what are you going to do about the aboriginal community that is simply going to ignore the gun ban?

It is kind of you to allow target shooters to have their guns, but there needs to be commerce to support this activity you permit.  Destroying the commerce around other gun activities is going to shrivel the commercial support for target shooting.

Simply talking about a handgun ban as if it were intuitively obvious that it would accomplish the stated goal doesn’t amount to an adult conversation.  We need to see that more thought has gone into the proposal, and addressing some of these concerns in a dispassionate and rational way would be a start from your side.

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Kavanaugh Commentary

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Oct 2018

RE: This isn’t about Kavanaugh (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Michael Coren missed an opportunity to talk sensibly about something important.  He is right that “it isn’t about Kavanaugh, it’s about the entire world.” But from there, he goes off the rails.

After recounting a sad family story, he goes on to expatiate about the evils and prevalence of “male entitlement.”  The Kavanaugh affair is not about that at all.  It is about protecting Roe v. Wade from a potential vote to reverse on the U.S. Supreme Court – for which anything fair or foul will be employed – and it is about basic standards of justice and logic.

Ford says Kavanaugh tried to rape her, and he denies any such thing happened.  Both cannot be true, so how do you decide which is?  You judge on the basis of evidence.  The evidence in this case is entirely on the side of Kavanaugh, for even Ford’s alleged witnesses say no such thing occurred.  With his calendar he came as close to proving a negative as you can get.  Those who are using Ford for their own purposes are trying to destroy logical procedure in order to win this one, to say nothing of the mobs they have screaming at U.S. Senators on Capitol Hill.

When the dust settles, it will be found that Christine Blasey Ford’s “memory” of the episode was “recovered” via the hypnotherapy she received in 2013.  That’s why she sincerely believes what she says, because a “memory” was implanted into her subconscious.  And that’s why Ford’s Democrat lawyers won’t turn over her therapist’s notes, because they would undermine Ford’s credibility.  A confused implanted memory is why she can’t recall any of the surrounding details that a real traumatic event would implant, such as time and place, and how she got home.

The Kavanaugh affair is not about male entitlement.  It is about the moral relativism of win at any cost.

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Vincent J. Curtis

5 Oct 2018

RE: Judging Brett Kavanaugh (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

The article in question is an example of fake scholarship from a fake discipline.  The author pretends to diagnose unfitness to be a judge from some cursory reports and some short observations from television of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.  This is deemed unethical in psychiatry.

The author holds that a couple of written tests and an interview by a “forensic social worker” would discover an unfitness that twelve years on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, 307 written opinions, and close observation by scores of people at the highest levels of the U.S. government, of the legal community, and most successful media personalities didn’t find.

The reason Brett Kavanaugh is fiercely opposed isn’t because he is morally unfit but because of the fear of his high moral fitness: fitness enough to overturn Roe v. Wade, that famous decision that legalized abortion in America.

What the article throws into high relief is just how these new fake disciplines with fake scholarship and supported by fake philosophies can be turned to support some political or ideological orthodoxy.  The easy tell of a fake philosophy at work is the author’s use of the word, “presents,” as in “he presents as if stuck…” and “he presents as barely advanced from…”  What about, he presents as if angry?  Does that mean he really is angry, or that he is faking anger?  The pseudo-technical jargon “presents” is borrowed from gender-studies – another fake discipline.

The article offers nothing insightful about Brett Kavanaugh, but it does offer insight into how much fake scholarship there is in academia these days.

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