Arts Majors fail at science again

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Nov 21

RE: Omicron: a variant born of inequity.  Hamilton Spectator Editorial 30 Nov 21

RE: Housing advocate says officer put knee on her neck.  News item by Katrina Clarke.

RE: Food insecurity stressor for students. News item by Kate McCullough

The Hanon People’s Daily seems to be making a recrudescence with editorials as blatantly ridiculous and Marxist as this. (To say nothing of the news articles.  The housing advocate must have the neck of a giraffe as the photo shows the officer’s knee between her shoulder blades.  What was she doing resisting arrest?)

Here’s me back on May 30^th, 2020, before there were vaccines and arguing against extended lockdowns: “We have two things to fear from extending the lockdown.  The first is that the virus could mutate into something more virulent, and the sooner it gets killed off the less likely such a mutation could occur.”  Mutations were anticipated over a year and a half ago, and they develop naturally if the virus is given enough time.  Inequity has nothing to do with it.  Marx spoke of “scientific socialism,” so why are the Arts Majors so unconcerned about grasping science?  Or is it that they do and don’t care?

The Omicron variant developed in South Africa, which is not some low-rent tin-horn African dictatorship riven with corruption and civil war, like the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, etc.  The Omicron variant didn’t develop because the white man’s greed withheld vaccines, or even the reality that free vaccines would be used to enrich corrupt officials in Black Africa.  It’s basic biology; but given the progressives’ love for gender identity theory and the belief that sex is merely a social construct, basic biology is something progressives repudiate.  What’s left as explanation except neo-Marxist gibberish?

Climate change causes the loss of critical thinking capacity in some humans, and progressivism is a brain-wasting disease.  Poor editor had no chance!

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If you look at the data for the first wave in Ontario, there was no basis at all for extending the lockdown beyond the “15 days to flatten the curve.”  By May, it was ridiculous, and the goalposts had shifted from flattening the curve to slowing the spread.  The problem with slowing the spread is that it prolongs the duration of the pandemic.  Lockdowns were for people over 70, while those under 60 could safely be exposed to the virus and develop immunity naturally.  But that wasn’t done.  And so we’re now into the 8^th or so variant.  Why wasn’t the delta variant a product of white man’s neglect?  Perhaps because it started in Brazil.  There have been a series of minor variants since delta.

Will we ever get out from under Trudeaupian pieties?

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Nov 21

RE: Tories should have backed hybrid parliament.  Hamilton Spectator editorial 29 Nov 21.

We now know that climate change causes a loss of critical thinking capacity in some humans, and that progressivism is a kind of brain-wasting disease.  It therefore comes as no surprise that the Spectator would editorialize against a return to normal and in favor of Trudeaupian pieties – even if they impinge on press access.

Everyone in or near the House of Commons is supposed to be vaccinated, or have a current proof of being COVID-free.  Practically all members of the House are under 70 years old.  Except for one’s desk-mate, everyone in the House is separated by at least one metre from each other (the European standard distance for social distancing).  Yet, everyone is supposed to pretend that death from infection lurks around the next corner.  Everyone is expected to wear a conformity mask, and most do wear the proven-useless cloth masks.  Despite all these precautions, the House is supposed to have hybrid sittings?  Why?

Most especially, what does this foretell for getting out from under COVID mandates?  When can we return to normal?  What does it take to get to normal?  Normal is quite possible for everyone under 70, if you look at the data. (Sorry, I forgot.  Looking at data requires the use of critical thinking.)

Trudeau achieves several things by holding a hybrid House.  First, it keeps the criticism muted and controllable.  It is a further demonstration of the great concern we all ought to have over COVID, he being the leader of that concern.  Lastly, it is a demonstration of sheer power.  Meanwhile, parliament offers no drama to write about.

If the Spectator were as rational about its interests as the editors demand Erin O’Toole be of his, the Spec would editorialize against hybrid sittings.  But does the cause of progressivism outweigh the interests of the press?  And by that I mean the business interests, of people buying papers to learn more of the latest scandal?  Or, are the interests of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party the rational interests that editors of the Spec hold ahead of the business interests of the paper?

I understand the Left’s interest in The Cause, The Cause, The Cause.  But are the business interests of the press that far behind The Cause in the thinking of the editors?

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Alberta gets the job done for Ontario

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Nov 21 

The news from Lotusland and from cowboy country is a study in contrasts.  In B.C., they drained a lake and built a town on the lakebed, and their descendants act dismayed when nature comes along and refills it.  Lotusland highways are built through scenic mountain passes, but the hippies seem surprised at mudslides and washouts.  This could add up to the fruits from Lotusland not making it to Ontario this year.

The news from Alberta is that Ontarians will be warm and well fed this winter.  Oil and gas workers brave temperatures as low as -50℃ to keep the natural gas and oil flowing.  When a well runs dry, the roughnecks don’t look at the hole and wonder how climate change could have done that.  They drill a new well, and Ontarians will be warm in their natural gas heated homes and have the electrical power to watch The Bachelorette on TV.

Oil workers unfailingly mine tarsand and convert it into fuel, enabling Alberta food to be trucked into Ontario’s supermarkets.  Ontarians won’t go hungry.  The cowboys make sure Ontario has a year round supply of tasty beef.  Alberta cattle may be flatulent and they don’t get critical race theory or that gender is a social construct, but they reproduce without caring what pronoun you call them by.

The hippies are in a heap of trouble, but the cowboys will get the job done for Ontario.

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Climate change causes loss of critical thinking capacity

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Nov 21

RE: We need climate action and fast.  Op-ed by Mark Freeman.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 26 Nov 21.  Mr. Freeman states his credentials are that he as engineering as well as financial management experience.

We were previously informed by the Spectator that climate change makes it difficult for Hamilton to keep its drinking water properly chlorinated.  Now we learn that climate change causes a complete loss in critical thinking among the mentally weak.

That the argument is settled and we don’t have time to waste has been pushed by the climate crazies for, oh, the last twenty years.  The fact that twenty years on the climate crazies are still pushing that point shows, at least, that the argument isn’t settled and that we did have time.  Maybe, instead of acting like radios – all talk and no listen – the climate crazies could begin to acknowledge certain facts.

COP26 was a crushing disappointment to the climate crazies who were conscious because the developing world, led by India and including China, will continue massive building of coal-fired electrical generators.  They’re cheap to operate, and they lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.  Canada, eleventh on the list of CO2 emitting countries, produces only 1.5 percent of the world’s emissions, meaning that nothing Canada does will affect CO2 levels over the next eighty years.

So, why bleat about obsolete, discredited climate shibboleths, like net-zero, renewables, and economy-destroying government polices enforced uncompromisingly?  Absence of critical thinking didn’t work in the Soviet Union, or Maoist China either.

What needs to be understood is that nothing Canada does matters.  We’re too insignificant a player.  And we’ve been had.  We’ve been had by people with a political ideology and its agenda.

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Parents, just say no.

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 21

The latest thing on the pandemic front, urged by slaves to progressivism and other members of the cult of the expert, is to vaccinate children aged 5 to 11.

Parents, just say no.

Dr. Leslyn Lewis, MP for Haldimand Norfolk, has been severely criticized for tweeting that children are being used as shields for adults.  This statement is absolutely accurate and it takes a progressive not to see it.  The data is that children don’t get COVID and don’t transmit it, and the outliers that do experience mild symptoms.  There is no reason to vaccinate them because the benefits are non-existent.  The clinical trials on vaccinating kids were to prove that the vaccine was safe, not that it was efficacious in children.  You can’t detect efficacy of a vaccine in children when statistically, children simply don’t get sick with COVID.  And it was not possible for these safety trials to observe whether or not there were long-term effects of the mRNA vaccines when given to pre-pubescent children.

Other than to fatten the profits of Pfizer and Moderna, why vaccinate children aged 5 to 11 when there is statistically no risk of COVID to kids that age?  The answer given by everyone is to tamp out kids as vectors of the disease.  They are afraid that kids, while they may not become sick, carry the virus and pass it on to grandma.  That’s the theory, just ask any vaccination fanatic.

Obviously, since the vaccine does no good for the kid and the benefit is to protect grandma, Dr. Lewis is absolutely correct that children are being vaccinated to protect, not them, but adults.

I put it to you, parents, if grandma catches COVID from one of her grandchildren, that’s on her.  She’s the one who should have been vaccinated.  She’s the one who should have been taking the precautions.  Masking little kids and giving them drugs they don’t need is plain wrong.  The adults in the room have to take responsibility for themselves and their own safety.

And it’s not just kids.  Based on the data, you can’t make a case to vaccinate anyone under 40, unless they have underlying conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and several other problems normally associated with age.  The younger you get, the less effect COVID has on you.  Those over 60 need the protection, while those under 40 effectively, don’t need any.  They’ll develop natural immunity, which is far better than the vaccines provide.

The risk in vaccinating children 5 to 11 is the remote possibility of effects on their undeveloped reproduction systems.  There isn’t much data on this, so the reliability is questionable, but the concern is a greater tendency to sterility and birth defects because the mRNA vaccines interact with the DNA of every cell in the body, including those undeveloped eggs and sperm cells.  We don’t know, but given that kids are at no risk of COVID, and there may be a risk of reproductive problems down the road, it tips the balance for me towards telling the vaccination fanatics to go stuff themselves, and not with my grandchildren you don’t.

The vaccines themselves are proving to be not what they were cracked up to be.  They induce protection for less than 9 months.  Countries that vaccinated early and to a high degree, such as Israel and some European countries, are experiencing surges in COVID cases, with breakthrough infections occurring everywhere. Third and fourth doses of vaccine are now either recommended or being administered to keep up protection.  I’m going to raise the question of whether or not the vaccine doesn’t make one more susceptible to infection after it wears off.  Likely, kids that are only supposed to receive one dose might be told to have a second later on down the road.  (Why only one?  The mRNA technique requires two, separated by a minimum of two weeks.  Only one is another reason I wonder if this isn’t just to fatten Pfizer’s profits.)

In summary, kids 5 to 11 are being vaccinated not to benefit them but in the hopes that it will protect some adults.  Adults who should be taking precautions to protect themselves.

Parents, your instincts say no.  And they are right.

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Sucked in, again

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 21.

RE: Is climate change a risk to city’s drinking water? Headline news article by Matthew van Dongen, The Hamilton Spectator, 25 Nov 21.

Yet again, the Arts Majors writing for the Spectator got their biases confirmed by wholly unscientific appeals to “climate change.”  Matthew van Dongen is no chemist, yet he writes, “…chlorine levels below provincial standards – a problem climate change threatens to make worse.”  This is nonsense on stilts.  There is likely some as-yet undetected episodic fault in the chlorinators, and on occasion an insufficient amount of chlorine is added to the water.  But van Dongen gets sucked in, and deflects the blame to climate change and away from the techs running the treatment plant.

Getting reeled in like a trout, van Dongen quotes water director Nick Winters yammering about lake surface water having a temperature of 18.5℃.  Never mind the actual intake is near the bottom of the lake, have they never chlorinated a pool in mid-summer?  Don’t they have data from prior years?  This isn’t a scientific mystery.

Gail Krantzberg, a McMaster University professor of environmental engineering professor – and Great Lakes expert! – is quoted as saying that climate models predict Lake Ontario water temperatures will continue to inch up, and lists another host of disasters Hamilton might experience  I’ll wager Prof Krantzberg gets research grants on basis of hyping climate change.

Here’s another news flash: climate change hasn’t happened yet.  It’s what’s supposed to happen fifty to eighty years from now, when the atmosphere’s average temperature is supposed to be 1.5 to 2.5℃ warmer than it is now.  Water temperature is a different thing, and even if it also experiences a secular increase of 2℃, that’s less than the annual fluctuation of temperature.

Finally, at the end of the piece, van Dongen gives the real reason for chlorine loss offered by city officials, and it is that water temperature is higher, and with usage down, storage time is up, and the higher rate of chlorine loss due to temperature is too great for the amount initially put in.  “We can manage that,” says Winters.  So, why the big hubbub about climate change, except to stoke a narrative?

City officials can’t blame climate change.  They’ve experienced these water temperatures before.  Find the fault, and fix it.  Stop with the crazy handwaving excuses.

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Prime Minister Canute

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Nov 21

RE: COVID-19, Climate top Liberal agenda.  A CP news article written by Joan Bryden.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 24 Nov 21.

Prime Minister Trudeau needs to take a lesson from King Canute, who famously showed his nobles that even the King couldn’t stop the tide from rising.  Trudeau’s promises to control the pandemic and to stop climate change smack of the beliefs of King Canute’s nobles.

Everyone in the Senate chamber for the throne speech was either doubly vaccinated or had a recent negative COVID test.  The principals were all distanced – and masked, as was everyone else.  With cloth masks - you know, the useless kind?  It was a show of mask-compliance and piety that demonstrated no faith in the efficacy of vaccination, testing, or distancing.  How can you claim to be able to control the pandemic when the only thing you truly rely on is the one thing known to be useless – cloth masks?

Likewise, climate change.  The lesson from COP26 is that the developing countries, led by India and including China, are going to increase dramatically their use of coal for generating cheap electrical power.  Canada produces 1.5 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions, and that figure will decline as the undeveloped world ramps up.  Eliminating Canada’s entire CO2 output wouldn’t change a damn thing – if you are inclined to believe in CO2 induced climate change.  And if you do, when are you going to face facts?  When are you going to stop insisting that Canada engage in self-abuse to save the planet from climate disaster?

Easier talking COVID control and climate change than fighting inflation or balancing a budget, matters actually within government control.  Never mind the drudgery of good government which Trudeau detests and can’t master: Watch the shiny thing everybody!

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Why the bum’s rush?

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Nov 21

RE: MPs return as Liberals set deadline to pass new bills.  Canadian Press news article by Jordan Press and Joan Bryden.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 23 Nov 21.

Two months after the last election the new, 44^th parliament is called into session, the first meeting of parliament in five months.  Immediately, the Liberal government informs the House that it has to act fast, passing four major pieces of legislation before Christmas.  Never mind a speech from the Throne and a budget.  You have to wonder, why the bum’s rush all of a sudden?  It’s not like Prime Minister Trudeau didn’t have time to think and plan.  Or, maybe it’s because he did.

The contempt of the Trudeau Liberals for parliament is not new, but since of death of Senator Eugene Forsey there is no go-to constitutional expert who can tell the people the dangers to their rights of the Liberal’s contemptuous actions.  Every little bit of arcania that obstructs the actions of government is there to protect the rights of the people, and especially of minorities.

People shouldn’t laugh at Trudeau’s cavalier attitude towards the procedures of representative democracy that protects the rights of minorities.  These procedures should be treated with reverence.  Perhaps Justin Trudeau is too unserious, immature, and shallow, for really vicious purposes, to undermine the protections that due regard for parliament provides to everyone, but he may be laying down markers that a serious anti-democrat can exploit.

There was no excuse for not calling parliament back within two weeks of the election so that the House could appoint a Speaker and select and empower a Board of Internal Economy that could legitimately operate parliament, and then adjourn.  Instead, parliament was not summoned, and an illegitimate Speaker and an illegitimate BOIE moved to block Conservative MPs from sitting in the new parliament that would select the new Speaker and empower the new BOIE, making them both legitimate.

On the grounds that you can’t do something stupid fast enough, the Liberals are rushing through partisan legislation without a budget or any of the other niceties a government is expected to deliver.

Meanwhile, a supine media watch in wonderment as the Liberals pull rhetorical rabbits out of their hats.  They talk about vaccination status instead of the business before the House, which, besides delay, is another distraction the from the government’s agenda.  Why the distractions?

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[UPDATE] A speech from the Throne was delivered after the filing of this story.  The fact that Prime Minister Trudeau effectively announced to the House some of the contents of that speech stole the thunder as it were from the speech delivered the Queen’s representative, a different kind of insult since the Governor General is made to look like a puppet.  The speech was a ridiculous spectacle of mask-compliance.  Everybody in the chamber had to be either fully vaccinated or have had a certificate of exemption, yet everyone wore cloth masks anyway.  And cloth masks are known to be completely ineffective in preventing the release or the intact of the virus.  The speech was a much-criticized stew of Trudeaupian pieties combine with liberal doses of insult all-round.

The Complete Disruption Option

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Nov 21

RE: This is not a no-growth option.  A news cum editorial piece in the Hamilton Spectator 22 Nov 21.

You have to wonder if reality ever intrudes into the minds of the ideologues who think the no boundary expansion option is the way to go.  No, I’m not going to rehearse my expansion causing the melting of polar icecaps jibe.  If it’s a growth option, where is that growth going to take place?

A recent article in the Spectator showed all the vacant land available for re-development within the current urban boundary.  Most of it is in the lower city, so let’s think about the effects of adding 100,000 to 200,000 more people to the lower city.

Can the infrastructure handle that large an increase in population?  Can the old water pipes and sewers handle the increased demand of fifty to one hundred percent larger population?  Can the streets handle the additional parking and traffic volume?

The answers are undoubtedly no.  This means that the infrastructure in the entire lower city will have to be upgraded.  The resulting construction will cause decades of disruption to the accustomed life of the people in the lower city.  Streets everywhere will need to be torn up, and it’s not going to stop.  The main east-west arteries won’t be able to handle the additional traffic without constant traffic jams.  I’ll wager the infrastructure costs of the high-disruption option will be more than building new on undeveloped land.  That’s one reason to develop undeveloped land: the disruption is minimal and the infrastructure costs are known and reasonable.

But Hamiltonians can console themselves that this is condign punishment for being so evil.  They’re evil because they’re alive, and because they live in an advanced, western civilization.

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Public Health Mismanagement

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Nov 21

RE: Unprecedented risk to health agency.  Hamilton Spectator news article 20 Nov 21.

The management of the COVID crisis has from the very beginning been botched.  Remember how “fifteen days to flatten the curve” turned into nearly four months of lockdown?  And why was lockdown resorted to?  It was to protect the health care system.  The saving of lives was a secondary and an indirect consideration.

It was made known in April, 2020, in articles by Dr. Scott Atlas, that prolonged lockdown would lead to perverse and counter-productive effects on public health.  He was disregarded, and lockdown remains to this day a resort to flattening the curve and protecting the health care system, despite definitive studies showing lockdown measures  are worthless in preventing the spread.

The perverse effects of lockdown forecasted by Dr. Atlas are now becoming plain.  Hamilton’s public health agency is now ‘at risk’ from all the other problems that were neglected to focus exclusively on COVID.  Hamilton is not alone in this.

British Columbia has suffered more deaths from drug overdoses than from COVID.  Alberta dropped COVID restrictions in July in part because a public health crisis in syphilis had broken out, and that required the immediate attention of health officials.  Government authorities across Canada spent hundreds of billions dollars fighting the effects of misguided lockdowns, but seemed never to have spent the tens of millions of dollars required to reinforce public health agencies so that they could walk and chew gum as it were in the midst of the pandemic.

Now, Hamilton can’t continue to ignore a growing health crisis caused by neglect.  But how is it expressed?  The agency is at risk.  Not lives, but the agency.

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Back to the future in B.C.

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Nov 21

RE: To glimpse our climate future see flooded B.C. Hamilton Spectator editorial 19 Nov 21.

The climate is changing all right.  In B.C. it’s reverting back to what it was in the 19^th century, when CO2 levels were low, no one fought forest fires, and there were natural lakes around Abbotsford.  Drive away nature, and she returns at the gallop!

Climate change fanatics are often warned not to attribute individual weather events to climate change.  Weather is not climate, and climate is not weather.  But progressivism, being a brain-wasting disease, its adherents fall into that mistake all the time.  And this is one of those times.

The editorial errs when it said “warmer air passing over rising oceans absorb more water and produces more precipitation.”  Never mind the oceans aren’t rising, it was warm Pacific water that put moisture into the cool air above it.  (That’s why hurricanes strengthen over the Gulf of Mexico) And it’s differences in temperature not absolute temperature that forces precipitation.  The Arts Majors writing editorials got the physics wrong, again.  Oh, and a tenth of a degree here or there doesn’t make a hill of beans when it comes to the difference between a gentle fall rain and a torrential downfall.

Disappointed by COP26, the climate change fanatics are lashing out everywhere, and grasping at straws for re-assurance.

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On a point of the physics.  If warm dry air passed over cold water it can absorb water and raise its relative humidity.  But it costs the air heat to evaporate water.  The air upon passing over the mountains would cool and if its relative humidity rose to saturation upon cooling, it would as rain in the mountains until the relative humidity fell below 100 percent.  But if air is warmed by water, it’s carrying a lot of humidity in consequence.  Upon meeting a cold front, the mixture cools until relative humidity reaches 100 percent, and then the rain falls.  This could happen near the coast, as it did.  The warm air, carrying lots of humidity, has a lot of rain to drop.  The whole business of climate producing a warmer atmosphere by fractions of a degree means nothing in this process.  Remember, it’s a temperature rise of 1.5 to 2.0 ℃ eighty years from now that they’re trying to stop.

Response to MPs can't be banned from the House

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Nov 21

I received a learned reply to my post on MPs can't be banned from the House.  It is reproduced below with omissions sufficient to block the identity of the sender.  My reply is below.

First, I cannot speak for ________, but Conservatives are not asking for special treatment as we do not support mandatory vaccinations for any federal employees, but rather we are stating there are alternatives such as rapid testing for those who cannot, for whatever reason, be vaccinated. Rapid testing would actually be more effective as it would ensure no one in the House has Covid as even those vaccinated can still carry the virus.

In addition, the BOIE order is not specifically to access the Chamber, but the entire precinct which would include a Member’s Hill office. That being said, MPs will have to show proof of vaccination to board a plane to fly to Ottawa as of October 30. I can’t imagine many would drive across Canada and back each week, so there are hurdles for any unvaccinated MPs already, if there are any that is.

To clarify a part of your document, “a Board of Internal Economy cannot be said yet to exist” : With the dissolution of Parliament, while all business of the House is terminated - the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the members of the Board of Internal Economy continue in office for the acquittal of certain administrative duties until they are replaced in a new Parliament (s 69). It is not the writ return which indicates the change in power for these positions, but the replacement of the positions as they cannot be vacant. As such, the members of the Board of Internal Economy as well as the Speaker of the House remain in their position until they are replaced.

My reply is below:

That being said, one could argue if the BOIE even has the jurisdiction to make such a decision to limit access to House by a Member of Parliament. Conservatives will be challenging this point through a Point of Privilege when the House resumes later this month. Meanwhile, although the decision does not align with our Conservative views that alternatives such as rapid tests should be available, we will advocate for a virtual option so all MPs are able to serve in their elected role and represent their constituents in debate and discussions of this Parliament until the order is revoked.

During the 2020 American president election, the California elections commission tried to keep Donald Trump’s name off the ballot in that state through the gambit of requiring a presidential candidate release their tax returns.  Of course, Mr. Trump never did.  The California Supreme Court struck down the requirement on the grounds that it was an extra-constitutional requirement, and therefore unconstitutional.  The American constitution only requires that the president be native born and over the age of 35.

Something like this is being pulled in Ottawa.  The only constitutional requirement for a person to sit as an MP in the House is that they be duly elected.  The addition burden that they also be vaccinated (however that is defined), disclose their vaccination status, and supply proof to the satisfaction of some knobby of their vaccination status is likewise extra-constitutional.  Never mind being pernicious to the rights of the minority.

You mentioned in your reply a ‘(s69)’ of something or other in reference to the carrying on of the Speakership and BOIE until “replaced.”  Permit me to refer you to the autobiography of the late Sen. Eugene Forsey, an acknowledged constitutional expert.  He used to rail against the invocation of an alleged “Principle of Administrative Convenience” to justify unconstitutional actions, practices, conveniences and shortcuts availed in the exercise of power to avoid the awkwardness of having to follow true constitutional practice – which you can be certain is awkward for a reason.  The carrying on of the Speakership and the BOIC of the last parliament until replaced by the new is an obvious codification of this pernicious principle.  The Ghosts of Christmas Past continue to haunt the House until is it convenient that they be replaced. 

Below is a link to a certain rigmarole that the mother of Parliaments undergoes immediately after an election.  I’m sure the Canadian parliament does something similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nrI8kMkIrI

The procedure you see is incomprehensible under the legal theory that the Speaker holds the job “until replaced.” 

You can see the pernicious effect of s69 on the recall of parliament.  Where is the urgency to summon parliament after an election if everything can sail on as before without interruption until replaced?

The role and actions of the Ghosts of Christmas Past rest on mere fumes of legitimacy, and might be tolerated so long as the actions they discharge are routine and uncontroversial.  But the imposition of new and extra-constitutional requirements by the old parliament on the new is beyond the pale of legitimacy.  It is an exercise of power Mr. Rota and the old BOIC do not legitimately have - at the best of times.

And this is why Mr. Rota and the “BOIC” must be resisted if the minority expect their rights to be respected in the future.

In my view, the Conservative members of the House ought to vote against Mr. Rota should he choose again to run for Speaker on the grounds of his having lost their confidence.

I hope this answers your point about the Ghosts of Christmas Past continuing to haunt the House of the new parliament until replaced.

I have confined my remarks to the matter of sitting in the House for the sake of clarity.  In the United States it is a crime for anyone, including law enforcement, to interfere with a member of congress going about their duty, such as voting in their Chamber.  Making it impossible for MPs to live and perform their duties unless “vaccinated” to me cries out for a rebuke somehow, some time.

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Beer’s Law and climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Nov 21

One of the best laws that chemists employ is Beer’s Law.  It’s used in analytical chemistry.  Anybody who has calibrated a humble Spectronic 20 or an atomic absorption spectrophotometer has discovered Beer’s Law.  But what has Beer’s Law got to do with climate change?

Beer’s Law states that the amount of light absorbed by a sample is proportional to the concentration of the sample.  The higher the concentration, the more light absorbed.  Up to a point.  Beyond that point, the calibration curve departs from linearity and flattens.  Eventually, the sample becoming more concentrated causes detectably no more light to be absorbed. The curve at that point is flat.

When the earth cools at night, it emits infra-red light in a spectrum known as blackbody radiation.  Carbon dioxide absorbs a narrow band of that light at 15 micron wavelength.  The amount of light absorbed by CO2 follows Beer’s Law up to a point.  Beyond that point, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere causes no more infra-red light of that wavelength to be absorbed.  Work recently published in the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics showed that the light absorption, or greenhouse effect, of CO2 is maxed-out by 100 ppm, and the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is well into the flat part of the light absorption curve.  Doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will result in only a tiny increase in the amount of light absorbed.  CO2 is already maxed-out in its greenhouse effect.

Likewise, methane  Methane’s infra-red light absorption overlaps that of water vapor’s absorption, and doubling methane concentration causes an almost undetectable amount of more light to be absorbed.

Hence, the greenhouse effect is already maxed-out, and adding more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere is not going to cause a runaway greenhouse effect.  The earth isn’t going to get warmer and the world’s climate isn’t going to change if even if the amount of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere were doubled.

COP26 was a failure, but the world would be far worse off had it been a success.

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Molecular Mechanics of the Greenhouse Effect

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Nov 21

Despite this imposing title, the greenhouse effect is most easily understood by looking at it from the molecular level.

When the earth cools at night, the surface of the earth emits infra-red radiation in a broad spectrum that closely follows what’s called in physics blackbody radiation.  The greenhouse effect occurs when atmospheric gases absorb some of this radiation and convert it to heat.  The primary greenhouse gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide, with ozone playing a role in the upper atmosphere.  Methane and nitrous oxide are minor greenhouse gases.  The mechanism of the greenhouse effect is basically the same for all of them.

These gases absorb infra-red light in certain portions of the spectrum.  Carbon dioxide, for instance, absorbs infra-red light in a narrow band around 15 micron wavelength.  When a molecule absorbs a photon of infra-red light it is kicked from its so-called ground vibrational state into an excited vibrational state.  When in an excited vibrational state, one of two things can happen: either the molecule emits a photon in a random direction and falls back to its ground state, or it collides with another molecule and transfers kinetic energy to that other molecule while it falls back into its ground vibrational state.  The second possibility is the essence of the greenhouse effect: infra-red radiation is converted into thermal energy.  That now faster moving second molecule is how heat is expressed in a gas.

Typically, the CO2 molecule will transfer energy to either a nitrogen or oxygen molecule, giving them a thermal-kinetic “kick.”  Suppose all the energy that could be captured at 15 microns was already being captured and converted into thermal energy.  What would be the effect of adding more capturing molecules?  The answer is that those additional capturing molecules wouldn’t be busy because all the infra-red energy available to be captured is already being captured and converted into thermal energy in nitrogen and oxygen.  If the criminal is already being caught, adding more cops to that arrest team isn’t going to result in the capture of more than that one criminal.  In the case of CO2, maximum greenhouse effect is reached at between 50 and 100 ppm concentration in the atmosphere.

The earth has only so much energy to capture in the infra-red, and if all of that is already being captured, adding more arresting agents won’t increase the amount of energy arrested.  Hence, adding more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere will not result in global warming or climate change because the amount of CO2 and methane already present in the atmosphere is already capturing all there is to be captured at their respective wavelengths.  Over the night, the thermal and infra-red energy of the lower atmosphere is transferred into the upper atmosphere and is finally radiated into outer space as infra-red radiation.  The greenhouse effect slows, but cannot stop, the transfer of energy from the earth to outer space in the form of infra-red radiation.

Ultimately, the amount of energy the earth absorbs during the day has to be emitted at night, or else the earth would warm.  This is a very closely maintained energy balance because even a slight imbalance would rapidly result in either heating or cooling until the situation stabilized at a new temperature.

Rate of heat transfer is proportional to the difference in temperature, so if the earth got warmer or cooler the rate of heat transfer would increase or decrease until a new stable temperature was reached.  All the while, the amount of solar radiation received by the earth remains the same.  If the earth radiates more energy than the sun is putting in, the earth will cool and the rate slow until the rates in and out balance at a new, lower temperature.  If the earth radiates less energy than the sun puts in, the earth will warm and the rate speed up until the balance is re-established at a new, higher temperature.  Keep in mind that the insulating effects of CO2 and methane are already at a maximum.  This is why it’s hard for the earth’s atmosphere to experience a thermal runaway.

I’m not going to try to explain now why so many reputations have been staked and so many billions of dollars spent hyping the alleged danger of allowing CO2 and methane concentrations in the atmosphere to rise.  One word will suffice for now: politics.  Scientists are human too.

COP26 was a failure by the standards of the climate fanatics.  Climate change has become a religion for many and they can’t abide by failure.  Hopefully, there’s enough sense in the world to save its economy from destruction by the nihilism of the climate change religion.

The ultimate message is that the world is in no danger from mankind-induced climate change.  Adding more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere isn’t going to harm the planet.

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Outdoors, masked and distanced while vaxxed

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Nov 21.

If you want to know why there are anti-vax protests and why actual scientists think the doctors running the pandemic measures are incompetent, just look at the front page of the November 12 Spectator, and pages A4 and A8.  You will find pictures of perfectly healthy young people, outdoors, socially distanced - and masked.  Undoubtedly, they’re fully vaccinated too.  Do the doctors running pandemic measures have confidence in any of their measures, or not? Wearing belt and suspenders to keep your pants up is one thing, but ostentatiously adding athletic tape and bungie cord for good measure is a little over the top, and calls into question a few things.

Questions like, do the vaccines work, or not?  They were supposed to save us from another wave of the pandemic, but that didn’t work.  Herd immunity was supposed to happen at 70, er, 80, er, 90 percent, but even 100 percent isn’t going to achieve it. Breakthrough infections are occurring with alarming regularity.  The blame for this is laid on the unvaccinated, the vast majority of whom aren’t carrying the virus.  If unvaccinated people are dangerous to the vaccinated, then what was the point of vaccination again?

Nevertheless, masks are mandated - the talisman that didn’t stop waves two or three.  Wearing masks outdoors was once considered over the top, but, obviously, not any more.  Social distancing while outdoors?  Not good enough, mask up!

When is this incompetence and ridiculous shows of compliance going to end?

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It must have hurt

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Nov 21

RE: We remember Nov 11 by lowering the flag.  Hamilton Spectator editorial of 11 Nov 21.

It must have hurt the editor to write the editorial.  Where’s the courage of the Spectator’s convictions?

Isn’t Canada a nation of colonizers?  Don’t we name the Indian bands on whose land that portion of Canada is now occupying?  Didn’t Canada engage in “cultural genocide?”  Weren’t the flags lowered for six months because hundreds of aboriginal children were murdered, died of neglect, or simply went missing from residential schools?  Aren’t statues of Canada’s founding Prime Minister being pulled down all over the country?  Isn’t Ryerson University being renamed because of Egerton Ryerson’s involvement with residential schools?

Isn’t Canada filled with racists?  Isn’t Dundas St. in Toronto being renamed because Dundas prolonged slavery in the British Empire?  Didn’t the original settlers of Upper Canada bring their slaves with them?  Isn’t racism still a hot matter today in our schools?

Isn’t Canada a hotbed of Islamophobia?  Didn’t a white Canadian man kill a Muslim family?  Don’t Muslims fear the white Canadian majority?

Isn’t transphobia rampant in Canada?  Isn’t Canada filled with white supremacists, science deniers, vaccine deniers, and climate deniers?

Don’t Canadian spew more than their fair share of climate destroying carbon into the atmosphere?  Don’t we ship fossil fuels to other countries so they can as well?  Aren’t our cattle too flatulent?  Aren’t our Armed Forces rampant with sexual misconduct?

Why is the Spectator calling to honour old white men who fought for all this wickedness?  Is that still the narrative, for now?

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Good News on Climate Front

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Nov 21.

There is excellent news on the climate front, though you won’t hear about it at COP26.  It comes from the International Conference on Climate Change, and specifically a paper written by W.A. van Wijngaarden, Professor of Physics at York University, and W. Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University.

The paper was entitled “Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules” and was published in the January 2021 edition of Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics.  The crucial conclusions are that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will have little impact on the greenhouse effect of the earth’s atmosphere, and that methane has essentially no impact on the greenhouse effect.

The authors developed a computer model of the atmosphere’s spectral absorption curve using over 300,000 spectral absorption lines from the far to near infra-red region of the spectrum.  What is crucial is that their model matches with uncanny accuracy the atmospheric spectral absorption curve as measured by satellites, and under widely differing conditions, Sahara desert, Mediterranean, and Antarctic.  The close conformity of the model to actual measurement demonstrates the model’s robustness, and it can be used with confidence to predict what would happen in wildly different scenarios.

The model shows that CO2 accounts for about 25 percent of the greenhouse effect.  If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth would be a colder place.  On the other hand, doubling the amount of CO2 from that present would result in only a tiny increase in greenhouse effect, due to spectral saturation.

Anyone who has calibrated an atomic absorption spectrophotometer knows that above a certain concentration, spectral absorption departs from linearity.  In the cases of CO2 and water vapor, saturation suppresses the full greenhouse effect by up to four orders of magnitude.  This explains why doubling CO2 concentration has so little impact on the greenhouse effect.

The modelling also shows that methane and nitrous oxide have essentially no greenhouse effect because water vapor absorbs in the same regions as these molecules do. Doubling the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has no detectable impact on the atmospheric greenhouse effect.  Trace gases such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFC’s) have no impact on the earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect because they are in such low concentrations and absorb in frequencies already dominated by water vapor.

The upshot is that the world needn’t spend trillions or even billions trying to mitigate the greenhouse effect of CO2.  The earth’s atmosphere is robust and won’t go wildly out of kilter by small increases in CO2.  It also shows that good science is possible even in this age of cancel culture and conformance to progressive orthodoxy. (It’s a wonder to me that the paper got published at all.)

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Fantastic arguments against boundary expansion

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Nov 21

RE: Stop the sprawl into Hamilton’s farmland.  Op-ed published in the Hamilton Spectator 8 Nov 21

The arguments used against Hamilton expanding its urban boundary approach the fantastic, and not in a good way.  And the piece by Doreen Nichol expressing such concern for Hamilton’s farmland was a bit rich coming from a Burlingtonian.  She needs to get out more.

Canada has no lack of farmland.  When you cross into Manitoba on Ontario’s Highway 17, the forests suddenly fall away and there before you lie the great prairies.  Two days of hard driving, passing hundreds of miles of wheat and canola fields, gets you to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, cattle country! The farmlands of Hamilton may be classed as agricultural, but they are already owned by the developers in anticipation of expansion, and crops will never grow on them again.

It is true that Hamilton gets some produce from California and Florida, and also the Okanagan Valley; but if Hamilton could grow oranges the world will have reached the climate disaster that Nichol is so fearful of.

The insinuation that boundary expansion will cause climate change were fantastic.  Urban boundary expansion will not cause the oceans to rise by another inch, slightly more of the polar icecaps aren’t going to melt, and Hamilton having the climate of middle Ohio is not a calamity in any event.

Nichol dismisses urban boundary expansion as some plot by developers tcrying to create a “pseudo-demand” Having nothing to do with “building affordable LEED-certified housing” but rather “the intentional destruction of farmland so developers can sell McMansions constructed on large lots” and having “everything to do with profit maximization because developers set the prices.”

Good Marxist that she is, utterly ignorant of the workings of the free market, and finding the making of money by developers such a horrible thing, it would be appropriate that Nichols was paid nothing for her work.

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Don’t be discouraged by COP26

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Nov 21

 

RE: COP26 failings shouldn’t be a discouragement.  Hamilton Spectator editorial 8 Nov 21

No serious climate activist (if there are any) should be discouraged by the COP26 conference.  The news isn’t all bad.  In fact, it’s good!

The University of Alabama in Huntsville has been measuring temperatures of the lower troposphere, that layer of the earth’s atmosphere closest to the surface, by satellite since 1979.  Their satellites see over 97 percent of the earth’s surface, meaning (since 70 percent of it is covered by ocean) they produce numbers more reliable than any set of ground-based thermometers.  UAH measurements are not subject to local ground interferences, like placing a thermometer next to an asphalt parking lot.

Since 1979, the satellite data trace an increase in lower tropospheric temperature to 1997.  Between 1997 and 2015, the temperatures were flat, and began rising again in 2016 to the present.  The twenty year pause in global warming is why we no longer speak of ‘global warming’ but of ‘climate change.’

Overall, between 1979 and the present, the average rate of increase in global temperature in 0.13℃ per decade.  Hence, over the ten decades of the 21^st century, global temperature is scheduled to rise by 1.3℃, less than the 1.5℃ targeted as the preferred maximum..  That is if present trends continue.

There is no reason for present trends to continue.  In the 20^th century, global temperatures rose from the year 1900 to 1940, fell from 1940 to 1979, and began rising again in 1980.  Based on the historical temperature patterns, the world could be due for a cooling trend beginning within the next decade.

Regardless of what emerges from COP26, the primary goal – preventing temperature rise - of COP26 is well within reach.

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Socialist healthcare always on verge of collapse

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Nov 21

RE: Ambulance delays at Hamilton hospitals a growing problem  The Hamilton Spectator news item 6 Nov 21.

The story reveals not just that Hamilton hospitals can barely cope with small surges in emergency demand, but that this problem has been growing for years.  Years, as in pre-COVID.  So, it’s no wonder the health care system across Ontario came close to collapse repeatedly during the several COVID waves.

With fewer than 205 COVID hospitalizations province wide as of this writing, Hamilton hospital emergency admissions jammed up and approached collapse on an ordinary Friday afternoon.  How would a real crisis have been handled?

Given the present state of decrepitude of the Ontario health care system, it’s no wonder extraordinary measures like lockdowns were imposed in an effort to prevent its embarrassing collapse.  Ontario wrecked its finances, violated civil and constitutional rights, put thousands out of business and out of work to save its healthcare system, not lives.  Saving lives may have been a corollary that made lockdowns palatable, but the stated and actual reason was to save the healthcare system from collapse.

Were previous Ontario governments penny-wise and pound-foolish in arranging that the healthcare system run at 95 percent of capacity in ordinary times?

Probably not.  Throwing money into the gaping maw of healthcare could never satisfy the fattening beast; it would only find new places to put it.  How many diversity and anti-racism programs and bureaucrats been funded with extra billions?  Even today, post COVID, it’s in no one’s personal interest to run a hospital more efficiently.

Things will be run the way they are until they break, and even then lockdowns will be called for rather than innovation.  Remember, it was the doctors who called for lockdown.  The doctors who ran Ontario healthcare had a vested interest in dodging responsibility for the parlous state of Ontario healthcare at the beginning of and throughout the pandemic.  Passing the buck is too easy when you’re the authority you’re appealing to.  Not a single reporter at a press conference pointed a finger and asked, “aren’t you the one responsible for having to lock down because of the way you ran healthcare the last five years?”

Socialism at work.  Of course, the media is filled with progressives and asking questions that challenged socialized medicine just aren’t asked.  They’ll also too easily impressed by credentials and credentialism..

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Giving China another opening

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Nov 21

RE: Canada pledges to end public fossil fuel financing.  Canadian Press news article published in the Hamilton Spectator 5 Nov 21.

The announcement by the Trudeau government that Export Development Canada will no longer fund fossil fuel development projects in the third world after 2022 is nothing but a bid to claim moral purity.  If implemented, it would leave poor countries poor through lack of development.  But don’t worry, the slack will be taken up by China through its “belt and road initiative.”

The belt and road initiative is the program by which the Chinese Communist Party gains power and influence throughout the world by purchasing or financing crucial  development projects around the world.  And China has the money to do it on a large scale.

In years past, Chinese companies purchased down-at-the-heels coal mines in Canada, for instance, and now ships Canadian coal to China.  China is desperate for coal, and if Canada won’t support developing coal mines in the third world, China will, and gain the diplomatic advantages of having a third world regime dependent upon it.

Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault can strut their moral purity before the COP26 audience, of which China and Russia are not members.  Fossil fuel projects will continue to be developed around the world because there are many countries that don’t share the fixation on “climate change” but do have in common the need for resource and economic development.

Displays of moral purity by the Trudeau government gains Canada nothing.

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Breathless in Glasgow

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Nov 21

The drama teacher in charge of the Canadian government told COP26 in his breathiest voice of the splendors of his tax on pollution, by which he meant the carbon tax.  The tax will eventually be raised (by others) to $170 per tonne, and he recommended a world carbon tax to achieve net zero by 2035.

The world leaders did not get to COP26 (or skipped it) by being as foolish, and Mr. Trudeau’s remarks received mere perfunctory applause.  The applause you get when your speech finally ends.  To whom will this global carbon tax be paid?  Will India, Russia, and China pay it?  To whom will the tax receipts be distributed?  Who gets to decide?  So many unanswered questions!

Mr. Trudeau referred to carbon dioxide as a pollutant.  It is not.  It is an essential component of the atmosphere, and plant life could not exist without it.  Animal life could not exist without plant life to begin the food chain.  The content of CO2 in the atmosphere has varied over hundreds of millions of years, being 7000 ppm at the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of life, as low as 180 ppm, and presently is 400 ppm.

The figure of $170 per tonne of carbon as a tax is an admission of failure.  $20 per tonne was supposed to do something, and then $30.  Now it’s $170 to get the attention of those commuters to Toronto.  And it will be Trudeau’s successor who has to play the grim reaper of the carbon tax.  Trudeau takes the credit, and his successor takes the blame.

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The dangers of government control

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Nov 21

RE: HSR delays expected as vaccine policy kicks in.  Hamilton Spectator 4 Nov 21.

You don’t hear about it in the Spectator, but the Ottawa Confederation line LRT has been out of service since September 19, following a string of service failures prior to this calamity.  Through a voluntary act of policy, the city-run HSR will offer service interruptions, and the ridership will just have to suck it up.  The cost of the wider economic disruption on the riders has no effect on those making policy choices at the HSR.

Quebec first delayed and cancelled a vaccine mandate on its healthcare workers, because enough of them said no that the government run system would have to shut down many vital services if the province carried through with its threat to fire the non-compliant.  Ontario decided not to impose a vaccine mandate on its healthcare workers, despite pleas from management that they do so, after seeing what happened in Quebec and because next year is an election year in Ontario and the government doesn’t want to screw up the healthcare system any more than it is.

Such is the dangers to the economic life of ordinary people of centralized government control, or socialism.  Socialism is founded on the belief that the top 1 percent ought to make decisions for the remaining 99 percent, even though 99 percent of the world’s knowledge is possessed by the 99 percent of the population who have things decided for them.  In economic terms, price discovery is impossible in a socialist system.  Generally, the top 1 percent are quite comfortable in their choices, and immune from them, as the 400 private jets in Glasgow testify.

If the Spectator editorializes about the inhumanity of optometrists withholding their services, well that’s price discovery in action in a socialist system.  The true cost to human health as a result of extreme exercises of centralized control from COVID have yet to be measured, but are certain to be worse than had the disease simply been allowed to rip.

The skyrocketing costs of housing is due entirely to choices by government concerning making new land available to house a growing population.

Mr. Trudeau breathily told COP26 about the wonders of the carbon tax, which churns money through the government, increasing its power through the benefits and punishments made available.  Not all decisions concerning benefits and punishments will be wise ones, and so government power inevitably will be employed to destroy good things and promote bad things.  And the persons making those decisions suffer no consequences for being wrong or benefit from being right.  The lives of millions are affected by the state of indigestion of an often unnamed and invisible few.

Mackay’s cartoon mocks banks for their alleged “fossil fuel investments” made decades ago, and the results of which supply Ontario and Quebec with transport fuels, and natural gas for home heating and electrical generation.  Luckily, Mackay wasn’t in charge in the days when the climate fear was the coming ice age.

Likewise, the Bank of Canada is supposed to turn attention to global warming risks, and will use its power to force banks to engage in fruitless and worthless speculation about something that is only a solar cycle away from reversal.  The business of banks, taking wise risks and keeping inflation under control and employment near to full, will be forced to spout the progressive line about climate – if the bankers know what’s good for them personally.  That’s called taking your eye off the ball.

The danger of centralized control should be obvious from the fate of the Soviet Union and the current travails in North Korea, - where people are encourage to eat black swans to stave off starvation.  Price discovery is important.  And ordinary people get hurt when they surrender their power of making choices to a centralized bureaucracy.

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Teach Catholicism instead

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Nov 21

RE: Halton Catholic Board delays seminar planned for Black parents.  The Hamilton Spectator 3 Nov 21.

The Black parents who balked at a seminar especially for them showed a commendable amount of common sense.  And the Halton District Catholic School Board showed too much modernism and too little Catholicism.

Between the teachings of St. Paul and the scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas, Catholic teaching is powerfully equipped to show rationally why racism is wrong – and why it exists.  Catholic faith begins with the fallen nature of man, and it’s man’s fallen nature that accounts for racism.  Catholic teaching can combat racism with rational argument, but given the nature of man, racism can never be eliminated.

This is why the Black parents were right to resist a seminar founded in modernism instead of Catholicism.  Patronizing and mollycoddling Black children ill-equips them to deal with the realities of life in the western world.  Whining and complaining about racism are excuses for failure, for not working hard, and not following good examples.

White parents on the other hand don’t need to hear another modernist polemic laying the blame for all the evils in the world on them.  They would however benefit from learning what their faith says about the evils man is heir to, and why and how they must be resisted.

White liberals are the bane of Black people, and it seems the Black Catholic parents in Halton spotted it and reacted.  Good for them.

The Halton board should be teaching and acting in accordance with Catholic Philosophy not modernism.

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Justin the heroic warrior for climate

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Nov 21

RE: Canada wanted more ambitious climate plan.  By Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 1 Nov 21.

A clean-shaven and gleeful looking Justin Trudeau smiles under a headline that says he failed.  But he failed heroically.  He wanted more ambitious language in the G20 final communique on climate, but didn’t get it.  The confab left it to King Canute actually to halt the rise in global temperatures.  President Barack Obama slowed the rise of the oceans and began the healing of the earth, but left the temperature problem to lesser mortals.

Canada couldn’t get more ambitious language into the agreement because Canada doesn’t count.  Any ambitious goal concerning carbon emissions and concomitant rise in global temperatures would have to be achieved by others.  But Trudeau could smile and claim credit for it if they did – he knew they could do it they just tried.  Promising much and leaving it to others to accomplish is a hallmark Trudeau technique.

Canada doesn’t count on climate because it contributes so little to the cause.  Canada contributes 1.5 percent of world CO2 emissions, and ranks 11^th on the list of emitting countries, behind Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Korea, Russia, Indonesia, China, India, and Japan, to name a few.  Most of them don’t care about climate, regarding it as a western fixation.

Western Europe made the mistake of placing itself into the power of Russia, and Russia responded by curtailing exports of natural gas.  To stay warm and keep the lights on this winter, Europe is going to have to burn a lot of coal.

Old fashioned power politics can’t keep Justin from claiming victory, of sorts.

Meanwhile, coal prices remain strong and miners expect to sell out their entire 2022 production.

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