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.

-30-

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.

-30-

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.

-30-

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?

-30-

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.

-30-

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.

-30-

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.

-30-