Electric Cars Still Need Energy

In the rush to go green, people have lost sight of common sense.

Investors.com: Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars

It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

"If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely

Sorry to spoil the party.

Sarah Palin Milking the Letterman Joke Controversy for All Its Worth

I thought it was a shrewd move for Palin to lash out at David Letterman's jokes. She piled on the hyperbole, and implied that the joke about her daughter was about rape, and that Letterman was a perv. It made Letterman look bad, and people weren't talking about her being a dummy for once.

(In case you've been on a deserted island this week, link here for a summary. )

The joke was awkward, but was clearly not implying rape. However, talk radio, and right wing blogs were leaping to her defense, summoning all the outrage they could muster. Finally it was something they could sink their teeth into, instead of the usual routine of trying to pretend that she's bright enough to hold a major political office.

Today, she's back for more: Sarah Palin Calls for Uprising Against Letterman for Joke About Her Daughter

In her interview, Palin said that Letterman does not owe her an apology.

"He doesn't have to apologize to me. I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it's ok to talk about young girls that way."

Gov. Palin was apparently pleased to see women organizations speaking out against the comments and then proceeded to read from her BlackBerry an e-mail she received from someone she described as not a typical feminist. "Every male organization. . . should rise up and shout in defense of their daughters, their sisters, their mothers," Palin read to NBC's Lauer.

You go girl! This should help her in her pursuit for the Republican nomination for 2012.

Reusable Bags Are Great for the Envirnoment Going to Make You Sick

I'm happy about this scientific finding that reusable bags suck.

The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what's considered safe for drinking water.

Further, 40% of the bags had yeast or mold, and some of the bags had an unacceptable presence of coliforms, faecal intestinal bacteria, when there should have been 0.

"The presence of faecal material in some of the reusable bags is particularly concerning," Dr. Summerbell stated. "All meat products should be individually wrapped before being placed in a reusable bag to prevent against leakage. This should become a mandated safety standard across the entire grocery industry."

Hopefully somebody sends a memo to snarling, anti-plastic bag, fascist, grocery clerks.

Backlash to Maclean's "Disturbing New Poll"

Barbara Kay in the National Post takes to task Maclean's Magazine for chiding Canadians as intolerent based on some poll findings. I meant to post on this, but I think Kay sums it up well. I expect better from Maclean's

Of the many features offending against minimal standards of objectivity in this poll, two stand out as especially discrediting.

One is Maclean's' solicitation of editorial commentary on the poll numbers from Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of Islamism-supportive CAIRCan. CAIR-Can has never repudiated Islamic terrorism and fellow-travels with the Muslim brotherhood. The Brotherhood is openly committed to the promotion of stealth jihad, and is universally acknowledged as the intellectual fountainhead of Sunni Islamic radicalism. No media organ should invite such an extremist institution to pass moral judgment on Canadians.

The other is Maclean's' overt editorial criticism around the very low level of acceptance for shariah law. Hostility to officially sanctioned shariah law is falsely linked here with negativism toward Muslims. In fact Canadians' opposition to shariah represents a wholesome rejection of Europe-style cultural suicide.

It is offensive that Canadians should be implicitly labelled racists for upholding democratic ideals over willfully blind multiculturalism. To regard the phrase "clash of civilizations" without ironic quotation marks is not a sign of hostility toward individual Muslims. On the contrary, national self-interest demands that we view Islamism and the dangers posed by radicalized Muslim youths with dread.

Read the whole thing.

Thank You For Smoking

In the upside down world of China, the government encourages you to smoke.

Daily Telegraph:

The edict, issued by officials in Hubei province in central China, threatens to fine officials who "fail to meet their targets" or are caught smoking rival brands manufactured in neighbouring provinces.

Even local schools have been issued with a smoking quota for teachers, while one village was ordered to purchase 400 cartons of cigarettes a year for its officials, according to the local government's website.

The move, which flies in the face of national anti-smoking policies set in Beijing, is aimed at boosting tax revenues and protecting local manufacturers from outside competition from China's 100 cigarette makers.

In total, officials have been ordered to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes worth £400,000.

All we need now is a higher booze consumption quota and I might start thinking about a new place to live.

Great Ezra Levant Interview

Ezra at his best on a CBC radio interview. If you want to understand the Canadian and Provincial Human Rights Commissions farce clearly, listen to this. Scroll to Part 2.

via: Ezra Levant

The Race For Victimhood

With the contruction of the The Canadian Museum for Human Rights underway, controversy has already begun. We should have seen this coming:

Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, was worried gay and lesbian human rights would be ignored because the group was "totally omitted" from the museum's promotional materials.

(Helen Kennedy and Egale, you'll recall, were the ones who objected to Hockey Night in Canada airing the term "pansification" that Mike Milbury used to describe new anti-fighting initiatives. It was considered homophobic. Appallingly, HNIC caved in and Milbury is not allowed to use the word anymore. This gives you an idea of the kind of people we're dealing with.)

There were more groups lining up for victimhood as well.

"It needs to be inclusive and equitable. If it focuses disproportionate attention to some cases over other cases, then what it is actually teaching us is that there is a hierarchy of human suffering, and that some human suffering is more important than other cases of human suffering; and on that basis, the museum would not be teaching us anything about human rights, it would be teaching us about racism," Kafieh said.

It's the Oprahfication of our culture. It's a contest between groups for who is the biggest victim. The prize for victimhood is political capital.

Nanny State Imposing Classes, Fines on Parents for Child's School Behaviour

Absurdity reaches a new height in the UK. The Daily Telegraph reports on new legislation regarding your children's behaviour. Parents to be hit with penalties if children misbehave at school

They can apply to courts for a "parenting contract" requiring mothers and fathers of wayward pupils to take parenting classes - with fines of up to £1,000 if they fail to attend.

Under laws - first announced in legislation in 2007 - parents can also be hit with penalties of £50 if their children are found in a public place without justification in the first five days of an exclusion. The fine will rise to £100 if it is unpaid within 28 days.

Parents must also be interviewed by headteachers before their child is allowed back into school, outlining the standards expected of pupils.

In the past, it has been feared head teachers were reluctant to take such hard-line action for fear of souring relations with parents.

"Parenting class." My God. Can you imagine? Some board of education, leftist type teaching a class to you, against your will, on how to raise your kids? Oh boy!

Lucky they didn't have this in my day, in Canada. My parents would have had to declare bankruptcy, with all the fines I would have generated.

Here's the Deal: Pay Even More Money for Something You Don't Watch

York University professor Wayne Rowland thinks CBC should forget about running revenue generating commercials and popular shows. What's the catch?

If the CBC is to survive the shock-doctrine opportunism of federal Conservatives bent on either privatization or elimination of the public broadcaster, it needs to once and for all come to terms with the festering albatross that is commercial sponsorship on its television network.

(...)

Crunching the numbers in the most recent CBC annual report, it looks as though roughly a third of television's operating expenses are covered by ad revenue of just over $300 million. So, if CBC TV were to go advertising-free cold turkey, as it were, it would have to find internal savings of something like 30 per cent.

Without access to the corporate accounts one can only speculate on where that might come from, but a shortened broadcast schedule would lower plant costs, and dropping professional sports would take a big bite out of production costs.

Yeah, that's right. Drop hockey, the only thing anybody watches the CBC for.

But maybe cold turkey is not the only answer. Why should it be assumed that Canadians, who take such pride in that other defining institution, medicare, would not be willing to ante up a few more dollars a year to support an ad-free CBC TV service?

A few months ago French President Nicolas Sarkozy did away with prime-time advertising on the country's public television network: the annual cost per capita went from $65 to $77. In Britain, taxpayers fork out $124 a year for the cultural cornucopia that is the BBC. Canadians pay a measly $34 each for the CBC. Raise that by about $5 and we've covered the advertising shortfall.

If we can salvage CBC TV as a centre for innovative, uniquely Canadian programs of exceptional quality, then CBC Radio will have a secure future as well.

Sure, make it completely unwatchable and expect taxpayers to fork over more. This professor is so out of touch he doesn't want any regular people to have a say, not even as ratings. (Without commercials, who cares how many people are watching?)

It's even more outrageous from a political point of view, as the CBC has been the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party my entire life. Why should I be forced to pay for its upkeep? It's like the TASS News Agency from the old Soviet Union.

Also, it annoys me that they keep talking about CBC quality programming, as if it's a given. What quality programing have we seen so far? Perhaps on the radio, which I don't listen to, because I can't find any clear online outlet or podcasts. I do listen to NPR in that capacity everyday.

Hat tip: Pat

Things Were Easier During the Cold War

Wasn't it nice when we knew the Commies were the bad guys? We hated the Soviets openly and they hated us. Our ideologies clashed. These days, after 9-11 we still haven't defined who we are fighting. And we're fighting two hot wars. As President Obama reminded us today:

“The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.”

Bush used to say the same thing. Sometimes you have to ask simple questions. Like: Does Islam have any part in it? I'm not saying we should get reckless. The politicians are probably doing the right thing. But as a citizen, I prefer our enemy to be more clearly defined. Not talking about problems doesn't make them go away.

Fake Global Warming Story From the Independent

Breaking News: Ice shelves on the ocean break apart, float! (Hmm.. what caused the Titanic to sink in 1912?)

I found this "yellow journalism" article in the Independent humorous. They're trying to sound the alarm bells about Global Warming but the story comes apart as you go along. I have to do a mini-fisking here. Climate warning as Antarctic ice bridge shatters

An ice bridge which held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place shattered at the weekend and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist has warned.

"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey.

OK. This sounds serious. Obviously a sign of Global Warming. Surely this has never happened before?

Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B, further north, in 2002.

Oh, so it has happened before. For the last 50 years. What about 100 years ago? Well, no humans went ashore in Antarctica then and hence we have no historical data on ice shelves. Serious scientific studies of the Antarctic weren't established until the mid 1950's. Essentially, they are saying that as long as we've been studying this ice, it's been doing this.

But here is the clincher, and it makes me laugh:

The loss of ice shelves does not affect sea levels – floating ice contracts as it melts and so does not raise ocean levels. But their loss can allow glaciers on land to slide more rapidly towards the sea, adding water to the oceans.

So it doesn't makes seas levels rise! I thought that is what you're supposed to think, as part of the Global warming doomsday scenario. Thanks for adding that in.

Also, apparently, it'll make glaciers slide into the sea? Is that how it works? That's not science. That's some hack writer who put that in the final sentence. Glaciers "expand" into the sea, because ice expands when it gets cold.

People read this headline, and read the first sentence and it reafirms their climate catastrophe scenarios. I don't understand why these media agencies slant, and make things up about Global Warming. What's in it for them?

Joke Police

Mark Styen had a great article about free speech in this week's Maclean's. It's about the shocking criminalization of certain jokes in the UK . Knock-knock. It's the gag police.

Robin Page, the chairman of Britain’s Countryside Restoration Trust and a columnist with the Daily Telegraph, spoke at a rally opposing the government’s anti-hunting laws at a Gloucestershire country fair in 2002. “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver,” he began, “I want the same rights as you.” A jocular reference to various approved identity groups by a member of an unfashionable one (country folk). Mr. Page was subsequently arrested and, upon declining to answer questions without the presence of counsel, thrown in a cell. Don’t worry. He eventually cleared his name—after five years.

Her Majesty’s Constabulary: the joke police—in every sense.

That’s the problem. Even if you think it’s a good idea for the state to regulate speech, the only troops available to do it are blundering coppers and hack bureaucrats. Last year, as readers may recall, I had the curious experience of having the “tone” of my jokes examined in a Vancouver courthouse by the geniuses of the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal. Hitherto, such forensic dissection has been limited to the more obscure literary critics. But not anymore. Following their week-long deconstruction of Steyn’s “tone,” the BCHRT announced that for its next show trial it would be turning to the “tone” of Guy Earle, a stand-up comic whose late-night put-downs of some lesbian hecklers were allegedly homophobic.

I knew offensive jokes were taboo in society and frowned upon by certain politically correct people in society, but actual arrests? As Steyn points out Obama is lucky he didn't say his little Special Olympics quip in Britain.

I remember in university there was a war against jokes, which if I can recall went something like: racist and homophobic jokes are an assertion of the power of the white male patriarchal society toward the powerless and oppressed.

No doubt this sort of thinking boosts the rating of tv shows like the Sopranos. Tony makes racist and homophobic jokes and it's not anything we're used to seeing in real life. That makes it so much more powerful. Remember the episode where Meadow's boyfriend reported to the gang that he spotted Vito engaged in a homosexual act? It was absolutely hilarious how these tough guys reacted to the news.

Green Collar Jobs Bust

I've said on this site many times that politicians and environmentalists are full of it when they tout all the "green collar jobs" boom that are going to come with new environmental regulations. The results will end up being the opposite. Bloomberg news has a case study with Spain:

The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

Spain’s Acerinox SA, the nation’s largest stainless-steel producer, blamed domestic
energy costs for deciding to expand in South Africa and the U.S., according to the study.

“Microsoft and Google moved their servers up to the Canadian border because they benefited from cheaper energy there,” said the professor of applied environmental economics.

The environmentalists have to be honest with this debate. I would have much more respect for them if they came clean and said, 'we want a cleaner environment, but it's going to cost us.' Instead they say the opposite.

Any layman knows that cheap energy fuels industry.

On a semi-related note: Dennis Miller made a good point on his radio show when he was interviewing Global Warming skeptic Steven Milloy this week. To paraphrase: Al Gore has invested his very life, and self-esteem into this issue. No matter what evidence is given, he simply can't give in because his entire life would crumble.

He's right. The madness will be going on for a long time, because it's more than just an issue to people, their essence of being depends on it. Like a religion. Try to point out inconsistencies in the Bible to religious people? It's pointless. They won't hear it.

Politically Incorrect Garbage

The old magazines were building up. I didn't feel like recycling them, as well as the wine bottle and beer cans. Straight into the dumpster with this kitchen catcher. That's the great thing about private garbage collection.

Integration Canadian Style

Naomi Lakritz, writing in the Calgary Herald points out something I was unaware of:

It's been quite a while since I've heard the kind of common sense talk about Canadian identity that I heard when Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, visited the Herald editorial board on Thursday. Kenney admits he used to have some trepidation about wading into what he calls the politically correct minefield around this issue, but no more. He obviously realized that when political correctness runs up against common sense, there's just no contest. New Canadians, says Kenney, "have a duty to integrate." Further, he says, "We don't need the state to promote diversity. It is a natural part of our civil society."

To that end, the government has sensibly ceased funding programs such as heritage language classes. Why should the federal government pay for children to learn the language of the country their parents and grandparents come from? It's the family's responsibility to teach children about their heritage, including the language.

"I think it's really neat that a fifth-generation Ukrainian Canadian can speak Ukrainian-- but pay for it yourself," Kenney says. Kenney's right--it is neat. If you can speak your family's mother tongue, your life is just that much more enriched. But such immersion in heritage shouldn't come at the expense of you identifying yourself as a Canadian first --and it certainly shouldn't come at Canadian taxpayers' expense...

I knew about the Canadian government paying for English and French lessons for new immigrants. I think it should be the duty of the immigrant to learn that at their own expense, but still it's in the countries interest to have them speaking the official languages. What the heck is the point of taxpayers paying people to learn Ukrainian or Punjabi? Thankfully they've ended it.

Hat tip: Strack Attack

"The Greatest Lie Ever Told"

The cracks in the "climate change" theory are becoming more pronounced. A Swedish sea level expert takes contention with the rising sea level scare. The Daily Telegraph reports:

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly hairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

Looks like Al Gore took Waterworld with Kevin Costner a tad too seriously and based his climate theory on it.

Be Sure to Turn Off Your Lights Tonight... Just Kidding

I'll be away from the keyboard today. We'll be celebrating a special occasion tonight, and I hope the restaurant won't be shutting off the lights at 8:30. Considering what Vancouver is like, I'm sure it will happen.

Have a good weekend!

As for Earth Hour, you can chew on this UN Global Warming Folly Scenario:

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes -- all under the supervision of the world body.

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discreetly worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December, 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U. S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.

UN Backs Appalling Blasphemy Proposal

I nearly put my fist through my monitor when I read this AP release:

The resolution urges states to provide "protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general."

"Defamation of religions is the cause that leads to incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence toward their followers," Pakistan's ambassador Zamir Akram said.

"It is important to deal with the cause, rather than with the effects alone," he said.
Muslim nations have argued that religions, in particular Islam, must be shielded from criticism in the media and other areas of public life. They cited cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as an example of unacceptable free speech.

I wonder what they are going to designate a crime? Is it defamation, if I don't believe Mohammed was delivered the word of Allah, from the Angel Gabriel, and dictated the Koran according to these words? Sorry, it didn't happen. The guy made it up. Just like Jesus, probably was a real person, but he wasn't the Son of God. Moses' parting of the Red Sea was probably a result of prehistoric Global Warming. I don't think Noah made it to the South Pole to round up two penguins. Is that "defamation?"

Why should I respect what I don't believe in and think causes huge problems? Easy for me to say as well. But what about people in Islamic countries that aren't believers? This legitimizes their oppression.

Another reason why the UN should be closed down. Some people in countries a world away want me to respect their invisible sky ghosts.

CBC Supporters Don't Want to Pledge Their Own Money

There is a petition going around the "Save the CBC."

The CBC is asking for temporary loans amounting to just $6 per Canadian, or less than 2 pennies a day for each of us. We can make this happen, so let's pull out all the stops to deliver a massive petition to Parliament and Save the CBC!

Petition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper: The CBC and Radio Canada are a national treasure, and play a vital role in our culture. We urgently call on you to grant the CBC's request for a bridge loan to cover its budget shortfall this year, and commit your government to supporting our public broadcasters.

Why don't they have a pledge drive like PBS and pony up some of their own dough while they're at it? I like how they mention that the money is only $6 per Canadian, but nowhere do they ask these loyal CBC fans to pay themselves. If it means enough to people, they will pay.

Utopian Project Doomed from the Beginning

Call me negative, call me a cynic but this new development on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is going to fail. The Globe and Mail interviews the architect and it doesn't take long to see the failings.

There is a gargantuan new residential and commercial development on the site of the old Woodward's building in Canada's most troubled postal code, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The project is an exciting attempt to, in a single stroke, remake a depressed community. As it happens, for the past three years, the project has been going up just down the street from my office, and as it's climbed above the Gastown skyline, its ambitions have intrigued and inspired me.

Of the development's 536 suites, about 40 per cent are going to non-market housing, which means the place will be an admixture of the advantaged, less advantaged, students (the property will house Simon Fraser University's new Centre for the Contemporary Arts), shoppers and workers (at the drug and grocery stores, non-profits and other retail units).

Translation, almost half the building will be social housing. Do they really think this will be positive in the long term? Would you pay money to live in a building that's half social housing and knowing the crime and lower quality of life that comes with that?

The architect has lofty goals:

The future is in hybrid projects - where market, rental and affordable housing get merged into the normal fabric of our city. I think that if we embrace the philosophy, in one generation we could end the homelessness and affordability problem. We're such a wealthy country, the fact that we can't deal with this important issue just seems silly.

Again, I hate to be a cynic, but I'm willing to bet money that this will be a bust within 10 years. When people aren't paying to live in a place, they don't treat it well. Imagine if you've invested money to live in a condo and in the lobby there's surly young men, and grafitti? You would be begging to sell and nobody will be buying.