Funding A Myth

While the petro economy in Alberta gets bashed the Tired Old Tories plow ahead with funding for the mythical carbon capture and storage. What a waste of money.And this from a government that supposedly is not in the business of funding business, picking winners and losers. Well carbon capture and storage is not just a loser, it does not exist yet. Call it funding the Emperors New Clothes instead of saving for a rainy day. Clean Coal technology is a right wing fantasy.

However, in the face of a $6.5-billion surplus shortfall and multibillion-dollar "green" spending commitments made when oil peaked at $147 US a barrel in July, Finance Minister Iris Evans said Tuesday she doesn't expect there will be anything left to save.
In fact, the province's new fiscal update revealed the heritage fund's value has fallen to $15.8 billion from $17.1 billion, due to the financial market meltdown.
Several government critics are calling the government's decision to push ahead with $2 billion for technology to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions foolhardy.
NDP Leader Brian Mason said the province should inject those public dollars into savings, not hand over seed money to help the energy industry cut its carbon footprint.
"That is just a tiny drop in the bucket for an unproven technology that essentially landfills carbon, rather than focussing on real reductions in carbon emissions," Mason charged.
Evans, however, defended the spending, saying it will help strengthen the province's environmental reputation. Alberta produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other province.
"Our $2 billion towards our carbon capture and storage is a necessary expenditure to show the world, to show Canada, that we're serious about environment and we're going to get emissions under control," Evans said

Now if only we had those oil and gas royalties in place our provincial budget would not have taken such a hit

SEE:

Harpers Alberta Green Plan

Between Coal and a Hard Place

King Coal

Coal=Cancer

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Ed's Politics Of Fear

With a green plan that makes the Federal Conservative government Hot Air Plan look good, hard to do, Farmer Ed now resorts to the politics of fear claiming that any green plan other than his non plan would end up with mass unemployment of everyone in the oil business in Alberta.

Seriously. Every single person working in the oil patch would be laid off if Alberta attempted to reduce our carbon footprint.

And again he has no proof for his assertions that the sky would fall. Oops.

"Our plan is real, is achievable and some of the commitments made by some of the leaders of the other parties would destroy 335,000 jobs," Stelmach claimed. "There's 600,000 new Albertans in this province. You want to send them back home to other provinces, other countries?"

When pressed by reporters after the encounter, Stelmach could not cite a source for the figure, which he has repeated throughout the campaign, but said there are multiple reports that have reached the same conclusion. Last week, the Tories suggested that's every job in the oilpatch.

The contentious issue at hand is a Tory policy on greenhouse-gas emissions that would see the province begin curbing carbon emissions by 2020 and decrease the 14% from 2005 levels by 2050, about 6% and 30 years behind federal targets. It has been roundly criticized by environmental groups.

The Stelmach government unveiled a new climate change plan Thursday that allows Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions to rise until 2020, and puts the province on a collision course with Ottawa over whose strategy takes precedence.

The Alberta plan -- which falls well short of what's demanded by both the Kyoto Protocol and the federal government -- was welcomed by the oil and gas industry as a good first step. But it was immediately panned by environmental groups and opposition parties.

It's the politics of fear. Which is the politics of a loser, with a loser environmental policy that makes no demands on the industry but puts the onus on individual Albertan's.

In fact it is not his plan nor even an Alberta plan, it is big oil's plan.

At the centre of the oil and gas sector's proposal is a plan to capture and store about one million tonnes of carbon emissions a year from natural gas. That would account for about 17 per cent of the sector's total emissions.

The proposal is still subject to feasibility studies, the industry admits, and its officials would not say whether it could be in place by the 2020 deadline. They also warned that the plan will likely be costly.

David Pryce, vice-president of western operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said more reductions could be found through waste-heat recovery, fuel efficiency programs and the elimination of gas flaring.

SEE

Liberals Empty Promises

Made in Alberta Green Plan



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Political Vendetta

"Mr. Speaker, in no democracy in this world," cried Van Loan as the questions persisted for days, "does a prime minister and a party use their power to conduct political vendettas against their political enemies."

Oh really what would you call this then.....

Climatologists puzzled at rationale for ending research fund
"I truly think they don't understand what research means," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth

Feds cutting climate studies: Nobel winners
Nobel Prize-winning scientists from Canada say the Harper government has shut down a federal climate change research network and blocked new studies on the ...

Nobel scientists deliver stinging criticism of federal government
"I can only put it down as one of two things," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

Canadian scientists sharing Nobel prize
University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.

The Conservatives of course may be upset over their flat earth 'pals' getting short shrift on CBC's Fifth Estate, the same program that exposed the Mulroney Schrieber affair that Van Loan was actually referring to in his quote.

From basic statistics mistakes to subliminal language tricks,
The Denial Machine disgraces the CBC

Another less severe, though still significant subliminal trick used by the Fifth Estate is the way they identify scientists on each side of the debate:

Climate alarmist Dr. Andrew Weaver is identified as a “climatologist” at the University of Victoria and “one of the authors of that definitive international report.”

Climate ‘skeptics’ are ascribed lesser credentials. I (Tim Ball) am just “a retired University of Winnipeg Professor”, a “so-called expert” “who hasn’t published original research in years”.

SEE

Junque Journalism

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

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Green Audit

Kettle, pot, black. Maybe now we will quit hearing how for thirteen years the Liberals did nothing. The Harpocrites haven't done anything either for the past two years. Except blame the Liberals.

Federal governments -- be they Liberal or Conservative -- continue to fail to make decisions and implement policies that would protect Canada's natural environment, says the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

Well at least Harper didn't name his cat Kyoto. Tories Kill Kyoto



SEE:

Clean Air Clean Water No Wildlife

Tories Hot Air Plan The Facts

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Junque Journalism

The National Post and its resident flat earther; Terence Corcoran attacked Nobel Prize winner Al Gore over Global Warming on their front page in yesterdays paper with another of their Fox News style Tabloid Headline; A coup for junk science

They forgot to mention that there were Canadian climate scientists on the UN IPCC committee who shared the Nobel with Gore And those scientists don't believe as the National Post and Corcoran do that;

"Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time."

Nor would these Canadian scientists accept Corcoran's assertion that;

Onto this heap of forgotten causes and marginalia the Nobel has just tossed Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's official climate science group. What a blow the award must be to the IPCC, self-proclaimed home of scientific rigour, to now be lumped in with Reverend Al and his Travelling Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.

The Post and Corcoran of course have engaged in junk journalism making political statements that they assert are facts. And in making Gore their straw man they forgot the Canadian Scientists, the guys who share the Nobel with him, who assert that their two decades of warnings about Global Warming are only in trouble because of lack of media and political attention to the problem. In other words because of articles like the Post published. Not only is it junk journalism it's failure to mention the Canadian scientists is sloppy journalism.

Unlike Al Gore, University of B.C. climate change expert John Robinson won't be going to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

But Robinson, who has been called "Dr. Sustainability," still felt like a winner when the award was announced early Friday.

"I've been in this area of research since the late '80s and it's been a long struggle to make the case that climate change really matters," Robinson, a professor at UBC's Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, said Friday.

He is one of thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including about two dozen Canadian scientists.

"It's unbelievable how climate change has risen to the top of the policy agenda and hopefully not in a flash-in-the-pan kind of way," he said.

The panel uses scientific reports and data to explore man-made climate change and ways to fight it.

Five Victoria scientists also contributed to the reports.

"It brings more awareness to the biggest issue facing humanity today. The consequences of global warming are huge," said Andrew Weaver, Canada research chairman in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria.

The IPCC has been releasing regular reports on the state of climate change since it was established by the United Nations in 1988. In an IPCC report earlier this year, top scientists from 113 countries agreed unanimously that the mass burning of fossil fuels, land use and agriculture practices are melting polar ice caps.

"We are treating the atmosphere like a landfill and we're not paying for it," said Weaver.

University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.

"I hope it will help people and government take action. It makes the work worthwhile," he said. "If we accept collective responsibility for this it can be empowering. If we have created this, we have the capability of reversing it."

The Post and Corcoran further slighted Canadians when they deliberately overlooked Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian Inuit woman who was in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, and who has seen the real effects of the theory of Global Warming.

The Post front page 'news' was all about attacking Gore, and promoting the myth that Global Warming is not a fact. Hence facts would just get in the way of such partisan pontificating.


H/T to Mentarch

SEE

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

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It's Not Who Won, But Who Lost

While the Canadian blogosphere right and left are posting on Al Gore and the UN IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize they seem to forgot who else was in the running. An Inuit woman from the Canadian Arctic.

An environmental activist may be the first Canadian to win the Nobel Peace Prize since former Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1957.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit activist, has been nominated jointly with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, the author of the book and narrator of the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

She lost which is a great shame since hers was an authentic voice for the reality of climate change unlike the winners.

Canadian Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Iqaluit-based environmental activist, was also nominated for this year's prize and had been considered one of the favourites to win. Her work has focused on the effects of global warming on northern communities.

"She has done so much work representing the interests of her people, the people in the north," Drexhage said.

Many conservation organizations are rooting for Ms. Watt-Cloutier, who they say has done more than anyone to create international awareness of the special plight that global warming has inflicted on people living in the Arctic.

She also has a remarkable personal story, of travelling in a dogsled around Northern Quebec, where she was born, to travelling the world speaking out about climate change. She's frequently said that she's gone from the ice age to the space age in one generation.

Earthjustice, a U.S.-based environmental group that has worked with Ms. Watt-Cloutier, praised her “for bringing the story of the Inuit people to the world stage, demonstrating that global warming is an issue of human rights as well as of the environment.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, arriving in Iqaluit on Thursday, said the awareness of climate change being raised by her nomination is the best prize she could have.

How Canadian.

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Silence is Acquiescence

So the Americans want Uranium producing countries to accept nuclear waste as the country of origin.

Canada has also been asked to join a U.S.-led nuclear partnership that could eventually see big uranium exporters - like Canada and Australia - be asked to dispose of spent nuclear waste.

Sources have told The Age discussions are under way that could see Australia and Canada made part of the powerful Washington-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership on a "parallel" track, without having to assume full membership of the organisation.

The Bush Administration has made it plain to the Howard Government informally that it would like Australia to be part of the GNEP — which is an alliance designed to restrict the number of countries enriching uranium to current players, such as the US, Britain, France and Russia.

GNEP members operate on a "leasing" concept whereby nuclear fuel is produced and exported and members ship back nuclear waste.

The initiative came to light in Canada in May 2006 when Prime Minister John Howard of Australia -- like Canada, rich in uranium -- visited Ottawa and voiced interest in the U.S. proposal, but also concerns about its effect on the mining and natural-gas industries.

And what does Harper say? Nada. Nothing. Zip.

Harper silent on nuclear energy initiative

And while Harper is silent on this crucial issue being discussed at the APEC meeting, Australia isn't.

Australia 'will never' accept nuclear waste

Of course it just so happens that his government is planning to open up a nuclear waste site in Northern Ontario. So will it be accepting American and other countries nuclear waste as well? Inquiring minds want to know.

Canada is poised to join an elite club of “advanced nuclear nations” that — led by U.S. President George W. Bush — plans to promote nuclear energy as a key solution to global warming and to control the international movement of enriched uranium and radioactive waste, CanWest News Service has learned.

Silence is acquiescence.

Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Howard of Australia

We also agreed on joint statements regarding climate change and energy, a joint nuclear energy action plan which involves cooperation on civil nuclear energy, including R&D, skills and technical training, and regulatory issues. Australia intends to participate in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, and there will be great benefits in terms of access to nuclear technology and nonproliferation. And the United States will support Australian membership in the Generation IV International Forum, which involves R&D to develop safer and better nuclear reactors.

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Tories Green Hot Air Plan For Cars

Environment Minister John Baird loves to talk about how the Conservative Government in Ottawa is more than just talk when it comes to their hot air Green Plan. They take action. Well Canadians are still waiting for their kickback for buying a Green Car.

Ottawa can't shift green rebates into gear

More than four months after announcing rebates for those who buy fuel-sipping cars and trucks, the federal government has not paid a cent to buyers of 2006 and 2007 models that qualify, and automakers are voicing complaints as 2008 models flow on to dealers' lots.

The ecoAuto feebate program set up in the March federal budget, offers rebates of up to $2,000 and also slaps a maximum levy of $4,000 on gas guzzlers. But it is angering consumers and growing increasingly messy for the auto companies, associations representing the major automakers operating in Canada say in a letter to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Environment Minister John Baird.

By contrast, Honda Canada Inc., began offering rebates on its Fit subcompact car and manual transmission Civic compact in May, made them retroactive to budget day, March 19, and is paying the money, senior vice-president Jim Miller said Monday.

The Fit did not qualify under the federal scheme because it uses 6.6 litres of gas to travel 100 kilometres, just missing the cut-off line for rebates on 2007 and 2006 vehicles, which is set at 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres.

People who bought Toyota Yaris subcompacts, ethanol-powered Chevrolet Impalas and Chrysler Sebrings, diesel-powered Smart cars and other alternative -technology vehicles after March 19 are eligible for rebates.

But consumers kicking tires on 2008 models, assuming they will get a rebate, may be out of luck because Transport Canada still hasn't announced what vehicles from the new model year are eligible.

Although sales of Toyota's Yaris jumped in April and May after the program was introduced, they fell in June.

Industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers, who heads DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc., said an analysis of subcompact sales for the past two years shows the so-called feebate program has had little impact on sales.

“We said on day one that the feebate would fail miserably, four months into the program we are being proven to be right,” Mr. DesRosiers said in a note to clients last week.

SEE:

Corporate America Greener Than Harper

Groupthink

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

Harpers Alberta Green Plan

John Baird In Exxons Pocket?

"C '" Car Go

Junk Science: Ethanol

Chocolate and Cars

Chrysler Made In Canada?

Chrysler Inc. vs. Liberal Inc.

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Heat Not Light

Well the Federal Government has finally caught up with me, I have been using compact fluorescent lights for over a decade.Canada to ban traditional light bulbs But you know what, my electricity bill has not gone down, it has gone up! Because of energy deregulation in Alberta and increasing gas costs.

And these bulbs also contain mercury, so you can't just junk them in the garbage. Efforts to recycle industrial fluorescent bulbs for their mercury is in an infant stage and not yet fully developed as an industry in Alberta. With an increase in use of compact fluorescent bulbs, this becomes an important need that has to be met.

Thus another Conservative plan that produces more ecological problems than it fixes. And one aimed not at industrial responsibility but at consumers.


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Conservative Green Plan: People Pay Not Polluters

Not a polluter pay tax nor is it a carbon tax, rather the Conservative Government in Ottawa gives us a consumer pay tax.

Households, economy to take a hit under Tory green plan

Ouch. The Conservatives version of the NEP aimed at you and me. The Tories Hot Air plan is that you and I should pay for the environmental destruction caused by capitalism.

Canadians will pay more for many of life's necessities under a new environmental strategy that falls far short of the Kyoto accord but reduces greenhouse-gas emissions faster than the Conservative government's first climate-change plan.

It is estimated the new proposal will cost the Canadian economy $7-billion to $8-billion a year.

Environment Minister John Baird, who unveiled the strategy yesterday, reminded Canadians that there are costs associated with turning the corner on global warming.

"The prices for consumer products like vehicles, natural gas, electricity and household appliances could go up. But it's a small price to pay to ensure a lasting environmental legacy for future generations," Mr. Baird told a press conference.

While the major industrial emitters account for half of the country's output of greenhouse gas, they will be required to find just 40 per cent of the expected reductions.

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Waiting For Dion

In response to the Conservatives Made In Alberta Green Plan the Liberal Leader was nowhere to be found.

Not on Don Newman's show on CBC or Mike Duffy's on CTV, heck not even on CPAC.

Stephane Dion was absent from the debate.

MIA.

Oh Dion, Dion, where art though Dion?

Why hast thou blown this opportunity?

Because it's like waiting for Godot.

Neither the Tories or Liberals want to deal with the reality of Kyoto being a carbon tax system.



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Punishing the Victim

Scary, because instead of increasing royalties from the Oil Sands to offset tax losses from regular hydrocarbon production, or eliminating health care fees or making post secondary educational institutions tuition free, or actually dealing with indoor air quality, pollution and Green House Gases we get this;

Hancock Pushing Hard for Smoking Ban In Alberta

The recent $5 per pack immediate tax increase in the April 19 Alberta Budget is the first step in an effort towards a province wide tobacco reduction strategy and is just part of the new Alberta Minister of Health and Wellness, Dave Hancock’s strategic efforts to promote wellness.

In addition to a tax increase, a proposal is being drafted by Hancock for a province-wide legislated ban on smoking in public places and work places. Further provisions will include a ban tobacco sales in pharmacies and to regulate so-called powerwall displays of tobacco products. Tax increases are as rare as hen's teeth in Alberta so this tobacco tax augers well for the political potential of a legislated ban of smoking in public and work places.

This public policy initiative is not new to Alberta. It has been tried 4 times before but never made it through the political policy development process. But with new leadership and the fact it is garnering significant public support, it may have a chance this time.

See:

Smokers and Smokestack Industries

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Smokers and Smokestack Industries

While opposing any form of carbon tax on Greenhouse Gases the Stelmach government in Alberta increases taxes on smokers.

The lone tax increase: Tobacco

Taxes for smokers not smoke stack industries is their motto.

The Ed Stelmach government's first Alberta provincial budget hikes spending by 10%, but has few new initiatives to show for it.Average Albertans will get modest tax relief of about $50 a year, but smokers were hit with a 63-cents-a-pack hike in cigarette taxes as of midnight Thursday, making tobacco taxes in Alberta the highest in Canada.



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