Catastrophic climate change policy

Clean, green and catastrophic - for the economy:

... In the wake of government action around the world, industrial plants are closing, so-called green operations are failing, prices are soaring, subsidies are rampant, jobs are being lost, competitiveness eroded and energy consumers, especially the poor, are threatened by regressive carbon taxes. ...

The Media Party and Liberal Party consummate their romance

"Honeymoon is usually a just a metaphor, but yesterday it was a true conjugal merger":



Related: Terence Corcoran - The Trudeau II coronation is over — now time to face reality

Now the new young King of all Good Causes will move, accompanied by a 30-member cabinet of diversity and inclusiveness, of young innocents and ancient backroom hackers, to the next phase of what promises to be one of the most painful political adventures in the history of the Dominion of Canada.

Canada declared "most reputable country in 2015"

Canada regains title as most reputable nation in the world despite Harper derangement frenzy

Canada under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has just regained its title as the most reputable nation in the world.  

According to the Reputation Institute’s annual report, Canada remains at the top of a 55-nation list for perceived trust, admiration and respect, based on a survey of 48,000 people around the world.

... few media picked it up. Instead, the Canadian media complex is in the grip of Harper Derangement Frenzy (HDF), which is an upgrade to hurricane status from Harper Derangement Syndrome ...

... [Canada's] international standing has never been stronger. Even the government’s global carbon strategy, portrayed by many as a national embarrassment, looks good to many other nations. As the table below suggests, Canada remains at the top of the world.

Good show Canada! (Well, at least progressives will think so.)

See also, Forbes.

Note: In 2014 Canada ranked second after Switzerland, and first for three years running in 2013,  2012 and 2011.

Why is the BC carbon tax myth not dead and buried?

Terence Corcoran: Time to bury B.C. carbon tax myth

The B.C. carbon tax is now enshrined as a world famous economic miracle, thanks to some handy promotional papers by a few Canadian economists and a gullible media. ...

... the World Bank is using the B.C. model as a handy selling point for carbon taxes

... It is time to put an end to the B.C. carbon tax success story. If anything, the tax has been a non-event in the economic lives of the people in the province.  ...

And what motivates many large companies and institutions to promote this myth?  Money, of course, big money [h/t to Michelle Stirling in the comments to Corcoran's piece].

Carbon Taxapalooza

Last Monday Terence Corcoran declared Carbon Taxapalooza Week:

We hereby declare this to be Carbon Taxapalooza Week. The objective is to acknowledge and deplore the great stampede of provincial governments to tax the hell out of fossil fuels.

On Tuesday, Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a self-appointed group of allegedly market-oriented economic policy wonks, will release a report calling for the provinces to adopt “carbon pricing” to help Canada tackle climate change. [Here's the full list Ecofiscal "commissioners".  It includes Preston Manning, Jean Charest, Paul Martin, Bob Rae, Peter Robinson (Suzuki Foundation CEO), etc.  With that rats nest of progressives and eco-illiterates what could possibly go wrong?]

Until now, Ontario hasn’t had much interest in carbon pricing ... But now, having exhausted a range of bad policies, Ontario’s Environment Minister, Glenn Murray, is pushing to adopt another set of allegedly less bad policies.

 Peter Foster: The way backwards on carbon policy:

... On Tuesday Canada’s self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission released a study, The Way Forward, that amounts to a recommendation for policy chaos in pursuit of the ever-more dubious cause of fighting catastrophic man-made climate change. ...

Peter Foster: Chris Ragan, market beautician:

You can always tell a fan of Big Government by the way he or she addresses the Invisible Hand, Adam Smith’s metaphor for free markets. ... This week, McGill economist Christopher Ragan, chairman of the self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission, came up with a more subtle put down - “Sometimes the Invisible Hand needs a manicure, and the way is to improve market signals.”

See also, Dennis Ambler at The SPPI Blog: A nest of carbon vipers

Vast sums of money, influence and power are involved in carbon mitigation schemes, and yet there is never any mention in the media of these massive and lucrative conflicts of interest. They appear quite content swallowing the diversionary tactics pushed by the likes of DeSmog Blog and Greenpeace ExxonSecrets with their claims of “oil- company funded deniers”.  It is doubtful that mainstream journalists ever bother to look behind the scenes at these people, yet it is all available on official websites.

Climate McCarthyism

Terence Corcoran:  The last climate science witch hunt

... the hunt for the hides of a few climate skeptics began last weekend when The New York Times climate beat reporter, Justin Gillis, co-wrote an attack on Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon, a sceptical scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  ...

... In the end it is the warmists who will come out of this looking like the pathetic political witch hunters they are ...

Roger Pielke Jr.: I am Under ‘Investigation’

When “witch hunts” are deemed legitimate in the context of popular causes, we will have fully turned science into just another arena for the exercise of power politics. The result is a big loss for both science and politics.

 Chistopher Essex: Save Willie: The global warming movement is anti-science, oblivious to how little we know about climate

Peter Foster: Crushing climate thoughtcrime

The U.S. Democratic witch hunt against scientists skeptical about official climate science threatens to blow up in the faces of the Inquisitors. It lays bare the totalitarian mentality behind the radical climate agenda.

 Willis Eschenbach: Mental Midgets Try To Bite Dr. Willie Soon’s Ankles

 Faux outrage over Willie Soon’s disclosure

 

The great carbon tax grab and BC's bogus green claims

Terence Corcoran:

Just as consumers start getting used to the idea of lower gasoline prices, putting billions of dollars in their pockets for spending on other things, politicians are conspiring to grab it back ... a long list of economists and celebrity policy wonks eager to provide support... Preston “Don’t call it a tax” Manning, The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, assorted think tanks ... Obama advisor Lawrence Summers ... Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada ...

... The carbon tax issue is no small policy shift. This is big statism in a green cloak, filled with policy inconsistencies, economic nonsense and out-of-control rationalizations.

... Carbon taxes are piled on green taxes piled on congestion taxes on top of regulations and other direct interventions. ... Worse, none of these taxes will do anything to improve the environment or curb carbon emissions...

Far left radical Saul Alinsky once wrote "never let a good crisis go to waste". Obama's far left fixer, Rahm Emanuel famously repeated it.   So, now, with a "crisis" in falling oil prices, opportunistic political weasels and wonks of all stripes are rationalizing a tax they hope can be imposed with minimal objection.  And once imposed it'll stay there after oil prices rise again. It's time for tax payers to show up en-mass on all their doorsteps carrying tar, feathers, torches and pitch-forks.

The B.C. carbon tax: Gordon Campbell's Liberals imposed a carbon tax in 2008 and have long held it up as a glowing success in  lowering BC's carbon footprint.  Terence Corcoran puts the lie to that load of junk economics:

... B.C. gasoline consumption is actually higher today than it was in 2008, both in absolute and per capita numbers. B.C. is therefore today producing more carbon emissions than it was the day the carbon tax was introduced.... Economics 101 is still the law, and the B.C. case for a carbon tax does not exist.

TransCanada fed up with Foot-Dragger-In-Chief's glib KXL fabrications

Claudia Cattaneo:

... Twice Tuesday, [TransCanada] issued statements on the US$8-billion pipeline, one correcting the White House’s economic reading, the other questioning the “well-established” process involved.

... The tone is similar to that struck in recent months, when TransCanada president Russ Girling accused President Obama of “pure fabrication” when describing KXL as an export pipeline, or called into question the President’s environmental movement-inspired views on the project.

... President Obama’s glib views on the Canadian project are leaving TransCanada with no choice but to crank up the pressure — or die trying.

... “The review process for Keystone XL has been  anything but a ‘well-established process’,” ...

Corcoran has more.

Preston Manning's appalling proposal

Peter Foster explains:

It sounds so simple. “We” need a fiscal system that produces more of what we want – good, clean jobs — and less of what we don’t want, which is “pollution.” Let’s call it an “ecofiscal” approach.

...  we need a carbon tax. But since taxes have such a bad name, why not change the name to a carbon “levy”?

... Mr. Manning, who heads the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, is also an advisor to the new, self-appointed Canadian Ecofiscal Commission, which aspires – like a cloister full of medieval scholastics – to set a “just price” for industrial emissions and thus fine tune a woefully inadequate market(ish) economy.

See also, Terence Corcoran: Why the call for bigger and better carbon taxes is about to escalate

... A decade of bad policy, including Canada’s disastrous National Energy Program, followed the first OPEC crisis. The challenge in 2014 is to avoid making a new series of policy disasters.

Naomi Klein's logic "suffers from a rootless dislocation from history, philosophy and science"

Terence Corcoran reviews Naomi Klein’s new climate-revolution/kill-capitalism manifesto:

Parts ... make for damn good reading. ... [b]ut the good bits are not enough to salvage This Changes Everything, a 560-page call-to-arms in which Ms. Klein proposes to overthrow four centuries of Enlightenment-driven human achievement.

... A major Klein target is Richard Branson, the media-darling head of Virgin Group ...

Other green billionaries skewered are Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and T. Boone Pickens, each of whom has a history of cozying up to the climate issue while their feet remained firmly planted in the fossil fuel world.

... her best putdowns are directed at the “pro-business environmentalists,” a Who’s Who of green activists who parade through a chapter sub-titled “The Disastrous Merger of Big Business and Big Green.”

The book’s real objective is to blame the looming climate threat on the greatest intellectual, philosophical, scientific and economic transformation in history.

The logic behind the climate mass revolt advocated by Ms. Klein suffers from a rootless dislocation from history, philosophy and science. It may also be totally dislocated from the world’s human beings, who remain, after many millennia, ever keen to improve their lives on Earth through continued and increasing dominance of nature.

 Klein's advocacy of "radical bottom-up popular revolution against governments and corporations, free markets and capitalism" is a recipe for the collapse of the system that made possible unprecedented human advances. Along with that collapse would surely come political and economic chaos and the death, by starvation and war, of billions. Klein, like most of the radical eco-left, is a foolish, dangerous demagogue.

Renowned Canadian historian, Margaret MacMillan, suckered by junk science

Terence Corcoran on the opening of the 16th annual Junk Science Week:

... Modern science seems less about science and more about working up consensus, agitating for social agreement, shaping opinion and aligning political decision-making, from climate to smog to chemicals. Science becomes the backdrop to an exercise in marketing and propaganda.

... A sidelight to the science of climate change is the willingness of even our most learned academics to fall into line behind the idea of climate “consensus.”  Margaret MacMillan, one of the world’s most celebrated historians, told a Toronto audience recently that a consensus will likely never form around the origins of World War One. “The past is not settled,” she said. “We should not be trying to find a single settled version of the past. We should be arguing about it because these are important questions.”

About 15 minutes before saying that a war fought 100 years ago was ultimately unknowable, Ms. MacMillan saw no need to argue or debate over climate change issues. We have, she said, something like 90% agreement among scientists.  As a result, she was more than willing to accept that climate change would bring a crisis 100 years from now. We can have no consensus on the past, but the future is settled.

Ouch! Ms. MacMillan would do well to avoid embarrassing contradictions brought on by pontificating on subjects she clearly knows little about.  And to improve her understanding of climate science the least she could do is take the time to read Ross McKitrick's excellent update.

"The IPCC must take everybody for fools. "

Ross McKitrick:

... [the IPCC's AR5 report claims:] “In summary, the globally-averaged surface temperatures are well within the uncertainty range of all previous IPCC projections, and generally are in the middle of the scenario ranges.” Later, in Chapter 9, it states with “very high confidence” that models can correctly simulate global surface temperature trends.

... The IPCC must take everybody for fools. Its own graph shows that observed temperatures are not within the uncertainty range of projections; they have fallen below the bottom of the entire span. Nor do models simulate surface warming trends accurately; instead they grossly exaggerate them. (Nor do they match them on regional scales, where the fit is typically no better than random numbers.)

...  since we are on the verge of seeing the emergence of data that could rock the foundations of mainstream climatology, this is obviously no time for entering into costly and permanent climate policy commitments based on failed model forecasts.  [Someone call Stephen Harper.]

Terence Corcoran: The tide is rising on climate models and policies

FP's Annual Rubber Duck Awards for Junk Science

Dishonoured for contributions to Junk Science:

Rick Smith for Lifetime Achievement
... the inspiration for the Rubber Duckies, which are named in his honour. Mr. Smith, as president of Environmental Defence Canada, co-authored of a remarkable piece of junk science literature, the 2009 Slow Death by Rubber Duck.

New York Times
... the NYT has aimed much of its junk at Canada...oil sands and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline ... similar canards were regurgitated in a paranoid piece by Canadian academic and zero-growth fan Thomas Homer-Dixon ... On the double-standard beat, the paper nobly refused to reproduce the “private” Climategate emails ... but couldn’t wait to publish Wikileaks

The Ontario Medical Association
... Since 2003, the union managed to boost average doctor salaries by 75% to $385,000
... hectoring the public and policy makers on issues to which the OMA brings no particular expertise ... Bill to ban indoor tanning ... restaurant menu labeling for calories and salt ... Doctors are prescribing too many antibiotics to too many people ...

Bill Gates
... his father headed Planned Parenthood ... Gates plans to reduce the global population by 10% to 15%, or about one billion people through reforms including reproductive health (abortion) ... Gates says we need to get down to zero-carbon to spare us from global warming. ... he’s working to correct “the failure of capitalism,”

For Happiness economics
Rubber duckies to the government of France, Joseph Stiglitz, the United Nations Human Development Report and anti-growth activists everywhere ...

Well deserved awards, congratulations.

Prominent climate alarmist bested by Canadian resources minister

Terence Corcoran:

It takes a rare politician to stand up and take shots at a climate scientist who’s the darling of the global warmist movement. Even more uncommon is to see a politician take on such a climate scientist—and win the contest.

Mr. Oliver pointedly took aim at James Hansen, the former NASA scientist and one of the godfathers of climate catastrophism. Instead of a gooey marshmallow capitulation on the issue of climate change, Mr. Oliver  questioned Mr. Hansen’s tendency to make claims that are at least exaggerations and often outright beyond-the-fringe.

RBC outsourcing controversy overblown?

Terence Corcoran:

RBC Chairman and CEO Gord Nixon capitulated Thursday with an “Open Letter to Canadians” that was instantly branded as a grovelling apology. ... what else can be expected from this catastrophic media-creation of a story. RBC might as well have dumped a million barrels of crude oil into Toronto Harbour...

... This a story bubble blown up by the CBC out of the mistaken impressions of one worker about RBC’s outsourcing program.

... How did the bank’s vast HR-PR machinery, so sensitive to environment issues and social responsibility, allow this story to get out of hand?

... The facts are now out: No RBC employee would have been fired, no crew of temporary workers has been parachuted in to take away jobs. Furthermore, the practice of outsourcing and worker movements is as natural an economic practice as buying a toothbrush made in China.

... But the CBC and other media ignored the facts and turned the story into an epic war against outsourcing any anything associated with it.  ... The left piled on, including front-line economist Armine Yalnizyan of the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Good Policy. ...

Apparently, Andrew Coyne agrees.

NYT editors to Obama: kill Keystone XL

Editorial from today's New York Times:

The State Department’s latest environmental assessment of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline makes no recommendation about whether President Obama should approve it. Here is ours. He should say no, and for one overriding reason: A president who has repeatedly identified climate change as one of humanity’s most pressing dangers cannot in good conscience approve a project that — even by the State Department’s most cautious calculations — can only add to the problem. ...

That's followed by several paragraphs of mostly bogus drivel straight out of the eco-loon propaganda manual.

Update:  Terence Corcoran weighs in: The New York Times calls for war on Canadian oil

... Following the Times’ advice, here’s a possible Keystone speech for Mr. Obama: “... I believe that climate change is one of humanity’s most pressing dangers. We need to decarbonize the world economy, and I think Canada is a good place to start ...."

Nexen and Progress sales approved.

Harper government approves foreign takeover bids:

... the Harper government declared Friday in approving CNOOC’s $15.1-billion takeover of Nexen, while warning that state-owned enterprise takeovers of oilsands companies will only be permitted on “an exceptional basis only.”

... also approved a $6-billion takeover bid by Malaysian national energy company Petronas for Calgary-based natural gas producer Progress Energy Resources.

Terence Corcoran: Rocky road ahead for foreign investments in Canada

Big Data: Is Hayek Dead?

Proponents of “Big Data” hail it as a “managerial revolution”. What would Friedrich Hayek have said?

Terence Corcoran:

... Many decades ago, The Economist declared "Keynes is dead,"

... As we know, Keynes was resurrected ...

... Given the state of government policy around the world, it's beginning to look like it's time to ask the question: Is Hayek dead?

... Hayek's warning was aimed at the menace of central planning, but it likely also applies to big data corporate planning. Regardless of volume and quality, he said, data and statistics are about the past and are notoriously incapable of predicting even the smallest of changes in economic behaviour. Big data may have uses, but a management revolution based on terabytes of data and YouTube views? Let's hope Hayek isn't dead yet.

This also brings to mind “climate change”. Whether applied to directing an economy or managing “climate change” (which inevitably leads to attempts at directing the global economy) central planning is fatally flawed.  Both climate change and economics have in common: 

Huge complexity   |
Faulty theory       |
Faulty data          |  >> Disastrous policy
Faulty models       |

Hayek is alive and well.

Climategate 2.0

Terence Corcoran: "In the wake of Climategate 2.0, action on the IPCC is more needed than ever."

Anthony Watts has the all the details dirt on the latest Climategate email dump.

Who is bankrolling the Vancouver mayor??

Vivian Krause asks fair questions in the National Post and Vancouver Sun:

... Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is no stranger to Tides Canada. In fact, he was a Tides Canada director from 2002 until 2004 when he entered politics with the NDP. The treasurer of Vision Vancouver, the political party that Mr. Robertson rode to power, is Martha Burton, who has been a senior advisor to Tides Canada. Mike Magee, the Chief of Staff at Vancouver City Hall, was also a senior advisor to Tides Canada (2002 to 2007).

... according to my calculations, during the course of five years of politics with both the NDP and Vision Vancouver, Gregor Robertson has received $400,000, including $340,000 in campaign finance for Vision Vancouver, from sources that are affiliated in various ways with two registered charities: the Endswell Foundation and Tides Canada.

There's lots more, including info on Robertson's real estate holdings on Cortes Island:

... Tides USA announced that it had purchased Hank's Beach, a 150-acre ocean-front property on Cortes Island. [which is happily (for Robertson) located right next to] ... 82 acres of ocean front that is owned or co-owned by one of Mayor Robertson's companies, Treedom Ventures Inc.

See also, Terence Corcoran's "mystery Mayor".

Veeerrrry interesting!