Rona and Stephen both get a kick in the face

PM to consider changing bill

The Conservative government's widely criticized environmental plan now has at least a chance of surviving after Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed yesterday to consider an NDP proposal to change the Clean Air Act. NDP Leader Jack Layton met with Harper late yesterday for about 25 minutes in an attempt to break the deadlock in the House of Commons regarding environmental issues. Layton says he told the Prime Minister the government's centrepiece environment bill is “dead in the water” as currently written. He proposed the bill be sent to a committee without a vote so that all parties can work to improve the bill. “That's [Layton's] ask and we'll seriously consider it,” said Government House Leader Rob Nicholson after the meeting. Layton said he was disappointed Harper continues to support lengthy consultations before setting targets to reduce greenhouse gases and fight climate change, but vowed to keep talking. “That sense of urgency wasn't there,” said Layton, who said he will seek guidance this morning from NDP MPs. Interim Liberal Leader Bill Graham dismissed Layton's actions as an attempt to attract media attention. However, he said his party would take part in any “real” effort to improve the government's bill.
(Globe and Mail 061101)

One thing that can be said about minority governments is that they are MUCH more sensitive to public and opposition party sentiment. The bad thing is that everything during their mandate gets stuck in committee, so really, nothing of value really ever gets done.

Opposition parties vow to 'clean the Clean Air Act'

The three opposition parties are vowing to turn the government's Clean Air Act into a vehicle for complying with the Kyoto Protocol, even though Conservatives have warned it's too late to meet Kyoto's targets without major economic havoc. Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to an NDP request yesterday that the Clean Air Act go straight to committee before second reading, a procedural option that means MPs are free to amend the bill in any way they wish. “We want to respect Kyoto's targets,” Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said. “We'll clean the Clean Air Act. Be sure of that. Stephen Harper won't recognize what he's proposing.” Liberal Leader Bill Graham and New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton also said they want the bill amended to comply with Kyoto. Environment Minister Rona Ambrose warned in October that meeting Kyoto at this point would cause consumer energy bills to soar.

While the opposition was pleased with the government's apparent flexibility, NDP MPs picked a new environmental battle yesterday over the appointment of a Kyoto critic to a federal agency responsible for funding scientific research. University of Western Ontario physics professor Christopher Essex was appointed Tuesday to the 21-member Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The council controls $900-million a year in funding. Prof. Essex was one of 20 Canadian academics who signed an open letter to the Prime Minister in April urging him to abandon Kyoto as an “irrational” squandering of billions of dollars. “ ‘Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified,” the letter to Harper states. Prof. Essex was a runner-up in 2003 for the Donner Prize for Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, which he co-authored with Ross McKitrick, a University of Guelph professor. The book challenges widely accepted computer climate models that say carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming.
(Globe and Mail 061102)

Yes - admittedly the fundamental science behind Climate Change and the models applied to the Kyoto Accord are largely unknown and are being steered more by collective agreement than a well-understood scientific theory, but can anyone honestly say that we are releasing enormous amounts of previously sequestered CO2, methane, etc. thinking that there won't be SOME SORT of consequences? Climate change may not unfold exactly according to the numerous computer simulations that have been run on it, but I don't think we need to understand any more in order to logically claim that there will deleterious consequences to our unfettered burning of fossil fuels over the past 100 years. Since nature abhors a vacuum and loves balance, the fact we are altering our atmosphere has to have some type of effect. We are now seeing subtle changes in our weather systems (for the benefit of the doubt, I won't say climate), and this is due to GHG released in the previous decades. If we have released more GHG in the past decade than any previous, then the effects of that are yet to come. Sure - global warming, global cooling, semantics, whatever....does it really make a freaking difference? Things are going to change on a massive scale, something 'affluent society' has never had to deal with before. The changes might be small, but they could just as easily be civilization altering. The concern is that no one knows for sure. Is it not more prudent to err on the side of caution? I think that's one of those lessons from history we've been exposed to many, many times, but may not have fundamentally learned from yet. Ignorant monkeys.

AND - if the complaint is that the climate change adherents are all victims of groupthink, the same can be said about the climate change deniers. They are just as apt to jump on the bandwagon when it comes along. After looking at the 'Taken By Storm' site, I wondered where all the negative reviews and reader responses were. Oh right - there are none!

This Essex quack has been invited to join the group that defines climate policy for Canada. Can you not see similarities here between the Conservatives and Republicans here? They want to put deniers on these committees so they can say, "see, no problem".