Musings —09.18.2012 02:53 PM
—Yeah, but global warming isn’t a big deal, is it?
Interesting read on plummeting water levels. Tells you plenty,
On the lake I’m on, up North, the water used to touch the bottom of my dock. It’s now so low, my tin boat can slide right under the dock’s lowest point. My bigger boat is pretty close to doing likewise.
Reminds me once again that, when someone tells me global warming is a myth, I’m in the presence of a goddamned fool.
BREAKING: KINSELLA CLAIMS TO BE AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING BUT HAS A FOUR BOAT DOCK! FILM AT 11!
good one!
Again Warren, please specify “man-made” global warming is a myth when you are making fun of us “man-made global warming deniers”. Global warming is happening, but it’s totally natural like it has happened many times before. 🙂
I actually honestly wouldn’t know.
Which is why I turn to the experts for, not necessarily the answer, but guidance.
And when 97% of all environmental scientists are of the view that “man made” global warming is real – and that does not include the non-environmental scientists and celebrities like Suzuki and Gore and other environmentalists – well, I’m kinda inclined to believe them.
And when there is such a high correlation between those who deny global warming or man-made global warming AND those who would shut down environmental data gathering centres because they don’t like the scientific results, I tend to have a automatic, knee-jerk reaction of discounting much of what they say.
(To say nothing of the high correlation between AGW deniers and deniers of evolution, AGW deniers and crime statistics, AGW deniers and birthers, AGW deniers and those who would shut down Stats Can and the work it does because they don’t like the results…. in other words, a high correlation between AGW deniers and those who oppose or deny or decry all sorts of science and learning because it interferes with their preconceived ideology.)
Very well said, Ted B. Totally agree.
Dear Prime Minister Stephen Harper:
We shareholders of Sino-forest are very glad to know that you and Chinese President Hu Jingtao witnessed the signing of the FIPA last week, because we have invested a Canadian company having main business in mainland China and we are now facing to lose all our investments by the date of an approval of the Restructuring Plan which will let the Note-holders to take over all the assets. The Plan is extremely unfair to us current shareholders.
Mr. Harper, would you please help the OSC to start an effective communication with the Chinese government regarding the Sino-forest case, so that the unfair Restructuring Plan can be stopped or changed for shareholders?
An effective communication with the Chinese government is very important to the OSC, just as Mr. Howard Wetston, the Chairman of the OSC, said in his BNN interview:”our ability to enforce the act overseas is a challenge”.
As a matter of fact, the OSC’s lacking knowledge about China and its completely distrust of the Chinese government and the government officials have already led to the discrepancies between the OSC’s allegation statement and the Independent Committee’s investigation reports regarding the Sino-forest’s forestry assets:
The IC, established by the Board of Sino-forest immediately following the release by Muddy Waters of the MW report, disproves allegation made in the MW report that Sino-forest is a fraud, and verified the firm’s cash balances and confirmed registered title or contractual rights to timber assets. Details about the verification method have been given in the second IC interim report. Forestry Experts have physically inspected the timber in the sample purchasing contracts selected.
However, the OSC has launched its own investigation against Sino-forest. The OSC, revealed in the second IC interim report, “expressed grave concerns as to such absence and surmised in its discussions with the IC that such absence is per se evidence of fraud.”
It seems that the OSC did not know that China had a policy of not issuing the certificates to foreign invested forestry companies.
Furthermore, the OSC denies the validity of confirmations issued by the Chinese forestry bureaus, reasoning in the SOA that “certain PRC forestry bureau employees obtained gifts and cash payments from Suppliers of Sino-Forest,further undermining the value of the Confirmations as evidence of ownership.”
The OSC’s lacking of trust of or effective communication with the Chinese government has led to a situation that there is no way to prove the ownership of Sino-forest’s forestry assets in China, and thus the resignation of the auditor (E&Y), and the consequent delisting of the company’s stock from the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The OSC’s lacking of trust of or effective communication with the Chinese government also led to uncertainty and difficulty for the sale of the company and estimate of the value of Sino-forest’s forestry assets. According to the FTI Consulting, the Monitor appointed by the CCAA court, “to complete any meaningful amount of verification could take years, at a minimum.”
To the date of the Seventh Report of the Monitor, the forestry experts (Indufor) have completed 6 verification reports confirming the compartment locations of 63,956 hectares of the Sino-forest estate, represents approximately 8% of total Sino-forest reported net stocked area of 808,685 hectares.
If the current Restructuring Plan is approved, it will be just like the media reported,”Sino-forest’s assets far exceed its liabilities, but shareholders are likely to end up with nothing…”
Please, Mr. Harper, please help us! we are a group of innocent Canadian investors, ordinary and powerless Canadian citizens. We are in need of your help.
1940’s, as a child, I learned 3 main lesson: Keep away from strange men; When you get off a street car, step away until it leaves; and, what comes out of a car’s tail pipe is bad for you. Circa 1950, I was aware of the air over there in England, in London, making peope sick. Through the 1950’s I heard lots about smog. I also saw use of fossil fules for transport shoot way up – and, no more street cars, fewer trains. Every one had to have at least one car. 1960’s I wondered where Israel and such got their oil for their tanks and planes. Smelled NYCity, Philadelphia, Detroit downtown. 1970s watched Fraser Valley smudge build up during the day. Heard the Club of Rome Report sdisdained. Saw gargantuan ships trailing slicks. 1980’s breathed particulate in my own oil patch city. figured if people thought the tobacco industry fought dirty to kill people, wait till they try ot take on the oil industry. 1990’s thought International Panel on Climate Change were on to something. Began to see the industry backlash about climate and fossil fuels.
Last decade saw my governments poo poo climate change and fossil fuel connection and ramp up funding to fossil fuel extraction and use.
Now, I see fossil fuel use up, everyone I know is increasing his or her driving, flying, toys use…and with the decrease in Arctic ice, my government and its free enterprise owners know just what to do – drill for more fossil fuels.
Marshall McLuhan told a story about the use of barrage balloons in lLndon in the early 1940’s getting in the way of the use of radar as an example of the way that investment in an old technology can hold up the possibilities in a new technology. Perhaps our civ, built on asphalt/autos/oil is such a huge investment, that we cannot change it…that we become irrational to protect our investment.
I sure hope the climate change deniers are right.
I have no idea why Kinsella connects low water levels with global warming. Some explanation tying the two would be appreciated.
Here are the historic levels of the Great Lakes.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/brochures/lakelevels/lakelevels.pdf
Lake Michigan and Huron have been on unusually low over the last 10 years by about a meter, but not lower than during the 1930s.
For all you climate change-global warming denying dinosaurs aka “Cons”…….watch and learn…….
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html
“Imagine a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth. That is what we face now[with climate change], yet we dither.”
-Dr. James Hansen PhD.
I did not know the water ran from Toronto to the north country and eliminates your car.and what form of new Hampshire public transit do you use?
I see only hypocrites need apply
The question is not whether it’s happening, but whether it’s unusual. How many 100,00s of thousands of years have you seen and can compare with?
Déjà vu. I remember the arguments about acid rain. Everyone who had a vested interest in not doing anything about it claimed it was a hoax. I originally come from the near North (Sudbury, Espanola, Manitoulin Island). Everyone from up there can remember a time when you’d paint your house, for example, and the paint would blister off after about three years. INCO et al were finally convinced to install scrubbers for the emissions from the smelters, and put in higher smokestacks for the scrubbed emissions, and voila! Your paint job lasted much longer, the grass stopped being so brown, the jokes about the “moonscape” terrain around Sudbury gradually stopped…
Ah well, I’m reminded of the Joel Pett cartoon about the Global Warming Conference. A lone soul stands up in the audience and asks “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”
Yup we all keep driving, keep using and keep on doing thiings that we always have done to maintain the “nice life”, but expect others to not do those things. Really the lake levels are irrelevant in the conversation or the fact that it is water access only, the point is that people in general, (this is not about Warren), continue to do what they always have done and expect others to pick up the tab. Just look at the emissions created by the folks on their Friday evening drive to the cottage and then back in two days. Industry does pollute and it maybe the biggest sector creating emissions but they are creating things that we want and we buy, so who is at fault, us, that’s who. Look at the whole food for fuel argument, we create bio-fuels to support and maintain our lifestyles. We do not have to change our way of life yet the whole world is impacted as food prices rise due to food commodities being used to create fuel. Even worse depending on the method and source crop used for bio-fuels it can be argued that is some instances it is not even helping the environment out much. So yes I can piss off if you don’t like the criticism, but to change things we all have to give something up, and if people don’t want to do it then they should stop b*tching about it.