A Mound Of Sound Guest Post: The Relentless Growth of CO2

I put this item together a while ago but I was reminded of it today while reading a report from the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, that April will go in the books as the first month in which atmospheric CO2 topped 400 ppm throughout the northern hemisphere. Not just one nasty region here or there, the entire bloody northern hemisphere. That's change you can believe in (sorry Barack).

Scientists say emissions will need to peak by 2020 and then decline rapidly to limit warming to 2C, a target agreed at the 2009 round of UN talks in Copenhagen.

According to the UN climate science panel, the world has already used between half and two-thirds of its “carbon budget” the amount of CO2 that can be released before the 2C goal is impossible.

This got me thinking about our chances of peaking our emissions by 2020 and then slashing them rapidly after that. At that point a quiz I recently spotted in The Globalist popped to mind.

The Globalist website posts a weekly quiz and they're generally pretty thought-provoking.

A recent one dealt with automobile manufacturing in 2013. How many cars were built in 2013? How about 83-million! China accounted for 27% of global sales. More telling was the fact that it wasn't until 2010 that we reached the 73-million auto mark. That's an increase of 10-million in just three years. Even more depressing is the forecast of 100-million cars to be produced in 2018, a third of them for the Chinese market.

What does that information tell you? In eight years we're going to go from producing 73-million cars to building 100-million. That means we'll be adding another hundred million cars a year to the hundreds of millions of older cars already prowling the planet's roads and highways. Now imagine what that's going to mean in the context of oil and gasoline consumption, water consumption (it takes 39,000 gallons of water to build a car), and of course greenhouse gas emissions. Hey kids, we're so screwed!

Another Globalist quiz looked at energy rich Nigeria and how much electricity the average Nigerian consumes in a year. It's about as much as the average person uses to power their microwave over the course of a year. That's because Nigeria is a corrupt petro-state and all that oil wealth mysteriously never makes it down to the ordinary folks.

How about electricity production from renewables? Brazil is the winner in the clean power contest at 82%. Canada comes in at 63% clean electricity, mainly through provincial hydro-electric generation (no thanks to Ottawa). The United States? Under 13%, well below the global average of 20% which also happens to be China's renewable electricity level.

You can find all the quizzes, including archives, here. If, like me, you're interested in issues pertaining to globalization, you can subscribe to their daily e-mail briefing. It's as timely as it is insightful.

Nature And The Heavy Hand Of Humanity

As difficult as this is to watch, we all have a responsibility to bear witness to our collective folly:

Post by HelaNada.com - A Brand New Experience.

New Enemies, New Misdirections

Last week I wrote a post about the fraught fund-raising letter sent out by Conservative Party director of political operations Fred DeLorey. The letter stressed the need to build a substantial war chest because a cabal of leftist media (essentially all of them - media concentration at its worst, eh?) is preventing the regime from getting out its message of good, sober, and responsible government.

In today's Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin, one of the few journalists left at the once mighty paper worth his salt, offers his perspective on this extraordinary and ludicrous claim:

The point about concentrated media power will raise eyebrows. Is Mr. Harper looking to break them up?

And the notion that media conglomerates are doing the bidding of the liberal left? That would be news to the likes of Postmedia, Sun Media, Shaw Communications, Rogers and Bell: Their headquarters aren’t exactly overrun by Noam Chomsky disciples. And more than 90 per cent of Canadian newspapers endorsed the Conservatives in the last election.

But like a growing number of our system’s institutional checks and balances, the fourth estate is on Mr. Harper’s hit list. The CBC has been there a long time; it would be gone if the PM had his druthers. If he wins the next election, it very well might be, as the fundraising letter’s line of questioning suggests.

While Harper's hatred for the CBC is well-known, representing as it does central Canadian liberalism, elitism and big-government values, the fact that our mad prime minister has turned his sights on the broader media suggests someone who has lost both his balance and his perspective (if he indeed was ever in possession of such), blaming everyone except himself for his spate of recent misfortunes:

When it comes to coverage, Mr. Harper has, in fact, been getting a rough media going over in recent months. He might wish to consider that perhaps the Senate scandal, the elections bill blundering and the Supreme Court debacle have something to with it.

The Prime Minister isn’t trending well with journalists. Years ago, there were a few scribes who took exception to his excessive controls and billy-club style of democracy. Now the majority of pundits are of that view – left, right and centre.

Martin concludes his column on an ominous note, reminding me once again of the disturbing Nixonian rage and paranoia that seem to define Mr. Harper's mental state:

We’ve seen how Mr. Harper reacts when challenged. Going forward, we can probably expect more than just fundraising letters.

Why Do They Do It?

For the sheer joy of it, I suspect:



To know and respect nature is to know and respect ourselves. All is connected.

Contempt Of The Electorate - Part 2

As I continue to ponder the question my friend Tom posed about why discredited economic theories are not vigorously opposed and exposed as such by political parties and media, two articles perhaps offer some helpful contextual information.

The first is by John Barber in today's Star, entitled Hudak’s discredited doctrine a lucky break for Wynne. In it, he remarks on the good fortune that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is enjoying by having an ideologue, Tim Hudak, helming the party of her chief opposition, The Progressive Conservatives of Ontario:

Hudak has presented her a chance once again to make righteous war on Mike Harris’s amply discredited Common Sense Revolution.

Barber speculates that embracing such an extreme austerity program that will see the elimination of 100,000 public service jobs in order to balance the books a year or two earlier than Wynne intends suggests one of two motives: either it is a strategy to gain a majority government by mobilizing true believers more likely to turn out in an election than others, or Hudak and his brain trust are mad, an explanation Barber favours, given that it reflects a worldwide trend of neoconservatives:

The boldness of the policy is the product of assumptions so ingrained the zealots see no need to explain them. Fixated by their own mechanistic ideology, they blandly expect voters to understand intuitively — or religiously, as they seem to do — that destroying jobs will create jobs and that cutting taxes will increase revenue. It’s all so clear to them. Don’t you see, Ontario?

Barber then provides a link to a recent column by Paul Krugman, entitled Points of No Return. In it, the economist writes about how facts, reason and informed cerebration seem to be losing out to crazed ideology and contempt for science and others sources of empirical data, bringing us to the point where the process of intellectual devolution seems to have reached a point of no return.

It, too, is a piece well-worth reading, as Krugman examines the Republican Party and its wholesale embrace of an ideology that reveres patently false economic ideas (austerity would be one such example), and offers reflexive rejection of inconvenient scientific truth (the notion of human-caused climate would be an example). The more obvious the falsity of the outlook, the more adherents become

more, not less, extreme in their dogma, which will make it even harder for them ever to admit that they, and the political movement they serve, have been wrong all along.

Strikingly like a certain domestic federal regime I could also name, no?

Admittedly, this does not offer a direct answer to Tom's question. But is it possible that those politicians who oppose such flawed doctrines are afraid of enraging those voters who do, a reaction that might strengthen their already motivated resolve to be a present en masse at the ballot box?

I would more than welcome input on this perplexing issue.

A Mound Of Sound Guest Post: Libya - We Screwed Up Good, Real Good

Libya, remember that place? That's where NATO waged a bombing campaign against the forces of the late dictator, Muamar Gaddafi. When Gaddafi was ousted we figured we'd done real good.

If you judge our warfighting prowess by the outcomes, Libya ranks right up there with Afghanistan. The country has become ungovernable, plagued by militias and Islamist terrorists. Foreign consulates have closed down in Benghazi and even Arab embassies are clearing out.

The Libyan military, fed up with the government's refusal to move against Islamist militias, has mutinied. General Kalifa Hafter, supposedly with the backing of Egypt's military government, is waging a campaign to clean the Islamists out of eastern Libya. Whether he has much chance of succeeding is far from clear. Militias are tough to take out. Like guerrillas, they can dissolve, melt away and return as insurgents.

Sad to say but I saw this coming back in February, 2011 when I wrote that the only effective way to deal with Gaddafi was for Egypt's army and air force to take him out. Gwynne Dyer came to the same conclusion a month later. This became especially urgent when al Qaeda announced they intended to use the Libyan civil war to get a toehold in north Africa that they missed during the Egyptian uprising that toppled Mubarak. And that, as our bombing campaign dragged on for week after week, was exactly what al Qaeda did. Even before Gaddafi was toppled, Islamist fighters assassinated the rebels’ top general.

Now, three lost years later, the Egyptian military wants a say in how Libya should be run. Now Islamist radicals are well entrenched across north Africa. Now we see plainly how little NATO really accomplished in Libya.

Embarrassing as this rightly is for NATO, it's far worse for Washington. Both sides, Hafter and the Islamist militias, blame the United States for the bloodbath now taking place in Libya.

Contempt Of The Electorate?

Tom, a friend of mine, posted the following on Facebook yesterday:

Kind of tired of all the polemical posturing in the latest election. However, can anyone provide one instance in history -- at least, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution -- where, corporate or business tax cuts, the basis of trickle down economic policy, have been primarily responsible for an upsurge in hiring or the oxymoronic fictional concept of job creation.

I replied:

Tom, you are asking a question that the media refuse to ask. Considering who owns most of the media in this country, this is perhaps not so surprising.

To which Tom replied:

I think that's partially true, Lorne. However, how come politicians and supporters of those on the other side [of the] argument don't keep asking the question and insist upon an answer. I've been looking for such an historical antecedent and can't find anything.

I wrote back:

A good question. Perhaps it reflects their belief that the attention span of the average citizen is short, and boring them with facts is counter productive? Sound bites do seem to rule the day.

Tom makes an excellent point about the dearth of questions asked about the right's underlying premises. Indeed, the Liberals have only gone so far as to ridicule the accuracy of the job-creation numbers Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak claims will ensue from both his gutting of public service jobs and reduction in corporate tax rates. Nowhere is his philosophical foundation questioned.

Kim Campbell, in her short career as Canada's first woman prime minister, once infamously observed that political campaigns are not the time to discuss policy. She was much pilloried for that comment, but perhaps it was simply an oblique expression of disdain for the very people whose support politicians seek on their road to power. That contempt seems to be more and more the default position of those who lead us or aspire to.

In his column this morning, Martin Regg Cohn laments the fact that Tim Hudak will not be taking part in the Ontario leaders' debate in Thunder Bay, attributing crass political calculation to his boycott, and not the 'scheduling conflict' Team Hudak claims.

Cohn calls his decision a disrespect for democracy, and yet I have long given up on such debates, reflecting, as they do, the very contempt that is the subject of this post. Far too frequently, instead of engaging in the thrust and parry a real debate entails, politicos are all too content either to simply rework their stump speeches into their responses or answer the questions they wished had been asked, rather than the actual queries. Avoidance and obfuscation seem to rule the day, and the journalists moderating the panels rarely seem to hold them to account.

How we arrived at this sad state is not an easy question to answer, but undoubtedly the pernicious influence of the Harper regime and its worship of ignorance is a factor.

Two brief letters in today's Star make this point:

Gutting Statistics Canada is a pound-foolish strategy, Opinion May 19

Anyone with brains could see that gutting Statistics Canada would be a disaster for future governing of this country. To me, it represented one of the first major steps of Stephen Harper’s “secret agenda” of remaking this country into his little fiefdom of conservative domination into the future ruled by ideology not evidence-backed policies.

It will be the ruination of this once small but proud country.

Ann Goodin, Burlington

I don’t think money is the main motivator behind gutting StatsCan, although it’s a great excuse. It’s been obvious for years that the Conservatives don’t like pesky facts getting in the way of their ideology.

They’ve also figured out how to data mine us so they have info we’ll never see (those pesky facts again).

Ellen Bates, Toronto

That is not to see that any of us gets a free pass when it comes to embracing ignorance. Far too many have stopped taking the political process seriously, seeing it more as a source of soap-operish entertainment than as fundamental to the health of our country. Anyone who doubts that need only refer to the antics of a Rob Ford and the tenor of so many reactions to them. Or ask yourself this: What comes to mind when you think of Maxime Bernier and the misplaced government documents?

I will end what has been perhaps a bit of a meandering post with one final letter from today's Star. During this Ontario election campaign, both Mr. Hudak and Ms. Horwath have made much about our hydro rates. It is taken as undeniable that we pay some of the world's highest rates thanks to Liberal incompetence and corruption. Here are the facts:

Business shifts election focus to power prices, May 15

Most people realise that just because a politician (or party rep) says something, it doesn’t mean it’s true. The latest scuttlebutt is the “sky-high” prices we pay for electricity in Ontario making us uncompetitive and putting a strain on working families.

Let’s face it: nobody wants to pay more for anything, but before voting for political parties who are promising to lower your hydro rates, consider the fact that electricity prices in Ontario are actually not high at all.

Hydro Quebec routinely surveys electricity rates for consumers/small business and large industrial customers across North America. In 2013 it may surprise many people to know that at a kw/h price of $0.1248, Toronto has lower hydro rates than Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Halifax, Charlottetown, and St John’s. In addition, it has much lower rates than Boston (0.165), Detroit (0.1554), New York (0.2175), and San Francisco (0.2294).

If one looks further abroad, a 2011 comparison of electricity rates (all in U.S. dollars per kw/h) world wide indicates that after adjusting for relative purchasing power, Canada has the lowest rates in the entire world. Not adjusting for purchasing power, we have the fourth lowest rates in the world at $0.10, just above India and China at $0.08 each and tied with Mexico and South Africa.

The average price in the U.S. in 2011 was actually $0.12, more than we pay in Toronto. The top five? Denmark: $0.41, Germany: $0.35, Spain: $0.30, Australia: $0.29, and Italy: $0.28. Even Brazil has higher rates at $0.17.

Ontario has a massive electricity grid to maintain relative to its population. Part of this cost is offset by relatively cheap hydro electric power and the artificially low cost we pay for nuclear power, but maintenance on a system this large requires substantial and on-going investment.

Before voting for a party promising to cut prices, ask yourself this question: Who is going to pay for them?

Rob Graham, Toronto