Sunday, October 19, 2008

I'm Sorry. You Did WHAT!?



According to CTV, Stephen Harper has just donated 100 million Canadian loonies to developing nations to "fight climate change"! The man who just finished campaigning on the recklessness of throwing away our tax dollars on a climate change plan, has just thrown away our tax dollars! I don't really know how to "spin this" in a positive light. Likely because there isn't one. During a time of financial uncertainty, to toss away 100 mil on some vague notion as "fighting climate change" is worthy of a Liberal campaign promise. According to the article, Mr.Harper says his government has "always" been committed to finding a solution to global warming, and understands that some poorer nations don't have the resources to do it.

Sigh.

First of all, you have not always been committed to finding a "solution" to climate change. That's why I voted for you! Second, I know many Canadians, myself included, who could use part of that $100 million for ourselves, to better our lives, our country, and our own problems. The media has been ranting and raving about possible deficits, and you go and throw a significant chunk of cash off to the Third World?

"That's why I'm announcing that the government of Canada will add $100 million of aid to developing countries particularly vulnerable to climate change," Harper said.

"This help will go to the countries that are least advanced and small insular states, especially in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific."

Harper also said he has been working with world leaders to "minimize the effects" of the global economic crisis.


You'd better start working on minimizing the effects of throwing away my tax dollars, or else it'll be a short lived government highlighted by deficits and bankruptcy.

Related:

The Washington Times writes, but I'm not sure they know what they're talking about. "Fiscal conservatism" is not how I would describe the Harper Conservatives - yet. They still have a chance to sort it all out.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool it man, if we are entering global warming period than Canada and Russia are the two countries of the World that would benefit the most from it, just think about farming and cost of heating.

Swift said...

Unfortunately we are almost to the end of the second year of a global cooling period that will last at least thirty years. The big question is whether it will be one like the 1885 to 1915 or 1945 to 1977 periods, or will it be the little ice age type of cooling that accompanied the Maunder Minimum in solar activity. Two independent scientific lines of enquiry suggest the latter. Until now no prediction of the devastating effects of global warming was too outrageous for Hansen, Suzuki, or the Goracle. However all three have recently been backpedalling on the Arctic ice melt. The "canary in the coal mine" seems to be much healthier than they expected. Not only did we not see a new record for the lowest summer ice extent, but the fall freeze has been much quicker than normal and currently the ice extent is 33% greater than at the same time last year.

Raphael Alexander said...

I wouldn't be surprised if we were heading for a period of cooling for the next 20-30 years either. If you look at the GISS data you can see the trend.

Powell lucas said...

If this is true then I fear this country is truly lost. The EU is pushing for a policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by something in the order of 80% over the next decade. This will drive an already rapidly failing industrial economy to complete ruin. The U.N. is clamouring for the western democracies to bankrupt themselves by transfering their wealth and technical know-how to the developing world. Now Harper and the Conservatives have let themselves be suckered into a con game even bigger than the one perpetrated by Wall Street. The leadership of the west has completely abrogated their responsibilities to their citizens. I never thought I would say this, but it seems that George Bush is the last sane leader in the western world.

issachar said...

I'd like to know what "giving $100 million to third world countries to fight climate change" means in practical terms. I doubt the plan is to get a bunch of big bags with dollar symbols on them, fill them with cash and throw them across the aisle at the UN while yelling "Go fight climate change!".

As for the argument that the money could be used at home, the same argument applies to all foreign aid.

Swift said...

GISS has a warm bias compared to the other three main temperature records, which are in fairly close agreement. The current neutral ENSO failed to raise temperatures back up to 2002-2006 levels. The current positive SOI index usually precedes a La Nina, so we can expect another bout of falling temperatures starting in the middle of next year. Vancouverites may be seeing a lot of snow in the city if this keeps up.

Raphael Alexander said...

Issachar,

They haven't said what the timeline for the aid is, or how it would be directed. Hopefully this is more fluff than substance.

issachar said...

Well there are good ways and bad ways to spend $100 million. Until they say how they're going to spend it, it's nothing more than a press release designed to make the government look good.

Raphael Alexander said...

Interesting that it's had the exact opposite effect. Conservatives will scorn at such nonsense, while the environmentalists will know a hollow boasting when they hear one.

Raven said...

The give away was to impress voters in Quebec since the francophonie summit is heavily covered there.

The EU and the US will be pressuring Canada to adopt carbon pricing so no matter what happens we will be forced to do something.

That said, Harper is the only leader that I trust to negotiate with the enviro-nuts in the EU and US so any compromise will likely be the best possible under the circumstances.

Cool Blue said...

I suspect this might have been done in order to help with the EU free trade negotiations because some of the politicians there oppose a deal because we're not "green" enough.

Bill in Calgary said...

Nowhere in any of the quotes that CTV has on their site did I see Harper say the $100,000 was to "fight climate change". It sounds like it is more for dealing with the effects of climate change which could be anything that poor countries always deal with such as crop failures and housing.

I think this is just an increase in aid to very poor counties wrapped in the "climate change" blanket.

No problem. There was, is and always will be climate change because mankind does not cause it. Poor countries need help coping with everything. Canada said we would increase aid and so we just did.

Raphael Alexander said...

Bill,

If the government ends up in a fiscal shortfall of $100 million, I guess we know who to blame then?

Bill in Calgary said...

Raphael,

I'm sure it was already accounted for. Not a huge amount in the big picture. If we run a $100 millon deficit just blame me.

Ryan R said...

I think that this is a play for right-leaning Green voters - folks who are upset with May making the party an ideological one more concerned with strategic voting than saving the planet (as they see it), and also with May failing to win/keep a single seat.

It's going to horrify much of Harper's base, though. The Conservatives need to be careful... if they move too far away from their base, it might hurt them...

Scruffy Dan said...

I don't even know where to start on this one.

First assuming that the 100 million is wisely spent, and is followed up with additional contributions/programs/etc that ensure that climate change is mitigated then it would go along way to wards improving the lives of Canadians in the not to distant future who wont have to deal with the disastrous effects of climate change. This money IS being spent to better the lives of Canadians.

Secondly to answer Swifts notion that we are entering a cooling phase, not that fully debunked denier talking point again.
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/05/selective_data_and_global_warm.php
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/dont-get-fooled-again/
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/h844264320314105
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/abs/nature05072.html

I am sorry Raph but absolutely no statistically significant trend exists for cooling.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/bjorn-lomborg-how-did-you-get-those-numbers/

As for the arctic, are you sure it is doing well? We just had the second smallest summer sea ice extent, possibly the lowest sea ice volume ever recorded and now the arctic is experiencing record high temperatures.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081002_seaice_pressrelease.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14976-arctic-air-temperatures-hit-record-highs.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news6_head_dn14976

The fact that this year didn't the sea ice didn't break last years unprecedented melt means very little, and you certainly doesn't mean that the arctic is doing well. As for the notion that the GISS has a warm bias, given the methodology/assumptions used to generate high arctic temperatures it would be more accurate to say that the other temperature sets have a cold bias.

And finally, issachar I fully agree that until we know how this money will be spent it is impossible to know if this is a wise use of taxpayer money.

Raphael Alexander said...

Ryan,

I don't imagine too many people are impressed with this move from the CPC base.

Dan,

We don't even know what "wisely" spent means as pertains to funding for global warming. Do you know what governments have done with tax dollars going to mitigate such things?

Neither do I.

Scruffy Dan said...

I have some idea, but so far Canada has spent money very unwisely. I am hoping that the Cons have a better track record on this than the Libs, who seemed not to care if the money was wisely spent as long as they got a good press release out of the deal.

Of course that is one reason why I liked the idea of a carbon tax at home, and a universal price on carbon world wide, though lets not get too off topic and get into a whole carbon tax debate again.

wilson said...

re: G8 summit in July
PMSH was reluctant to sign on, seems to be satisfied and is giving aid now, aid in the form of developing technologies here??:

Canada holding back World Bank climate change funds
July 03, 2008

'The World Bank said this week it will establish the foundations - called the Strategic Climate Fund and Clean Technology Fund, respectively ...

As a result, developing nations have pushed for countries such as Canada to finance the development and transfer of technologies that will allow poor countries to mitigate the impact of climate change and make their economies more energy efficient.''

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=629713

Anonymous said...

IMO, I don't think Harper would carry through. Like most government's that pledge money, it usually never gets delivered.

Raven said...

Scruffy Dan loves the word denier but it really describes himself.

The facts are indisputable: the global has cooled over the last 8 years when it should have been warming according the AGW theory and the IPCC.

Scruffy Dan's counter argument is saying we should ignore the last 8 years of data because it warmed in the 8 years prior to that. Such an argument is a red herring because no one is disputing that the climate has warmed in the past. What people are saying is a 8 year cooling trend during a period of rapidly increasing CO2 emissions cannot be adequately explained by the IPCC climate models.

Of course the true believers will insist that we should have faith and the climate model gods and that the planet will start warming again soon. However, I am not big on blind faith and will believe it when I see it.

John M Reynolds said...

"Interesting that it's had the exact opposite effect. Conservatives will scorn at such nonsense, while the environmentalists will know a hollow boasting when they hear one."

This is targetted to the masses who are somewhere between the small c conservatives and the environmentalists. This is aimed at the bulk of people who voted for NDP, Bloc, and Liberals last week. The Conservatives have been paying lip service to global warming since late 2005. They realize that the bulk of the country wants to participate at least somewhat in fighting global warming even though most erroneously call it climate change in an effort to appear politically correct. This minority government received only 62.4% (Polls reporting: 69,601/69,630) of the popular vote. (What matters is whether or not the average temperature of the planet goes up by 4C or more according to IPCC scenarios.) The government needs to implement some policies that the Conservatives won't like as part of compromise.

SouthernOntarioan said...

Yikes.. couple this article with the comments by Flaherty and Harper about the possibility of running a deficit and its not pretty.

One things for sure, if Harper runs a deficit this decision will really come back to bite him in the butt. If he keeps us in the black this sort of thing is fine and commendable generally, but if it is done helping to cause a deficit then its wrong.

Scruffy Dan said...

@ Raven

Obviously you couldn't be bothered to follow the links I posted, and understand the point I was making.

Scruffy Dan said...

Speaking of the arctic this report by NOAA is particularly relevant.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20081016_arcticreport.html

Clearly the arctic is NOT doing well.