Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – According to Guardian Climate Change Columnist Dana Nuccitelli, the Guardian has decided to “discontinue” its science and environment blogging networks, a policy shift which seems to involve a significant cut to their climate change blogging (see the bottom of the quote for the Guardian announcement).
Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
Dana Nuccitelli
Fri 26 Oct 2018 18.15 AEDTBy rebating the revenue to households, disposable income rises, which can be a boon for the Canadian economy
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Canada will implement a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2015.
Starting next spring, it’ll no longer be free to pollute in Canada. We’re putting a price on pollution in provinces that don’t yet have a plan to fight climate change. More on our plan to cut pollution, grow the economy & create jobs: https://t.co/VjCNOOKLVB
#EnvironmentEconomy pic.twitter.com/b4wFc17Qte— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 23, 2018
The federal carbon pollution price will start low at $20 per ton in 2019, rising at $10 per ton per year until reaching $50 per ton in 2022. The carbon tax will stay at that level unless the legislation is revisited and revised.
This is a somewhat modest carbon tax – after all, the social cost of carbon is many times higher – but it’s a higher carbon price than has been implemented in most countries. Moreover, a carbon tax doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the social cost of carbon. The question is whether it will be sufficiently high to meet the country’s climate targets.
…
Energy prices will rise
A $20/ton carbon tax translates into a 16.6 cent per gallon surcharge on gasoline. So, in 2022, the $50/ton carbon tax will increase Canadian gasoline prices by about 42 cents per gallon (11 cents per liter). For comparison, the average price of gasoline in Canada is $1.43 per liter, so that would be about an 8% gasoline price increase in 2022.
…
Note: this will be our final entry on Climate Consensus – the 97%. The Guardian has decided to discontinue its Science and Environment blogging networks. We would like to thank this great paper for hosting us over the past five years, and to our readers for making it a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor.
Dana Nuccitelli has provided us with lots of entertainment over the years, balancing his big oil career with radical environmentalism.
Whenever I was short of ideas for what to write, I could usually look up Dana’s whacky green opinion pieces for inspiration.
Obviously at this stage it is difficult to know where The Guardian will go next with its climate change reporting. I find it hard to believe the Guardian have decided to entirely quit the environment / climate change reporting space.
On the other hand, a few formerly prolific climate action advocacy blogs have been going dark lately, as their authors run out of things to say, or lose interest in talking about climate change. Perhaps even the Guardian has gotten fed up with flogging a dead horse. Or maybe they are just running out of money.
Update (EW): Fixed a typo (h/t Canman)
https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-guardian-go-bankrupt
Short answer, not right away, thanks to good financial moves in the 1970s.
About time. Do they have a new owner?
Australia next for the carbon tax . 8 cents petrol increase for 3 years will see new conservative governments in 3- 4 years with huge majorities.
No, unfortunately I think you are being somewhat optimistic.
The “Conservatives” are CINO, and are an unelectable rabble. The “Liberal” party is destined to have at least two terms in opposition, while the socialists destroy the economy.
After this, they will have a very hard time finding candidates, and may actually disappear into oblivion.
Much like Venezuela.
WP:”The Liberal Party of Australia is a major centre-right liberal conservative political party in Australia,”
angech said “conservative governments ” not “Conservative governments “.
Yeah there is a lot of drift Greg. Neomarxism may move communism into centre right eventually.
yes, gary.
Neomarxism, communism
are your favorite topics.
This distracts you from digestive problems or that your children can not stand you.
Mods?
Greg, …….. like religion verses Religion, …… right? 😊
Perhaps they evaluated the level of contributions in the end-of-article Beggars Bowl that accompanies each article.
And they realized that climate alarmism just doesn’t pay like it used to? (If it ever did.)
More soccer stories will fix it. Maybe a bit more Islamo-pandering to round it out?
The truth is they had so throughly purged any opposing views from their comments sections that even the most ardent Warmists got bored with the endless chorus of approving echos!
Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money
Either the Canadian government thinks that the average Canadian is moronic or the government itself is horrifyingly ignorant.
For the record, taxation costs the populace more money than a “rebate” of the tax revenue. The balance goes to pay all those little bureaucrats who decide who and how much each household should get and those departments who are short of cash on another equally useless project so use the carbon tax money for that, and the economy slows down because of the tax and people loose jobs and the government will possibly use more taxation to pay for the unemployment benefits and so on.
A little knowledge of simple economics is a wonderful thing if you are trying to run a country.
Cheers
Roger
Trudeau thinks the average Canadian is moronic.
I sincerely hope we’re going to prove him wrong in the upcoming election. After all, even Ontario just elected a provincial government that removed their ‘carbon tax’ and wiped out the provincial Liberals as a party… yet the federal Liberals go and put it right back. Ontario, from where most of the insane Liberal ideas imposed on the rest of Canada come.
Self projection?
..Liberals seem to think everyone is as naive as they are ….
MarkG, I was seriously looking at options for getting out because I had concluded Canadians were in fact moronic after 20yrs or so of the post normal neoliberals in Ontario, followed by election of Trudeau federally. Only a moron would impose a carbon tax on Ontario af5er a massive swing to conservative Doug Ford. Doesnt the ypung felliw know the largest province also chooses the federal government. Marxylibs are toast.
And here I was thinking that Trudeau was going to magically crap out two dollars for every dollar paid in carbon taxes /sarc
I know, I know it is really a redistribution of wealth from larger corporations back to the people right?
RIGHT!!!
Well remember that the budget will balance itself
The average Canadian is really not very bright. They have never seen a tax they would not pay, and have never repealed one even if it impoverishes them.
Canadians will eventually wake up to the idiocy, hopefully before it’s too late. Complete rubbish for a country that contributes very little CO2. Nuccitelli and JT are not the only ones to believe in the magic enviro-dollar. A Canadian Wind Energy Association paper from a few years back said consumers would save $20 in energy costs for every $10 they poured into subsidies for wind.
Like most liberals, they have been convinced that the new taxes will only hit people who have more than they do.
They on the other hand are looking for the free stuff that these taxes on other people are supposed to provide.
Roger:
Our PM is a former drama coach. In his mind, most Canadians will be richer as a result of his carbon tax. In addition, he will be creating jobs, presumably for the civil servants who will administer the program. And the companies that are impacted by the tax will NOT pass it on to the consumer, in fact, they will happily eat it and cut their dividend payments to the hordes of wealthy stockholders who don’t need the money anyway, while everybody in the world looks on admirably at us virtue-signalling Canadians and are shamed into reducing THEIR carbon pollution as a result. What could be simpler?
What kills me is the assumption of the author/Canadian Liberal Govt/ PM JT that raising taxes on fossil fuels will somehow prevent CC or be cheaper than the direct remedial costs of CC when no cost estimations are offered and given that there is little correlation between slightly increasing GT’s and CO2 levels, and no correlation at all between the incidence of extreme weather event such as severe droughts, flooding, precipitation, hurricanes or tornadoes and CO2 since records have been kept by NOAA. The author does not supply any evidence of the supposed increased cost of sea coast erosion in either the Maritime Provinces or BC due to CC; nor do we learn what the current budgetary outlays have been in the past for this line item, if it exists in the first place, for either provincial or Federal expenditures. The carbon fuel taxes will be added to the cost of living and doing business in Canada that will affect the overall CPI and GDP to some degree at the macroeconomic level of the Canadian economy that neither JT nor the Guardian author has calculated; but surely this added carbon tax will accrue as a new cost to government expenditures as well increasing budget deficits.
I’m not sure if you are lying on purpose or just don’t know. During his time at West Point Grey Academy Justin Trudeau taught mostly Fench and math but also drama, creative writing and a grade twelve law class. I also don’t particularly like Justin …. likely a very nice fellow but lacking the skill sets of a Prime Minister … and I didn’t vote for him. However nothing is gained by spreading falsehoods or selling him short on his achievements.
Re the average price of gasoline in Canada – it was $1.13 a litre in Calgary this morning and so far less than the $1.43 in the article.
It all sounds like a broken window to me.
Canada, as with Germany, needs to become an international OBJECT LESSON. I’m glad they have a carbon tax… let’s revisit their experiment in five years.
Does Trudeau think that CO2 causes visible haze? Now THAT is world class stupid.
It is a natural impossibility for any government to redistribute an amount of prosperity (money) without at the same time redistributing an amount of poverty (cost) that is greater than the amount of prosperity that is being redistributed.
Especially so when they are trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist
Actual Hat Tip to Leitmotif who pointed this out two days ago on this website.
Oh. And gloat.
Yes. Breaking-Hat tip to MCourtney. We were discussing this in WUWT comments two days ago.
Speaking of failures…
http://thelocalne.ws/2018/10/26/wind-turbine-fire-cost/
lets assume 500 cars per 1000 citizens..
and 500 dollar more in gasoline carbon taxes per year..
efficient is 100 percent (tax wise) ..each person will get 250 bucks per year..
what extra money??
…….exactly…and the overhead of collecting distributing…and all the new hires to do it
Looks like a grow government plan to me
UN Environment
“UNEP Guide to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Laws”
At: http://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/unep-guide-energy-efficiency-and-renewable-energy-laws
Time to discover where all or most all of this crap comes from?
UNFCCC
Articles: 5,450
Search results: Renewable energy laws.
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=renewable%20energy%20laws
Can just scroll through some of the article titles.
World Commission on Environmental Law | IUCN
International Union for Conservation of Nature( IUCN), Switzerland
(WCEL) is one of the IUCN Commissions.
http://www.iucn.org/commissions/commission-environmental-law/about
And IUCN,
Geneve Internationale, Switzerland information.
http://www.geneve-int.ch/recherche/results/IUCN
UNFCCC
Articles: 732
Search results: energy laws & IUCN
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=energy%20laws%20IUCN
UNFCCC
Articles: 9,380
Search results: Energy laws.
https:unfccc.int/gcse?q=energy%20laws
Can just scan a few pages for article titles.
Should be: https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=energy%20laws
UN Sustainable Development
Re: ECOLEX
ECOLEX is a recently formed legal information data base for legal issues such as court cases and etc.
ECOLEX is a partnership of the UN System, FAO and UNEP.
https://sustainabledevelopnent.un.org/partnership/?p=1512
ECOLEX
“The Gateway to Environmental Law”
http://www.ecolex.org
UNFCCC
Articles
Search results: ECOLEX
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=ECOLEX
UN Documents
“Our Common Future”, c. March, 1987, 300 pages.
Chapter 12: Towards Common Action: Proposals for Institutional and Legal Change.
Chapter 12 is near the end of this Document. Scroll down.
http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf
UNFCCC
Articles: 5,410
Search results: Our Common Future
https://unfccc.int/gcse?q=Our%20Common%20Future
In the world of government and eco-nutty folks, that means companies will be charged $250 plus for every citizen receiving that amount.
Government must install staff to oversee the tax collection, monitor the carbon tax structure itself, rebate the collected taxes to citizens, report on the rebate.
Which means that the companies will be charged well north of that $250. Plus the companies will immediately pass along the costs to the consumers.
It would not be surprising for every citizen eligible for a $250 rebate is paying over $500 for increased costs due to the carbon tax.
As Latitude notes, government will get bigger.
Companies will have to add staff to deal with the carbon taxes and the carbon tax regulations.
Y’all should run those government representatives out of town on a rail. A term that refers to a split rail used for fencing.
It’s possible that the grauniad realized that Dana’s bad financial math is illogical and seeks to repair their finance writer department.
That just all sounds like more jobs for America! Canadian companies will soon be thinking about heading south and getting out from under.
American companies go to China and Mexico and when people complain companies call us all sorts of names ending in “ist” and “ite” then let us know we are economically ignorant for wanting jobs and anyone displaced should go learn computers – so they can be further displaced by H1-Bs I suppose.
If you believe you have a right to force companies to loose money just so that you can keep your “high paying job”, then you have earned those names ending is “ist” and “ite”.
Well the theory is that companies will pay the tax as well as individuals, but only “families” will get the rebate. Somehow, they avoid the obvious – that companies will have no choice but to pass on the cost of the tax to their customers, who are ultimately, of course the “families”, who will have to use the rebates to pay the extra cost of everything they buy.
It’s almost beyond belief that they expect people to accept this transparent sham.
Warmists writing in the Canadian media understand the phony logic but they are saying, well; higher fuel costs will be an incentive to use less fuel, thereby helping to save the planet.
If $50 a ton CO2 tax is going to be a boon for the economy and the people… Gee why not just increase it to $50,000 a ton. The money rebated to all the people will make everyone insani rich! we have
Good point, Alcheson. We want a higher carbon tax rebate!
Of course, back in the real world: Someone should tell Trudeau there is no free lunch. Someone has to pay for the lunch and it usually ends up that the poorest people are the ones that pay. Corporations just pass any tax increases on to their customers.
Tax increases of any kind reduce economic activity.
Like President Reagan said, …….. “Corporations don’t pay taxes, ……. people pay taxes”.
The Climate Rodents have been jumping ship more and more of late. Looks like a trend.
The Guardian used to be a great place to comment on. It was one of the few forums where progressives and non-progressives, climate change alarmists and skeptics, could duke it out daily.
Then The Guardian changed. Whereas before almost every article could be commented on, now only a fraction could. Further, where you used to be able to debate for many hours — even days — at a time, now the window for commenting is usually an hour or two.
And the moderation. It’s supposed to be viewpoint neutral, but there became increasingly more topics where moderation became draconian, allowing only a narrow range of viewpoints. As an example, an opinion like “Modern feminism is no longer working in the interests of the people it professes to represent.” would get removed in an instant,
All of this drained the vitality out of the site. About two years ago I deleted my account and quit visiting.
That is all true.
But the economics pages are still OK. And the TV & Film pages haven’t changed.
I think the problem was in recruitment of moderators rather than any actual policy change.
So the Guardian hired a bunch of moderators, who appear to have done whatever they wanted, and nobody at the Guardian knew (or cared)?
And they’re wondering why they’re going broke,
I still find the Guardian useful when selecting novels.
If the novel has a glowing quote from the Guardian anywhere on the cover I put it back on the shelf and find something else to read. Painful past experience has taught me that the Guardian value woke over character, plot or worldbuilding when writing their reviews and if they like it, I wont.
It is a badge of honour for me that I was long ago banned from ‘Komment Macht Frei’ at the Grauniad for disagreeing with George Monbiot about something or other.
yet the environmental section was actually better under him than it is now under the 97% gang. So there passing will really be no loss expect to their camp followers, who brought nothing to the section anyway . But it is odd timing given the latest count down of doom claim , I wonder if the ‘money man ‘ has pulled the plug so its no longer a freebie and Dana is now going to have to find a job , if he can , and this means the end of Bob ‘fast fingers ‘ Ward too?
Monbiot was never the head of the Graun’s environment section. Editor Rusbridger used to boast that he had ten or eleven full-time environmental journalists, and they were all highly educated “with two or three degrees” (unlike Monbiot, who has a simple BSc in zoology). Rusbridger clearly hasn’t heard the news that anything over two degrees is dangerous.
The Guardian comments used to be where you could say anything and it would be published.
Then people with contrary views became abusive and used violent language against anyone who disagreed with them.
Then the abuse became so aggressive and vile that the Guardian started deleting the comments, which often produced vast areas of blank space where the comments and the replies to those comments used to be.
Then the moderators started deleting comments they disagreed with, which turned the comments sections into an echo chamber.
Then readers started avoiding articles that would not allow comments that challenged the article writer’s viewpoint.
Then the Guardian decided to publish most articles without readers comments allowed.
Then the readers noticed that comments were not allowed, so they will not click on those articles and read them, which makes a mockery of the whole point of the articles.
Now a whole section of Guardian reportage is deleted and will probably be incorporated into other sections of the paper, such as the science section or the economic/business section.
The Guardian has not learned anything from its experiences of falling popularity with its own readers, so it will continue to decline until it does.
My own experiences with the Guardian include having my comment deleted because I corrected an article about a Rihanna music video which the writer complained was “misogynist” when it was obvious she had not even seen the video. The next deletion was when I asked the question “how can Prince Charles claim to support science when he advocates Homeopathy?” I reached the end of the road with the Guardian’s comment section when Iain Duncan Smith resigned from the Government and I spend most of that day commenting on the various aspects of why he is hated so much (because of his appalling damaging policies towards the poorest). The Guardian decided to delete every single post I had made that day and when I complained they said they had done it because “this information is available elsewhere” and “you are writing essays” which is a bit rich coming from them. They then decided to put me in “pre-mod” which means that all my posts would go to the editor and moderators first and only be displayed in the comments section after they approved it. That was the last time I bothered to log in and comment on anything in the Guardian and instead told them to delete my account completely and remove all the comments I had made previously because they did not deserve my input, and good riddance to them and all their moderators.
What a pity you asked them to delete your comments. What was your commenting name? Normally all your comments are accessible if you click on your name. You used to be able to bring up all past comments by simply tapping your name in on the comment URL, but they started encoding names of commenters.
My favourite commenter was one MoveEveryMountain, who regularly demolished all warmist articles line by line. One year he won the Guardian’s competition for readers’ favourite commenter, and the Graun begrudgingly awarded him the prize of a free article on the site. His article was an attack on the principle of free speech. Soon after the Guardian banned him.
I used the name Brockett but I do not know if they actually deleted my published comments or not. I could never be bothered to find out.
If you really want to know how things work, try litigating against something as enormous as a government department. One thing you will realize is how many illusions are keeping the system going. For example, the illusion that government is accountable to its citizens. The main purpose of “democratic” government is to pretend that it is answerable to the public, while at the same time using its massive power and influence to defeat every attempt to force it to justify its actions in a court of law.
Likewise, the Guardian maintains the illusion of being accountable to its readers and open to new ideas, while it actively sabotages every attempt by its readers to contradict the false facts the Guardian has declared to be true, and deletes every idea or new ways of thinking that might threaten its religiously-enforced groupthink.
My battles with Iain Duncan Smith and the Department for Work and Pensions were long and bloody. On two occasions I nearly managed to get him into open court for a full hearing, but I was up against a team of legal experts from the Department for Work and Pensions in Judges Chambers who managed to get both cases struck out. Then, as the legal process in Britain was exhausted, I gained leave to bring my cases to the European Court of Human Rights, which I did, twice. This took a considerable effort and no little expense, but after several months the British government legal team in Strasbourg got my cases removed from consideration by the European judges.
Now you know why it was such a big deal for me when Iain Duncan Smith resigned. The Guardian thought so as well, and they kept publishing articles throughout the day covering different aspects of why it happened and the implications for the government and whole welfare system. That day, I was busy reading all the Guardian’s articles and making comments to correct the many mistakes they published, give my opinion and “fill in the blanks” so that readers were better informed about what Iain Duncan Smith had been doing in the years he was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (he was the boss at the Department for Work and Pensions and was totally in charge of the entire welfare system). After spending nearly the whole day reading and posting, the Guardian deleted all my posts and put me on pre-mod. I was so furious and sad. That was the last day I put my experience and energy at the mercy of the Guardian’s censors, and it was another lesson in one of the illusions that infect our daily lives.
I was banned 5 times by the Guardian for things like questioning the 97% consensus, requesting supporting documentation for the “overwhelming evidence” for AGW, pointing out the lack of experimental evidence that supported the magical claims of CO2, being sometimes a bit sciency (lol) and worst of all referring to WUWT. 🙂
All the alarmists had to do at the Guardian was hit the report button and your comments disappeared. If it happened too often then you were banned.
I used to post on Eco Watch till it ceased blogging and you could put your tuppence worth in with impunity.
I tested your point about the Graun’s moderating policy once. Some warmist made the same false statement eleven times. I reported ten comments but missed the eleventh. The ten were wiped, but not the one I hadn’t reported.
They bent over backwards to be fair though. One warmist commenter, who was also a Guardian writer since he had published an interview with John Cook, once expressed the desire to bend me over a table and “roger” me. I begged the moderators to leave the comment up, but they wiped it.
“One warmist commenter, who was also a Guardian writer since he had published an interview with John Cook, once expressed the desire to bend me over a table and “roger” me.”
I’m afraid that is part of the scientific method encouraged at Skeptical Science, Geoff. Its popularity must have been vigorously endorsed by the Guardian cognoscenti, even if it meant having to perform the “roger” act whilst bent over backwards.
leitmotif
the guardian was my introduction to climate change. I knew nothing about it other than being indoctrinated like everyone else. So I picked on a guy who seemed to know a lot to ask questions of. RockyRex, a retired schoolteacher, Geography, with a degree in Geology from memory.
All went well for a while until I noticed he was just regurgitating the same information time and time again. I started challenging him, of course boasted he had his personal database (browser favourites) which proved everything there was to prove about the certainty of AGW.
Long story short, I smelled a rat, and so via the awful, hysterical, intimidating, vitriolic warmists sites ended up on WUWT where. When I asked a question here it was taken seriously and answered with patience, knowledge and humour.
As I learned more I started shredding RockyRex on the guardian and then my posts started disappearing. Whilst I suspected he was deleting them I could never be sure, he never admitted to being a mod. But then I would challenge him on this and lo and behold, my comments stayed up, then the cycle would begin again with comment deletion. Eventually, like most here, I was banned.
I was happy to remain as open minded as I could be (and hope I still am) but the guardian makes that impossible on their site so, like most, I no longer bother with the worthless rag.
Ironically, it’s people like us the guardian needs to bolster its readership and they have succeeded in alienating a large part of its readership.
Co-incidentally, I stumbled on a blog devoted to the appalling nature of the CIF sections.
HotScot
Yes, I remember you as RedHotScot! You certainly put the alarmists’ noses out of joint. Check rockyrex’s history and you will find he registered as far back as 2007 so he could be a mod.
He isn’t nasty like the others and does not use the “denier” word but he is frustratingly smug. He has a number of stored comments that he just regurgitates whenever it suits him as if they were pearls of wisdom but are actually just catechisms in praise of The Church of Global Warming. For instance, his argument in response to anyone pointing out the lack of empirical evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis is that the “theory” is robust because it has consensus, coherence and consilience.
Whenever he is losing the argument he always resorts to something like, “No scientific organisation in any field in any country agrees with you. Not one.”
He has his own blog, did you know?
Or instead of reducing co2 output they simply pass on the costs to the consumer who uses their new tax money to pay for it. Ie nothing changes at all.
Here in Australia if the polls are right, we will have Bill Shorton and the Labour Party federal government by next May.
If he keeps his promises about Climate Change ?, then we will have up to 50 % renewals all over Australia.
Presently only South Australia has that figure, and its close to the lights going out.
But at present via a connector to the largely fossell fuel generators of both Victoria and NSW they, S.A. are just managing.
Overall the system cannot handle a 50 % renewables. So when the lights do go out, yes we will have a Liberal (Conservative ) government, but it will take years to repair the damage done, and we will be deep in debt.
Its incredable that a gas CO2 can do so much damage.
MJE
With China and India building new coal plants as fast as they can, it’s ridiculous for Oz to starve itself of energy in a bootless attempt to reduce global emissions of beneficial plant food.
Too bad that China and India’s coal plants also emit real pollution.
Australia has not had a decent leader since Howard. Hawke, prior to Howard was also a great plain speaking leader.
Australia was once the lucky country, now it’s lame and without direction.
Regards
Hard to dislike a champion beer drinker, not matter how far Left.
Hawke’s Defence Minister, Kim Beazley, his fellow West Australian and Rhodes Scholar, was a 1973 Rhodie classmate of mine, although two years my senior.
Oz is indeed at risk from its Lunatic Left. I hope the voters wise up. Despite all its glaring faults, the present government at least vaguely recognizes the threat posed by Chinese expansionism.
ya think?
victorias Labor tool just signed the state onto the OBOR
and allowed solar farms on prime ag land near Mildura
I know this sounds pessimistic, but here in Australia I’m getting a distinct ‘Venezuelan’ feel. The Libs insist on pandering to the Green Left (people who are never going to vote for them no matter what the say or do). The political choices in Australia are no longer between whiskey and water but between Pepsi and Coke. The two main parties are just as bad as each other. A bit harsh I know. Labor is obviously worse, but you know what I mean. And I’ll bet, way back, the Venezuelans didn’t think it could happen to them.
Steve Reilly
In 1977, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. Now, not so much.
That’s what socialism will do for you.
Post WW2, Argentina was also a top ten world economic power. Only a faint shadow now. Regardless of ‘R____ or L___ Wing’ any extreme government will dig its own grave.
Prior to Castro, Cuba was one of the richest countries in Latin America.
Argentina lost it’s economic strength due to a long period of military junta’s from the 1930s.
Plus high post war immigration meant per capital GDP fell as the wealth came from agriculture rather than industry.
All those countries that have gone down the economic and social tube mentioned above had a Presidential system of government.
A collegial Parliementary system of government is one where the emphasis when voting is the party you want , not a Presidential system where one person exercises inordinate power over the elected government and its bureaucracies.
As the voter elected ruling group , a parliamentary system political party elects their leader, a Prime minister, Prime meaning the first amongst equals, from within their own voter elected party ranks.
The nominal and unelected and usually the regarded as the nominal leader of a nation irrespective of which or what party is in power and is the government of the day who provides national if nominal continuity when formally interacting with non national entities such as other governments and political organisations is generally some form of a continuing hereditary royalty or a representative of such royalty usuually appointed for a term of years to ensure political neutrality , a Governor General who has very strong powers when required but in a very narrow and limited and very constrained range where he / she cannot interfere in the every day running of the governmentof the day.
In effect a parliamentary system of government is a government by agreement on policy amongst peers with the consequence that the peers, the voter elected representatives of the Prime Minister’s party and his /her cabinet of Ministers execise a restraining effect on any excessive policy implementations and power grabbing endeavours amongst their political compatriots.
A Presidential government on the other hand is far more susceptible to extremes where just one individual can wield enormous power particularly after he / she is elected and secure in their role and for which seemingly in a lot of presidential type governments, there are few restraining abilities to limit the power of that presidential candidate once he / she is elected.
So maybe somebody here can identify one or more of the Parliamentary, party elected Prime Minister led nations that has gone off the economic and socially destructive rails compared to the number of nations with a Presidential type system of government , quite a number of whom seem to have become almost destitute and ungovernable as nations due to seriously bad decisions and power and wealth grabbing policies emanating and put into place by the past and current Presidential office holders.
ROM, I think you are very close to hitting the nail on the head. Just look at the Philippines where they currently have a madman by the name of President Duterte who is running amok slaughtering his own citizens by the tens of thousands, (24,000 in 2.5 years so far) under the claim of a drug war, when it is very clear he and his family are the Narco head of state importing all the crystal Meth and killing the opposition drug lords, all in cahoots with the Chinese Triads and President XI. Including selling off a lot of the EEZ offshore with the Spratley Islands where the Chinese have built their 7 fortified and militarized artificial islands. Which is probably ground zero for World War 3 in the South China Sea. And one where the Philippines won their case before the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 2016, but yet this President Duterte is bound and determined to sell out his own country to China, all for a multi billion Peso bribe and a narco distributorship directly from China.
Indeed, a Presidential form of Government can be very close to an absolute monarchy unless it has checks and balances like the USA. But again, the Philippines is very much modelled after the USA in its politics, and the President just jails the opposition by threatening to murder anyone in his way, including their Supreme Court and Senate and Congress who they remove from power or fabricate lies to jail the opposition. Everyone just falls into line under threat of death or loss of career under this type of an abusive presidential system. This should prove how quickly a presidential form of government can go off the rails, and why so many countries are already failed states. Let’s hope the USA doesn’t begin to drift this direction some day.
“HA”, the USA has been drifting in that direction since the late 1970’s.
US Public School students use to be #1 in the World Ranking in math and science.
Now, thanks to the lefty liberal “Politically Correct” socialists that have taken control of our public schools and colleges our World Ranking in student education has gotten far worse than the PISA results from 2015, which placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science.
And both the Democrat and Republican political Parties has not only condoned the aforesaid deterioration of our public schools …… but have been instrumental in exacerbating said demise.
yup
and voting indy is a waste of time cos theyll hand preferences to whoever will do em a deal.
i took the time to read as many idependants pages as I could last time
when you see their full list of what they support, in most cases, voting for them is insane anyway.
getting closer to donkeyvote in desperation;-( never done that …but..
Much the same in the UK, at least our cousins across the pond have a genuine choice atm
Hey Michael, Here in Australia we are already punching above out weight when it comes to saving the planet on all fronts. No real plans or directions for saving water on the driest ( inhabited ) continent, export all our natural gas so the east coast of Australia virually runs out of supply, solve the problem by re importing it at world parity pricing, close down oil refineries and reduce the nations stockpile of liquid fuels to under 3 weeks. Ban any new exploration for liquid or gaseous hyrocarbons although they are clearly there waiting to be utilized, export any currently produced crude oil to Singapore for refining, buy it back at world parity prices, ban logging from well managed and controlled native forests then import timber from third world countries without any controls and then give money to save the Orang Outans. Sadly the list is endless. No matter how hard I look I cannot find a single major commodity that is produced in Australia that is delivered to our citizens at a reduced rate for our benifit. Still there are advantages for living here, the climate, changing or otherwise is pretty good.
It would cost less to set up an orangutan sanctuary in Queensland or NT and charge tourists to visit it and feed their primate kin. Orangutans don’t make good pets, but they’re fascinating creatures in the wild. Or even in captivity, as long as they’re on the other side of a barrier from their human visitors.
Darwin learned a lot interacting with them at the London zoo.
Your quite right John,we are so good at solving problems of the world. Our own domsetic ones not so much.
What’s worse, 24 million people trying to solve the problems of going on eight billion people has only made your own problems worse, as witness SA’s energy starvation.
I feel so bad for you guys. Australia used to be a White paradise, thinly populated but with all the blessings of European civilization. Now it’s well on its way to becoming a proverbial excrement hole.
Australia still a great place to live, but, as the commenters indicate, in danger of going down the Venezuelan path if the socialists continue with their dumb ideology. A socialist government most likely in May. You get the government you deserve.
No-one deserves a socialist government.
Though, on the plus side, the Australian socialists will be the first ones sent to the Gulag when the Chinese take over in a few years.
“Australia used to be a White paradise”
Yeah, I remember. The food was inedible and the inhabitants exquisitely ill-adapted to daylight. Now, I love a sunburnt country as much as the next bloke, but come on. Fortunately, the land of meat pies and melanomas has become a nation of all cuisines and complexions, and we wouldn’t return to your sepulchral racial candy-land if you paid us, thanks very much.
“White paradise”
Obnoxious racism. We don’t need that here at WUWT
we could do with a bit more down here thanks;-)
sudanese gangs being a tiny part of why
ps we re now also copping the utter idiocy of americas “appropriation” meme
cant run a chinese restaurant if youre not chinese etc
well every fish n chipshop with lebanese chinese or greek owners will have o shut down then…lol
you can take the pc ness and shove it.
” cant run a chinese restaurant if youre not chinese etc”
Of course you CAN, in principle. It’s just that nobody ever DID. Which is why White Australia was so…. beige. Vive la variete.
There’s nothing PC about objecting to racism, by the way. PC is just chauvinism in another hood.
A sudanese gang might be racism by itself, but not merely mentioning a gang is Sudanese.
If it has special Sudanese features, not liking them is perfectly acceptable.
What is not, is thinking any black person/male equates with the deeds of the gang.
Racism is pretending you came out of Black Panther yawning at what you assumed was simply the latest sausage-link in Marvel’s multilogy of mall-pleasing pieces de least resistance for audiences with a single-digit reading age. You know, like the 17 pieces of dreck that preceded it, and which it resembles in every describable way.
Rather than the game-changing Shakespearean epic it so obviously was.
As you would know, if you weren’t blinded by centuries of privilege and player-hatred.
“ps we re now also copping the utter idiocy of americas “appropriation” meme
cant run a chinese restaurant if youre not chinese etc”
It’s not America’s idiocy, it is the American Left’s idiocy. Leave the rest of us out of it.
+1. please keep this kind of crap away from wuwt.
One of the things that awes me about the theory of evolution is that it makes us ALL cousins. We’re all in the same family, if you just go back far enough.
Remo, please reconsider your hatred of your cousins based on the arbitrary factor of skin color. Try instead to make your hatred a meritocracy and point it to individual actors based on a rational theory of justice and righteousness. Anything less is unfair to millions of people.
Here in Australia if the polls are right, we will have Bill Shorton and the Labour Party federal government by next May.
If he keeps his promises about Climate Change ?, then we will have up to 50 % renewals all over Australia.
Presently only South Australia has that figure, and its close to the lights going out.
But at present via a connector to the largely fossell fuel generators of both Victoria and NSW they, S.A. are just managing.
Overall the system cannot handle a 50 % renewables. So when the lights do go out, yes we will have a Liberal (Conservative ) government, but it will take years to repair the damage done, and we will be deep in debt.
Its incredable that a gas CO2 can seem do so much damage. Or rather that politicians choose to think so.
MJE
As long as this is all that politicans in Oz can talk about and move around deckchairs about, I just will not vote for any of them, in any election. Not one of them deserves a vote, and not one of them is doing their job, which is to protect the Australian people’s actual interests and be like, sensible. If you have to carry on like this to get elected, then you won;t get my vote, I don’t care what party it is, I don’t want any of these dumb creeps doing anything in my name, or to be responsible for electing the clowns, or to encourage them in any way.
So if the ‘conservatives’ think they can somehow induce me to vote for them, via still shafting me, and talking nonsense about loud hysterical imaginary nothings, and constantly talk nonsense and respond to such as though it matters, guess what?
NO VOTE for you too.
I can do this for a lot longer than you can remain in office.
i wonder how many of us signing in and not voting we require to make an election an utter failure?
Not as much damage as calling the Pres of our major ally ‘barking mad’.
Something has to actually happen re climate that people see that is dramatic and dangerous, else over time, the screamers are ignored. When you are reduced to griping about a 1C mean temperature change, the concept is quite obtuse to grasp or care about.
A prolonged, brutally cold and bitter winter across North America and Europe would do the trick, methinks.
Trudeau is concerned about “carbon pollution”. How wrong can you get?
Then, taxpayers are going to get more out of carbon tax revenues than …what?
Unlike a poster above, this Canadian thinks that the Liberals will lose.
The popular uprising that go underway in the US has had electoral successes in Ontario and the Quebec.
The question is not about the Liberals losing, it by how many seats?
At this point it’s anybody’s guess. It’s pretty much a dead heat in popular vote between the Conservatives and Trudeau’s Liberals. poll
If Brad Wall (former Premier of Sask) was made the Leader of the official opposition, I think it would be a slam dunk for the Conservatives, no matter what. I just don’t think Andrew Scheer is going to get enough people out to even cast a vote. Especially with maybe a Quebec split with Max Bernier. Scheer has that stupid smile glued on his face, is a staunch catholic and he almost blew it 3-4 days ago in saying maybe they re-think the marijuana illegality again, but then back tracked to say now maybe the review some aspects of the details. But still, that was how Trudeau got himself elected was by getting all the kids out to vote for marijuana legalization and commercialization. (take note Trump)
I think maybe it is a 60-40 chance we are stuck with Trudeau another term depending whether Canadians are outraged with the carbon tax. Given that the poorer middle class will get the carbon tax refund, maybe it becomes a non issue for many. Canada is really sunk big time with two terms of Trudeau.
Yes. If Trudeau wins again, it will be time to start working on secession.
There’ll be no future for Canada as a country after four more years of those idiots in charge.
BTW, Trump has said he’ll be happy to sign a marijuana legalization bill if Congress passes one. He’s not stupid, unlike Scheer.
“… as their authors run out of things to day, …”
Eliminate the space or change the ‘d’ to an ‘s’.
Fixed, thanks.
It looks to alert Canadians that the businesses that cannot leave Canada will pass the carbon dioxide tax on to consumers. The rebate will be chump change but likely inflationary and result in another central bank interest rate hike. Oops, bad climate change policy unless you think its part of the program of UN IPCC to collapse the global oil economy.
Good point. It’s going to accelerate the shift of investment money from Canada to the US, as companies that would have run their business in Canada find it’s more profitable and less annoying to do it in America and ship the products to Canada.
That’s particularly true of those who would export most of their products across the border from Canada anyway. If the Canadian government is anti-business, why not just set up in America in the first place?
I know this sounds pessimistic, but here in Australia I’m getting a distinct ‘Venezuelan’ feel. The Libs insist on pandering to the Green Left (people who are never going to vote for them no matter what the say or do). The political choices in Australia are no longer between whiskey and water but between Pepsi and Coke. The two main parties are just as bad as each other. A bit harsh I know. Labor is obviously worse, but you know what I mean. And I’ll bet, way back, the Venezuelans didn’t think it could happen to them.
Steve Reilly
Australia has been dancing on the edge of a green / communist revolution ever since Whitlam, so far we have always pulled back from the brink.
I hope you are right
The corruption of lefty delusional politics is like a cancer. Starts small, spreads quietly, then overwhelms the victim.
Venezuela’s cancer began with nonsensical rent controls and making costly things free because their black gold would flow effortlessly forever.
Due to the liberals bickering like Labor, Labor/Greens will win next May for at least two terms by which time Australia will be well past the brink of stupidity. In all discussions I have had about climate change here in Aus the alarmists claim more than 80% of Aussie want action on climate change and they believe voting for a party that will bring a “price on carbon” and renewable energy will save the planet because Aus it doing it’s bit! LOL
“Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money”
The very idea that you can tax people into prosperity is an insane and ludicrous notion. Only a complete nut case would put their name to such words. We all know that a large proportion of the money will be consumed by public service administration costs and whatever is left over will be used in the form of welfare handouts to bribe votes at the next election.
Of course the real outcome of such a tax is obvious. Higher energy costs will always lead to business downsizing, closing down or moving offshore. The resulting recessionary effects on the economy will create higher unemplyment and reduced money into most households. Economics 101 stuff !
Good comment,what Liberals also deliberately ignore is the increased cost of everything.
Which will not be “rebated”.
Of course with the current legalization of Dope, Justin’s supporters will be to brain dead to care that the cost of living will skyrocket.
The “revenue neutral” nonsense being babbled by our politicians and bureaucrats is priceless spin.
Old tale..give them enough rope.
“Canada passed a carbon tax that will give most Canadians more money”
This is socialism in a nutshell. The idea is that we take money from those who have more than we do, and use it to buy the votes of everyone else.
Which is exactly what is happening in Australia. People here just think selling houses to each other and foreign investors will sustain an economy.
markets dropping
stock markets too
superfunds going turtle
interest rates start to rise and watch how many lose the home.
and unlike usa people- we have to repay it all
if the bank sells your home cheaply youre in the can for the remnant debt until paid.
hand the key over n walk away doesnt happen here
The sky didn’t fall, the wolves didn’t come, and people can’t be fooled forever. Papers are driven by readers and evidently their readers had enough. I sense a slow retreat from the alarmism by the public.
Bless! Especially with online paper, papers are driven by advertisers. It may often be useful to advertise in a paper like the Guardian even when people are not reading it, because it represents an arms length ‘trusted source’ for faux news that can be referenced by other people on the blogosphere.
The Guardian has almost no circulation at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation
Selling newspapers is not what keeps it going. Selling cars used to.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/22/guardianmediagroup-theguardian
I guess the Mayan climate calendar ran out and no was left to keep up the joke.
Taxing basically everyone as part of a plan to “grow the economy & create jobs” lol.
” … a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019 … ”
—
Revenue-neutral?
Another way of saying we are creating a giant useless annoying inefficient bureaucracy for no worthwhile reason but to look like the gumit is dooooin sumthin. But then again, its there, so if the slime wins another election they get to make it anything but revenue-neutral? More thin-end of the wedge infrastructure for further mindless acts of anti-Canadian b@stardry to come.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, stuff the Guardian, and its years of muck-raking drivel, to sell google ads at the expense of science.
“….Perhaps even the Guardian has gotten fed up with flogging a dead horse. Or maybe they are just running out of money……”
Or some of both?
Kind of like the economic equivalent plugging an extension cord into itself (with politicians in the middle) and expecting no loss of jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/aug/31/farewell-to-the-guardians-science-blog-network
“Eight years ago, something special happened at the Guardian’s science desk. A group of carefully chosen scientists and science writers were given the keys to the website, and told that they could write about whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.”
Unfortunately for the Guardian, those “carefully chosen scientists and science writers’ were Klimate Katastrophe Kooks who either didn’t have the mental wherewithal to discern reality from the climate ‘unicorns-farting-pixie-dust’ fantasies they promulgated; or brainwashed socialist ‘useful idiots’ who had no scruples about promulgating obvious lies in pursuing a blatantly political agenda… and with complete editorial freedom granted them by the Guardian, that was the avenue of abuse which was their downfall.
Regardless of the reasons behind the Kooky Klimate Klaims they wrote, the end result was the same… the vast majority of readers saw right through the ruse, and the Guardian’s credibility (and thus revenue) fell as its readership fell.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/aug/31/farewell-to-the-guardians-science-blog-network
“We find ourselves in a moment in history that is dominated by fake news, cherry-picked data, and a culture in which the stories we tell ourselves – the ones that tap into our own limited experiences and beliefs – trump facts and evidence.”
That is prototypical psychological projection, and an unknowing tacit admission to their perfidious malefaction.
Good old Grauniad.
They handed over their website and good name to a pseudoscience blog. They lost all credibility. And then they have the dishonesty to complain about fake news.
That’s exactly what they chose to do with this bold experiment. Reportage without any relation to the truth.
Also that’s not how you spell “Headquarters”.
Not more of the old carbon dioxide is pollution rubbish?
“… Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Canada will implement a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting in 2019, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2015 …”.
There is revenue neutral and there is ‘revenue neutral’.
If the additional tax receipts are simply returned to taxpayers as individual tax cuts less administration costs it’s unlikely to have much effect on fossil fuel use and emissions.
However sticky-fingered leftwing governments are more likely to use the additional revenue as a slush fund to buy votes amongst favoured groups and expand the size of the state in general.
Anthony, If you are quick you could hire all the Guardian’s skilled climate staff!!
If $50 a ton CO2 tax is going to be a boon for the economy and the people… Gee why not just increase it to $50,000 a ton. The money rebated to all the people will make everyone insani rich!
The Daily Telegraph used to employ Louise Gray, “Ms cut’n’Paste” (http://www.louisebgray.com/) and Geoffrey Lean “Just tell me what lies to write” (https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/adam-ramsay/why-did-telegraph-push-out-britains-most-experienced-environmental-journalist-on-eve-) …but gave them both their notice. Why? The Telegraph was unashamed ‘no one is willing to pay for green editorial any more’.
The way it works is this: a company like Dung Energy, lets say, needs to get some planning permission to erect some turbines…so a press release detailing how great renewable energy is goes out to the usual suspects, and at the same time advertising space is booked in the newspaper in question.
And the ‘advertorial’ gets written by the hopeless hacks and hackettes. In general it is almost completely cut ‘n’ paste, as teh company -= or an arms length lobbying one like Renewable UK – will have assembled all. the data, done all the ‘research’ and supported it with references to Learned Papers and so on.
In fact one could often see the joins in the cut’n’paste where the hapless hacks had attempted to actually write something themselves and betrayed total ignorance in the process. Typically MW instead of MWh or some such.
Essentially money is drying up in renewables. The UK government has not directly challenged climate change, nor publicly dissed renewables, but it has cut back on subsidies. Because that’s good for people, thereby calling the Green Bluff that ‘renewables are cheaper than fossil’ etc etc.
This is sensible devious politics. Don’t challenge the orthodoxy, simply stop feeding it and let it wither and die.
Frankly with Brexit now the main battleground between Liberal Useful Idiots and those who prefer a more accessible, accountable and indeed smaller government, everyone’s forgotten about carbon dioxide.
It’s not yet time to shut up shop Anthony, but the time may be near. I hope however this blog continues and simply broadens its scope into a blog that addresses all of science and perhaps even philosophy .
Let’s face it, the media that purports to cover this are themselves owned by those to whom science is simply another marketing tool. As is Liberal politics and ideology.
The ideal population for these people are brainwashed useful idiots, whose votes can be relied upon, whose consumption is dominated by what is advertised to them, and whose behaviour is utterly controlled by a specious moral code they are inculcated with in their public schools, where ‘social justice’ ensures that everyone gets full Marx…
” but it has cut back on subsidies. Because that’s good for people, …..”
No.
It’s because as a country we cant afford it.
Not noticed at your local A&E.
State of the roads.
Police.
PCSO’s
etc.
Money has to be prioritised.
Isn’t ‘we can’t afford it’ the same as ‘good for the people’?
The business model for The Guardian was never strong enough to maintain its existence.
Relying on hits and advertisement it had to attract a body of readers ready and able to spend money on the products advertised.
The demographic was not deep enough or sufficiently wealthy to support them.
In Australia the ‘mating of the dinosaurs’, Fairfax and Chanel 9, a free to air TV station with national reach, is an attempt to prop up a similar broadsheet empire, Fairfax.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/unbelievably-sad-fears-for-fairfax-legacy-as-183yearold-firm-bought-by-nine-entertainment/news-story/fe7db7b5f5d1ef1940e2cd10ac93cf93
The most revenue rich part is the right wing Macquarie network, dominated by 2GB in Sydney and network into Queensland and rural NSW.
The news bulletin is still left biased but the commentators interview people who actually disagree with the Fairfax line, ensuring listeners stay tuned.
The jewel in the Fairfax crown, Domain, a real estate site, has been hit with the current collapse of the market in the Eastern States of Australia.
Its not clear the merger between the dinosaurs will go ahead.
‘Gay Alcorn, a journalist at Guardian Australia, expressed the concerns of many Fairfax veterans in a tweet on Thursday: “The name Fairfax has stood for so much over more than 150 years: quality, independent, fierce journalism, proud staff and loyal readers. Now it’s to disappear — the symbol is the loss of the name, but it’s far more than that.”
But it was the Australian’s Rick Morton who summed it up most succinctly, referring to the SMH and Age’s slogan, “independent. Always”.
“Independent. Once,” he wrote.’
I stopped reading the Fairfax Press years ago.
It failed to give the facts and let the reader make up his own mind.
The letters were groupthink.
The Guardian is going the same way.
It is readers they are running out of.
From The Press Gazette 30 July 2018…
Guardian science and environment networks to close but paper says it remains ‘firmly committed’ to wide-ranging coverage on topics
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-science-and-environment-networks-to-close-but-papers-says-it-remains-firmly-committed-to-wide-ranging-coverage-on-topics/
Oh dear 😂 I am trying not to laugh but it’s not easy 😁 Now he as lost his platform, I wonder if the ‘money man’ will keep paying out or will he now have to get a job, if anyone will take him.
Wildly Ot but why do I care, variety is the spice etc etc so we get:
Today’s puzzling picture:
Is it:
A new NASA success story..
or
Mosh switches on his new supercomputer
or
Danny’s head exploding…
or
Something to do with carbonoxide
decisions decisions eh
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/meteor-explosion-video-astronomy-space-clun-castle-shropshire-a8604236.html
How does a carbon tax work? Is it supposed to be a tax to try to stop people from using carbon?
I don’t see how taxing and taking money actually does anything positive, only negative.
Reanne,
“How does a carbon tax work?”
At first, as a few cents’ impost on every kg of graphite, coal, diamonds or carbon nanotubes sold. It doesn’t sound like much but it can be a game-changer for some industries, as the NY Times discovered.
The stupid takes your breath away, saving 45,000 ppm of C O 2 innit.
It will kill of the old geezers nicely, making way for nice families from hot countries to take their place.
Let’s not get too smug about the demise of the Guardian and Fairfax.
“The Australian” is in danger of going the same way.
I have been at war with the moderators of “The Australian’s” online edition for about six months. Few of my comments are published any more, so I have taken to entertaining myself by bating the moderators. The less PC my comment, the shorter its life expectancy.
This was not the case in the past when I could engage in robust debate online.
The point is, that PC and group think have been slowly infiltrating “The Australian”, and if it continues, the paper will go the way of Fairfax.
People will burn something to keep warm. You can’t live in Canada without heat. The carbon tax just adds excessive costs to everything.
Cleaner air? Hardly. An efficient steel mill produces higher quality and more steel with less pollution than a million backyard producers. You have efficient electric producing plants that produce way less pollution than a million fireplaces going off at the same time. Same with natural gas.
There should be incentives for efficiency rather than punitive and regressive taxes.
Supposing co2 was a problem, or carbon tax, just another bad idea whose time has come.
I just noticed Dana “Scooter” Nuccitelli’s scooter by the oil well in Josh’s cartoon.
Perfect.
Good morning to all.
Bob
Farewell to the Guardian’s science blog network
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/aug/31/farewell-to-the-guardians-science-blog-network
Highlights include:
After eight brilliant years, the Guardian’s science blog network comes to a close today
An exploratory experiment, if you like, to see what would happen if excellent science blogging was cultivated at an international newspaper. Today, the experiment comes to an end.
Somehow, we have lost the ability to take a step back, to try and be objective about the information that is presented in front of us, especially if we are faced with something that we already hold a strong opinion about.
So, farewell, and.. Thanks for all the fish.
Good to hear they’re resecting the tumor of Nuccitelli et co.
With the money the Guardian no longer has to spend on buckets of raw fish, who knows? Maybe they can afford some science bloggers now.
Under Rushbridger the Guardian abandonned its former commitment to objective reporting and the separation of reportage and comment, and turned itself into the house organ of a group of activists.
The activist agenda contaminated the reporting and made it untrustworthy.
News and reporting became secondary to the campaigns. So we had ‘leave it in the ground’, which contaminated reporting on renewable energy projects. We had the campaign for divestment from fossil fuels, which made all reporting on the finances of renewables versus fossil fuels suspect. We had the campaign to influence the US Presidential Election by swinging Clark County – making, in passing, all coverage of the US election untrustworthy.
Then we had the campaign to remove Corbyn as Labour leader which made all reporting on him and the Labour Party untrustworthy. I agree about the disaster that is Corbyn, but the idea that its the Guardian’s role to try to get him kicked out?
Finally there is the Snowden affair. There, they actively participated in getting Snowden into Russia, and still endorse him, and thereby render useless all their reporting on privacy issues. Certainly government surveillance is an issue in our democracies. But is it really down to a news reporting organization to facilitate the flight of a traitor to Russia?
And there is more – there are also the stories the Guardian refused to cover or admit were important. The grooming scandals of Rochdale and elsewhere. The NHS scandals.
There has been an essentially unaccountable group of people who have taken over what used to be the Scott Trust, and who have used it to further their own hodgepodge of policies.
The last and in some ways worst episode of this sort was turning the environment pages over to Skeptical Science and the motley crew of the 97% nonsense.
The Guardian used to be an excellent paper, with a liberal left editorial approach, but with reporting integrity. Rushbridger not only brought it to its knees financially, with a mixture of self righteous arrogance and the feeling that they were there to save the world and that money didn’t matter, but he also destroyed its fine tradition of independent journalism.
That was a real tragedy. And one the new Editor has not repaired. So if you look at the front page of the site today, what is supposed to be news is all about me and my gynecology, transgender activism, anti-Trump activism. They have now seemingly cut back on global warming activism, but don’t worry, there are lots more oddball personal obsessions of the editorial team that they and their hand picked columnists can still focus on. And they will, they will. Though there are some glimmers of awakening.
This retaking of the environment pages is one. Another recently appeared in the form of a column where the author said she was not going to march for another vote on Brexit. It had finally dawned on her that the march was going to entirely consist of the urban middle classes in London and a couple of other cities talking to themselves. And that maybe this was not really going to help persuade the residents of Middlesborough….. So perhaps there is hope of them recognising the real world.
But recognising the need for journalistic integrity, once you have lost or forgotten it, well. That is going to be a much longer haul, and one they don’t even any more realize what it means. That ius a tragedy. They wrecked something of immense value, without even knowing what they had.
Excellent analysis. To understand the intellectual vacuity of editor Rusbridger, read my transcript of his chairmanship of a discussion to launch a Greenpeace climate blog at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20121002_bf
where he blathers on and on and leaves hardly any time for the panel to discuss. He is really an extremely stupid person, and I say it though I owe him a tremendous debt, since his earlier investigative journalism revealed that the British secret service had files on 3 million UK citizens, which no doubt explains why the French refused my demand for a resident’s permit, against all EU treaty laws, since I’m no doubt on MI5’s books as a dangerous lefty.
To understand the Guardian’s colossal failure, you have to understand that Rusbridger’s policy was to turn a British left of centre journal into a major international internet news source in order to attract the automatic ad revenue which comes from enhanced clicks, as opposed to readership. Hence the articles beginning “the government says..” where you don’t know whether they’re talking about the government of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, or possibly some Pacific isle due to disappear under rising sea levels.
If US readers find all this a bit academic, I’d point out that the Graun, in its previous incarnation as the Manchester Guardian, was defending the abolition of slavery when the US consisted of 13 states and some territories. Institutions that old are not common, and are therefore worth preserving.
”They wrecked something of immense value, without even knowing what they had.”
You must have on medication at the time you wrote that.
For the record, the guardian has always been niche rancid far left, and not worth a carrot.
The Beano comic sell 4 x more copies.
The Guardian is so far from being “niche rancid far left” that when they published an article by Noam Chomsky (who you would probably consider as being off the rancidity scale) they apologised to their readers, pointing out that Chomsky’s views weren’t those of the Guardian. They’re nice nice ever so centre left, (except when it comes to Trump of course, when they line up with the far right CNN and NYT in holding their sensitive noses.)
The Beano comic is far right, as revealed in a famous article by George Orwell written in the thirties. But also popular. A bit like Trump really.
Wait… CNN and NYT are “far right”? Your news agencies and society must have slid so far left that you consider the rabid leftist communist-wannabe’s of CNN and NYT to be ‘far right’.
Of course, we ARE talking about Britain… where they burn aborted babies to heat their hospitals, they have more Big Brother cameras than they have people, and the government can force parents to let their children die rather than fly them to another country to save their lives.
{All the above are absolute fact… look them up if you don’t believe me.}
That’s about as “rancid far left” as you can get. I’m amazed the British don’t have the backbone to stand up against that sort of totalitarianism.
The Guardian in its fine days was not ‘rancid far left’.
Its political loyalty was to the UK Liberal Party, the descendant of the Liberal Party of Gladstone and Asquith. The Liberal tradition in the Guardian was a long time dying, and it happened not as a result of a conscious decision so much as a series of incremental steps – many expressed by the nature of the columnists they hired and the change in makeup of the opinion points of view.
And of course the blurring of the line between fact and comment.
Its the Guardian of C P Scott that we have lost, and it has been a real loss.
Even mainstream liberals get tired of farce over time. It becomes demeaning and an area to avoid. That’s not good for a publishing business model based on eyeball count and consumer profile warehousing.
“…the social cost of carbon is many times higher”
Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the 4th most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon’s abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen
It’s been years since I pasted this, so here it is again :
No pen can describe the turning of the leaves—the insurrection of the tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days later the hill-sides as far as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil shading of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods.
Rudyard Kipling
Thank you
The problem with that picture is that it isn’t CO2 that’s causing the hazy skies so they are fighting the wrong thing.
Totally, Cameron. I don’t think any so-called greenhouse gas would cause haze.
Fighting actual pollution is a good idea, but this? I call it biting the hand that gives you life.
Poor Dana. Now he’ll have to go back to doing vaudeville with John Cook, dressing up as Nazis for our edification.
It is too bad, that Dana can’t even get the facts straight.
Here in Saskatchewan, those carbon values are imposed by the Federal government, every where we look… 60 cents additionally on a gallon of paint. Three cents additionally for grocery bags, that use to be free –some places charge more, and see this as a way to profit. I have seen places that charge a nickel.
“The federal carbon pollution price will start low at $20 per ton in 2019, rising at $10 per ton per year until reaching $50 per ton in 2022.”
It is not per “TON”, but per “TONNE”. One is an Imperial measurement of weight, and the other is a metric version of weight.
1 Ton = 2000 lbs
1 Tonne = 2204.6 lbs
In Canada, it is per TONNE. Which is 204.6 lbs heavier than a Ton.
Trudeau is a Liberal Zombie, a childlike, spokesperson for La La land.
Same story as other countries, just different actors.
Canada has the third largest oil reserve in the world and is currently losing $50 dollars a barrel, $110 million/day, due to lack of pipeline space to the west coast.
Canada has a large balance of trade issue and a never-ending deficit.
Ironically, Canada’s largest trade deficit is tourism, as Canadians who can afford it all take a winter holiday, to escape the cold Canadian winter.
Deficits do not matter in La La Land. Policies that kill business does not matter in La La Land.
The Carbon tax is a net loss to Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-trade-deficit-1.4605982
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-402-x/2012000/chap/tt-ut/tt-ut02-eng.htm
“The social cost of carbon is a measure of the economic damages caused (via climate change) by each ton of carbon pollution that we produce today. It’s difficult to estimate because of physical, economic, and ethical uncertainties. For example, it’s difficult to predict exactly when various climate tipping points will be triggered, how much their damages will cost, and there’s also a question about how much we value the welfare of future generations (which is incorporated in the choice of ‘discount rate’).”
Science!!
I reported this news 2 days ago in this blog.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/26/why-the-weather-doomsayers-need-to-take-a-raincheck/
And I acknowledged you on the fourth comment posted on this article.
Don’t forget that Nuccitelli was only half of the comedy knockabout team known as The 97%, which took over the sciencey part of the Graun’s climate reporting when their environmental journalists got fed up with being ridiculed in the comments thread, the other half being engineering college professor John Abrahams, who came to the Guardian’s notice when he posted a podcast in which he maundered on about something Monckton once said for eighty minutes. The Guardian posted the podcast and two articles (one by Monbiot) praising Abrahams.
I wasted an evening of my life transcribing the Abrahams podcast and posting what he said at the Guardian, something the Graun hadn’t thought to do. Abrahams’ method of analysis was to take a criticism by Monckton of something said by a scientist, phone up the scientist in question and ask: “Who’s right, Monckton or you?” and report the response. I got as far as where Abrahams said “According to the world’s most authoritative polar bears…” and gave up.
For the 40 years from 1970 to 2010 US inflation annualized at ~ 4.3%. Gasoline prices in period went from 10 cents/litre in 1970 to 90 cents per litre in 2010 which was a 5.6% annualized increase. assuming the same numbers apply to Canada, that means if in Canada the carbon tax causes a 8 % gasoline price increase by 2022, that should translate to a 8 * .76 = 6 % change in the inflation rate caused by gasoline prices alone. That works out to a 1.467 % annualized increase in inflation over the next 4 years caused by gasoline carbon price tax by itself irregardless of the other increases to inflation which will occur. Some of the present top 620 CO2 emitters in Canada (the only ones that potentially are forced to pay the tax) will switch from a carbon based fuel to a non carbon based fuel. This means that those firms won’t pay the tax, so the tax won’t get collected and reimbursed to the public. So the public will not recover the full impact of inflation because of the carbon tax. And the government hasn’t guaranteed that the reimbursements will happen every year indefinitely. Once the inflation goes up the public has to pay that inflation every year indefinitely. The inflation will go up, whether the firms pay the tax or not. This is because for the firms that switch fuels, the cost of the new fuel will be more expensive; or that firm would already be using that fuel. THIS IS UTTER MADNESS AND A BIG RIPOFF
What is a revenue neutral tax anyway?
It’s a bit like a policy-neutral policy recommendation for policymakers, of the kind the IPCC specializes in summarizing.