Society in General

Canada’s Animal Farm Culture War Factions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Bruce Pardy writes at National Post Woke wolves dominate the culture war ecosystem — for now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Canada is unravelling. Culture wars are making the country stupid, poor and fractured — and according to Angus Reid, these fractures have produced five distinct groups.

Last week, the Angus Reid Institute released a study on the bubbling, sometimes boiling, political conflicts in Canada. The study characterized five culture war factions that comprise the country: the “zealous activists,” the “quiet accommodators,” the “conflicted middle,” the “frustrated skeptics” and the “defiant objectors.” They make up the political ecosystem, which is why they are perhaps best recast as members of the animal kingdom.

Zealous Activists Behave as Wolves

“Zealous activists,” according to the Angus Reid study, make up 17 per cent of the population. They are ardent social progressives who believe that cancel culture is about “accountability.” I think of them as wolves. They travel in packs. These are woke mobs pushing the social justice revolution. They hunger to rip to shreds the reputation of anyone who defies progressive agendas.

Although they sometimes attack big targets, wolves prefer to hunt the vulnerable. They dress in sheep’s clothing, pretending to protect the weak and the downtrodden. But when the weak or downtrodden step out of line, wolves turn on them without a moment’s hesitation. Wolves appear to be more numerous than they really are, perhaps because they howl incessantly. They are proud virtue-signallers. Some truly believe in the cause, but activism is also a means to professional and social standing: they compete with one another for status within the pack.

Quiet Accommodators Resemble Sheep

Just over one quarter of Canadians are “quiet accommodators.” Like wolves, they are progressives, tending to agree with safe spaces and trigger warnings — but they lack the intensity of a predator. Let’s call them sheep. They are the foot soldiers of the culture wars; they believe in social justice dogma because that is what they have been fed. They crave approval and belonging.

Some sheep don’t understand social justice ideology beyond catchphrases and knee-jerk reactions, but they know those very well. Sheep can be found in positions of authority, where they enthusiastically enforce woke policies. They can be primary school principals, CEOs and even premiers. They seek to preserve their status by supporting the “correct” attitudes; in doing so, they willingly follow wolves, failing to understand that wolves are their greatest threat.

Conflicted Middle Act Like Ostriches

Ostriches don’t actually put their heads in the sand. They mostly lay their heads in the grass, preoccupied with staying well fed.

The “conflicted middle” makes up 18 per cent of the population. They are ostriches who keep their heads close to the ground, divided on culture wars and politics. Ostriches are ambivalent about social justice agendas and cultural revolutions; they comply to avoid any unwanted attention. Like sheep, ostriches seek to preserve their professional or social status. Unlike sheep, who want to belong, ostriches obey to avoid trouble. They tend to abhor politics and prefer not to think about ideology, even when ideology won’t leave them alone. Ostriches just wish the whole thing would go away.

Can you spot the leopard hidden in the grass?

Frustrated Skeptics Lurk Like Leopards

Nineteen per cent of Canadians are “frustrated skeptics.” They view culture wars as tiring and unproductive. Imagine them as leopards, aware and poised, but camouflaged against the scrubby savannah. Leopards object to woke agendas but keep their opinions to themselves. Some feel vulnerable in their jobs or social relationships. Others hide their opposition strategically, believing they can resist more effectively from the inside. Like ostriches, leopards are careful not to provide wolves with a reason to attack. Unlike ostriches, leopards are not ambivalent, but are waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Defiant Objectors Roar Like Lions

A fifth of Canadians are “defiant objectors.” They oppose cancel culture, safe spaces and censorship. These are the lions, who openly roar in disapproval at the progressive transformation of their society. Lions are the only animals in the kingdom who say “hell no” out loud. Some have prominent public profiles, but most lions are simply fearless ordinary people. They sometimes gather in prides, like the truckers and their supporters, but they are naturally inclined to be independent. When lions roar, wolves howl that they are bigots, populists, or members of a fringe minority with unacceptable views.

Missteps are dangerous in a culture war. The pack will devour those who commit wrongthink. The most susceptible are sheep and ostriches, who, despite submitting to the regime, are apt to utter inconvenient truths. Social justice ideology is tricky. It contains incoherent positions, changes the meanings of words and constantly moves the target. “My body, my choice” is a rallying cry when it relates to abortion, but racist and misogynist when it applies to vaccine mandates. Sheep and ostriches must navigate an ever-shifting landscape of rules and political correctness.

Leopards can misstep and blow their cover, but sometimes that works out for the best. Once revealed, they may find that they were meant to be lions after all. Lions can’t misstep, at least in the sense of accidentally outing themselves. Out is where they mean to be.

An activist minority is setting the agenda in Canada, but only
for as long as Canadians allow it. Be a lion.

Biden Nanny State Coming At You

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Krebs exposes federal shenanigans in their war on home appliances in his Master Resource article Update: DOE Appliance Minimum Efficiency Standards.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“It started with gas cooking.  It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can. Basically, what we’re witnessing is the energy equivalent of ethnic cleansing. I’ve been saying this for years but now it should be obvious.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Biden Administration has significantly accelerated the pace of minimum appliance efficiency rulemaking. With this acceleration, there has been a marked decrease in DOE’s analytical quality and transparency. The purpose of this update is to summarize:

  1.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products

2.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Products; Boilers

3.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters

Note: In DOE-speak, the term ‘consumer’ means non commercial/industrial, or just residential.

Part 1: Consumer Cooking Products

On April 27, 2023, MasterResource published DOE vs. Gas Cooking: A Review of Critical Comments. On August 2, 2023, DOE reopened the docket with a “Notification of data availability and request for comment (NODA) with comments due September 1. More than 100 comments were filed.

Some commenters viewed the NODA and relatively short (30-day) comment period as a violation to the Administrative Procedures Act codified by 5 U.S.C. § 551(5)–(7) and the DOE’s “process rule” codified by 10 CFR 430 Appendix A to Subpart C. One such commenter making this case was the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Other comments privided detailed content in opposition of DOE’s proposal for consumer cooking products.  My comments addressed what has changed since DOE determined (in 2019) that additional efficiency mandates for gas cooking appliances is not justified. In short, Biden happened. With that change, DOE resorted to a longstanding bias that any amount of net positive cash flow (greater than zero) on average was sufficient economic justification. I cited AHAM’s press release “Gas Cooking Appliances Remain at Risk Despite New DOE Data” for this NODA that succinctly justified what that amount now is:

“The revised data reduces consumer savings to just 9 cents per month.”

I contend no one would freely elect to invest in anything with that kind of return-on-investment (ROI). Additionally, 9 cents per month is far less than the uncertainty range within DOE’s economic calculations.  Besides, DOE’s economic calculations typically low-ball increased maintenance costs and over-inflate fuel costs (among many other biased input assumptions).

What else has changed is that DOE cost-effectiveness now includes highly controversial benefits from reduced climate change allowed by grossly inflated social cost of carbon (SCC) avoidance and health benefits from improved indoor air quality (IAQ).

Part 2: Consumer Boilers

On September 12, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential boilers. A 59-page slide deck for that meeting is here. (If you have never read one of these slide decks, I urge you to do so. It’s a relatively painless way of getting familiar with the ‘administrative state’ going about its business of picking winners and losers.)

There were many participants representing manufacturing interests that would be adversely impacted by DOE’s proposal, and they were quite vocal about it (in a professional way of course).  But why would manufacturers want to litigate? DOE would put some of them out of business. 

Part 3: Consumer Water Heaters

On September 13, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential water heaters that lasted 3 hours. A 74-page slide deck for that meeting is here. There were nearly twice as many participants on line compared to the number of webinar participants the day before for consumer boilers; and many of the participants represented water heater manufacturers, some of which would be devastated if DOE’s proposed mandates were finalized.

One manufacturer that stood out in this regard was Rinnai America. Rinnai is the sole manufacturer of non-condensing tankless water heaters in the U.S. Rinnai’s President stated, as I recall, that DOE’s proposed ban of non-condensing water heaters would shut down Rinnai’s new factory that cost $70 million. That, of course, would devastate the many involved.

Conclusions

DOE has been (ostensibly) ‘improving’ appliance efficiency for nearly a half-century. The low hanging fruit is long gone. In many cases, DOE is doing more harm than good and using unfair tactics to maintain control and reward its minions. What we have now is relentless self-serving “mission creep” of the administrative state and its “useful idiots” that forces consumers to fund the erosion of viable energy alternatives. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is greatly aiding and abetting this forced transformation away from free market forces.

DOE doesn’t care what it costs to litigate. After all, DOE has the backing of the Department of Justice for such matters. In my opinion, DOE has strayed too far from any redeeming virtue that may have originally existed from the 1975 passage of EPCA. It’s past time for Congress clean up the mess it created by enacting EPCA and the numerous ambiguous loopholes that gives undeserved deference to the administrative state to interpret. A valid question is whether EPCA (and DOE for that matter) should be salvaged or scrapped.

Biden’s DOE wants to eliminate alternatives to electricity. 

This fixation became apparent to all with their planned elimination of gas cooking and ran head-on with consumers that hold gas cooking near-and-dear. Consumer preferences for gas cooking was and is a major obstacle to control via societal electrification overall. As this article hopefully conveys, it started with gas cooking. It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can.

Postscript:

The Department of Energy (DOE) quietly promoted a top adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to a senior role overseeing home appliance regulations after he failed to clear Senate confirmation.

The DOE announced last week that Jeff Marootian was appointed to be the principal deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The appointment came days after the White House withdrew his name from consideration to lead EERE as the office’s assistant secretary.

While Marootian’s nomination failed after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed him over the Biden administration’s crackdown on natural gas-powered stovetops, his appointment last week makes him the effective chief of the DOE’s EERE office.

More complete discussion on appliance war at Fox: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/experts-warn-biden-admins-water-heater-crackdown-hike-prices-reduce-consumer-choice

 

Social Justice Sendup

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Long before BLM flash mobs, calls to “Defund the Police” and ultra-liberal prosecutors blind to BIPOC misdemeanors or even felonies, Bluesman R.L. Burnside dropped his song “Nothin’ Man,” a satirical sendup of the sappy social justice mindset. (Closed captions are an option.)

R. L. Burnside (1926-2005) Blues Hall of Fame

Ironically, Burnside Street is a major thoroughfare of Portland, Oregon, one of the cities most damaged by social justice politicians. East Burnside Street and 122nd Avenue is the most dangerous spot of the most dangerous neighborhood when it comes to shootings. (2023)

Don’t Buy “Planetary Boundaries” Hype

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Latest diagram from Stockholm Resilience Centre

The usual suspects are beating on their “planetary boundaries” drum to scare up submission to Zero Carbon restrictions.  Remember these are the same climate justice warriors pushing the notion of a new geological era named “Anthropocene”.  For example, cue the following:

Six of nine planetary boundaries now exceeded–Phys.org

Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries’–Scientific American

Earth is now outside most of the “planetary boundaries” under which human civilization emerged–TechSpot

Six out of 9 planetary boundaries breached, Earth increasingly becoming uninhabitable for humans–MSN.com

Humanity deep in the danger zone of planetary boundaries: study–YAHOO!News

Etc., Etc. Etc.

Background

In 2009, a group of 29 scholars published an article in Nature, advancing an approach to define a “safe operating space for humanity” (1). The group argued that we can identify a set of nine “planetary boundaries” that humanity must not cross at the cost of its own peril. Since this 2009 publication, the concept of planetary boundaries has been highly influential in generating academic debate and in shaping research projects and policy recommendations worldwide. At the same time, the concept has come under heavy scrutiny as well, and many critics have taken the floor contesting the broader framework as well as its implementation and interpretation. Partially because of this critique, the original proposition of nine planetary boundaries has undergone various reformulations and updates by their proponents and an emerging network of scholars specializing in planetary boundary research.

The original 2009 paper in Nature suggested nine boundary conditions in the earth system that could, if crossed, result in a major disruption in (parts of) the system and a transition to a different state, which is likely to be hostile to human prosperity. The proposed planetary boundaries included:

♦  climate change,
♦  biodiversity loss,
♦  the nitrogen cycle,
♦  the phosphorus cycle,
♦  stratospheric ozone depletion,
♦  ocean acidification,
♦  global freshwater use,
♦  land use change,
♦  atmospheric aerosol loading, and
♦  chemical pollution.

For each of these planetary boundaries, one or more control variables were identified (e.g., atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration), which in turn were assigned with numerical boundary values at a “safe” distance from dangerous levels, or where applicable, “tipping points” in earth system processes (1).

Eventually, the framework should allow for quantification of threshold parameters, as a guide also for political responses. For some planetary boundaries, the group in 2009 suggested that the current state of knowledge was too uncertain to allow for quantification. Yet, for other earth system processes, the group felt confident enough to suggest a specific boundary value. In this endeavor, they erred on the side of caution and a strict interpretation of the precautionary principle: Where they saw remaining uncertainties, the group suggested the lower values for the boundary that they identified.

They concluded that three planetary boundaries had been crossed already.

On climate change, for instance, the boundary value proposed was 350 ppm, which had been passed long ago in the second half of the twentieth century. Regarding biodiversity, the current extinction rate is more than 100 extinct species per million species per year, whereas the suggested boundary was 10 extinctions. As for the nitrogen cycle, humans remove today approximately 121 million tons of nitrogen per year from the atmosphere, whereas a safe rate would be a maximum of 35 million tons. In these three areas, therefore, this analysis suggested that humankind had pushed the earth system past planetary boundaries and possibly dangerous levels, into a new—and unknown—world.  Source: The Boundaries of the Planetary Boundary Framework: A Critical Appraisal of Approaches to Define a “Safe Operating Space” for Humanity.  Annual Review of Environment and Resources October 2020

We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm.–Johan Rockström, co-author and Centre researcher

Critics of the Planetary Boundaries Framework

Leaving aside those who want the boundaries to be tighter and harder than presented, let’s hear from critics challenging the whole enterprise. Shortly after the invention of “planetary boundaries,” Breakthrough Institute published a thorough critique of the notion and the framework.  Planetary Boundaries: A Review of the Evidence.  Linus Blomqvist (2012)

The planetary boundaries hypothesis – embraced by United Nations bodies and leading nongovernmental organizations like Oxfam and WWF – has serious scientific flaws and is a misleading guide to global environmental management, according to a new report by the Breakthrough Institute. The hypothesis, which will be debated this month at the UN Earth Summit in Brazil, posits that there are nine global biophysical limits to human development. But after an extensive literature review and informal peer review by leading experts, the Breakthrough Institute has found the concept of “planetary boundaries” to be a poor basis for policy and for understanding local and global environmental challenges.

KEY FINDINGS

♦   Six of the “planetary boundaries” — land-use change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen levels, freshwater use, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution — do not have planetary biophysical boundaries in themselves.

♦   Aside from their impacts on the global climate, these non-threshold “boundaries” operate on local and regional, not global, levels.

♦   There is little evidence to support the claim that transgressing any of the six non-threshold boundaries would have a net negative effect on human material welfare.  The full report is linked below:

A new report from the Breakthrough Institute highlights scientific flaws
of the “planetary boundaries” hypothesis

Planetary Boundaries as Power Grab–Giving Political Decisions a Scientific Sheen–Roger Pielke Jr. (2013)

When the cover of the Economist famously announced ‘Welcome to the anthropocene’ a couple of years ago, was it welcoming us to a new geological epoch, or a dangerous new world of undisputed scientific authority and anti-democratic politics?

The basis for the power grab by the experts – really old wine in new bottles – is the fashionable idea of “planetary boundaries“ which holds that there are hard and fast ecological limits within which human activity must be constrained. The concept is much contested scientifically — such as in this excellent review by my colleagues at The Breakthrough Institute.

A real-world example of the implications of the planetary boundaries political philosophy is vividly seen through the issue of global energy access. Future global development, at least in the short term, necessarily will involve trade offs between expanded use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels and the expansion of energy access to the world’s poorest. The planetary boundaries advocates, consist with their hierarchical values framework, call for “universal clean energy” and recommend development targets focused not on measuring expanded energy access, but rather carbon dioxide emissions (here in PDF).

In other words, expanded energy access to the world’s poorest is deemed acceptable
only if it first satisfies the demands of planetary boundaries – in other words,
the political demands of the scientists couched in the inviolable authority of science.

An major recent critique was: Planetary Boundaries for Biodiversity:  Implausible Science, Pernicious Policies  by Montoya, Donohue and Pimm. Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2018)

The notion of a ‘safe operating space for biodiversity’ is vague and encourages harmful policies. Attempts to fix it strip it of all meaningful content. Ecology is rapidly gaining insights into the connections between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. We have no option but to understand ecological complexity and act accordingly.

How best should environmental science articulate its concerns, set research agendas, and advise policies?One solution embraces the notion of planetary boundaries [1] arguing that global environmental processes very generally have ‘tipping points’. These are catastrophes involving thresholds beyond which there will be rapid transitions to new states that are very much less favorable to human existence than current states. The associated notion is that humanity’s ‘business as usual’ can only continue so long as it remains within some ‘safe operating space’.

We show that notions of planetary boundaries add no insight into our understanding
of the threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, have no evidence to support them,
are too vague for use by those who manage biodiversity, and promote pernicious policies.

Fatally, the boundaries framework lacks clear definitions, or it has too many conflicting definitions, does not specify units, and fails to define terms operationally, thus prohibiting application by those who set policy or manage natural resources. Moreover, recent reviews indicate that tipping points occur only rarely in
natural systems [6], while policies related to boundaries are unlikely to be evidence based. A need for operational definitions to aid managers is self-evident [7].

At the heart of the problem are terms such as ‘planetary boundaries’, but also ‘sustainability’, ‘health’, ‘harmony’, and others, that are emotionally appealing but rarely, if ever, defined. They all speak to the urgent need to understand how human impacts change ecosystems, when at best we aspire to protect only
half of it. We must set policies and establish management for the vast tracts of land and sea that we do not protect. Fatally, those who do so often use language that does not borrow from the existing knowledge about ecosystem processes, nor readily translates its aspirations to those who study them [7].

See Also:

Planetary Boundaries as Millenarian Prophesies  Malthusian Echoes

The identification of the planetary boundaries is dependent on the normative assumptions made, for example, concerning the value of biodiversity and the desirability of the Holocene. Rather than non-negotiables, humanity faces a system of trade-offs – not only economic, but moral and aesthetic as well. Deciding how to balance these trade-offs is a matter of political contestation (Blomqvist et al, 2012:37). What counts as “unacceptable environmental change” is not a matter of scientific fact, but involves judgments concerning the value of the things to be affected by the potential changes. The framing of planetary boundaries as being scientifically derived non-negotiable limits, obscures the inherent normativity of deciding how to react to environmental change. Presenting human values as facts of nature is an effective political strategy to shut down debate.

Beyond Planetary Boundaries by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Linus Blomqvist (2012)

There are useful implications for environmental change science that can be drawn from where planetary boundaries went wrong. First, any pragmatic framework on environmental change must look at benefits and costs. Some of the hypothesis’s authors have said that their motivation was to provide a useful framework for helping global leaders manage environmental change. We applaud and support this motivation. But for any environmental change framework to be useful, it must seek to understand not only the costs of change but also its benefits.

One of the implications of this is that simply measuring variance from Holocene baselines is a highly misleading metric of human sustainability. Since so much variance from the Holocene has been good for humans, future environmental change cannot be assumed, as planetary boundaries does, to be negative for our welfare.

 

Londoners Vs. ULEZ Cameras

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Background: 

Remember that the World Bank recognizes personal mobility as the defining characteristic of the Middle Class.  Also recall that as Aristotle stated, the Middle Class is the social buffer against tryanny by the elite and slavery of the poor.

Finally, be informed that C40 is a global network of mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis. It was founded in 2005 as C20, and has since expanded to its current network of 96 cities, including London.  More at Daily Sceptic The Green Globalists Behind Ulez – and What They Have Planned Next  (Of course our virtue signalling Montreal Mayor Plante is all in on imposing ULEZ here.)

Freedom Fighters Take to the Streets of London

Within this context comes the report that Londoners are conducting an organized attack on the ULEZ cameras placed to enforce fines for people straying from their home neighborhood. The Remix News article is Hundreds of ULEZ cameras destroyed by vigilante group following wider London roll-out.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds. H/T Tyler Durden

The group intent on disrupting London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s green vehicle tax
has received some political support despite its criminal activity.

Hundreds of Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) cameras have been vandalized by a vigilante group that opposes the controversial scheme, which extended across wider London this week and charges road users for traveling in non-compliant vehicles.

The scheme is part of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s green agenda to enhance the air quality across the U.K. capital; however, many critics of its extension into London’s suburbs consider it to be a regressive tax and cash grab that will hit working families the hardest.

A vigilante group known as the Blade Runners has been targeting newly installed cameras across the capital in a bid to disrupt the implementation of ULEZ as much as possible, and hundreds of cameras have already been hit.

Prior to the roll-out, which came into force on Tuesday, around 500 cameras had been marked as out of action or damaged, according to a map the vigilante group promoted. Many of the cameras targeted were located in London’s southeast with 156 of the 185 cameras around the districts of Sydenham and Sidcup being hit, as well as 18 of the 22 cameras installed in Bromley.

The camera map, published on a popular anti-ULEZ Facebook page, allows users to update it when a camera has been rendered out of action. The black pins represent cameras that are now missing or damaged.

In the southeast town of Orpington, just two of the new number plate recognition cameras were in working order on the day of the ULEZ expansion after vigilantes smashed, spray-painted, or cut the wires of 14 cameras on a single road.

Video footage and photographs of disruptors vandalizing the cameras have been published on social media, much to the delight of those critical of the scheme.

One camera was even installed just meters from a crematorium in order to
pick up funeral-goers, a camera that was swiftly taken care of by locals.

Despite their criminal activity, the vigilantes have received political support, including from a former Conservative Party leader and cabinet minister, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who insisted he was “happy” for Londoners to fight back because “they are facing an imposition that no one wants and they have been lied to about it.”

“A lot of people in my constituency have been cementing up the cameras or putting plastic bags over them,” he said. “The actions you are seeing show how angry people are at what is being imposed on them. Sadiq Khan has gerrymandered all the information – people have had enough.”

Last November, Khan announced the extension to the scheme, which had previously been reserved for central London, to all London boroughs despite overwhelming opposition to the plan.

It is the latest in a continuous assault by Khan on motorists, following the installation of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs), extensive road-narrowing, and the excessive expansion of 20-mph zones.

When he was heckled at a public event back in March over the ULEZ roll-out, Khan suggested that those who opposed the plans were “far-right,” a remark that was met by derision and booing from the Question Time audience.

How Leftists Distract from Destructive Climate Policies

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A lesson from Canada on how the left uses insults about trivia to disract from all the damage done by their misguided policies.  The photo above comes from a Star article: Justin Trudeau’s Liberals see lowest approval rating since they formed government, poll shows.  Brief excerpt below

Ottawa, August 9, 2023–  Justin Trudeau may have shaken up the Liberals’ front bench, but a new poll suggests he remains on shaky ground with voters.

Results from a new Abacus Data survey provided exclusively to the Star suggests that if an election were held today, 37 per cent of Canadians would vote Conservative, compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals.

So how do Trudeau’s press lapdogs at the subsidized CBC respond:  Pierre Poilievre drops the glasses as part of an image revamp.  And the acid is thrown by Tristin Hopper at the National Post: Nice try pretending you’re not a poindexter’: Inside the thoughts of Poilievre’s discarded glasses.  Some excerpts of the poison:

Dear Diary: ‘Unfortunately for me, mainstream Canadian women voters apparently like
politicians who conceal their need for corrective vision appliances’

OK, these are those nice Canadians after all. They’re not dropping indictments on the Conservative or blaming him for wildfires.  Still, like journos on the extreme left everywhere, they label the Conservative as Alt-Right, dangerous and irresponsible. But what are they covering up while ignoring the deep, growing unpopularity of this regime?

Here’s a hint from that same issue of National Post: Liberal net-zero scheme heralds dark era of ever-growing government.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault speaks to media in Toronto on Aug. 10, 2023. PHOTO BY ARLYN MCADOREY / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The draft clean electricity regulations, released last week, serve as a warning that neither the provinces nor industry nor common sense will stand in the way of the federal government’s commitment to meeting the radical emissions targets agreed to in Paris in 2015. Whether the Liberals will successfully force power grids to achieve net zero by 2035 is far from certain, but one thing seems clear:

The climate agenda has put the final nail in the coffin of deregulation.
Big government is here to stay.

The draft regulations were immediately attacked by the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan as being “unconstitutional” and “unachievable.” Although there have been varying estimates of how much the transformation will cost — with Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault disingenuously claiming Canadians will save money by switching away from fossil fuels (which his carbon tax has artificially inflated in price) — there can be little question that it would be an expensive undertaking for the Prairie provinces.

Unlike British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Newfoundland, they are not endowed with the geographical features that permit an abundance of hydroelectricity. Nor do they have a legacy of nuclear power, like Ontario does. Saskatchewan currently relies on fossil fuels for more than three-quarters of its electricity supply.

Alberta also relies heavily on fossil fuels, but is considerably greener than a decade ago. The province had planned to phase out coal generation by 2030, but has managed to make the transition ahead of schedule (something that’s almost unheard of in government), with its last coal plant due to be decommissioned later this year.

Lost in all this is any discussion of fostering competitive markets to spur innovation and bring down prices, or of limiting the size and scope of government. In the 1970s and early ’80s, governments were faced with many of the same challenges as they are today: inflation was rampant, economies were stagnating and crime was a blight on many cities. This spurred a wave of deregulation in many western countries, including Canada, which opened up sectors such as telecom and air travel, driving down prices, increasing choice and reinvigorating the economy.

In this country, both Alberta and Ontario experimented with electrical deregulation, with varying degrees of success. Ontario’s competitive market opened in 2002, but was short-lived, with the government quickly succumbing to political pressure over rising prices that were largely caused by unrelated factors. Alberta also caved to pressure that resulted in numerous market interventions before prices had time to stabilize, but was largely successful at creating a competitive electrical generation market and giving consumers some choice on the retail side.

But a competitive market is antithetical to the type of overbearing control
the Trudeau Liberals are looking to exert over electrical generation.

Not only will the new clean electricity regulations dictate what type of generators can be used, preventing companies and governments from striking a balance between the environment and affordability, they represent the latest change in a constantly shifting, and increasingly murky, set of environmental regulations that will only serve to scare away investors.

Not content to let the carbon tax incentivize market players to find ways to reduce emissions, the government has also imposed industry-specific emissions caps on oil and gas, introduced clean fuel standards, banned the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and made it virtually impossible to build new energy infrastructure, all while giving tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to favoured industries to produce products demanded by governments, rather than consumers.

Ottawa’s ever-changing rules do not provide the type of stability businesses need to make long-term investments — not just in energy and electrical generation, but in other sectors of the economy, as well. This is likely one of the reasons why Canada has seen a sharp decline in gross business investment since the Liberals took office in 2015.

The contemporary push to displace competitive markets with central planning comes at a time in which clear price signals could serve an important role in the energy transition. Many Canadian households and small businesses are charged for electricity based on the time of day, with prices dropping overnight and hitting a peak in the afternoon or early evening. But those traditional time-of-use patterns are quickly changing, and governments have significant concerns about the coming influx of electric vehicles overloading the grid.

Instead of harnessing the power of competitive markets as a force for good, however, the Liberals have chosen to increase the size of centralized bureaucracies and dictate how individuals, businesses and even other levels of government conduct their affairs. It’s a strategy that’s limiting individual freedom, subverting provincial autonomy, constraining the economy and making life increasingly unaffordable.

Climate Hype Backfires on Greens

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Higgie reports Europe’s summer of climate hysteria in Spectator Australia.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

But voters continue to move against the Green tide

If the British weather were a person with bank accounts, it would by now likely find itself, like Nigel Farage, ‘de-banked’ for political incorrectness. While the BBC has gone into hysterics over the hot summer in southern Europe, further north the British weather has stubbornly refused to co-operate with the Green warming narrative. Temperatures for much of the summer have barely reached those of a winter’s day in Canberra. Much of the British media has tied itself in knots trying to explain why, if the world just had its hottest July ever, and is, in the words of UN Secretary-General Gutteres, ‘boiling’, everyone in Britain is wearing jumpers and has the heating on.

Where has UK summer gone?

As the media have pulled out all the stops to stir climate fear, Australians will recognise echoes of the ABC’s coverage of the 2019-20 bushfires – especially the silence about revelations that Europe’s recent ‘wildfires’ were fuelled by Green-tinged failures to backburn and were started in many cases by arsonists.

Sadly a watershed moment has been reached: you can no longer trust
Europe’s weather forecasts and readings.

Many of the BBC’s forecasts in mid-July for southern Europe proved wildly exaggerated. For example, on 18 July, it reported Sardinia was expected that day to see a high of 46 degrees and that ‘there are warnings that extreme heat could continue for a further 10 days’. In fact, Sardinia peaked at 40 and temperatures then fell steadily to the low-30s over the following week.

Much of the hyperbole appears to have been based on a swifty pulled by the European Space Agency (ESA), on which many media outlets rely for weather forecasts. On 13 July it issued a press release claiming that the ‘air temperature’ of Sardinia and Sicily was ‘expected’ to climb to 48 degrees, ‘potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe’. In Sicily in fact it never went above 35 degrees. Unusually, the 13 July ESA press release, updated five days later, claimed that land temperatures in the 40s and 50s had been recorded across southern Europe in the previous days. The standard measurement of temperature is that of the air, made two metres above the ground. Land temperatures will of course always be many degrees higher, as anyone who has walked barefoot on a concrete footpath in summertime Australia will know. The ESA’s 48 degree forecast of the ‘air’ temperature in southern Italy was obviously an error – in reality it was the forecast land temperature.

The forecast was never corrected, went unnoticed by most in the media
and was repeated around the world.

When the weather map went crazy in Arizona

Yet despite the unrelenting propaganda, European voters continue to defy the climate lobby’s plan to make them colder and poorer. Voters over the past year have given the Green-left a bloody nose at virtually every opportunity – in national and regional elections in Italy, Sweden, Finland, Greece and Germany. The Netherlands might join that list after elections later this year – the Farmer-Citizen Movement recently came out of nowhere against the government’s Green jihad on farming and is on course to influence policy as the country’s equal-largest party. Meanwhile in Spain, the elections in July saw a major swing to the right against the ultra-eco Socialists, even if it wasn’t enough this time to unseat them.

By contrast Britain’s left defeated the Tories at two of last month’s three by-elections – largely because grumpy Conservative voters failed to turn out. But the result which has had the most political impact is the Tories’ surprise retention of Boris Johnson’s former seat in outer London, Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Fought more or less solely on London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan’s planned expansion of the city’s ‘Ultra Low-emission Zone’ (ULEZ) – which would mean owners of older cars would be hit with green levies – it has allowed the Tories to glimpse a possible path to victory at next year’s general election.

While ULEZ is not directly related to the net-zero agenda, it has only now dawned on the Tories that while the vast majority of Britons want a cleaner environment, they oppose Green measures involving cost and/or inconvenience. A recent YouGov poll found that while net zero in principle attracted 70 per cent support, if net zero entailed ‘costs for ordinary people’, support fell to just over a quarter.

Since Uxbridge, Prime Minister Sunak has suddenly started portraying himself as ‘pro-motorist’, now opposing ULEZ-like schemes across the country and the proliferation of 20mph speed limits. He’s also suddenly approving new North Sea oil and gas development projects, while attacking Labour as eco-fanatics in bed with extremists like Just Stop Oil.

Over 40 Tory MPs and peers have told Sunak they want him to go further and to defer Boris Johnson’s ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 – a planned measure opposed by 83 per cent of Tory members, according to an opinion poll. Sunak and other members of the Tory establishment for the moment flatly reject this.

If the opinion polls don’t shift, panic could lead the Conservatives to shift more dramatically on their net-zero policies. The obvious options are to delay the looming bans on non-electric cars and gas boilers. An even bolder move would be to announce a referendum on net zero, as championed by Nigel Farage and the Daily Telegraph. That would provoke meltdown by much of the British establishment but isn’t inconceivable.

Global Warming Boils in August

Posted on by Ron Clutz

SCIENCE   Global Warming Mysteriously Spikes Every Year Between June And August, Experts Say Aug 12, 2023 · BabylonBee.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House National Climate Task Force reported today that NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious spike in global warming every year between June and August.

“We’re completely stumped,” said Bob McMahon, White House National Climate Task Force spokesman. “Our satellite data confirms global warming keeps happening in America during these same months, almost like clockwork. Even stranger, global warming seems to hit South America in different months. Bizarre.”

Mr. McMahon went on to detail evidence of a massive rise in temperature occurring every year between the months of June and August, noting that in some places temperatures even reach over 100 degrees. “This year’s global warming is shaping up to be just as hot as last year’s,” said Mr. McMahon. “We don’t know why climate change strikes during these months, but we suspect it’s all the extra carbon emissions from people using air conditioning.”

Despite the compelling evidence, some scientists still disputed Mr. McMahon’s findings. “If the globe gets so hot every August, why am I sitting here wearing a sweater?” asked climate scientist Rachel Evanson. “And why am I having my husband carry around an extra coat and scarf? Ugh, it’s freezing in here.”

At publishing time, the Climate Task Force had decided to take action by making Google Maps tell people it’s really hot outside whenever they ask for directions.

Footnote:

They could start by not fixating on the Northern Hemisphere–

 

How to Get Free and Fair US Elections

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The image above gets it right on the basics:  Eligible voters come to their voting station with valid ID and proof of residency, and paper trail exists to validate machine entry and processing.  But there are some subtleties around the edges requiring management.  For example, voter registration should be in advance of the voting process, and not on election day.  Why? Because there’s no time to check for fake ID or residency. Later on is a post on why there must be an election day deadline, beyond which votes cannot be added to the count.  But first a look at some international standards regarding elections and balloting.

A Practical Guide to Democratic Elections Best Practice from Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE).  Below is the section on Balloting.

Right:
To Universal Suffrage, To Equal Suffrage, To Secret Ballot, To Fair Elections
Which  Guarantee the Free Expression of the Will of the People

Balloting  Best Practices:

• Voting procedures must be understandable so that voters are able to vote without difficulty

• Voting should take place in a polling station; however, other means of voting are permissible for voters who are physically unable to attend a polling station, but only where there are safeguards in place to prevent fraudulent voting

• Observers and representatives of candidates and political parties must be permitted to observe the delivery of election materials, preparation of the polling place, voting, and counting of ballots

• Members of the military should vote in the place of their permanent residency, or in a polling station near their duty station

• Voting must be in person, by secret ballot

• Voters must present adequate identification information and sign register in order to vote

• Only the voter may mark a ballot, except that a voter who requires assistance for physical reasons may be assisted by another voter who is not a member of the election administration or an observer

• Ballots and voting materials must be securely maintained before, during, and for a sufficient period of time after an election

• The entire counting process must be conducted in a transparent manner in the presence of observers and representatives of candidates, political parties, and the media

• There must be procedures for, in the presence of observers, independent verification of all elements of the counting and tabulation

• All results of voting, tabulations, and protocols must be publicly posted at the polling station and copies given to representatives of observers, and transmitted to higher levels of election commissions in a transparent manner

• Intermediate tabulations and protocols must be publicly posted at intermediate election commissions and copies given to representatives of observers

• All final voting results must be published in media as soon as possible after elections in such a manner that voters are able to check results at their polling places

• Legal measures must be in place to deter electoral fraud in the voting, counting, and tabulation processes

Navarro Report On the 2020 US Presidential Election

There is extensive evidence that the US 2020 election did not respect the above best practices.  The 2021 Navarro Report (link in red above) provides the details summarized in this table:

The detailed report includes many documented events, including evidence under the heading Outright Voter Fraud:

Fake Ballot Manufacturing and Destruction of Legally Cast Real Ballots

Fake ballot manufacturing involves the fraudulent production of ballots on behalf of a candidate; and one of the most disturbing examples of possible fake ballot manufacturing involves a truck driver who has alleged in a sworn affidavit that he picked up large crates of ballots in New York and delivered them to a polling location in Pennsylvania.  There may be well over 100,000 ballots involved, enough fake ballots alone to have swung the election to Biden in the Keystone State.

Likewise in Pennsylvania, there is both a Declaration and a photo that suggests a poll worker used an unsecured USB flash drive to dump an unusually large cache of votes onto vote tabulation machines. The resultant tabulations did not correlate with the mail-in ballots scanned into the machines.

Arguably the most flagrant example of possible fake ballot manufacturing on behalf of Joe Biden may have occurred at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The possible perpetrators were caught in flagrante delicto on surveillance video. In one version of this story, poll watchers and observers as well as the media were asked to leave in the middle of the night after a suspicious water leak. Once the room was cleared, several election officials pulled out large boxes of ballots from underneath a draped table. They then proceeded to tabulate a quantity of fake manufactured ballots estimated to be in the range of tens of thousands

Finally, as an example of the possible destruction of legally cast real ballots there is this allegation from a court case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona: Plaintiffs claim that over 75,000 absentee ballots were reported as unreturned when they were actually returned. These absentee ballots were then either lost or destroyed (consistent with allegations of Trump ballot destruction) and/or were replaced with blank ballots filled out by election workers or other third parties.

And so on, and so on.  All of these worst practices were employed with impact because of a fundamental illegality that disqualifies any and all elections when it occurs.  Jonathan Gault explains the problem in his American Thinker article Beware the ‘Long Count’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Though barely campaigning, unable to speak, and drawing massive crowds, measured in dozens, waving to nobody, on the rare occasions when he was able to muster the energy to leave his basement, Joe Biden remarkably received the most votes of any candidate in US history. However, his historic popularity notwithstanding, his debatable victory nevertheless still required eking out miraculously close races in the hyper-partisan Democrat strongholds of Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, each of which employed the Long Count.

The Long Count is defined as counting votes well past election day.

Long Counts took place in these cities (and others) because, said the Democrats, “every vote must be counted,” even though, in many jurisdictions, early voting was available for months prior to election day on November 3, 2020.

Even with modern technology, for some reason, 21st-century Americans are unable to count votes, even over a period of two months, so we now also count votes well past election day. Therein lies the rub… However, considering that we are dealing with modern-day Bolsheviks, for whom, in their quest for unbridled power, the end justifies the means, there may still be hope.

There are numerous explanations rationalizing the leftist zeal for mail-in voting. One is most certainly to capture the dead vote. It is common knowledge that, once deceased, even lifelong Republicans flip to Democrat upon entering the grave. Another is to capture the “almost dead” vote. Those in end-of-life care are certainly entitled to vote, but they mustn’t be included if no longer lucid (as, for example, our titular head of state).

Yet another is to “enfranchise the disenfranchised,” postulating that minorities who are able to acquire driver’s licenses, get to work, catch flights, make doctor’s appointments, etc., are somehow incapable of figuring out how to vote. More useful is harvesting as many unclaimed mail-in ballots as possible. These tend to go Democrat because the “bag men” executing the fraud understand that their “elected” representatives will not enforce voter fraud laws against the co-conspirators who keep them in power.

The aforementioned notwithstanding, the real reason for mail-in voting enthusiasm is that it creates chaos, and as the events of the past four years have shown, chaos is the Bolshevik goal, and the perception of chaos is all that is needed.

My goodness! How can all that paper possibly be counted by election day? If “every vote must be counted,” the final tally must extend long after the election has concluded until ballots cease to arrive. Two weeks, six weeks, “whatever it takes.”

This drive for chaos also explains why leftists despise in-person voting. When voting in person, the votes are tallied in real-time, the polls close at the pre-appointed time, and the tallies are certified by representatives from each party and transmitted to “election central” before the end of election day. There is no Long Count. And therefore, the “bogey” cannot be identified.

The bogey is the second part of the key to voter fraud, as it represents
the vote differential between the Republican candidate and the Democrat
at the time the in-person polls close.

Using the Long Count, poll closure merely serves to determine the bogey. Once determined, the counting then continues indefinitely until enough ballots are “received” (really created, retrieved, or recounted) in order to flip the result. This explains what happened in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix twice (once in 2020, during the Presidential election, and again in 2022, in the Gubernatorial election, carried out both times under the aegis of Arizona “Governor” Katie Hobbs, who, as Arizona attorney general, carried out the fraud on her own behalf after testing it out in the 2020 Presidential election).

Pennsylvania “Governor” and former Attorney General Josh Shapiro did the same after infamously tweeting in 2020 that (and I paraphrase) “there was no way that Trump could win Pennsylvania.” One wonders how the person in charge of conducting the election could know that “fact” before conducting the election. Now you know why Attorneys General have a high success rate when running for Governor.

If the Long Count is the real election integrity issue,
what can be done about it?

In 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Foster v. Love that, as one article carefully explains, “Elections Undecided by Midnight are Void & Preempted by Federal Law.” The Court’s clear ruling must be understood to nullify long counts. At the very least, the issue must be litigated, adjudicated, confirmed, and broadly publicized before the 2024 Election to ensure that the Federal Election Commission will void election results in any jurisdiction that engages in counting past election day, ensuring that it doesn’t again occur.

Only in that way can we be certain that our next election will be an honest one. We are onto them (“Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…” ), and therefore a “shot across the bow” is required to act as a deterrent so that Democrats don’t attempt a reprise of 2020’s and 2022’s behavior in the upcoming election. We now understand very well what is happening.

I believe that President Trump had such a commanding lead at midnight on November 3, 2020, that, had the polls closed, and counting ended at 11:59:59 pm that evening, as per Foster v Love, with no bogeys calculated nor counted toward, he would have won. And if he had won, our society, country, and, indeed, the world would right now be far safer, happier, and better places for all of mankind, and most certainly Americans.

Footnote Regarding Candidates in a Free Election

From OSCE Best Election Practices:

Candidates and Political Parties and Campaigning Best Practices

• All candidates and political parties must be treated equally before the law and on a non-discriminatory basis

• Candidates must be permitted to stand individually or as representatives of political parties

• All candidates and political parties must be provided sufficient access to media in order for voters to become adequately informed of views, programs, and opinions of the electoral contestants

• The formula for allocating media access among candidates and political parties must be fair, understandable, and capable of objective application

• Coverage by state supported or sponsored media must be neutral, unbiased, and on non-discriminatory basis

• No unreasonable limitations may be placed on the right to freedom of speech or expression

• No unreasonable limitations may be placed on the right to freedom of assembly

• No unreasonable limitations may be placed on the right to freedom of association

• All candidates, political parties, supporters, and voters must be treated on a non-discriminatory basis