Excellent article in the National Post from June 20, 2007: Read the Sunspots (Google cache... my apologies if the link doesn't work later on!)

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change."

It's part of a series of articles about Global Warming "Deniers".

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

From the NY Times: From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

Some scientists argue that a number of central points in Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” are exaggerated and erroneous.

What I like best about this article is the credibility of the scientists who are doubting "the saviour."

Is it just me... or is David Suzuki really the twit he appears to be? Check out "David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton".

Last Thursday (Feb 15, 2007), environmentalist guru David Suzuki stormed out of a Toronto AM640 radio interview with host John Oakley because Oakley dared to suggest that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki insisted it was.

More articles on the "great debate":

"Global warming charlatan"

"Hey Doc, what you would you do for the environment?"

Here's a great Al Gore rebuttal page that (although I'm not a scientist) seems to reference enough reliable sources to be taken seriously: "Gorey Truths - 25 inconvenient truths for Al Gore".

Check out "Climate Chaos? Don't believe it" by Christopher Monckton:

"...how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect."

From a new satirical article in The Onion ("Al Gore Caught Warming Globe To Increase Box Office Profits"):

Former vice president Al Gore takes a flamethrower to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica to boost weekend ticket sales for An Inconvenient Truth.

I don't usually post an entire article directly from the source, but this article will eventually disappear from the Globe & Mail, and I wanted to permanently immortalize it. This article generated lots of nasty hate letters from the public, but I love it. Here's "Climate police should chill" (Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail, Dec. 9, 2006):

Stop the ark, I want to get off. Al Gore was Oprah's guest this week, and she sweetly referred to him as our "Noah" of global warming.

Far from Oprahland, on the other planet, matters aren't quite as congenial. Whatever the temperature of the Earth, the temperature of the rhetoric about the temperature of the Earth is rising.

With ever more frequency, we meet the phrase "global warming denier." This is the phrase of choice now applied to scientist or layperson who harbours some hesitation on aspects of global warming, who offers a variant theory of its causation, who questions the mix of causes or the full accuracy of the many "models" on which the projection of global warming effects are built. Ad hominem attacks on "skeptics" -- they are the subsidized minions of "big oil" -- are commonplace.

Global warming deniers. Deniers is the loaded term. How did we get from climate modelling to the Holocaust?

We don't computer-model the Holocaust, and it isn't a theory. It is base and vile to deploy the language of ostracism and vilification, rightly turned against bigots and anti-Semites who do deny the Holocaust, and turn all its horrible condemnatory force toward people who are questioning the rarefied complexities of the pioneer sciences of global warming.

On the outskirts of the debate (at least I hope these are the outskirts), we have this gem of warning for those who "deny" global warming: "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full, worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards ['the deniers'] -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."

The tone is insolent and ignorant, and, alas, the rhetoric is not accidental. It is a taste of the attempt to foreclose debate.

Two U.S. senators, just nodding off into the sleep of reason, recently fired off a letter to Exxon Mobil "requesting" it halt all funding and support to groups or individuals who (in the senators' opinion, mark) "contribute . . . to the global climate denial myth." It goes on with the request that Exxon "repudiate its climate change denial campaign." Britain's Royal Society had earlier, using the same language of "denial," sent out a similar minatory letter.

Slam Exxon all you want, but is it really necessary, or even tasteful, to attempt a grand smear-by-association by invoking the horrific associations of Holocaust denial when trying to slap down an opposing perspective? The discussion of global warming has about it far too much of angry righteousness, the tone of the exasperated evangelist in full fury against those who choose "not to believe." Altogether too much of the condescending vanity and ego of those who know they are saving the Earth.

What is the nature of a scientific debate that places dissenters from some aspects of a theory dealing with a future projection in the rhetorically vicious category of those, who against mountains of records and documentary proof, are "deniers" of the reality of a historical genocide?

The current theory of global warming has a veritable global industry of support and propagation. Its proponents are calling for massive and swift intervention in most of the world's economies, with concomitant political and social implications on a scale that is difficult to imagine.

Before those commitments are made, before the route to a solution is hammered in steel, it is surely the moment for the most diligent and neutral assessment of all the science, and the policy projections flowing from that science. It is emphatically time for the most scrupulous and disinterested inquiry to determine the solid core of what is really known about the subject, separated from the great clouds of speculation, advocacy, geopolitics and calculated alarmism that overhang and shadow that core.

And what is the likely characterization of someone who in the very spirit of science calls for disinterested analysis and scrupulous measurement of what, actually, we really do know? Why, "climate change denier," of course.

I know -- and it doesn't require a science textbook to learn it -- that the first sign of a weak argument is the attempt to shut down any argument. Extreme rhetoric is the front line in the defence of frail logic. I also know there is no science of the future: We may decorate reports with graphs and charts, and conjure pages of the most exquisite and arcane equations, but the very best we can offer on climate a hundred years from now is a series of sophisticated and ever-ramifying probabilities that are themselves subject to a myriad of unforeseeable contingencies.

Who will undertake the difficult task of sifting the real science from the alarmist advocacy, who will draw the boundaries between climate activism and cold analysis, who will present a statement of the case, as close as reason and science today can make it, to what we actually know and can reasonably project on the basis of what we know?

What will the Conservatives be able to accomplish as a minority government? Have a look at the National Post's "Stephen Harper's agenda":

Mr. Harper's job in the months ahead will not be an easy one. Finding support from either the Liberal Official Opposition or the other opposition parties will doubtless prove frustrating. Yet the Conservatives have presented a popular and lucid agenda, one not so much based on ideology as on common sense. And as such it may prove surprisingly resistant to politicking.

An interesting post in a discussion forum on globeandmail.com:

A. Stewart from Brockville, Canada writes:

My wife teaches grade 6.She presented her class with 6 platforms and three columns, A B & C.In each column was what each party stated on each of the platforms. They were mixed up, of course and she asked them to list whether they thought A was Liberal, Conservative or NDP and the same for B & C. She then asked them which policy they liked best. I thought this was a good lesson for the class to discuss.After the discussion, the class voted. The Conservatives won with 17 votes, NDP had 6, Liberals had 1 and Green had 5 and 1 ballot was spoiled. She did not do anything to try and influence which way they voted. This goes to show you that when you know what you are doing, the Conservatives were the logical choice. I wish more people could have a teacher like my wife.

It's now just 2 hours 40 minutes till the Canadian election results start coming in... I'm pumped! Just in case a co-worker complains that the Liberals really were just a bunch of misunderstood fellows, lay them flat with this article from the Toronto Sun: "218 reasons NOT to vote for the Liberals".

My favourite part is the "Where Canada Stands Now" portion of the list:

211 Economy: 12th among industrialized nations, according to Conference Board of Canada (down from 3rd in 2003).

212 Competitiveness: 14th, according to World Economic Forum (down from 4th in 1997).

213 Health care: 30th in efficiency, according to World Health Organization.

214 Ethics: 14th, says Transparency International, due to "marked increase" in corruption (down from 5th).

215 Military spending: 153rd out of 192 countries, based on percentage of GDP; 14th in per-capita spending.

216 Peacekeeping: 36th, according to UN.

217 Personal income tax burden: Highest in G-8, says OECD.

218 Marginal tax rates: Second only to China, says C.D. Howe Institute.

The best SEO article yet from guru Jill Whalen! Have a look at the article titled "No Quick Fixes with Search Engine Optimization" in Issue 156 of her newsletter.

My favourite news site "Slate" has just posted their 10 most popular articles of 2005.

The mid-December issue of the High Rankings Advisor had a great list of their top articles for 2005.

Trivia:

• In Einstein's famous 1905 paper, he didn't actually write E=mc². He wrote the equivalent: m=E/c².
  
• In 1901, the entire Indian subcontinent, with a population totalling 300 million, was administered by a British ruling caste which consisted of no more than 1,000 men.
  
• From 1948 to 1963, Porsche manufactured more than 150,000 tractors.

The subject of Intelligent Design fascinates me.

1. I don't believe in creationism.
2. I do believe in God - the Jewish version, anyways :)
3. I like the idea of Intelligent Design being a philosophy that appeals to the intuition rather than the intellect.
4. Should it be taught in schools? Perhaps as a talking point, rather than a doctrine.

I encourage you look at this article: Famous Atheist Now Believes In God

"A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

"At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."

"Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life."

Several years ago I read an article in a magazine about a supposed 1000-year time gap, the "dark ages." The idea is that we're actually in the year 1005 (approximately) because historians have taken ancient documents too literally, leaving us with a poor chronology of the last 2000 (or is it 1000?) years.

It would all seem to be a bunch of hooey if it wasn't for Gary "Chess Champ" Kasparov backing the idea! For more information see this article written by Gary Kasparov, and the wikipedia article about New Chronology.

OK! I admit it... I'm a right-wing neo-con. My favourite Canadian news reporter is Margaret Wente, and my new fav rave in the US is Christopher Hitchens. Recently Margaret has been writing about realistically helping out the world's worst suffering and there's a great article that Christopher wrote about military intervention to fight evil-do'ers.

I've just introduced categories to my Links page -- the list was getting large and confusing! Interesting note: I had thought about allowing multiple categories for a link, but thought that having repeated links and link descriptors might annoy Google.

I don't necessarily believe in their mission, but I think the site design is great: The Brights. A clean, easy-to-expand site design.

There are two new Xaraya-based sites coming up: Noble Works Marketing Solutions and Kerry Cooper Geologist. Both are in the process of having the clients put in the content. With CMS, I can create the site structure, graphics, and layout, and then hand the project over to the client for what they know best: what they want for content. Why pay me $50 per hour to type up your content, when you can do it yourself?