…what an erudite, literary bunch we Canadians are.” Do read Terry Glavin via the link; quagmires may not be all they’re quacked up to be.

Who’s there?
Iguana.
Iguana who?
Iguana need a hardhat.

But it’s tofu-based, cruelty free gravy!

[The Humane Society of the United States] collected over $86 million in contributions, and spent more than $24 million on fundraising, including $4 million on professional fundraisers. Think about it: 28 cents of every dollar contributed to HSUS goes back out the door to raise more money. HSUS even paid a single “lockbox” company more than $4.2 million to count and process its cash hauls. We won’t comment on that company’s curious “ALF” initials (for Arizona Lockbox & Fulfillment).
And with all this cash flying around, it’s no surprise that 41 HSUS employees made at least $100,000 last year. All told, HSUS paid out over $30.9 million in salaries, wages, and other employee compensation.

Meanwhile…

HSUS gave only a little more than $450,000—that’s just half of one percent of its total budget—in grants to organizations providing hands-on care to dogs and cats. That’s less than 11 percent of what it paid “ALF” (see above) just to count its money.

Continue reading →

And they managed without felling a single tree!

h/t EBD

Via WUWT;

In France, if at least 60 Deputies of the House and 60 Senators appeal to the Constitutional Council, it has the power to pronounce on the constitutionality of a proposed law – in the present case, the 2010 national budget of France, which contained enabling provisions (loi deferee) for a carbon levy. The Council found that these enabling provisions were unconstitutional on two grounds: that the exemptions contained within the provisions for a carbon levy vitiated the primary declared purpose of the levy, to combat carbon emissions and hence “global warming”; and that the exemptions would cause the levy to fall disproportionately on gasoline and heating oils and not on other carbon emissions, thereby breaching the principle that taxation should be evenly and fairly borne.

“Oops! Not quite…”

Rigzone;

Royal Dutch Shell has publicly announced it will slash 5,000 jobs by year end–including “hundreds” in Houston–as part of a sweeping reorganization new CEO Peter Voser said is needed to make the company more competitive.
But under a separate program, the European oil giant has been quietly transferring additional office jobs from Houston and elsewhere to India and the Philippines to reduce costs, according to internal Shell documents obtained by the Chronicle and a person familiar with the plan.
The “migration” programs affect employees in finance and other support functions, which are being consolidated in what the oil company calls “shared service centers” in low-cost countries to fit the new company structure.

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
h/t Adrian

Just look out your limo window;

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Environmental Responsibilities of the Secretariat
The secretariat is developing a policy aimed at making its offices and use of transport environmentally sustainable. The policy, which will cover a broad range of aspects of ‘sustainability at work’, is being developed in cooperation with other United Nations organizations and is expected to be implemented when the secretariat moves to the new United Nations campus here in Bonn.
Meanwhile, the secretariat has undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of its activities. These initiatives have included efforts to reduce paper usage, actions to improve energy-use efficiency, favouring of train travel for short distances, and some ‘greening’ of procurement.
Efforts have been made to determine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the UNFCCC process. To this end, the GHG emissions inventory for the following bienniums have been prepared:
* (PDF) 2004-2005 GHG inventory
* 2006 GHG inventory to be posted soon

Pass the caviar.
h/t Shaken

Saskatoon Star Phoenix – June 15, 2006

Following is the opinion of the writer, a geography professor at the University of Saskatchewan and director of the centre for hydrology. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change.
Streams, sloughs and wetlands may not be sustainable under climate change, and the slightly milder winters anticipated under global warming may dry out the Prairies.
[…]
On June 5, the United Nations Environment Programme announced a study that shows the world’s desert and arid regions are at risk of becoming even more parched. Research at the University of Saskatchewan supports this, showing the Canadian Prairies could be drying out due to more moderate winters.

With the mercury dropping below -30C in recent days, I’ve been staying close to home. It’s as good a time as any to review my own skepticism about climate change, to open my eyes to the planet around me in the context of that warning written over three years ago.
What I found is indeed, sobering.
Along Hwy 7 between Delisle and the village of Vanscoy is a very typical prairie slough. Its proximity to the highway permits even the casual observer to witness first hand the effects that runaway climate change is bringing to the Canadian prairies.

For nearly as long as I’ve lived here, the area pictured above has been home to a rich diversity of waterfowl. Just three years ago the water rose so high that a Canada goose chose the shoulder of the highway for her nesting site. Note also that the plants in this photo include reeds and other wetland species.

The plant debris caught on the barbed wire is incontrovertible evidence of just how high the water in this prairie wetland rose.

These fence posts are approximately 4′ in height, the residue indicating that the water was at least 3 feet deep, even at this location near the edge.

Today it’s all but dry. There will be no ducks bobbing here next spring, no buttercup goslings to delight the motoring public.

Just two short years ago, life-giving water covered this spot, from the edges of the highway where I stood, all the way to the trees on the far side. Food for thought…

Fair and balanced: In the interests of “not believing your own lying eyes” a guy in a boat says all of this new ice is rotten.
PS – Oh look! The Port of Churchill is stil open! For all the good it’s going to do them.

The stuff they never tell you at the CBC…

Rachid Liass Gharbi. In the major (blog) media, good on Norman.

More at Ed Driscoll’s.

This FP column by Ross McKitrick leaves only one question unanswered…

The expert reports upheld all of our criticisms of the Mann Hockey Stick, both of the mathematics and of its reliance on flawed bristlecone pine data. One of the panels, however, argued that while the Mann Hockey Stick itself was flawed, a series of other studies published since 1998 had similar shapes, thus providing support for the view that the late 20th century is unusually warm. The IPCC also made this argument in its 2007 report. But the second expert panel, led by statistician Edward Wegman, pointed out that the other studies are not independent. They are written by the same small circle of authors, only the names are in different orders, and they reuse the same few data climate proxy series over and over.

Why wasn’t it on the front page?

“It’s all unravelling now.”

Bookmark this handy reference for the next time someone accuses those dirty “skeptics” of being in the pay of Big Oil (pdf). More here.
Speaking of which … still waiting for that cheque you promised, Mr. Exxon.

And how he may, or may not, relate to pre-traumatic stress disorder.

Why Copenhagen Will Achieve Nothing
(more in the comments).
*Andrew Sandlin

Inside the Humane Society of the United States;

Last night in Los Angeles, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) president Wayne Pacelle showed why he’s been able to turn a group that sounds as if it’s all about protecting puppies and kittens into an animal-rights lobbying force with talons. He’s looking to sink those talons into people who have the audacity to eat or sell meat, wear leather, go to circuses, or enjoy hunting and fishing – in other words, 99 percent of America.
In front of a hand-picked crowd of HSUS supporters who attended last night’s “town hall meeting” at the Ebell of Los Angeles, Pacelle rallied the troops with a fight song:
“We have to create a clamor for change … You can get further with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.”
He attributed the latter quote to notorious gangster Al Capone, who seems like an odd inspiration for a supposedly peaceful movement. But animal-rights extremists are far from peaceful. One of Pacelle’s own staffers, Josh Balk, told the HSUS-sponsored “Taking Action For Animals” that “there are very few instances that companies just refuse to move with a friendly conversation … The animals can’t wait for people to come to a revelation themselves. Sometimes it does take force.”
HSUS sounds more and more like PETA and the terrorist Animal Liberation Front every day.
It’s been well documented that HSUS spends only a tiny fraction – less than four percent – of its budget directly funding animal shelters. If you’re wondering how it spends the other roughly $100 million in its budget every year, you might consider the cost of renting out the posh Wilshire Ebell Theatre, providing the supporters-only crowd with a catered coffee service, and hiring four burly security guards to keep out the riff-raff.
Sorry, Wayne. We got in anyway.

“Although they can operate at zero fuel costs, windmills are expensive to build — about as expensive as nuclear — and only last about 15-20 years, as opposed to 60 years or more for current reactors.”

Quick, someone call the Sierra Club!

h/t Gerald