Sustainable Conventional Energy: the New Tautology

Uncategorized 20 Comments

There was a time not that long ago where the expression “sustainable conventional energy” was considered an oxymoron.
I wonder, does hundreds of years of conventional energy in abundance change it to a tautology?

“The message is quite clear, you can produce gas hydrates using conventional techniques,” says Scott Dallimore, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the project in the Mackenzie Delta. Over two winters the researchers drilled down more than a kilometre into a 150-metre-thick layer on the edge of the Beaufort Sea at Mallik — the most concentrated known deposit of the frozen fuel in the world.

A Government Agency with Nothing To Do

Baiting the Right 31 Comments

Your tax dollars “at work”:

A federal agency created by the Conservative government to mediate complaints about Canadian mining operations abroad has spent more than $1.1 million in the past two years, but has yet to mediate anything.
At the same time, the agency — the Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor — has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel, entertainment, training, meetings, reports and other expenses, documents obtained by CBC News show. Renovations to a federal government office to accommodate the agency’s three employees alone cost Canadian taxpayers $189,000.

Are Canadians Really a Free People?

Baiting The Left 38 Comments

In a fascinating new column, George Jonas ponders why Canada is exporting democracy but importing tyranny.

In the narcosis of “progress,” the liberal state clings to its dogmas, sacrileges, holy things and taboos. It guards them as jealously and enforces them as rigidly as the Taliban guards and enforces its version of Islam. Maybe it doesn’t enforce them as cruelly — maybe.
Exaggeration? You decide. In the year 1300, a period we call the Dark Ages, a pig was tried for blasphemy in France. In the year 2000, 200 years into the Age of Enlightenment, on the threshold of the 21st century, in the United States of America, the authorities charged a six-year-old boy with sexual harassment for kissing a six-year-old girl.

Those Moderate Muslims!

Religion Of Submission 27 Comments

They don’t hate our “freedoms”. They hate our guts.

The usual Sunday-Morning-talk-show explanation for this is that Pakistan is hedging its strategic bets: Pakistani military leaders doubt the United States military can tame Afghanistan before American combat forces’ scheduled exit in 2013. And rather than see the country degenerate into absolute chaos (as occurred in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Soviet departure), Pakistani military leaders want to be in position to turn Afghanistan into a semi-orderly Pashtun-dominated client state that provides Islamabad with “strategic depth” against India. And the only way for them to do this is to co-opt the Taliban.
This elaborate Great Game theorizing all makes sense. But there is another, simpler explanation: Most ordinary Pakistanis loathe America — indeed, not only America, but the whole of the non-Muslim world — and are only too happy to support jihad against the NATO forces next door in Afghanistan.

h/t Kevin

Featured Comment

Featured Comment 31 Comments

Long time reader “Shaken”, via email;

As our journalists continue to cast themselves under a self-made asteroid, hundreds of thousands of small investors find themselves on a ledge, wondering which version of The Truth is the one that will inform their retirement or educational fund management decisions. Reporting in the mainstream financial press of late has been at best like a ride on the vomit comet: Greece soon to default; ECB funds a bailout; oops not quite – actually China is our white knight; not so fast – the Greeks cannot agree to terms… On and on it goes.
Can anyone be surprised then when the Al Gore’s invention glows red hot with rumor and speculation as a worried public experiences daily cognitive disconnects while trying to reconcile what their lying eyes see and or read from the professional financial journalists?
Is it any wonder, then, that in such a climate of fear, deliberate disinformation, misdirection, obfuscation and even plain lying that blog posts such as this one become viral within hours of publication?
When one reads through this blog post, pieces seem to fall into place, and otherwise paradoxical events and statements begin to form into a cohesive and logical pattern. Believability ensues. Caring relationships ensure rapid dissemination.
Millions of people around the globe stand ready to do what our professional journalists have forgotten to do, or have otherwise been convinced not to do: be one of us looking out for each other.
Perhaps the blog post to which this note refers is merely the speculation if an intelligent and well meaning individual that has been swept up in the milieu of anxiety which grips us all ever tighter each day, but that us beside the point. The point is, this post went viral as though cycled in a Swiss particle accelerator, evidencing the appetite of the public for reliable information, an appetite no longer satisfied by journalists.
The veracity of the rumor will soon be established or dismissed. Reading it through, one cannot but help sense that there may just be a tinge of truth to the rumor, especially as it has a large degree of congruence with the latest musings at established and credible blogs such as Mish’s and Zerohedge.
If this rumor turns out to be true, and the MSM has once more been scooped by the humble blogosphere, it will be perhaps the nearest of the near misses – the biggest story in the lives of many today, unreported, either by malfeasance, or incompetence. Or both.

Related – Among European nations, debt-ridden Greece is most exposed to Iranian oil disruption.

Does Justin Trudeau’s Canada Tolerate Mockery?

You Might Be A Liberal 53 Comments

Lorrie Goldstein is at his very best with this hilarious piece about Canada’s Prince of Self, Justin Trudeau.

… Sometimes I think my mouth isn’t big enough for my brain, sort of like the Brain in Pinky and the Brain.
This is a burden I, Justin Trudeau, must bear — for the sake of the starving children of Africa, who look up to me — so that I can make life better for everyone … who is not Justin Trudeau. (That’s me.) …

h/t ‘batb’
Related: The first hour of Roy Green’s show today was devoted entirely to the Lil’ Pony’s outburst. There were some absolutely hilarious callers and one particularly annoying Leftist. You can listen to it here, beginning at 6:00.

Grandpa … What are Those Towers?

Uncategorized 46 Comments

“They are eco-ruins, Sarah.”
“What’s an eco-ruin Grandpa?”
Well my little darling, let me tell you a story:

I don’t think I’ll mind Eco-ruins. It will be fun to point them out on hikes with kids and explain what it was like back in the late 1900’s. “The best part kids, is that they thought they were smarter than everyone else. They would get so mad if anyone said different. Look at their big schemes now. Every time you pay the government, just remember that its to pay for these rusting monuments.”

So, what did you learn in school today, Billy?

Uncategorized 122 Comments

“Well, mommy, I learned that Stephen Harper is a…”

Two of Canada’s largest unions paid to bus hundreds of school kids to Parliament Hill on Tuesday to rally against what they call government inaction on First Nations education.
Officials with the Public Service Alliance of Canada and Canadian Union of Public Employees denied the elementary school students were enlisted as props in the unions’ ongoing public battle against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.

Lisa Howell, a teacher at Pierre Elliot Trudeau School, deadpanned –

“I don’t feel like we’re advancing an agenda.”

Of course not. Don Moran, a senior officer with CUPE:

“We sponsored the bus to bring them…CUPE and PSAC. We kind of had a joint venture to bring them down so that all the voices could be heard here…I think (the kids) are speaking from their hearts. I don’t think there’s any brainwashing.”

h/t ET

Destroying Memorials

Uncategorized 43 Comments

When you elected the Conservative Party of Canada, I bet you didn’t expect them to be destroying memorials in Quebec. Isn’t that a crime?

Jeff Larivee, whose wife was killed in the 1989 Montreal massacre, is a spokesman for the Coalition for Gun Control. He said he and many other Quebecers feel outrage at the Harper government’s determination to dismantle laws that, for many, serve as a memorial.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation