The World Is Being Run By Crazy People

Terrorism 38 Comments

The Quebec HRC has just awarded a pilot by the name of Javed Latif $319,000 in compensation for racial discrimination by Bombardier when it refused to allow him to take pilot training at one of their facilities… [and has] ordered Bombardier to “stop applying or considering the standards or decisions of American authorities in terms of ‘national security’”.

h/t Hebbert

MACRO-CANADA: We Stand On Guard For Thee …

Baiting the Right 21 Comments

Via Moneytalks; (PDF)

Canadians should be … “standing on guard” … as the currency pushes for a violation of “parity” to the US Dollar, which, in turn, has put downward pressure on Exports relative to Imports, causing the Current Account Balance to collapse into a deepening deficit … in synch with a tightening in monetary conditions and an intensifying erosion in the core of the Canadian labor market. Canadians should be on guard, for more macro-market turbulence.
Indeed, as noted in the chart below, Canada’s Current Account Balance plunged to its DEEPEST DEFICIT EVER during the 3Q.

More Moneytalks.
Lots of charts. Most of them ugly.
Update: Here’s a highly related story.

The World Is Being Run By People With Heated Garages

Gopher News 119 Comments

Otherwise known as “overpaid bureaucrats”.

Bob Klassen was issued the $60 ticket after temperatures took a dip. He says he’s a law-abiding citizen, but is forced to keep a car on the street because his driveway isn’t big enough. And when temperatures drop, he has to plug his car in or he has to jump it every day.
“The bylaw is written in such a way that there’s no actual way to run a cord to the street,” Klassen says. “I’m stuck, I’m at a loss. I have no idea where to go or what to do.”

There’s a petition here, but Regina residents are more likely get action by yelling at their city councillors – and not about cords. If that’s all they can find to do, then Regina has too many city employees.
Update. In response to some of the commentors…

Y2Kyoto: If You Don’t Believe In Global Warming

Roadkill 19 Comments

Just look out Phil Jones’ window.
Or into Hansen’s data!

(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sens. David Vitter and John Barrasso today introduced S. 4015, the Public Access to Historical Records Act, which would dramatically improve the transparency and accuracy of NASA’s historical records and guarantee public access to the data.
“Recent incidents, such as the investigation showing that the Obama administration manipulated data to justify the drilling moratorium, have raised concerns that some scientists and government agencies are using misleading data to support their favored viewpoints,” said Vitter. “This bill would open NASA’s temperature records to public scrutiny and establish an objective set of data to ensure that influential climate research is protected from political agendas.”
“Each year, Americans are forced to spend billions of their hard-earned dollars to support climate change research. Since this administration promised to be the most open administration in history, it should immediately share NASA’s temperature data with the American public,” said Barrasso. “There are too many questions regarding temperature models not to allow all Americans access to this data. This legislation will ensure that our nation has the most accurate and transparent historic temperature record in the world.”

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 59 Comments

The musical accompaniments to the tips thread usually feature established artists. Even the relatively unknown ones have been typically slogging away for years in the background. Tonight, in the first of four quinquennial posts featuring the potential stars of tomorrow, we present young Kate Osmond Devereaux singing Little Spanish Town.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

The Sound Of Settled Science

climategate2 16 Comments

From the Climategate archives…

One of the most disturbing things we learned from Climategate is that academic peer-review can be startlingly superficial. Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (the source of the Climategate e-mails), told a UK parliamentary committee in March that, in all his years of publishing papers in reputable journals such as Nature and Science, no one has ever asked to examine his raw data or his computer code.

… to a new research tool.

Canadian blogger Hilary Ostrov and Australian computer programmer Peter B. have given the climate change world a gift this week. Since March they’ve been hyperlinking and annotating the 3,000-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in 2007. The result is AccessIPCC.com.
Those of us who’ve been taking a close look at the 2007 report (also known as AR4) have identified numerous concerns. Now we have a tool to analyze it more comprehensively than ever before.
The more than 18,000 references on which the IPCC builds its case have been coded via an automated process. This means one can now visually scan a chapter and see which citations are of potential concern.

Check it out, and then send the link to your friendly provincial environment minister.

“This Paper Should Not Have Been Published”

Climate Cult 20 Comments

The sound of NASA Science…

“We cannot indiscriminately wade into a media forum for debate at this time,” declared senior author Ronald Oremland of the U.S. Geological Survey. “If we are wrong, then other scientists should be motivated to reproduce our findings. If we are right (and I am strongly convinced that we are) our competitors will agree and help to advance our understanding of this phenomenon. I am eager for them to do so.”
“Any discourse will have to be peer-reviewed in the same manner as our paper was, and go through a vetting process so that all discussion is properly moderated,” wrote Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. “The items you are presenting do not represent the proper way to engage in a scientific discourse and we will not respond in this manner.”
While Redfield considers Wolfe-Simon’s research “flim-flam,” she think it’s fine for the NASA scientists to hold off responding to their critics. She is working on a formal letter to Science detailing her objections. But Jonathan Eisen of UC-Davis doesn’t let the scientists off so easily. “If they say they will not address the responses except in journals, that is absurd,” he said. “They carried out science by press release and press conference. Whether they were right or not in their claims, they are now hypocritical if they say that the only response should be in the scientific literature.”

More at RRResearch;

Here’s a detailed review of the new paper from NASA claiming to have isolated a bacterium that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus on its macromolecules and metabolites. (Wolfe-Simon et al. 2010, A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus.) NASA’s shameful analysis of the alleged bacteria in the Mars meteorite made me very suspicious of their microbiology, an attitude that’s only strengthened by my reading of this paper. Basically, it doesn’t present ANY convincing evidence that arsenic has been incorporated into DNA (or any other biological molecule).

Uh oh.
(h/t L. Gardy LaRoche)

Y2Kyoto: Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Export?

The One 12 Comments

Henry Payne;

[T]he same company to which Obama gave 20 percent of Chrysler — for free — in return for building one 40-mpg car (the tiny Fiat 500) here in the states will now expand sport-ute production to two Fiat brands as well as expand U.S.-brand gas-guzzler production overseas.
“The carmaker plans to use U.S. ‘platforms’ and make as many as 280,000 vehicles a year at the (Italian) plant,” Automotive News reported. “New Jeep and Alfa models will be ready by the fourth quarter of 2012.”

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