Dirty fuel

Speaking of dirty fuel –

Germany was forced on Wednesday to draw on its reserves for producing electricity for the second time this winter as Europe is gripped by a severe cold snap.

The country’s four main power operators requested the reserve generator at a coal-powered plant in southern Germany and two plants in Austria be activated, the regional environment ministry in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said.

The power station in Germany, in the southern city of Mannheim, would continue to be used Thursday, a spokesman said.

“We do not have a problem of supply, of quantity, it’s principally a question of stabilizing the network,” a spokeswoman for the Germany electricity market regulator said.

Germany also had to tap its reserves in early December. The system was set up in August to avoid shortages and stabilize the network for the country’s winter power provision. Read more:

“Stabilizing the network” because their wind farms weren’t up to  it and because of anti-nuclear policies. But coal is the answer and we guess oil sands oil is too dirty. Sigh.

Further reading – Do we want this here?

 

SAVE OUR FARMS!

HT SDA

Check out Real Agriculture

Iranium

We have seen the documentary Iranium. Not at our local theatre but online. It is available free for a limited time via the website. Just have to submit an e-mail address. Warning: It is disturbing.

Makes worries about Climate change seem a bit petty.

Wait for it

It won’t be long before we hear the wails and gnashing of teeth over Canada’s position at the  Climate Conference in Cancun . Soon a deluge of outrage and counter-spin will hit the media. We have already had enough warnings of climate  catastrophe to last a lifetime.

Don’t be fooled, they tell us.

Don’t be fooled by Australia’s wet and mild conditions. [The Ozzies are heading into summer remember]

A United Nations weather agency report, released on Friday, found 2010 is almost certain to rank as one of the hottest three years on record while the past 10 years are the warmest period since climate data began in 1850. …”While Australia has escaped this year … other parts of the planet are seeing incredibly hot temperatures,” he told reporters gathered with other climate scientists in Melbourne on Friday.

Other parts of the planet – like say, Norway?

Norway got over a hundred new records in November. Cold, colder, coldest. Unless you remember back to the year 1919, November 2010 is definitely the “coldest.” …On the whole, Norway has therefore experienced the coldest month of November since 1919, with the full 3.57 degrees below the normal level.  Because the norm is regarded as cold , this is a very big difference!

Don’t be fooled by the record cold temperatures in the UK

and the rest of  Europe.

The world is really warm they tell us . Not sure why. Or How.

We are warm. Well, Maybe not all of us…

Don’t be fooled.

But everyone has been fooled who thinks this has been and is about climate. It’s about power politics and money.

Films we’ll never see …

Here’s a film to add to our list of Films we will never see at the Fundy Film Festival – or on CBC.

Mine Your Own Business

“Mine Your Own Business” follows George, a 23-year-old unemployed miner from northern Romania whose life has been put on hold after an anti-mining campaign orchestrated by foreign environmentalists. George explains his hopes and dreams for the future – which are different from those prescribed for him by foreign environmentalists. He then travels to other impoverished communities in Madagascar and Chile who are also desperately waiting for large mining projects. George finds people similar to himself with similar hopes and dreams of a decent job and house and a decent education and better life for their children.

Controversial? Yes, yes. But not favoured by the self-appointed anointed. [Mind you we would love to see a certain Councillor prove us wrong.]

It will however be shown at the Free Thinking Film Society of Ottawa in conjunction with a debate between Ezra Levant and Elizabeth May in Nov.

Great Scott!

Scott Brison doesn’t tweet much but we caught this one. He’s in Bogota and sending pictures via Twitpic.

Here in Bolivar Square in the rain with 3000 others for President Santos inauguration

Jason Kenny is there too and also tweeting.

Just witnssed inauguration of Columbian President Santos in the beautiful Plaza Bolivar in Bogotá. Its a remarkable example of democracy…

…but no cigar

More in the culture wars. Another blow has been struck for political correctness, another victory in the war against that heinous crime – smoking.

Pitiful isn’t it? Poor Winston’s mouth now looks like he survived a stroke. And who was responsible for this nice bit of historical revisionism? The Cancer Society?  Close but no cigar. A London Museum!

In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a “V” shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth.

But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques.

And it took a museum patron to notice.

The alteration of the original image, taken in 1948 during the opening of a new military headquarters, was noticed by David McAdam, a visitor to the museum.

He told the Daily Mail: “I pointed out this crude alteration to a museum steward who said she hadn’t noticed the change before, nor had anyone else pointed it out.

“So much for the notion that only communist tyrants airbrushed history.”

Well, ahem. David McAdam should think again about that statement.

Noble services

A tragedy is a tragedy at any time of year but as Dickens said, Christmas is “ a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt.”

Lt. Andrew Nuttall, along with an Afghan soldier, died when an improvised explosive device detonated in the town of Nakhoney, the military said early Thursday — Christmas Eve.

An interpreter was seriously injured.

Nuttall, 30, of Prince Rupert, B.C., belonged to the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton. [CH -Dec. 24 ]

We feel deeply for his family who will be mourning when many of us will be celebrating. But we hope they will also read this:

Let me wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and would like to take the opportunity to thank you very much for your very noble services, sacrifices, bringing us, the Afghans and the world peace, security and development.

I know 2009 was not an easy year for some of us, the families who lost their love ones in fight against terrorism, extremism, warlordism, druglordism, backwardness and human rights violations.

We also understand that challenges in Afghanistan have caused some of you to celebrate this great occasion of Christmas and New Year away from your homes and love ones. We thank you and wish you all a joyous and peaceful Christmas commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, may peace be upon him.

God is with us and we will soon be receiving his blesses of peace, enlightenment, prosperity, solace, dignity and unity.

Through this massage I would like to reiterate that your tireless and brave efforts and countless generosities are noticed and appreciated by the hundreds of men and women teachers and students of the Afghan-Canadian Community Center (ACCC).

You should be proud of what you’re doing. Your families must be proud of you. You may not know, but we all appreciate what you have been doing. Your mission is holy and a success, no doubt about it.

We do know you are working in a very complex and uncomfortable situation. You are dealing with warlords, drug lords, tribal lords/rivals, extremists, corruption and interference by prejudice and selfish networks around Afghanistan. We do know how wisely and professionally you are handling all of this mess to save Afghanistan and the world. We thank you for your dedicated services and we are praying for your successes in your very holy mission of bringing us peace, security and development.

Let us wish you all a very joyful Christmas and New Year and pray that the New Year may bring healing and peace to our suffering Afghanistan and the world as a whole.

– Ehsanullah Ehsan, Director of the Afghan-Canadian Community Center, Kandahar, Afghanistan.

HT Terry Glavin

A light may have gone out from the family but Lt. Nuttall and many others  have helped in a process which will bring light to many.

Please read Glavin’s post

Protest brewing-update

Our Baker Street Boys reported that about 85 people [including panelists and other organiser types] attended the discussion monologue on the Columbia – Canada Free Trade issue the other night. Scott Brison, who many hoped to see there, was a no show. The why of that is the story.

It seems Scott was invited but belatedly- hardly more than 48 hours before – according to our source. Still he put himself out to hop on a plane and hustle his himself to Wolfville [at taxpayers expense? And think of the Co2 emissions!]. He expected to be included as a participant, only to find out that he would be given “a maximum” of 10 minutes to speak and only from his chair in the peanut gallery.  While the NDP Trade Critic sat at the table. Imagine! That would have been something to see and a challenge for Mr. Mangle to moderate after all. [Mr. Brison has a look that could turn Rumblebuffin to stone.] But this drama was not to be since, given those conditions, Scott declined to attend. He cleverly arranged instead to answer questions from all and sundry in a room in the BAC at 12:30 pm today – the very hour 50 or so protesters  were massing outside his office with puppets effigies of Columbian President Uribe and Stephen Harper the Grim Reaper!

That’s turning the tables.

Brison  is seething disappointed . He expected better of the ponytail set.

________________________

Let’s learn from Sweden!

There’s an article in today’s CH entitled “HRM goes to Sweden: Who will learn what from whom?” which suggests that HRM has lots to learn from Sweden.You can get the tongue in cheek tone of the piece from this summary:

You know in retrospect maybe there’s not all that much the Swedes can learn from the HRM delegation about energy, housing and public transportation. On the other hand, maybe the Swedes would like to know more about cat bylaws. [The article is not to be found at the moment on line so we quote from the tree killing copy.]

We agree. The delegation, which is on a fact-finding mission, could learn a lot from Sweden.

The author of this piece, Mr. Hughes, is apparently a visiting professor with the Global Energy Systems research group at Uppsala, Sweden.  Regarding energy, he mentioned how about half the homes there are heated from community central heating plants [is it feasible to replicate district heating in a country less compact and less densely populated than Sweden? ]  He mentions extracting heat from sewage treatment plants [ we’d just be happy if sewage was treated in HRM, for a start]. Similar laudable aspects of Swedish life are touted in housing and transportation – they keep old buildings, have height restrictions, encourage the use of bicycles and run their buses on bio-fuel. We don’t doubt these are worthy things the HRM officials could observe. But he doesn’t mention cost and he doesn’t mention taxes. Perhaps Mr. Hughes could tell us how Sweden managed these things  and are lowering taxes too! Yes, Sweden has lowered taxes in each of the last 4 years! Now that we would like HRM to learn and pronto.

Sweden’s government will lower income taxes for a fourth consecutive year in 2010 to get more people to take jobs and boost the economy, which slipped into its first recession since 1992 last year.

The government will cut income taxes by another 10 billion kronor ($1.46 billion) in 2010, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told a news conference today in Stockholm. It will reduce fees small business pay by 1.2 billion kronor to create more jobs in the Nordic region’s largest economy, which shrank an annual 6 percent in the second quarter in its second largest contraction in at least 15 years.

We think Sweden’s taxes were probably pretty high to begin with but it might be instructive for the HRM big wigs to ask about the cost of Sweden’s  aforementioned improvements  and how cutting taxes now fits into that picture.

The government has already cut income and company taxes by almost 80 billion kronor, or about 2.6 percent of gross domestic product, since coming to power in 2006 after 12 consecutive years of Social Democratic rule. It cut the corporate tax to 26.3 percent from 28 percent this year and lowered the general payroll tax by 1 percentage point from 32.4 percent in an attempt to make Sweden more business-friendly. [Source]

Sounds like the electorate has spoken in Sweden.

Related: We could learn from the Danes too but that is fodder for another post.