Shatner Does Palin

I interrupt my writing retreat to bring you the following poetic gem.

Reposted from the Tonight Show.

If Rex Murphy lived in Vancouver …

Would he be denying the existence of global warming? Just wondering. (msnbc.com)

Six in the Morning

1. BC UTILITIES COMMISSION SAYS BURN MORE GAS: The BC government's plan to cultivate green energy in the province has been thwarted by a ruling from the BC Utilities Commission. The Commission claims it isn't in energy consumers' best interests for there to be so much invested in alternative energy. This is a serious blow to the government's greenhouse gas reduction program. Some environmentalists are scratching their heads at the Utilities Commission's recommendation to keep Burrard Thermal -- a natural gas fueled power plant -- outputting 5,000 GWh instead of reducing it to the 3,000 GWh the Campbell government was aiming for. Meanwhile, stock prices for Canadian green energy companies tanked after the Commission's report was released. (Globe and Mail)

2. DOUBTS ABOUT REGINA DOME: The Executive Director of the Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon has some questions about dome plans in Regina. He says that he can see a need for a new sports complex here to replace Mosaic but wonders if the domed facility currently being pondered will actually attract any new business to the province. (Leader Post)

3. SUIT AGAINST SCHOOL BOARD EXPANDS: A Regina lawyer is expanding a lawsuit against the Regina Public School Board into a class action suit. The clients he is representing are protesting fees levied by Regina schools which provincial legislation says the schools should provide free of charge. Sounds like they've a case... I don't really know. And, yeah, if you're a low income family having your kid's school ask for an additional $400 a year is a big problem. But at the same time, when you think of all the pressure to keep property and provincial taxes low, could extra school fees be a case of parents reaping what they sow? (Leader Post)

4. MICROSOFT AND YAHOO STRIKE DEAL: Two companies I couldn't care less about reached a "search advertising" agreement. The deal, between the maker of an operating system I don't trust and will never use again and the company behind a search site so irrelevant even I never visit it, is expected to generate $500million in revenue for the companies. Whoop-di-doo. (Guardian)

5. CANADIAN PONZI SCHEME GUY BANKRUPT: Earl Jone's company was declared bankrupt by a Quebec court. (CBC)

6. O'REILLY NOT SO GOOD AT THE MATH: Video of Bill O'Reilly saying US has worse life expectancy than Canada because it has 10 times as many people. Ha ha. (Media Matters)

Danger, Danger

This something people really need to stop doing. (CBC)

Red Planet

If you get a chance in the next few months, check out Mars. Once every two years or so its orbit with Earth synchs up and we end up pretty close together. While this opposition will be nowhere near as spectacular as the one in 2003, which was the closest in 50,000 years, with Mars coming within 56 million km of Earth and shining at a magnitude of -2.7 (Mars will close to within 99 million km in January, and shine at magnitude -1.2) at some points in its orbit Mars is as much as 400 million km from Earth, so it will still be pretty prominent. Currently, the planet's rising in the south-east around sunset.

Seattle Slogs Sask

Slog, the blog of Seattle's crazy-excellent alternative mag The Stranger, has a post on the recent human rights ruling on a Sask marriage commissioner fined for refusing to marry a gay couple. The post, by The Stranger's editorial director Dan Savage, is here. Check it out.

Midnight Mind-Blown

Okay, so now bacteria can be programmed to solve mathematical problems. Right. And they're faster than computers. Okay.

That's it, science has officially melted my puny little mind.

Full story here, at the Guardian--the newspaper Rex Murphy Dares Not Read.

Memo to the Big Three

Uh, when you're busy planning your restructurings, you might want to consider something along the lines of what Nissan's doing. (MSN)

Rex Murphy: A Second Opinion

He's a contrarian asshole. No, seriously.

How's that for a second opinion?

By disputing climate change in Canada's paper of record based on his (irrelevent) personal observations of local weather conditions and on Ian Plimer's discredited anti climate change book book Heaven + Earth, Rex Murphy casts doubt on what scientific consensus says is a clear and present danger to civilization that requires immediate action.

Murphy's article is appalling. It's like defending smoking as harmless. In fact it's worse, because unlike smoking, climate change is a threat to our standard of living, our civilization and possibly our species.

There's just too much at stake to let Murphy's column pass without comment. First, about Plimer's book, which Rex Murphy is enamoured with. Is it any good? Not according to this July 10 column by the Guardian's science editor, George Monbiot:

"Seldom has a book been as cleanly murdered by scientists as Ian Plimer's Heaven + Earth, which purports to show that man-made climate change is nonsense. Since its publication in Australia it has been ridiculed for a hilarious series of schoolboy errors, and its fudging and manipulation of the data."

You can read the full thing here. Monbiot's column is a rebuke to a British newspaper, The Spectator, that published a glowing feature about Plimer's crappy book.

Second, if we're going to throw around anecdotes about weather, here's one that's worth a little more than Murphy's. It's from Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, who's currently enjoying the view from the International Space Station. Thirsk, who was last in space over a decade ago, has some observations:

"This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the mountains is less than it was 12 years ago when I saw it last time."

You can read the full story with that quote here (Montreal Gazette). Thirsk's "perception", incidentally, agrees with U.S. satellite photos which Dechene posted about earlier today.

The science editors and astronauts agree: we've got a global warming problem, Houston. Too bad a few days of mellow weather and a crappy book convinced a Globe And Mail columnist there's nothing to worry about.

U.S. Spies Prove Climate Deniers Wrong

Following up on this post, one of Ian Plimer's many ridiculous claims in Heaven and Earth is this one:

The good news is that alpine valley glaciers are not retreating. Measurements of retreats and advances from glaciers in the period 1946–1995 for 246 glaciers show that there is no sign of any recent global trend towards increased glacier melting.

It leaves one with the impression that we've little to worry as the world's glaciers aren't disappearing.

Well, as is being reported in the Guardian, the Obama administration has recently declassified a whole whack of satellite photos of the arctic, and the photo evidence is undeniable: arctic and glacial ice is retreating at an alarming pace. (More on that story here. And a really scary gallery of photos here.)

How could Plimer (and by extension Rex Murphy) get things so wrong? Well, as Enting points out, the first sentence in that quote above doesn't follow from the second. Plimer, it seems, is confusing speed with acceleration. The source he's using there did indeed show that glacial melting is not speeding up from year to year. But that glacial melt isn't accelerating doesn't mean that it isn't happening. In fact, that's exactly what Plimer's source shows (and the spy satellite pictures prove once again): Glacial ice is reteating at a steady (a more literate columnist might say "inexorable") pace.