Magic Statistics

This CBC Manitoba story quotes two inmates at Stony Mountain Institution who voted today. One prefers the Liberals, while the other doesn't admit to liking any of them. The Liberal supporter objects to Stephen Harper's pledge to take the vote away from prison inmates, saying that's just one more way of isolating inmates. Some would respond that inmates are supposed to be isolated, but I'm more interested in why these guys are voting at the advance poll. It's not like they'll be out of the country on election day.

via Dust My Broom.

Much about climate change is controversial, but one thing everyone knew: trees are good. They take in carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and produce oxygen for us to breathe. But, as Will Rogers is reported to have said, "It ain't the things we don't know that get us into trouble; it's the things we know that just ain't so". New research has shown that the earth's vegetation is pumping out immense quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide.

This is not a product of trees and plants rotting, which everyone already knew was a source of methane; it is an entirely natural side-effect of plant growth that scientists had somehow missed. Yet it is by no means trivial: preliminary estimates suggest that living trees and plants account for about 10 to 30 per cent of the methane entering the atmosphere.

The discovery, reported by an international team of scientists in the current issue of the journal Nature, is adding fresh fuel to the debate over the confidence we can put in global warming science.

It is especially disturbing that such a significant source of greenhouse emissions went undetected for so long.

This may prove to be another nail in the coffin of the Kyoto Protocol, which allows signatories to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through reforestation programmes. For it now appears that this provision actually aggravates global warming. Certainly, the new research confirms that climate science is far more complicated than Kyoto enthusiasts imagine.

Climate scientists would have us believe there is no doubt about the basics of global warming and the time for action is now. The recent spate of large revisions of the facts tells a different story. Yet politicians are still being pressed to do the impossible: modify the huge, chaotic system that is the earth's climate in ways guaranteed to be beneficial for all.

We should count ourselves lucky that, for once, politicians do not share such delusions of omniscience.

via Enviro Spin Watch.

Binks, the head webelf at CaNN, posted a rant today. Well, who wouldn't? I, too, feel one coming on.

Less than a year ago, Canada's sophisticated and urbane cultural and political "leaders" were ridiculing Stephen Harper for warning that, if same-sex marriage is legalised, then there will be no basis for refusing to recognise polygamous marriages. No way! Get serious! What a joke! Harper is engaging in "unabashed fear-mongering"; he's a "dumb hick" and "a yokel". Justice Minister Irwin Cotler pooh-poohed the idea:

We don't see any connection, I repeat, any connection between the issue of polygamy and the issue of same-sex marriage. . . . Any attempt to make that kind of connection is simply a way of confusing distinguishable issues in every regard.

Even the usually bright Andrew Coyne sneered:

The slippery slope, in other words, is an illusion. Nothing connects gay marriage to polygamy. Nothing obliges the courts to overturn the ban on polygamy, and nothing would prevent the majority from reinstating it if they did. We are not prisoners of unreason, however much some might pretend we are.

"Not prisoners of unreason"? Andrew Coyne is apparently not well-acquainted with the agency of the federal government called Status of Women Canada, which has just released a report calling for the repeal of Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada—the section outlawing polygamy.

Chief author Martha Bailey says criminalizing polygamy, typically a marriage involving one man and several wives, serves no good purpose and prosecutions could do damage to the women and children in such relationships.

"Why criminalize the behaviour?" she said in an interview. "We don't criminalize adultery. In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society, why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?"

"Fairly permissive"? How many more rules regarding sexual behaviour have to be nullified before Ms Bailey would classify Canada as "very permissive"? How many are left?

I'd say all those worldly-wise pundits and politicians owe Stephen Harper an apology; but don't hold your breath.

Be sure to read Binks' rant.