Support was weakest by far in Quebec, where 31 per cent were in favor of extending the mission while 64 per cent were opposed. Backing for the move was strongest in Alberta, where respondents favored the extension by a 55-40 margin.
[...]
As for Kyoto, 59 per cent nationally said the accord is important for Canada and the country should not withdraw from the treaty. Thirty-one per cent said it doesn't matter if Ottawa sticks to the deal, as long as there is an alternative plan in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Quebecers backed Kyoto by 66 per cent to 27, while Albertans opted for an alternative approach by 50 to 41.
Obviously we've got a bunch of war-mongering, science-hating ignoramuses out in Alberta. I think its time we quit appeasing these people and demanded that they step up to their role as Canadians.
6 comments:
But we also have money!
Well most polls at the time of the SSM debate said that most Canadians disagreed with it, but that didn't stop the Liberals did it?
Sucks eh, you reap what you sow.
Not at all surprising. Harper is taking a leaf out of the Bush Book: rush something through, with a catchy but sometimes misleading framing, preferably without too much media attention; then, pretend you have done nothing and move on to the next topic ... Above all else, do not debate issues; manage from the shadows ...
This does not work in Canada. We have a country with fractious provinces; minority governments; lots and lots of experience with long debates about politics.
Try to hide things from Canadians? Fat chance of success.
So Harper's plan of Rush it through, then disregard it, ain't gonna work on these two issues. He is going where voters do not want to go ..
Chill out over global warming
By David Harsanyi
Denver Post Staff Columnist
DenverPost.com
You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.
Why not give it a whirl?
Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.
Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.
The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.
Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.
"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."
Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.
"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."
Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?
Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.
Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.
I ask him: How do we fix the public perception that the debate is over?
"Quite frankly," says Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog (climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu), "I think the media is in the ideal position to do that. If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change. There aren't just two sides here. There are a range of opinions on this issue. A lot of scientists out there that are very capable of presenting other views are not being heard."
Al Gore (not a scientist) has definitely been heard - and heard and heard. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is so important, in fact, that Gore crisscrosses the nation destroying the atmosphere just to tell us about it.
"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."
Gray acknowledges that we've had some warming the past 30 years. "I don't question that," he explains. "And humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."
Both Gray and Pielke say there are many younger scientists who voice their concerns about global warming hysteria privately but would never jeopardize their careers by speaking up.
"Plenty of young people tell me they don't believe it," he says. "But they won't touch this at all. If they're smart, they'll say: 'I'm going to let this run its course.' It's a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way."
So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.
Back away slowly. You'll probably be called a fascist.
Don't worry, you're not. A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike.
What allows a person to exist as he or she wishes in a country such as Canada. Is it free health care, ei, or the umlimited choices of financial aid; grants, student loans, rebates and such? Or is it the wide range of economic choices. The abundance of jobs and other forms of economic oppurtunities such as investment, real estate or small business. The ability to act on a dream and make it come true, often with the assistance of government programs that are in turn funded by the contributions that working Canadians take off of their paychecks every month.
As a result of our freedom and oppurtunity, we are able to take the simplest things for granted. For example, buying a computer and making our thoughts known to the world.
Sorry to break this to ya BigCityLib, ya big lug, but the only reason you and the rest of us enjoys such freedoms is because hardworking Albertans, almost all of them Canadians transplanted from other parts of the country (very few from Quebec), are driving the Canadian economy to unprecedented levels.
As for warmongering, I suppose we here in the west should just lay back and let the barbarians overrun us. We whitys deserve it for being such bad little boys anyways.
Here we go with the self-righteous Albertans...Albertans didn't plant the oil and Albertans didn't make the world run on it. Sure, people work so hard on the rigs but it's not like they don't get paid well for it. There's nothing special about Alberta and I can't handle hearing about how the rest of the country owes us for something we had nothing to do with.
And for all my 31 years in good old Alberta, the only terrorist I ever heard of was Weibo Ludwig-a God-fearing honky. Well, there was the person who blew up his van at West Ed...
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