Lorne Gunter: Whatever The Facts Are, They're Bad

The Sun's Lorne Gunter objects to a PBO report claiming public sector sick day costs are not a burden on the taxpayer because  "...most departments do not call in replacements when an employee takes a sick day, [and therefore] there are no incremental costs.”  Lorne doesn't like that: whatever the costs are, they're unwarranted.  He apparently thinks that there are just too many federal public servants, however many of them there actually are and whatever they cost, and presumably if he was in charge goddammnit he would cut them to the point where the next employee taking a sick day did have an negative effect on service levels.  Apparently, Lorne thinks this is what happens in the private sector: your business owner fires everyone but his last administrator, and when they come down with the flu calls go unanswered and business goes undone. I expect this does happen occasionally, especially when times are tough, but its hardly what you would call good business practice.  And imagine how this strategy would work if applied to, for example, your local fire department.  You sack enough fellows that when the next guy sprains his ankle, the next fire gets maybe half a truck.  A guy in a VW Beetle with a can of spritzer water, maybe. In fact, in Ontario you barely have to imagine. Hudanomics, that math challenged theory propounded by ex-PCPO leader Tim Hudak, suggested firing public servants, fire men included, and redistributing the money saved to folks like chiropractors and the people who operate nail salons.  Ontarians decided that he was nuts.

Do I Owe Lorne Gunter An Ice Cream Cone?

Maybe.  Got this email from officer Ian Shardlow this morning:

The estimates that I have received is that we destroyed approximately 3-4000 lbs of ammo and now have approximately 2-3000 lbs in our possession for destruction.  We had enough ammo in the first instance that we had to arrange for a temp magazine type storage facility because we could not store in the Detachment. 

 We had to large ammo burners going steady for several days, and have arranged for one to come back in the coming weeks.

All of this ammo was voluntarily turned in to the RCMP after the residents had returned home.

IAN

Although maybe not.  All this ammo was not, as per Gunter's implication, taken during the same sweep as the guns.  It was voluntarily given up for disposal afterwards.  Probably because it was water-damaged. So I will leave it to my readers: does Lorne Gunter get his ice-cream cone (should he claim his ice-cream cone. I'm obviously not buying one on-spec)?

And, seriously, does somebody up in High River own a cannon or two?

Click through link for background.

Very Soon, I Think That Lorne Gunter Is Going To Look Stupid

He writes, of what happened up in High River , where RCMP officers took guns from homes abandoned after this summer's floods in Alberta:

Nearly a half hour into his grilling by residents, Shardlow was detailing how many hundreds of guns had been forcibly removed from homes and how many had already been returned.

During his enumeration, Shardlow stated matter-of-factly that in addition to firearms, Mounties had also “ burned approximately seven thousand, five hundred pounds of compromised ammunition.”

Upon hearing that, the first thing that occurred to me is that in the small boats and dinghies Mounties were using, it must have taken dozens of trips to collect nearly four tons of ammunition. That means that rather than searching for survivors, their door-stomping rampage must have been first and foremost about taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, otherwise they wouldn’t have devoted so much overtime pay and scarce equipment to the effort.

So, I am willing to bet that Shardlow meant or in fact said rounds rather than pounds, and that  Gunter is just too dumb or conspiracy-minded to see this.  I mean, that's the natural way to describe units of ammo.  And if I am proven wrong, I will buy Lorne Gunter an ice-cream cone.  But, as per usual, only one scoop.  For I am not made out of money.

PS.   All this talk of the wrong done by the RCMP up in High River is, as far as I'm concerned, pandering to gun nuts.  Gunter is either playing dumb to fan the flames,or he isn't playing.

Update here.

Refuting Lorrie Goldstein On AGW

Not really something worth doing, because its only The Sun, but since it won't take very long...

In his commentary on the much ballyhooed David Rose story in the weekend Daily Mail (UK), Goldstein writes:

One problem with determining whether the Earth is warming is that it’s hard to measure.

The Met says 1998 was the warmest year on record, meaning in the past 132 years for which reliable temperature data exist.

NASA, another leading global climate monitoring agency, says 2005 and 2010 tied as the warmest years.

Interpreting temperature trends obviously depends on what years you choose.

If you pick 1997-2012, as Rose did, the Earth hasn’t warmed significantly for almost 16 years.

Well, no, in their response to the Daily Mail story, which Goldstein actually references but perhaps did not read, The Met provided this graphic (which, in addition to being informative, is really quite pretty):

Not only does it show that eight of the ten hottest years were recorded in the last decade, it shows both 2010 and 2005 as being hotter than 1998.  Who knows how Goldstein managed to bung this one up?  It is true enough, though, that the ranking for the various years can change retroactively as more data becomes available.  Nevertheless, since March of this year, all the relevant sources, including The Met, have shown 2010 and 2005 as being warmer than 1998.  Perhaps Goldstein has simply not kept up.

PS. As for Mr. Rose, the guy has a long history of misquoting scientists.

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, And I Must be Lorne Gunter

The latest tranche  of census information, like the material released back in February, is from the still mandatory short form.  It is the long form that was compromised by the government's decision.  Lorne Gunter, who also covers the global warming controversy and would, you would think, possess at least a single smidgen of  statistical knowledge, still cannot tell the difference between long and short forms.  Naturally, he writes for the Toronto Sun.

Today's Census Numbers Are ALL From The Short Form

...which is still mandatory, meaning that Lorne Gunter's column about the voluntary long form is entirely irrelevant, and you don't need to read it.

The Shorter Lorne Gunter

Albertans are suckers.

Gunter On Ice

Not only has this news not received much reporting, but the fact that ice sensors in the North have been malfunctioning, which has very likely led to a further underestimating of the amount of ice around the pole.

"Very likely"? Well, there's no reason to speculate: the sensors in the North are back up and running:

...and they still show ice-extent way under the long-term average, and bouncing around the record lows of 2006-2007.

Denier On Denier Action! Lorne Gunter Burned By Climate Change Crazy!

For a climate change denier, the most important thing is getting your case "out there"--floating around the blogosphere, linked to by Drudge, unattached to a particular source and, therefore, irrefutable. Graphs get re-purposed, flawed arguments get re-hashed long after their shortcomings have been painfully exposed.

Perhaps, then, the National Post's Lorne' Gunter will be thrilled to know that his Feb. 25th, 2008 column "Welcome to the new ice age" was given a 2nd life by one F. William Engdahl of the Centre For Research on Globalization.

From Lorne Gunter's "Welcome...":

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

From F. William Engdahl's "Global Warming gets the Cold Freeze ":

China is surviving its most brutal winter in one hundred years. Temperatures in the normally mild south were low for so long that some middle-sized cities went weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

From Lorne Gunter:

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

From F. William:

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has been hurt as home buyers have stayed home. In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, breaking the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in 1950.

From Lorne:

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

From F. William:

Now, as a result of the recent record cold weather, the ice is back. According to Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

Lorne (a long one this time):

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

F. William:

There is also admission by several intellectually honest climatologists that their predictive models are flawed. Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona, two very prominent climate modellers, recently admitted that the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (as in the fictional movie The Day After Tomorrow) are wrong.

In a recent interview Russell said, “It's not ice melt, but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of man-made warming on polar ice melt.” Now that’s very interesting.

When professors Toggweiler and Russell reprogrammed their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator, then back towards it again, the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the recent Arctic warming.

Russian climatologists believe recent weather changes around the globe are results of solar activity and not man-made emissions. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, calls the argument for man-made climate change "a drop in the bucket." His research shows that now the recent very active solar activity has entered an inactive phase. He advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

Kenneth Tapping of Canada’s National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

Now, the stuff in this last paragraph is a load of baloney, and only demonstrates the maxim that a lie can get all the way around the world before the Truth gets its boots on. What Kenneth Tapping actually said can be found here. The original source of the bullshit version was the Feb. 9, 2008, Investors Business Daily, retailed uncritically by Gunter later in February, and then by Engdahl in April.

As for F. William Engdahl, he is known for (among other things) his theories re the Abiogenic origin of petroleum. An ex-peak oiler, he now believes that oil and gas supplies will never run out.

H/T CW, who did most of the legwork.

Lorne Gunter Rebrands

When you're demanding free-speech for bigots, and a column of yours appears telling appointees of the Canadian Wheat Board to "remain silent", you might logically be accused of hypocrisy. What do you do? If you're Lorne Gunter, you re-title the piece "Release farmers from the bondage of the Canadian Wheat Board" and slap it up on your blog. Hey Presto! Once a censor, now a liberator. Not that the content of the piece has changed.

Nice to know you're reading this, Lorne. And just remember: I made you dance for me once, monkey boy, I can do it again.

Lorne Gunter On Freedom Of Speech

...for Stephen Boisson, the nutty X-youth pastor whose famous gay-bashing letter to the Red Deer Advocate was causally linked to the beating of a gay youth:

Still, anyone truly interested in freedom of speech must defend Boissoin against the forces of state coercion and political correctness aligned against him.

...for Larry Hill and other members of the Canadian Wheat Board, who have been, as it turns out, illegally muzzled by the Canadian Government for publicly defending its single desk selling system.

The Wheat Board should remain silent

Nuff said.