Climategate 2.0

Terence Corcoran: "In the wake of Climategate 2.0, action on the IPCC is more needed than ever."

Anthony Watts has the all the details dirt on the latest Climategate email dump.

Who is bankrolling the Vancouver mayor??

Vivian Krause asks fair questions in the National Post and Vancouver Sun:

... Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is no stranger to Tides Canada. In fact, he was a Tides Canada director from 2002 until 2004 when he entered politics with the NDP. The treasurer of Vision Vancouver, the political party that Mr. Robertson rode to power, is Martha Burton, who has been a senior advisor to Tides Canada. Mike Magee, the Chief of Staff at Vancouver City Hall, was also a senior advisor to Tides Canada (2002 to 2007).

... according to my calculations, during the course of five years of politics with both the NDP and Vision Vancouver, Gregor Robertson has received $400,000, including $340,000 in campaign finance for Vision Vancouver, from sources that are affiliated in various ways with two registered charities: the Endswell Foundation and Tides Canada.

There's lots more, including info on Robertson's real estate holdings on Cortes Island:

... Tides USA announced that it had purchased Hank's Beach, a 150-acre ocean-front property on Cortes Island. [which is happily (for Robertson) located right next to] ... 82 acres of ocean front that is owned or co-owned by one of Mayor Robertson's companies, Treedom Ventures Inc.

See also, Terence Corcoran's "mystery Mayor".

Veeerrrry interesting!

Occupy Adbusters!

Terence Corcoran - "March of the global anarcho-crazies":

... U.S. President Barack Obama said “the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration.” Mr. Obama obviously doesn’t read ‘Adbusters’, the anarcho-crazy Vancouver magazine that is credited with having started OWS last July with an editorial call-to-arms titled “#OCCUPYWALLSTREET: Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?”

... The bald and grotesque absurdity of comparing Wall Street (and the United States or Canada) with Egypt and other Middle East tyrannies should be enough to stop this exercise in juvenile political science.

... These are the same global anarcho-crazies — the same ideological anti-democratic trouble-makers who stormed the G20 in Toronto, attracted the Black Bloc, staged riots at free trade meetings, marched in the 1960s and 1970s — who are now using the same old violent property-seizing techniques they’ve always used to put forward an incoherent message that boils down to we don’t like the way things are, so let’s join a mob. ...

Never mind Occupy Wall Street / Vancouver / ..., someone, preferably CSIS and the RCMP, should occupy the Vancouver headquarters of Adbusters and start taking names and indicting nitwits. Adbusters’ declared aim:

Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we live in the 21st century.

In short the instigators of the “Occupy” mobs are engaged in treasonous agitation and promotion of insurrection against the most free, most successful political, economic and cultural system in the history of mankind. They want to “topple” it. To replace it with ... what?

Corcoran disses 'Ethical Oil'

Terence Corcoran:
First with some praise:

... The ethical oil argument is a clever and compelling one, and good for a dozen laughs when it’s delivered — as it was at a Toronto Empire Club lunch the other day — by Mr. Levant. Most of the laughs come at the expense of the David Suzuki crowd, green campaigners and air-headed young campus leftists/activists such as Zoe, Mr. Levant’s caricature of a 20-something McGill student in vegetarian studies who has never been west of Hamilton but has a brain filled with ethical angst over dozens of global issues about which she knows nothing — human rights, environmental degradation, poverty, climate change and Wall Street domination. Zoe is probably preparing even now for Saturday’s march on Bay Street. ...

Then his objections:

... Ethical oil backers appear to have co-opted the liberal left’s concerns about rights and the environment by portraying the oil sands as a morally superior source of oil. In the end, though, ethical oil abandons the principles of free trade and cedes the economic argument to the anti-free trade left. Ethical Oil is too clever for its own good. ...

And Ezra responds:

Hi Terry. Thanks for coming to my speech yesterday!
Defending Canada's ethical oil does not mean creating trade barriers against conflict oil from OPEC dictatorships. For one thing, it's impossible: there is just too much conflict oil on the world market and too little of the good stuff. We see this now with economic sanctions against Sudan and Iran: America doesn't buy any of that conflict oil, but China, Japan and India are desperate to buy all they can.
The ethical oil argument is the opposite of a trade barrier; it is a call for more transparency in the marketplace to allow consumers to make a fully-informed choice at the pumps. Some people don't care if their oil is from Saudi Arabia. But others do. Why not let the market decide? Fair trade coffee shops don't depend on putting Tim Hortons out of business. They just give consumers a chance to pay for the goodwill inherent in ethical production methods. But the good news for energy consumers is that, unlike fair trade coffee or Polar Bear diamonds, ethical oil doesn't cost any more than the foreign stuff.
Terry Corcoran is worried about a fantasy scenario where world governments would sanction blood oil. The real risk is the opposite: right now the European Union, looking to distract from its own appetite for blood oil, is threatening to slap trade barriers on our Canadian ethical oil. Let's fight that real trade threat before going off to fight one that doesn't exist yet.

I'd add that Ethical Oil is a well reasoned response to relentless attacks by environmental radicals and other hysterics, on Alberta's oil sands ("dirty, immoral, environment destroying tar sands, Big Oil, capitalist pigs, ..., ...").  Big Oil was doing a crappy job of defending itself, so someone had to.  Ezra deserves high praise for demolishing all the nonsense and makes the case that, contrary to the dearest wishes of the anti-oil mob and whether or not AGW is actually a problem, there is no alternative on the horizon.  Furthermore, each of the various causes promoted by activists has to be addressed on its own merits.  They are not all morally or ethically equivalent.  Pushing for dubious "fair trade" in coffee beans is hardly equivalent to the anti-apartheid movement.