Not very. The recommended set-back in Ontario, incidentally, is 550 meters.
Continue readingTag: Anthropogenic Global Warming
BigCityLib Strikes Back: "Climategate" 2.0: Anatomy Of A Fake Scandal
It’s dead, Jim. A combination of journalists not wanting to get fooled again–especially with the suspicious timing of the email release (to coincide with Durban)–and a quick response from within the Climate Science community itself, killed it. The oddest part is that the email hackers thought Durban important enough to
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: "ClimateGate" II: The Media Snores
Outside of the usual suspects, this seems to be the typical media response to the latest batch of emails stolen from CRU: its just scientists arguing things out, occasionally being mean to one another, but (as was the case with the first batch), nothing science-altering. A couple of things to note. 1) I haven’t
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Government Prepares For The Future Of The North
The purpose of this study is to address the issue of the accuracy of visual observations of seabird mortality from a vessel observation platform. The objective is to design and conduct an experiment to determine the number of simulated dead pelagic seabirds that are visually detectable in an open ocean
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Keystone XL: Which Way Around?
With Transcanada suddenly willing to redirect parts of Keystone XL, the question arises: where exactly in Nebraska would the rerouted pipeline go? In fact Cardno Entrix, the controversial environmental contractor that assessed the line, had already considered alternatives to the "as filed" route, including in the Sand Hills area. From their "Keystone Pipeline Project – Mainline Pipeline Route
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Michael Levi On The Keystone Pipeline: Lamenting A Train That’s Already Left The Station
Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Michael Levi thinks the decision to delay, and possibly kill, the Keystone XL Pipeline is short-sighted, and will redound to ill effect upon the environmentalists that are celebrating today.
I should say a…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: I Like Mike DeSouza
This PostMedia reporter did bang-up work on the PWU’s (Power Worker’s Union) astroturf campaign against Ontario’s Green Energy Act. And this article, chronicling how Enviro Canada scientists have been trying to defend the science of AGW in the fa…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: By Day He Denies, Part III
Whenever U.S. pundit Victor Davis Hanson reels off one his tired diatribes against the “AGW Hoax”–Climategate, Al Gore is Fat, and etc.–I like to point out that he is on the advisory board of CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization), a fringe…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Global Warming–Discovered By A Chick?
According to conventional wisdom John Tyndall was the first to measure the variation in absorption of radiant energy by atmospheric gases and the first to predict the impact on climate of small changes in atmospheric gas composition. Overlooked by mode…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Global Warming Confirmed: Urban Heat Islands, Surface Station Quality Have Little Effect On Temperature Readings
After the CRU-Hack and other pseudo-scandals of 2009, Berkeley physicist Richard Muller assembled a team of scientists and statisticians whose goal was to reanalyze land temperature records and determine once and for all whether factors such as th…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Does Alykhan Velshi Work For TAF
…or does TAF work for him? After several hundred words of the same old, same old, ex Tar Sands shill Alykhan Velshi slaps this at the end of his Huff Post piece:Alykhan Velshi is on the Board of Directors of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, …
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Velshi Bails
…on Ethical Oil, is replaced by Tory Blogger. Not to suggest causality, but I would note that the Harper government, after huffing and puffing a bit over the Canadian Value of Free Speech, seems to have decided against taking public action over…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: The Meaning of CLOUD
Several weeks ago, the first results of CERN’s Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (or CLOUD) experiment were revealed. This experiment was designed to study the chemical factors behind cloud formation and, more particula…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: The Keystone XL Pipe-Line Is A Side-show
Given the events on Parliament Hill this afternoon, I thought I would pitch in 2-Cents or so.To me, the best/only way to “green” the tar-sands is to sell any oil from them to our American cousins exclusively, and wait for their federal and state g…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: More Dirty Business: Who Funds Wind Concerns Ontario, Part II
According to Elections Ontario, if you want to spend over $500 getting word out on your issues during a provincial election, you have to register as a third party advertiser. We know that Wind Concerns Ontario, the anti-wind-energy group wit…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Sun Smears Suzuki
When you read this story about the “controversy” David Suzuki and his foundation have found themselves in for endorsing Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy initiatives, you have to read between the lines. What’s between the lines can be found in…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: NY Times Fluffs "Goreathon" Climate Change Piece
Their mistake is to treat Canada’s own Tom Harris as a credible representative of the “sceptical” side of the AGW argument. Mediamatters gets some of it right: such ttechnical training as he has is in mechanical eng…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Editor Steps Down For Publishing Denialist Paper
Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science. Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or f…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Very Large Loopholes
UBC climate scientist Simon Donner looks at the Tory govs’ new regulations on carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants, and spots a couple of “get out of jail free cards” for polluters hidden within them:1. Any coal plants built before July, 201…
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Charles Monnett And The Polar Bears
Back in 2006, US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation biologist Charles Monnett published a brief paper in which he described, apparently for the first time, a number of drowned, polar bears spotted during an aerial m…
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