Year: 2012

The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert

Frontier was delighted to co-sponsor the annual Calgary luncheon of the Friends of

Donna Laframboise

The IPCC has been co-opted by Eco-activist groups

Science which was held yesterday.   It featured a presentation by Canadian author Donna LaFramboise who wrote an important book last year that exposes how the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been completely co-opted by eco-activist organizations with very defined agendas.   We will post the audio and related powerpoints slides shortly.  Here are my introductory remarks to give you a flavour:

To start off, I would like to thank the Friends of Science Society for hosting yet another crucially important climate change event.  We at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy are proud of our long standing relationship with the Friends. For those of you who don’t already know, Friends of Science is a non-profit organization run by volunteers dedicated to educating the public about what science really tells us about climate change.

Even though world temperatures have not risen for the past 16 years the global warming lobby continues to bombard us with breathless reports of imminent doom due to mankind’s use of conventional hydrocarbon fuels. They tell us that that our emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are causing a dangerous increase in our planet’s greenhouse effect.  This then is causing the dreaded global warming that, so we are told by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC, is leading to a host of frightening phenomena; such things as:

–       increasing extreme weather like droughts, heat waves and hurricanes.

–       Unprecedented Arctic sea ice melt

–       Antarctic icecap growth – that too is a result of human induced global warming, climate alarmists announced last week (go figure . . .).

–       the threat of extinction of polar bears due to Arctic warming. Apparently no one has told the bears about this since they stubbornly continue to thrive, with rising numbers threatening native communities.

–       The Maldives in the Indian Ocean will also soon vanish from the face of the Earth due to rising sea level, alarmists tell us. The fact that sea levels in the Maldives are lower now than they were in the 1970s doesn’t seem to matter at all.

Equalization Isn’t Equal

Mention the subject of federal transfer payments, and most people’s eyes will glaze over. Mention that taxpayers in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario are net contributors to federal transfer payments – even though the cost of living is highest in those provinces, and lowest in the provinces that receive the bulk of federal transfer payments – and you might get people’s attention.

Featured News

How Obama Lost Canada: Botching Relations With the United States’ Biggest Trade Partner

Permitting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline should have been an easy diplomatic and economic decision for U.S. President Barack Obama. The completed project would have shipped more than 700,000 barrels a day of Albertan oil to refineries in the Gulf Coast, generated tens of thousands of jobs for U.S. workers, and met the needs of refineries in Texas that are desperately seeking oil from Canada, a more reliable supplier than Venezuela or countries in the Middle East. The project posed little risk to the landscape it traversed. But instead of acting on economic logic, the Obama administration caved to environmental activists in November 2011, postponing until 2013 the decision on whether to allow the pipeline.

Refugee Policy Reform

This editorial from Calgary is worth a read.  With the changes, the government appears to be killing a fly with a sledgehammer. It should consider cutting back benefits only to those from designated countries of origin — who might only be temporarily affected with...

Lesson Delivered Here at Home

Bill English mocked the demonstrating post-graduates and suggested they take lessons in rioting from the Greeks. They do not need to look that far; New Zealand’s teacher unions have provided a fine lesson in how vested self-interest groups can defend their entitlements.