A man named Reid Bryson passed away on June 11, 2008. It is a truism oft stated here that advanced age brings wrinkles and not wisdom and I firmly believe that. Wisdom is inherent and not affected by age. What aging does accomplish is to loosen the inhibitions we place on ourselves that encourage us to suffer fools and foolish notions perhaps just a little bit too often. I have found that older folks tend to have much less patience with silliness from silly people.

Reid Bryson’s life is a towering monument to not just wisdom, but blunt talk. What follows is a wonderful example of blunt talk and conviction coupled with a long, long, lifetime of scientific study. I sure couldn’t say any of this any better.



The Faithful Heretic
A Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions

Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then there’s Reid Bryson. At age 86, he’s still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented.

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.

How Little We Know

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.

“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What’s called “proxy evidence”—assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data—helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.

We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it’s second-tier stuff. “Don’t talk about proxies,” he says. “We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It’s all written down.”

Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners’ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

What Leads, What Follows?

What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There’s been warming over the past 150 years and even though it’s less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the “greenhouse effect,” various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.

We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”

Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up—or down—and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.

Renaissance Man, Marathon Man

When others were laughing at the concept, Reid Bryson was laying the ground floor for scientific investigation of human impacts on climate. We asked UW Professor Ed Hopkins, the assistant state climatologist, about the significance of Bryson’s work in advancing the science he’s now practiced for six decades.

“His contributions are manifold,” Hopkins said. “He wrote Climates of Hunger back in the 1970s looking at how climate changes over the last several thousand years have affected human activity and human cultures.”

This, he suggests, is traceable to Bryson’s high-school interest in archaeology, followed by college degrees in geology, then meteorology, and studies in oceanography, limnology, and other disciplines. “He’s looked at the interconnections of all these things and their impact on human societies,” Hopkins says. “He’s one of those people I would say is a Renaissance person.”

The Renaissance, of course, produced its share of heretics, and 21 years after he supposedly retired, one could ponder whether Bryson’s work today is a tale of continuing heresy, or of conventional wisdom being outpaced by an octogenarian.

Without addressing—or being asked—that question, UW Green Bay Emeritus Professor Joseph Moran agrees that Bryson qualifies as “the father of the science of modern climatology.”

“In his lifetime, in his career, he has shaped the future as well as the present state of climatology,” Moran says, adding, “We’re going to see his legacy with us for many generations to come.”

Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston College, Moran became a doctoral candidate under Bryson in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “I came to Wisconsin because he was there,” Moran told us.

With Hopkins, Moran co-authored Wisconsin’s Weather and Climate, a book aimed at teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and workers with a need to understand what the weather does and why. Bryson wrote a preface for the book but Hopkins told us the editors “couldn’t fathom” certain comments, thinking he was being too flippant with the remark that “Wisconsin is not for wimps when it comes to weather.”

Clearly what those editors couldn’t fathom was that Bryson simply enjoys mulling over the reasons weather and climate behave as they do and what might make them—and consequently us—behave differently. This was immediately obvious when we asked him why, at his age, he keeps showing up for work at a job he’s no longer paid to do.

“It’s fun!” he said. Ed Hopkins and Joe Moran would undoubtedly agree.

“I think that’s one of the reasons for his longevity,” Moran says. “He’s so interested and inquisitive. I regard him as a pot-stirrer. Sometimes people don’t react well when you challenge their long-held ideas, but that’s how real science takes place.”— By Dave Hoopman

Reproduced from the Wisonsin Energy Cooperative News, June 23, 2008 , http://www.wecnmagazine.com

30

I get a little bit tired of trying to coerce people into actually examining the words that they use, daily it seems, in conversations all around me to make themselves sound au courant and ‘down with the struggle’ to save the planet and all the cute little polar bears from US, the supposed scourge that an omnipotent god unleashed on his creation.

When I ask them if they really want their governments to borrow against the future earnings of their children and grandchildren based on the word of a failed politician who managed to catch the imagination of all the ‘beautiful people’. I mean this was Al Gore for crying out loud. The guy who also claimed that he invented the internet, and that he was the inspiration behind the screenplay for the movie “ A Love Story” , and also went on record as unequivocally accepting Bill Clinton’s word that “he did not have sexual relations with that woman”. How could you possibly believe anything so important from such a dweeb as this?

He set in motion a waterfall of funding for any scientist, or pretend scientist, who was clever enough to include the words “GLOBAL WARMING” in their grant applications. I remember reading an interview with a Sudbury professor who said he couldn’t get a plugged nickel to finance his study of the mating habits of squirrels in the pine forests until he changed his title to “ An examination of the effects of GLOBAL WARMING on the sexual reproduction practices of squirrels in the pine forests. “ , and so it goes, on and on, billions upon billions spent and trillions asked for and promised.

All of this to pursue some holy grail of stable global climate. Something that no one can define or quantify because the very idea of climate being stable runs counter to all observable fact. Climate changes, every minute, everywhere, we can’t stop it, we cannot control it, we do not cause it.

A weather guy from the midwest US of A cracked me up one day when he said, “ I really don’t know which is more arrogant, people saying that we (humans) cause global warming, or that we (humans) can control it.”.

Today I just want to tackle one canard that annoys me that I found a rather well written response to. It was part of a letter by a fellow named Hans Schreuder, a chemist by training, regarding the Greenhouse Effect and Radiative Forcing.

He said in part :

“ Following on from your piece in the FT on 30 May 2008, as quoted in your latest CCNet
newsletter (31 May 2008) I wonder how we can get it across to alarmists as well as
skeptics that the much hyped greenhouse effect with its radiative forcing mechanism is
scientifically unsound and, in fact, absurd.

Based on UN IPCC dogma and according to this Australian website for children, the
greenhouse effect is "caused by gases in our atmosphere (especially water vapour, carbon
dioxide and methane). They trap energy from the sun's light and reflect it back to Earth,
so we just keep on getting warmer."

As Alan Siddons points out: "You might as well believe that your image in a mirror can
burn your face”. It is palpably absurd, and yet it is an accurate depiction of the theory that
the IPCC has foisted on the public - a theory that IPCC critics won't even attack because,
presumably, they believe it too.

Moreover, the actual trapping of heat cannot raise an object's temperature in the first
place. It only slows down heat loss. For instance, a polar bear is a living thermos bottle.
Its internal body temperature is much the same as ours. But its surrounding fat and fur are
such that - and this is remarkable - a polar bear is virtually invisible to a thermal camera.
Just like coffee in a thermos, you can't tell how hot the inside of a polar bear is by
looking at it from the outside. But neither does coffee in a thermos get hotter because its
heat is trapped. It just retains its temperature for a longer time. Otherwise, both the polar
bear and the thermos would self-ignite.

In short, the earth absorbs enough energy from the sun to reach a certain temperature.
Since it radiates the same amount, its temperature obviously isn't raised by carbon
dioxide absorbing some infrared - for CO2 simply releases that energy at the same pace,
as satellites attest. But even if CO2 did trap thermal energy, as insulation does (creating
an emission discrepancy that would be quite observable to satellites), the earth's
temperature could go no higher than what it began with. To repeat, coffee doesn't get
hotter in a thermos."

I kind of like the way this fellow put forth his argument and hope it strikes a chord with some of you so you can perhaps sleep a little bit easier at night.

30

Like most of the communities here in the Centre of the Universe, (COTU), we had a very active weather pattern move through the area Friday night last. For a while I thought the world might end and then it did. I was watching the half season finale, (the TV writers strike gave us a whole new language, didn’t it?) of BSG. That is Battlestar Galactica to the four of you who are not fans of this magically reworked Lorne Green original SciFi big adventure. A really terrific vehicle for a very talented Edward James Olmos who for once plays a brooding, strong character who is not that way just because he is hispanic and misunderstood. I love this show.

At 10:17 PM, the storm of the century caused all of our lights to go out. The world had indeed come to an end. The TV was blank, the room was dark, I was alone in the dark void that had been my family room. I tried to read the newspaper by tiny flashlight all the while hoping that the power would come back on any minute and I would not have missed much of my show.

It did not come back until 3:38 AM. Who knew if the Cylons had killed all of the hostages? Was the rescue successful? Will they find Earth? This is important stuff and I had missed it.

A few days before that, I would have been OK. As a tech savvy person, I know where to look, I know how to get, and I know how to watch video that I can access through the communications tool of the 21st Century, The Interweb.

I knew that I could log on, down load and burn out, the right file to allow me to see the episode that Thor, the God of Thunder, had blocked me from watching. It would take me mere minutes.

As the old Chad and Jeremy song goes, “that was yesterday, and yesterdays gone” . Now, Jim Prentice, the Industry Minister of our “nomore BIG government or BIG Brother” Conservative government of the day, has introduced Bill C61, a new, made in Hollywood production, passing itself off as a well thought out Copyright overhaul to bring Canada squarely into the 19th century.

Now, for me to download and view that copyright protected episode of BSG could get me and the person who uploaded it into serious jail time and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

You might think that you have another option. Your buddy Ralph loves the show, works nights and always tapes the show with his VCR. You know he will have come home, watched the show and if you move fast, you can get that tape from him before he overwrites it with Desperate Housewives.

Not so fast Felon Face! Under C61, Ralph is ALLOWED to tape the show. HE can watch it once and then he must erase it. If he lends it to you, there is a good chance a SWAT team from the local RCMP detachment will break down your door, his door, seize everything with a power cord attached to it and cart you off to the Crowbar Hotel.

All this, for a 1 hour television show that was BROADCAST for FREE over the airways and the cable networks. You could pick this show up with rabbit ears, why the hell does it need to be protected to such a degree. One would think, I don’t know, based on 50 years of being bombarded with TV schedules full of shows chosen only because of their Neilsen ratings, that the idea behind this whole Television thing is to get as many eyeballs on the product as you can. More eyeballs, better ratings, etc. , etc.

Not in Canada in the 21st century you don’t. I don’t even want to get started on how if you BUY a CD from Sony music and you load that CD onto your computer so you can then download it to your iPod to listen to it while you jog or ride the subway, you have now won the right to pay $20,500. per song and possibly times 4 if you get sued by the song writer, song singer, the band and the cleaning lady at the studio.

So a 10 track disc violation like that would amount to $820,000, if all fines are applied. That is $500 per track, $20,000 for breaking the digital lock on the CD by loading it onto your computer, time the number of complainants that will come out of the woodwork if Sony decides to make you their newest best friend and example to felons everywhere.

Folks, I am not making any of this up and it is a lot worse. For the first time in my life I sent an angry email to a cabinet minister, Mr. Jim Prentice, and told him how I felt about this regressive, draconian piece of legislation. Make no mistake, this is not about piracy, or stealing anything from various “stakeholders” as they like to style themselves these days. This is just about the money.

The Recording Industry has not evolved since Edison recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet on Dec. 6, 1877. Every technological advancement has been met with massive resistance, lobbying, new legislation and fear mongering on the part of the Recording Industry.

Their time is up, their business model can no longer support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, their Star system of artist promotion is gone, the radio business no longer supports a Top 50 format and their sales are in the tank while Apple sells a Billion songs over the Interweb.

My local FM radio station used to have a playlist numbered in the hundreds or thousands. Since the dawn of the “targeted format” aimed at computer selected demographic groups the number of songs played on the largest Rock FM radio station in the largest market in Canada has dwindled to less than 40 songs.

And they wonder why artists are not selling records. Less than 10% of all songs written in Canada every year ever get aired on radio. Yet when I go to Best Buy and purchase a package of blank CD’s to burn my photos, my Computer OS software to, I am forced to pay a large fee, (roughly $10 per spindle) on top of the cost to be given to the 11,000 English songwriters in Canada who have registered with the Government program designed to ‘compensate’ artists for my “stealing” their work.

I am not to blame for this. Any of it. If Mr. Prentice and his cronies in my once favourite Conservative caucus would get their heads out of their collective asses and look around a little bit they might just figure it out.

Maybe if this C51 dies on the order paper, (as it could, and should) I will be able to find out if Adama, Laura, Boomer and Starbuck ever find Earth. You know, the important stuff.

If not, if this passes into law, there is another big storm coming. Hold on to your Tilley hat.

30

Let me begin by saying that anyone who believes that we have a universal, one tier health care system in Canada should really give up the Grey County Gray stuff and join the rest of us here in reality land.

Every time I read that some American basketball player stubbed his toe during a game here in Toronto and was taken directly to a downtown hospital for a full body CAT scan, an MRI and a neurology consult, all of which was completed before the next morning sports pages were printed I want to throw something at a politician. This battery of tests for you or I would involve the best part of a year of to-ing and fro-ing, several doctors from several different disciplines, a small army of clinic and health care support staff, a couple of dozen civil servants and a note from your mother.

When a politician, or a politician’s friend, needs a heart transplant, don’t stand in between them and the surgical room because you are going to get knocked down in the stampede. And for God’s sake, don’t sustain any head injuries within a walking mile of the hospital or you may get your wish to “donate” a little bit earlier then you had planned on.

For the most part, even though it is not as egalitarian as advertised, I like our health care system. I spent a lot of time working in various US cities with a number of companies filled with normal people who had normal health care issues not one bit different then we have. Their hospitals are wonderful, well equipped temples to modern medicine. Marvelously well trained doctors and first rate drug therapies await your every symptom.

However, you only have to see the effect of one diagnoses of Diabetes for a co-workers young child or a single heart attack to realise just how precious our portable health care system is. In the US of A, any such health care crisis has far reaching consequences. If you have a fairly good health care plan with your job, you are now bonded to that job forever. Any career advancement that necessitates a change of employer will result in you having zero health care benefits as your new employers plan will almost certainly not cover a “pre-existing condition”. You are screwed and you had better not get sick.

Back here at home, our hospitals are few and far between, an MRI may become a scarce precious resource, ‘shared’ on a regional basis by a number of hospitals so book four months in advance and beg a ride to Newmarket if you need one. Meanwhile a trip to the emergency room would try the patience of Job.

During a recent Provincial election, Liberal politicians unveiled, (for a second time already) a big sign touting a massive investment in our local hospital to fund a much needed expansion. Markham Stouffville Hospital needs this expansion.

Election over, sign is fading, minor announcement recently that the funding has been put on hold, ostensibly until the next election.

Not to be left out in the cold, a plan has been announced by the local politicians to levy a 3% Hospital Expansion Tax on homeowners in York Region to fund the expansion promised by the Province. These guys got balls.

It sounds a lot like the “User Pay” plan that is raised every so often and roundly criticized by pinheads like George Smitherman our Health Minister, as not universal, anti-inclusive and discriminatory.

Only in this case, it is a little bit different because it would be a case of Homeowners of York Region PAY while Everyone Else USES.

Markham Stouffville hospital is only a few miles north of Toronto’s border. Hospitals in Toronto are even more crowded then ours. It turns out savvy frequent fliers on the Ambulance Service frequently direct their drivers to take them to Markham Stouffville because the wait time, while still atrocious, is less then in their local hospital.

Run your eyes down the addresses of the patients in any ward in the hospital and you will find a great number are from outside what most folks would see as a logical ‘catchment area’ for MSH.

So, our hospital really does need to expand and we do need to raise some money if the Province is going to renege on their commitments.

I am going to surprise you here and tell you that after much sober thought I am in full agreeement with the 3% tax plan on York Region homeowners to fund this expansion.

They can impose that tax, the day after they start asking for ID with a York Region address on it before they admit or provide any services to anyone who comes through the door.

That I can live with.

30

With any luck we will be following and/or participating in two major elections this coming Fall season. Our American friends will be duking it out state by state. The Blue States vs. the Red States as seen on those incredibly stupid massive electronic chalk boards on CNN and FNN ad nauseam during political news casts which seem to run about 20 hours a day now.

In Canada, it will be Les Bleu’s vs. La Rouge with a smattering of L’orange and Vert thrown in to keep the metaphor even more colourful.

It was inevitable I suppose that nations who have been engaging in dumbing down the important debates of our day to reach the lowest common denominator as based on advertising demographics would eventually devolve into using what can only be described as the electronic equivalent of a colouring book to explain the big picture to the folks.

Colour is not the only thing that the two elections will have in common this time round. Mr. Dion has announced his party platform on Energy and it seems to be based on the fallacious notion taxing the Bad Guys and promising tax breaks to the Good Guys will work just as well in this 21st century as it did during most of the last quarter of the 20th. From a “chicken in every pot” to a “Prius in every driveway” is a short slide down a slippery slope.

I actually look forward to Mr. Dion and Mr. Obama running on a platform to raise the price on $1.35 a litre or $4.00 a gallon gasoline by 40 cents or so as well as similar increases in electricity rates, and natural gas. As Premier Campbell of BC is going to find out as the effects of his recently enacted Carbon Tax starts to show up on the Visa statement, hell hath no fury like a voter deprived of the pleasure of their Silverado.

Speaking of which, the outraged auto workers, (Do any of you also think that being an easily outraged, “git her done” kind of person is a prerequisite for admission into the CAW?) now seen on every TV channel are just the tip of the iceberg of the hundreds of thousands of people in Canada whose livelihood is or will soon be threatened by the knee jerk reaction of consumer sheep to the scary talk dripping from the mouths of weaselly politicians and others in the “How are we going to fool them today” camp.

Spend a year of so telling everyone that Oil is bad, the planet is dying, WE are dying and within 30 or 40 years we are all going to be living either underwater, or on a shore somewhere without any breathable air or drinkable water unless we use fewer plastic bags and tax people into the poorhouse if they use any form of energy and guess what? People stop buying Silverado’s and F150’s and take fewer trips to visit the folks in Parry Sound.

Next on the list of unintended consequences is the abandonment of hundreds of development plans for housing projects in what are currently known as Bedroom Communities like Barrie, Bowmanville, Milton et al right across the country. If folks can’t afford to drive cars into the city to work they will either not move out of the city in the first place or try to move back in to be closer to their jobs. Watch what that does to the affordable housing market and jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries.

All of these pinheads persist in characterising their Carbon Tax or Cap and Trade plan as “Revenue Neutral”. Dion insists, as does Mr. Campbell et al, that every penny of the $10 or $20 or $40 Billion that these taxes will vacuum out of the economy into the Federal Treasury will be returned to taxpayers as tax credits. Now, hands up anyone who believes that for a nanosecond. Nobody? I thought so. Even if you trusted their intentions, listen to their words. We will provide tax incentives for people to invest in energy saving appliances and transportation.

What they want you to believe is that everyone will get some money back. What they will do is provide tax credits for buying a Prius or an ultra efficient Zero refrigerator. I don’t know about you, but most folks who I know are driving 12 year old Ford products and paying bootleg repairmen to refill their 25 year old Kelvinator with Freon which was banned in the last fit of useless regulatory activity.

If you pay little or no taxes, which means you are likely not making much money, a $2500 tax credit to buy a $40,000 hybrid car to replace your 10 year old Chrysler minivan is of zero value. They don’t send you a cheque, they just let you deduct from taxes owing.

Revenue neutral? I don’t think so. Furthermore, if these or any taxes are honestly able to be described as REVENUE NEUTRAL, can you understand why they would impose them at all? I mean seriously, they are saying they will take Billions of dollars out of your left pocket, launder it through the machinery in Ottawa and then they promise that they will put EVERY PENNY back into your right pocket. Why bother?

Why bother indeed!

Mr. Dion and Mr. Obama and all of their cowardlly, stay in power at any cost, fellow travellers, in trying to appease their left wing, green focussed, vocal voting minorities will provide easy pickings for the Bleu’s and the Blue’s this fall.

30

I remember well the feeling of helplessness that came over me when I first got involved in politics in the early 70’s. Young, inexperienced, more heart the head, I was a large “L” Liberal at a time when it was a good thing to be. I’ d like to be trite and say that the earnest young ladies of the NDP, with their sturdy shoes and shop floor haircuts, could not compete with the bra-less and occasionally bra-burning Liberal Ladies League but the truth is that it was not the ladies nor the parties but the late night discussions about policy that drew me to the Trudeau camp and kept me away from the party of David Lewis, a man I greatly admired.

It was policy and more importantly, a sense that what we were doing was going to have an effect on the world around us, was actually going to mean something, that stirred our hearts and drove us to work ridiculous hours and give up so much of our family life for The Cause.

The helplessness came when we would rub up against old time Conservative voters, either at the door while canvassing, or while involved in some community activity. With the zeal of the freshly converted I would rattle off the benefits of Liberalism and the sins of Conservatism. How one uplifted the spirit and the other crushed the little guy. Time after time these grizzled Tories would nod their heads in agreement about how the last Conservative government of John G. Diefenbaker had bungled one policy after another and we would exclaim how we just could not understand how Dief had ever been elected in the first place. They would agree, smile and every damn one of them would say with an almost beatific smile on their faces, “ He may have been all of those things, but “BOY, HE SURE COULD GIVE A GOOD SPEECH”.

That was it for these folks, damn the results, never mind the carnage, “HE GAVE A GOOD SPEECH” was all that was necessary to win the hearts and minds and wallets and votes of these morons with voting privileges. Unbelievable!

This past Tuesday, I heard it again, as if from some far distant memory, “WHAT AN ORATOR”, “GREAT SPEECH”, “REALLY STIRRED THE CROWD” , were the words I heard the talking heads exclaim over and over, as if that really meant something.

I suppose it does however, much as it pains me to say it. It means Barack Obama is the NEXT BIG THING and woe betide anyone or anything who gets in the way of his rhetoric or dares to parse his actual words.

I dare though, I mean, I know most people today are sheep. The polls tell me every day that even in the face of tons of real evidence to the contrary, most of the folks I share this hemisphere with actually believe that A: Global warming is a real and present threat. and B: That not only did ‘we’ (they usually mean me though) cause it, that we can actually do something about it.

So you see, I am used to seeing this kind of blind acceptance of the public utterances of morons like Al Gore and David Suzuki but surely there has to be some kind of means test applied to the words of the guy who would be the next President of Everything. The guy said the following, to thunderous applause, (sic) “ today is the day that the oceans stopped rising”, ... “today is the day our planet began to heal”. I mean come on, this guy is talking about how June 3, 2008, the day he decided to declare himself, cause you know, Hillary has not decided yet if it is true or not, the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for the 08 elections, will go down in history as the day the oceans stopped rising!!! The planet began to heal!!!

This guy should not be worried that folks may call him by his middle name, Hussein. He should be concerned that folks will call him Knud, the Viking King who anointed himself with the power to stop the tides just about 1000 years ago. (1016)

Rapture is what I saw on the faces of the crowd Tuesday night. Awe is what I perceived on the minds and lips of the talking heads of Fox News as they reported this event. But I got to tell you, all I could hear, in that little nagging voice back behind my tired eyes, was, “BOY, HE SURE COULD GIVE A GOOD SPEECH” !

Hang on to your hats, here they come again.

30