Canada has dropped any remaining pretences of supporting global action on climate change by urging other countries to follow Australia's example in gutting its climate plan.

In a formal statement, the Canadian government said it "applauds" the move by Australia this week to repeal a carbon tax on the country's 300 biggest polluters.

"Canada applauds the decision by prime minister Abbott to introduce legislation to repeal Australia's carbon tax. The Australian prime minister's decision will be noticed around the world and sends an important message," the formal statement from Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said.

The Harper government withdrew from the Kyoto protocol on climate change in 2011 and Canada has failed to meet its own international emissions to cut greenhouse gas emissions – almost entirely because of its mining of the carbon-heavy Alberta tar sands.

But the praise for Australia marked the first time Canada has actively sought to discourage other industrialised countries from following through on their own climate change commitments.

On a more combative note, Canada on Wednesday went on the attack against the European Union's move to class carbon-heavy Alberta crude as a dirty fuel, labelling the finding as "unscientific".

Calandra, in his statement congratulating Australia, went on to claim that Canada is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But that claim was at odds with the latest finding from the government's own Environment Canada that the country would blow through its international climate commitments by the end of the decade.

Under Canada's current trajectory, emissions were projected to be 734 mega tonnes – or 122 megatonnes higher than Canada's target of 612 tonnes under the international accord the country agreed in 2009.

Canada had agreed at the time to align its climate plan with America's and cut emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.

But Environment Canada in its latest report projected that the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 would amount to barely a 3% drop compared with the promised 17% cut.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/13/canada-climate-australia-carbon-tax

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In Australia, "going troppo" means going north where it's "hot" and people there go funny in the head.... Social convention tend to drop like flies being Baygoned and people become "weirdoes" — especially those who become isolated. One does not see this so much in agglomerations like Cairns, but the heat still impact the behaviour of people who try to spend most of their time inside shopping centres where it's cool due to air conditioning...

In Canada, the same thing happens but it's "going tundra". People become weirdoes as they go north into one of the coldest part of earth. 

But this is irrelevant. 

Canada wants to exploit its mineral rich resources and the bitter cold, especially in winter, is a hindrance. Give them a couple of extra degrees — or four or six — and they'll be happy as a Québecois dog in a char going to the park, with a stick of wood in its guelois... Canada wants to replace Saudi Arabia as the main supplier of oil to the US. This is why they want a dirty big pipeline going from their oil-shale fields, where they extract the most dirty oil on earth to send it directly to Washington DC, in the pool in front of the Lincoln monument... Of course, there is some opposition to the project...

Thus, Canada, as I have mentioned before on this site, has more climate sceptics per square kilometres than anywhere else on earth. That very eminent Canadian scientist, Dr Suzuki, has no chance of making these people see the folly of encouraging global warming — which the Canadian conservative government seeks with not so discreet vigour. Dr Suzuki has already studies certain beetles that used to be under control by the extreme cold... Now these beetles are sort of decimating woodlands, but who cares — the Canadians won't need environmental certifications to bulldoze the dead trees.

While Australia and other parts of the world — including the USA — will warm up dramatically, Russia and Canada would "benefit" from "a bit of warming". China might see things differently, as global warming is going to (already has) impact that country quite severely. 

By mid century, the science of global warming will be fully recognised as accurate by all... and recognise that what we HAVE DONE and are doing to the planet will become mind-bogglingly obvious. BUT WILL IT BE TOO LATE TO PUT THE BRAKES ON? The wall would have been hit already... Too late, you effin' morons...

At the moment we are running over budget in a manner that is not sustainable... Our "economists" and politicians tell us that "we need to live within our means" but they don't apply the same principle to the planet — nor to THE RICH PEOPLE. They all talk rubbish of course. Living "within our means" for these morons means for the poor to carry on toiling cheaply while the rich carry on lining their pockets with nuggets.... Deficit of moneys are basically irrelevant.

But the health of the planet is deteriorating rapidly.

Anyone who reads about this or that animal becoming rare or extinct say in Bengal or in Africa and think that this has nothing to do with them, considering they live in Panama or Greece, are deluded. 

In Australia, we are at a point we have to consider that koalas are an endangered species... Koalas used to be common. Even on the "north shore" of Sydney, there were a few remnants of koala "colonies" till the mid 1990s. I don't think anyone has seen one since. Let me know if you have. Dogs, CATS, traffic and encroaching urbanisation that is out of step with the leafy areas have either killed them off — or forced them to swim across Pittwater to the national park, on the other side — a park that burns down from time time due to smokers, lightning, empty beer bottles acting like looking-glass under the sun and "back-burning from pyromaniac fire-fighters. And it's not going to improve.

The word that the rich people, the economists and the politicians hate (they really HATE IT!) is "sustainable". It's a word which they of course misunderstand because they only think in terms of dollars and the size of their cut as the kitty GROWS, and they think SUSTAINABILITY means lack of progress. To the contrary, "sustainability" is the most progressive concept there is — in which we can do more with less, including provide more happiness. But the rich hate happiness other than their own wallet, because they think should people be happy, they will slack off. Wrong. Eventually capitalism will have to come to respect the idea of sustainability. 

Had Mr Murdoch — as he should have — been reasonable, Tony Abbott would have been blown off the water like a wooden duck shot by frustrated hunters not seeing any real canards on their pond. That's about the worth of Tony. A wooden duck. But I don't know why Uncle Rupe was hell-bent in destroying Julia, then kill off Kevin to promote a crappy little turdy bully who's seem not to have understood anything scientific in his life. 

Was it a revenge against his mother who at the grand old age of 95 plus sumpthin' could still have been chastising him for being an annoying little brat? Unless Uncle Rupe is a misogynist, who likes women as a support act to his antics. But of course Brooke was found out with her hand on the phone-taps and possibly frolicking with another of his lieutenants whom he had carefully placed by the side of the new PM of Pommyland... Unless it's the challenge of doing the impossible: getting the unelectable Tony into the chair of PMship — against all odds. Uncle Rupe is a gambler we know but he also knows how to load the dice and mark the deck.... What a coup! But it doesn't help the planet one iota. To the "au contraire", my dear Watson, it's retrograde... Tony's government is not "reactionary" It's pure retrograde — and NASTY to boot.

So Tony has no OTHER mandate than to be servile to Mr Murdoch. It's a shame that the whole episode happened at a time when the ego of another loopy-loony destroyed the Labor Party. Rudd behave like an egomaniac — some say ambitious. But ambition without restraint is egomaniac... Rudd destroyed the career of many fine people. As Tony Wright writes:

When he finally returned to the prime ministership, Gillard's term destroyed largely by Rudd's own sabotage, it was too late for Labor. Once again, the arguments will continue about how many seats he might have saved and whether he should have gone to the election quickly or waited, but Labor - the party that had swept to power on Rudd's popularity in 2007 - was soundly defeated.

Now Labor can put Kevin Rudd behind it and Rudd himself might get on with his life. But he leaves behind an astonishing trail of collateral damage: including former ministers Nicola Roxon, Simon Crean, Craig Emerson, Martin Ferguson, Greg Combet, Stephen Smith and Peter Garrett, and many staffers, bureaucrats and colleagues burnt out by Kevin Rudd's ambition, which burnt beyond his own capacity to control it.

Journalists like Laurie Oakes also have a lot to answer for... Because, aware or not, they were part of the machinations to unsettle Labor and destroy Rudd in the second wave after having used him to destroy Julia. I am sure Laurie knows it... He must see this, really that he was used... When he pontificated at the Andrew Olle lecture intro about the value of leaks to journalism, he should have smelt the odour of burning rubber as he was gloriously raped from behind in the stunt. I would believe Oakes now feels dirty or duped, especially when the little rats in government are not giving him his daily bowl of milk... Nothing. 

But all this is only human delusions and useless travails. All of this is of little value to our understanding of the greater picture. The matter at hand is the destruction of this planet. 99 per cent of what we dig, pump or sludge is from CONTINENTAL surfaces, including continental shelves, that at one time or another have been above the surface or close to it, then covered up by sand or mud.

For whatever physical properties and physics principles, most of (if not all) the carbon on earth has been on or very near the surface. Thus carbon has been essential in the way the surface of this planet behaves — and I include the atmosphere in the status of this surface. Over aeons, the sequestration and the interaction of carbon has given life to this planet, as well as taken it away in massive extinction events — sometimes related to cosmic events sometimes due to a sheer glut of carbon. It's part of the natural processes. For the last few million years, a large quantity of carbon having naturally been sequestered, a certain natural oscillating equilibrium between sea, photosynthesis, life in general and the gaseous mix of the atmosphere has been reached, giving us the various oscillation between ice ages and warmer periods. 

Bring back the carbon that has been sequestered for millions of years and it's akin to releasing those energies that led to those massive extinction events in which a glut of carbon was the lead of the event.

And we're seeing it now. Global warming, acidification of oceans, pollution and extinction of species. We can think that the natural processes could have also "dug up" the same buried carbon in it's own way... BUT NOT AT THE WARP SPEED WE ARE DOING IT NOW. 

So with our morons in charge, all bent to pray to the god of greed rather than to the goddess of sustainability, we're in for a MASSIVE SHOCK.

I am not kidding.

Have a good day.

Gus Leonisky