The NDP British Columbia government 2023 budget promises a continued attack on family budgets.

To verify my reaction my first bit of research  needed to clarify the meaning of the word hypocrisy. 

So lets start there: 

Behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe. 

Say one thing but do another.

Claiming to have moral standards to which ones own behavior does not conform.

Insincerity, deception. dishonesty, double-dealing are a few more bits of connective tissue that reflect

the disdain this government reveals towards the everyday working folks it claims to serve.

This attitude is made crystal clear with the plans to triple carbon tax in the next 7 years, starting with escalations a few weeks from now.  Driving costs more, heating your home  with LNG costs more, and increasing transportation costs means everything you buy will cost more. Don't forget that's on top of the increased pump price and heating your home costs.

So the government espouses converting everything to electricity to wean our lives into the mythical universe of a carbon neutral nirvana in order to save the planet. At the same time, they will punish anyone with the audacity to use carbon based fuels. They buy into the fear mongering science of pending doom because we use gasoline and diesel and LNG  and other fuels derived from oil but the government is quite ok with raking in mountains of dough from the very products they claim to despise.

That defines the term hypocrisy to the Nth degree in my mind.  We (the NDP) say we think carbon based fuels are the evil scourge even though they are still a necessity for existence but we are not only going to continue  to beat you up mentally over your disregard for the environment, we are going to gleefully grab more of your money through excessive carbon taxes just because we can!

Meantime, electric vehicles speed around on those glistening asphalt highways with narry a hint of  any costs to them  to save the world other than the narcissistic belief that they are saving humanity from extinction.  Can you imagine the government wanting their millions of dollars in electric vehicle subsidies returned?  Or a tax on electric vehicle registrations to help maintain our streets and highways?  You can bet your meagre savings that the NDP will not touch that concept with a 20 ft. pole.  Maybe the revenge will come when electricity costs spiral in North America and oil consumption stays the same globally as other countries swallow up the evil surplus of the energy source that brings them radical economic advancement.

 after an extended hiatus I  revisited this blog and wondered how so many years had evaporated.

The climate crisis still strikes fear.  So, little has changed-including the temperature of the planet.

About to turn 75, I might be trying to test  whether my faculties are somewhat intact.  we shall see in the

 coming months.  There are some significant (in my mind) thought collections rattling around in my head.

We shall see what becomes in the days ahead.  since I have microscopic readership there will likely be 

little in the way of  blowback from whatever I write.  I'll think of it self therapy.  cheers for today.

Climate Change Just Won't Quit

Question:  How do Canadians find truth about climate change and these carbon emissions?


It's such a push button topic these days but how much do we really understand about the climate that surrounds planet earth.  If there are a lot of average Canadians like me, you are mildly obsessed with weather forecasts but deeper knowledge of what creates climate is limited. Factor in blatant, unfactual  information imbedded in articulately constructed news from climate change extremists and our knowledge of what creates climate is reduced even further.
It's so tempting to lash out at the purposeful and calculated deception that has unfolded over the last 20 years on global warming /climate change / carbon footprint / slash / slash / slash.  What is really needed is more information.
 I found real momentum to follow this rabbit trail discovering a NOVA  program titled "Earth From Space".  This documentary detailed data collected from a fleet of spacecraft circling earth.  Emerging as I watched,  was a powerful, understandable conception of the universal forces of sunlight, polar icecaps, earth rotation, magnetic force fields and additional significant scientific discoveries that form the origins of climate on earth. Even so, it was barely fathomable to get  my feeble human reasoning  around the sheer immensity  of  the information being revealed.  Our world may seem smaller through technology. But the size of the planet is the same and the universe has not been minutely affected by humans. What seemed a little like a throw in at the end of the NOVA program was the effect of human activity on the earth.....still miniscule when stacked up against the scientific realities of  the climate that creates the atmosphere that fuels the very survival of the wonders that we see and experience on our planet. Most significantly what we humans contribute to the big picture.
You many or may not notice that climate change comes in waves into our media world.  The most recent example is the past few weeks.  Various stories about rising temperature, melting polar ice caps government inaction on carbon emissions and the increasing need for green energy solutions.  A National Post article on December 12th, written by Peter Foster laid out the foundation of why this happens. The Conference of the Parties(COP) in Lima, Peru.  Apparently, news releases are highly organized to reveal alarming studies that will validate the need for a global agreement to change the climate: the stated goal of this U.N. inspired organization.  Not incidentally, this 8000 strong delegation is trying to pry loose 100 million dollars from governments to fund this pursuit. Their tactics this year included Greenpeacers trespassing on a sacred Peruvian  Heritage site to trample out their own politically loaded message on renewability.  Another of their stories on climate change stated that Antarctic glaciers were shedding  Mount Everest of ice every year.
There is great disparity on the buy-in of countries supporting carbon emissions controls. Promises versus actions from many countries and organizations are wide ranging.  India and China  give lip service but not much else.  It's not secret that they see oil and gas as the fast track for economic development.  Europe and the U.S. are not on the same page.  Many countries' subsidies to renewable industry are disappearing fast than Antarctic ice. Closer to home, the Ontario Provincial Liberal government has saddled consumers with an extra 50 billion dollars of debt with their misguided foray  into building renewable electricity infrastructure.  Our Prime Minister, Stephen  Harper has always expressed a clear stance on this subject, foremost not to throw money blindly at COP.  Most recently on their latest strategy to impose unilateral restrictions on the oil industry, he states this would be a crazy move in the current environment of depressed oil prices.
The CBC and especially news anchor, Peter Mansbridge have long been on a desperate mission to fuel the demise of Prime Minister Harper.   Mr. Mansbridges' annual Christmas interviews can border on the pathetic,  saved only by the intelligence and leadership qualities of the PM.  And witness the ambush interview by Mansbridge at the UN in New York with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as reported by Philip Cross of the National Post.  Mr. Mansbridge seems to have lost any journalistic integrity in his anti-Harper quest.
The momentum-building for the Lima COP gathering had this 'bit' of good news to cling to heading in to this years meeting. After 18 straight years in which global temperature refused to climb, 2014 statistics to the end of October from the World Meteoroligical Organization recorded a new record, a 1/100 of a degree increase.  In an article published by environmental writer Lawrence Solomon, he reports that Arctic ice is over its average of the last 15 years.  Antarctic sea ice cover is at an all time high and is thicker than previously thought.  The Polar Vortex is spreading to Europe and produced 9000 record lows in November in North America.
Whatever the climate, there is a new sheriff in town. Plummeting oil prices are ushering in a  new age of oil and gas popularity.  Remember when 'peak oil' was a buzz phrase.  A little historical reading on what 'science' said then might be quite interesting! Conversely, the International Energy Agency is expressing a lot of confidence these days regarding the popularity of oil and gas products for the next quarter century.
So, fellow Canadians, where do we go from here?  The NOVA, Earth from Space documentary should be a must see in order to establish any perspective on how climate works on this planet, regardless of the input by humans. 
The climate change media machine will never provide us with perspective and many of their 'facts' are highly suspect  when checked out.  Don't fully trust those on the other side either.  Once the NOVA program is processed, it's quite logical to recognize that 'computer modelling' creates the worst case scenarios such as the famous Al Gore 'hockey stick' and many others.  With hindsight we now know that none of these models have proven out  The Conferences of the Parties is supposed to be the beaming reinforcement of the lofty aspirations of this gathering to motivate humans to reduce the horrible carbon footprint we are making.
A report from writer Nota Bene even casts doubt on this endeavour.  The stated intention of COP at their Lima meetings was to neutralize all the greenhouse gas pollution they created at the convention.
Bene reports these  findings in the U.S. News and World Report on December 9th.  Quite the opposite happened....a record 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide were created.  Some of the reasons: 13 temporary buildings were assembled for the 2 weeks of the meetings.  Some components flown in from Brazil and France.  Electricity supplied entirely by diesel generators(other plans like solar power didn't work out according to organizers), A bicycle parking lot was meagrely used.  8000 delegates mostly used vehicles for the 10 km., hour long traverse between the meeting site and their hotels.
Reality can be such a harsh judge of idealistic intention.
What we need to do is work a little harder to find out as much as we can about climate and the role of humans in it.  This means to also study the information from the numerous scientists who believe we have as much effect on climate as 'a fart in a wind storm'.  It means not giving up on efforts to reduce waste and minimize pollution on our planet.  Whether or not we are a factor in climate, we still need to maximize efforts to become better housekeepers of our home in this vast amazing universe.
Is their climate change?  Of course there is.  It's been happening since the very beginning.  If indeed you subscribe to the theory that there were enough fossils to create all this oil, can you imagine the flatulence that occurred.  Today, India's cows are know to be a worse contributor to green house gasses than most countries.  Maybe even Canada.
In the long run, people will respond better to truth than manufactured alarmism that carries stupendous financial implications for a small lobby group.  We are getting better at waste control and pollution practises.  Let's concentrate on that for a quarter century and see what happens.

Climate Change Debate 2014

Do you remember back around 2007, when the climate change furor spread fearful assurance the 'human effect' on our planet heralded certain disaster?  This scientific revelation spread like wildfire led by the Al Gore inspired Inconvenient Truth.  There were crazy stories: hotels removing Bibles from their rooms and replacing them with Al Gore's book.  Green house gases from human activity causing radical temperature change that would melt the polar ice caps and raise the ocean level by 20 feet!
Anyone daring to debunk or even challenge this spiralling challenge to civilization faced immediate and fierce public admonishment. For Gore and a legion of others a massive economic wheel began to turn. Carbon became the bad boy that built mind numbing fortunes.
Fast forward to June 2014.
Ross McKitrick, a professor of environmental Economics published the latest information comparing the 'climate models' that forecast those dire predictions  to what has actually happened to global temperatures over the last 15 years. Keep in mind that the rising carbon dioxide levels actually increased some 43 percent But and its a pretty big but, during this time when temperatures were supposed to rise more rapidly there has been no change in global temperature.
This result is unavoidable 'fact' for the IPPC(intergovernmental panel on climate change).  These results at their embarrassing least have forced them to acknowledge a 'warming hiatus' since 1998.
The bigger picture is the impending possibility that their  climate models are heading for the junk pile. This is not small potatoes and requires more  explanation that gets into how these models impact economic policy. You must look elsewhere to delve into this aspect.  (I'm trying to keep this short and to the point)
The scarier scenario being played out in this is the role that science plays in our lives today.  Or, how that role has changed.  British sociologist Barry Barnes explains this about as briefly as possible.
He makes this comparison.  The old way of science was belief based on rational foundations. Now, knowledge depends on consensus and authority. "Customs and conventions are seen as the creation of human agents, actively negotiated and actively sustained under the collective control of those who initially negotiate them and subsequently sustain them. The result is to, "display scientific knowledge through and through as a social contract."
Today's social media world empowers this reality exponentially in my mind.  It is sooo hard now to know what is the truth-inconvenient or otherwise.

My atheist and agnostic relatives and friends would likely get edgy right away reading something that starts off: Jesus said in the Bible that if one or more gather they can be in relationship with Him.

When you love and respect people with a different perspective, you also recognize the potential and devastating harm that can be done when trying to be who you are yet not throw gasoline where a mere spark may cause a violent explosion.What I want to do may not what I achieve, but if I'm successful I will tread in barefeet over the hot coals, not spill any fuel, and step again on to the cool safe ground with no harm to myself or others. Writing these thoughts has been prompted by someone who came into my life with amazing impact considering the circumstances and length of our acquaintance.

I believe, after much thought, that to begin this story it is necessary to talk about the context in which I feel it must be taken. It is a story of incredible belief in God. So that creates a problem right off the bat for those who do not belief there is one.

If there is no God then this is simply seen as something conjured up in a human brain.

If there is no God then every religion that worships one has been created by humans .

If there is no God then everything bad blamed on religion can be traced to bad humans who exploited innocent, good intentioned humans.

If there is no God then the teachings in Holy Books holds little significance.

However, even if one believes all of the above to be true, there is no denying the powerful force of people who believe in God. Even if it is totally a human creation, it was recognized early in the history of mankind that this was a very real force even if you could not see it, hear it, touch it, feel it or smell it. Humans just seem to sense it.

As with anything in the human realm it will be used for good and it will be used for bad. I believe it is so unfortunate even if inevitable that the strongest emotions gaining strength in our times is the bad uses and consequences of actions identified as religious in nature. The extreme response is to somehow destroy all religions and their activities.

I am hoping that the reader is already figuring out that this really isn't where I am going with this conversation....defending/condemning......condemning/defending. But I do have to color this with my own pencil because of the fact that I try to live my life based on principals taught in the Christian Bible and attributed to possibly the most controversial figure in human history. His name is Jesus. And frankly I don't really know much about what is said in other Holy Books. I do know that Jesus represents the only God claiming to have shown himself in human form on earth.

What I am trying to create context for, is that personal relationship between one person and one God.

There is no religion, no great infrastructure, no superiors to answer to. It is simply believing that there is someone who you can lay your whole life before, most desireably in secret. And when you are able to do that to the very best of your ability, you will receive answers to your deepest darkest fears, your highest most improbable desires and you will receive at least some deep understanding of why events happen for which we have absolutely no answers.

And that is where this story begins. Part of a recent holiday trip included some time on Prince Edward Island. Its a beautiful place to just go on drives over lightly travelled country roads, past impeccable homes with giant manicured lawns, immaculat looking churches and graveyards, huge fields of potatoes and corn, idyllic rolling countryside and cooperative September weather bathing everything in sunshine. One drive took us from the major centre of Charlottetown to the islands next biggest place of Summerside. Arriving in time for lunch to discover that many of the neat restaurants on the waterfront had already closed with the tourist season pretty much over. However we were directed to one that was still open for another week.

It is right on the water and provided an excellent view. A couple of tables have customers and there is a notice that the full menu is not available due to the impending winter closure. The girl who served us had incredibly severe disfigurement on her face and at first it required good concentration to look her in the eyes and understand her words when she spoke. She on the other hand seemed fully confident in her work. We watched as she chatted with the other customers. Eventually we became the last ones there so we struck up a conversation.  Val courageously (I thought) asked what had caused the scars. What we heard was the amazing testimony and courage of a young, openly Christian 24 year old girl who had half of her jaw removed when she was about 2 due to bone cancer. Then as a teenager she had a good portion of her face practically torn off in a automobile accident and at that time was given last rites with little expectation that shew would survive her injuries.
This is her mothers restaurant and she has always worked here since she was a little girl and told us her main goal after the accident was to get back to work before the end of the tourist season that year.
Nicole talked so candidly about her life and how she will be getting more surgeries next year to rebuild her face and told us stories of how she has been able to help others in the community that have faced extreme difficulties in their life. She is also involved with an organization called About Face(www.aboutface.ca) that helps people deal with facial disfigurement.

We became friends within a matter of a few minutes. Her amazing story of unquestioned faith in God and how that faith provided victory and hope over such daunting challenges really touched Val and I very deeply. We felt really blessed to have been brought to this place to hear this story.  We will certainly be keeping her in our thoughts and prayers as she prepares for extensive surgical procedures in Toronto in the coming months.

Such are the mysteries of God. He gives strength when we are at our weakest. Prayer works even though we really don't know how. We are also allowed to discount him as nothing more than a figment of the human brain. One thing for sure God and Jesus usually evoke emotion in the human brain and seldom promote apathy.

I have questions about the atheist point of view. The main point is that there is no god. But what I often read is their anger at religion and churches. ' There can be no peace until the last church is destroyed.' So would that prove that there is no god?
The 'fact' that I am working around is that there are some 60 million gods among the cultures of the world. So must the trappings of all of them be eliminated to prove there is no god?
So who was the first god? Didn't there have to be a first one some where back in time....and then another one and another one. Where did this urge to worship a higher power come from?
Having a god to worship does not make you a better person. In fact putting yourself out there as a person who can help you communicate with a god is really the worst kind of deceiver.
So are these the people that atheists want taken out? That is the end game is it not? If nothing else 60,000,000 gods should tell you this is a pretty widespread aspect of human nature and I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say it is pretty much hopeless to convince anybody but a minor minority that there are no gods. not a single one....

The most well known attempt to go down this road was the rule of communism in Russia. One of their main thrusts was to educate the people that there was no such thing as god. They murdered 60 million people who disagreed with them. It does become the only solution if you insist on enforcing a fundamental belief make over. And how did that work out in the end....I do believe that the human desire to worship a higher power won out.
I do not pretend to know how to explain god. I consider myself a rational human being who believes that at the end of the day there is one God, our Creator and that the Bible provides the operators manual for understanding who human beings are and how we fit into the scheme of things. Its obviously a complex book as people have been trying to fiure it out for nearly 2000 years and there's no end in sight that that I can see.
When I look up at a starry night I know with certainty that we are a microscopic speck in a bigger scheme. So for me it calls into question the issue of who is a human? And that is a whole other question. My biggest difficulty with it being able to rationalize the theory that we came out of the slime.
As human beings we are free to choose what we believe. When we look at the billions of us on the planet, that freedom is pretty obvious. We've gone every which way but loose....as the Clint Eastwood movie said.
But at the end of the day isn't there just one right answer, one truth? At this time in human history it just seems to be that the concept of no god is one of the weakest possibilities if you look at how humans in great percentage seem to lean toward the connection to a higher power.
The humans who use god, and religions as vehicles to do many, many bad things are bad humans. So anger against them is justified. Atheists would have a lot more friends if they stated that is how their anger is directed at. But it looks and smells like atheism is a veiled political attack on the concept of god and somehow points its bony finger at Christianity more than other religions and their gods.
Us humans are such an imperfect lot. All I know for sure is that when I try to live a life based on some basic rules laid out by fellow named Jesus it is the most complete form of living on this planet that I've found.
An atheist needs to tell me what set of rules he/she lives by...if its anarchy when you hold it under a bright light then I can't buy it.

Hanging out with Dad

Whenever I go back to Prince Rupert I like to make a point of visiting my Dad.
His spirit has remained part of me since September 12 1982. But I still like to visit the veterans section of the Prince Rupert Cemetery. I usually clean away the encroaching moss from the small rectangular granite grave stone that bears his name, military information and the quotation, A Proud Canadian.
This summer I decided to ask someone to join me. My cousin, Carroll, was always like another son to my Dad. It was Carroll who took on the unenviable task to call me when Dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. He and I have carried on that spiritual connection we seem to have even though our lives have often go in different directions.
Now Dad was a proud Canadian who served overseas for 5 years but there is an underlying significance to this tribute. There is a Canadian Whiskey called Royal Reserve and on the back of each 26 ounce bottle was a removeable sticker the read A Proud Canadian. There were a number of these stuck on various things and places around my parents house.
So when I asked Carroll if he would be interested in visiting Dads place where his earthly remains lie, I already had in hand a bottle of Royal Reserve and a couple of Cokes. So we drove up to the Cemetery one afternoon. We had a ‘snort’ as Dad would have called it straight from the bottle. Then dumped some of the Coke to make room for the other liquid. We stood with Dad and talked about the good times we remembered with him, his sense of humor, how we remembered his life, his never complain attitude even though the last 12 years were diminished somewhat from the effects of a heart attack that shortened his life to 63 years.
His was a simple and sometimes difficult life, yet surely not forgotten by many who knew him. Not perfect by any means. But a teeshirt given to Carroll by a close friend had these words, which I think fit my Dad as well: I’m not for everyone, but those who like me like me a lot.
It probably explains why Carroll and my Dad were so close.

We poured some of our drinks around the grave stone in a loving and sharing way that a lot of people might not understand. Mighty irreverent by some standards. But no true Christian is perfect and in that time Carroll and I spent with Dad that afternoon we discovered something pretty amazing ….that each of us in his own private way yet in a real and meaningful way know that we will be together again some day.
It’s the best news I could have ever prayed to have.

enjoying the wastefullness of grace

The Shack by William P. Young

How does it feel to have a personal relationship with God? William Young has written a story that has made me truly believe that God can and will approach any one of us...and not be surprised if the way He does is unorthodox.
The complete heart of God is revealed in scripture. The immensity of fully knowing this on a personal level is a challenge that has not been completed in the time the Bible has been available. It is why Gods' word is vibrant, alive and responding to each new generation as it come along.
The Shack takes the reader on an incredible journey. Reinforced through Biblical truth the reader is conjoined to a chain of life changing events in Mack's life. Events that show the reader how to comprehend the way God might work into our very own lives and do it in away that could change our lives forever.
In a note on the book cover, William Young portrays his own life these days as 'enjoying the wastefulness of grace'. For anyone that is thinking at all about the meaning of life in this hectic world of ours, The Shack will start you on a journey to understand what that phrase means.
I believe that understanding Gods grace and the abundance of it, is the beginning of living life the way it is intended to be lived