Beautiful, balmy Boston day.
I've been out and about for the past couple of days, so I have been remiss on reporting on the Bakken.
I see the president continues to lecture: Congress should not go on vacation until they finish their work. Meanwhile, I see the president is off to Hawaii again for his own vacation. Even the Brits have noticed the hypocrisy: it must be nice being President -- a seventeen day Christmas vacation. MailOnline noticed he had just been to Hawaii two weeks ago. But neither he nor Michelle have any shame. She lecturing us on obesity and he lecturing us on laziness. First parents.
I see Canada is about ready to throw in the towel on the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is the global warming treaty that Canada signed; the US hasn't signed it. The treaty is legally binding but it appears Canada misread the fine print. Canada thought they had until 2050 before they had to take the protocol seriously. Back in 2006, the bill under consideration would have resulted in no hard caps on greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 or 2025, according to the backers, though the government sought to cut emissions by 2050.
It turns out Canada is already facing a huge bill to participate in this scam. Bloomberg is reporting that Canada will save $6.7 billion by backing out of the Kyoto Protocol this next year. There will be too much pressure on Canada to stay with the protocol, so folks will find a way for Canada to postpone the payments, or renege on them completely. My hunch: someone will count the trees north of the border, find they undercounted the trees back in 2006, and determine that the REAL number of trees more than offsets any "cap and trade" payments for at least another decade. This is not rocket science.
Meanwhile, their neighbor to the south just killed the Keystone XL which has nothing to do with global warming, but it must have the Canadians asking themselves why they are paying $6.7 billion when the US is not, and then, on top of that, the Americans don't even want Canadian oil.
Canada' s greenhouse emissions are actually a third higher than they were in 1990 (see link above). Wow. A third higher. Earth Day, 1970. First warnings on global warming: 1994 or before. And here we are, 2011: 40 years since Earth Day -- emissions in Canada are actually a third higher than they were in 1990. With emissions a third higher now than in 1990, have there been any dire consequences? None that I know of. Except more golden eagles and whooping cranes are being killed by wind turbines than polar bears are being killed by global warming. Just saying.