Lisa Priest wrote in “Aneurysm lands man in health-care nightmare, A shortage of specialized services in Ontario hospitals has forced 164 neurosurgical patients to U.S. hospitals since April of 2006”, (Globe and Mail, Feb.19, 2008) of patient Ming Quon’s experience with the Ontario health-care system.
Priest reported Mr. Quon, 55, after experiencing an unusual, severe headache at home, was taken by ambulance to: “York Central Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, caused by a ruptured aneurysm.
But that was only the beginning of his troubles.
More bad news was to come: No Ontario hospital that provides neurosurgery could take him.
Unwittingly, Mr. Quon found himself smack in the middle of a health-care shortage, one that has forced 164 patients with broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or outside of the brain to Michigan and New York State hospitals since April, 2006.
That includes 69 patients sent so far in fiscal 2007-2008, according to Health Ministry figures.
Although Ontario has the worst problem by far, it is not alone.
British Columbia has sent four patients with spinal-cord injuries to Washington State hospitals for care from May to September, 2007, though the recruitment of more staff and opening of new beds have helped alleviate the problem. Saskatchewan has sent patients to neighbouring provinces, including Alberta, for specialized neurosurgical services.
In Ontario, patients face barriers to receiving care at every turn.
There is limited access to teleradiology and operating-room time. There are too few intensive-care beds, a short supply of neurosurgically trained intensive-care nurses to staff them and too few neurosurgeons.
For Mr. Quon, it was "a scary thing," said his wife, a registered nurse who works at an insurance company.
Ms. Quon said her husband spent about 15 hours in emergency as staff worked to find a hospital that performs neurosurgery.
Bruce Harber, York Central Hospital's president and chief executive officer, could not comment on the case, due to patient confidentiality.
But he wrote in an e-mail: "We at York Central Hospital work closely with CritiCall [an emergency-referral service for physicians] to ensure that these patients are transferred to the most appropriate and available regional centre."
When Mr. Quon was finally referred to a Buffalo hospital, his wife raced home to grab passports, threw on a pair of slacks, forgetting to change out of the pajama top she was still wearing.
Treatment at Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital came in the form of neurosurgery about 17 hours after Mr. Quon suffered his subarachnoid hemorrhage.
He underwent a craniotomy, an operation to open the skull, then had a small metal clothespin-like clip placed on the aneurysm's neck, to halt its blood supply.
He also had two endovascular coil embolizations, a minimally invasive procedure where a long, thin tube is inserted into the femoral artery near the groin, up to the aneurysm.
Small platinum coils then fill the aneurysm to prevent it from further expansion and rupture.
Michael P. Hughes, vice-president of public relations and government affairs for Kaleida Health, which includes Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital, could not speak about Mr. Quon's case, due to patient confidentiality, but said his institution is seeing an increasing number of Canadian patients.
"I'm glad he had a positive outcome," Mr. Hughes said.
Chris Wallace, head of the division of neurosurgery at Toronto Western Hospital (part of the University Health Network), said in Mr. Quon's case the wait to obtain neurosurgery did not make a difference to his outcome because he did not have a second cerebral hemorrhage.
"He's very brave and so is his wife," said Dr. Wallace, a neurosurgeon who has seen Mr. Quon since he returned from Buffalo.
"I'd be crying if the delay had led to a worse result. In this instance, it didn't."
In an effort to stem the tide of patients being sent to U.S. hospitals, the University Health Network has been provided an additional $4.1-million by the Ontario government to do 100 more neurosurgical cases by October, 2008.
Indeed, an expert neurosurgery panel report done on the shortage of neurosurgical services and authored by James Rutka, chairman of the division of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, made 21 recommendations to the Ontario government in late December.
That 84-page report recommended a two-phase approach: allocating additional neurosurgical services to one hospital to address emergency out-of-country transfers immediately, and increasing capacity in more centres in Ontario.
Alan Hudson, head of Ontario's waiting-time strategy and a former hospital president and neurosurgeon himself, struck the panel when he heard of the neurosurgical service shortage.
When told of Mr. Quon's case, Dr. Hudson said: "We've given some fairly detailed advice to the government for exactly this reason. We're looking forward to the government's response to the expert panel report."
Health Minister George Smitherman's press secretary, Laurel Ostfield, said "the government is currently awaiting further advice from the team who drafted the report on the best way to use the recommendations in our combined efforts to improve patient care for Ontarians."
Over the past three years, she said the government's track record has been to implement 80 per cent of recommendations received from expert panel reports.
As for Ms. Quon, she and her husband are not angry, "just very disappointed."
There were all sorts of problems to deal with upon their return, including threatening calls and notes from bill collectors, hounding her to pay various U.S. hospital bills.
The Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which covers all costs of emergency surgery and the hospital stay, has since dealt with the matter.
In all, Ms. Quon said her husband's treatment, including surgery costs, diagnostic imaging and a hospital stay of more than a month, was about $250,000 (U.S.), according to a Health Ministry letter she received.
That doesn't include the costs she absorbed - $5,000 out of pocket to stay in a Buffalo hotel for more than a month, which is not covered by OHIP.
When they returned, it was difficult to get back into the health-care system.
She said the province should have a designated person who deals with patients who receive out-of-country care so things run smoothly upon their return.
Mr. Quon, meanwhile, has yet to return to work. He has trouble with short-term memory, is easily distracted and frustrated.
He has little memory of what happened after the subarachnoid hemorrhage, other than the initial pain he felt in the shower and sketchy images of nurses walking U.S. hospital hallways.
"It was hard on my family. The mental anguish and all that," Mr. Quon said.
"For me, I was just delighted to be down there."
'ALARMING TREND' OF PATIENT TRANSFERS
James Rutka, chairman of the division of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, was appointed by the provincial government to head the expert neurosurgery panel. In his just released report, Dr. Rutka noted there was an "alarming trend" of sending Ontarians out of province for neurosurgery care.
"It is poor patient care to transfer people who need emergency care out of province or to make anyone who needs neurosurgery wait longer than they should and risk doing them harm," Dr. Rutka wrote in his 84-page report. Transferring patients out of province should only be done in exceptional circumstances, he said.
Some observations in the report:
About 65 neurosurgeons provide neurosurgery each year to more than 30,700 Ontarians in 13 hospitals in larger urban areas.
Neurosurgical conditions are a major cause of disability, morbidity and mortality that results in high costs to individuals, their families and society.
Dr. Rutka made 21 recommendations to fix the problem, including:
The heads of 13 hospital neurosurgical units should develop clear and simple criteria for determining when a patient needs a neurosurgical consultation and may need to be transferred to a neurosurgical unit. As well, they should develop a simple protocol for looking after minor head injuries in the emergency room. This information should be provided to every hospital in Ontario and posted in emergency rooms.
Hospitals with Level 3 and 4 (the most acute) neurosurgical units should dedicate resources, including operating rooms, equipment and staff for unplanned emergency cases.
Neurosurgical centres should provide updated bed information to CritiCall (an emergency-referral service for physicians) electronically at least twice daily.
The Ontario government should increase its full-time neurosurgeon-to-population ratio from 1 per 187,077 to the more appropriate level of 1 per 150,000. If that ratio were accepted, 15 additional neurosurgeons would be required.”
****
Once again, thanks to Buffalo, New York, and the Americans for helping another Ontario patient who was let down and shuffled off to Buffalo by Ontario's Liberal medicare monopoly. (Please, don't tell Michael Moore)
Of course, my local MPP, St. Catharines Liberal Jim Bradley, once enjoyed fear mongering about the evil, slippery-sloped Americanization of our health system, yet, oddly, his Liberals just can’t stop sending ill Ontarians to that same supposedly-sicko U.S. system for treatment which Bradley’s sicko Liberal health-monopoly is unable to provide here.
Priest wrote that “164 patients with broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or outside of the brain” were “forced” to obtain treatment “in Michigan and New York State hospitals since April, 2006.”
Can Jim Bradley confirm that this is an accurate figure? What about cardiac patients? What about burn trauma patients? What about cancer patients? Can Bradley provide any figures on how many patients in total his Liberal health-care monopoly is exporting to the States for health-care that is unavailable in Ontario?
I asked Bradley in “Will Liberal Transport Minister Jim Bradley open new 'sicko' lanes at U.S. border to ease Canadian healthcare exodus?”:
“Does your Liberal government keep any statistics detailing how many Ontarians have been forced to the States to obtain treatment which is unavailable here, due to the inequities of your medicare monopoly? Or, does your Liberal government simply deem such incidents to be merely anecdotal anomalies; minor, expected but irrelevant blow-back, in your grand scheme that is ‘Medicare’?
Columnist Terence Corcoran’s story, “Bordering on the ridiculous” (National Post, Nov.24, 2007) notes that “over a year, an average 150 ambulances loaded with Canadians in need of treatment are shipped from Windsor to Detroit. It’s routine.”
Can your government, Mr. Bradley, confirm or dispute the claim that in Windsor alone an average of three patients a week are being exported by your health monopoly to the States for treatment? Is this an acceptable routine for your Liberal government?
What is the cost of this Liberal treatment-by-export health-care rendition policy, not only to the province (which McGuinty admits already spends 50% of its entire budget on healthcare), but also to Ontario patients in terms of potential peril, suffering and inconvenience?
Why should patients suffer by having to wait at the U.S. border for medical treatment, Mr. Bradley? Why should we be waiting in Ontario at all - with no options available to us - in the first place?
Forget the existential aspects in Waiting for Godot; Waiting for Smitherman is truly our health care horror nightmare.
Mr. Bradley, is it not your Liberal, statist, single-payer health ideology that caused patient Laporte, and many others, to be in ambulances speeding through the Detroit tunnel, away from Canada, to the States for health care?”
I asked Jim Bradley, back on Dec.4, 2007, if he could provide figures as to how many other ill Ontarians are also leaving Ontario at other border crossings, such as in Niagara.
At least writer Lisa Priest has provided some answers. Patients are apparently rushing down the QEW right through Jim Bradley’s St. Catharines riding on their way to get health-care in Buffalo.
My smug MPP, Liberal Jim Bradley, on the other hand, has never bothered to provide any answers.
Bradley has still not even publicly revealed why (according to a Nov. 2007 CIHI study) the Niagara Health System, here in his own St. Catharines riding, was found to have the third-highest hospital death-rate in Canada.
Time to add "Waiting for Bradley" onto the list of existential absurdities, along with "Waiting for Health-Care".
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Don't suppress or diminish Liberal health-care failures in Ontario
Unlike writer Richard Murri in his Feb.15 Niagara This Week letter, I commend columnist Mike Williscraft’s attempt (Feb.1, 2008) to bring Ontario’s failing health-care system to the discussion forefront, because it sure wasn’t debated during Ontario's recent provincial election.
We need more discussion, not less; we need to realize that these instances of the health-system failing patients are systemic, not dismissively anecdotal and unimportant. How many anecdotes do we need to hear? There is even a constitutional health-care challenge now before the Ontario court!
Where do HMO’s exist in Ontario? It would be great to have that choice. What are the names of these "certain politicians" who Dick Murri claims “would love to grab a slice of the health care funding pie” (whatever that means)? In the last five years, for example, I have heard no Ontario politician or party having the guts to openly challenge our failing health-care monopoly.
The only politicians grabbing Ontario’s entire health-care-monopoly funding pie are Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, who, while blaming others, have themselves created a two-tier system by delisting health-coverage while concurrently creating a new multi-billion-dollar Health Tax. Doesn't Dick realize this?! (of course he does..!)
Let’s not forget that when McGuinty's first-term Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara stood in the Legislature of Ontario on May 18, 2004 to introduce his hated Health Tax, Sorbara noted in his budget speech that:
"For the past five years, health care budgets in Ontario have grown by an average of 8% per year."
That's right: McGuinty's Liberals actually complained that for five years the Conservatives spent too much on health-care, and so the Liberals were now going to "control" that!
To “improve” health-care, Sorbara said, his Liberal single-payer-monopoly-pushing demagogues were going to “to delist” previously-covered "universal" health-care!
McGuinty and his Ontario Liberals cut health care from their very first days in office - then continued to spread the narrative that "harris" was to blame!
We need to know that the health-care climate in Ontario is not all settled.
We need to reduce the politicians' health-care-policy footprint which restricts our individual health-care choices.
We need to see that the Liberal’s Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act is a policy failure.
We need to understand that 'universal health-care' is not the same as 'government monopoly health-care'.
And - despite what the duplicitous Dicks say - we should also acknowledge and give a note of thanks to the maligned American system which is treating so many Ontarians who have been let down by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals.
*
We need more discussion, not less; we need to realize that these instances of the health-system failing patients are systemic, not dismissively anecdotal and unimportant. How many anecdotes do we need to hear? There is even a constitutional health-care challenge now before the Ontario court!
Where do HMO’s exist in Ontario? It would be great to have that choice. What are the names of these "certain politicians" who Dick Murri claims “would love to grab a slice of the health care funding pie” (whatever that means)? In the last five years, for example, I have heard no Ontario politician or party having the guts to openly challenge our failing health-care monopoly.
The only politicians grabbing Ontario’s entire health-care-monopoly funding pie are Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, who, while blaming others, have themselves created a two-tier system by delisting health-coverage while concurrently creating a new multi-billion-dollar Health Tax. Doesn't Dick realize this?! (of course he does..!)
Let’s not forget that when McGuinty's first-term Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara stood in the Legislature of Ontario on May 18, 2004 to introduce his hated Health Tax, Sorbara noted in his budget speech that:
"For the past five years, health care budgets in Ontario have grown by an average of 8% per year."
That's right: McGuinty's Liberals actually complained that for five years the Conservatives spent too much on health-care, and so the Liberals were now going to "control" that!
To “improve” health-care, Sorbara said, his Liberal single-payer-monopoly-pushing demagogues were going to “to delist” previously-covered "universal" health-care!
McGuinty and his Ontario Liberals cut health care from their very first days in office - then continued to spread the narrative that "harris" was to blame!
We need to know that the health-care climate in Ontario is not all settled.
We need to reduce the politicians' health-care-policy footprint which restricts our individual health-care choices.
We need to see that the Liberal’s Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act is a policy failure.
We need to understand that 'universal health-care' is not the same as 'government monopoly health-care'.
And - despite what the duplicitous Dicks say - we should also acknowledge and give a note of thanks to the maligned American system which is treating so many Ontarians who have been let down by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals.
*
Monday, February 18, 2008
Shocking evidence of global warming in Toronto!
The CBC TV Toronto evening newscast on Feb.15, 2008 started out with a story that “alarming numbers” of people are going to emergency wards because they are slipping down the icy stairs at subway entrances. “Dozens injured on the TTC’s stairwells…Is the TTC doing enough to keep you safe?” the report asked.
Is the TTC [and its riders, for that matter] not aware that it’s winter in Canada?
Are they surprised at all the STORMS, ICE and SNOW??
Do they have their heads that far up Gore’s butt??
The National Post (Feb.15, 2008) wrote that Toronto councillor Michael Walker, a “26-year veteran of City Hall, has rarely seen his constituents as angry as they are today about the city’s snow clearing policies.
In less than two weeks, his office has received more than 1,000 complaints about shoulder-high snowbanks, ice-coated sidewalks and impassable side streets.
“People are out there to lynch politicians over this!” Mr. Walker said. Although Mayor David Miller yesterday announced an aggressive, $20-million emergency plan to cart the snow off side streets, the move comes more than two weeks after the first major blizzard of the year smacked Toronto on Feb. 1.
The mess that Torontonians have slogged through in the meantime raises the questions: What went wrong? Why can’t Canada’s largest city adequately deliver a service as basic as cleaning up after three big snowstorms?
Mr. Walker has a theory. “We’ve dragged our feet up until now,” he says, “because we’ve been hoping beyond hope that all this snow would go away and we’d only have to do a half-ass job.”
City officials are not afraid to admit the councillor has a point. Having grown accustomed to mild winters in which Mother Nature melts the snow after a storm, Toronto has no regular plan to remove snow en masse. The city salts and ploughs, but has not trucked the accumulated white stuff off residential roads in nearly a decade.
The last time Toronto systematically removed snow was the winter of 1999, the year the Canadian military rode to the snowbound city’s rescue.
“Snow removal on side streets is an irregular activity for the city of Toronto, unlike Ottawa or Montreal,” said Peter Noehammer, director of Transportation Services with the city of Toronto. “They not only gear up with equipment and operators, but they also budget accordingly to provide that service. [Snow removal] is a fairly costly occurrence. We don’t treat it lightly and we only undertake it when we absolutely have to.”
So far this month, Mother Nature has not co-operated with Toronto’s laissez-faire approach.
She dumped 70 centimetres of snow on Toronto in the first two weeks of February, smashing the record of 66.6 centimetres for the entire month set back in 1950, said Bob Whitewood, an Environment Canada climatologist.
Major storms walloped the city Feb.1, Feb.6 and Feb.12. After the second storm, the mercury plummeted, freezing the snow as solid as stone.
Although the city’s 200 salt trucks and 600 ploughs — two-thirds of which are operated by private companies — were deployed at full tilt, they were no match for the accumulation.
Problems piled up as fast as the snow. Many side streets, especially those with on-street parking, were reduced to a single lane where drivers were treated to games of low-speed chicken with oncoming traffic. In at least 286 cases, CAA service trucks had to cancel appointments because they could not safely drive down the street where a client was stranded. (However, snowbound cancellations amounted to only 1.6% of the approximately 18,000 calls CAA has responded to in Toronto since the start of February.)
“I think there is certainly room for improvement,” said Faye Lyons, a spokeswoman for CAA. “Both around policies and what they have for equipment.”
All that snow also hurt public transit, shutting down the Scarborough rapid transit line and causing delays on streetcar routes where poorly ploughed streets contributed to drivers parking their vehicles on or too close to the tracks.
Last Sunday, for example, TTC streetcars were delayed 20 times because of cars parked on the tracks. Four of those delays lasted more than 40 minutes, said Gary Webster, the TTC’s chief general manager.
All this explains why Toronto has finally turned to physically trucking out the snow. However, because that step is rare here, the city has not budgeted for it, nor does it have in place long-term policies that could mitigate problems such as getting cars off narrow side streets with parking on both curbs.
The strategy Mr. Miller unveiled yesterday will gobble up nearly a third of the city’s $65-million snow budget.”
And in a couple of months, the global-warming climatalarmists will come out of hibernation (John Moore in his Feb.18 National Post column already has) and begin revving up their political weather-making for another summer.
Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter, with snow like we've not seen since 1950.
Let's remember that when the Gorzukions roar.
Is the TTC [and its riders, for that matter] not aware that it’s winter in Canada?
Are they surprised at all the STORMS, ICE and SNOW??
Do they have their heads that far up Gore’s butt??
The National Post (Feb.15, 2008) wrote that Toronto councillor Michael Walker, a “26-year veteran of City Hall, has rarely seen his constituents as angry as they are today about the city’s snow clearing policies.
In less than two weeks, his office has received more than 1,000 complaints about shoulder-high snowbanks, ice-coated sidewalks and impassable side streets.
“People are out there to lynch politicians over this!” Mr. Walker said. Although Mayor David Miller yesterday announced an aggressive, $20-million emergency plan to cart the snow off side streets, the move comes more than two weeks after the first major blizzard of the year smacked Toronto on Feb. 1.
The mess that Torontonians have slogged through in the meantime raises the questions: What went wrong? Why can’t Canada’s largest city adequately deliver a service as basic as cleaning up after three big snowstorms?
Mr. Walker has a theory. “We’ve dragged our feet up until now,” he says, “because we’ve been hoping beyond hope that all this snow would go away and we’d only have to do a half-ass job.”
City officials are not afraid to admit the councillor has a point. Having grown accustomed to mild winters in which Mother Nature melts the snow after a storm, Toronto has no regular plan to remove snow en masse. The city salts and ploughs, but has not trucked the accumulated white stuff off residential roads in nearly a decade.
The last time Toronto systematically removed snow was the winter of 1999, the year the Canadian military rode to the snowbound city’s rescue.
“Snow removal on side streets is an irregular activity for the city of Toronto, unlike Ottawa or Montreal,” said Peter Noehammer, director of Transportation Services with the city of Toronto. “They not only gear up with equipment and operators, but they also budget accordingly to provide that service. [Snow removal] is a fairly costly occurrence. We don’t treat it lightly and we only undertake it when we absolutely have to.”
So far this month, Mother Nature has not co-operated with Toronto’s laissez-faire approach.
She dumped 70 centimetres of snow on Toronto in the first two weeks of February, smashing the record of 66.6 centimetres for the entire month set back in 1950, said Bob Whitewood, an Environment Canada climatologist.
Major storms walloped the city Feb.1, Feb.6 and Feb.12. After the second storm, the mercury plummeted, freezing the snow as solid as stone.
Although the city’s 200 salt trucks and 600 ploughs — two-thirds of which are operated by private companies — were deployed at full tilt, they were no match for the accumulation.
Problems piled up as fast as the snow. Many side streets, especially those with on-street parking, were reduced to a single lane where drivers were treated to games of low-speed chicken with oncoming traffic. In at least 286 cases, CAA service trucks had to cancel appointments because they could not safely drive down the street where a client was stranded. (However, snowbound cancellations amounted to only 1.6% of the approximately 18,000 calls CAA has responded to in Toronto since the start of February.)
“I think there is certainly room for improvement,” said Faye Lyons, a spokeswoman for CAA. “Both around policies and what they have for equipment.”
All that snow also hurt public transit, shutting down the Scarborough rapid transit line and causing delays on streetcar routes where poorly ploughed streets contributed to drivers parking their vehicles on or too close to the tracks.
Last Sunday, for example, TTC streetcars were delayed 20 times because of cars parked on the tracks. Four of those delays lasted more than 40 minutes, said Gary Webster, the TTC’s chief general manager.
All this explains why Toronto has finally turned to physically trucking out the snow. However, because that step is rare here, the city has not budgeted for it, nor does it have in place long-term policies that could mitigate problems such as getting cars off narrow side streets with parking on both curbs.
The strategy Mr. Miller unveiled yesterday will gobble up nearly a third of the city’s $65-million snow budget.”
And in a couple of months, the global-warming climatalarmists will come out of hibernation (John Moore in his Feb.18 National Post column already has) and begin revving up their political weather-making for another summer.
Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter, with snow like we've not seen since 1950.
Let's remember that when the Gorzukions roar.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
A Liberal Pile of Grit
Grant Lafleche wrote an article in the St. Catharines Standard, Jun.10, 2000, titled “The menacing haze: Niagara's dirty air is shortening our lives and hurting our children. It may also be killing our crops”:
“Most agree Niagara's air quality is poor. The disagreements come over what can be done about it locally.
Some, like St. Catharines MPP and Liberal environment critic Jim Bradley, want the Harris Tories to do more to clear the air.
"They can legislate things like the level of sulphur in gasoline ... and the emissions from power generation and industry," he said. "They could fund public transit. For every person that is on the bus, that is one less car on the road."
Bradley also wants the provincial government to fund a GO train between Niagara and Toronto to cut back on the number of cars on the QEW.”
It's amazing how when Jim Bradley was in opposition, the air in Ontario was bad: children were being ‘hurt’; our LIVES WERE BEING SHORTENED; ground level ozone was seeping into our “increasingly toxic air” and “pillaging” our “lungs and plants”….yet, Jim Bradley has now been in a majority government since 2003: so have all these dire problems outlined by LaFleche in 2000 SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED under Bradley in 2008 ?!
Amazingly, under the Liberals, now there’s no more ground level ozone? Children aren’t being ‘hurt’? The air isn’t “toxic”? Farm foliage crops are no longer exposed to ozone, “stunting their growth”? Smog, the “complicated chemical witches’ brew” has vanished? The coal-fired generators have ceased spewing their “ill wind”, as LaFleche wrote in this 2000 article?
It’s a miracle – under Jim Bradley, there’s no longer a “menacing haze” over Niagara; now we have Clean Air in Ontario, and all the reporters are happy! Not too many stories lately about how “the quality of the air is consistently bad” in Niagara under Jim Bradley’s Liberal government!
Bradley, in 2000, while in opposition, talked oh-so-earnestly about the government doing “more to clean the air”! Bradley said the government could “legislate” the “emissions from power generation and industry"! Yet Bradley’s government lied about closing all the coal-fired plants which they said they were going to close by 2007! To this day, Bradley and his Liberals have done nothing at all about even ameliorating those emissions, let alone stopping them!
Bradley -ironically now Transportation Minister - was saying then: "They could fund public transit. For every person that is on the bus, that is one less car on the road." Yet by 2008, Bradley's hollow Liberal rhetoric has brought no GO Transit buses to anyone in Niagara!
LaFleche wrote: “Bradley also wants the provincial government to fund a GO train between Niagara and Toronto to cut back on the number of cars on the QEW”.
How many years has Bradley got out of that blustery little chestnut? So, where’s the “GO train” now in 2008, Mr. Bradley? Where’s that GO TRAIN funding, Mr. Bradley, from YOUR Liberal provincial government, which would “cut back on the number of cars on the QEW”?
What a pile of….
Which brings me to this article by Ted Woloshyn (Toronto Sun, Feb.9, 2008) titled “New law a pile of fertilizer. Ban on pesticides hits a harmless herbicide – and allergy sufferers will pay the price”:
“The Ontario government is on the verge of banning the cosmetic use of pesticides for lawns. Many people are applauding the measure, set to impact lawns, gardens, schoolyards and parks. But this legislation is flawed.
Let me explain why.
The government wants to ban pesticides, which is a blanket term covering fungicides, insecticides, and most importantly for the purposes of this story, herbicides.
One of those herbicides is 2,4-D. It is a broadleaf weed killer and has been cleared by Health Canada, the World Health Organization, the New Zealand Pesticides Board, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, to name a few -- as long as directions are followed.
You should also follow directions on bottles of bleach, and turpentine, to new name just a few household products. This isn't a new concept.
In September 2003, documents show the government of Quebec knew there was no scientific basis to support the banning of 2,4-D. "Certain herbicides in Schedule 1 (2,4-D, MCPA, Mecoprop) cannot be prohibited on a scientific basis (carcinogenic risk and others)," a report stated. And yet they banned it. But why? Because environmental groups would have seen retaining the herbicide as a step backward.
Now if 2,4-D is to be banned due to health risk, shouldn't that same ban cover agriculture?
"It is the same stuff our farmers have been using on our food since the 1940s. How can it be safe to eat, but not to walk on?" said Jill Fairbrother, director of registration and stakeholder relations for Scott's Canada. "It's based on fear. Every piece of junk science is repeated as true.""
Woloshyn writes: “The British Columbia Ministry of Forests has stated "2,4-D is possibly the most extensively researched off all pesticides, and the data have been examined by an unusual number of advisory committees and work groups. All have concluded it does not present an unacceptable risk when used according to product instructions."
Ask your MPP, or activist friend if he or she supports this cosmetic ban. Then ask if they know anything about 2,4-D. If they don't, then ask yourself why you're paying attention to them.”
Well, seeing that my MPP, Jim Bradley, was at one time the celebrated Minister of the Environment, admired by the likes of David Suzuki, perhaps Jim Bradley would provide detailed reasons for his government’s decision to implement this ban.
Do you support this herbicide ban, Mr. Bradley, and can you explain why?
“Most agree Niagara's air quality is poor. The disagreements come over what can be done about it locally.
Some, like St. Catharines MPP and Liberal environment critic Jim Bradley, want the Harris Tories to do more to clear the air.
"They can legislate things like the level of sulphur in gasoline ... and the emissions from power generation and industry," he said. "They could fund public transit. For every person that is on the bus, that is one less car on the road."
Bradley also wants the provincial government to fund a GO train between Niagara and Toronto to cut back on the number of cars on the QEW.”
It's amazing how when Jim Bradley was in opposition, the air in Ontario was bad: children were being ‘hurt’; our LIVES WERE BEING SHORTENED; ground level ozone was seeping into our “increasingly toxic air” and “pillaging” our “lungs and plants”….yet, Jim Bradley has now been in a majority government since 2003: so have all these dire problems outlined by LaFleche in 2000 SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED under Bradley in 2008 ?!
Amazingly, under the Liberals, now there’s no more ground level ozone? Children aren’t being ‘hurt’? The air isn’t “toxic”? Farm foliage crops are no longer exposed to ozone, “stunting their growth”? Smog, the “complicated chemical witches’ brew” has vanished? The coal-fired generators have ceased spewing their “ill wind”, as LaFleche wrote in this 2000 article?
It’s a miracle – under Jim Bradley, there’s no longer a “menacing haze” over Niagara; now we have Clean Air in Ontario, and all the reporters are happy! Not too many stories lately about how “the quality of the air is consistently bad” in Niagara under Jim Bradley’s Liberal government!
Bradley, in 2000, while in opposition, talked oh-so-earnestly about the government doing “more to clean the air”! Bradley said the government could “legislate” the “emissions from power generation and industry"! Yet Bradley’s government lied about closing all the coal-fired plants which they said they were going to close by 2007! To this day, Bradley and his Liberals have done nothing at all about even ameliorating those emissions, let alone stopping them!
Bradley -ironically now Transportation Minister - was saying then: "They could fund public transit. For every person that is on the bus, that is one less car on the road." Yet by 2008, Bradley's hollow Liberal rhetoric has brought no GO Transit buses to anyone in Niagara!
LaFleche wrote: “Bradley also wants the provincial government to fund a GO train between Niagara and Toronto to cut back on the number of cars on the QEW”.
How many years has Bradley got out of that blustery little chestnut? So, where’s the “GO train” now in 2008, Mr. Bradley? Where’s that GO TRAIN funding, Mr. Bradley, from YOUR Liberal provincial government, which would “cut back on the number of cars on the QEW”?
What a pile of….
Which brings me to this article by Ted Woloshyn (Toronto Sun, Feb.9, 2008) titled “New law a pile of fertilizer. Ban on pesticides hits a harmless herbicide – and allergy sufferers will pay the price”:
“The Ontario government is on the verge of banning the cosmetic use of pesticides for lawns. Many people are applauding the measure, set to impact lawns, gardens, schoolyards and parks. But this legislation is flawed.
Let me explain why.
The government wants to ban pesticides, which is a blanket term covering fungicides, insecticides, and most importantly for the purposes of this story, herbicides.
One of those herbicides is 2,4-D. It is a broadleaf weed killer and has been cleared by Health Canada, the World Health Organization, the New Zealand Pesticides Board, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, to name a few -- as long as directions are followed.
You should also follow directions on bottles of bleach, and turpentine, to new name just a few household products. This isn't a new concept.
In September 2003, documents show the government of Quebec knew there was no scientific basis to support the banning of 2,4-D. "Certain herbicides in Schedule 1 (2,4-D, MCPA, Mecoprop) cannot be prohibited on a scientific basis (carcinogenic risk and others)," a report stated. And yet they banned it. But why? Because environmental groups would have seen retaining the herbicide as a step backward.
Now if 2,4-D is to be banned due to health risk, shouldn't that same ban cover agriculture?
"It is the same stuff our farmers have been using on our food since the 1940s. How can it be safe to eat, but not to walk on?" said Jill Fairbrother, director of registration and stakeholder relations for Scott's Canada. "It's based on fear. Every piece of junk science is repeated as true.""
Woloshyn writes: “The British Columbia Ministry of Forests has stated "2,4-D is possibly the most extensively researched off all pesticides, and the data have been examined by an unusual number of advisory committees and work groups. All have concluded it does not present an unacceptable risk when used according to product instructions."
Ask your MPP, or activist friend if he or she supports this cosmetic ban. Then ask if they know anything about 2,4-D. If they don't, then ask yourself why you're paying attention to them.”
Well, seeing that my MPP, Jim Bradley, was at one time the celebrated Minister of the Environment, admired by the likes of David Suzuki, perhaps Jim Bradley would provide detailed reasons for his government’s decision to implement this ban.
Do you support this herbicide ban, Mr. Bradley, and can you explain why?
Ontario's long Liberal health-care wait-times
The St. Catharines Standard wrote on Apr.15, 2006:
“Wait times for cancer care in Niagara are getting better. Or possibly worse.
Depending on your preferred statistics -- and who you talk to -- the issue is open to debate.
Erie-Lincoln Tory MPP Tim Hudak believes Niagara patients are waiting longer for cancer care.
In the provincial legislature earlier this week, Hudak claimed government statistics show wait times have increased 13 per cent in Niagara since last July -- and 38 per cent in Hamilton.
"Despite Liberal promises and a Liberal health tax, there has been no improvement. Things have gotten worse," Hudak said.
Not so, said St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley.
"In fact, this government is investing substantial amounts to bring those times down,' said Bradley.
"Month to month those times may vary, but the trend line is down."”
On Apr.29, 2006 the St. Catharines Standard reported in: “Province ponies up $2.7M to cut down on wait times”:
“Wait times for cancer surgery, joint replacements and other procedures in Niagara should be reduced by an infusion of $2.7 million from Queen's Park, says St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley.
"There are a number of issues when it comes to wait times, but one of the big ones is money," Bradley said in an interview Friday afternoon. "This should help the hospitals pay for more of these procedures and make inroads in the backlog of people waiting for them."”
Yet, here it is in 2008: Katie Simpson reported in “Ontario gets failing grade in cancer care report card”, (680 News, Feb.12, 2008):
“Cancer patients that live in Ontario are more likely to die than those in Western provinces, according to the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada.
"Cancer research funding is oriented toward bacteria, mice and cancer cells instead of how to prevent cancer and change people's behaviour, which is the main cause of cancer," said Dr. William Hryniuk.
The group said young patients are being ignored, clinical research is too slow, and medical staffers are being used ineffectively.
"Nurses are not nursing patients but they're nursing doctors and clinics and watering plants," he said, adding patients in Western Canada have access to new Blockbuster drugs, PET scans, and face shorter wait times than those in Ontario.”
When it comes to health care waiting lists, Jim Bradley’s Liberals say one thing, do another. Is the "trend down"?? The wait times in the Liberal government-run health-monopoly, despite billions of tax dollars being spent, are still unacceptable. When Liberals like Jim Bradley say they dumped “substantial amounts to bring those wait times down”, and yet we see that the wait times are still high, we can only wonder how appropriately Bradley’s Liberals are apportioning our tax dollars on our behalf. Or if these bumbling Liberal medicare-middlemen even know what they're doing.
“Wait times for cancer care in Niagara are getting better. Or possibly worse.
Depending on your preferred statistics -- and who you talk to -- the issue is open to debate.
Erie-Lincoln Tory MPP Tim Hudak believes Niagara patients are waiting longer for cancer care.
In the provincial legislature earlier this week, Hudak claimed government statistics show wait times have increased 13 per cent in Niagara since last July -- and 38 per cent in Hamilton.
"Despite Liberal promises and a Liberal health tax, there has been no improvement. Things have gotten worse," Hudak said.
Not so, said St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley.
"In fact, this government is investing substantial amounts to bring those times down,' said Bradley.
"Month to month those times may vary, but the trend line is down."”
On Apr.29, 2006 the St. Catharines Standard reported in: “Province ponies up $2.7M to cut down on wait times”:
“Wait times for cancer surgery, joint replacements and other procedures in Niagara should be reduced by an infusion of $2.7 million from Queen's Park, says St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley.
"There are a number of issues when it comes to wait times, but one of the big ones is money," Bradley said in an interview Friday afternoon. "This should help the hospitals pay for more of these procedures and make inroads in the backlog of people waiting for them."”
Yet, here it is in 2008: Katie Simpson reported in “Ontario gets failing grade in cancer care report card”, (680 News, Feb.12, 2008):
“Cancer patients that live in Ontario are more likely to die than those in Western provinces, according to the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada.
"Cancer research funding is oriented toward bacteria, mice and cancer cells instead of how to prevent cancer and change people's behaviour, which is the main cause of cancer," said Dr. William Hryniuk.
The group said young patients are being ignored, clinical research is too slow, and medical staffers are being used ineffectively.
"Nurses are not nursing patients but they're nursing doctors and clinics and watering plants," he said, adding patients in Western Canada have access to new Blockbuster drugs, PET scans, and face shorter wait times than those in Ontario.”
When it comes to health care waiting lists, Jim Bradley’s Liberals say one thing, do another. Is the "trend down"?? The wait times in the Liberal government-run health-monopoly, despite billions of tax dollars being spent, are still unacceptable. When Liberals like Jim Bradley say they dumped “substantial amounts to bring those wait times down”, and yet we see that the wait times are still high, we can only wonder how appropriately Bradley’s Liberals are apportioning our tax dollars on our behalf. Or if these bumbling Liberal medicare-middlemen even know what they're doing.
Shocking evidence of global warming in Niagara Falls
The sign, obscured by a two-inch thick layer of ice, in a cloud of pelting mist-hail, says 'Welcome to Niagara Falls, Canada's Banana Belt'
Don't tell Al Gore: that's snow... and ice... and frost... and cold...
Get out the ski-doos.
The ice shelf on the Niagara River has increased in two days, now reaching the base of the Horseshoe Falls. The area in the foreground was still open water on Sunday Feb.10, 2008. (See previous post) Al Gore says: fascinating, yet illogical. This does not compute! The ice should be melting!
Giant thirty-foot long icicles hang over the entrance to the forbidden Frozen Fortress of Solitude.
Table Rock plaque caked with ice. [Click on any photo to enlarge]Compare this video, taken today, Feb.12, 2008, with the video taken on Feb.10, 2008, posted earlier. It can be clearly seen that in the last two days, the Niagara River has become frozen all the way to the base of the Falls. According to the Goracle, the ice should be RECEDING. We've had record snowfalls in Southern Ontario, and are now in the middle of a deep-freeze here and in upstate New York.
Help heat us, Al Gore!
Hey, David Suzuki: stop jailing people who don't share your enivro-mental fantasies, and knit us some toques!
Liberal Green-Shift-er hack Stephane Dion isn't here to see the Niagara Ice Bridge form and grow, either - he and his Liberal cowards are busy today, running away from their job in Ottawa: they've walked out en-masse refusing to vote on the crime bill in the House of Commons.
Astoundingly, all their Liberal hot-air is still not enough to melt the ice.
Brr.
*
Brr.
*
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Niagara Falls then and now: mists cause global warming!
[click on photos to enlarge] Above: Behold the smoky devastation in Niagara Falls that the American and Bridal Veil (left) and Canada's Horseshoe Falls (right) wreak upon the environment. These Falls have laughed in the face of the Kyoto protocol for far too long, and now they must be made to pay for what they have done to the Planet.
Look at all those deceptively beautiful, yet shameless, clouds of misty global-warming blatantly steaming out of the ice!
Rainbows must be eliminated NOW. There is only a pot of environmental evil at their end. Rainbows represent the two greatest evils of global warming - the dastardly combination of sunlight and misty water vapour. If you see a rainbow - as you often can at Niagara Falls - RUN and hide in a dark, waterless cave, and, depending on which side of the border you're on, immediately report this sighting to Al Gore or Stephane Dion. They will ensure that those nasty rainbows get what's coming to them. A good tip: DO NOT exhale during your trip to Niagara. Human breath emissions, with all their Co2, damage The Planet... so you better stop it. 
The Ontario Liberal government has posted danger signs warning people - duh - not to stand on the ICE-ENCRUSTED LOW WALL BETWEEN THEM AND AN ALMOST TWO-HUNDRED-FOOT-PRECIPICE DROPPING INTO THE VAPOROUS VORTEX BELOW !!!
The inconvenient truth, apparently, is that when both polar ice caps melt, the resultant flood will leave Niagara Falls dried up!
[From “Jim McBee’s Mostly Exchange web blog”]
Oh, the humanity....LOOK AT WHAT GLOBAL WARMING HAS DONE!!
Play the video clips to see Evil Global-Warming Mists stealthily creeping over Niagara Falls on Feb.10, 2008.
Old man river, stop playing misty for me.
Your rainbow ride is over.
*
Peter Kuitenbrouwer wrote in “Finding faith in a storm's aftermath”, (National Post, Feb.8, 2008) of last Tuesday’s (Feb.5) snowstorm in Ontario: it was
“the most snow in one day in Toronto since 1966, Environment Canada says…
Yesterday, I took a day off from my ongoing series exploring greater Toronto's lakeshore to write about the remarkable wallop of snow we've been getting. Since November, 128.2 cm of snow has fallen at Pearson airport this winter, far higher than the average 90 cm of the past 30 years…
"We still have a few more weeks left of February and it is likely that we're going to see more snowfalls to add to this," according to Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson.
The city said it deployed 200 salt trucks, 600 snow ploughs and 300 sidewalk ploughs to clean up and make the city safe after the storm.”
We’re freezing our butts off in Niagara today, Feb.10, 2008. It was 7 F (minus 14 C) today - and that was in the daytime.
Shouldn’t someone be hauling David Suzuki off to jail for his global warming hysteria? Did Nobel Lies Winner Al Gore fly into town to help anyone scrape off and start their frozen cars, or shovel their driveways and sidewalks for the umpteenth time?
The Niagara River has its ice bridge forming below the Falls, and ice floes from the upper Niagara River are tumbling over the edge. Where’s Al Gore to witness this “climate change”? Yeah, the Gorzukion – gang (Gore, Suzuki, Stephane Dion) will pop out around March predictably screaming the ‘ice is melting’ – which, of course, it will be, (as springtime approaches) as it has for thousands of years!
KevinB posted this entry on “Small Dead Animals” (Dec.1, 2008):
“What kills me is the absolute refusal by the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] crowd to do even the most basic research. For example, Honda has ads promoting their fuel cell car, saying that it only emits water vapour. It takes about five minutes on Google to find out that of all the supposed "green house gases", water vapour is by far the biggest culprit. Not only is there more of it in the atmosphere than CO2, it traps radiant energy at more points in the spectrum than CO2 does. Idiots.”
I wonder if the Gorzukion enviro-nutters will therefore dam-up the Niagara River to dry up Niagara Falls, in order to prevent the global-warming mists that the natural wonder of the Falls causes?
Hour after hour - for thousands of years - the mists arising from the river’s plunge over Niagara Falls have caused dangerous global warming, which the Gorzukions will now have to stop. Didn't the Kyoto Protocol clearly specify that the emissions-footprint of Niagara Falls be reduced to pre-10,000 B.C. levels? yes... yes it did...
The above video clips show the utter devastation of global warming in Niagara Falls: the ice floes, the frozen trees, barren, sleet-caked rocks and slippery pavement, the absence of people, the toxic cloud of evil global-warming gasses rushing to the sky from the swirling cauldron of water in the gorge below…this must be stopped immediately!!
For years, the Ontario Liberal government, knowing full well that the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara emit huge amounts water vapour and global-killing catastrophic amounts of Co2, sat by and DID NOTHING! They let it happen!!
St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, whose riding is next door, just several minutes away from Niagara Falls, was even the environment minister in Ontario in the 1980’s – why, when he had the chance, didn’t he DO SOMETHING…ANYTHING… to stop this disastrous environmental horror right in Niagara, under his own nose??
Judge David Suzuki recently prescribed enviro-jails for politicians guilty of such environmental negligence, didn’t he?!
Sheesh. In order to Save The World, Canada and the United States might well have to build a new Hoover-like dam - about a mile or so down river past the Falls, then let the water flood in the gorge until it all becomes just a deep river. The deadly mists of Niagara - along with their evil (yet pretty) rainbows - will be forever eliminated, and the New Niagara Gorzukion Dam will provide plenty of 'green' hydro power. We must Save The Planet here, after all. Hey - stranger things have happened!
In the summer of 1969, the U.S. Corps of Engineers, after building a temporary dam upstream, dried up the American Falls for study and remediation purposes.
The entire Niagara Falls went naturally dry for about a day before April Fool's Day, 1848, when a bizarre combination of up-river winds and Lake Erie ice created such an ice jam at the head of the Niagara River at Buffalo that the river, and then both Falls, temporarily dried up. People even walked out onto the edge!
And, the American Bridal Veil Falls dried up several times during the last hundred years due to winter ice jams in the Niagara River closer to Goat Island.
Next time this happens, the disciples of Goraphobia will certainly blame it all on Bush, Harris and the neocon conspiratorial industrial-military complex - which also, by the way, caused hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, and every volcanic eruption since the dawn of time.
Really.
(...and in 2015, we can still witness more global warming / climate change/ GreenFear climatalarmism being perpetrated at the CBC by Bob McDonald.)
*
Your rainbow ride is over.
*
Peter Kuitenbrouwer wrote in “Finding faith in a storm's aftermath”, (National Post, Feb.8, 2008) of last Tuesday’s (Feb.5) snowstorm in Ontario: it was
“the most snow in one day in Toronto since 1966, Environment Canada says…
Yesterday, I took a day off from my ongoing series exploring greater Toronto's lakeshore to write about the remarkable wallop of snow we've been getting. Since November, 128.2 cm of snow has fallen at Pearson airport this winter, far higher than the average 90 cm of the past 30 years…
"We still have a few more weeks left of February and it is likely that we're going to see more snowfalls to add to this," according to Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson.
The city said it deployed 200 salt trucks, 600 snow ploughs and 300 sidewalk ploughs to clean up and make the city safe after the storm.”
We’re freezing our butts off in Niagara today, Feb.10, 2008. It was 7 F (minus 14 C) today - and that was in the daytime.
Shouldn’t someone be hauling David Suzuki off to jail for his global warming hysteria? Did Nobel Lies Winner Al Gore fly into town to help anyone scrape off and start their frozen cars, or shovel their driveways and sidewalks for the umpteenth time?
The Niagara River has its ice bridge forming below the Falls, and ice floes from the upper Niagara River are tumbling over the edge. Where’s Al Gore to witness this “climate change”? Yeah, the Gorzukion – gang (Gore, Suzuki, Stephane Dion) will pop out around March predictably screaming the ‘ice is melting’ – which, of course, it will be, (as springtime approaches) as it has for thousands of years!
KevinB posted this entry on “Small Dead Animals” (Dec.1, 2008):
“What kills me is the absolute refusal by the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] crowd to do even the most basic research. For example, Honda has ads promoting their fuel cell car, saying that it only emits water vapour. It takes about five minutes on Google to find out that of all the supposed "green house gases", water vapour is by far the biggest culprit. Not only is there more of it in the atmosphere than CO2, it traps radiant energy at more points in the spectrum than CO2 does. Idiots.”
I wonder if the Gorzukion enviro-nutters will therefore dam-up the Niagara River to dry up Niagara Falls, in order to prevent the global-warming mists that the natural wonder of the Falls causes?
Hour after hour - for thousands of years - the mists arising from the river’s plunge over Niagara Falls have caused dangerous global warming, which the Gorzukions will now have to stop. Didn't the Kyoto Protocol clearly specify that the emissions-footprint of Niagara Falls be reduced to pre-10,000 B.C. levels? yes... yes it did...
The above video clips show the utter devastation of global warming in Niagara Falls: the ice floes, the frozen trees, barren, sleet-caked rocks and slippery pavement, the absence of people, the toxic cloud of evil global-warming gasses rushing to the sky from the swirling cauldron of water in the gorge below…this must be stopped immediately!!
For years, the Ontario Liberal government, knowing full well that the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara emit huge amounts water vapour and global-killing catastrophic amounts of Co2, sat by and DID NOTHING! They let it happen!!
St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, whose riding is next door, just several minutes away from Niagara Falls, was even the environment minister in Ontario in the 1980’s – why, when he had the chance, didn’t he DO SOMETHING…ANYTHING… to stop this disastrous environmental horror right in Niagara, under his own nose??
Judge David Suzuki recently prescribed enviro-jails for politicians guilty of such environmental negligence, didn’t he?!
Sheesh. In order to Save The World, Canada and the United States might well have to build a new Hoover-like dam - about a mile or so down river past the Falls, then let the water flood in the gorge until it all becomes just a deep river. The deadly mists of Niagara - along with their evil (yet pretty) rainbows - will be forever eliminated, and the New Niagara Gorzukion Dam will provide plenty of 'green' hydro power. We must Save The Planet here, after all. Hey - stranger things have happened!
In the summer of 1969, the U.S. Corps of Engineers, after building a temporary dam upstream, dried up the American Falls for study and remediation purposes.
The entire Niagara Falls went naturally dry for about a day before April Fool's Day, 1848, when a bizarre combination of up-river winds and Lake Erie ice created such an ice jam at the head of the Niagara River at Buffalo that the river, and then both Falls, temporarily dried up. People even walked out onto the edge!
And, the American Bridal Veil Falls dried up several times during the last hundred years due to winter ice jams in the Niagara River closer to Goat Island.
Next time this happens, the disciples of Goraphobia will certainly blame it all on Bush, Harris and the neocon conspiratorial industrial-military complex - which also, by the way, caused hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, and every volcanic eruption since the dawn of time.
Really.
(...and in 2015, we can still witness more global warming / climate change/ GreenFear climatalarmism being perpetrated at the CBC by Bob McDonald.)
*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
