Questionable

The CanWest papers are trumpeting a poll reflecting Canadians' lack of knowledge about Kyoto. But it can't be helping matters that the poll itself seems to have gone out of its way to misinform those polled on the issue:

Guilbeault suggested some of the questions in the poll may have been biased, including one that asked whether people would support Kyoto if it resulted in 200,000 job cuts and $16 billion in economic losses.

"This is such crap," said Guilbeault. "The Quebec industrial sector reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 9.9 per cent between 1990 and 2003, (and) increased production. So that's 11/2 times Kyoto, and I didn't see them laying people off and losing billions of dollars of money. This is ridiculous."

Funny how any question about whether people would support Kyoto if it prevents Canada's coastal areas from ending up underwater seems to have missed the cut, even though there's at least as strong a causal connection to be drawn to that outcome than to purely speculative job losses.