The uselessness of Canada's climate alarmism

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

We're getting charged more because of the climate emergency.

[Anonymous]

Why is the federal government giving them any money, nevermind $2.7 million of our money to build 54 electric vehicle (EV) fast chargers at Canadian Tire locations across central and western Canada.



https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-canadian-tire-takes-trudeaus-corporate-welfare-for-green-cars

Canadian Tire takes Trudeau's corporate welfare for green cars

[Anonymous]

Ever notice how oil and gas activists and climate alarmists are pretty quiet when it's -40 ?

[Anonymous]

Canada's "Climate Crisis" is Entirely Political



https://c2cjournal.ca/2020/01/canadas-climate-crisis-is-entirely-political/



Western countries even though virtually all emissions growth is elsewhere. China, India, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris climate accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired electric power plants. If Canada disappeared from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our emissions in a few short months.



The Liberals and Canada's vast climate emergency movement remain preoccupied with national rather than global emissions, and this leads to myriad "local action" absurdities. The award for most ludicrous goes to Victoria's City Council for its plan to spend $14 million on installing shore power at its harbour so that cruise ships can shut off their generators while moored at city docks. Council clearly doesn't understand that emissions caused by actually propelling the ships after they leave port are hundreds of times greater than their generators produce.



No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. And yet for all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change. Entering the third decade of this troubled millennium, we can only hope our federal government somehow realizes the future of our Confederation requires leaving behind blind ideology and finding some basic common sense.

[Anonymous]

Ever notice how oil and gas activists and climate alarmists are pretty quiet when it's -40 ?

Yes, I've noticed that.

[Anonymous]

Trudeau's so called climate plan is shut down Western Canada's resource sector and charge people more for everything. And it still won't meet the pointless targets they set under the useless Paris agreement.



By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media



PM can't have it both ways

Trudeau must choose between climate pledge and Alberta's economy

The dilemma for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on climate change and energy policy comes down to this.



If he wants to meet the promises he's made about reducing Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions, he has to gut our oil and gas sector.



He also has to do it quickly and the consequences for Alberta's economy, as well as Saskatchewan's and Canada's, will be severe.



Trudeau and his cabinet would have to reject the $20.6-billion Teck Frontier oilsands megaproject in Alberta, now up for approval after getting the goahead from federal regulators.



But even if the Liberals cancel that project, that wouldn't reduce current emissions, just slow the increase of future ones.



To meet his 2030 target of cutting Canada's current emissions to 30% below 2005 levels, Trudeau will have to eliminate the equivalent of 50 Teck oilsands megaprojects over the next decade, or five Teck megaprojects every year, for 10 years. Even using the Trudeau government's own projections of what emission levels will be in 2030, including projects it hasn't started, it would still have to cut current emissions by the equivalent of 19 Teck-like megaprojects over 10 years, or almost two every year, for a decade. To achieve his election promise of cutting Canada's emissions to net zero by 2050, Trudeau would have to cut Canada's emissions by the equivalent of 175 Teck-like megaprojects over the next 30 years — almost six Teck-like megaprojects annually, for three decades.



Canada has seven economic sectors that generate significant industrial emissions, but oil and gas has been the fastest-growing since 1990 and the largest since 2012. Today, these emissions total 195 megatonnes annually, an 84% increase since 1990.



The second-largest is the transportation sector at 174 megatonnes of emissions annually, a 43% rise since 1990, but with stable emissions since 2012.



Emissions in the electricity, heavy industry and waste sectors have gone down since 1990, while emissions in the agriculture and building sectors haven't grown significantly since 2005.



Technology in the oil and gas sector is constantly improving, reducing the carbon intensity of its emissions, meaning the energy required to produce a barrel of oil generates fewer emissions over time, but not enough to come close to meeting Trudeau's 2030 and 2050 targets. For that, Trudeau will have to slash current oil and gas production.



Trudeau's dilemma is that while he has never acknowledged the severe economic consequences to the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Canadian economies of fulfilling his climate change promises. He also doesn't have enough money — our money — to subsidize an industry his climate policies are designed to kill.



Last week we learned the price tag on completing the Trans Mountain pipeline the Trudeau government bought two years ago has increased to $12.6 billion, 70% higher than its original forecast. A report by Reuters news said Trudeau and his cabinet are considering federal aid to Alberta if they decide to reject the Teck megaproject, with the Liberals divided on what to do when they announce their decision later this month.



Vetoing Teck would be widely seen in Alberta as a deliberate, possibly fatal blow to the province's beleaguered economy by a vindictive Liberal government that no longer has a single seat there or in Saskatchewan.



Approving it would be viewed as a betrayal by those who supported the Liberals in last year's election because of Trudeau's promise to meaningfully address climate change.



Now, Trudeau has to pick a lane.

[Anonymous]

Do we still want to be a strong G7 economy or do we want to keep blocking industrial development. Do we want the rule of law or foreign funded anarchy.



By Anthony Furey of Sun News Media



The Paris accord is causing Canada trouble — time to leave it



It's fairly common to hear politicians or activists announce a campaign to tackle a social plague like poverty or homelessness and even affix a hard target to it. They give themselves a certain number of years to considerably reduce the problem or even entirely eradicate the foe.



While we all agree with the sentiment, we also all know it's not a goal that we seriously think we'll achieve. It's a symbolic gesture meant to inspire action.



"Aspirational" is a good way to put it, and that's the word Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay used in a recent television interview to describe Canada's Paris climate accord commitments.



There is much hand-wringing right now about whether or not Canada will rigidly meet its commitments to slash emissions by 2030. And it's that obsession with meeting these targets that is one of the key motivating factors behind so much of the current drama holding back Canada.



The controversial carbon tax; the cancellation of the Teck Frontier project; the recent criminal antics of outlandish activists, most notably Extinction Rebellion; the reason why thousands of otherwise reasonable people turn out to applaud Greta Thunberg's fire- and- brimstone road show — all of this has been propelled by the fact the federal government has officially signed on to a global accord that says we've got to phase-out the oil sands.



All of these matters would have been considered too far from the mainstream to generate the inertia they now undeniably command among the Canadian public were it not for the fact that the government de facto gave them the green light by formally signing on to the Paris climate accord shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 2015 election.



Unfortunately, we have not been treating them as "aspirational" targets. Instead, we've been acting like they're laws of the land that must be followed at risk of punishment.



Even though they're not. Far from it.

What is hardly ever reported in the constant news lamenting our progress is that our 2030 commitments are what is called "Nationally Determined Contributions". That means we came up with our own goals — to hit, miss or walk away from.



Canada is now at an inflection point where we need to decide whether we are truly worthy of remaining a G7 nation, whether we are serious about having an enviable economy. Given the events of recent weeks, where the economy has been grinding to a halt because of our weak response to illegal activism, it looks like things could go either way.



Maybe regular people will get so frustrated with this series of events that public opinion veers away from over-the-top activism and towards stability, rule of law and common sense; or, maybe we're about to lose everything and throw our hands up in defeat.



One thing that would go a long way towards re-framing the narrative in the right direction is withdrawing from the Paris accord. It's clear that our fealty to this meaningless United Nations group hug has caused us more trouble than it's worth.



This doesn't mean we stop caring about the environment. It just means we do it because we want to and how we want to, not because of some international shaming ritual of false deadlines and targets. New evidence even tells us that approach may be the most productive.



As my colleague Lorrie Goldstein explained in a recent column, the United States is now the world leader in reducing emissions. This coming after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris accord — the only signatory to have done so — back in 2017. "U.S. emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period," reads the latest Internat i o nal Energ y Agency report cited by Goldstein.



Free market solutions to climate concerns are not only possible but likely more efficient. The activists don't want you to know that. That's because an open source response to climate change, as opposed to the current authoritarian one, takes away their influence, control and financing.



Did you hear them sing from the rooftops the recent news that University of Ottawa scientists are on the cusp of a new and improved model of carbon capture? Of course not. Because, if successful, such innovations will reduce the need for the Paris accord, carbon taxes and many other top-down green schemes.



While Peter MacKay did not call for a Paris withdrawal in his CTV News interview, he did articulate a sensible pathway forward on the issue: "Canadians can be innovators and be big contributors to the global effort because we're not the problem. We have an obligation to do our part, but I think we can be bigger in our vision and bolder in our effort to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally."



The Paris accord conversation is dominated by the very same people who are pushing to shut down the Canadian economy and our energy projects. That's just wrong. Let's shut them down instead.



The obsession with meeting these Paris targets is one of the key motivating factors behind so much of the current drama holding back Canada

[Anonymous]

No, climate change isn't lowering our birth rate



By Lorrie Goldstein

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.



For example, Canada's declining birth rate, which federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson suggested Monday may be linked to human- induced climate change.



In remarks to the Vancouver Board of Trade, first cited by Blacklock's Reporter, Wilkinson said: "Given the lack of significant action over the past couple of decades, it is certainly no wonder that youth around the world are fed up with our generation. We're not acting on the science we have before us, and many question whether they see a future in which they can have children of their own."



Wilkinson said his youngest daughter, in Grade 12, constantly tells him, he's "not doing enough to fight climate change" and "her words motivate me in what I do."



It's true many young people today say they don't want to bring more children into the world given its current state. But young people have been saying that for generations.



For baby boomers, it was because of the threat of nuclear war.



As for Canada's fertility rate, it's been declining for 170 years — from 6.56 children per woman in 1851, to 1.5 today.



As Statistics Canada explains : "Canada has changed from a high-fertility society, where women had many children during their lives, to a low-fertility society where women are having fewer children overall and at increasingly older ages.



"Despite some fluctuations, the total fertility rate in Canada has been below the replacement level for over 40 years. In fact, 1971 was the last year the replacement- level fertility of 2.1 children per woman was reached — meaning that couples, on average, had produced enough children to replace themselves."



"The demographic shift ... has resulted in a transition from a country with a relatively young and growing population to one with an aging population, which is increasingly reliant on immigration for population growth."



One reason is Canada's shift from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrialized one, where families no longer need large numbers of children to work the land and care for them in their old age.



Others are the decreasing influence of religion, lower child mortality rates, improved contraception, the emancipation of women, their pursuit of education, increasing entry into the labour force, and medical advancements giving them the option of having children later in life.



The high cost of housing and the increasing prevalence of contract work vs. full-time jobs, are also reasons for Canada's low birth rate.



One could argue Wilkinson was simply making an anecdotal observation about young people being disillusioned with the world their parents gave them, which is nothing new.



But the problem is that because the Trudeau government touts human-induced climate change, as Wilkinson twice referred to it, as an "existential" threat, and the most important issue of our age, it distorts its public policies with that in mind.



Human- induced climate change is serious but it's not an "existential" threat. It doesn't threaten our existence.



Portraying it as such leads to bad political decisions fuelled by hysteria.



Climate change is one of many challenges we face, including conventional air and water pollution, toxic waste sites and the frequency of deadly viruses emerging from China and Africa, where many people live in close proximity to animals likely to jump the species barrier in transmitting disease.



Hysteria won't help us address these problems. Only good judgment and common sense will.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't seem to be threatening the birth rate across Africa.

[Anonymous]

The Conservatives need to grown a pair and stop lowering Canada's living standards by pandering to middle class destroying climate alarmism.



Conservative candidates need to push back against the climate scare



https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/harris-conservative-candidates-need-to-push-back-against-the-climate-scare

It is high time every Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate thoroughly debunked the climate scare. For climate alarmism threatens to ruin the Canada previous generations fought and died to preserve.



f you think the five-month COVID-19-induced shutdown has been rough, imagine a permanent such shutdown, but with soaring gasoline, natural gas and electricity prices. Our children have a bleak future indeed if today's climate activists get their way.



Yet, to date, only Derek Sloan has dared contest the sacred cow of dangerous human-induced climate change, promising to take Canada out of the Paris Agreement. The rest of the leadership candidates – Peter MacKay, Erin O'Toole and Leslyn Lewis – have acquiesced to the alarm.



This is a huge problem. 'Stopping climate change' has become a central organizing principle of public policy formulation, as manufacturing jobs have disappeared overseas, vitally needed oil pipelines have been cancelled or delayed, and electricity rates have skyrocketed.



This has caused severe damage to Canadian energy consumers and producers while impairing national unity. Poverty awaits for many more Canadians if current climate change and energy policies continue.



Besides wanting to avoid being labelled 'climate change deniers,' and attempting to attract left-wing voters, MacKay, O'Toole and Lewis are apparently under the impression that they must ignore rank and file Conservatives on this issue and follow what they perceive to be general public opinion. This is a mistake.



In "Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S.," published in 2012 in the journal Climatic Change, McGill University, Drexel University and Ohio State University researchers demonstrated that the stated positions of politicians and other "elites" in society is the primary factor influencing public opinion.



The study showed that when prominent Republicans worked with Democrats to support concerns about dangerous global warming, the public was far more supportive of this stance. However, following the Republican split with the Democrats on the issue in 2008, there was a quick reduction in the fraction of the public who "worried a great deal" about climate.





The same would apply in Canada. So, unless MacKay, O'Toole and Lewis actually want the public to support climate alarmism, they should clearly state that the scare is wrong, citing reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. These documents summarize thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that either refute or cast serious doubt on the climate scare. Then Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates can play their proper role of leading the public to a balanced understanding of this important topic.



Indeed, all Conservatives must 'cross the Rubicon,' and call a spade a spade: the idea that we detrimentally affect climate through our use of fossil fuels is one of the worst deceptions ever perpetrated. The primary result of the climate crusade will not be enhanced environmental protection but expanded government power, reduced individual freedom, and huge profits for alternative energy companies. Attempts to convert from reliable coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power to flimsy and expensive wind and solar power to supposedly 'save the climate' is both ridiculous and dangerous.



After all, "carbon pollution," that the government tells us we must reduce, is really carbon dioxide (CO2), a colourless, odourless gas essential for plant photosynthesis and so needed for life. It is the very opposite of pollution. It is not worth spending anything at all trying to reduce CO2 emissions.



And, yes, climate change is real. So is sunrise and gravity. That doesn't mean that we cause them, or, in the case of climate change, if we do contribute, that our impact is in any way dangerous.



And, for Conservatives too timid or uninformed to say this, they need the courage to at least state that, at 1.6% of world emissions, Canada's contribution is trivial in comparison with countries such as China, by far the largest emitter. And China clearly has no intention whatsoever of reducing emissions so Canada's sacrifice would be for nothing. The best policy is to simply adapt to climate change as it occurs.



Any Conservative leadership candidate so frightened by political correctness that they stand idly by while our nation is sucked further into the black hole of climate alarmism is not worthy of leading any party, let alone becoming prime minister.



Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.

[Anonymous]

With the exception of Derek Sloan, all the Tory candidates are taking a cowardly stance. We know Ottawa's climate plans hurt average working Canadians and put the entire country at a competitive disadvantage while not budging the climate needle. The Tory candidates should not be afraid to tell the truth about the uselessness of Canada's climate alarmism.

[Anonymous]

Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy just published a great post on CAE's blog about the return of Gerald Butts and what that could soon mean for your energy bill.



Butts has returned to Ottawa to head up the "Task Force for a Resilient Recovery", which last week released their preliminary report.



Unfortunately for us, what the Task Force is recommending is a repeat of Ontario's disastrous 2009 Green Energy Act, for which Butts was also a key advisor.



Yes, the same Green Energy Act that inflated energy bills in Ontario by a whopping 70% from 2008 to 2016. The same Green Energy Act that Ontarians are still paying for!



McTeague breaks down all the ominous ways in which this Task Force's recommendations are all too similar to the measures implemented in the GEA, and he has a stark warning about any energy plans that feature liberal amounts of green subsidies:



"These plans only ever result in dramatically higher costs, which are then passed down to the consumer. Prioritizing 'clean' energy is always expensive - as Ontario has demonstrated. Pretty soon all of Canada - not just Ontario - can pay the Global Adjustment Fee to fund this green agenda."



You can read the whole post here.



There is one simple way we can avoid this expensive plan. We must defeat Justin Trudeau.

[Anonymous]

"Climate alarmism" is an ideological approach that claims human use of fossil fuels has a dangerous effect on the world's climate and will lead to human extinction.



This claim is not supported by science. Thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals contradict or cast serious doubt on the claims made by climate alarmists.



Climate alarmism is a massive deception used by the left to expand government power and taxation, erode personal freedoms, and run "green energy" subsidy scams paid for by taxpayers.



Ontario is still paying for the Green Energy Act of 2009, which increased energy bills by 70% while driving businesses from the province in the name of promoting "green energy" through subsidies. Disgraced former Trudeau Principal Secretary Gerry Butts was behind the GEA, and now he heads up a group looking to launch a similar plan nationally.



Plans involving "green energy" subsidies always result in radically higher energy costs that ordinary Canadians must pay.



Even though climate alarmism is unscientific, rallying cries to "fight climate change" go unchallenged and have led to policies that cripple our energy sector, banish manufacturing jobs, make energy rates skyrocket, and shatter national unity.



The Paris Agreement was created out of climate alarmism. Attempts to meet its goals will destroy our oil and gas industry, while at the same time serving as justification for an unconstitutional carbon tax that makes life more expensive for us all.