Trudeau government - so much for science

[Rwede]

So much for the science, Trudeau government sticks to pre-determined climate agenda


Ross McKitrick, Special to Financial Post | November 25, 2015 6:13 PM ET



Comment: The Trudeau government says it’s open to science. But its first climate briefing suggests that what it really wants is glossy, one-sided agitprop to help sell a costly interventionist agenda into energy policy.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld


Comment: The Trudeau government says it’s open to science. But its first climate briefing suggests that what it really wants is glossy, one-sided agitprop to help sell a costly interventionist agenda into energy policy.


The Trudeau government ignores the data on global warming that doesn’t promote its pre-determined policy agenda

Apparently the Canadian government is willing to listen to climate scientists again. It seems like just yesterday when government officials feared losing their jobs for talking about science and data that didn’t match the official party line. I can remember not long ago a senior Environment Canada official telling me he was trying to bring some rationality and balance back to the place but feared the Minister would have him fired if he spoke up. And then there was the other government scientist who sent me a binder full of material showing their environmental planning process had been hijacked for ideological reasons because the government was determined to put its hardline climate politics ahead of real-world data.

But enough about the Chretien era. The Tories who followed seemed to take a hands-off process to the climate science scene, letting a thousand flowers bloom, which made sense since most policy decisions have never had much to do with the science anyway. But to some of the old climate warhorses it apparently felt like betrayal.

Why would scientists single out a brand new, controversial data series to show policy makers?
Now we have a government that insists it is open to science again. So it organized a special climate briefing on November 23 and even put the presentation —by Gregory Flato of Environment Canada and Alain Bourque of Ouranos — on the internet. But, surprise surprise, before the briefing even begins, the PR people have dictated what the conclusions will be: “The scientific evidence is clear: climate change is one of the greatest threats of our time. The Government of Canada recognizes that global temperature increases must be limited to at most two degrees Celsius.”

Stop right there. The “science” does not tell us whether climate change is a greater challenge than, say, terrorism or the national debt, that’s something that citizens and elected officials have to sort out. As for the “two degrees” slogan, this has always been a political construct, it doesn’t emerge from thermodynamics or meteorology.

So it’s starting to look like the old days again, when the science gets heavily torqued to promote a pre-determined policy agenda. The preface goes on: “The Government of Canada takes great pride in the work of all of Canada’s scientists and will continue to feature science work to Canadians.” Huh? I can think of lots of Canadian scientific work on climate that the Government will never listen to, because it doesn’t support the policy agenda.

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As for the presentation itself, the very first data chart is a clue to all that follows. A little bit of hunting on the internet will show you that there are four major surface temperature data sets derived from land stations and ocean records, two global atmospheric data sets derived from weather satellite readings, and at least three global atmospheric data sets derived from weather balloon readings. They don’t all show the same thing over the past 35 years: most indicate a hiatus in warming over the past 15 to 20 years. However, one of the surface compilations (from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) shows a continuing increase in warming over the past decade. The NOAA version was released with great fanfare just last summer, but its end-of-sample warming spike turned out to be based on some controversial new methods for processing the old buoy- and ship-based sea surface temperature records that other teams do not use. And in response to requests from Congress for details on how the analysis came to be done that way, the head of NOAA is stonewalling and won’t turn over the records.

It hardly inspires confidence. And yet, of the nine available climate data sets, this is the only one shown in the briefing. Why would scientists single out a brand new, controversial data series to show policy makers? Could it have anything to do with its conspicuous uptick at the end?

It’s like the hockey stick episode all over. Back then, a brand new outlier data set showed what a lot of influential people wanted to see: glossy graphical evidence of an unprecedented climate catastrophe. The official imprimatur made it look unimpeachable, but it turned out to be an illusion based on bad data and flawed methods. Criticism was waived away at the time, but as Mark Steyn’s excruciatingly convincing book A Disgrace to the Profession makes clear, about the only thing there’s a real consensus on today is that, despite its prominence in government reports, the hockey stick was garbage.

A real scientific briefing would have given decision-makers a proper sense of the uncertainties and complexities in climate science, beginning with the different global temperature data sets. It would have shown the conflicting trends in sea ice data from both poles, not just the Arctic. It would have shown how far off climate models are from observations, having predicted four times more warming than was observed this century. It would have shown the long term variability and lack of trend in records of droughts, hurricanes and other extreme weather indicators. And it would have shown the growing string of empirical studies that have found real-world climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases to be at or below the low end of the typical model-based distributions.

The new government says it’s open to science. But its first climate briefing suggests that what it really wants is glossy, one-sided agitprop to help sell a costly interventionist agenda into energy policy. No one should pretend to be surprised, nor should we be shocked when the real world once again fails to conform to the simplistic picture the government’s science briefings present.

[I Think]

Only in North America do we have rightist political groups that refuse to believe that global warming exists.

[Rwede]

Only in North America do we have rightist political groups that refuse to believe that global warming exists.

So much for science. An apologist turns it political, same as Trudeau has.

[The Green Barbarian]

Only in North America do we have rightist political groups that refuse to believe that global warming exists.

You mean that they refuse to just accept the unproven hypothesis that man-kind is somehow affecting the climate by emitting CO2, a harmless gas required by all plant life to live. That's what you mean. And it's not just in North America. People all over the world are questioning this unproven hypothesis, especially since NOT ONE prediction of anyone trying to claim that this hypothesis is true, has come true. NOT ONE. Any other hypothesis that was consistently proved wrong would have long been discarded, but this isn't about science, it's about power and control, and billions upon billions of dollars.

[I Think]

Lets see, do we believe people like Gates, Branson et all, or the right wing deniers here like rweede, green b, lv etcetera?

Tough choice huh?,

[JLives]

Lets see, do we believe people like Gates, Branson et all, or the right wing deniers here like rweede, green b, lv etcetera?

Tough choice huh?,

Well clearly you have never read their blog posts. Now those are some people who know more than an international conglomerate of scientists spanning several disciplines and funded by both public and private backers.

[flamingfingers]

JLives -
Your post is a bit confusing to me - you seem to suggest that the right wing deniers such as RWede, Green B, LV actually have blogs that one should read and go on with:

Now those are some people who know more than an international conglomerate of scientists

I am QUITE sure that you REALLY didn't mean to couch you post in those terms!!!!

God forbid we give that trio a scintilla of credibility.

[JLives]

It's typed in the sarcasm font. Climate change deniers have zero credibility in my books. That argument is settled. Now we're (we're being sensible people who accept science as true) onto what do we do about it.

[Veovis]

It's typed in the sarcasm font. Climate change deniers have zero credibility in my books. That argument is settled. Now we're (we're being sensible people who accept science as true) onto what do we do about it.

Like toss billions at side companies like the carbon credits were to funnel taxes into corporate accounts somewhere, because that's all that has done for Al Gore and David Suzuki so far, climate change IS big business, and just like all big business it uses the emotions of large groups to stir up support for the funneling of huge sums to private pockets with no actual change ever occurring.

If climate change is real, it will not be changed by making a few private individuals very rich, if it isn't real, this is going to be one of the largest ponzi schemes ever revealed in the next century. Either way nothing will have changed for the environment.

Climate change is far from proven, though it is also not been dis proven either, no matter what both sides claim, but the questions remain, what do we forfeit as Canadians to fund this? Even though it has been clear from some posters that 200 million loss and 6.5 billion is the same amount, it really isn't by almost a factor of 25, and the pot isn't unlimited, at some point there will have to be proof.

[I Think]

Veovis, if we can bring solar and wind energy to levels similar to the scale used to manufacture cars, which I am sure you will agree must be possible, then we will no longer need coal and oil fired generating plants especially if we couple them to storage schemes. We have the technology to bring abundant low cost power to all to all the people of the world within the next 20/30 years.
Each solar panel that goes out the doors of factories is a small step closer to not needing coal/oil power.
A study of 5MW wind turbines sited in Oregon has been shown to repay all costs of manufacturing, installation, grid connection, maintenance and recycling, for each machine, in the first 5 to 8 months of their 20 year life, for 19+ years they continue to generate free electricity sufficient to power 450 homes.
If you place enough solar panels to cover two small texas counties, you will have sufficient power to supply North America with all its electrical needs.
Within 10 years electric cars will be cheaper, and have greater range than gasoline powered cars.

[JLives]

Like toss billions at side companies like the carbon credits were to funnel taxes into corporate accounts somewhere, because that's all that has done for Al Gore and David Suzuki so far, climate change IS big business, and just like all big business it uses the emotions of large groups to stir up support for the funneling of huge sums to private pockets with no actual change ever occurring.

If climate change is real, it will not be changed by making a few private individuals very rich, if it isn't real, this is going to be one of the largest ponzi schemes ever revealed in the next century. Either way nothing will have changed for the environment.

Climate change is far from proven, though it is also not been dis proven either, no matter what both sides claim, but the questions remain, what do we forfeit as Canadians to fund this? Even though it has been clear from some posters that 200 million loss and 6.5 billion is the same amount, it really isn't by almost a factor of 25, and the pot isn't unlimited, at some point there will have to be proof.

There is no if. Climate change is real. It is not far from proven, it is proven. If you listen to scientists you would know this. There is a 97% consensus on this issue despite what the ill informed blog readers would have you believe. This isn't an issue with sides or opinions, it IS occurring. The rate of acceleration is up for debate as is our response to it but the fact that it is occurring is not.

And I agree that fighting it isn't something that should be used monetized but that's not the way our system works. I don't support carbon credits or carbon taxes but I understand why they are brought in. Because it's only when our wallets take a hit that we actually care about anything in any substantial way, especially on the corporate level. If we don't make financial incentives for industries to lower carbon emissions, they won't.

[Gone_Fishin]

Actually, there's a 97% consensus among those working in the pro-climate change industry.

Let's not get carried away here, shall we?

[Veovis]

Ithink - we both know that wind energy has never become that viable and is needed actual tech advancements to acheive such, and has other negative environmental affects, AND has had billions in investment not bringing any returns. If they were viable they would be greater. As for solar, that's coming, Elon Musk battery sounds to have some long term potential for home building and solar supplemented power systems, not there quite yet, but showing some promise, and he doesn't need extra billions from Canadian taxpayers to do it.


JLives - this is the issue with absolutes like you set out. They don't work. I will agree that you can currently find a lot a scientists to agree that if some long term changes are not made that the human affect on the environment can have problematic affects, possibly, potentially, even though pretty much every prediction to date has been shown as false so we change the terms a bit each time in the theory we are evaluating.

You would also find that 97% also agree that evolution is the strongest and most likely THEORY, that exists for the planet. Like climate change, neither has actually ever been "proven as fact", but argued as happening, possibly happening or going to happen if some adjustments aren't made.

The Carbon taxes are just another tax, they will change nothing, BC is no better now than when we got one, nor will Alberta be, or the rest of Canada. We still have people thinking vaccines cause autism, when the doctor involved cooked the data, we have scientists proven to have cooked climate change data (both ways), and we have varied levels of actual concern towards it.

Keep in mind this shouldn't even be an issue since (what I bet is some of the same government employed scientists today) said we were going to run out of oil long before now anyways.

Belief in a scientific theory is fine, but asking taxpayers for billions every year for your favorite theory isn't.

[maryjane48]

lol evolution is fact , only some bible thumping rightwing loon would ever say otherwise . pssst the parting of the red sea never happened or psssst dinosaures are more than 4500 years old .

[JLives]

JLives - this is the issue with absolutes like you set out. They don't work. I will agree that you can currently find a lot a scientists to agree that if some long term changes are not made that the human affect on the environment can have problematic affects, possibly, potentially, even though pretty much every prediction to date has been shown as false so we change the terms a bit each time in the theory we are evaluating.

You don't "find" a lot of scientists saying this. There are a majority of scientists telling us this is what they have found through their research. There are no secret organizations digging for scientists to agree with their mission and put this out for marketing or something. These are people from all around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are funded privately, some are funded publicly. They have a variety of disciplines. Some were paid to refute it and also came to the conclusion that it is, in fact, occurring. I'm not absolute in any of my views. If the evidence changes so does my standpoint.

You would also find that 97% also agree that evolution is the strongest and most likely THEORY, that exists for the planet. Like climate change, neither has actually ever been "proven as fact", but argued as happening, possibly happening or going to happen if some adjustments aren't made.

You don't "agree" with evolution as fact. Science is true whether you believe it or not. Evolution is occurring now and has occurred from immediately after the Big Bang. We have observed it occurring. It's why people get a flu shot. There's a branch of medicine dedicated to it. We have fossil records. We can trace genomes and actually see how species are interrelated through DNA. It's as factual as facts get. I have some books with the finer details if you would like to borrow them.

The Carbon taxes are just another tax, they will change nothing, BC is no better now than when we got one, nor will Alberta be, or the rest of Canada. We still have people thinking vaccines cause autism, when the doctor involved cooked the data, we have scientists proven to have cooked climate change data (both ways), and we have varied levels of actual concern towards it.

Keep in mind this shouldn't even be an issue since (what I bet is some of the same government employed scientists today) said we were going to run out of oil long before now anyways.

Belief in a scientific theory is fine, but asking taxpayers for billions every year for your favorite theory isn't.

I agree with you that taxes are not the answer. I don't know what the answer is but I would certainly like to be discussing it. The imposition of taxes or any other measures monetizing climate change is a completely separate issue from the fact that it is occurring. I wish more people could separate that in discussing it.