Month: May 2024

Canada has only reduced carbon emissions by 4 per cent in the 25 years from 1979-2022, from 86% to 82%. That emissions will drop the remaining 82% in the next 25 years is an impossible dream

By Vaclav Smil, Fraser Institute, May 28, 2024

The global goal to achieve “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050 is impractical and unrealistic, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“The plan to eliminate fossil fuels and achieve a net-zero economy faces formidable economic, political and practical challenges,” said Vaclav Smil, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba and author of Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome.… Read more

Europe’s voters want climate policies—until they discover how much they cost. No one wants to be the party that’s promising to take voters’ jobs and raise their energy bills

By Joseph C. Sternberg, Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2024

You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.

The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy.… Read more

It would take Canada’s emissions 4,055 years to warm the globe by 1°C. The Conservative Party should use these figures to educate the public on folly of climate taxes

By Pav Penna, May 25, 2024

Which factually equivalent statement better communicates Canada’s impact on the climate?
 
a) “Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 were 548 Million tonnes.” 
 
or
 
b) “In 2022, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions warmed the globe by 0.000247°C, which is equivalent to 1°C in 4,055 years.”
 
Statement a) is a meaningless theoretical construct to the average citizen, whereas statement b) can be readily understood by all and gives voters desperately needed context on climate change. … Read more

IPCC has abandoned claims of more floods, droughts, storms, heat waves, etc., due to fossil-fuel emissions—but alarmists still beat the ‘extreme weather’ drum

By Tom Harris, America Outloud News, April 4, 2024

Climate campaigners and their political and media allies often tell us that their frightening forecasts are backed up by the best available science. In particular, they point to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that they tell us are the gold standard of climate science research. If the IPCC said it, it must be true, they proclaim!

The late Dr. Jay Lehr and I have often written about the serious flaws in the IPCC reports.… Read more

Federal and provincial governments have failed to provide cost-benefit analysis for costly climate policies that will have almost no effect on climate

By ROBERT LY­MAN, National Post, May 15, 2024

Among the many questions about the federal government’s policies to virtually eliminate Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, one of the hardest to answer concerns the costs to governments, businesses and consumers. This is due partly to a serious failure of governance.

The federal and provincial governments have failed to provide Canadians with an inventory of the measures they have implemented, their costs, their intended beneficiaries and their effectiveness. Governments regularly pay homage to “transparency and accountability” but have largely ignored them in their climate policies.… Read more

Finding disproves climate alarmists’ claims that current temperatures are higher than periods going back thousands if not millions of years

By Chris Morrison, Daily Skeptic, May 14, 2024

Astonishing finds by a group of Scandinavian scientists have placed a number of animal species living north of the Arctic Circle 9,000 years ago, including African wildcats, dogs and frogs. The area in northern Norway is much further north than where these wild animals would survive today and indicates, yet again, that temperatures in what is known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) were much warmer than today. … Read more

Basic math shows that Net Zero is an impossible goal

By Roger Arthur, “Climate crisis? There is no climate crisis,” Facebook, April 28, 2024

There are over 1.5 billion cars globally and since 40 kilograms of lithium are required per battery, 60 million tonnes is required, i.e., 6 million tonnes each year on average over 10 years to reach the UN’s goal of producing only electric cars by 2035.

But the current rate of mining globally is less than 150,000 tonnes a year, at which rate it would take over 400 years to obtain the lithium needed to make batteries for 1.5 billion EVs.… Read more

Governments in Europe are scaling back climate-change policies. Canada should do the same before it’s too late

By Conrad Black, National Post, April 27, 2024

I have written here and elsewhere countless times before of the dangers of responding prematurely to alarmist concerns about climate change. Dr. Benny Peiser of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation spoke to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary earlier this month, warning that Europe’s extremist net zero carbon emission policies may get to Canada even though they are now running into extreme problems in Europe. The North American media has not much reported on the widespread and often violent farmer protests in Europe, which has caused every government that has been put to the test to scale back their aggressive climate-change policies.… Read more