Month: June 2024

US Supreme Court: Climate alarmists will now have to prove that CO2 is ‘pollutant’

Until this decision, Environmental Protection Agency and other U.S. agencies were considered the final experts. Now they will have to defend their claims in court

By Terigi Ciccone, Quora, June 29, 2024

Until this week, the Environmental Protection Agency had the authority to set pollution regulations on electrical and industrial emissions based on the Chevron Difference concept. This allowed the EPA and all other US government agencies to be regarded as the final experts and arbiters of ambiguous laws and regulations passed by Congress and signed into law. … Read more

Climatism’s claims of pending apocalypse are nonsense

Climate change is a problem, but predictions of climate and social apocalypse are not just wrong but dangerous

By Mike Hulme, National Post, June 26, 2024

The argument developed in Naomi Klein’s 2015 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate, is that the real significance of climate change is that capitalism is reaching its end. Or, at least that it is necessary to ride the wave of climatism to ensure that through aggressive campaigning and discrediting of capitalism social licence to operate it does reach its end. But it is a dangerous move to position the ideology of climatism as a direct opponent to the ideology of capitalism.… Read more

UN’s ‘climate science’ is junk science

In Guterres’ climate crusade, scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated, ‘science’ is warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda

By Terence Corcoran, National Post, June 25, 2024,

History will record that the United Nations has established itself as the greatest organizational perpetrator of junk science in modern times, if not of all time, with current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres destined to be singled out for his personal contribution to the distorted UN climate alarmism.… Read more

What will Net Zero by 2050 cost? At least $3-trillion

Ottawa reluctant to tell Canadians the total bill they will have to pay to ‘fight climate change,’ but it will be about $120,000 per household

By Robert Lyman, Financial Post, May 15, 2024

Among the many questions about the federal government’s policies 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.… Read more

In a nutshell: Why we can never reach Net Zero by 2050—and shouldn’t try

To replace fossil fuel energy worldwide would require the equivalent of 22,000 Site C dams and severely damage our living standards, says Fraser Institute study

By Fraser Institute, June 12, 2024

Canada and other developed countries have committed to achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

… but is there any chance we’re actually going to hit that target?

Right now, in 2024, we are at the halfway point between the Kyoto Protocol (the first international treaty to set binding targets for cutting emissions) and that 2050 target.… Read more

The ‘climate crisis’ fades out, as it should…

Today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies are being abandoned, making room for a more informed approach to meeting the world’s energy needs

By Steven E. Koonin, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2024

The 2015 Paris Agreement aspired to “reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the latter half of this century. The centerpiece of the strategy was a global transition to low-emission energy systems.

After nearly a decade, it’s timely to ask how that energy transition is progressing and how it might fare in the future. … Read more

What are climate policies costing Canadians? Much more than most are willing to spend

Fewer than 50% of Canadians willing to spend 1% of household income a year (about $430) to fight climate change. In fact, the climate bill is roughly $2,800 per household

By Robert Lyman, Friends of Science, May 10, 2024

A global survey published in the journal Nature Climate Change in February 2024 found that fewer than 50 percent of the people asked in Canada and the United States would be prepared to spend one percent of their income to address climate change (see Figure 1, green shading). Such findings stand in sharp contrast to what Canadians are already paying.… Read more

‘The science’ doesn’t tell us what fighting climate change costs

Climate change is a problem but a civilization-endangering cure could be far worse than the disease

By BJORN LOM­BORG, National Post, May 31

We constantly hear that because climate change is real we should “follow the science” and end fossil fuel use. We hear it both from politicians who favour swift carbon cuts and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists “The science is clear — fossil fuels must go.”

The assertion is convenient for politicians because it allows them to avoid responsibility for the many costs and downsides of climate policy, painting these as inevitable results of diligently following the scientific evidence.… Read more

Restaurants fear huge costs in retrofitting from natural gas to electric

Proposed municipal bylaws requiring all-electric fixtures would cost average restaurant in B.C. $800,000, study says

By Gordon McIntyre, Vancouver Sun, May 30, 2024

To convert a restaurant from natural gas to electricity for cooking and patio heating would cost an average B.C. restaurant $800,000, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The study was commissioned after several municipalities, including Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Victoria and Nanaimo, have introduced bylaws banning natural gas in newly constructed buildings ahead of a zero-carbon provincial mandate that takes effect in 2030.

Phasing out natural gas in B.C. does not apply to existing buildings, but the B.C.… Read more

Companies balking at high cost of running electric trucks

Study shows operating expenses of low-emissions rigs are far higher than those for diesel trucks—’the economics just don’t work for most companies’

By Paul Berger, Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2024

Executives at truck leasing company Ryder System spent years listening to some of their biggest customers say they wanted to switch to battery-electric big rigs. 

“The economics just don’t work for most companies,” said Robert Sanchez, the chief executive of Ryder, which manages 250,000 trucks and vans for tens of thousands of retailers and manufacturers.… Read more