Q&A: What is the ‘common sense’ approach to ‘climate change’?

By Climate Realists of B.C., Oct 18, 2024

For thirty years, climate has been one of the “third rails” of Canadian politics—politicians do not dare touch it lest they are accused of being “climate deniers,” on a moral par with Holocaust deniers. And so politicians do not speak out against “The Science” of climate, even when it is clearly flawed.

The silence, at least in B.C., was broken in 2022 by then-Liberal MLA, now Conservative Party of B.C. leader John Rustad, who supported a Tweet by climate skeptic Patrick Moore that “the case for CO2 being the control knob of temperature gets weaker every day.” For daring to say the unsayable, Rustad was expelled from the then-Liberal (more recently B.C. United) caucus.1

Rustad, who has based his party’s platform on a “common-sense” approach, is not a climate “denier.” He has stated that climate change is “real” and that humans are contributing to it.2 But he has also argued against the climate orthodoxy that there is a “climate emergency”requiring a crash program to get rid of fossil fuels (the Net Zero by 2050 approach3).

If Rustad and many others, like Patrick Moore, are correct and CO2 is not the climate “control knob,” then the Net Zero by 2050 “decarbonization” policies will have little or no effect on climate. But these policies can and will do considerable damage to the B.C. and Canadian economies.

Below are some questions and answers showing clearly that opposing the climate-alarmist policies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its parent organization the United Nations is not only common sense, but the only rational, realistic, and scientific course of action.

Common sense on ‘climate change’

Q.1: Isn’t there a climate “emergency” based on rising temperatures and increasing levels of carbon dioxide (currently at 422 parts per million)?

A.1: If there is, then the planet has been in “emergency” mode for 90 per cent of the past 600 million years,4,  which is all of the time that multicellular life has existed on earth (see Figure 1). During this time temperatures have been higher than today’s—and often 10° Celsius or more higher—and CO2 levels have also been much higher (up to 3,000 parts per million and even higher).

Figure 1: Temperature and CO2 over 600 million years. Note that at times CO2 has been high and temperature low; at other times, temperature has been high while CO2 is low. This strongly suggests that CO2 is not the “control knob” of temperature.

In fact, far from burning up, the earth is in an Ice Age and today’s temperatures and CO2 levels are the lowest in 500 million years.5

Satellite temperature data, which is the most accurate available, shows an average rate of temperature rise over the past 45 years of just over 0.15°C-0.20°C per decade.6 If this trend continues, the temperature might rise by 1°C-1.4°C Celsius by 2100—this is hardly a “ planetary emergency.” We are in no danger of “burning up”; we are in much greater long-term danger of a return of the ice-age glaciers, which really would be an “climate emergency” for human civilization.

 Q.2: But isn’t the whole IPCC case based on carbon dioxide being the main driver (the “control knob”) of today’s global warming—that is, as carbon dioxide increases, temperature increases in lock-step?

A.2: Carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas,” and thus contributes to the warming of the planet. However, about 80 per cent of this warming effect is caused by the first 100 parts per million in the atmosphere7; after this, each additional 100 ppm causes about half the warming of the previous 100 ppm.8 Moreover, at between 200-300 ppm, the layer of the atmosphere in which carbon dioxide traps heat gradually becomes “saturated,”((Dieter Schildkneckt, “Saturation of the Infrared Absorption by Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.” International Journal of Modern Physics B, Aug. 5, 2020Available online at Cornell University site https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00708. For a provocative but persuasive argument that carbon dioxide has had no active effect on temperature for millions of years, see Jim Mason, “A Planet that Might Not Need Saving: Can CO2 Even Drive Temperature?” C2C online journal, Oct. 13, 2024. Available at https://c2cjournal.ca/2024/10/a-planet-that-might-not-emneed-em-saving-can-co2-even-drive-global-temperature.))—just as a sponge gets saturated as it fills with water and cannot absorb more. We are currently at 422 ppm, so any additional CO2 can cause only minimal anthropogenic warming—a tiny fraction of a degree Celsius at most. 

The saturation effect is a basic law of physics that is never mentioned in the IPCC reports, perhaps because it completely destroys its case for CO2 as the main driver of climate. 

Q.3: If CO2 isn’t causing the high temperatures of late 2023 and 2024, what is?

A.3: The current warming is driven by a combination of influences, human (not carbon emissions as such but cities—the Urban Heat Island Effect—and agriculture) and natural (mainly solar-related, including wind and ocean currents). That said, the main greenhouse gas is water vapor, which is responsible for about 90 per cent of “global warming.” Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide represents less than 10 per cent. In temperature terms, water vapor warms the planet by about 30°C from the temperature with no greenhouse gases; CO2 is responsible for about 3°C of that.9 When water vapor increases in the atmosphere, so does “global warming.”

In January 2022, the massive explosion of an undersea volcano near Tonga in the Pacific increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by an estimated 10-15 per cent.10 This is more than enough water vapor to raise the earth’s temperature a degree or two for a few years after the explosion, but this warming will fall as water vapor levels return to “normal.” Another key warming factor in 2023-24 is a strong El Niño event in 2023, discussed in the next section.

Q.4: Are there any other scientific reasons to believe that CO2 is not the “control knob” of climate, i.e., that CO2 and temperature are not highly correlated, as some climate scientists claim?

A.4: If CO2 and temperature were strongly correlated we’d expect that as CO2 rises steadily (over 2 ppm per year), temperature would follow suit: we’d see a steady, gradual upward warming trend from year to year. But over the past 45 years (the period when the IPCC believes most of the human-CO2-influenced warming has occurred11), temperature has flat-lined for years at a time. 

Between 1980-1994, 2000-2014, and 2017-2023, there was very little or no warming (see Figure 2). Warming in this time has only occurred during El Niño events (including, again, the very large El Niño of 2023, enhanced by the Tonga explosion, which helped create the 2023-24 “record” temperatures). Each El Niño ratchets the temperature to another level, after which temperature is relatively steady again until the next El Niño.12

Figure 2: Temperatures 1975-2024, using the University of Alabama at Huntsville dataset. For most of these years there  has been little or no “warming.” Source: Woodfortrees.org

In other words, for 34 of the past 45 years there has been no “global warming.” This flat-lining would not occur if CO2 was the highly correlated “control knob” of temperature. 

Q.5: But what about the 650,000 years on Al Gore’s huge wallchart in his movie An Inconvenient Truth? It shows temperature and CO2 going up and down together in this time.

A.5: Gore wants his audiences to believe that the squiggly ups and downs of CO2 in the chart created the squiggly ups and downs of temperature for the last 650,000 year (an ice-age period, by the way) (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Al Gore’s wall chart of temperature (blue) and CO2 (white) over 650,000 years, from his 2005 film An Inconvenient Truth.

However, even Gore supporters acknowledge that Gore got his correlation wrong: in reality, first the temperature rose or fell (due to a planetary phenomenon called the Milankovitch Cycles) and then, centuries later, CO2 levels rose or fell. Nor is CO2 causing today’s warming temperatures; for the real “control knob,” as noted above, we need to look first at the El Niño cycles. 

Q.6: But don’t the IPCC climate models all show scary future warming if we keep emitting CO2?

A.6: Virtually all of the IPCC’s computer models have predicted more warming than actually occurred when the models are “hindcasted” (compared in retrospect to what actually occurred)—see Figure 4. 

Figure 4: IPCC computer model predictions (the top ‘spaghetti’ lines with the red average line) compared to actual temperatures (green average line). Source: Dr. John Christy

This means climate scientists have consistently set the “sensitivity” of temperature to CO2 in their models much too high, which is a sure sign that the climate models are not reliable predictors of future “warming,” that climate science is far from “settled,” and that CO2 is not the “control knob” of temperature and therefore climate.

Q.7: But isn’t carbon dioxide a “pollutant,” as environmentalists, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claim? 

A.7: A “pollutant” is a substance that is dangerous and potentially toxic to human, animal and/or plant health. As John Rustad has noted, human beings are “carbon-based” lifeforms—to fear carbon, as the IPCC wishes us to do, is to fear the very building block of life. Why? Because carbon is essential for plant life, and therefore to all life. 

Even better: the more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the better plants grow13; this is why greenhouse growers add carbon dioxide to their greenhouses. How much CO2? One thousand ppm or more.14 Even the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), no friend of climate common sense, admits that the recent increases in CO2 are “greening” the planet considerably.15

Plants also become more drought-resistant in higher-CO2 conditions.16 Another important point: below levels of 150 ppm, plant life dies, which means most life also dies.17 We don’t have too much CO2, we have too little. To call CO2 a “pollutant” is like saying water is a pollutant—after all, water vapour accounts for 95 per cent of the GHG effect, i.e., causes considerable warming! If CO2 is a “pollutant” causing warming (it isn’t, but if), then doesn’t that make water vapor a “pollutant”, too? 

Q.8: But if all this is true, how could climate scientists possibly have gotten the facts about climate so wrong? They’re scientists, after all!

A.8: Climate science isn’t the traditional, “hard” science that climate scientists would like the public to believe, but a variation called “post-normal” science. Here’s how Wikipedia describes “post-normal” science: 

Post-normal science (PNS) … is a problem-solving strategy appropriate when “facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent,” conditions often present in policy-relevant research. In those situations, PNS recommends suspending temporarily the traditional scientific ideal of truth, concentrating on quality as assessed by internal and extended peer communities.18[emphasis added]

The IPCC describes its approach in similar terms, although it doesn’t use the words “post-normal”:

We fully recognize that many of the evaluation statements we make contain a degree of subjective scientific perception and may contain much “community” or “personal” knowledge. For example, the very choice of model variables and model processes that are investigated are often based upon the subjective judgment and experience of the modeling community.19[emphasis added]

A “science” based on “personal knowledge,” and “subjective judgment,” that suspends “the traditional scientific ideal of truth,” that doesn’t use the scientific method of empirical testing of hypotheses, is not reliable science. Therefore, it’s not surprising that climate science has strayed so far from the actual facts about how the climate system actually behaves (for example, in not accepting that CO2 can become “saturated” and in overpredicting warming).

Q.9: What principles are climate science based on then, if not those of traditional science? 

A.9: The IPCC’s mission statement reads: “Review by experts and governments is an essential part of the IPCC process” (see Figure 5).20[emphasis added]

Figure 5: the IPCC’s mission statement, from its website.

In other words, climate science is highly politicized science. In what other scientific discipline except, perhaps, science involving national security, is “review by governments” essential? By accepting “review by governments” over their findings, climate scientists automatically became politicized and abandoned any claims they might have to scientific objectivity or integrity. Instead, they serve the ideologies of their political masters.

Common sense on Net Zero

John Rustad has said that “taxing people into poverty” through a carbon tax will not change “the weather.” Instead, he promises a “common-sense” approach to developing economic growth in the province, which means abandoning the Net Zero by 2050, anti-fossil-fuel policies as both absurdly expensive and futile in terms of reducing temperatures. 

Q.10: Can we create enough electricity generation to power a Net Zero economy by 2050?

A.10: No. It is not possible to create the additional (non-fossil-fuel) electrical power that would be needed to implement a true Net Zero by 2050 policy in B.C. or Canada or, indeed, anywhere in the world. 

For example, the federal Liberal and B.C. governments are requiring that all new vehicles in Canada be electrically powered by 2035. Nationwide, this regulation alone would require, according to a Fraser Institute study, an additional 11,000 megawatts of new generating capacity, the equivalent of 10 new mega-hydro projects like B.C.’s Site C dam (which produces 1,100 megawatts) or 13 large natural gas plants.21 

Site C took 20 years to get approved and built and cost $16 billion. How likely is it that Canada can build nine more Site C-type dams in 10 years? Canada will not have the power it needs for just this one federal requirement—all-EV vehicles by 2035. How will Canada meet the many other requirements of Net Zero?

Q.11: What will Net Zero by 2050 cost globally?

A.11: Plenty. On a global scale, the Liberal-friendly McKinsey Global Institute estimates that Net Zero by 2050 will cost US$275 trillion, or about US$9.8 trillion a year.22 For comparison purposes, the global GDP in 2023 was an estimated US$105 trillion, so Net Zero will be costing roughly 10 per cent of world GDP a year. Even the most committed Net Zero Policy politicians have never acknowledged or campaigned on a 10 per cent reduction in their constituents’ standard of living. But that is in fact what they are recommending and, if in government, are trying to implement as quickly as possible. 

Q.12: What will Net Zero by 2050 cost Canadians?

A.12: Reaching 75 per cent of Net Zero by 2050 will cost Canadians $60 billion a year ($1.5 trillion), according to the Royal Bank of Canada.23 At $60 billion a year, every Canadian will be contributing about $1,500 a year to “stop climate change,” or $6,000 a year for a family of four—and this is on top of all other taxes. This expense won’t be spread equally, of course: better-off families will be contributing more than less-well-off families. 

The average household in Canada earned $106,300 in 2021 before taxes, $87,700 after taxes,24 so Net Zero policies mean the well-off Canadian household could end up paying at least 10 per cent of its after-tax income, perhaps more. And that’s for only 75 per cent of Net Zero.

The question arises: If Canadians knew they’d be expected to pay 10 per cent or more of their household income each year on climate measures, would they agree? For most Canadians, the answer is certainly “no.” Perhaps this is why Ottawa and the provinces are so reluctant to reveal this information.

Q.13: What will Net Zero measures cost British Columbians?

A.13: The Business Council of British Columbia analyzed what the province’s “Clean BC Roadmap to 2030” policy would cost the B.C. economy.25 The Roadmap aims to reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2030.

Using the provincial government’s own figures, the Business Council found that each year up to 2030 the province’s GDP will decline; by 2030 the fall in GDP will be $28.1 billion lower that it would have been without the Clean BC policy (see Figure 6). This is about 10 per cent of B.C.’s estimated GDP of $289 billion in that year.26 Net Zero represents a major hit to British Columbians’ standard of living.

Figure 6: B.C.’s own numbers show that the province’s “CleanBC” policy will reduce B.C.’s GDP in 2030 by $28.1 billion compared to a non-CleanBC policy. Circled numbers indicate GDP without CleanBC (left), numbers with CleanBC (middle), and the difference (loss of GDP) on the right.
Q.14: How much will our Net Zero measures reduce the rise in temperature?

A.14: People with common sense only spend huge sums of money if they are sure of getting a worthwhile return. Logically, then, all Canadians should be asking how much our $60 billion a year ($1.5 trillion by 2050) will reduce the global temperature? And similarly, how much will global spending of $9.8 trillion a year reduce “global warming” by 2050?

We don’t have facts from the future, but political scientist Bjorn Lomborg (the “skeptical environmentalist”) has estimated, using the IPCC’s own computer models, that if all nations fully met their 2015 Paris Climate Agreement obligations, the temperature rise averted by 2100 would be a mere 0.04° Celsius.((Bjorn Lomborg, “Section 7.3: Costs and benefits: Paris agreement.” In “Welfare in the 21st century.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 156, July 2020, 119981. Available at  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157.)) A more optimistic estimate by three prominent physicists predicts that strong global Net Zero action could reduce warming by 0.07°C by 2050.27 A temperature change of 0.07°C is too small to be perceived by the human body,((Battistel, Laura, et al., “An investigation on humans’ sensitivity to environmental temperature.” Nature: Scientific Reports, 13, Dec. 21, 2023. This article suggests the human body’s Just Noticeable Difference is between 0.38°C and 0.95°C, depending on conditions. Available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47880-5.)) so this seems like a very low climate bang for our billions of bucks. 

Given that Canada’s carbon emissions are about 1.5 per cent of global emissions (see Figure 7), how much will Canada’s contribution promote “global cooling”? Using the generous 0.07°C estimate, by 2050 Canada’s $1.5 trillion will have reduced the temperature by 0.00105°C. In what universe is a temperature fall of 0.00105°C a “common-sense” investment of $1.5 trillion over the next 25 years? This is virtue-signalling, with no practical purpose.

Figure 7: Canada produces only 1.5% of global GHG emissions. Source: Ron Davison, Friends of Science, based on figures from Our World in Data
Q.15: But Canadians consider themselves good global citizens. If we don’t do our part, why should the other nations?

A.15: Most developing nations are not included in the Paris Agreement and will continue to use fossil fuels until their people are lifted out of poverty, with China and India being the largest carbon emitters (China is reportedly building two new coal-fired power plants a week28). On a global scale, Canada’s emissions “savings” will be wiped out by the increased emissions of the still-developing nations in a week or two. We will have spent $1.5 trillion to accomplish … nothing in terms of fighting “global warming.” Again, this is just very expensive virtue-signalling with no practical purpose.

Q.16: But won’t we be out of step with other nations if we don’t have a carbon tax? 

A.16: Most other nations have no carbon tax or a tax much lower than Canada’s, which means Canada’s competitive position with our chief trading partners continues to fall. The United States doesn’t have a national carbon tax; Mexico’s tax is US$3.50 a tonne. Canada’s carbon tax is currently $80 CDN a tonne, rising $15 a year to $170 a tonne by 2030 and undoubtedly higher after that. This tax imbalance is harming Canadian exports and is one reason why Canada’s economy is currently in free-fall.29 Removing the carbon tax and other Net Zero fetters on fossil fuels will help return Canada’s and B.C.’s economies to health.

Net Zero’s ‘anti-human’ agenda

John Rustad has said that climate change policies are motivated by an “anti-human” agenda that would create food scarcities leading to the deaths of hundreds of millions, even billions, of people, and that reducing “overpopulation” in this way is one of the environmentalist goals.30

Q.17: Isn’t this a rather extreme statement, smacking of conspiracy theories? Surely the aim of environmentalists isn’t to starve millions of people!

A.17: In 2021, a “green” government policy aimed to make Sri Lankan agriculture “100 per cent organic” by eliminating artificial fertilizers. The result? Rice production fell by 20 per cent, food prices rose 80 per cent, and a farmers’ revolt eventually forced Sri Lanka’s president into exile.31

Fossil fuels are an essential ingredient in the creation of artificial fertilizers and in the mechanized farming that are currently helping to feed eight billion people. Without artificial fertilizers, farmers could only support half of the world’s current population of eight billion (see Figure 8). The Net Zero policy threatens hunger and perhaps starvation for up to four billion people!

Figure 8: The world’s population would be half its current level without the use of synthetic fertilizers, which would be banned under Net Zero policies. Data comes from 2015 population figures. Source: Our World in Data, “How Many People Does Synthetic Fertilizer Feed?”

“Green” governments in other countries, including Canada, have also tried to ban artificial fertilizers and even force farmers to severely cull their cattle herds, harming food production and reducing farmers’ incomes, while making citizens poorer due to higher food costs.

The “green” attack on artificial fertilizers and industrial farming, based in fears of CO2-created “climate change,” can only mean greatly reduced food production and, in the less-developed countries, hunger and in even mass starvation. This Net Zero policy deserves the name “anti-human”: to call it that is not a “conspiracy theory”—there really is a conspiracy. It’s not a “theory.”

Q.16: But if the climate is warming, what can we do? What is a common-sense policy?

A.16: The worst way to tackle “global warming” is to destroy our Canadian and B.C. economies by trying to rapidly eliminate the use of fossil fuels. A strong economy has the resources needed to tackle climate issues, such as forest fires, floods, droughts, extreme heat, and so on, and this is the pragmatic, adaptive approach we should be taking: deal with climate problems as they arise and also proactively (e.g., build dikes against flooding, but also keep them under repair), while continuing to grow our economies.32 To do this, we need to remove the carbon tax and other Net Zero curbs on fossil-fuel energy and transportation (e.g., pipelines) that can only shackle a strong economy.

Overall, we should be avoiding the utopian social-engineering approach favoured by Net Zero promoters like the United Nations and IPCC, particularly since, as we’ve seen, there is no reason to believe that carbon emissions are currently driving “global warming.” 

Q.17: What about nuclear power?

A.17: Nuclear power was banned in 2010 for B.C. by then Liberal government of Gordon Campbell as part of a “green” approach to reducing carbon emissions. For some reason, Campbell and his green advisors felt this transition to “green”sustainable” energy could happen without nuclear. In recent years, B.C. has often been a net importer of electricity.33 To meet B.C.’s electrical and energy needs of the future, even without Net Zero, nuclear power is the common-sense solution. 

Q.18: What is the best way to bring in “common-sense” climate policies for the province?

A.18: The Net Zero policy can only cause enormous, self-created, social and economic damage to Canadians and British Columbians, while achieving virtually nothing in terms of “stopping climate change.” The best way to derail the Net Zero policy in the immediate future is to elect governments that are committed to ending the carbon tax and removing the shackles on energy development.


Notes

  1. Andrew Weichel, “MLA John Rustad ousted from BC Liberals after climate change spat.” CTV News, Aug. 18, 2022.  []
  2. John Rustad, “Conservative Party of B.C.’s Climate Policy.” Nov. 22, 2023. Available at https://www.conservativebc.ca/conservative_party_of_bc_s_climate_policy. []
  3. Net Zero by 2050 aims to balance the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere by 2050. That is, any emissions produced would be offset by an equivalent amount of emissions removed, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment, even though fossil fuels would still continue to be used to some extent. []
  4. Edward Aguado & James E. Burt, Understanding Weather & Climate. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2004, p. 479. This textbook is used in university geography courses; its views are scientific mainstream, not controversial or skeptical. The authors write: “Looking at the broad span of Earth’s history, we would have to describe the present climate as highly unusual, because most of the time our planet has been considerably warmer than it is today.” P. 477. []
  5. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “What’s the coldest the Earth’s ever been?” Climate.gov, Feb. 18, 2021. NOAA writes: “Although it has some competition from cold conditions occurring between 300 and 250 million years ago, the most significant ice age in the last half a billion years may be the most recent.” []
  6. “Climate Change: Global Temperature,” Climate.gov, Jan. 18, 2024. []
  7. Irish Climate Science Forum, “Irish Climate Science pleads for Political Pragmatism in Climate-Related Agricultural, Energy and Economic Policies.” Aug. 11, 2024. Available at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/579892791b631b681e076a21/t/66d5e542fe219b1da8095f43/1725293891050/ICSF+-+Political+Pragmatism+on+Climate+Policy.pdf []
  8. R. Lindzen, W. Happer & W.A. van Wijngaarden, “Net Zero averted temperature increase.” Arxiv, June 12, 2024, p. 4. Available at https://arxiv.org/html/2406.07392v1. The authors write: “Each increment of CO2 concentration causes less warming than the previous equal increment. Greenhouse warming from CO2 is subject to the law of diminishing returns.” []
  9. Source: Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers: “Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System.” Available at www.GeoCraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html. []
  10. Joel Achenbach, “Volcano eruption blew millions of tons of water into space.” National Post, Dec. 13, 2022. See also Phys.Org, “Models show Tonga eruption increases chances of global temperature rising temporarily above 1.5°C.” Jan. 25, 2023. There are many other articles online reporting this huge eruption and its effect on warming in 2023. []
  11. IPCC “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”, Chapter 3, Section 3.1 Introduction, p. 250. Available online. Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2020/02/ar4-wg1-sum_vol_en.pdf. []
  12. El Niños have been occurring for thousands of years, so human carbon emissions can’t be the primary cause. El Niños are created when the trade winds in the Pacific Ocean blow more strongly than normal from east to west; this push builds up a reservoir of very warm water in the western Pacific (where the water is warm to begin with, again quite naturally). When the trade winds ease, this reservoir of super-warmed water surges back toward North and South America, bringing warm and sometimes very warm temperatures. It’s the strength of the trade winds, leading to greater or lesser concentrations of warm water in the western Pacific, not CO2 (anthropogenic or otherwise), that determines the strength, and therefore the amount of warmth, of an El Niño. []
  13. Craig Idso, “Increased Plant Productivity: The First Key Benefit of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment.” Master Resource: A Free-Market Energy Blog, April 21, 2022. Available online. Available at https://www.masterresource.org/carbon-dioxide/increased-plant-productivity-the-first-key-benefit-of-atmospheric-co2-enrichment []
  14. “Supplemental carbon dioxide in greenhouses.” Ontario Government. Dec., 2002.The website notes: “CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigor. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient.” Available at https://www.ontario.ca/page/supplemental-carbon-dioxide-greenhouses. []
  15. NASA, “Carbon dioxide fertilization greening Earth, study finds.” April 26, 2016. The article notes: “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Available at https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds. []
  16. Plants need carbon dioxide molecules for their growth. Plants have small openings called stomata on the undersides of their leaves that open to trap carbon dioxide. At the same time, the open stomata release precious water vapor that the plants also need. With more CO2 atoms in the air, plants don’t need to leave as many stomata open per leaf surface area, preserving water while getting the CO2 molecules they need. []
  17. Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Manitoba, “Greenhouse CO2 supplement.” Available at https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/crop-management/co2-supplement.html. The site offers advice to greenhouse gardeners and notes: “At 100 ppm of CO2 the rate of photosynthesis would be stopped completely. At 150 ppm the plants begin to respire, and photosynthesis is stopped. At this low level the plant will no longer be able to obtain CO2 from the atmosphere and photosynthesis is restricted. The plant will eventually use all of the CO2present, photosynthesis will stop and the plant will die.” []
  18. Wikipedia, “Post-normal science. []
  19. IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Model Evaluation, “What is Meant by Evaluation?”, Section 8.2.2. Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-08.pdf []
  20. IPCC, “16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention,” December, 2004, p. ii.  Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/03/16th-anniversary-brochure.pdf. []
  21. G. Cornelius van Kooten, “Failure to Charge: A Critical Look at Canada’s EV Policy.” Fraser Institute, March 14, 2024. Available at https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/electric-vehicles-and-the-demand-for-electricity.pdf. []
  22. McKinsey Global Institute, The Net Zero Transition: What it could cost—what it could bring. McKinsey & Company, January 2022, “In brief,” p. viii. Available at https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/the-net-zero-transition-what-it-would-cost-what-it-could-bring. []
  23. Royal Bank Special Reports, “The Net Zero opportunity.” The $2-trillion transition: Canada’s road to Net Zero. October 20, 2021. The RBC notes that Ottawa and the provinces are already spending $15 billion a year on climate measures, so we’ll only need an extra $45 billion a year. The report is available at https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/the-2-trillion-transition. []
  24. Central Mortgage and Housing (CMHC), “Canada—Household Income: Average and Median.” Based on Statistics Canada data. []
  25. Ken Peacock & Denise Mullen, “Government’s own modelling shows its CleanBC plan will dampen economic growth and set B.C.’s prosperity back more than a decade.” Business Council of B.C., Aug. 9, 2023. Available online. https://www.bcbc.com/insight/governments-own-modelling-shows-its-cleanbc-plan-will-dampen-economic-growth-and-set-b-c-s-prosperity-back-more-than-a-decade?rq=cleanbc. []
  26. For more details, see Peacock & Mullen, “NDP’s own models show CleanBC policy will damage economic growth—a lot.” Available at https://climaterealists.ca/ndps-own-models-show-cleanbc-policy-will-damage-economic-growth-a-lot/. []
  27. R. Lindzen, W. Happer, W. A. van Wijngaarden, “Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase.” arXiv, June 2024. Available at https://arxiv.org/html/2406.07392v1. []
  28. Helen Davidson, “China continues coal spree despite climate goals.” The Guardian, Aug. 29, 2023. []
  29. James Thorne, “Why Canada’s economy is on the ropes.” Globe and Mail, Sept. 17, 2024. []
  30. Andrew Weichel, “Anti-human agenda’: B.C. Conservative leader suggests climate action motivated by overpopulation concerns.” CTV News, Oct. 1, 2924. []
  31. Tunku Varadara­jan, “Sri Lanka’s Green New Deal Was a Human Disaster.” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2022. []
  32. When Justin Trudeau says his government is trying to “grow the economy,” he means a “green” economy, which is actually part of the “de-growth” movement and not what common-sense people call “growth”. []
  33. “Backgrounder: B.C.’s Energy System.” Government of B.C., June 2024, p. 13. “With severe drought conditions, BC imported approximately 11,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) or 39.6 petajoules (PJ) of electricity in 2023. However, over the last 15 years, BC Hydro was a net importer in seven years and a net exporter in eight.” Available at https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/electricity-alternative-energy/community-energy-solutions/backgrounder_-_bcs_energy_system.pdf. []

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