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OPINION By Michelle Stirling © 2017
Twitter has been ablaze ever since Her Excellency, the Right Honorable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, lit a match with her address to the 2017 Canadian Science Policy Conference with her eye-rolling remarks on climate change and faith on Nov. 1, 2017. That furor was followed on Nov. 3, 2107 by the Hon. Catherine McKenna asking a reporter at The Rebel Media to stop calling her #Climate Barbie.
Odd that she was not upset at the 22 Minutes skit “Sexy Climate Change”:
or “Catherine McKenna’s No Barbie Girl”:
produced by the State Broadcaster, CBC, both of which are far more outrageous than the silly moniker which has stuck to her. The non-stop cheer-leading #Climate selfies, inane comments and Halloween dress-up pix about “Climate Super Heroes” are embarrassing to most Canadians who are concerned about the on-going economic impacts of the Trudeau government’s climate policies. The Minister takes a light-weight approach to the economy – in Canadian reality people’s jobs, livelihoods and investments are at stake.
The real problem is that the Payette/McKenna public controversies create a diversion from the fact that Canada’s climate policy poses an existential threat to Canada. That’s what people should be talking about – especially now, during the Bonn COP-23 conference. There is a lack of a Canadian cost-benefit analysis in the climate plans, such as what any business would have to make. The US obviously did one and promptly abandoned Paris Agreement.
As reported by Lorrie Goldstein in the Toronto Sun Nov. 1, 2017, a new UN report says Canada will miss its GHG reduction targets by miles – and no wonder. The targets are unattainable. The suggestion that we should buy offsets to address this is laughable – as laughable as the same advice from the IPCC’s ‘moral’ philosopher, John Broome, who repeatedly tells people in his book “Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World,” that we can compensate for the greenhouse gases (GHGs) generated by travelling through simply buying offsets.
Ezra Levant called out this kind of nonsensical thinking some time ago, and you don’t need a Ph.D. to see how piled high and deep the rhetoric is on ‘saving the planet’ while jet setting.
The notion that buying offsets reduces pollution is ludicrous. Interpol has written up a “Guide to Carbon Trading Crime” [REPORT: guide-to-carbon-trading-crime ] wherein they report that emissions are often upped to make more money and that this invisible ‘currency’ of carbon has shape-shifting qualities of mythical proportions. (See: Conning the Climate)
For our part, both the scientific assumptions and the entire Paris Agreement are flawed.
Dr. John Christy’s testimony to the US Senate House Science Committee of March 29, 2017 should be one of the main topics addressed at COP-23, because he shows that a graph in the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change (IPCC) report illustrates that natural factors, not greenhouse gases, are the dominant driver of climate change. That means human activity is not causing global warming to any significant extent.
But – no – it’s ‘business as usual’ for the COP-23 crowd; perhaps we should say more unusual because we now have one commentator who is even calling for a ‘climate dictatorship.’ Certainly, the roots of this kind of group-think can be found in the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI), which has had institutional investors and corporate participants sign a pinky swear pledge to save the planet from warming by reducing GHG’s – or else. They’ve turned investors into activists and told them to massage the corporate sector into line. Once you sign on, if you fail to fall in, your access to financing and other benefits of the UNPRI network will be limited. You will be a heretic. That’s a problem when they control most of the world’s assets under management. (Annual Report of 2016 JUNE 2017 for blog) Canadians have seen Dutch bank ING, Desjardins and BNP Paribas back away from oil sands and pipeline financing. Is this CDP Worldwide report scaring UNPRI investors off? Why are these unaccountable, unelected groups able to sway public markets at all?
And why does the call for a ‘climate dictatorship’ sound so much like the days of witch-burning for the crime of ‘weather cooking’? Oh. Because this is the same kind of unscientific, dogmatic thinking – the kind of thinking Governor General Payette appeared to mock in her speech, while in fact supporting climate dogma; the kind of magical thinking the Hon. Catherin McKenna promotes with her ‘ambitious targets’ that bear no relation to scientific of economic reality, thus “Barbie-esque” in nature.
Here’s astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas discussing the historic attack on ‘witches for weather cooking’ during the cold, erratic weather period known as the Little Ice Age (~1250-1860 AD).
This was prior to her being harassed out of the sciences for supporting the view that the sun is the main driver of climate change. She had ‘different’ scientific findings. You’d think that the women-supporting, gender-concerned, ‘inclusive,’ diversity-focused, no finger-pointing COP-23 participants who claim their event is based on science would be outraged at this climate bullying and discrimination. But no. COP-23 is not about science or justice. It’s about Climatism – a set of deeply held Gaia-worshipping theological beliefs that have no relation to reality.
Robert Lyman, Ottawa energy policy consultant and former public servant of 27 years and diplomat for 10 years prior, lays bare the farce in “Just the Facts.”
In short, the Paris Agreement (see full document for sources):
1. Commits the parties to nothing but reporting. Persists in desiring that OECD countries establish a climate fund to help developing nations, but there will be no requirement for them to report on where the money went. Some wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia would be able to apply for aid under the terms.
2. Governments have been working on this since 1998, to no avail. Stephen Lewis hosted the first Canadian Climate Conference featuring James Hansen and then Senator Al Gore. None of their catastrophic predictions about climate change have come true and successive efforts at agreements limp along into the next conference.
3. Emissions, though stabilized in Western nations for the most part, continue to rise dramatically world-wide. In summary, in spite of governments’ repeated agreements to reduce emissions, from 1990 to 2014 global emissions grew by 62 %. “All climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100. In effect, these commitments will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.”
4. Though many reporters claim that China is a leader in renewables and aspirations for emissions reductions, “Even if these goals were attained, however, Chinese emissions by 2030 would be two to two and a half times as high as those of the next largest emitter, the United States.”
5. People believe ‘clean energy’ and ‘renewables’ are about to take over from conventional fuels, that’s not true, and impossible in the short-term. “…global consumption of energy by percentage and source… Roughly speaking, therefore, the percentage breakdown is liquids fuels 33% (gasoline/petrol, diesel); coal 28%, natural gas 23%; nuclear 5%, and renewables 12%. Wind and solar energy combined account for less than 2%.”
6. GHGs will grow: “…global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will grow from 32.3 gigatonnes in 2012 to 43.2 gigatonnes in 2040, a 34% increase. Ninety-one per cent of the emissions growth will take place outside the OECD, mostly in China, India and Southeast Asia.”
Also concerning is the fact that no one calls out the undue influence of organizations related to Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management/Generation Foundation on the country roadmaps for the Task Force on Climate Related Disclosures via the UNPRI’s fiduciary responsibility program. Gore’s Generation Investment Management group web-site claims that major ENGOs are their collaborators and will help clients achieve their objectives.
One of those collaborators, World Resources Institute (WRI) claims that it helped set 3/4 of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) for the Paris Agreement – those unattainable targets – the only alternative to meeting them? Buying offsets.
Feels like a set-up, somehow. Questionable conflict of interest?
Reminds us of a Lawrence Solomon article about Enron.
The upshot? The science is not settled. There is no consensus. There is undue influence by parties with vested interests. Buying offsets does nothing but make some people rich, while you become poor. Claims of inclusiveness and diversity stop short when it comes to scientists who show evidence that there is no catastrophe imminent and that climate change is mostly natural.
And regarding the leadership of Governor General Payette and the Hon. Catherine McKenna one can only say “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.” Sadly, that is the opposite of democracy, freedom of speech and scientific inquiry. Canadians’ best interests are not being served by senior officials participating in derogatory groupthink on climate change.
Our country’s future is at stake. Paying billions to buy offsets from polluting nations is a Ponzi scheme with no benefit to the environment and no reduction in human impact on climate. Canada is rich in resources and its open season on us – a tragic irony when we are one of the most responsible countries in the world when it comes to the environment.
Say NO to Climate CO2-Coercion.
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Letting India, Pakistan, China and any other third world nation can pollute as much as they want for free andCanada can also pollute all we want only we have to give large amounts of money to third world countries for tickets that will allow us to pollute. The kicker in this agreement is that the rich will get richer and collect millions while we the taxpayers will take it up the wazoo to help them do so. Why did our moron Prime Minister along with Climate Moron Barbie sign on to this scam he really can’t be that stupid or the advisors around him being that idiotic also or their all collecting into offshore accounts we aren’t privy to so Stupid us the taxpayer. Let’s just remember these scams come election time. Trudeau has told more lies and scams than Dolt McGoofy and that’s saying a lot. Don’t Forget come Election Please.