Climate Change Your Mind: Rebutting the Canadian Government’s Climate Report

The Canadian government’s report – “Canada’s Changing Climate Report (CCCR2019)” – released a day after the national carbon tax was introduced, is filled with fearmongering and highly speculative projections says Friends of Science.  “Climate Change Your Mind” is Friends of Science evidence-based rebuttal; they are calling for the government to retract CCCR2019. 

LINK to Full Report;  Climate Change Your Mind FINAL

Executive Summary

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a report entitled “Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2019” (CCCR2019) on April 2, 2019 which sparked headlines world-wide claiming that Canada was warming ‘twice as fast as the global average temperature.’[1]  The report made predictions of increased weather extremes such as flooding, wildfires and heatwaves, unless drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and the use of fossil fuels were implemented.

The report was issued a day after the very unpopular federal carbon tax policy was implemented and as a constitutional court case began over the validity of a federally imposed carbon tax on the provinces.

Friends of Science Society disputes the claims of the CCCR2019 as summarized here:

1.       NASA GISS Dec. 2018 temperature dataset shows that global temperatures have dropped by 0.5°Celsius in the past three years.  The sun is presently entering a solar minimum, exhibiting very few sunspots. Historically, observations correlate this low solar activity to a time of cooling, such as that of the Little Ice Age (1250-1860AD).

2.       The risk of cooling to Canadians and to Canadian agriculture presents a far more serious challenge than the risk of warming.

3.       Despite a significant rise in carbon dioxide concentration, temperatures have flatlined for the past 20 years. The growing scientific consensus is that carbon dioxide is not the ‘knob’ that can fine tun climate, meaning carbon taxes and reduction measures will not fight climate change. Natural climate factors appear to be more influential.

4.      CCR2019 used a reference frame that began in a cooler solar minimum and ended in a higher temperature El Nino period – this would give a distorted appearance of much higher warming. Page 6 of the Executive Summary refers to “Changes are relative to the 1986–2005 period.”  

5.       Computer models (simulations) are useful for understanding how climate works, but inadequate for accurately predicting future climate.  There are too many variables and unknowns.  Physicist Freeman Dyson calls it ‘science fiction’ to use computer models for climate predictions.  Climate models do not reflect the observations of satellite and weather balloon data and did not project the near 20-year hiatus in warming, with no statistically significant warming since 1997.

6.       Canada is a vast country of many regional climatic conditions; predicting climate change patterns 80 years from now is an exercise in magical thinking. Climate change is measured in periods of 30, 50, 100 and millennial timescales. Climate and weather patterns are subject to changes in humidity, winds, precipitation, cloud cover, cosmic ray influx and more. Changing human influences like increased population density, land use (agriculture, paving/building up cities), large-scale water diversion (James Bay dam, Site C dam) and other emissions from daily human and industrial activity also affect regional climates. On a wider scale, there are natural factors like black carbon/ash/soot (which affect Arctic warming/albedo) and other aerosols from wildfires, ash, gases and aerosols from volcanic eruptions, decomposition of biomass, and atmospheric oscillations such as El Nino, La Nina, Pacific Decadal (PDO), geothermal activity (below sea level), and changes in ocean currents.  These can have amplifying or modifying effects on large regions of Canada.  Though some oscillations appear to have a regular cycle (PDO 60 years), others like El Nino, which can have global effects, are impossible to predict with any accuracy, nor can the length or scope of the impact be determined years in advance. A series of solar and cosmic cycles and planetary conjunctions also affect climate. How can carbon dioxide/greenhouse gas emissions be more influential than any one, or all of these?

7.       The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Extreme Weather in 2012stated that there is little evidence to support the claim that human influence on climate will lead to more extremes. It is curious that CCCR2019 comes to the opposite conclusion.

8.       Most expert scientists in the field of climate reject the use of the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) high end model assessment as being completely unrealistic in terms of energy use. However, RCP 8.5 it is used throughout the report, frequently with bright ‘red-hot’ visuals.

9.       Undue influence and content from contributors outside the field of physical sciences brings into question the quality of assessment.  Reliance on the IPCC AR5 report does not reflect the reality of Canada’s unique geological and climatic conditions. Further, the AR5 report noted a then 15-year hiatus in global warming, which today reaches nearly 20 years.  The AR5 report weakened the case for human causation of warming, as Dr. Judith Curry testified to the US Senate on Jan. 16, 2014, also stating that the rapid rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) while temperatures flatlined indicated that:

a)     Carbon dioxide is not a control knob that can fine tune climate

b)     Reducing carbon dioxide emissions to stop global warming may prove to be futile in the face of natural variability (solar and ocean cycles and other natural factors being more influential).

10.   Solar influence on Canada’s climate offers more robust evidence of the driver of climate change. Importantly, the CCCR2019 report failed to inform its Canadian readers that the IPCC climate models failed to correctly simulate the Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent for the past 50 to 100 years.

11.   Since 2005, green billionaires have been funding ENGOs worldwide for millions of dollars a year to push the ‘climate catastrophe,’ ‘climate crisis,’ for their own vested interests in renewables, global cap and trade and carbon pricing.  They have co-opted union pension funds and institutional investors to their ‘cause,’ thus skewing markets and policies.

12.   Can so many scientists and government agencies be wrong? Yes, history shows us that science, especially when politicized, can go wrong based on faulty premises that cannot be questioned. A crucial example is that of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union where faulty agricultural science became government policy. This diktat did not allow for scientific dissent on pain of excommunication, incarceration in a mental institute, or execution.[2]  Following on his theories, in Maoist China, those ‘deniers’ and ‘right-leaning conservatives’ who argued against the Great Leap Forward were ‘struggled’ into submission by their peers – lack of freedom of speech and scientific inquiry led to the deaths of ~36 million.

The Sun Also Warms- Dr. Willie Soon

4 Comments

  1. Andrew Roman

    You mentioned the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO, but what about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)?

    • fosadmin

      Also a factor. We show a small map of oscillation locations and provide a link. We did not want to get too detailed on one aspect of influences and El Nino/PDO are probably best known and most relevant to seasonal wildfire risk/weather conditions on the BC coast and northern Alberta, which we later address in the report.

  2. Ron Clutz

    Thanks for putting this report together. I did a synopsis at my blog with links.

    https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/05/09/climate-change-not-as-advertised/

  3. rogerthesurf

    I like what you are doing.

    In terms of science, I mean real science, not UN style of science, I direct you to a post on my blog – https://rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/ever-been-told-that-the-science-is-settled-with-global-warming-well-read-this-and-decide-for-yourself/ – which shows the real science simply, accurately and inescapably.

    Hope the logic there will be some help to you all

    On a slightly lighter note, I must say that I never understood how climate warming could possibly be a problem in Canada. One only has to look at the map to see the vast lands north of Edmonton. Imagine the blooming and booming of Northern Canada should even a 5C average warmth occur!

    I personally as a youth spent a number of wonderful years in Alberta which I still remember well with some nostalgia. I still have my skiing 35,000 vertical feet in one day pin from Mt Norquay in Banff.

    Cheers

    Roger

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