Erin O’Toole on Climate Change – The Speech He Should Have Given

An op-ed by Michelle Stirling © 2021

In this op-ed, I re-imagine the speech of Erin O’Toole of the Conservative Party of Canada on ‘climate change is real’.   Since the media have not bothered to report on any other of the 257 words in the A-2340 policy submission, I have pointed out some problematic clauses herein, and the reasons why they might lead to voting down this policy submission. Friends of Science Society is apolitical and offers insights on climate science and energy policies to the general public and policymakers.

My friends, climate change is real.  But delegates have voted down Policy Submission A-2340 which contained those four little words.  We can expect to be mocked and shredded in the press and by the Liberal party.  But remember that our overriding theme of this conference and the Conservative Party is “Secure the Future”.  The Liberal funded climate change reporters will not report the detail of that submission, so let me give you, the delegates, and the greater public, some details to make it clear that there were good reasons for this submission to be voted down.

Part of Submission A-2340 read:

If you recall, the Paris Agreement is a VOLUNTARY agreement.  By agreeing to making an international emissions reduction regime into one that is truly global with binding targets takes us right back to the Kyoto Accord, adopted in 1997.  If you recall, under Prime Minister Harper, Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Accord in 2011, because we would have had to pay $14 billion dollars in penalties for not meeting targets, while beneficiary countries like Russia, would not have to pay or do anything.  They would have had NO obligation to address climate change and NO obligation to address environmental issues like pollution.

Now Russia is one of our major oil/gas competitors in the world.  Russia supplies virtually all of Europe with natural gas and oil.  They have pipelines crisscrossing borders of countries and you never see a protestor there.  The Russians were very clear about Kyoto – to them it was a means to economically destroy energy producing nations.  Here is a report by Mr. A. Illarionov
Adviser to the President of Russia, presented to the Washington Press Club in 2004.    

Likewise, Russian scientists strongly disagree with the view of many Western scientists and organizations.  Here is a presentation by Russian astrophysicist Habibulov Abdussamatov explaining how solar cycles drive climate change.  More importantly in this presentation, he shows that the world is moving into a long-term cooling period – another Little Ice Age – which we are not prepared for because we are busy fighting about global warming.

Many people do not follow the details of climate change negotiations.  They don’t realize that since the 1992 Rio Conference, every “Conference of the Parties” or “COP”s, as they are called, has resulted in agreements for ever more stringent targets, but in reality, the world increased its use of oil, natural gas and coal dramatically.  Why?  Because these are the energy forms that provide us with modern medicine, industrial societies, the freedom of flight and aviation, and all the good things of life.

As you can see by this graph, these are the effects of climate agreements on emissions reduction. Note that not all of the rise in carbon dioxide shown in the graph is due to human industry – much of it is due to nature.  Presently, the Liberals are pushing Bill C-12, which would make Canadian climate targets into a climate accountability LAW, presumably to set some kind of example for the upcoming COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, to perhaps make us appear as a climate leader in the eyes of the world.

Well, a leader is not a leader if there are no followers.

An analysis of the upcoming COP26 conference, by long-time public servant and diplomat, Robert Lyman, shows that there is no one in the climate change parade that Canada hopes to lead.

Storm Signals for COP 26 in Glasgow
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2021/03/19/storm-signals-for-cop-26-in-glasgow/

Robert Lyman notes that although all COP signatory countries were supposed to submit updated plans to reduce emissions, only a handful did.  He writes:

“…the updated plans included only two of the 20 largest emitters, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Notably missing are plans from China, India, the United States, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, members of a group that constitutes 70% of global emissions. It remains to be seen how much these countries will commit to reduce emissions. To date, China and India, the two fastest growing sources of emissions, have committed only to reduce their emissions intensity (i.e. emissions per unit of GDP), not their actual emissions.”

Lyman closes the article by saying:

“Unless something completely unexpected and unprecedented happens, COP26 will have to face the reality that the world’s countries are not prepared to endure the economic harm that would be involved in transitioning their energy systems to more costly and unreliable sources. A storm is brewing in Glasgow.

But… no storm in Canada.  The Liberals are completely committed to imposing policies that will cause you to endure MORE economic harm.

So, you might say, well, so what?  Surely Canada must be noble and ‘do its part’ and be a moral example for other countries like China.

Consider this one fact about the Futile Folly of such a policy.

“China emits in one month (819 Mt/month) about what Canada emits in one and a half years”

https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Futile-Folly-aug-2020-Reissued-FINAL.pdf

Yes.  Nothing we do will affect global emissions or climate change in the least.  And furthermore, the developing nations of China and India and many other smaller south Asian countries are giants that are about to arise.  They want the same benefits of modern society that people in the west have come to enjoy, and it is very unlikely that climate change demands of western nations will change their mind.  And why?  The west, where climate policy is central to virtually all conversations and policies, makes up only 15% of the world’s population.  The Asia-Pacific regions’ population is 4 times that – and let us not forget African nations are also on the cusp of a boom in industrial development and population.

Why would any of these countries listen to well-fed Westerners who want people to have less under climate change policies?

Now, you might say, well virtually every country in the world signed on to the VOLUNTARY Paris Agreement. Look at “Just the Facts” on the COP21 Paris Agreement.

I submit to you that dozens of countries signed on because the agreement was voluntary and not binding, and also because they were bribed with the offer of access to a $100 billion a YEAR Green Climate Fund.  $100 billion a year!  Where was that money to come from?  It was to come from western OECD nations like ours!  As of 2017, the nations that agreed to fund this Green Climate Fund have barely ponied up $9 million, nowhere near the proposed $100 billion a YEAR from western nations.  Now with COVID breaking the economy of most countries, which Western nation will be able to pay anything?

As of 2017, contributions to the Green Climate Fund were:

The total grant-equivalent amount of the pledges as of August 18 was the equivalent of U.S. $9,678.3 million dollars. That is a long way from $100 billion per year.

The countries of Europe contributed $4,692.5 million, or 48.5%.

The countries of North America (the U.S., Canada and Mexico) contributed $3,185.1 million, or 32.9%. Canada’s actual contribution to date is U.S. $175.1 million (out of the $2.65 billion that Prime Minister Trudeau has committed in principle).

And let me explain a few anomalies of this Green Climate Fund.  It was to be $100 billion a YEAR from the west.  It would have been granted to non-OECD nations – which include wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait!  It would include developing nations like China – which now has the second largest economy in the world.  Yet, the Green Climate Fund demands payment from OECD countries, even bankrupt countries like Greece.  And for countries receiving the funds, there is to be no requirement for accountability at all.

We know what kind of problems we presently have with our own Liberal government on accountability.  Under Minister McKenna, millions of dollars of infrastructure money has been spent, but no one knows where.  Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Freeland has not issued a budget and can barely pronounce the numbers that make up the scope of Canada’s national debt at present.

While obviously the support to Canadians in the form of CERB or other sustaining programs during lockdowns were valuable and crucial to the survival of many people, the lack of public accounting within Canada is dangerously unprecedented – imagine Canada being bound to an international climate agreement with binding targets and billion-dollar penalties, and at the same time being forced to underwrite a Green Climate Fund where money vanishes into developing nations with no accountability.

For all these many reasons, Canada would have been put at great risk by adopting the Policy Submission A-2340, particularly as we are a weak democracy, a vast nation of great natural riches and small population, operating in the context of the United Nations where most of the countries in the world are not democracies, many are competitor nations to our natural resource industries, and some would like to be vultures, picking at our carcass.  These global climate policies have the power to decimate Canada because we, as a nation, are in the minority, and even our former colonial rulers like France and Britain, along with other European nations have vested interests in creating climate carbon trading policies because they have no oil, they have ideas.  In other words, binding climate targets will create a kind of global equalization payment plan that will punish countries like ours that are rich in resources.  I hope this clarifies at least one aspect of why delegates may have voted down A-2340.

Still, we will be mocked in the press by those four little words ‘climate change is real’.

Well, look around you.  Where we stand today used to be under 2,100 meters of glacial ice.  It all melted.

Our delegates from Alberta, often mocked as so-called ‘climate deniers’ for their questioning of climate dogma can tell you they have seen, with their own eyes, the wonders of the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller.  There you can find dozens of dinosaur skeletons and trace the history of Alberta when it was once a lush, tropical paradise.  Yes, climate change is real.

Many of our Alberta delegates have seen, with their own eyes, the Big Rock, the sacred Okotoks of the Blackfoot people in southern Alberta.  A 16,500 tonne (or 18,200 ton) glacial erratic, the largest known of its kind in the world, that sits like a beacon on the prairies.  This massive rock was pushed 400 kilometers south from where the beautiful resort town of Jasper is today. Climate change is real.

Many climbers and hikers in this country will have topped Yoho National Park, in British Columbia, finding all kinds of fossils of ocean creatures in the Burgess Shale, thousands of feet above sea level.  Climate change is real.

Most Albertans are aware that since the 1899 Treaty Diary of Charles Mair on his travels through the Mackenzie Basin, the west has known of the existence of the Alberta oil sands – then described by Mair this way:

We were now traversing perhaps the most interesting region in all the North. In the neighbourhood of McMurray there are several tar-wells, so called, and there, if a hole is scraped in the bank, it slowly fills in with tar mingled with sand. This is separated by boiling, and is used, in its native state, for gumming canoes and boats. Farther up are immense towering banks, the tar oozing at every pore, and underlaid by great overlapping dykes of disintegrated limestone, alternating with lofty clay exposures, crowned with poplar, spruce and pine. On the 15th we were still following the right bank, and, anon, past giant clay escarpments along it, everywhere streaked with oozing tar, and smelling like an old ship.

These tar cliffs are here hundreds of feet high, of a bold and impressive grandeur, and crowned with firs which seem dwarfed to the passer-by. The impregnated clay appears to be constantly falling off the almost sheer face of the slate-brown cliffs, in great sheets, which plunge into the river’s edge in broken masses. The opposite river bank is much more depressed, and is clothed with dense forest.

The tar, whatever it may be otherwise, is a fuel, and burned in our camp-fires like coal. That this region is stored with a substance of great economic value is beyond all doubt, and, when the hour of development comes, it will, I believe, prove to be one of the wonders of Northern Canada. We were all deeply impressed by this scene of Nature’s chemistry, and realized what a vast storehouse of not only hidden but exposed resources we possess in this enormous country. What is unseen can only be conjectured; but what is seen would make any region famous.

Nature’s chemistry. Yes. Climate change is real.

Our Alberta delegates are undoubtedly aware that Alberta’s cadre of some 70,000 Professional Geoscientists and Professional Engineers, along with the army of skilled tradespeople and supporting labour who made the Alberta oil sands into a world-class technological achievement – one that has been hammered by jealous competitors worldwide, using the Tar Sands Campaign network of climate activists, paid and strategized by foreign and domestic funders – smearing Albertans as climate change deniers, when Albertans are the people who actually know the science and who have developed superior environmental standards and technologies in resource development.

Yes. Climate change is real.

And what of human influence upon climate?  Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish environmentalist.  You may have heard of him.  The title of his recent book “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” is an apt description of where we are now in Canada on climate policy, pursing this futile folly with a passion and spending billions of your tax dollars for no beneficial result.  Within that book, Lomborg reports on his peer-reviewed study wherein he examined what if all countries met their Paris targets – what would the resulting cooling effect on the climate be?

In doing this exercise, by the way, he used the “MAGICC” computer model that IPCC contributors use.  He found that if all countries met their targets by 2030, the resulting reduction in warming by 2100 would be 0.05°Celsius…and if they continued to meet targets, by 2100 there would be a grand 0.17°C – or a reduction of SEVENTEEN ONE HUNDREDTHS of a degree Celsius in warming by 2100. This is immeasurable, and certainly not the meeting of the 2 degree C or 1.5 degree C  target promised us by politicians and bankers like Mark Carney and activists like Naomi Klein or Bill McKibben.  So, they are lying to us.  Furthermore – the cost of trying to meet these targets, according to Lomborg, would be $1-2 TRILLION per year.

No country had that kind of money before the COVID crisis – we certainly do not have it now.  And no politician should ever consent to participating in such a wasteful, economically destructive plan, which is obviously intended to simply fill the pockets of green crony capitalists while making the middle class and the poor even poorer.

But wait – you say – climate change is real.  What can we do about it?

Climate change is real.  But the ‘settled’ science is in error.  Just as for decades governments around the world adopted principles of eugenics, often incorporating these discriminatory, deadly policies into law – resulting in vulnerable persons being incarcerated, sterilized, or subjected to medical experiments – only to ultimately find out that the so-called ‘settled science’ behind eugenics was horribly wrong; so today we find that climate science claims of a catastrophe are based on outdated, skewed science.

While in 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had reported that there had been no statistically significant rise in global warming since before the Kyoto Accord, despite a huge increase in carbon dioxide from human industry, this information was buried in the press.

In 2014, the climate catastrophe scenario took off as wealthy green billionaires and environmentalists with vested interests in the climate catastrophe narrative, banded together to publish and proliferate “Risky Business” – a report that focussed on the least likely scenario of global warming – one that required we burn several times more coal than exists on earth.

What? You say?

These scenarios are simply meant for scientists to evaluate what factor is the driver of climate change.  They are NOT predictive, and the authors of the RCP studies explicitly say they should NOT be used for policymaking. This exaggerated “RCP 8.5” scenario does show that carbon dioxide is a driver; it is a completely unrealistic scenario that does not represent ‘business-as-usual’ at all.  But that is how it is presented to policymakers, banks, investors and all the powers that shape our world.

US climate policy analyst Roger Pielke, Jr. and Canada’s Justin Ritchie did an analysis of scholarly papers and found that this skewed and outdated science has been recited and repeated in over 17,000 academic papers, referring to this “RCP 8.5” climate catastrophe scenario.

But the reality is that due to climate policies, more efficient use of energy and the proliferation of natural gas, emissions have dropped dramatically in the west and Pielke, Jr. and Ritchie say that ‘peak carbon was likely reached in 2019’.  That does not mean there won’t be more emissions overall – as Robert Lyman reports in “The Stranded Assets Myth” – the Asian Pacific region is expected to continue to boom, and that is where most hydrocarbon consumption will occur going forward – but it does mean that there is no climate crisis.  It was just that scientists relied on previous work that used the RCP 8.5 scenario and the advocacy of wealthy green billionaires and their funded environmental activist groups.  Most likely the reason this issue was not discovered earlier is due to the fact that politicians and the media have simply called people ‘climate deniers’ when they asked questions.

This is a heinous term that should never be used again.  It should be relegated to history like the many other offensive terms have been.

Climate change is real.  So are scientific errors.

We have wasted billions of dollars of taxpayer funds chasing climate leadership roles that are meaningless in the context of global emissions and geopolitical activity.

But what of the environment – don’t you Conservatives care, you ask?  And that too is part of policy submission A-2340.

We do care. If you look at the record, Canadians have been paying for pollution since the 1970’s – FIFTY years.  Now, unlike Mr. Trudeau, Mrs. McKenna, and Mr. Wilkinson, I am old enough to remember when urban pollution was frequently a thick smog.  But early Liberal governments (to give them credit where due) and subsequent Conservative policies have resulted in huge reductions in pollution in Canada.  The late Jim Prentice brought in legislation to improve fuel standards and greatly reduce ground level pollution from vehicles.  In these policies, we worked WITH industry to arrange a reasonable time frame and targets for implementation.  We did not try to hijack the proceedings and impose onerous, impossible targets like the present government is doing with Bill C-12 and the Clean Fuel Standard – which is just pancaking impossible policies on top of the already effective ones that we established in the past.

Canada consistently ranks as having some of the cleanest air in the world and some of the highest environmental standards – no matter what the foreign-funded Tar Sands Campaign climate activists tell you.   And that is also why many of our delegates objected to A-2340 as it called for “highly polluting industries to reduce their emissions and be accountable” … as noted, these industries have been doing so for fifty years.

In general, we have observed compliance and innovation from Canadian industrial and agricultural leaders in regard to pollution control and reclamation – and why?  Because those captains of industry and agriculture are Canadians, too.  They live here – they are parents, they have families and they want Canada to remain a beautiful country with clean air, resilient soil, and fresh water.  Particularly in our agricultural sector, many farm families are proud of the long heritage of their family farms and they intend to keep their land rich, resilient, and productive for generations.

Policy submission A-2340 also demanded that Canada become a world class leader in ‘green’ technologies (see below).  And I guess that depends on what you mean by “green”.  We have seen the images of solar panels dumped in Africa, where they will not be recycled.  We have seen the images of wind turbine blades being buried in a landfill in the US because they cannot be recycled.  How is that ‘green technology’?  Though we support the development of wind and solar and geothermal as such complementary energy systems, we recognize that, at this point, they do not provide replacement for grid scale power generation.  Does this make us climate deniers?  Not a bit.  If the media pundits care to actually read the full policy document, you will find Policy Submission B-1586, the development of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.  We have brilliant minds working on these technologies today with near market potential.

But as I noted earlier, the proclaimed climate emergency is a fiction that has proliferated from the use of outdated science, and the influence of green billionaires and their funded circles of climate activists.  So, while we welcome innovative technologies like Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, and we remember that they will be produced with the energy and by products of oil, natural gas, and coal – the drivers of our modern society.  Renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels by 2050.  To continue to promote NetZero 2050 is simply greenwashing the public.

And finally, many people think the greatest challenge for us is climate change – I have shown that is not true.  The greatest challenge for democracy in Canada is the proliferation of large foreign-and-domestic funded environmental groups, most of them are tax-subsidized charities, most get millions of dollars in additional grants from governments every year, and many of them are associated with the Tar Sands Campaign – hellbent on destroying our resource and energy sectors and blocking access to world markets.  Much of their rhetoric centres on climate change; thanks to Bill Morneau and the Liberals, these groups are now free to use 100% of their funds on ‘non-partisan’ political activity.  This “Green Titanic” of influence may drown us all. Personally, I have yet to see a single non-partisan commentary on climate change or ‘green’ tech from any of these groups.

https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Money-Matters-report-format-FINAL.pdf

Read all these reports on ENGO funding. https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2019/05/07/environmental-charities-a-compilation-of-reports-on-their-finances-power-and-implications-for-canada/

What this means is that the voice you voters are supposed to have in parliament, is eclipsed by these special interest, tax-subsidized groups, often foreign funded, and working against the interests of the working and middle class. That is why we could not vote for the emphasis on a ‘green’ Canada in the proposal because it would mean that we agree with this Third-Party system that is manipulating Canadian government policies in an undemocratic, unelected, and unaccountable way. 

I hope I have helped you understand Canada’s place in the context of global climate change.

As conservatives – small or large ‘c’ – we reject the imposition of the federal government’s climate plan which would result in CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT for Canadians – something that is a breach of your charter rights.

And in closing may I say, again, climate change is real.  But that is not the issue.  The issue is to what extent does human influence affect climate and can humans stop climate change?

Let me tell you the truth.  Politicians can’t stop climate change. Les politiciens ne peuvent pas arreter le changement Climatique.

But we can stop lying about it. And we’d better stop intimidating and delegitimizing those Canadians who hold rational, dissenting views on climate.  Because the lack of open, civil debate on this matter is what has led us to the disastrous policies that the federal Liberal government is trying to impose on you today.

Conservatives will not subject Canadians to such cruel and unusual punishment like that of the Liberals who are simply using policy for preening their ‘climate leader’ with empty platitudes, the unaccountable person we will replace in the next election.  Thank you.

And in closing, did I mention?

Climate change is real.

Reference – the full A-2340 submission. The underlining existed in the original document.

3 Comments

  1. Cosmos

    Thanks Michelle for this “masterpiece”. Last Sunday I sent an email to Mr Otoole urging him to organize a televised public debate among professionals (Red team vs Green team), before developing any policies. We must empower this silent majority.

  2. bob graham

    I hope this has been sent to the PC’s while they address their “climate change” agenda!

  3. Patrick Hunt

    Michelle, that is the speech I am going to repeat to my circle of friends. Mr. O’Toole would be well served to do likewise. Brilliantly written. I have not met a single person who believes the climate has never changed, but I have met a lot of supposedly smart people who think humans should stop climate change in the future. How arrogant – and misinformed – is that?

    I would also like to see the government tell me why they think Canada would be worse off if the temperature increased by 2°C, and CO2 double to 800 ppm.

    Shouldn’t the government do a cost benefit analysis before committing billions and billions of dollars to reduce anthropogenic CO2 when we know that in the short 40 years that satellites have been measuring biomass, it has increased 20% thus producing more food and healthier trees. What’s wrong with that?

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