Urgent Call for Review of Climate Emergency Declaration Evidence and Conflicting Public Policies on GHG Reductions and Immigration

May 31, 2022

Open Letter to the Bank of Canada, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canadian Association of Journalists, News Media Canada, Canadian Federation of Taxpayers, Canadian Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

PDF here

To Whom it May Concern,

RE: Urgent Call for Review of Climate Emergency Declaration Evidence and Conflicting Public Policies on GHG Reductions and Immigration

In recent testimony on the declaration of the Emergencies Act during the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, it was revealed that the government relied on a CBC report¹ about potential foreign influence to enact the Emergencies Act.

This begs the question, what evidence was relied upon for the declaration of a Climate Emergency? How are Canadians supposed to stand for Members of Parliament claiming that changing climate targets constitute a ‘crime against humanity’² when such hyperbole diminishes the tragedy of such actual crimes such as those remembered by Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Holodomor, the Killing Fields, the Great Leap Forward famines and more. Indeed, it is more fitting to remind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as we did in this open letter, ³ that the UN Special Rapporteur deemed that biofuels are a crime against humanity; certainly, true as global famine looms.

The government of Canada is using the premise of a climate emergency to enact evermore restrictive energy policies at a time when the world is facing an energy crisis; millions of people face heat or eat poverty in Europe and as do millions of Canadians, despite our rich resources.

Canadian banks have taken up the theme of a climate emergency and Net Zero targets. If there is no climate emergency and if carbon dioxide is not the main driver of climate change, this would be a significant crisis of greenwashing and fraud to continue down such a policy path as we pointed out in our report “Climate Risk Reporting: An Exercise in Greenwashing”⁴. It should be noted that World
Economic Forum (WEF) and UNEP have claimed that during the COVID lockdowns, there was a reported drop in human industrial emissions of ~7.6% and thus, additional lockdowns, including ‘climate lockdowns’ over the next decade have been proposed.^{5 6 7 8}

The fact is the drop in emissions during COVID lockdowns is not enough to significantly affect the increase of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. One must compare the change of emissions to the annual change of CO₂ concentrations, not to the cumulative CO₂. This graph from Dr. Roy Spencer’s article shows that the annual random fluctuations of the change of CO₂ concentrations are far larger than the expected change due to lockdown reduction changes of emissions. This graph from Our World in Data shows 36.7 GtCO2 in 2019 and 34.81 GtCO2 in 2020⁹ which is a reduction of 5.1%. The reduction of 1.89 GTCO2 is equivalent to 0.24 ppm CO₂. About ~50% stays in the atmosphere, which is 0.12 ppm CO₂. The expected reduction in the annual CO₂ increase in the atmosphere is only 0.12 ppm due to the COVID lockdown in 2020. But the annual fluctuation is 0.5 to 1.0 ppm. Therefore, the CO₂ change in the atmosphere due to the COVID lockdown is far smaller than the random fluctuations. Furthermore, carbon dioxide has never been empirically shown to be the main driver of climate change. There has been no global change in extreme weather events, including floods, droughts, storms, or hurricanes.

Lockdowns may have been a prudent first step in public policy in the short-term when facing a novel virus, but to ascribe value to them in terms of emissions reductions is incorrect as shown above. They did not save the people or the planet. There were catastrophic impacts on our youth, health, economy, and excess mortality unrelated to COVID itself.¹⁰

The ’climate emergency’ theme appears to originate with the unelected, unaccountable Club of Rome, whose ‘plan’ to stop the alleged climate crisis is to throw taxpayers’ money at building more wind and solar. These industries are dying due to skyrocketing materials and energy prices¹¹; not to mention, wind and solar cannot replace conventional power generation,¹² not even with storage due to the enormous cost of electricity storage. Wind and Solar’s Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) is so poor that they cannot even support basic society.¹³ The Club of Rome report also makes astounding pronouncements about what actions should be taken on a global scale when they have no electoral status in Canada; thus, the question is ‘are they’ or ‘how are they influencing the Canadian public agenda’ with their misinformation?

Due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, there is a looming global food crisis. Canada is a significant producer of wheat and grains, but various climate policy related ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) regulations and carbon tax implications are making it difficult for farmers and ranchers to maximize production.

Canada is deeply in debt.¹⁴ We could capitalize on our resource riches. In Oct. 2021, Robert Lyman evaluated their worth at market prices then as follows: “if they could be sold at present international prices Canada’s fossil fuel reserves would yield gross revenues of about US $21 trillion. While it is far more difficult to assess the likely net revenues that could result from their sale, it could easily be in the range of Cdn$13 trillion. The infrastructure to move it to market, including pipelines, railways and ports probably adds at least $300 billion.”¹⁵ However, climate policies and foreign and government funded ENGOs have driven off investors, banks, and insurance companies, by demonizing energy and spouting climate catastrophe claims that are not supported by the evidence.¹⁶

The federal government has called for ever more stringent climate targets – greenhouse gas reductions (GHGs) – but at the same time it is planning to bring 400,000 immigrants to Canada this year, and 63 million immigrants by 2100.^{17 18} Most immigrants to Canada come from warm countries such as India, China, the Philippines, meaning their individual carbon footprints go up dramatically as greater energy use is vital for survival in Canada. Likewise, there are ‘embedded’ emissions in their lives, including housing (which must be built), transportation, etc.

Over the years, climate activists have berated Canada for not meeting previous targets, but in fact, aside from the fundamental technical challenge, the greater influence on not meeting targets was that between 1990 and 2019, Canada’s population grew by 37%.

However, successful propaganda by environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs), many of which are foreign-funded, and which operate in a highly coordinated manner,¹⁹ and on coordinated media campaigns demanding that Canada meet climate targets has led to Bill C-12, the climate accountability act.

These are obviously conflicting policies.

The damage to our economy and food supply is not the only critical problem.

On April 26, 2022, CTV Toronto reported that “Ontario youth are more depressed, anxious than prepandemic days due to climate change, COVID-19: survey”. ²⁰ [Underline added] The study is predominantly about the COVID pandemic lockdown effects on youth – and many young people expressed depression and suicidal tendencies.

The CTV headline puts emphasis on climate change which was a minor part of the survey. Yet in the actual report in Section 9 “Conclusion – Encouraging Findings” it states: “A majority of students are not extremely worried or depressed about climate change.” Why did CTV misstate the findings?

However, from other studies we do know that many children and youth are depressed and concerned about climate change.²¹ So, it is alarming to find out that the World Economic Forum, where Deputy Prime Minister Freeland and Mark Carney are trustees, granted Greta Thunberg a global stage without vetting the facts behind her emotional and frightening speech “I want you to panic…Our house is on fire.” That message was repeated by mainstream media around the world. In testimony to the US Congress on April 21, 2021, Ms. Thunberg reported that there is no science behind her statements – these were ‘just metaphors’. Somehow this revelation did not make headline news.²²

CLINTEL – the international climate intelligence organization based in The Netherlands has objected to the Swiss government about this abuse of public trust by the WEF ²³ which enjoys ‘host state’ status.

According to the Canadian federal government proponents of more climate regulation, they use ‘the best science’ to evaluate climate change. A peer-reviewed paper by Mitchell et al 2020 found that the Canadian climate model (CanESM5) is deeply flawed, writing:

“We draw attention to the CanESM5 model [computer simulation of global temperature trends]: it simulates the greatest warming in the troposphere, roughly 7 times larger than the observed trends.” The Canadian government relies on the CanESM models “to provide science-based quantitative information to inform climate change adaptation and mitigation in Canada and internationally.²⁴

The “Social Costs of Carbon” (how carbon taxes are determined) are calculated based on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs – economic models) which are calibrated to climate models – meaning if the climate model runs too hot, the carbon taxes will be set far too high.

Much of the climate emergency push comes from the “Risky Business”²⁵ report which was funded and promoted by green billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg who have pecuniary interests. “Risky Business” relied upon a catastrophic scenario known as RCP 8.5, presented as if ‘business-as-usual’ (BAU) when it is a completely implausible scenario. These scenarios were only designed for research purposes, not for policymaking. Climate policy analyst Roger Pielke, Jr. and colleague Justin Ritchie have shown that RCP 8.5 has proliferated throughout climate science research, even though it is deemed to be implausible by most of the climate science community.²⁶ A more recent report by Deloitte uses the RCP 6.0 scenario as if BAU²⁷ which it is not. The originators of the RCP research scenarios (van Vuuren et al 2011²⁸) never meant for these scenarios to be used for setting public policy, but this is what has happened, thus hopelessly skewing climate policy.

Here, for example, Canada’s Climate Atlas states that RCP 8.5 is the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario when it most certainly is not.

Climate Atlas is sponsored by numerous government agencies in Canada, using taxpayers’ money to misinform the public.

We see a disturbing trend in the media, where many outlets and journalist positions are now funded by the federal government, to hype climate change as a crisis. Most recently the Canadian Association of Journalists and other related groups participated in a national survey and issued a report entitled: “Climate Coverage in Canada.”²⁹

Emeritus Professor D.K. Johnson of University of Victoria professor of philosopher and logic, reviewed the study and was alarmed by a crucial, absent question:

On page 12, the report states that 77% of the scientists surveyed “strongly agreed” with the statement “There is a climate crisis.” An additional 19% of the scientists “somewhat agreed” with this statement.

The report also describes the responses of a sample of journalists and members of the public to this statement. But obviously the opinions of these people are irrelevant to the question of whether there really is a climate crisis.

Page 22-23 of the report explains how the scientists surveyed were selected: “Our research team invited 1,015 researchers in Canada who had published four or more peer-reviewed scientific papers about climate change prior to 2021 to participate in the survey.” The report says nothing about where these papers had to be published in order for a scientist to meet the selection criterion. Thus, there is a definite possibility that this original sample of scientists was biased. For example, journals that were willing to publish contrarian views may have been excluded at the outset.

Of these 1,015 scientists, 143 (14.1%) responded to the survey. Thus, all we are given are the opinions of a small self-selected subset of scientists from the first sample. Consequently, this report provides no reason whatsoever to believe that there is a climate crisis.

However, the question being asked by the report is not “Is there a climate crisis?”, but rather “Should news outlets cover climate change as a crisis?” (p.12) No doubt there are many people who believe that the first question is completely irrelevant to the second. (bold and underline added)

How can the journalists’ survey to describe climate as a crisis be deemed to be objective journalism when the fundamental question ‘is there a climate crisis’ was never asked?

Indeed, when the City of Calgary declared a ‘climate emergency’, one of the references cited was a website run out of Quebec which is an ENGO trying to get cities to become signatory to this climate emergency movement. Hardly scientific evidence to support expensive virtue signalling.³⁰ Most policy makers only read the highly politicized ~40-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which is approved line-by-line by political delegates; few ever read the full scientific report of the Working Group I (Physical Sciences). Roger Pielke, Jr. offers this plain language summary of that report and much good news. Despite UN Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres claiming “Code Red for humanity” …or more recently “an axis of human suffering” – that is not reflected in the scientific evidence. Pielke, Jr. writes:³¹

The extreme scenario RCP8.5 was in the most recent IPCC report [2013] identified as our most likely future. Now IPCC has completely reversed that, and it [RCP8.5] is now considered low likelihood.

There could not be a more profound change in the scenario foundation of climate science. Instead of apocalyptic warnings about “immediate risk” a top line message of this report should be: Great News! The Extreme Scenario that IPCC Saw as Most Likely in 2013 is Now Judged Low Likelihood. I am actually floored that this incredible change in such a short time apparently hasn’t even been noticed, much less broadcast around the world.

To put that in visual terms that anyone can understand:

Many highly qualified climate scientists such as Richard Lindzen, formerly of MIT,³² state that the alleged climate crisis is imaginary and not supported by the evidence. Most recently, Steve Koonin, former Obama science advisor issued the book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters”. And the ~1,000 international scientists and scholars of CLINTEL state clearly there is no climate emergency and that natural forces like the Sun and oceans are more influential on climate change than human emissions of carbon dioxide.

The global energy crisis means fertilizer prices are through the roof (as fertilizers are made from natural gas, which is a volatile market commodity); crops will not be planted in Ukraine and may be limited in Russia this year – countries which typically supply much of the global wheat supply.

With looming global famine and little evidence to support the climate catastrophe claims, which seem more designed to benefit green crony capitalists and tax subsidized ENGOs than to create any real value added industry, it is time to:
a) revisit what evidence underwrites the federal government’s claim of a climate emergency; if faulty or outdated, then rescind the Climate Emergency Declaration;
b) reconsider present immigration targets vis a vis intended climate targets, or both (Paris Agreement is not a legally binding agreement in any event);
c) repeal the destructive climate policies like carbon taxes and cap on emissions which limit revenue earning/job creating resource development, food production, and which drive citizens into heat-or-eat poverty; and
d) restructuring of tax funding or benefits to mainstream media and charitable status of ENGOs with a requirement to present balanced arguments on climate science and energy policies, rather than cheerleading a theme with fearmongering headlines and nonsense surveys.

Thank you for your attention. Feel free to ask any questions or for more information.
Sincerely,
Ron Davison, P. Eng.
President
Friends of Science Society

1 https://www.blacklocks.ca/govt-relied-on-cbc-stories/
2 https://youtu.be/COrDc_D07ks
3 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/?p=6704&highlight=open+letter+to+IPCC&highlight=open%20letter%20to%20IPCC
4 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2022/01/17/climate-risk-reporting-an-exercise-in-greenwashing/

5 https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/cut-global-emissions-76-percent-every-year-next-decade-meet-15degc
6 https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/we-need-total-fossil-fuel-lockdown-climate-revolution
7 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-if-we-are-to-avoid-economy-wide-lockdowns-to-halt-climatechange-11600879250
8 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/emissions-fell-during-lockdown-keep-that-way/
9 Not including land use changes
10
https://www.cma.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/health-advocacy/Deloitte-report-nov2021-EN.pdf
11 https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/were-all-in-trouble-wind-turbine-makers-selling-at-a-loss-and-in-a-self-destructive-loop-bossesadmit/2-1-1197217?mc_cid=9acd144434&mc_eid=5e3c942cd8
12 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/WHY-RENEWABLE-ENERGY-CANNOT-REPLACE-FOSSIL-FUELS-BY-2050-FINAL2.pdf
13 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-energy-and-sustainability/article/lessons-from-technology-development-for-energy-andsustainability/2D40F35844FEFEC37FDC62499DDBD4DC

14 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/?p=9781&highlight=monumental+&highlight=monumental%20
15 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/?p=9339&highlight=will+we+squander&highlight=will%20we%20squander
16 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/?p=9424&highlight=ecojustice&highlight=ecojustice
17 This is a comment about carbon footprints, not immigration per se. Our scientific advisor, Dr. Madhav Khandekar, immigrated from India years ago.
18 https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/

29 https://s35990.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Climate-Coverage-in-Canada-Report-2021.pdf

30 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/City-of-Calgary-Rebuttal-to-Climate-Emergency-FINAL.pdf
31 https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report?s=r

32 https://blog.friendsofscience.org/?p=8798&highlight=richard+lindzen&highlight=richard%20lindzen