Waiting for the Other Shoe to drop on the Climate File

In part one of this piece, I explained how the Harper Conservatives rode to power on a platform that included open, common sense transparency in the climate debate; how they took full advantage of an electorate exhausted by past Prime Minister Jean Chretien's opportunistic, unscientific climate change bombast to tell Canadians that the Conservatives would promote an honest re-evaluation of the file from top to bottom.

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I also started to explain how, after forming the government, the Conservatives turned the tables on core supporters by quietly adopting as their own, the adolescent climate change rhetoric of their Liberal predecessors. This approach has resulted in today's situation where a massive and unnecessary regime of carbon dioxide and other ‚'greenhouse gas' emission ‚'cap and trade' is about to be foisted on an unwitting public unaware of the coming storm. There are many examples of how the Government used clever but dishonest language to keep themselves temporarily out of political trouble on the climate file. A particularly egregious one still in use that was also a favorite of Liberal environment minister David Anderson - "Climate change is real" - is a meaningless phrase now mocked by school children and professional scientists alike. On April 6, 2006, shortly after being elected, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was sent (and then Ministers of the Environment, Rona Ambrose, and Natural Resources, Gary Lunn, cc'd), an open letter from sixty-one eminent scientists in climate and related fields in which they explained:

"‚'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‚'noise.' The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to ‚'stopping climate change' would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next."

Yet the new Conservative government completely ignored the letter and continued to regularly use the phrase regardless -- "Climate change is real" are the very first words on today's Environment Canada (EC) main climate change Web page and current environment minister Jim Prentice has used it as well (e.g. his November 23, 2007 Lake Louise World Cup Business Forum speech when he was Minister of Industry). The EC site still contains many of the errors it did under the Chr√©tien/Martin Liberals and even the thoroughly discredited ‚'Mann hockey stick' global temperature reconstruction remains front and center, live on the site. Quizzed about why such an important but seriously flawed graph has not been removed, Dr. Brian T. Gray, Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch of Environment Canada explained in his May 25, 2009 letter to the author that the Web page in question has not been updated since 2003 and that "We recommend that website users always check the date when a department website was last updated". Of course few students or average citizens will do that, so the Mann hockey stick undoubtedly continues to ride high in public consciousness and student projects across Canada. Citing a mistaken IPCC Summary for Policymakers conclusion that "the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous past 1,300 years", Dr. Gray concluded, "Environment Canada, when it comes to climate change issues, relies substantially on the conclusions reached by the Panel [IPCC] in its ongoing scientific assessments." But even the IPCC dropped the Mann hockey stick graph from their most recent assessment reports -- why has Environment Canada not done the same? Will the department now also incorporate the findings of the newly-released Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) that contradicts many of the findings of the IPCC, I have asked Dr. Gray. I'm not holding my breath. Even empirical climate data measured in the real world does not seem to penetrate the offices of government speech writers. A good example can be found in Harper's speech before the APEC Business Summit 2007 meeting in Australia when he told delegates:

"The weight of scientific evidence holds that our atmosphere is getting hotter... The physical evidence is already there for all to see. ...".

Yes, it is there all right -- and what it shows is that, when Harper made the assertion, nearly six years had passed during which there had been no warming at all (see graph). Since then, temperatures have dropped and now stand at less than one half of one tenth of a degree above the 1979 -- 1998 average -- that's the physical evidence, Mr. Harper. Figure 1: Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature since 1979 according to University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. Data obtained by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) TIROS-N satellite, interpreted by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy, both at Global Hydrology and Climate Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA (reference). Many Canadian conservatives believed that continuation of such politically correct, but scientifically flawed ‚'spin' was not particularly serious -- ‚'talk is cheap', they said. ‚'The new government is simply saying what they need to, given today's public opinion. They will not actually do the sort of things the Dion Liberals would have done. Our party will not betray us.' And they were partly right. The Conservatives have not brought forward a ‚'carbon tax', as Dion promised the Liberals would do. They have not taken the Kyoto Protocol particularly seriously (although they did break their 2006 election promise to withdraw from the protocol). And they have not renewed funding to the hopelessly-biased Environment Canada creation, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. But trusting conservatives are sadly mistaken overall. The Harper government has now brought forward something far worse than Dion's plan -- a ‚'greenhouse gas' (GHG, primarily carbon dioxide, CO₂) cap and trade scheme, referred to as the ‚'Offset System for Greenhouse Gases", an approach that, according to economist Professor Ross McKitrick of Guelph University will be "far more costly to administer, more volatile for the economy and more economically burdensome to households" than Dion's so-called ‚'carbon tax' ever could have been. And, to make matters worse, the government has released for public comment the proposed logistics for the GHG credit awarding part of the process first. While this appears to serve their political purposes in the short term - delaying the inevitable protests that will result when the GHG ‚'caps' part of the legislation is unveiled later while giving the Government something to boast about in the meantime -- it increases corporate and political pressure to actually impose severe emissions caps on industry. Wind power operators and other erroneously-labeled ‚'clean energy' providers, some farmers and even a few individual citizens will see large potential profit in the credits they will be awarded only if the climate scare continues. Expect ‚'carbon' credit holders, even those who do not seriously believe in human-caused CO₂ driven climate change, to now lobby government to impose severe limits to industry's GHG emissions so as to maximize the value of their credits. The resultant increased energy costs will drive up consumer prices and unemployment, leaving all but a privileged few inside the ‚'carbon cartel', poorer. Prentice is helping all this come about by promoting the establishment of a vested interest constituency that can be expected to press hard to see the scare continue. Canadians have a right to be angry with the government for another reason as well. The EC documents that the public has been given until August 12^th to comment are written in complex, jargon-laden language that only those already familiar with the file will understand. There has been no serious attempt to educate Canadians about the language and nuances of cap and trade. Asking us to comment such statements as "The materiality threshold is 5 percent of the total reported reductions or 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, whichever is less" or chapters with such esoteric titles as "Offset System Quantification Protocol", is just going through the motions of public consultation. Having already developed highly complex plans ‚'in house', the Government is merely paying token homage to democracy by asking for public comment on such a complex set of documents within a short period of time. Rather than attempting to give comments on the arcane logistics of a program that will undoubtedly cause significant economic harm, Canadians should demand that Prentice delay the ‚'greenhouse gas' offset program until the government has first asked for public comment on draft documents that supply answers to the sort of questions average citizens naturally ask when such a vast and expensive undertaking is planned:

• What will this cost me, either directly through increased consumer prices or indirectly through greater taxes or reduced government services or in increased national debt?
• Will I, as a consumer, ultimately be the one who pays for the credits about to be awarded?
• What are the benefits of your program?
• What are the downsides and the risks? How will Canada avoid the widely publicized problems experienced in Europe when similar programs were initiated?
• Minister Prentice said, "we are establishing a regulatory framework that will impose mandatory emissions reduction targets across the full spectrum of Canadian industry." What industries will be hurt or helped? Is my job threatened?
• Why do we need to do this now when the economy is still in trouble -- what would be the economic and environmental effect of waiting a few years?
• What alternatives has the Government considered and how do they compare from a cost to benefit perspective with your plan?
• What impact will these massive and complicated plans have on the size and cost of government?
• Who is advising the Government on the set-up of the Offset System for Greenhouse Gases and how will they be involved in its final implementation? Are their conflicts of interest at work here?

Then, the public should be given plenty of time, not a mere 60 days most of which falls during the summer, to comment the government's answers to these questions. Only upon completion of this critical first step of providing fundamental program impact and justification information, and sufficient public support for the effort has been demonstrated, should we be asked to comment on the logistical details of a plan (if there is still public support for doing anything at all about CO₂ emissions). The government's current approach is akin to asking a medically untrained patient to comment on the technical details of major surgery they are about to undergo but neglecting to address such basic issues as: Why do I need this operation? What are the alternatives? What are the risks? What are the benefits? What will it cost? How long will I take to recover? Prentice's may truly view such an approach as "part of our [the Government's] commitment to consultation and transparency", as he said at the Economic Club of Canada on June 10^th, but in reality, it is just the opposite. At this point, there is little to indicate that the Government is even remotely able to answer the above questions anyways. This then begs the question -- why would the Conservative Government of Canada take such a massive risk with our nation's economy and employment at a time when we are still struggling to recover from the recent meltdown? The answer appears to have little to do with environment protection and is more about day to day optics of national and international politics, a topic beyond the scope of this piece and not something many politicians will admit to. Instead, the politicians' response to the above list of citizens' questions will essentially be what Prentice said in his June 10^th speech:

"...I don't think that any of us ... can afford, for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, not to succeed in the battle against climate change. The consequences are too great, the stakes too high ... there is a strong consensus that this is something that simply must get done. That the time has come, the moment is now and the world must act. While the challenges are great, the responsibility is clear."

Just as Canada (quite reasonably) entered World War II without a cost/benefit analysis or even a knowledge of the expected price tag in dollars or human lives, we will continue to be told that the risk of not acting to "combat climate change", as Prentice puts it, is simply too great to even contemplate not forging ahead with the government's Offset System for Greenhouse Gases, no matter what the costs. So, the key to derailing this train before ordinary Canadians are run over is to convincingly demonstrate to the public that the science foundations of the climate scare is either highly suspect or simply wrong. Over time, public opinion polls will start to reflect increasing lack of support for the program (as has already started) and politicians will gradually change their approach or be voted out of office. Mainstream media will reluctantly follow rather than risk irrelevance and declining advertising revenue by getting too far out of step with their audience. Environmental groups that do not shift their focus to real environmental problems will see their funding quickly dry up. Even after being shown that government forecasts of impending climate doom are not supported by real world observations or independent research, some people will still demand a scaled back greenhouse gas reduction plan, ‚'just in case', and that is certainly their prerogative. But general public enthusiasm for taking a risky path that has unknown, but potential devastating costs, with highly dubious environmental benefits will quickly wither, once the true state of the underlying science is better appreciated. So, the task at hand is clear - determine and implement strategies to effectively counter the misleading public information campaigns of the heavily-funded international juggernaut that the climate change ‚'industry' has become. This mission will be greatly assisted by strategic use of the new Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), released in Washington DC on June 2^nd. In part three of this piece, I will describe how climate realists must take full advantage of this potent new arrow in our quiver to help the public understand that, although climate changes all the time, often dramatically, for natural reasons, it shows little indication of being significantly influenced by our emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‚'greenhouse gases'. Consequently, the government's Offset System for Greenhouse Gases, and any other schemes to control the highly beneficial gas, carbon dioxide, is a costly mistake we must all oppose.