Alberta Isn't Warming

With Jim Prentice easily winning the leadership of Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party on Saturday, he becomes the premier of one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the planet. And since the value lies in oil -- Alberta's environmental policies will be back on the agenda front and center as the environmental activists will try to impose further rent-seeking activities on a historically unprincipled party. For several decades, Alberta has been slipping further into political correctness and unbridled liberalism.

The question remains as to whether Prentice will take the party further on its path to the left, or if he will tack to the right in an attempt to draw off support from the popular Wildrose Party. Hopefully when the topic of climate change -- and particularly, climate change in Alberta -- comes up during the election campaign, Alberta can have a rational and fact-based discussion rather than the alarmist hysteria witnessed during the last election in 2012. Whoever the next Alberta premier is, ideally they will shut off the government funding tap to the climate modeling exercises that wastefully consume far too much public money and produce far too little of real use. Removing the provincial carbon tax and cutting off public support of expensive carbon capture and sequestration projects is also a must do on the Albertan agenda. Defunding and disbanding the Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) should come first. Just last year, the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute produced a report for the CCEMC that was uncritically featured in the media, and which predicted dramatic climate change for the province in the coming decades. For example, "higher predictions indicate temperature increases of up to 6.5 degrees Celsius. The report says that could result in the near-complete loss of boreal forest from northern Alberta ... At a minimum, the report suggests, temperatures in Alberta will likely increase by two degrees Celsius over the next hundred years." Of course, what wasn't mentioned is that there has been absolutely no warming of Alberta for at least the past three decades.

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Absolutely no evidence whatsoever Alberta has been warming over the last three decades

Indeed, a good look at Environment Canada's Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data (AHCCD) database reveals 38 long-term climate stations throughout the province, from north to south and east to west, covering the mountains, foothills, and prairie regions. What does an analysis of the last 30 years show? That not a single one of the benchmark climate stations in Alberta has a significant warming trend for annual temperatures. The only significant trend is a cooling trend for Edmonton. For all the stations with non-significant trends, the correlations are split evenly negative and positive. In other words, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever Alberta has been warming over the last three decades. A similar report from 2005 by the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC) in co-operation with Alberta Environment predicted large increases in annual mean temperature throughout the province by the 2020s that would continue and accelerate through the 21st century. Unless the current lack of trends in Alberta changes, these predictions are not on-track to come true, either. Yet more money continues to be dumped into the nebulous world of climate prediction in Alberta. The only temperature that has been rising in Wildrose Country over the past few decades has been the political thermometer, and let's hope that it rises to a point at which Albertans more critically examine the path their province is on -- especially the environmental realities which should be shaping environmental policies. At present, they are not.