“Bankrupt, Hungry and Freezing in the Dark”

Testimony of ICSC-Canada’s Tom Harris before the City of Ottawa Environment and Climate Change Committee – 21/02/23 (video of testimony may be seen here):

My name is Tom Harris. I am Executive Director of The International Climate Science Coalition – Canada. I have bachelor and masters degrees in mechanical engineering with a specialization in thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics. I worked as an engineer for the National Research Council, other government departments, and in the high-tech sector. As a lecturer at Carleton University, I taught climate change [science] to about 1500 students.

To start, I would like to tell you about what happened in Texas when they relied on unreliable power, as Ottawa plans.

Mr. Gonzales was one of up to 700 people who died due to hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, house fires

As dawn broke on February 15, 2021, 80-year-old Julius Gonzales made his way to one of his regular dialysis appointments. But he found the clinic had lost power and was closed. So, he drove back home to Arcola, Texas, where he lived with his wife Mary. But the power was out there too. As temperatures plunged to about -5, they couldn’t get warm, no matter how close they huddled to their generator-powered electric heater. By 5 a.m. the next morning, Julius Gonzales was dead.

Mr. Gonzales was one of up to 700 people who died due to hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, house fires, etc. caused by a power blackout that left over eight million Texans without power, heat and water for up to five days. With freezing temperatures, people resorted to using their gas ovens or even to burning furniture to stay warm. Others used barbecue grills or their cars to create heat. This created a carbon monoxide poisoning disaster.

The blackout happened largely because the State of Texas did not have sufficient reliable power. As the state with the most wind power, Texas had become overly dependent on wind power, an unreliable energy source. You see, on February 8^th, wind power was providing over half of the state’s electricity. But, between February 8^th and 16^th, wind power crashed to just a few percent. The use of natural gas increased more than four-fold, but it wasn't enough to make up the shortfall.

If Ottawa goes ahead with its $57 billion plans to get rid of fossil fuels and power to rely largely on wind and solar power, there's a huge risk that a greater disaster will hit Ottawa even worse than the one that hit Texas.

Ottawa’s Climate Change Master plan is unfeasible and damaging to its residents

In our January 2022 report, ICSC-Canada described why the city’s Climate Change Master plan is unfeasible and damaging to Ottawans, the environment and human rights. In July, we sent an open letter to Mayor Watson and council alerting them on our report, explaining that Ottawa is on the verge of a self-induced crisis being brought on by prioritizing “stopping climate change” over real world concerns. 

No one replied to either our letter or our report. 

Consequently, we ask that each member of this committee read our report at International Climate Science Coalition – Canada and respond in writing before voting on the budget. 

We also ask that you recommend to council that all funding for the city’s Climate Change Master Plan, electric buses and the Resiliency & Climate Change program be removed from the budget until unbiased, open consultations are carried out by this committee. Those consultations should involve experts from all sides of these issues so that councillors and the public can hear about the actual state of the climate science and the financial, safety, health and security implications of Ottawa’s net-zero plans. 

To help the committee understand why we need fossil fuels to protect Ottawa and the environment, I will leave you with this report, from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, as well as some summary documents if you don’t want to read a thousand pages. 

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Thousands of peer reviewed studies that show the benefits of CO₂

To help you appreciate how the rise in carbon dioxide is actually good for the environment and good for humanity, I’ll leave you this report, with thousands of peer reviewed studies that show the benefits of CO₂ and how we actually have nothing to fear about increasing carbon dioxide and indeed, I’ll also give you this so you can read a summary as well.

And finally, to give you an overview of the science that contradicts that which you’re relying on, I leave you with this report which actually talks about the science of climate change that is not actually covered by the media. And I’ll also leave some summaries of that.

We would be pleased to meet with any of you personally and to present our findings to the committee or to the full council. We’re convinced that following Ottawa’s plans will leave us bankrupt, hungry and freezing in the dark for no environmental benefit.

I look forward to your comments and questions. Thank you.

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