Flimsy, fake rationale for imposing Canada’s pernicious carbon tax
On April Fool’s Day the Trudeau Liberal federal government’s draconian Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act came into force in Canada–a fitting day on which to inflict a punishing carbon tax law on Canadians. It applies to provinces that do not have their own carbon tax regimes that meet “national standards,” currently Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick.
The Preamble to this law, based on the fake premise of manmade global warming/manmade climate change, is full of the usual pseudoscientific tropes and untruths about a pretend planetary climate emergency.
The Preamble, the rationale and justification for the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, decoded in caps (emphasis added):
BECAUSE 97% SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS (fake claim, long ago debunked many times over):
Whereas there is broad scientific consensus that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global climate change;
BECAUSE URGENTLY SAVING THE PLANET (blatant scaremongering):
Whereas recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are at the highest level in history and present an unprecedented risk to the environment, including its biological diversity, to human health and safety and to economic prosperity;
BECAUSE WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE (more blatant scaremongering):
Whereas impacts of climate change, such as coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, increases in heat waves, droughts and flooding, and related risks to critical infrastructures and food security are already being felt throughout Canada and are impacting Canadians, in particular the Indigenous peoples of Canada, low-income citizens and northern, coastal and remote communities;
BECAUSE THE GRANDCHILDREN (emotional blackmail):
Whereas Parliament recognizes that it is the responsibility of the present generation to minimize impacts of climate change on future generations;
BECAUSE IT’S A PLANETARY CLIMATE EMERGENCY (fake, phoney, non-existent):
Whereas the United Nations, Parliament and the scientific community have identified climate change as an international concern which cannot be contained within geographic boundaries;
BECAUSE THE UN TOLD US TO (obeisance to “non-binding” UN diktats):
Whereas Canada has ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, done in New York on May 9, 1992, which entered into force in 1994, and the objective of that Convention is the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system;
BECAUSE THERE IS ONE IMMUTABLE, CORRECT GLOBAL TEMPERATURE (which the UN’s IPCC made up out of thin air):
Whereas Canada has also ratified the Paris Agreement, done in Paris on December 12, 2015, which entered into force in 2016, and the aims of that Agreement include holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
BECAUSE THE PARIS AGREEMENT SAYS WE HAVE TO (“non-binding” UN agreement):
Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to achieving Canada’s Nationally Determined Contribution – and increasing it over time – under the Paris Agreement by taking comprehensive action to reduce emissions across all sectors of the economy, accelerate clean economic growth and build resilience to the impacts of climate change;
BECAUSE AN URGENT “NATIONAL PROBLEM” (non-existent, lying to Canadians):
Whereas it is recognized in the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change that climate change is a national problem that requires immediate action by all governments in Canada as well as by industry, non-governmental organizations and individual Canadians;
BECAUSE WE LOVE ORWELLIAN LANGUAGE (“pricing” is a tax grab):
Whereas greenhouse gas emissions pricing is a core element of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change;
BECAUSE WE’RE GONNA MODIFY YOUR BEHAVIOUR (micromanage your life) . . .
Whereas behavioural change that leads to increased energy efficiency, to the use of cleaner energy, to the adoption of cleaner technologies and practices and to innovation is necessary for effective action against climate change;
. . . BY BEATING YOU HARDER AND HARDER WITH THE PRICING STICK (citizen abuse):
Whereas the pricing of greenhouse gas emissions on a basis that increases over time is an appropriate and efficient way to create incentives for that behavioural change;
BECAUSE WHOSOEVER EMITS CARBON DIOXIDE HAS TO PAY (does breathing out count?):
Whereas greenhouse gas emissions pricing reflects the “polluter pays” principle;
BECAUSE IF THE PROVINCES REFUSE TO DO IT . . .
Whereas some provinces are developing or have implemented greenhouse gas emissions pricing systems;
. . . WE’LL MAKE THEM . . .
Whereas the absence of greenhouse gas emissions pricing in some provinces and a lack of stringency in some provincial greenhouse gas emissions pricing systems could contribute to significant deleterious effects on the environment, including its biological diversity, on human health and safety and on economic prosperity;
. . . BECAUSE WE CAN AND WE WILL:
And whereas it is necessary to create a federal greenhouse gas emissions pricing scheme to ensure that, taking provincial greenhouse gas emissions pricing systems into account, greenhouse gas emissions pricing applies broadly in Canada
The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act is a dishonest legislation right from the start, i.e. the title – greenhouse gases are not “pollution.” This from the Liberal government that promised to develop policies and legislation based on science and evidence. It has the fingerprints of the UN’s anti-human, anti-democratic sustainable development program all over it, citing agreements and commitments that Canadians were never consulted about or able to vote on, such as the UN’s 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (basis for the UN’s Agenda 21, Millennium Development, 2030 Agenda), the Paris Agreement, and the UN’s unscientifically-derived, made-up global target temperature rise of no more than 2°C (oh wait, no, they reduced it for added hysteria value down to 1.5°C!).
Ontario is currently challenging the constitutional validity of the law in the Court of Appeal for Ontario. That’s good news, but unfortunately putting the cart before the horse. We first need a court case about whether or not manmade global warming/manmade climate change is actually a scientifically-proven catastrophic thing. To prove that, we need a baseline of empirical evidence as to what the natural influences on the ever-changing climate are, and then empirical evidence of what, if any, is man’s contribution causing additional change over and above that.
Sadly, at the moment there is nothing like this kind of national climate science review on the horizon for Canadians.
The biggest Fake News of the last 30 years: Manmade global warming
A sign in Queen’s Park, just steps away from the Ontario Legislative Building, proves the gargantuan fakery of manmade climate change. It reads in part:
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF QUEEN’S PARK
15,000 years ago, all of Ontario was covered by glacial ice measuring up to 1.5 km thick. Lake Iroquois formed when these glaciers receded…This glacial lake eventually receded to the level of Lake Ontario.
Climate changed naturally throughout the eons. Always has, always will.
The biggest lie central to the Fake Climate News narrative, devoid of scientific-method-derived empirical evidence, is that carbon dioxide, CO2, is responsible for manmade climate change, the cause of catastrophic extreme weather events that in reality have occurred only inside rigged climate computer models. None have been borne out by real-world observations and empirical evidence.
Carbon dioxide, the life-giving, invisible, odorless trace gas plant food, has been deliberately demonized and vilified as “carbon pollution,” “carbon emissions,” “GHG emissions,” where a deadly “carbon footprint” is every human’s original sin and which, according to the eco-freak pundits unchallenged on the “climate change” propagandist state broadcaster CBC, has “people dying by the hand of carbon emitters.“
Fake Climate News is the pretext for the draconian control-and-command “mitigation measures” of the Liberals’ fraudulent-green energy policies, enabled by anti-democratic and anti-human legislation such as the Green Energy Act in Ontario.
As JoNova writes:
The religious mission against plant fertilizer in the hope of holding back the tide by half a millimeter in 2100 is noxious, damaging, dangerous in so many ways. It deprives the poor of cheap energy, good jobs, and warm houses.
The evil climate fakery has spawned a massive, corrupt, $1.5 trillion worldwide climate change industry. In Ontario, the Liberals’ phoney-green energy policies have caused punishing electricity costs and plunged citizens into gut-wrenching energy poverty. Unmoved, the Ontario Liberals continue to oppress and impoverish Ontarians with their useless, destructive, pernicious industrial wind energy fiasco. To make matters worse, the Liberals have imposed what is effectively a callous, irresponsible carbon tax (on thin air) which itself is subject to a further Harmonized Sales Tax (HST)!
Just how useless and wasteful industrial wind turbines are is detailed in a December 2016 report submitted by Strategic Policy Economics (Strapolec) in response to the Ontario Ministry of Energy’s formal review of its Long-Term Energy Plan (LTEP). It provides a shocking analysis.
For the report, Strapolec developed a simulation to show how “supply options could interact to supply the anticipated demand.”
Key assumptions and findings with respect to industrial wind turbines (emphasis added):
Page 9:
- …intermittent solar and wind generation…sources require significant backup/storage and entail other integration costs.
Page 13:
- …wind generation…results in a surplus electricity.
Page 14:
- Wind generation production will be intermittent.
- Wind in Ontario tends to arise at similar and coincidental times across the province.
- Wind is deemed surplus to the hydro or nuclear generation.
- Imports are called upon to meet the winter ramp if there is insufficient wind production.
- …wind may be able to “fill in” with the future imports, but does not integrate well with baseload hydro or nuclear.
- This intermittency results in over 40% of the wind generation becoming surplus generation…
Page 20:
- The significant increase in wind capacity in the OPO [Ontario Planning Outlook] is questionable on three counts:
- Wind generation has not matched demand since its introduction in Ontario;
- Over 70% of wind generation does not benefit Ontario’s supply capability: and,
- Wind generation will not match demand in the OPO future projections as 50% of the forecasted production is expected to be surplus.
- Figure 16 compares wind generation patterns to Ontario demand for the period of 2013 to 2015. Over this three-year period, wind generation has increased in the spring and fall when Ontario doesn’t need the supply, and is at its lowest when Ontario needs it most in summer. Peaking in the fall, wind generation does not contribute to its full supply capacity throughout the higher winter demand period. Wind cannot be matched to demand. With the forecasted winter-heavy demand profile, the contrast between wind generation and demand in winter will become as stark as those in the summer.
Page 21:
- This mismatch leads to surplus energy.
- When wind generation is present in Ontario, it causes three distinct reactions of similar magnitude in the dispatch of Ontario’s supply resources:
- Curtailment (waste) of both nuclear and hydro;
- Export of wind generated electricity at prices well below cost of production; and
- Reduction of natural gas-fired generation.
Page 22:
- Total useful wind energy therefore represents 4.3 TWh, or 47%, of the wind generation in Ontario. Over 50% of wind generation in Ontario is not productively used by Ontarians. It could be viewed as being wasted through curtailments and/or via uneconomic exports to neighbouring jurisdictions.
- …historical surplus wind generation is reflected in the production forecast in the OPO D1 and D3 options. These results indicate that 40% to 55% of the planned wind capacity in the OPO may be surplus. This is a very important consideration given that the LTEP focuses on the lowest possible cost future. If wind generation can only be productively used 50% of the time, then its unit cost doubles to $172/MWh from the $86/MWh assumed in the OPO. This suggests that wind generation is the most expensive generation option for Ontario, not including the Tx related costs and other integration issues described in the OPO. Wind and imports represent the two most expensive options in the OPO, yet these options are given significant weight in the OPO. The LTEP process should address this contradiction.
Page 42:
- The limitations related to wind generation’s contribution to Ontario’s clean supply mix were discussed earlier in this report.
Page 56:
- …it can be argued that given the natural flow of…wind patterns, as described in Section 3.0, demand does not match these supply resources, and requires either large reservoirs or backup facilities to function.
Page 57:
- The wind and solar costs in the OPO are deceiving, as outlined earlier. The full cost associated with wind’s variable production profile is $172/MhW…
Page 58:
- Opposition to wind projects has been evident in Ontario and other jurisdictions. Specific concerns have been expressed about human health impacts, nuisance effects related to noise and the visual presence of the wind turbines on the landscape, bird deaths and disturbance to the habitat of rare fauna and flora.
- Research is underway in several jurisdictions e.g., Germany and Sweden related to the decommissioning, recycling and disposal of wind turbines and the associated infrastructure.
- No clear accountability and or funding arrangements are evident in Ontario to manage the decommissioning, recycling and disposal of components of existing and or planned wind projects.
The Strapolec report, damning as it is of the non-efficacy of industrial wind turbines, is predicated on the fiction that
the urgency to combat climate change is now fully acknowledged by all key actors. To reverse the impacts of global warming, deep decarbonization of the global economy is now a priority for government action. Electrification across all economic sectors is considered a critical enabler for transitioning Ontario to a low carbon energy future. The LTEP’s role is to provide for the energy infrastructure that will facilitate this transition.
The report provides an awful lot of technical analysis and deep thinking about how to craft an energy mix that will effectively “fight” what is actually a non-existent problem of manmade climate change. However, it is very valuable with respect to pointing out that the industrial wind turbine industry, as one of the climate industry’s fake-green energy “alternatives,” is utterly useless, actually damaging, economically speaking, not to mention destructive in every conceivable way for humans, communities, the land, and wildlife—birds and bats catastrophically so.
In December 2016, Ontario’s auditor general, Bonnie Lysyk revealed that
ratepayers forked out $37 billion more than necessary from 2006 to 2014 and will spend an additional $133 billion by 2032 due to global adjustment electricity fees on hydro bills.
Meanwhile, the provincial and federal Liberals, instead of addressing real environmental issues, kowtow to the UN-led massive scientific deception, by now a quasi religion, and stupidly, wilfully continue tilting at a deliberately concocted non-existent climate problem, betraying, oppressing, and impoverishing the people they are mandated to serve and protect.
Catherine McKenna, Gina McCarthy: Robotic, misleading catastrophism
Canada’s broadcaster, the CBC, chief propagandist for the manmade climate change/manmade global warming cabal, featured Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, and the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Gina McCarthy, on yesterday’s The Current, with host Anna-Maria Tremonti presiding.
Pontificating about a non-existent problem, and prescribing a punitive tax remedy for it, McKenna and McCarthy, with Tremonti providing the cues, manage to parrot all the usual tired, alarmist, untrue, irrational manmade climate change tropes—multiple times—as listed further below.
At the same time, the Mc-Robots want you to believe that:
…technology choices…are competing effectively against fossil fuels; in many cases they are less expensive, so let people…choose, let the market capture…technologies that are are most able to compete…mostly renewables.
…when you look at the markets and market forces, numerous renewables are now at par, in many cases, with fossil fuels and so…there’s a shift right now towards renewables.
…continue to allow fossil to be in the mix until it’s no longer the one that’s viable or cost-effective…let the market decide, as long as we send the right market signals.
…they have to successfully compete in the market.
It’s not as much about EPA regulations but it is about the industry themselves and whether they can remain competitive.
No reasonably-informed person swallows any of this drivel
For example, in Ontario, “renewables” such as industrial wind turbines can spring up seemingly overnight, thanks to tailor-made, obstacle-free special legislation. Their owners go on to enjoy 20 years worth of guaranteed, significantly above-market rates of return. On the other hand, anti-oil, anti-gas, anti-coal, anti-pipeline regulations, rules, and strictures mean an unlevelled competitive field for the fossil fuel industry.
As for Mc-Eco-Bots and their automated disinformation, read on . . .
“Feel” the manmade climate change
There hasn’t been any global warming for at least 19 years, but, according to the Mc-Fibbers, manmade climate change is really here, is really happening right now. They can feel it, they can see it, so why can’t you?
…we know the climate is already changing, we can feel it, we can see it, we can measure it
…on the front lines of climate change, they can see it every day
…the real impacts of climate change
…a major impact
…understand what is the real impact
…impacts of climate change
…because you can really see it and feel it
…we see impact there
…very real changes to the climate that are impacting their lives
…climate changes that are already happening
Yes, climate changes all the time, always has, always will—naturally.
“Fight” and “tackle”
Lest you aren’t feeling the desired degree of urgency, the Mc-Deluded wish to remind you at every turn that something supposedly needs to be done, and pronto. Hence, the following (hubris-filled) action points:
…tackling climate change
…tackle climate change
…how we tackle climate moving forward
…tackling climate change everywhere
…challenge of tackling climate change
…the fight for climate change
…have to take action
…take action
…take action on climate
…the challenge of climate change is an immediate one, we have to take action on it
…we all know that we need to act
The Mc-Deluded actually think that they can control the climate. The 11th century King Canute had more common sense, integrity, and honesty than McKenna, McCarthy and their political masters combined.
“Low-carbon” future or bust
And why do we need to take action? The Mc-Fake-Enviros’ objective for their fool’s errand is simple-minded, backward:
…reduce our carbon pollution
…capture the carbon that is damaging the planet
…low-carbon future
…move towards a low-carbon future
…decarbonizing, moving to lower-carbon future
…a low-carbon future
…we need to move to a lower-carbon future
…moving to a low-carbon future
…moving to a lower-carbon future
A “low-carbon” future is code for de-development, de-industrialization, de-population, anti-democracy, anti-personal-freedoms, and consigns the poor to even deeper poverty, despair, and deprivation.
Carbon price and tax thin air
And how do the Mc-Punishers think they can make us comply? Put a price on it, again, and again:
…price carbon and tackle the problem
…putting a price on carbon
…pricing carbon
…a price on carbon
…price on carbon
…we need to be putting a price on carbon
It really is a tax on air. Think about it.
“Science-based” decisions
Of course, these are not mere whims on the part of the Mc-Pseudo-Scientists and their masters. These draconian measures are supposedly based on empirical evidence, on sound science, don’t you know, and therefore righteous and good:
…our science-based efforts
…the best science
…absolutely looking at the science
…Paris agreement is based on science
…a science-based approach
…the science is really good today
…we’re doing things based on science
Perverted, corrupted, damaged, manufactured, outcome-predetermined “science.”
Sustainability flim-flam
Just in case you’re worried about the economic consequences of their “evidence-based” plans, the Mc-BSers assure us that everything will be hunky-dory:
…done in a sustainable way
…make sure they’re done in a sustainable way
“Sustainability” is code for anti-prosperity.
Emotional blackmail
Of course, when providing the rationale for the manmade climate change insanity, never forget to play the “next generation” card, and the Mc-Eco-Preachers do not disappoint:
…we need to protect our kids
…we need to keep our kids future healthy and safe
…create the jobs that my kids will have
…protecting our kids
…keeping the world safe for future generations
…necessary for our kids
The truth is that the kids will be far sicker, poorer, and more at risk if insane anti-human manmade climate change policies are implemented.
Greenhouse gas demonization
Finally, there may be an additional manmade climate change villain in the offing. Is methane being groomed as the new CO2? The fabrication that CO2 is the demonic driver of manmade climate change may have become too much of an awkward argument for the eco-fantasists. Too many people know that CO2 is carbon dioxide, a non-polluting, indispensable trace gas that nourishes plants, without which there would be no life in earth. So, methane may now need to be the satanic, planet-destroying gas:
…curbing methane gas emissions
…capture that methane
…you have to capture the methane
…capture the methane that otherwise would be damaging the planet
The UN-led deliberate, evil deceit of manmade climate change continues unabated
The scientific fiction, fuelled by a $1.5 trillion climate change industry, continues apace, scarcely hindered by the truth, or valid science, or the scientific method.
We need more courageous and honest leadership in the political class. We need more common sense, more mainstream media investigative journalism, more reason. We need more public awareness that the cry-wolf, pretend-green potentates of the manmade climate change narrative are liars, utterly lacking in clothing and any scrap of integrity.
Kafkaesque: Opposing an industrial wind turbine project in Ontario
(Scroll down for updates)
Take a look at what happens when Ontarians try to oppose an industrial wind turbine project.
Laws, regulations, and processes seem to have eliminated every conceivable obstacle for the mad rush of the (economically useless, environmentally destructive) wind industrialization of rural Ontario. At the same time they effectively, undemocratically block wind project opponents at every turn. The Ontario Green Energy Act (GEA) and its quasi-judicial complaints department, the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) pitch opponents headlong into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
An example:
- The government gives the Proponent permission to undertake an industrial wind turbine construction project, which includes granting a special environmental permit that allows the Proponent to kill, harm, and harass a Victim or two.
- Locals launch an appeal on the grounds that the project would, amongst other troublesome consequences, cause serious and irreversible harm to the Victims.
- The appeal is heard by a Tribunal, which issues a very rare decision favouring the Victims, finding that the Proponent’s project will indeed cause serious and irreversible harm to two classes of Victims.
- The Tribunal orders a further hearing to consider the Proponent’s proposed mitigations of this serious and irreversible harm.
- In the meantime, however, the Proponent is legally entitled (and signals the intention) to go ahead and begin the project site pre-construction work, and in the process kill, harm, and harass Victims, without first having to table mitigation plans at the next Tribunal hearing (see 4 above).
- Lawyers for the Victims file a motion to have the Tribunal issue a stay of the Proponent’s pre-construction on-site activity associated with the special permit to kill, harm, and harass.
- The Tribunal dismisses the Victims’ motion, with reasons for its decision to be given at a later time.
- Lawyers for the Victims then appeal to a Divisional Court with a motion for a stay.
- The Divisional Court also dismisses the appeal because the Victims’ lawyers, through no fault of their own, are unable to establish specific grounds for said appeal, given that they are in the dark about the reasons for the Tribunal’s dismissal of the motion (see 7 above).
- The Victims’ lawyers are entitled to renew their Divisional Court motion (see 8 above), if and when they ever receive the reasons for the Tribunal’s dismissal decision (see 7 above).
- Meanwhile, the circle is complete, with the Proponent apparently free to go ahead and kill, harm, and harass the Victims, even though there is to be a future Tribunal hearing (see 4 above) at which the Proponent is supposed to make proposals for mitigating the killing, harming, and harassing that probably will already have taken place by then.
That is the saga thus far with respect to the battle between the Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County and the wind energy company wpd Canada Corporation.
The ERT appears to be nothing more than a Kafkaesque-Potemkin-kangaroo-emperor-with-no-clothes court.
The GEA and its companion, the ERT have allowed wind energy companies, eager to cash in on the Ontario Liberal government’s 20-year-guaranteed, above-market returns, to ride roughshod over democratic rights of people and municipalities. The kleptocratic subsidy scheme is footed by the taxpayers, and consumers’ electricity charges triple as a result.
Wind project opponents are spending inordinate amounts of time and money to fight a losing battle, the contest rigged from the start. For wind project opponents, the ERT appears to be nothing more than a Kafkaesque-Potemkin-kangaroo-emperor-with-no-clothes court.
The ERT gives people the illusion of offering democratic equality and justice before the law. In reality, it forces them to accept the industrialization of rural Ontario against their will, while depleting their wallets and spirit.
What’s at play here is just one aspect of the insidious implementation of the UN’s one-world-government Agenda 21, a blueprint for an anti-prosperity, anti-democratic sustainable development and wealth transfer movement. It uses the cudgel of the massive scientific deception of manmade climate change to clobber and guilt people into phony-green-energy submission. It has them running in circles, looking in vain for democracy and laws to protect their rights.
UPDATES
APRIL 4, 2016 – Wind developer wpd Canada Corporation indeed started clearing trees in preparation for wind turbine construction, despite the fact that the entire project was under appeal.
This work began in areas known to be habitat for the endangered Blandings Turtle; the power developer is continuing even though there are reports that milder weather has resulted in the turtles emerging early from their winter hibernation, and are at great risk.
Vegetation cleared in Prince Edward County Blanding’s Turtle wetland area, while the White Pines project was and still is under appeal. [Photo: APPEC]
…Sylvia Davis, lawyer for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, cited a ruling from over fifty years ago that only a panel of three judges could hear an appeal of this nature.
It became clear at that point that the motion would not be heard until after the legal matter of whether this was properly before the court had been dealt with, with a potentially unfavourable decision.
Rather than spend considerable time and money on legal wrangling the decision was made to withdraw our motion for a stay on all physical activity at the White Pines project site. The motion was withdrawn on consent of all parties and without costs.
We will immediately be going to the Tribunal to once again request a stay.
APRIL 8, 2016 – And then, mirabile dictu, the ERT granted a temporary stay!
Late this afternoon the Environmental Review Tribunal granted a temporary stay of WPD’s Renewable Energy Approval (REA). As a result of the stay all construction work at the project site has been brought to a halt. The Tribunal will schedule a written hearing at a later date to decide on the merits of a more permanent stay.
Ross McKitrick: “Environmental alarmism and the raft of false beliefs”
Dr. Ross McKitrick is a Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, and Research Chair in Energy, Ecology and Prosperity at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He specializes in environmental economics.
Dr. McKitrick spoke (starting at :19) on the topic of Green Conservatism at the Manning Centre Conference in February.
In his brief talk, Dr. McKitrick gives a brilliant, succinct overview of the current absence of rational, logical, empirical evidence-based thinking and planning on the part of the Canadian political class when it comes to the environment and economic policies.
Dr. McKitrick argues that our “very high-level” decision-makers are churning out “extremely distorting” policies based on their false, alarmist environmental beliefs. The results of their scientific illiteracy and ideological alarmism are environmental over-regulation and “green” taxation overkill.
Reading between the lines, we’re in a big, fat, fake-green mess and heading for continued fiscal and economic misery.
The following is a partial transcription (bolding added for emphasis).
On illogical “green” taxes:
The trouble in the Canadian context is, the economic logic only works if they used “instead of,” and not on “on top of” a command-and-control regime….repeal the onerous regulations that we’ve already got in place, like for instance, the Green Energy Act in Ontario, and the federal ethanol mandate, and the proposed coal fadeout in Alberta.
Unless you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and work against those things in a very vocal way, you’re not really in a position to make a credible argument for green taxes in Canada.
Otherwise, it’s just going to be one thing piled on top of another.
On real and imaginary climate graphs:
The mayor of Montreal is so worried about the state of the environment that he’s leading a campaign to block the Energy East pipeline from reaching Montreal, presumably because he thinks that the contents of that pipeline will be damaging to the local environment. He has in mind, I guess, a graph like this, except that it would slope up instead of sloping down, and lots of other graphs, presumably in his imagination, that slope up rather than sloping down.
If you want to see what all the other graphs look like, I’ve put them online at a website called yourenvironment.ca. It’s very easy to navigate. You can look up the complete air quality records for every city in Canada, and lots of other information besides—climate information, CO2 emissions, all sorts of stuff.
On regulatory overkill and pipeline blockades:
Once you get a handle on what’s actually happened to the environment in Canada, you’re going to think the problem is a little different. It’s regulatory overkill.
We’re at a point where we have controlled conventional air pollutants to an extremely low level in Canada, and yet we’re seeing an acceleration of new and extremely distorting policies, including the various attempts to blockade all pipeline development and keep the western fossil fuel reserves in the ground.
On false environmental thinking embedded in high-level decision-makers:
I can only conclude that a lot the decision-makers—and this kind of thinking is embedded at very high levels—have in mind a completely false picture of the Canadian environment. They’ve been convinced that it’s much worse than it is and that the trends are going in different directions.
On irrational, ideological environmental alarmism:
The real target today is environmental alarmism. It’s this irrational but popular ideology that the environment is bad and getting worse, that we face an emergency and that we have to take radical measures.
It’s easy to defeat once you start showing people the data, and it’s easy to defeat if you can get a hearing for the idea that if you get specific about what you’re really talking about, we can measure these things. In fact, we do measure them, and in Canada we have decades and decades worth of measurements. So you can get the discussion on a very rational footing.
On the phony “97% consensus”:
We should encourage people to discuss the science, and we do it in a deep way—and not with the slogans like the “97% consensus,” which is another one of these phony statistics that emerges.
On huge regulatory overkill and unnecessary coal phase-outs:
What we need to do is to get people to think clearly about what it is they are talking about. Are you concerned about air pollution? Well, we have the data on all the major air contaminants. We can measure it, this is what it looks like…It’s not one big thing. It’s a lot of little things and most of them are actually being handled very effectively by our current regulatory systems in Canada.
There isn’t a huge opening to come in with some silver bullet like emission taxes that are going to have a big effect on the state of the environment…
We have a problem of overkill in some areas, including, for instance, the coal phase-out in Ontario. That was a huge overkill in response to the air emissions issue…They didn’t need to phase out those coal-fired power plants. But it’s the alarmism that made it impossible to have that debate at the time.
On “extreme weather” fibs:
When governments start to hauling out the issue of extreme weather, there is nothing mainstream about that kind of science. The mainstream science, including the IPCC, does not draw a connection between greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather events. So, politicians need to be called on that sort of thing.
On climate propaganda and browbeating:
And also, finally, don’t overstate the challenge. I was struck this week by research that came out of Yale University, that even after all these years of propaganda and browbeating, Canadians are roughly evenly-split on whether global warming is mostly anthropogenic, but so is the scientific community…Once you try to move to something more specific than that—like, is it the most? or if it is responsible, is it even a problem?— that’s where that kind of consensus breaks down. So don’t overstate the problem!
On false beliefs:
You need to understand that the problem is actually alarmism, and the raft of false beliefs, and not the need for little tweaks to the tax code.
Watch Dr. McKitrick’s whole presentation here, starting at :19.
Christopher Monckton: I accuse. (You won’t believe who and what!)
Still photo from ideacity video
Must read, must see, must hear!
Christopher Monckton, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, gave an impassioned and hard-hitting talk on the issue of climate change at the ideacity conference in Toronto on June 18, 2014.
READ: Click here to download a PDF transcript, complete with slides: The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley at ideacity, Toronto
WATCH: Click here to see the video of his talk.
An excerpt:
I accuse the world’s news media of failing to report almost any scientific evidence or fact, however relevant, casting doubt upon the party line on climate; in particular –
That the satellites show no global warming at all for 17 years 9 months;
That sea level may not be rising at all;
That global sea ice extent has changed little;
That hurricane intensity, frequency and duration are at their least in half a century;
That floods are not increasing globally;
That the fraction of the world’s land under drought is not increasing;
That wind farms kill rare birds by the million while adding to CO2 emissions;
And that the cost of preventing global warming that is not occurring is 10-100 times that of adapting to its consequences even if it were to occur.
Dirty secrets of the Ontario Liberals’ wind power scam: What you need to know from DownWind, the Sun News documentary
THE ONTARIO LIBERALS’ GREEN ENERGY ACT HAS DONE SERIOUS AND IRREVERSIBLE HARM TO PEOPLE, WILDLIFE, THE ENVIRONMENT
- Rural people in Ontario living in the midst of 50-storey-high industrial wind turbines have been badly hurt, even seriously and irreversibly harmed, with respect to mental and physical health and safety, property values (loss of 10-48% or even 100%), livelihood, way of life, community harmony. Some families have had to leave their homes on the advice of doctors.
- Farmers have noticed that wind turbines drive out earthworms due to electrical surge charges and vibrations. This reduces the quality of the soil. “Food production will go down.”
- The wind turbines’ 800-ton concrete bases, of which some of the material is toxic, go 50 feet down, far enough to hit aquifers.
- Livestock productivity, such as that of dairy cattle, is adversely affected.
- Birds are slaughtered by wind turbines.
THE LIBERALS HAVE PRESIDED OVER ABROGATION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS AND BULLYING BY WIND COMPANIES
- “The provincial government wants these things and they’re going to come no matter what we do.”
- “(As high as) 140-50 storey buildings – you don’t even have that in Toronto. We’re talking 1,800 turbines up and down the shoreline (of Lake Huron), on some of the most productive farmland in all of Ontario. My God, what are you people thinking? Don’t tell us from your condo that the green thing is so great that we’re going to force it on you.”
- The Liberals’ Green Energy Act supersedes/overrides 21 pieces of legislation including the Clean Water Act, acts that protect the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, the Heritage Act.
- All Ontario government ministries have turned a deaf ear to complaints and concerns communicated to “every arm of the Ontario government when they asked for help. The wind companies do whatever they want.”
- The Liberals’ Green Energy Act strips municipalities of their planning powers. More than 80 communities have declared themselves to be unwilling hosts.
THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED AGAINST WIND TURBINE VICTIMS
- Wind turbines “are imposed on people and they are getting no choice. That begs the question of whether it’s Charter-compliant, whether it complies with constitutional principles to put these people through these things without being assured of a certain level of safety. No one should be subjected to a reasonable risk of harm.”
- There have been more than 20 Environmental Review Tribunal hearings of appeals and all of them were dismissed. One was allowed but appealed in Ontario Divisional Court where the wind developer prevailed. “The process they’ve created is so imbalanced and so weighted in favour of the wind turbine companies it’s as if they wrote the legislation. It’s embarrassing.”
LIBERALS GOT IN BED WITH GREEN NGOS, WIND INDUSTRY, BAY STREET LAWYERS TO WRITE THE GREEN ENERGY ACT
- “They all sat down and worked up the language they wanted in the legislation and built a campaign around it. You got the complete package: the PR side, the legislation drafting, the program to re-educate the public service, the whole momentum going, the Toronto Star editorial page cranking out a regular drumbeat – coal bad, wind good.”
WIND POWER IS FAR FROM CLEAN
- “When they talk about displacing coal-fire power plants in Ontario with wind, that’s not actually what happens. As they add wind capacity to the system, they are displacing nuclear and hydro and those are non-emitting sources. And you have to remember that whenever you see a wind turbine, there is a gas-fire power plant running in the background to balance out the load fluctuations. So it’s always a wind and gas combination. They’re replacing emissions-free hydro and nuclear with a combination of wind and gas and we’ll actually end up with higher emissions of pollution …”
- “So you’re paying for a wind turbine to turn, and you’re paying for a gas plant to idle. You’re paying double most of the time. It’s asinine.”
THE LIBERALS HAVE USED JUNK SCIENCE TO MISLEAD THE PUBLIC
- Air pollution levels in Ontario have declined steadily since 1974, but the Liberals claimed in 2009 when the Green Energy Act came into force that there was a rising air pollution crisis. “But they knew perfectly well that air pollution had been trending downward right across the board.”
- Most particulate matter emissions come not from coal power generation, as the Liberals claimed, but from construction, industry, agriculture, and most of all from dust from unpaved roads.
- “There’s no question that there’s been an effort to demonize coal.”
BILLIONS OF YOUR DOLLARS WASTED ON LIBERAL BOONDOGGLES
- Ontario electricity costs are the highest in North America as a result of the Liberals’ Green Energy Act.
- “Wind turbines don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies.”
- They replace power that costs 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) with wind power that costs 13.5 cents per kwh to generate.
- “Nobody was building wind turbines in Ontario until the government started throwing money at it. It’s not cost effective. Wind turbines can’t compete on a wholesale market without a lot of government support.”
- Wind companies get 20-year contracts to sell wind power at far above market rates.
- “The system has to buy power whenever wind companies produce it” whereas standard power producers (nuclear, hydro) have to compete on the wholesale market.
- Ontario lost $1 billion selling excess power in 2013 to neighbouring jurisdictions – “How stupid is that?”
- The cost of the Green Energy Act to date is $4-5 billion, or 70 times the cost of retrofits recommended in 2005, to get equivalent environmental benefits. (Some estimates say the Green Energy Act costs so far are closer to $8 billion.)
- Before the Green Energy Act, Ontario had a few large power plants with the grid optimized to source the power. Now we have “tiny, little unreliable” wind facilities that required a new grid, putting an “extra cost to get something we already had – it increased the costs of having what you had before.”
- “There were far smarter ways of creating energy. If we had done nothing except put the most advanced scrubbers on our coal plants we would actually have had as clean air as we do today.”
THE LIBERALS FAILED TO PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE, OR UPHOLD THEIR FIDUCIARY DUTY
- The Liberal government has to date done no cost benefit analysis, and no health study.
- The much-anticipated Health Canada two-year, $2 million research study of the adverse health effects of wind turbines is due in December of this year. However, it will apparently not establish causation or have conclusive results.
- The 550-metre set-back for siting industrial wind turbines from homes, established by the Ontario government, is arbitrary and was not based on any research.
HYPOCRISY, DISHONESTY
- In her current election campaign ads, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne says she believes “government should be a force for good in people’s lives.” In her campaign she claims “I believe there is only one good reason to enter politics, and that is to help people,” yet the documentary showed her not to have had the basic decency to stop to listen when she was approached by industrial wind turbine victim Norma Schmidt.
FLAGRANT CONFLICT OF INTEREST – LIBERAL FRIENDS CASHING IN
- Mike Crawley, erstwhile president of the Ontario Liberal party, a former senior aide to former premier Dalton McGuinty, was at the same time CEO of a major wind developer that was proposing four or five projects in Ontario. In 2004 he was awarded a contract worth $475 million, in addition to others.
FEAR AND COWARDICE – INDUSTRY INSIDERS ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT
- People in the system have not dared to speak out.
- “There were people in the power generation sector who understood that the government numbers were not correct and did not add up, but they were effectively muzzled. The people that work in the power sector know that this is a crazy system. These wind farms are displacing hydro-electricity, which is just a waste on every level. The hydro-electricity plants don’t generate any air pollution emissions. They give us reliable, predictable base load power and now we let (them) sit idle.”
- “So people who work in the sector, they can see what is going on and they know that this is a waste but for understandable reasons they are not about to make a big noise about it because they could lose their jobs if they do.”
- “Our electricity system, to the people that run it, has become a joke, and they dare not raise a finger to oppose it.”
- “The electricity industry professionals will see the wasted generation … and their response is ‘so long as we have a blank cheque to keep the lights on, it’s all good.’ “
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There is much, much more to learn and be alarmed and outraged about in this documentary film, which runs 1 hour, 36 minutes and may be purchased for $9.99 and downloaded.
UPDATE: The full documentary Down Wind is now available on YouTube. Click here.
THE LIBERALS “HAVE GOT TOO MUCH INVESTED TO ADMIT THE ERROR”
In the upcoming Ontario election on June 12, any vote for the Liberals would appear to be one in favour of propping up a government that has proven itself to be working to enrich its cronies with the province’s treasure, not one that is interested in the welfare of the people it is mandated to serve, or in nurturing the economic health of the province.
Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has promised to repeal the Green Energy Act if elected.
The Global Warming Doctrine and its phoney planetary emergency
We carry on connecting the dots: back from the economically-useless, environmentally-destructive, socially-corrupting industrial wind turbine in your backyard to the origins of the ideology that is continuing to blind, deafen and dumb down the Ontario Liberal government as it stumbles and bumbles with its failed, billion-dollar boondoggle of an alternative energy program.
In the brilliant speech below (with bold emphases and links added) given to the World Federation of Scientists in August 2012, then President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, discusses the economic consequences of the bogus science and the zealous ideology and propaganda of man-made global warming:
The real problem is not climate or global warming, but the Global Warming Doctrine and its consequences. They may eventually bring us close to a real planetary emergency. Absolutely unnecessarily, without any connection with global temperature. The arrogance with which the global-warming alarmists and their fellow-travellers in politics and the media present their views is appalling. They want to suppress the market, they want to control the whole of society, they want to dictate prices (directly or indirectly by means of various interventions, including taxes), they want to “use” the market.Continue reading to understand that the malevolent factors outlined in this speech are the same ones that have influenced the Wynne/McGuinty failures and driven Ontario straight into its current scandalous economic, environmental and social quagmire.
=======================================================
The Man-made Contribution to Global Warming Is Not a Planetary Emergency
Magistral Lecture to the World Federation of Scientists
Erice, Sicily, August, 2012
by Václav Klaus, President, Czech Republic
MANY THANKS for the invitation to attend your conference and to speak here. I appreciate that a mere politician, a former economist, has been invited to address this well-known gathering of highly respected scientists. If I understand it correctly, this year’s seminar is devoted to the discussion of the role of science and of “planetary emergencies”.
To the first topic, I want to say very clearly that I don’t see a special role for science which would be different from doing science. I have, of course, in mind “normal science”, not a “post-normal science” whose ambitions are very often connected with political activism. The role of scientists is not in speculating on the probabilities of events that cannot be directly measured and tested, nor in promoting a pseudo scientific “precautionary principle”, nor in engaging in activities which are the proper function not of scientists but of risk managers.
To the second topic, I have to say that as a conservatively-minded person, I am unaware of any forthcoming “planetary emergency”, with the exception of those potential situations which would be the consequences of human failures – of human fanaticism, of false pride, and of lack of modesty. But these are problems of political systems and of ideologies.
This brings me to the topic of my speech. I will try to argue that current as well as realistically foreseeable global warming, and especially Man’s contribution to it, is not a planetary emergency which should bother us.
I am not a climatologist, but the IPCC and its leading spokespersons are not climatologists either. I am content to be a consumer of climatology and its related scientific disciplines. In this respect, I am located – in the economic jargon – on the demand side of climatology, not on the supply side.
There are many distinguished scientists here, and some of them are on the other side. I have no intention to break into their fields of study. By expressing my doubts about a simple causal relationship between human CO2 emissions and climate, I do not have the slightest ambition to support one or another competing scientific hypothesis concerning the factors leading to global warming (or eventually cooling).
Nevertheless, my reading both of the available data and of conflicting scientific arguments and theories allows me to argue that it is not global warming caused by human activity that is threatening us.
My views about this issue have been expressed in a number of speeches and articles in the last couple of years all over the world. The book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” [1] has already been published in 18 languages, last month even in Indonesian. The subtitle of the book asks, “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” The real problem is not climate or global warming, but the Global Warming Doctrine and its consequences. They may eventually bring us close to a real planetary emergency. Absolutely unnecessarily, without any connection with global temperature.
This doctrine, as a set of beliefs, is an ideology, if not a religion. [2] It lives independently on the science of climatology. Its disputes are not about temperature, but are part of the “conflict of ideologies”. Temperature is used and misused in these disputes. The politicians, the media and the public – misled by the very aggressive propaganda produced by the adherents of the global warming doctrine – do not see this. It is our task to help them to distinguish between what is science and what is ideology.
Believers in the global warming doctrine have not yet presented its authoritative text, its manifesto. One of the reasons is that no one wants to be explicitly connected with it. Another is that to put such a text together would be difficult because this doctrine is not a monolithic concept which can be easily summarized. Its subject matter does not belong to any single science. It presents itself as a flexible, rather inconsistent, loosely connected cascade of arguments, which is why it has quite successfully escaped the scrutiny of science. It comfortably dwells in the easy and self-protecting world of false interdisciplinarity which is really a nondisciplinarity, it is an absence of discipline.
My reading of this new incarnation of environmentalism can be summarized in the following way:
1. It starts with the claim that there is an undisputed and undisputable, empirically confirmed, statistically significant, global, not local, warming;
2. It continues with the argument that the time series of global temperature exhibit a growing trend which dominates their cyclical and random components. This trend is supposed to be nonlinear, perhaps exponential;
3. This trend is declared to be dangerous for the people (in the eyes of “soft” environmentalists) or for the planet (by “deep” environmentalists);
4. This temperature growth is postulated as a solely or chiefly man-made phenomenon attributable to growing emissions of CO2 from industrial activity and the use of fossil fuels;
5. The sensitivity of global temperature to even small variations in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is supposed to be very high;
6. Exponents of the global warming doctrine promise us a solution: the ongoing temperature increase can be reversed by radical reduction in CO2 emissions [3];
7. They also know how to bring about their solution: they want to organize emissions reduction by means of the institutions of “global governance”. They forget to tell us that this is not possible without undermining democracy, the independence of individual countries, human freedom, economic prosperity and a chance to eliminate poverty in the world;
8. They rely on the undefined and undefinable “precautionary principle”. Cost benefit analysis is not relevant to them.
This simple scheme can be, undoubtedly, improved, extended, supplemented or corrected in many ways, but I believe its basic structure is fair and correct.
I do not believe in any one of these eight articles of faith and I am not alone. There are many natural scientists and also social scientists, especially economists, who do not believe in them either. The problem is that most genuine scientists do science and are not willing to discuss this doctrine in the public space.
An additional problem is that natural scientists and social scientists do not talk to each other. They only come into contact with self-proclaimed interdisciplinarists who are very often mere dealers in second-hand ideas. Social scientists, in particular, tend to be silenced by seemingly authoritative statements that “the science is settled”, while natural scientists assume a priori that there is nothing “hard” in the social sciences.
Politicians – after having abandoned other ideologies – heartily welcomed this new one. They became rapidly convinced that playing the global warming card is an easy game to play, at least in the short or medium run. They hoped the voters would appreciate their caring about issues more serious than the next elections. The problem is that the politicians (to say nothing about the media) do not take into consideration the long-term consequences and costs of measures demanded by this doctrine.
How to make a change? I dare say that science itself will not make the change, regardless of its achievements. The Global Warming Doctrine is not based on science. Accordingly, scientific debate itself cannot bring it into disrepute. The course of the worldwide global warming debate more or less confirms this elementary methodological argument. Serious scientific research continues to bring us new pieces of knowledge almost on a daily basis, but it has not brought and will not bring us any decisive breakthrough in the public debate on this topic. Climate is a complex system. In spite of the dreams of believers in general systems theory, any scientific discovery concerning this topic will always be only a partial one.
Can a decisive change come as a result of new empirical data? I doubt it. It is evident that the current temperature data confirm neither the alarmist and apocalyptic views of the believers in the GWD, nor their quasi-scientific hypotheses about the exclusivity of the relationship between CO2 and temperature. The world has not warmed for the last 15 years, but that is too short to shatter the whole carefully built edifice of the global warming doctrine. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that some of us have been arguing that a century in climatology is too short to prove the ongoing global warming as a new long-term trend. That is why, for the sake of symmetry, we must accept that a decade is not sufficient to do the opposite.
Discussing technicalities in more and more depth will not help us, because the supporters of the global warming doctrine are not interested in them. We are not dealing with people who are authentically interested in science, in objective truth, in identifying the causes of incremental changes in temperature. For them, the temperature data are just an instrument in their plans to change the world, to suppress human freedom, to bring people back to underdevelopment. Their ideas are the ideas of ideologues, not of scientists or climatologists. Data and theories, however sophisticated, will not change their views.
I mentioned my economic background. Let me turn attention to what the field of economics – with all of its internal disagreements – says to that:
1. Economists believe in the rationality and efficiency of the spontaneous decisions of millions of individuals. They believe in “the wisdom of people” rather than in the wisdom of governments and of their scientific advisors. They do not deny that market failures happen, but they have many reasons to argue that government failures are bigger and much more dangerous than market failures. They consider that jumping on the bandwagon of the global warming doctrine is an example of a serious government failure which undermines markets, human freedom and human prosperity;
2. Economists, at least since Frederic Bastiat, have considered it their duty to warn policymakers against unintended consequences and against failing to differentiate between what is seen and what is not seen;
3. Economists have at their disposal a rather developed subdiscipline called “energy economics”. They know something about scarcity, as well as about prices, and they have to warn governments against playing with them.
4. Economists believe in rational risk-aversion, not in the precautionary principle;
5. Economists are aware of externalities and have worked with them for a long time. It is their own concept: it was not discovered by environmentalists. They consider it dangerous in unqualified hands. After decades of studying it, they do not see the world as full of negative externalities a priori;
6. Economists base their thinking about intertemporal events on a rather sophisticated concept of discounting. It was the misunderstanding of discounting in the climatologic modeling that brought me into the subject of global warming some years ago;
7. Economists have some undeniable experience with the analysis of time series. Statistical and econometric methods used in economic analysis are full of sophisticated models not used in natural sciences, because these are based mostly on the analysis of crosssection data samples. They know something about the problems with the imperfect quality of data, about measurement errors, about data mining, about the precariousness of all kinds of averages and other statistical characteristics. They also have some experience with computer modelling in complex systems, with pseudocorrelations, with the sensitivity of parameter adjustments, etc. For that reason they are convinced they have the right to comment on the statistical analyses of climatologists. [4]
Based on all that:
First, economists do not see the outcome of the cost-benefit comparisons of CO2 emission reductions as favourably as the adherents of the global warming doctrine. They know that energy demand and supply patterns change only slowly. They see the very high degree of stability of the relationship between manmade carbon dioxide emissions, economic activity and emissions intensity, and possess no hypothesis for expecting a radical shift in this relationship. Emissions intensity (as a macro phenomenon) moves only very slowly and does not make miracles. The very robust relationship between CO2 emissions and the rate of economic growth is here, and is here to stay.
If somebody wants to reduce CO2 emissions, he must either expect a revolution in economic efficiency (which determines emissions intensity) or start organizing a world-wide economic decline. Revolutions in economic efficiency – at least in relevant time horizons – have never been realized in the past and will not happen in the future either. It was the recent financial and economic crisis, not a technological miracle or preaching by the IPCC, that brought about a slight – and probably temporary – reduction in CO2 emissions. The GWD adherents should explain to the people world-wide that to achieve their plans economic decline is inevitable.
Secondly, the relationships studied in natural sciences are not influenced by subjective valuations of the variables in question, nor by any rational (or irrational) behaviour, nor by the fact that people make choices. In social or behavioural sciences, it is more difficult. To make rational choices means to pay attention to inter-temporal relationships and to look at opportunity costs. It is evident that by assuming a very low, near-zero discount rate the proponents of the global warming doctrine neglect the issue of time and of alternative opportunities.
A low discount rate used in global warming models means harming current generations (vis à vis future generations). Undermining current economic development harms future generations as well. Economists representing very different schools of thought, from W. Nordhaus at Yale [5] to K. M. Murphy at Chicago [6], tell us convincingly that the discount rate – indispensable for any intertemporal calculations – should be around the market rate, around 5%, and that it should be close to the real rate of return on capital, because only that rate reflects the true opportunity cost of climate mitigation.
We should not accept claims that by adopting low discount rates we “protect the interests of future generations”, [7] or that opportunity costs are irrelevant because in the case of global warming “the problem of choice does not exist” (p. 104). This uneconomic or perhaps anti-economic way of thinking must never be accepted.
Thirdly, as someone who personally experienced central planning and attempts to organize the whole of society from one place, I feel obliged to warn against the arguments and ambitions of the believers in the global warming doctrine. Their arguments and ambitions are very similar to those we used to live with decades ago under Communism. The arrogance with which the global-warming alarmists and their fellow-travellers in politics and the media present their views is appalling. They want to suppress the market, they want to control the whole of society, they want to dictate prices (directly or indirectly by means of various interventions, including taxes), they want to “use” the market. I agree with Ray Evans that we experience the “Orwellian use of the words ‘market’ and ‘price’ to persuade people to accept a control over their lives” [8]. All the standard economic arguments against such attempts should be repeated. It is our duty to do it.
To conclude, I agree with many serious climatologists who say that the warming we may expect will be very small. I agree with Bob Carter and other scientists that it is difficult “to prove that the human effect on the climate can be measured” because “this effect is lost in the variability of natural climate changes” [9]. Provided that there are no irrational attempts to mitigate the human effect on global temperature, the economic losses connected with the warming we may expect will be very small. The loss generated as a result of the completely useless fight against global warming would be far greater.
Footnotes
[1] Klaus, V.: Modrá, nikoli zelená planeta: Co je ohroženo, klima nebo svoboda?, Praha, Dokořán, 2007; English version: Blue Planet in Green Shackles, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington DC, 2008. Italian version: Pianeta blu, non verde, IBL Libri, Torino, 2009.
[2] I was recently in California. In my hotel room Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” was next to the Bible.
[3] This is what Ray Evans calls „The Theory of Climate Control“, Quadrant, No. 3, 2008.
[4] I would like to mention at least R. McKitrick and S. McIntyre and their attack on the bastion of the GWD, on the so called „hockey stick“.
[5] A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies, Yale University Press, June 2008
[6] Some Simple Economics of Climate Changes, paper presented to the MPS General Meeting in Tokyo, September 8, 2008
[7] M. Dore: “A Question of Fudge”, World Economics, January–February 2009, p. 100
[8] The Chilling Costs of Climate Catastrophism, Quadrant, June 2008
[9] Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, New York City, March 2009, p. 23. Professor Carter’s arguments are more developed in his book “Climate: The Counter Consensus”, Stacey International, London, 2010
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