A recent poll finds that what most worries Canadians about climate change is the possible loss of food security. Which suggests that Greta Thunberg, Peter Kalmus, Paul Ehrlich and that crowd are doing a pretty good job of scaring people away from sober scientific inquiry on climate, since any rational examination of agriculture in the famously northern and chilly Canada shows, first, that we have somehow been increasing food production at an impressive rate all through the decades of our never-ending climate breakdown and, second, that nevertheless, except in our southernmost regions we suffer troublingly short growing seasons and harsh winters, not endless heat. Just look at the great American farm states south of our narrow strip of productive land, where it is… warmer and sunnier and crops pour forth in staggering bounty. Yet those Canucks who merely eat the stuff instead of growing it apparently now look at a wheat field or orchard in autumn and pray for snow to ruin the harvest, before complaining of rising food prices.

Even the Canadian government, which commissioned the survey, knows the result is bunk. At least to the extent that a “government” can be regarded as a unified entity with one view on anything, which should not be taken too far. But as Blacklock’s Reporter noted in reporting on this in-house survey by Health Canada (and why Health Canada is studying Canadians’ fears of climate change rather than, say, working to shorten waiting lists is an open question), “The Department of Agriculture in a 2014 report Crop Sector Foresight Exercise predicted an extended growing season due to climate change would likely result in bigger harvests and more varied crops.”

Indeed, Blacklock’s quotes from that study that after the usual fear-mongering, the authors blurted out the obvious:

“Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns will open up new areas to cultivation and eliminate others. In Canada climate change is expected to result in different invasive species and increase weather variability. As well, a longer growing season coupled with shorter-season varieties will allow expansion of production of crops such as corn and soybeans in Western Canada.”

The Health Canada survey also found that Canadians’ fears regarding climate change include “’natural disasters’ (cited by 18 percent), ‘the future of my family’ (16 percent), the inevitability of climate change (9 percent)” which seems a bit circular and, our favourite bit and probably Peter Kalmus’s as well, “earth dying”, reported by 8 percent.

Had we been asked the survey we might have picked the last option as a protest vote over the generally inane tone of the poll. But in case people really meant it, we have to suppose that some irresponsible morons really convinced one in 12 people in Canada, and probably many other countries as well, that if the planet warms by another degree or two it will literally become a lifeless hulk, and that the whole Gaian biosphere will turn brown and perish. If so these people really need to look at the state of the Earth back in the Eocene or the Cretaceous or something. And also at the ominous drop of atmospheric CO2 to 180 ppm during the Last Glacial Maximum, just 30 ppm above the level at which all older C3 photosynthesis plants really would die, including all the trees, though even then life would find a way. Without us, quite possibly, whereas if the planet warms by 2 degrees we won’t just survive, in Canada we’ll have more productive farms and a much more varied 100-mile diet.

As any fool could figure out if the supposed experts weren’t hollering contrary rubbish and silencing dissent.