- An outfit called “Possible” tells British drivers it would save them as much as €150 to give up their cars for a month, and for good measure offers a mystery prize draw. And our sarcastic take on it is… nothing. We’re skeptical of the savings (otherwise people would have discovered them on their own) and doubt the prizes would be our cup of tea. But when some idiots are out there blocking roads and attacking art and historical artefacts, and another is using creativity and persuasion, we are very much on the side of the latter.
- Further to climate change being so omnipotent and mysterious that it can even kill bees who aren’t even dying, an alert reader sends us a link to a terrific John Stossel takedown of the media tendency toward utter, un-self-correcting credulity on environmental scares that help fill the coffers of environmental organizations including the beegone one.
- As Orwell said, he who controls the past controls the present. So back in 2009 in that series of scandalous leaked emails, Kenneth Richard at Climate Change Dispatch reminds us the gatekeepers of orthodoxy at HadCRUT discussed taking 0.15°C out of the 1940s warming trend so as to stop people asking “why the blip”. And sure enough, without a hint of shame or embarrassment, they have slowly but surely adjusted temperature in the 1940s by a figure that now reaches… uh… 0.15°C. Downward, as we do not need to add. Just as we do not need to add that they have also adjusted more recent temperatures… upward. But we do anyway. It’s the old joke about man-made warming… and not in a scientifically good way.
- A trend to nowhere: thanks to the diligent, arguably obsessive “Ottawa Weather Records” account we learn that May 17 was “Ottawa’s 43rd consecutive day with maximum temperature ≥ 5°C. This is the longest run before May 18 in 19 years, since May 17th, 2005.” So boiling hot and getting worse? Not remotely. On the leaderboard of runs of days above 5°C prior to May 18, 2024 is in 16th place since 1872, with the Top 10 being 1922 and 2001 tied for 10th, 1991, 1915, 1999, 1968, 1998, 1945, 1902, 1953 and in first, 1910. More proof that there’s always been weather.
- From the governed by idiots file, Canada’s Environment and Climate Change minister lectures us and the Commons environment committee pompously that “I will be the first one to recognize it is complex. If you want simple answers, I am sorry. There is no simple answer when it comes to climate change or modeling.” This from the man who is forever saying the situation is simple… as he immediately did with “Carbon pricing works. This has never been clearer.” Whereupon he totally botched the math, claiming “Carbon pricing alone accounts for around a third of emission reductions expected in Canada” according to “complex statistical calculations” only promptly to attribute a very precise 73 million tonnes of emission reductions since 2019 to the tax, including 19 million tonnes in 2022. But it turned out the total claimed reduction that year was 19 million (how they would know what would have happened otherwise we leave to the mysteries of models) and the carbon tax only explained a third of it. Clear?
- One of Guilbeault’s assistant deputy ministers, and if high-ranking bureaucrats were money Canada’s government would not be running deficits, then had to try to explain to the Senate national finance committee that things are complex in a simple way. First, “It is impossible to perfectly disaggregate the contribution of any individual measure because the measures all work together”. But second, “our current best analysis is carbon pricing, both the fuel charge and the industrial pricing systems across Canada, are contributing and will contribute approximately a third of the overall emission reductions we are seeing today and that we project in the future.” As to how they arrived at that “best analysis,” um uh “I am not able to give you, to identify sort of a ranked list of which are the most significant. The overall approach is designed to work together.” With what? And if so, why are our emissions rising?
- Another assistant deputy minister, from Natural Resources, told the same Senate finance committee that it would take forever, give or take, to plant the 2 billion crucial trees promised in 2019 for just $5.9 billion. “We had initial projections and we continue to calibrate those,” which is how bureaucrats say we’re making it up on the fly. And then he added that with climate breakdown urgent they’re sauntering ahead: “The major emissions reductions will be sort of toward 2050 as opposed to in the next few years.” Sort of. Because they finally figured out that trees start small and grow over a while. Sort of. (They now claim they’ve planted 553 million, including ones they haven’t planted yet, which even the Environment Commissioner doubts, and Canada has 318 billion sort of so who cares anyway?
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29 May 2024 | News Roundup
"Canada’s Environment and Climate Change minister..." This evokes memories of Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit. How long before leviathan swells to encompass more and more of existence such that we "need" a Ministry of Constipation or a Ministry of Disinformation related to the Color Blue?
On a similar note, the state of Victoria in Australia has recently appointed a parliamentary secretary for men's behaviour change.