- Meet the new boss: Canada’s supposed pivot away from wacky wokeness and green zealotry to productivity and balanced energy continues to flop, including putting the new “nation-building project” bureaucracy in the hands of the former CEO and current chair of the state-owned Trans Mountain Corporation which oversaw completion of the absurdly expensive Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. Who also seems to have the official Ottawa habit of excessive, even unlawful, secrecy about public affairs. Just the sort of socialized-corporate insider you want to restore investor confidence.
- China watch: we mentioned last week that fatuous western enthusiasts for the Communists in Beijing supposedly pivoting toward green energy never talk about how much of China’s total energy consumption is actually from renewables. Well, Willis Eschenbach took a look at solar, and its share is, of course, feeble.
- From the “science isn’t settled and should not be” file we bring you a Newsweek item “Solar Flares More Than 6 Times Hotter Than Thought as 50-Year-Puzzle Solved”. And they seem chuffed that “The findings challenge prior assumptions in solar physics and suggest that ions are heated far more intensely than electrons during solar flares.” So let’s see them express similar enthusiasm that, say “Arctic Ice Not Melting As Thought”. Um guys? Are you there? (Oh, and Scientific American says “A Cosmic Void May Be Skewing Our Understanding of the Universe/ Our understanding of cosmology hinges on how well we know our own local universe, which remains poorly mapped and poorly understood”. But nothing of the sort appears to trouble them on climate.)
- So Trump was right? We ask because The Atlantic “Weekly Planet” runs a sob story about a guy who quit FEMA for a private disaster-relief position in protest at Donald Trump’s arbitrary anti-science meanness, only to encounter higher pay, greater job security and more meaningful work. Isn’t it awful?
- National Geographic informs us, or something, that “Are these cities ready to become climate havens? In the future, cities that survive climate change could be full of green spaces, smart buildings, and compact neighborhoods.” Cities that survive climate change? And not to be obtuse, but weren’t medieval cities full of green spaces, smart buildings given available materials which often forced people to rely more on brains and less on technology, and also compact neighbourhoods?
- Last week we also ridiculed recycled claims of the imminent collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, along with the West Antarctic ice sheet. So let us here mention Matthew Wielicki’s refutation of the former, on the classic boring actual-science basis that real-world data shows no evidence of this calamity that keeps happening inside computer models designed to predict it. As Wielicki also points out, as someone with multiple peer-reviewed publications under his belt, the key paper misrepresents one important source and totally omits two others and the peer reviewers winked and passed it anyway.
- Also, Canada’s hapless “Two Billion Tree” program has fallen slightly short, though only by 89 percent, at a cost Blacklock’s Reporter reports is a quarter-billion tax dollars and counting. But they’re pleased with themselves: “To date over 228 million trees have been planted representing important progress,” according to the Department of Natural Resources. Progress toward what? Bloviation? “The government remains committed to restoring and conserving nature and biodiversity. Nature is part of Canada’s identity.” However they also claimed two years ago that “two billion” was just some nice-sounding words that would inspire people, not a real target. (Also the Canadian Meteorological Association said you’d need 10 billion mature trees to offset our carbon emissions, though possibly they didn’t know either.) But at least it’s employing 50 or so bureaucrats not to get the job done.
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Tidbits
10 Sep 2025 | News Roundup
Canada’s 2 Billion tree program…..Canada’s existing 300 billion trees sprout about 2 billion saplings per year all on their own, putting to shame the multi-year government program of 2 billion in a decade…. Just to state the numbers….
Total Anthropogenic Canadian CO2 emissions are 700 megatonnes (700 x 10^9 Kg) per year.
That’s 190 megatonnes (190 x 10 ^9 Kg) of Carbon atoms. Canada has 300 billion trees (300 x 10 ^ 9 trees).
Dry wood is about 50% carbon atoms by weight in its cellulose and lignin.
So Canada’s entire C emissions are offset by growth of 1.3 Kg of wood per tree per year. In addition, oceans absorb about half of human worldwide emissions…so each of Canada’s trees only has to grow by .65 Kg of wood to offset the entire population’s CO2 emissions.
You will hear other views, such as :
1) “Forests are net zero because new growth offsets tree death by old age”….this basically denies that trees grow by several KG per year. Check the trees in the park…
2) “Forest Fires…” Canada’s Boreal zone is about 550 million hectares, of which about 28 million hectares is declared forest fire zone annually. So about 5 %….its not even close to 5% if you use satellite imagery. But this 5% is replaced by annual new-growth-carbon-sequestering trees within a decade.
3) “The forestry industry clear-cuts everywhere…”. Well, forest fires consume about 4 times as much forest as commercial lumbering, so lumbering is actually a minor component to consider.
So basically Canada is in a very good position with regards to justifying being a low emissions country. Our boreal forest and the rocks of the Canadian Shield likely sequester 2 or 3 times what our population emits. Add to that the entire shutdown of Canada’s coal fired power plants, Canada’s use of hydro dams and nuclear electric plants, forestry companies planting new trees when they cut….and the whole Canadian carbon emissions situation isn’t even something that can be considered a problem by a logical person.
Trudeau's "Values-driven" replacement is using “nation-building project” as his criteria for projects that get to perhaps bypass the regulatory and stakeholder purgatory effectively criminalizing everything else crossing provincial borders. This presupposes that all non qualifying construction proposals are not a “nation-building project”. His Eminence declares his chosen projects tomorrow. Any bets that there will be any pipelines for "non decarbonized" hydrocarbons in the mix?
I calculated the amount of CO2 sequestered by Canada's forest in the following manner but come to similar answer. In one of the UK's Royal Society reports it estimates that each hectare of woodland sequesters 10 tonnes of CO2 per year. So for Canada with a shorter growing season and more common forest fires let’s assume each hectare sequestered only 5 tonnes per year. Canada has 362 million hectares of forest and that will therefore sequester over 1800 million tonnes of CO2 annually. Canada emits approx 700 million tonnes per year so voila Canada is not just carbon neutral but we could be selling credits to the world.