Last week we raised what is starting to feel like a recurring topic: whether it matters to alarmists and their audience when they’re wrong. Because in exiting Mark Carney’s Canadian federal cabinet in a huff over the Memorandum of Misunderstanding that pretends to make a pipeline from landlocked Alberta to the Pacific a possibility, former scofflaw former Environment and Climate Change Minister (reduced to Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages, Minister and Nature and Parks Canada, as well as his “Lieutenant in Quebec”) Steven Guilbeault wrote “Over the past ten years, our country has made historic progress in reducing climate pollution”. But it hasn’t. And a big problem in government, not only in Canada, is precisely that politicians are so isolated from bad news by an elaborate PR system that portrays everything, however trivial or unsuccessful, as a historical achievement, that they have very little idea that they have lapsed into obvious absurdity.

At CDN we are not naifs. We expect politicians to be blatherskites. But we wish there were some limits. Instead Guilbeault’s colleague Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who apparently earned promotion to that post due to his facility as Minister of Industry in handing huge no-strings subsidies to EV battery-makers who promptly went bust or invested the money in the United States, prated that Guilbeault was a “great friend” who “has contributed in many ways to our country and will continue to do so” but “I think Canadians understand the world has changed.”

Uh changed how? Surely in the view of such persons as F-P Champagne and S. Guilbeault, what has changed is that the weather has become spectacularly worse due to evil human “carbon pollution”, thus making it ever clearer that the alarmist position is correct and that getting rid of the stuff is mega-vital, not suddenly dispensable because of some vague changely change.

Now the subtext might be that with a spendthrift like Champagne fronting for a spendthrift like Mark Carney, the economy had better be able to deliver tax revenue at a speed not seen in generations so never mind that silly old burning planet. But it does depend on that latter position, which is hardly one a person who believes truth is true could take.

Seriously, haven’t the Guilbeaults, Champagnes and Carneys been yelling at us for decades that Canadians, like everyone else, can see the ravages of climate change just by looking out their window if the frost isn’t too thick? Why, the PM himself Xed out that:

“Steven Guilbeault’s leadership to advance sustainability has consistently shaped a more hopeful horizon for future generations. As Prime Minister, I have been deeply grateful for his counsel and contributions to our new government, which shares his fundamental commitment to climate ambition and climate competitiveness for Canada.”

Oh it does, does it? So how has the world changed? Or is it just talk?

This question brings us to a strange piece in Canada’s National Post, in which veteran pundit Kelly McParland quotes former Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, a professional alarmist, on the ongoing urgent crisis. In the runup to COP30 and as her “third and final report as chair of the grandly named United Nations High-Level Expert Group on the Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities” and we’re all glad if it’s really the last, she said:

“Climate isn’t going away … it’s getting worse all the time.”

No indeed. Climate isn’t going away. We confidently predict it will continue to exist. In fact it’s all around us. It is what’s all around us. Where would it go? But never mind that such people frequently lack the power of coherent speech as they seek to reshape our destinies. What’s interesting is McParland’s comment that:

“McKenna is a climate change warrior, and each of her assertions may be entirely accurate. What’s up for grabs is her conclusion: that now, more than ever, the world needs to forge ahead with the same battles, along the same lines, using the same tactics that have been followed for decades now.”

Hang on. What do you mean “may be entirely accurate”? Are they or aren’t they? It’s kind of important to the story. Or so you ‘d think. Didn’t you check?

Referring to the aforementioned Memorandum McParland says:

“Carney’s climate credentials aren’t seriously open to question. Even McKenna concedes that ‘Mark Carney knows more about climate than almost anyone.’ The agreement suggests Carney doesn’t see the pact as a betrayal of climate orthodoxy so much as an understanding that years of environmental summits and anti-industrial policy haven’t achieved their desired goals, and that continuing to make the economy pay heavily in productivity, growth and investment isn’t the best way to get better results.”

The idea that Carney “knows more about climate than anyone” is laughable: we’ve never heard him say anything rational about the science, the past history of the planet, or much of anything else. But to make the suggestion then proceed to note that all the policies he has pushed for 20 years are wasteful failures piles on the absurdity even higher.

This weird column goes on:

“Climate activists have no one but themselves to blame for the changed approach. For years, they’ve built a crusade on forecasts of doom. Their favoured terminology has elevated the situation from a challenge to a crisis to an emergency to an ‘existential threat.’ Cold winters result from a ‘polar vortex.’ Hot summer days are a heat emergency. Heavy rain comes from ‘atmospheric rivers.’ Scare tactics can be effective at times but tend to fade with repetition. A 2024 report from the non-profit Environics Institute found that over a five-year period from 2019, climate fears slid down the ranks of top concerns expressed by Canadians.”

But but but… if it is a crisis, emergency or existential threat and they see that it is, they’d be irresponsible morons not to predict doom if we don’t do something. And scare tactics don’t “fade with repetition” if what they’re warning of is real. Churchill, for instance, was vindicated not sidelined over the Nazi menace because… wait for it… it was real. Whereas Canadians are increasingly blasé about “climate fears” not because they’ve decided burning up while choking and drowning wouldn’t be so bad, but because they do not believe it is happening.

It all hinges on this crucial question that just seems to bore insiders, namely whether what is being said by climate alarmists is true, or whether what is being said by their critics is true.