Calling all Canadians: Check your climate’s context

Back in my halcyon days, i.e. long before “global warming” aka “climate change” – aka whatever the dedicated “we must de-carbonize now” activists and advocates are calling it this week – crossed my radar, it did not even occur to me to give a second thought to or to question the message(s) being relayed by the MSM from “the experts”.

I’d certainly never heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or its “primary client”, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – although I had heard of the “Kyoto Protocol”, if only because by 2008, the former leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, Stéphane Dion had wrapped himself in the “Kyoto” flag (and, as I had noted previously, named his dog, Kyoto).

Dion’s proposed “green shift” policies may or may not have caused him and his party to lose the 2008 Federal election to Stephen Harper; but suffice it to say, they did not serve him well. Nor should they have, considering that such policies could not have derived from any academic or experiential expertise he might have acquired which would enable him to assess the so-called “science” on which the “human generated CO₂ is the primary culprit” Kyoto Protocol was allegedly based.

That being said, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that during his 2004-2006 stint as Canada’s Environment Minister Dion may well have decided to dedicate himself to “the Cause” – on the strength of assertions from bureaucrats within his Ministry and/or the alarming (and equally unsubstantiated) narratives from David Suzuki and other lobbyists.

One such lobbyist might well have been BC’s recently-minted Member of the Provincial Legislature, representing the BC Green Party (while holding on to his “objective and transparent” IPCC hat), Andrew <climate change is a barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles> Weaver who in those days was busy flogging what came to be known as BC’s Climate Change Act (many provisions of which are remarkably similar to those of the equally hastily passed – and equally unexamined – U.K. Climate Change Act).

As I had noted not too long ago, one of the seeds of Weaver’s activism masquerading as “evidence-based policy”, has subsequently blossomed into Wastelandia. But I digress …

I can well imagine that Dion may well have been convinced by Michael Mann’s greatest misrepresentation of ’em all, i.e. the “creation” [h/t Joelle Gergis] of his hockey-stick icon. To be fair, Dion may not have been alone in his gullibility and/or failure to conduct his own personal “due diligence” on this issue (and/or many others!) before recognizing that he may well have been tilting at windmills, in his earlier dreaming of the impossible dream on the sunny (but catastrophic) side of the street, so to speak!

Nonetheless, this did not stop Dion from echoing the UNFCCC’s ill-conceived calls to action during his candidacy for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Perhaps as a precursor to his ill-fated “green shift” sloganeering, during this 2006 leadership campaign, Dion’s hopes for change included:

Dion admits Liberals’ Kyoto goal impossible

Mr. Dion, a candidate for the Liberal leadership, said that if he became prime minister after an election next year, he would try to reduce emissions, which are thought to contribute to global warming.

[…] Everyone is saying target, target. But … it is to be more than to reach a target. It’s to change the economy. It’s to have resource productivity, energy efficiency when we know that energy will be the next crisis for the economy of the world.”

[…]

Mr. Dion advocates binding commitments for industry to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions through a domestic trading system. Companies able to cut their emissions below target levels could then sell credits […] he is also working on environmental tax reform and would put the environment at the centre of government. “All my ministries will be green. Maybe I’ll make one department of industry and the environment — a department of sustainability. That’s not a commitment, but if you want to change the mind, you have to change structures.” [emphasis added -hro]

For the record, if I was aware of Mann’s notorious icon, prior to very gingerly stepping onto the battlefield of the “climate wars” circa early November 2009, it did not register. More likely, whenever this brochure might have landed in my snail-mailbox, it was dutifully dropped (unexamined) into the conveniently located recycling bin – along with all the other junk mail delivered by Canada Post on that particular day in 2002. Although I should note that this particular act of Government sponsored propaganda and manipulation of the Canadian public in the hope of “mind changing” was on the watch of David Anderson, Dion’s predecessor as Minister of the Environment.

In the years between late 2009 and today, I certainly have become better informed about all of the above – and then some! As, I’m inclined to think, have many of my fellow Canadians, and many other individuals throughout the world who today find themselves with feet firmly planted in the “skeptic” camp. Rather than blindly accepting and dutifully reciting the tenets of the (falsely advertised as “all peer reviewed“) Climate Bible (aka the IPCC’s much vaunted “Assessment Reports”).

To suggest that this has caused considerable hand-wringing and consternation among the current (and soon to be former) movers and shakers, acolytes and lesser lights in the ever-proliferating and ever-expanding circles of journalist-advocates and activist-scientists (not to mention utterly shameless psychologists, such as Stephan Lewandowsky and/or “my-one-theory-fits-all” evangelists, such as Dan Kahan) would be an understatement of considerable magnitude!

For some reason, I very much doubt that any of the hand-wringers will be at all consoled by the knowledge that PR hack, Bob <fast fingers> Ward has recently made an utter fool of himself – and deservedly earned for himself the sobriquet of Rat Snake Bob – with his litany of imagined “wrongs” on the part of Donna Laframboise, Richard Lindzen and Nic Lewis, during the course of their testimony before the U.K. House of Commons’ Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, who are conducting an inquiry into the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Review (AR 5).

Nor do I believe they will be particularly thrilled to learn of Dr. Ross McKitrick‘s new addition to the resources available to those who prefer to <gasp> think for themselves and do their own due diligence when confronted with the increasingly shrill (and decreasingly credible) cries and/or attempted diversions – such as the hasty pudding cooked up by the U.K. Met Office – emanating from the keyboards of the alarmist camp.

Here’s how U. of Guelph’s McKitrick (who along with Steve McIntyre has long been the nemesis of Mann and his world) describes this (still under construction) self-serve, due diligence application:

Your Environment – the complete record of air and water pollution levels in Canada

Wherever you live in Canada, there is a good chance that air and water pollution in your community has been monitored in the past, and may be monitored today. There are also likely to be climate records going back many decades. This website is is designed to give you fast and easy access to official records of environmental quality wherever you live, or wherever you want to look.

All data presented on this website were collected by provincial environment and natural resource ministries, or by Environment Canada. You can get the data in graphic form or download the numbers themselves. [emphasis added -hro]

Get the data? Download the numbers? WOW! What a concept, eh?! Totally anathema to the likes of the IPCC or Mann, Jones, Gleick and the late, great St. Stephen of Stanford et al and, of course, their respective bands of admirers, no doubt. But, not unlike Red Rose Tea ….

Poor Stéphane Dion, eh? If only he’d had access to such a resource as McKitrick is developing for us. Perhaps he would have been somewhat less determined to tie the mast of his political future to the non-evidenced based “policies” of what has come to be known as “Big Green”.

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