The Ontario government has just presented its latest plan for fighting climate change – by imposing a tax on what it calls “carbon pollution.” Ontario’s plans to reduce plant food would kill jobs and do nothing to control Earth’s climate
Guest opinion by Tom Harris
In its March 19 Speech from the Throne, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government asserted, “you cannot be serious about lowering emissions and fighting climate change without a price on carbon pollution.”
Nowhere did the speech specify what this supposed pollution actually is. That’s probably because, if it did, millions of Canadians would realize that the Wynne government is wasting billions of dollars trying to control a non-pollutant in the forlorn hope that reducing the province’s minimal contribution to worldwide emissions of this non-pollutant will have a beneficial effect on Earth’s complex and ever-changing climate.
In a March 14 press release, Wynne said that her government is “building a cleaner, low-carbon Ontario.” But carbon is not unclean. Carbon is a solid, naturally occurring, non-toxic element found in all living things. It forms thousands of compounds – far more than any other element. Medicines, trees, oil, natural gas, plastics, paints, food crops, and even our bodies are made of carbon compounds.
Pure carbon occurs in nature mainly in the forms of graphite and diamonds. They are certainly not Premier Wynne’s target.
So, what is the “carbon pollution” she is concerned about? Is she speaking about reducing soot emissions from cars and power plants? Amorphous carbon, carbon without a fixed atomic structure, is the main ingredient in soot, which we certainly do need to control. Power plants have already done a good job reducing soot and other actual, dangerous pollutants. So have cars.
Instead, the premier is crusading against emissions of one specific carbon compound: carbon dioxide, or CO2. Ignoring the oxygen atoms and calling CO2 “carbon” makes about as much sense as ignoring the oxygen in water (H2O) and calling it “hydrogen.”
Calling CO2 “carbon,” or worse “carbon pollution,” causes people to think of it as something dirty and thus important to restrict. Calling carbon dioxide by its proper name would help people remember that, regardless of its role in climate change (a point of intense debate among scientists), CO2 is really an invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis, and thus to all life. Indeed, without at least 200 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, most life on Earth would cease to exist.
We are actually near the lowest level of atmospheric CO2 in Earth’s history. Around 440 million years ago, CO2 was over ten times higher than today’s level, while Earth was stuck in one of the coldest periods in the entire geologic and modern record.
The climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is clearly wrong. In fact, it’s the other way around. Planetary temperatures largely control atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The warmer the air and ocean waters get, the more CO2 is released from oceans into the atmosphere; the colder the seas, the more carbon dioxide they retain.
Wynne does not seem to understand this, or the fact that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 ppm CO2 – for a good reason. Plants inside grow far faster, more efficiently and with less water than at the low 400 ppm found outside in Earth’s atmosphere.
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that document how the productivity of forests and grasslands has risen as CO2 levels have increased – not just in recent decades, but in past centuries.
Moreover, increasing carbon dioxide levels pose no direct hazard to human health. CO2 in submarines can reach levels above 10,000 ppm, 25 times current atmospheric levels, with no harmful effects on the crews.
Finally, Wynne mixes up “the government’s actions on climate change” with “making our air cleaner.” The Speech from the Throne switches back and forth between the two, as if they were related.
(We hope it’s a mistake, and not a deliberate attempt to mislead people and promote expensive and damaging public policies.)
Activists do this often when they claim CO2 emission controls will bring important pollution reduction co-benefits. There is no basis for this assertion. US Environmental Protection Agency data show that total emissions of six major air pollutants dropped 62% since 1980, amid a 14% increase in CO2 emissions. Using climate regulations to reduce pollution is obviously an expensive blunder.
Wynne’s ‘carbon pollution’ mistake is dangerous because it dumbs down a vitally important science debate, inappropriately sways millions of people, and ultimately drives terrible government policies.
The Premier says climate change is a fight that “our children and grandchildren can’t afford for us to lose.” What our children and grandchildren really cannot afford is picking up the tab for the Wynne’s government’s billion dollar plans to “lead the world” on reducing plant food that is “greening” our planet, rolling back deserts, and enabling us to grow more food from less land.
Highly complex climate and weather systems are now, and always have been, driven by fluctuations in the sun’s energy output, cosmic rays, ocean currents, volcanic activity and dozens of other powerful natural forces, over which humans have absolutely no control
So, the Ontario government’s CO2 reduction plans will obviously do nothing to “protect” Earth’s climate. But they will drive up energy prices, force companies to spend billions more on electricity and fuels, kill countless jobs, hurt poor and working class families the most, and reduce forest, grassland and crop growth.
Ontario’s plan to price CO2 emissions is a prime example of what countries, states and provinces throughout the world should avoid.
Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.
Machines putting alarmists out of work.
—
Penguin Spotting, and Other Cool Satellite Tricks
By Matthew R. Francis
Air & Space Magazine
April 2018
“You’d be surprised what you can see from 300 miles up. Against the pure white snow of Antarctica, an Emperor penguin colony appears in a QuickBird satellite image as a half-mile-long stain. …”
https://www.airspacemag.com/space/studying-wombats-from-space-180968346/
.
What will be the next excuse? But there it is, brown stain = penguin. Don’t step in the habitat.
No empirical evidence in observational data
1. that atmospheric CO2 is responsive to fossil fuel emissions
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2997420
2. that there exists an ECS parameter that determines temperature according to atmospheric CO2
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3117385
3. that there exists a TCRE parameter that determines temperature according to cumulative emissions
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3142525
4. a parody of the flaw in TCRE
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3144908
“…Instead, the premier is crusading against emissions of one specific carbon compound: carbon dioxide, or CO2. Ignoring the oxygen atoms and calling CO2 “carbon” makes about as much sense as ignoring the oxygen in water (H2O) and calling it “hydrogen.”
All of the global warming kooks call CO2 – carbon. This includes Obama, Al Gore, and the rest of the clan (long list)…And that CO2 is pollution, which is even more kooky…
I have tried to nail this one home with my friends who are also global warming kooks. They just won’t / don’t listen. They just seem to hate facts, they put their hands over their ears. Some of them are even Doctors, PHDs, Computer Scientists, and general worker “bees”, you name it…
I sometimes think that being anti ‘carbon’ is a form of subliminal racism: ‘cos it’s black. (And quite often CO2 is seen as white).
The justification I’ve seen is that carbon encompasses both CO2 and methane. But, if they want an umbrella term, “greenhouse gases” would be even better (encompassing all five gasses).
The correct test of whether something is “pollution” is that if its level can be reduced to undetectable levels in an environment, then that environment will be better off for that.
Real pollutants are heavy metals in the environment (water, soil): lead, mercury, cadmium, etc. Or halogenated carbons like cleaning fluid carbontetrachloride that can pollute ground water. Air pollutants like surface ozone and sulfur and reduced nitrogen compounds are harmful to those with respiratory problems. Completely undetectable levels of these would be ideal. But to be practical, safe level in the parts per million, billion, or even trillion are used.
With CO2 you cannot say that. It is exactly the opposite in fact. The environment, which is the biosphere we live in, flourishes on more CO2 at least up to 4 times present day atmospheric molar concentrations. CO2 concentrations below 200 ppm begin to have serious ecological impacts on the food chain, especially at higher elevations (mountains, high plains, etc above 6000 feet).
The people who use the term “CO2 pollution” are either simply ignorant useful idiots or dishonest useful idiots. Either way they are useful idiots. They are useful to the people who’s real goal is the death of Western style capitalism and democracy and replace it with one-world governance of socialism and run by elites.
More virtue-signaling by ignorant morons.
Why do people keep electing these losers?
because , fundamentally, there are more stupid people in the world than intelligent. and politicians know that. Keep education standards low, don’t teach critical thinking et voilà you have a compliant, stupid electorate.
In The Tales Of Beelzebub To His Grandson, Beelzebub is succinct and observant. Of course, it has nothing to do with “stupidity” ..
“My dear and kind Grandfather, be so kind as to explain to me, if only in a general way, why those beings there are such that they take the ‘ephemeral’ for the Real. [b]……..In general, any new understanding is crystallized in the presences of these strange beings only if Smith speaks of somebody or something in a certain way; and then if Brown says the same, the hearer is quite convinced it is just so and couldn’t possibly be otherwise.
The non-Political Correct way of stating the above, is, to wit:
Iffen you can keep the public barefoot, hungry and ignorant … they will always remain sufficiently stupid enough to believe and/or do anything you tell them.
Ontario is expected to go Conservative in the next election.
Let us hope for some sanity
Greens in NZ are preparing a Carbon Free bill. That should cut down on obesity.
New Zealanders may soon change their mind on that score. I think that the SH is about to have a cold fall/winter. NZ seems particularly vulnerable, imo, to the shift in wind patterns since early this year. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=156.52,-43.70,1107/loc=168.636,-45.284
The Green Party will:
Pass a Zero Carbon Act, putting into law the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
The Green Party really just a bunch of watermelons: Green on the outside but red (communist) on the inside.
I believe they’re practicing for what they’d like to do to all over, and that is stifle capitalism and individual freedoms.
I repeat this constantly and nary a commenter seems to take me serious, save for a select rare few.
This is POPULATION REDUCTION. Full stop.
History is saturated with Malthusianist agigators and Marxists that despise humanity. They have openly called for global governance by an elitist few. Amazing how these tyrants never cease to exist throughout history.
Take, for example, Maurice Strong.
https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-maurice-strong-globalist-oiligarch-environmentalist/
for some reason, very intelligent people who are very logical, dismiss the idea of a massive eugenics agenda:
http://green-agenda.com
Why? Is it because they believe this is another party to blame for what is perceived as the organic and natural imperfection of our species, so it is an us vs them cop-out? I assume so because just as with the warmists who refuse to look at the data that refutes their catastrophic worldview, many intelligent skeptics and logical people refuse to believe in a worldwide push for global government funded by CO2 tax, which everyone emits from birth and it can be calculated based on weight, height, age, etc..
so frustrating. All of you science folks I greatly respect and admire, and I don’t have the training to contribute in a meaningful manner, but I have studied the history behind this movement and it is very real, and most of it happens behind the scenes. Although, now it is openly happening front and center with governments.
Quoting Tom Harris:
“The warmer the air and ocean waters get, the more CO2 is released from oceans into the atmosphere; the colder the seas, the more carbon dioxide they retain.
Wynne does not seem to understand this, or the fact that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 ppm CO2 – for a good reason. ”
No need to talk about “does not seem to understand”. Wynne does not simply know anything about the role of atmospheric CO2. Her ideas about “carbon pollution” would be plain laughable, were it not for the fact that she rules Canada and are taxing the country on its knees with them. Calling her an ignorant moron (like Bitter&twisted above) is foul language, but unfortunately it describes her abilities as regards climate science just too well.
Johan – March 24, 2018 at 2:26 am
Tom Harris’s above quoted statement is not exactly correct ,,,,,, but close enough for the game of “horseshoes” or “government work”.
What Tom H should have stated was, to wit:
“The warmer the ocean waters get above the near-surface air temperatures, the more CO2 is released from oceans into the atmosphere; the colder the seas get below the near-surface air temperatures, the more atmospheric carbon dioxide that is absorbed into the ocean water.”
Henry’s Law.
And iffen it is raining, the temperature doesn‘t matter, ….. because every raindrop that enters the ocean water contains CO2, …… thus increasing the CO2 content of the ocean water.
” because every raindrop that enters the ocean water contains CO2, …… thus increasing the CO2 content of the ocean water.”
Do we know that for sure?. Are there any studies that prove this? If true it destroys the alarmists catastrophic scientific basis on the spot. Because if CO2 is eliminated in each locale every time it rains that would put a limit on any forcing because any forcing caused by increase in clouds and water vapour from evaporation eventually causes the air to get H2O saturated and therefore it rains. So the air can never build up an excessive amount of CO2 to cause any runaway global warming. Tiny increases of CO2 that we are seeing we can handle even if CO2 does cause warming. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Alan T, it is absolutely, positively a true fact
Wynne is a progressive who is more left wing (Marxist) than the Socialist party (NDP or Dippers) and has taken the Liberals for a ride to the Left side for a few years. She knows she is speaking about CO2 (her brother in law was on the Board of a company that dabbled in wind turbines) and is quite the green radical, but the use of carbon is intentional and effective because of what can be conjured as coming out of many vehicles, especially diesels…that is soot. Soot and black carbon really appear to be pollutants, so they lead with the term carbon.
She is definitely neither ignorant nor unschooled in the matter, but very political and a “true believer” in the progressive cant about this as pollution, as the middle class must pay for its sins and to support her vision.
Wynne is only 1 premier of a province who will soon be defeated in an election in 3 months. The real dangerous person is Trudeau who is the prime Minister of the whole country. He believes exactly what Wynne believes.
Natural Resources Canada
‘Canada’s low-carbon energy future, designed by you’
Generation Energy Dialogue, launched 2017
Re: Renewable energy such as wind and solar.
Goal: 100% renewables?
Follow the links on this webpage.
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/20093
Government of Canada
‘Canada’s National Reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2017)’
Canada’s 7th National Communication and 3rd Biennial Report’, 316 pages
Click on: UNFCCC website link.
Includes all of Canada on Climate Change actions undertaken.
Scroll through this Report for readable text. Appears to be computer code mixed in?
https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/greenhouse-gas-emissions/seventh-national-communication-third-biennial-report.html
It’s just like they say “elections have consequences”. Evidentially Ontario chose to elect some dysfunctional progressives who know what’s best for the people of Ontario (and the rest of the world!). Nothing to be done until the next election with the possible exception of minority-rights lawsuit? Maybe the recent progressives set-back in Oakland, California has some consequences?
She and her party were elected by the people. The people of Ontario gets what they have chosen as well as most of the western countries who are scared of the CAGW. On with it. Let the catastrophe fall then the people could move on. Too much resources are being wasted on policies based on modelling.. The wastage could be over all lower if policies fail as soon as possible than all this procrastination with each day with the followers digging and becoming more fanatical calling for bigger and more expensive policies . The longer the day of catastrophe is delayed the bigger the stakes have become, the more fanatical and blinded are the adherent. Remember the Y2K? January 1,2000 came and that’s it. Anybody still worried of Y2K or even angry at the people who painted all those catastrophic alarms that would happened on Jan 1,2000. The people who made money on Y2K as well as the people who were fooled have just move on to other areas.
The problem is that, after these people elect politicians who destroy their province, they then move to provinces that haven’t yet been destroyed, and start voting to destroy them, too.
“Money Talks & B—s–t Walks!” – Danny DeVito
When I was a young man we would joke that governments would tax the air we breathe if they could. Well now, they’ve found a way of doing so.
Seriously, if a tax is levied as a means to mitigate an undesirable outcome then the law should require that the mitigation be capable of being measured, and that immeasurable or trivial outcomes should nullify the tax being called for.
Ottawa is howling at the moon – but still it rises.
Sometimes one wonders why bother since the folks running government will merely come up with more ways to steal your money to buy votes and provide public monies to their cronies and families. One supposes if we fight off the carbon tax they’ll just have to work a wee bit harder and maybe that’s a good thing. After all, only when voters are literally starving, as in VZ, do the voters seem all that concerned about the theft of their property.
I refer to Mrs Thatcher’s comment about Socialists, that “sooner or later, they run out of other people’s money”. This has actually happened in South Africa, where the Government owned enterprises (rail and electricity especially) have been “state captured” with billions of Rand disappearing (probably into Dubai). And now, with the treasury empty, “junk” status looming, and deliberately rash promises of free tertiary education to be met, and with the Taxman being extremely compromised, horrible decisions have to be made. So far, the result has been a one percentage point increase in Value Added Tax (on EVERYTHING), and a reduction of cash for housing, primary and secondary education, and infrastructure.
I said “horrible decisions”, but it’s looking like South Africa is becoming the classic “Horrible Example” – just like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela.
I can’t see that anyone has yet asked the question : where or to whom will the billions of dollars go?
If it ends up in the general budget to pay for benefits to the needy , better roads and schools , etc , then it is just another general tax , which goes up and down over the years anyway.
Someone of a suspicious mind might think that it will end up in the pockets of a few Green organisations , and political sponsors /lobbyists.
Hopefully someone will disabuse me of this suspicion.
All those things you talk about require borrowing and so most of the money you ‘also’ talked about will mainly go to service interest payments on loans?? Can’t see how to simplify the answer further. Does it sound right?
It is way more pernicious than “just another general tax”. Indeed, the purpose of carbon taxes generally isn’t to raise money. It is in fact to “punish carbon” and reward “being green”. It skews energy systems towards “green” energy, making electric grids unreliable in addition to making electricity prices skyrocket. Energy-intensive industries, trucking, etc. become very expensive, forcing prices up. This is all deadly to economies.
“… just another general tax , which goes up and down over the years anyway….”
Sorry, I can’t seem to recall a single general tax once imposed, that was later reduced or eliminated. Once their hands are in your pocket, they never get pulled out… they just dig deeper.
Kathleen Wynne wants a carbon tax. Shall we see how some of her other policy initiatives have turned out?
Wynne (the Ontario Premier) visits a prominent mosque and delivers an address on tolerance.
This is her position just after her speech.
They put a hijab on her and sat her in the back on a folding chair.
The imam then gave a lecture on the evils of homosexuality.
(Wynne is a lesbian.)
Wynning!
She thinks they can serve as useful idiots to attain her goals.
“She thinks they can serve as useful idiots to attain her goals.”
She thinks they can serve as useful idiots to attain her idiotic goals.
So sad. I grew up when Leslie Frost (Conservative) was the premier of Ontario. We were Liberals but we recognized him as a worthy leader. Where are the “Leslie Frosts” when we need them.
Gone to snowflakes every one.
I bet there’s a Germanic-like word for that experience. I can only think of schadernfreude. 😂
Ooooh! A (female) lesbian as a provincial premier! That’s soooo Progressive!!!
You have to wonder how many so-called minorities are orchestrated into positions of power and influence by the Progs just so that any criticism of them is immediately denounced as being some form of -ism. Boom! Instant change of subject!
At first I laughed at this picture and then I wanted to throw up . She did not walk out of the IMAM’s speech. She listened to the whole thing and then thanked him for allowing her to speak to the congregation. I wonder if the IMAM who gave the hate speech against homosexuals knew that Wynne is a lesbian. This is what the voters in Ontario voted as their prenier Luckily for us we wont give her another chance in June 2018
Those Imams are pillars of tolerance!
“Ignoring the oxygen atoms and calling CO2 “carbon” makes about as much sense as ignoring the oxygen in water (H2O) and calling it “hydrogen.”
Because they ignore the O2 and keep the C it makes more sense that you would ignore the H2 and keep the O and then refer to water as oxygen. The we could spend money on preventing oxygen pollution, that should go over big with all living and breathing things.
It’s just a tax. Government would tax us at 100% if we let them. Wynne has found a way to convince people to let them take more of their money. It’s not about the environment; it’s about getting more money from the people.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/30/what-happened-to-the-armchair-environmentalists-and-climate-alarmists-when-the-hurricanes-hit/comment-page-1/#comment-2624888
[excerpt]
The political reality is that most people are far too stupid to vote, as evidenced by the energy debacle in Ontario under Doltan McGuinty and Kathleen Wynn, and the election of Justin Trudeau in Ottawa and Rachel Notley in Alberta. Global warming alarmism is promoted by scoundrels and supported by imbeciles – there is no real global warming crisis.
Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple. Most politicians are too uneducated to even opine on energy, let alone set energy policy.
As you may know, Alberta has carried Canada economically for the past ~60 years, with transfer payments totaling about $1 million per Alberta family-of-four over this period (includes nominal interest, See Mansell and Schlenker*). This has enabled other regions of Canada to adopt economically destructive policies, because Alberta’s money has made them affordable.
So the reality is that it will take time for truth about the Global Warming $cam to sink in, and further economic destruction will occur before the system corrects itself.
Watch for push-back in the form of civil RICO lawsuits in the USA and class-action lawsuits elsewhere, targeted against warmist organizations.
Regards, Allan
* Reference:
Mansell, Robert L. and Schlenker, Ronald. “The Provincial Distribution of Federal Fiscal Balances” Canadian Business Economics 3.2 (1995): 3-22
Robert Mansell has updated his tables from time to time, and I have them.
The West of Canada will secede, sooner or later. There’s little reason to be chained to the failing industrial economies of the East and their socialist leaders who despise the people of the West.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/20/kelly-mcparland-another-wheel-flies-off-ontarios-green-energy-bus-and-lands-on-340-workers/comment-page-1/#comment-2557449
To Doltan McGuinty (former Premier of Ontario): TOLD YOU SO, 15 YEARS AGO:
We confidently wrote in 2002:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”
Source: [PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals , THE GLOBE AND MAIL and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae].
http://www.apega.ca/members/publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Justin Trudeau (Canada), Kathleen Wynn (Ontario), Rachel Notley (Alberta) and the new BC NDP – please take note. For your entire careers, you have taken policy advice from people who have been CONSISTENTLY WRONG on energy and the environment.
HOW COULD YOU GET IT SO WRONG, FOR SO LONG?
The harm you and your fellow-travelers have done to society cannot be undone. Globally, many trillions of dollars of scarce resources have been squandered, and millions of lives have been wasted by global warming nonsense.
“THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”
But BATTERIES!
If only someone could explain to Trudeau that coal is its own battery. But he wouldn’t understand.
Gamecock:
Battery solutions to solve the intermittent nature of grid-connected wind and solar power are wishful thinking.
The only practical grid-scale “super-battery” is pumped storage and there are hardly any sites available worldwide. The problem is you need a huge water reservoir at the bottom of a hydro dam, but few such sites exist.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/16/draft-un-climate-report-poor-people-will-be-hit-worst/comment-page-1/#comment-2746114
[excerpt]
Eric wrote:
“Regardless of what happens to the climate in the future, and the climate will change regardless of what we do, the solution to poverty is pragmatism, capitalism and wealth creation. Always has been, always will be.”
Perfect, thank you Eric.
In summary:
Cheap, reliable , abundant energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple. Fossil fuels provide about 86% of global primary energy.
Renewables provide about 2% despite trillions per year in wasted subsidies, paid by consumers.
Grid-connected green energy, typically wind and solar, is not green and produces little useful energy. The problem is intermittency. The sun does not shine all the time, and the wind does not blow consistently either. Warmists think that grid-connected mega-storage (aka the super-battery”) will solve this problem. It won’t – not for the foreseeable future.
Allan: Just to say, with you all the way on this. Willis did a great post years ago on cheap, abundant, reliable energy. It not only lifts the poor out of poverty it curtails the need for a growing population.
Could it be the difference between: ‘What, now?!’ and ‘Watts now!’ (worked for me….)
“Battery solutions to solve the intermittent nature of grid-connected wind and solar power are wishful thinking.”
Thinking? Absence of thought throughout.
Guess I shoulda used a sarc tag.
The can of worms gave birth to an octopussy .
So extraterrestrials to cause climate change. I wish I had thought of that. What are they drinking in Canada?
Labatt Blue
I think Ontario’s carbon tax has nothing to do with global warming, and everything to do with generating tax revenue.
————————————————————————
How crushing is Ontario’s $312 billion debt, really? It would take Drake 2,000 years to pay it off
Ontario owes more money than almost any regional government in the world, but it’s still less of a fiscal disaster than Quebec
http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-crushing-is-ontarios-312-billion-debt-really
Automotive News, Oct.25, 2017
‘Ford, VW pressured by green groups to defend CAFE standards’
Re: Coalition of environmental groups + Sen.Whitehouse
Ontario does manufacture vehicles for the North American market.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20171025/OEM11/171029818/environmental-ford-vw-cafe-fuel-economy
The bigger perspective is that “carbon” is the banner to inspire control freaks who are demanding perfection. In the past, this has been destructive.
The objective of Communism was to create the “Perfect Man”. Of the Church in the 1500s, the “Perfect”. soul. The Nazis were determined to create the “Perfect” race and land-space.
Now authoritarians are insisting on imposing the “Perfect” climate. All it takes is more taxes and more regulation.
These have been monstrously harmful experiments, and there has been another compulsion. This is the boast by interventionist economists that they can provide the “Perfect” economy.
The promotion that authoritarians can “manage” the economy will be seen as a failure on the next recession.
As the solar minimum prevails the global temperature trend will go back to flat. As it continues the trend will turn down and the promotion that a government can “manage” the climate will lose many believers.
The suppression of common sense by “experts” can’t run forever. Can it?
Meant to sign that post.
Bob Hoye
+97
Ontario plans get wide support because for years they have been teaching students twisted science…
“Overall Expectations — from the Ontario Curriculum…
By the end of this course, students will:
F1. analyse the cumulative effects of human activities and technologies on air quality, and describe
some Canadian initiatives to reduce air pollution, including ways to reduce their own carbon
footprint;
F2. investigate gas laws that explain the behaviour of gases, and solve related problems;
F3. demonstrate an understanding of the laws that explain the behaviour of gases.”
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/2009science11_12.pdf
UNFCCC
‘Canada’s 7th National And 3rd Biennial Report 2017’, ~ 316 pages
Chapter 9: Education, Training, and Public Awareness
9.2, page 295., Re: using digital media, enhance learning, and influence behaviour.
9.3, page 301, Re: NGOs.
http://unfccc.int/files/national_reports/national_communications_and_biennial_reports/application/pdf/82051493_canada-nci-br3-1-5108_eccc_can7thncomm3rdbi-report_en_04_web.pdf
Or use link posted above. Skip the unreadable parts.
Why guess about “what Ontario or the Premier means” — the plan is right here:
“We are now at about 380 parts per million. At 380 parts per million, coral reefs are dying, glaciers are melting, seas are rising and an estimated 35,000 people died in the 2003 European heat wave. According to the IPCC, without significant action to reduce emissions, CO2 concentrations may reach 750 parts per million this century. Partly, this is because molecules of CO2 remain in the atmosphere for up to 200 years. Which means the CO2 molecules produced by the first cars, the Wright brothers’ plane and the first coal-fired electricity plants may still be airborne.”
http://www.climateontario.ca/doc/workshop/2011LakeSimcoe/Ontarios%20Go%20Green%20Action%20Plan%20on%20Climate%20Change.pdf
That’s just a mathematical slight of hand to deceive the ignorant. Mathematically you can take a piece of cheese and cut in half every day, but in 200 years there will still be some there.
The reality is that the natural carbon sinks are still increasing at least as fast as human emissions, with no sign of this ending. This is thus another of the great failing of the doomsday scenario: We will probably never get to 750ppm CO2 however hard we might try. We won’t have either enough population or sufficient fossil fuels to achieve that. The good thing is that we will still have raised the level of CO2 sufficiently to add a significant boost to the productivity and water-efficiency of the biosphere. Something wonderful is going to happen.
Let’s face it, global warming/climate change has nothing to do with science, but is simply the modern-day religion of the Western world. We have abandoned our basal Christianity and thereby left a gaping void in our lives which has neatly been filled with GW/CC. O Holy Al Gore and Blessed Saint Suzuki, be with us now and in our hour of need!
Religion is not amenable to logic. We just have to wait for it to burn out, and hope that its replacement is not equally destructive.
True. I describe above the carbon tax is just a tax. But the religion is also being used to justify the destruction of Western Civilization.
A great and bold move by the Ontario government who do buy into the theory that human produced carbon pollution is good for this planet. Many more initiatives like this to follow. Fossil fuel use and production is slowly being reduced worldwide as countries seek to meet their IPCC CO2 emissions targets so commentators on this site are pretty much whistling in the wind 🙂
With the dolts that we have in government, especially in the Ontario and Canadian Federal governments, perhaps skeptics are “whistling in the wind” but just as likely “consensus” warmists like ivankinsmin are “pissing into the wind” in that their stream of nonsense is blowing back and soiling us all.
Load of cock and bull. You want to degrade your few square metres of the planet go ahead, but don’t affect mine. CO2 pollution cannot just be confined to fossil fuel advocate/climate sceptic zones unfortunately. I really wish it could so then you could just foul your own nests.
Ivan, I’ll bite. Who pays you to come here and post inane garbage?
Please provide your evidence that suggests CO2 is a pollutant.
Yes ivankinsman, I know what you mean for I have been there: no cars and no trucks because no gasoline or diesel fuel. All organic vegetables grown in the garden. Bread made in a backyard oven with flour milled in one of two nearby flour mills, one water driven, the other wind-driven ( from wheat hand-thrashed with flails ). Walk everywhere or bicycle if it wasn’t raining. A wood-stove in the one room that could be kept warm, and one lightbulb to provide light in the evening. Only trouble: it was all the result of war, and there was nothing romantic or green or healthy about it. So, don’t wish it either for yourself or for anyone else. And read something challenging, even at the risk that you may want to change your mind.
Keep on the current course and we will be back in the Middle Ages trying to eke out a lifestyle on a resource poor planet. Current lifestyle is slowly choking this planet … You just don’t want to accept the reality. You think we can just carry on as normal and everything will be hunky dory? Think that and you’re a damn fool…
You live in a land of make-believe Ivan, and are simply delusional. Pull your head out.
Ontario is just on the cusp my friend. We are not all ignoring what is going on, thinking it is all a threat to American capitalism. You might ignore what future generations havecti face but I tend to care about the world my children will be living in. Time to get your head out of the sand and thinking about how a biosphere operates…
I hope that the :)means sarcastic
i cant believe that someone like ivankinsman is serious. With all the evidence that shows that AGW is a huge hoax he comes on here to spout his religion.
Nope. I am a true believer at the altar of climate change as you sceptics like to put it.
You made some good points. You could abandon this one:
“The warmer the air and ocean waters get, the more CO2 is released from oceans into the atmosphere; the colder the seas, the more carbon dioxide they retain.”
The oceans are gaining CO2 and have warmed for awhile. How it was 150 years ago is interesting but things have changed since then. The oceans have for at least the past 30 years provided a negative feedback to atmospheric CO2 levels.
I live here and it’s embarrassing. Ontario is one of the best (worst?) examples (per capita) of the $damage man-made global warming alarmists can do. A fiscal boondoggle of waste unmatched in Canadian history.
And it’s likely over $100 billion and climbing so electricity prices can only go up. Shutting down coal (even though our air quality was and remains superb), refurbishing old nukes (that should have been de-commissioned), building huge, costly wind and solar parks with the necessary and also costly conventional back-up and finally, the excess power from wind, solar and nuclear sold to the spot market for a fraction….total $fiasco and no reason for it.
Even more mind boggling is the support. All of our educated, media and political class are on board the good ship AGW. They have to be, otherwise they are branded irrelevant.
Now we have a “carbon” tax combined with cap and trade. These people will never admit to being wrong, they can’t, there is too much water under the bridge. Even though the man-made climate “scare” is just another hobgoblin of the times I don’t think this creature is going to go away any time soon.
All they had to do was shut down the old nukes, keep the coal plants going and hook up to Québec’s cheap and available hydro power. What a mess.
Don’t worry, Ontario will evict the Liberals, in a landslide June 7, 2018. GK
The Ontario Liberals are approaching peak stupidity with this policy (they could soar even higher), as does any other government where the following conditions hold.
According to Wikipedia, China and India accounted for over 36.32% of global CO2 emissions in 2015 (29.51% and 6.81%, respectively), and this proportion will hold for the next few decades.
Canada accounts for 1.54% of global CO2 emissions, and in 2015 Ontario emitted about 1/4 of this, making Ontario’s global contribution 0.385%.
Nature emits about 95% of all atmospheric CO2, humans 5%. This puts Ontario’s 2015 contribution at about 0.02%.
Ontario plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
In 1990, Ontario produced 181.3 Mt of CO2, and by 2015, this number had been reduced to 166.2, representing a decrease of 15.1 Mt or 8%, meaning about 12% remains to reach the 2050 target (the Liberals are nearly already half-way there!).
Using the 2015 terms, this reduction is about 13% of Ontario’s 2015 CO2 emissions.
Now, 13% of Ontario’s 2015 CO2 emissions of 0.02% is about 0.0026%.
Even if one believed CO2 to be somehow a problem, this 0.0026% reduction in global CO2 emissions achieved by Ontario would easily be discounted by even minor CO2 emission changes due to nature or China.
So, it’s a waste, no matter what. It’s a billion dollars of virtue signaling and naïfs feeling they are ‘doing their part’.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder put is this way:
http://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmzqeb028m1qggdq1.jpg
Odd that Wynn would bring up this idea in the middle of a provincial election. It’s not a big vote getter. Some environmentalists will be keen on it, but most registered voters will recognize it as just another excuse to move money into provincial coffers.
More carbon dioxide is why I have to mow my lawn so often. Which means that I am putting out more carbon dioxide, which will make my grass grow faster. Which means that I will have to mow more often.
See? There really is a runaway greenhouse effect.
The way I see it the US is the only country left in which enough people within the authorities and legitimate institutions are expressing sensible reservations to put some braking power on this Juggernaut.
Short of occasionally sending reporters actual data to counter their sensationalism I have given up in New Zealand. We are too small and one soon gets branded as a crank. For me the only hope lies in the US. Congratulations.
Mind: everything form here on lies within the temperature record. Should it creep up by even a few tenths of one degree C/decade we are fighting a losing battle. The ignorance out there is just too dominant and domineering. For all mankind’s advances in education and communication the ability to see clearly and independently has not advanced one iota.
In terms of reality and governmental policy one independent influence reigns supreme: economics. They can tinker with taxes and subsidies but there is no way they can restrict emissions of CO2 beyond an ineffectual amount. They will drop like flies once it hits the public pocket.
This means that the CO2 sensitivity theory will be tested over time, once and for all. It will take time. I hope they have satellites “up there” once I arrive. I wonder if hell has warmed too? I betcha that Satan is a warmest 🙂
Regards
M
Michael you may not want to arrive “up there ” ( assuming you are allowed a choice) because it will be full of Gores , Obamas , Oreskes and Manns who are universally (or 97%) regarded as the finest and purest of human specimens and therefore most deserving of Paradise .
You may find it more congenial in the other place with a community of we “deplorables” who believe in the rule of law and scientific rigour and honest assessment of the environment around us , wherever or whenever we are.
It is already hitting the public pocket. The hidden and non hidden (fixed and variable cost of gasoline tax is already nearing 50% in Ontario. The hidden part is that amount of money that the oil companies are forced to spend on carbon trading or carbon taxes and any other government requirement. There are probably hidden costs imposed on auto manufacturers as well which of course gets passed on to us consumers. The total tax take in Canada as of 2017 is 43.4%. Because I make only an average salary, my tax take is around 33% when you include everything I buy. I guess IM too stupid to figure out how come the difference is 10% .Somehow the government is imposing taxes that I dont pay. Oh I know a couple. I dont drink alcohol or smoke so that accounts for 2% of the difference but that still leaves 8% unaccounted for that. Well if companies cant pass on all their taxes to consumers then we can add in another 4% because of profits taxes so that still leaves around 4 % unaccounted for. maybe payroll taxes add another 1% so that leaves 3% unaccounted for. As of January 1. 2018 the total tax take probably went up a little bit because most governments hike the taxes on January 1 of each year. The measure of the amount of socialism you have in your country is the total % of taxes in the country divided by the total income . in Ontario the average person pays 53% to the federal government 37% to the provincial and 10 % to municipal.
for comparison purposes France is around 58%. Actually France is worse than that because a significant part of French industry is government owned with a total of 81 companies having some level of government ownership. Also the French government through regulation has major influence on hundreds more of companies. As an example the French government owes 20% of Renault the major car maker. If you take all this into account the true % of control of the French economy by the French government including taxes, ownership and influence is more like 60-65% of the French economy. Not too far off the Chinese number of 67%. Better than Cuba which is around 97% . However I say the closer you are to 100% the closer you are to socialism and thus the closer you are to a dictatorship. Capitalism is not a perfect system but it is the best one weve got. Socialism is a road to hell.
For anyone not familiar with the Ontario political scene: this is the last gasp of a tired, incompetent, doomed government making one last grab for our money. Words don’t do justice to the stupidity of the Ontario Liberal government. Imagine: 50% of our electricity requirement is met by reliable and safe nuclear power; 30% comes from hydraulic power, mostly Niagara Falls. No carbon dioxide from these. The remaining 20% came from coal, and that’s where our brilliant leaders chose to replace this with wind turbines and solar panels. Turns out that these had to be backed up by natural gas. All of it ! So now we pay some of the highest electricity prices anywhere when we could be near the lowest in the world.
Touted by economists as a wondrous market mechanism that will deliver Canada from the evils of climate change, carbon pricing is emerging as a regulatory nightmare
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-the-great-green-carbon-tax-grab
Boondoggle: How Ontario’s pursuit of renewable energy broke the province’s electricity system
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/boondoggle-how-ontarios-pursuit-of-renewable-energy-broke-the-provinces-electricity-system
Tom Harris: Thanks for reporting on this. Kathleen Wynn doesn’t care whether the planet is warming or not, or whether CO2 emmissions are good or not. She is part of the Globalist movement that believes HUMAN BEINGS ARE BAD FOR THE PLANET. And Capitalism, cheap energy (fossil fuels), Wealth, and Human Freedom and Democracy all need to be reduced,controlled, or destroyed; and Human Beings controlled by a Central Global Government. She is part of the huge deceptive anti-human globalist movement that uses “human-caused climate change” as a main deceptive argument to persuade people to go along with the agenda by attempting to fighten them. Marxists like Wynne know that they can’t persuade people through truthful means, which is why it’s all alarmism and deception. The end justifies the means to them, because they think they know best for the World. They won’t succeed in the Developed World, Wynne’s popularity has dropped drastically, and Trudeau’s isn’t far behind. What saddens me is how all these Globalists are slowing the development of the Developing World. No cheap fossil fuels for them. There are too many people on the planet already in the eyes of the Globalist/environmentalists..
To get some idea how corrupt the Ontario government rabbit hole is.
Casinos, money laundering, Fentanyl, green energy, false rape allegations.
Many Canadians, like many citizens of “First World” countries, simply assume that there is little or no corruption among federal, provincial and municipal governments, or political parties and other institutions here, no matter how many Canadian corruption humdingers hit the news. And too few do reach the news, in my opinion, in part because we have a press largely asleep at the wheel, now accustomed to being spoonfed press releases for news, and little in the way of investigative journalism (with some notable exceptions). Canada is probably a paradise for white-collar criminals thanks to this naïveté.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oveans over which mankind has no control. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensifity of CO2 is zero. All such efforts to decrease CO2 emissions will have no efect on climate. The carbon tax may raise government revenew for the short term but it will have no effect on climate. Cutting economic activity will be required to reduce CO2 emissions which will on the long term reduce government revenews.
Since the premise is more political science than real science, it should be considered a severance tax in the resource nation of Canada. And since they are losing the ability to export the resource, it would be called a domestic severance tax. The uses of the revenue are purely political at that point.
Taxing the human-produced component of 0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere has always seemed like a precedent in taxation air that does NOT bode well for the future of humankind. Maybe she really DOES want to tax only the carbon part of CO2 — next only the O2 part, and then this opens the door to taxing all O2, but why stop there? — there’s all that nitrogen making up a huge portion of the atmosphere, and we don’t even have to PRODUCE it for it to be there — we just have to pay a tax on it to breathe it. Now THAT would be progressive.
Vive le Canada !
http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/bonokoski-justin-trudeau-unwisely-plays-media-like-april-fools
Read this Toronto Sun article on Justin Trudeau.
Note especially the comments. The level of intellect in the criticisms of Trudeau is FAR higher than that in the few remarks that support him.