“Carbon dioxide is not a control knob that can fine tune climate”
– Judith Curry, Atmospheric Scientist, Georgia Tech
Globally the demand for oil grows; only Canada is blocked from market by its own climate policies, many of them due to Tar Sands Campaign/ENGO activism, and Canada’s adherence to the lofty, unattainable GHG reduction goals of the non-binding Paris Agreement.
CALGARY, Canada (PRWEB) May 22, 2019
In response to a May 16, 2019 report in the National Observer, wherein Bank of Canada Governor Steve Poloz expressed fears of a ‘fire sale’ of stranded ‘carbon assets’ and market upheaval in Canada’s oil sector, Friends of Science Society urge the governor to open an investigation into the “Tar Sands Campaign” as a part of a trade war against Canada, and an integral part of creating global ‘climate hysteria’ to serve vested interests in renewables, carbon pricing and global cap and trade.
A Friends of Science post of May 19, 2019, entitled “Debunking Markham Hislop on Tar Sands Campaign” details this perspective.
In the Bank of Canada’s reports on “Sustainable Finance,” Friends of Science notes there appears to have been no due diligence done on the likelihood that Canada could meet Paris targets. According to Robert Lyman, former senior Canadian policy adviser on Kyoto and GHG reduction policies, these targets are unattainable without the almost complete destruction of the Canadian economy, as detailed in his presentation “Can Canada Survive Climate Change Policy?”
Furthermore, meeting Canada’s goals would have no impact on global emissions, as detailed in the report “Futile Folly: Canada’s Climate Policy Goals in the Global Context.” Globally the demand for oil grows; only Canada is blocked from market by its own climate policies, many of them due to Tar Sands Campaign/ENGO activism, and Canada’s adherence to the lofty, unattainable GHG reduction goals of the non-binding Paris Agreement.
Friends of Science Society notes that the Bank of Canada Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance reference Canadian Climate Change Data Portal which is using the projections, known as Representative Concentration Pathway – RCP 4.5 and 8.5, for their analysis. (LINK: canadaccdp.ca/ See:“About”)
Climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry stated in an interview with filmmaker Marijn Poels that RCP 8.5 is completely unrealistic and should be ‘thrown out the window.’ (at 4:37 in video) She states that there is an ‘uncertainty monster’ surrounding forward climate change predictions because of the numerous unknown and unpredictable, large natural forces at play, such as solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and cyclical changes in oceans and atmospheric oscillations. Friends of Science ask Governor Poloz how can non-experts like corporate boards be expected to predict something that climate experts say is impossible?
In the 2013 UN Climate Panel (IPCC) Working Group I AR5 report (Chapter 9 Box 9.2), it stated there had been a 15-year hiatus in global warming up to 2012, despite a significant rise in carbon dioxide emissions.
Two Friends of Science reports from Jan. 2017, rebut the pension trustee positions of “SHARE” on climate risk and ‘denial.’
Friends of Science issued a letter to the Ontario Securities Commission on Aug. 27, 2017 on the issue of the UNPRI demand for climate risk disclosure and risk of vulture investors.
Friends of Science notes that oil producing competitor nations, and Canada’s largest trading partner, the US, are not burdening their oil producers or corporations with ‘climate risk’ reporting or carbon tax requirements. As Dr. Curry says in her Jan. 16, 2014 testimony to the US Senate: “Carbon dioxide is not the control knob that can fine tune climate.”
See “Unfriend ENGOs-Befriend Facts”on climate activism against banks and insurers.
LINK: blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/END-THE-CLIMATE-CATASTROPHE-CON-FINAL.pdf
HT/Willie Soon
Some say “tar” sands and some say “oil” sands, that’s about all you need to know with regard to their position on the subject.
Call them what you will… either way the sands are NATURALLY soaked with hydrocarbons over which rains and rivers, skunks and geese AND humans have coexisted for millenia.
Just add some feathers, and throw Trudeau into the mix.
Now THAT’S what I call polluting the environment.
○¿●
As well as BC’s Horgan, Weaver and May.
Bribes from Tides
My friend asks:
“Isn’t this kind of stuff illegal?”
Subject: First Nations chief received $55,000 from Tides Foundation | Toronto Sun
https://torontosun.com/2014/01/17/first-nations-chief-received-55000-from-tides-foundation/wcm/e63d8d29-9c48-4db6-ba64-9c782fb886f2
First Nations chief received $55,000 from Tides Foundation
A left-wing lobby group in San Francisco wired $55,000 to the bank account of an Indian chief in Northern Alberta, paying him to oppose the oilsands.
And sure enough, that chief – Allan Adam, from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation – earned his money. Last weekend, he flew to Toronto to sit on a stage next to Neil Young, the folk singer who was in town to demonize Canada’s oil industry.
Now, $55,000 might sound like a lot of money to pay, just to rent a politician for a day if all the chief did for his money was to appear on stage in Toronto beside Neil Young. But to the Tides Foundation, it’s well worth it. Think of Adam as an actor, hired to play a part in an elaborate theatrical production.
Neil Young had his role: he’s the American celebrity who can draw crowds of fawning Baby Boomer journalists. But at the end of the day, he’s just another millionaire celebrity. When he talks about the oilsands, he quickly reveals himself as a low-information know-nothing.
Adam brings what Young can’t: authenticity. Young likes to wear an Indian-style leather vest, but Adam really is an Indian, and he really lives near the oilsands.
Adam didn’t do a lot of talking in Toronto. He was more of a prop than an actor. See, the Tides Foundation is from San Francisco. And Neil Young lives on a 1,500-acre estate near San Francisco. Without Adam, this would have just been some California millionaires coming up here to boss Canadians around. That’s why they had to hire Adam, to aboriginalize their attack on Canada. It was political sleight of hand, to distract from the fact that this was a foreign assault on Canadian jobs.
Tides could have hired an actual actor, like maybe Lorne Cardinal, who played the Aboriginal policeman in the comedy series Corner Gas. But they didn’t hire an actor. They hired an elected public official. That’s the problem.
Adam’s official title is “chief.” But it’s not a religious or cultural title. Under the Indian Act, that’s just the legal title given to the elected mayor of an Indian Band.
The Tides Foundation put $55,000 into the bank account of a mayor to get him to take a particular political position. Depending on what Tides was getting the Chief to do, the payment might well have been a bribe. But we won’t know, because no one is talking about the $55,000 payment.
How is it acceptable that a foreign lobby group can simply deposit cash into a bank account of a Canadian politician? Who else is being paid cash to oppose the oilsands?
This fact almost escaped detection. It was buried in the Tides Foundation’s 138-page filing with the IRS, who only disclosed it to get a tax break. Even then, it was shrouded in secrecy.
The money was paid to a numbered company, 850450 Alberta Ltd. Only a search of Alberta’s corporate registry revealed that 850450 Alberta Ltd. was owned by another company, called Acden Group Ltd., that had changed its name twice in the past four years. Adam and other band politicians were directors and shareholders, in trust for the band.
The payment was well-hidden – and Adam certainly didn’t disclose it when he was on stage with Young.
The same IRS disclosure shows Tides made 25 different payments to Canadian anti-oilsands activists in a single year, totaling well over a million dollars. And that’s just one U.S. lobby group. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund out of New York, spends $7 million a year in Canada, with an explicit campaign strategy of fomenting Aboriginal unrest, through protests and lawsuits.
If a foreign oil company – say, ExxonMobil – was depositing secret payments in the bank accounts of MPs, it would be a scandal. Those MPs would face an RCMP investigation, Exxon would likely be charged with bribery, and the media on both sides of the border would have a field day.
Yet none of those things will likely happen with Adam.
Because the Tides Foundation knows that the Canadian media and even the police are cowards when it comes to Aboriginal politicians. They don’t dare hold them to account, for fear of being called racist. If you doubt this, look at the continued success of Theresa Spence, Attawapiskat’s chief.
Tides got its money’s worth.
The activities of Leftwing Billionaires needs a lot more scutiny.
Thanks for detailing some of the corruption going on in Canada, Allan.
The Mueller investigation in the USA was about fiction – this is real.
The Friends of Science has posted a series of blog articles describing the funding provided by largely U.S.-based private foundations to hundreds of environmental and aboriginal groups in Canada to finance their opposition to energy development and pipeline construction. While severely prejudicial to Canada’s economy, such political funding is not illegal. Indeed, as a result of legislative changes passed by the Trudeau government and court decisions, all previous restrictions on the political activities of registered charities, including environmental organizations, have essentially been removed. Environmental organizations have funding that far exceeds the funding of all political parties in Canada.
“”Medicine Hat (Canada) shuts down $13 million solar plant after it couldn’t produce enough energy”
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/medicine-hat-shuts-down-13-million-solar-plant-after-it-couldnt-produce-enough-energy/?fbclid=IwAR3gEtZVb3H4wqB6o_uHSey9BTfpkmQDQnZO8lQLmM2BqgHEH-sAl18mkZ8
“A solar power plant intended on testing the feasibility of solar energy was shut down after the cost to maintain the facility didn’t justify the plant’s energy output.”
D’OH !
Don’t the Canadians know that all they need to do is spend Billions more building a Pumped Hydro system and it will magically make their solar power the cheapest energy on the Plant?
Quick, we need to ship a dozen Green Economists to Canada so they can explain how building something incredibly expensive that is a net consumer of energy can make a horribly expensive source of energy into the most economical one.
~¿~
And Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada has, I believe, the highest sunshine hours in the entire country, due to it’s location on the dry prairie (east) side of the Rocky Mountains and barely north of the Canada/US border. If solar panels are not economic there, you know the rest of the country still infatuated with solar is dreaming in technicolour!
Who the hell things a solar plant in freaking canada is a good idea?! This would have been an obvious bad idea from the beginning. Why on earth would anyone do this?
$$$$$$ It’s all about the money.
Collect taxes. Spend big money on projects (doesn’t matter whether they succeed or fail or make sense). Take a rake or get kickbacks or invest in the chosen ‘winner’ before the ;winner’ is announced. Reward cronies who will make things cushy once out of office.
Medicine Hat is further south than Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
Sorry.
“Checking water levels behind upstream dams, in areas hit by heavy to exceptional rainfall, it seems that pools may be near or above design capacity [or] maxed out, so the dams are forced to pass high stream flows downstream to prevent catastrophe,” Andrews said.
The flood gauge near Ponca City, Oklahoma, on the Arkansas River crested at 22.26 feet on Friday, breaking the 1993 record of 20.11 ft.
Sorry for posting OT? I think you’re not sorry.
Trudeau has got to Go! C’mon Canada!
Get yourself free from the economic strangulation that is the socialist Paris Climate fraud!
Judith Curry is no longer at Georgia Tech. She directs her own successful company CFAN Climate Forecast Applications Network:
https://www.cfanclimate.net/judith-curry
“The overall weather pattern that has been in place across the U.S. will continue early this week, which will bring more rounds of severe weather to the Plains,” according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Rathbun.
Again you’re not sorry.
Anyone who neglects the impact of long-term changes in the level of galactic radiation and the Earth’s magnetic field on the climate, deceives people.
But the Bank of Canada just issued a report identifying CC as a high risk factor to the Canadian economy….seeing benefit from the Carbon Tax cashflow, as good public servants in Canada tend to do.
Ah, scientific banking. Settled scientific banking, even.
That’s unsettling.
Is warmism cracking up all over? Will the rot reach the corrupt Lord Gummer and his economy ruining committee?
Canada seems to be in a right eco mess. Hopefully someone of influence will listen to Judith Curry et al.; but would need the support of intelligent voters.
Sadly there appears to be a total dearth of global political intelligence these days with anyone daring to express intelligence being clobbered by the Green agenda.
The Canadians need to to be very wary on who they vote for. Lemming like consensus is a recipe for disaster.
It appears that, unlike Australia, the voters of Canada want to vote themselves into ever increasing government mismanagement, poverty, and hyper inflation. Shades of Venezuela. Canada, oh Canada. Hopefully, they will rise up before it is too late to stop the looming folly of Green Socialism powered by money from non-Canadian slimeballs.
I would not under-estimate the damage being caused by the environmental policies of the Trudeau-led federal government in Canada or the complicit parallel policies being followed by the provincial governments of British Columbia and Quebec. While the situation is bad, there are signs of hope. Recent elections in Alberta and Ontario resulted in defeats for the left-wing governments there, and substantial reductions in the electoral support for leftists in the Maritime provinces. The governments of five of the ten provinces are challenging in court the carbon tax regime of the Trudeau government. The forthcoming federal election in November will be very important.
Canada is up to its neck in economic tar sands and now no longer knows which way is up.
Traditionally, Canada’s big banks have been contributors of the Liberal Party of Canada. Hoping to be blessed by the party’s corruption when in office.
The government’s anti oil policies have been economically suicidal. There has been no net increase in oil production since Trudeau took office in 2015.
The denial of income to the oil business has been huge and it represents a proportionate denial of tax revenues to all levels of government.
Canada’s banks took a severe hit with the collapse in the oil industry in the 1980s. They would not want to suffer another disaster, which would happen if the value of the oil sands gets marked down to zero.
Perhaps the big banks are getting ready to support the Conservative Party. Now in opposition, it is the government in waiting.
And the election will be held in this October.
Let’s hope the new no name Conservative has game. I would have preferred Maxime Bernier a guy like Trump who doesn’t believe anything is too big to fail.
When it didn’t cost the populace anything to save the world from AGW they were all in. After all, what harm could it do? Now they know and are starting to ask questions. The UN/Marxists thought that planting the ‘save the world’ seed would be enough and now they’re finding out just how wrong they are. Hopefully it will end in the demise of the UN/IPCC or at the very least a massive overhaul of the UN back to its’ original mission.
markl: “When it didn’t cost the populace anything to save the world from AGW they were all in. After all, what harm could it do?”
Exactly right.
I was busy with work and paying for school for the kids and CO2 based global warming was just a buzz in the background… until the politicians started pushing Cap and Trade here in the US. When they came after my wallet, I started paying attention and looking into the topic of CO2-based CAGW. I knew enough from a basic grade school education in the ’60s to smell BS. It didn’t take long to figure out that CO2 was not the control knob, given right off the bat that CO2 lags temperature.
The rest of my time since then has been spent appreciating the work of the few hardy souls that are actually trying to figure out what really drives the various regional climates. There’s a lot of work to be done, there.
An Engineer commented recently on this blog: Interpolate at will. Extrapolate at your own peril.
The modeler’s code written by a modeler…
This is a critical few words in that report ” risk of vulture investors.” An artificial devaluing of Canadian investment in the oil sands leaves them open for more predatory investors, as if they are not already heavily owned by other countries.
How could any Canadian, living in a country that is frozen 60% of the year, actually not want/need “Global Warming” “….It truly baffles my mind…
The oil will come from somewhere. Put in a tax on country A the country B will produce more to meet demand. All in all the carbon taxes will do little to reduce co2 unless all countries agree to same deal. Not that co2 is a bad thing, and even if it did actually cause catastrophic warming geo engineering is cheaper solution.
Once China starts exploiting the South China Sea, they will drive down the price of oil to the point that Canada’s oil sands are no longer profitable. Trudeau has done a great deal of damage. It is time to send liberals everywhere packing or into jail for their never ending corruption. Just weeks after Canada set-up a $600,000,000 fund to assist newspapers, Trudeau is quoted as saying that they could get favorable op-eds into the newspapers. The liberals in Canada and the rest of the western world are so smug that they no longer try to hide their corruption… they must go!
Cheers,
Speed
Does anyone actually read Canadian papers? The only time I ever do is when Air Canada hand them out while we’re waiting for our flight to take off.
Oh, hang on. Obviously no-one does or Trudeau wouldn’t be giving $600,000,000 of our tax dollars to prop them up.
People will pick no brainer private industry funded projects, that will bring prosperity and jobs when they vote, over job killing madness and gradual lose of services.
The Conservative leader is proposing policies that will remove political barriers to constructing pipelines in Canada to the coasts to enable Canada to it’s sell oil and gas.
There was $30 billion dollars of privately funded pipelines before the Liberal party’s end energy export policy.
Dues to the Liberal policies Canada now has unstainable growing debt.
Which party will Canadian select for the next election?
The spend and kill industry/job parties (Liberals/NDP/Green Party) or the build some pipelines and create billions and billions of new revenue and hundreds of thousands of new jobs party (Conservatives)?
Canada should be doing must better economically then they are. It is the liberal policies destroying good jobs and growth. The only job growth seems to be government jobs.
SteveK,
Exactly like the 8 years of the Obama regime…
Oh boy.
Asking a bureaucrat of actually do his job?
Actual evidence to justify the stated policy?
Not in Canada.
We lead the world.In the manufacture of policy based evidence.
And in regulation based production nobbling.
The best you can expect of Canada is that it splits in two or three before the borrowed money comes due.
A cold country with 7 months of winter and vast forests acting as a genuine “Carbon sink” is going to somehow reduce the industrial emissions of CO2 to zero?
How cold do our parasitic overloads want this land to be?
“…open an investigation into the “Tar Sands Campaign” as a part of a trade war against Canada”
Well, ain’t that the truth! Why have US interests take such expensive measures to influence Canadian pipeline policy and routes? There is a lot of direct interference in elections by these groups.
I was in a meeting last week at which the Environmental Defense’s plans featured – about a local organising of organisations meeting mooted for the 8th of June. Goals? Disinvestment and blocking pipelines and getting “people we like” elected.
Canada sells energy and raw materials. That is a fact and has been the case since I was born, and through the previous century as well.
Global warming has really benefitted Canada. The permafrost line has moved from Toronto to about halfway to the North Pole in only 12,000 years. That’s why we have so many trees. Twelve degrees of warming have helped a lot too.
Crispin,
I like it ! I’ve been telling my existentially fearful aquaintances that a degree of warming since 1880, and warming of the Arctic from -40 to -38 just isn’t a big deal…..but your 12,000 years of global warming benefits is “more better”!!
Good On Ya, Alberta! Keep up the good work, cleaning up those fouled ‘tar sands’!
You’d think cleaning up the biggest oil spill on the planet would be a real rallying point for the environMentalists, wouldn’t ya??! But Noooooooo! If ‘Mother Nature’ makes a muck-all mess spilling millions of barrels of oil across the land, it’s OK because it is ‘all natural’. Locally Sourced, Free Range, and No GMOs too! But let a manmade pipeline or tanker spill 10 gallons and it’s cause celeb for the environMentalists to “shut everything down and keep it in the ground”. The irrational hippocracy is beyond belief!