We didn't start the fires

......but we can certainly manipulate the story for political advantage. Everybody's doing it!

Predictably, climate change activists are blaming the extremely active fire season in the Northern Hemisphere (Alberta!  BC!! Quebec!!! Yellowknife!!!! Hawaii!!!!! Tenerife!!!!!!) on climate change. Serious scientists are careful not to say climate change is the direct cause of these extreme weather events, but journalists are not so scrupulous. I actually heard one talking head this past weekend lumping the Ventura county earthquake in with Hurricane Hillary as a symptom of climate change.

On the other side of the spectrum, climate change deniers are taking equally extreme positions. A favourite argument is that the exceptionally high number of wildfires this year is mainly down to arson.  Every year there are fires that are directly caused by humans, either campers being careless with the matches or actual arsonists.  The added spice this year is that it is now apparently necessary to blame someone specific, and the bigger the culprit, the better the story.  Here in Canada I have seen it asserted, without a shred of evidence, that "climate vigilantes" have been setting fires on the direct orders of Justin Trudeau and/or the World Economic Forum. 

Let's just think about the logistics of this tsunami of arson for a second. The reason many of the fires in northern Quebec were allowed to just burn themselves out is that they happened in areas so remote that firefighters could not gain access to them. Yet we are apparently supposed to believe that arsonists were able to move freely about in these inaccessible regions, setting fire after fire and making it home safely to tell the tale. I don't think so. 

We may be able to exonerate Justin Trudeau from any direct involvement in setting the fires, but that doesn't mean he is not heavily involved in all this. His heart-on-sleeve "green" government is naturally playing up the role of climate change in all this (and completely downplaying any impact from arson).  But Trudeau is also seizing the opportunity to advance another part of his agenda: his battle to shake down Meta and Google to force them to bail out Canada's struggling legacy media, through an Act of Parliament known as Bill C-18.

Bill C-18 requires companies like Google and Meta to pay for any links they provide to Canadian news media. Meta has responded more robustly than Google, complying with the letter of the law -- though not its intent -- by removing such links from its websites.  The Government is furious, even though anyone with half a brain (and even some experts) tried hard to warn them this would happen.

Trudeau has glommed onto the opportunity provided by the forest fires, most notably those burning around Yellowknife, to lambast Meta for putting Canadians' lives at risk by depriving them of access to fast-breaking news.  Two points here: first, my own very informal and unscientific survey suggests that virtually no-one actually relied on Meta platforms for access to news sources.  Second, Trudeau has  apparently not found it necessary to suggest to the media that they might remove their own paywalls for the duration of the crisis. So even if you still had access to, say, the Toronto Star via Facebook, you still wouldn't be able to read anything beyond the headline: the paywall would keep the actual content from you. Well thought through there, Justin. 

Trudeau's zero content, zero emissions plan

The Justin Trudeau government has unveiled its "plan" or "road map" for Canada to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050.  I have placed those terms in quotes because this isn't much of a plan, and it's no kind of a road map. It is at most a statement of intent, another example of the government's addiction to virtue signalling.

The zero emissions by 2050 goal is one the government has been talking about for some time. Today it has tabled legislation, Bill C-12, which the CBC website, quoting Trudeau, portrays as "an accountability framework that will "ensure we reach this net-zero goal in a way that gives Canadians confidence."  At first blush that sounds pretty vague, and the details do nothing to correct that impression. Let's return to the CBC article for more:

" (The) bill doesn't set out exactly how the federal government should go about reducing emissions — it does not mandate further increases to the carbon tax, for example. It simply stipulates that Ottawa must set a goal and work to achieve it through measures that are deemed effective".

So there are no details?  How about a timetable, then? Well, sort of: 

"The legislation also requires that the minister table a plan in Parliament outlining how Ottawa plans to meet those targets. The legislation does not stipulate what role the provinces and territories will play in this national emissions reduction plan.

The first emissions reduction target, and the plan to meet it, would be tabled nine months after the bill is passed through Parliament. That first target would be for the year 2030.

Nine months after the bill is passed, so in all likelihood a year or more from today! Didn't Trudeau tell the media this morning that Canadians "want climate action now"? Oh well, there must at least be meaningful consequences if the interim or final targets are not reached, right? Far from it!

"While the government describes this legislation as "legally binding," there would be no tangible penalty applied if the country fails to drive down emissions as promised.

The government would simply have to state publicly in Parliament that it failed to meet its goals. There would be no meaningful legal consequences if Ottawa falls short. "

What's more, "A future government also could simply repeal the law and do away with reporting obligations altogether."

I accept the science regarding climate change and accept that we have to do something about it, though I'm no eco-warrior. This legislation is astoundingly vacuous and almost completely pointless. Can't wait to hear what Greta Thunberg has to say about it. 

Tiff talks

Even as the second wave of the COVID pandemic sweeps across the country, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem is looking ahead to the risks that litter the path to eventual recovery. In remarks to the Global Risk Institute this morning, he focused on risks to the recovery itself, risks that may arise during the recuperation phase, and risks related to by climate change. Unsurprisingly, many of the risks he addressed are related to debt. 

After briefly summarizing the steps that Canadian governments and the Bank itself have taken since the pandemic hit, Macklem moved on to discuss the financial risks. Intriguingly, he drew a parallel with the disastrous Fort McMurray fires of 2016, which the Bank has studied closely. "Then, as now, we saw a rapid stop in economic activity caused by a sudden shock. Then, as now, much of the lost ground was regained quickly. But the episode left economic scars that took a long time to heal."

Macklem noted that Canada's banks have provided mortgage relief to hundreds of thousands of borrowers over the past six months, but these deferrals are coming to an end. Moreover, the pandemic has severely hampered the ability of businesses to meet their fixed obligations, although the extension of emergency wage subsidies into 2021 will provide relief. Macklem described the financial system as well-capitalized and able to act as a shock absorber for households and businesses, but cautioned that the Bank is continuing to monitor the level of credit losses.  

As regards risks during the recuperation phase, Macklem's focus was squarely on household debt. A commitment to maintaining low interest rates sine die is a key element of the Bank's support to the economy, but the Bank is aware that low rates can foster both speculative buying and over-borrowing. The Canadian housing market experienced a remarkable bounce as the first wave of the pandemic faded: though Macklem did not mention this, Toronto was recently identified as one of the most over-extended housing markets in the world in a report by UBS. For the moment it appears that Macklem is confident that the Bank has the macroprudential tools it needs to cope with these risks. 

Finally, as regards climate change, Macklem stated that the financial system has a "critical role to play" in supporting the real economy's transition to a low carbon future. "If we are going to do a better job assessing, pricing and managing climate risks, we need better and more decision-useful information that combines climate-data analysis with economic and financial information. This will make the financial system and the real economy more resilient. And it will strengthen the ability of the financial system to fulfill its most critical role, which is to allocate savings to its most productive uses. This will help Canadians take advantage of sustainable investment opportunities."

Macklem's summing-up of the challenges ahead is worth quoting in full:

"The COVID-19 pandemic has made it painfully clear that how well we manage risks has a huge impact on our well-being. Globally, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the quality of risk management will increasingly influence the success and stability of societies. Of course, I’m talking about much more than financial-risk management. But the financial services sector has a leadership role to play. Two historic recessions in just over a decade have underlined just how much managing risks in our financial system matters to the livelihoods of Canadians. As we begin to recover from the economic fallout of the pandemic and look to the vulnerabilities ahead, sound risk management is more critical than ever."

A full agenda indeed.

This could get interesting

We learn via CBC that former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has taken on a side hustle. After his spell on Threadneedle Street ended early this year, Carney was appointed as a UN special envoy on climate change and climate finance. Apparently that's not a full-time gig, because he has been providing advice to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on how Canada should respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Carney surely knows his way around a crisis.  He was at the helm of the Bank of Canada during the global financial meltdown, and more recently led the Bank of England's response to the Brexit vote and the subsequent chaotic negotiations -- indeed, he agreed to extend his term in London in order to ensure an experienced hand on the tiller on Brexit day itself,  at the start of this year. The fact that Carney served in both Ottawa and London under Conservative governments may be part of his appeal to Trudeau right now, possibly helping to deflect potential criticisms that the Government's pandemic response is politically driven. 

That said, Carney's re-emergence in Ottawa gives us plenty of opportunities for speculation.  For example, how does new Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem feel about it?  The two men seemingly worked well together a decade ago, when Macklem was Carney's Deputy, but Carney is, to put it mildly, not bashful about expressing his views. How will Macklem respond if Carney takes to second-guessing the Bank's, or offering his opinions from the sidelines?

Then there's Finance Minister Bill Morneau to consider. Morneau has been caught up in the ongoing WE Charity scandal, which basically involves suspiciously tight connections and flows of money between a well-connected charity foundation and senior Liberal politicians, including both Morneau and Trudeau himself. Trudeau's Teflon shield seems to be deflecting much of the blame, but Morneau may not be so lucky, especially if Trudeau decides that someone has to go under the bus for appearances' sake.

Carney has long been reported as having political ambitions. Firing Morneau and installing Carney in what is effectively the number two job in the Government would be a bold and risky move, especially as Carney has no seat in Parliament.  Then again, there's a vacant seat in the Toronto area, so a hastily-arranged by-election to get Carney into the House of Commons can't be ruled out.

Lastly, Carney's acceptance of the UN special envoy role reflects a genuine interest in the climate change issue. He regularly raised the hackles of backbench Tories in London by speaking out on the issue. There are reports that Trudeau is looking to use the need to pilot the economy out of the pandemic shutdowns to launch some radical changes, which would undoubtedly focus heavily on "green" issues.  "Green Czar" Mark Carney?  Stranger things have happened. 

Hey Greta -- read the room!

It took Greta Thunberg about a nanosecond to denounce the EU's hard-won 750 billion Euro COVID rescue package, on the grounds that it "fails to tackle climate change". To which one might respond that it was never intended to do so, but of course, for Ms Thunberg, everything must be about climate change.  That being the case, she needs to prepare for a whole lot of disappointment, because COVID-19 is likely to set efforts to combat climate change back for a long time to come.

In the short term, COVID is making a big difference to the way people get around. Sure, plane travel has collapsed, which is a good thing for the climate.  On the ground, however, it's a different story: the private car is making a big comeback at the expense of public transit.  The UK publishes weekly data comparing the usage of various modes of transportation to year-ago levels. For the week ended July 20, journeys by train or subway stood at about 20 percent of prior-year levels.  That's stunningly low until you realise that a few weeks ago, that figure stood at less than 10 percent.

What about car journeys?  Those had recovered to about 85 percent of prior year levels and were moving up fast. As long as people perceive the car as the safer way to get around, that trend is likely to continue: experts are warning it could take years to rebuild confidence in public transportation. Similar trends are surely to be seen in many other countries, and as long as they persist, they bode ill for the climate.

If we now look at the longer term, there are two factors in play that stand to inhibit efforts to return  climate change to the top of the policy agenda.  The first is the macroeconomic impact of the virus itself: it's making every country poorer, while imposing massive costs.  Countries facing falling GDP, stubbornly high unemployment and soaring healthcare costs (including the staggering bill for acquiring and administering a vaccine when one is found) are unlikely to put much money aside for climate change efforts. Senator Joe Biden might want to keep this in mind as he looks to place a "green New Deal" at the centre of his platform for November's election.

The second factor is sheer fatigue.  Ms Thunberg and others have regularly suggested that the all-out international effort to combat COVID can be seen as a dry run for a similar mobilization to avert climate disaster. That seems downright Panglossian -- nobody is enjoying this, and the idea that as soon as COVID is beaten, people will be revved up to undertake a longer and more arduous effort to curb climate change is little short of ludicrous.

Most disturbing of all for Ms Thunberg, it seems to be people of her own age or just a bit older who are chafing the most under the restrictions imposed to fight COVID.  People who can't stay away from the beach or from illegal raves for even a few weeks seem unlikely to sign up to Ms Thunberg's multi-year crusade.

COVID-19 has not diminished the importance of doing something about climate change, but it has drastically reduced the likelihood that voters and taxpayers will see that as a priority any time soon.     

You got the wrong St. John's

The weather guy on a Toronto TV station just now breathlessly announced that Tropical Storm Edouard, out there in the Atlantic, was a record breaker. It was -- wait for it -- the earliest ever fifth named storm for any Atlantic hurricane season. Seems like a pretty obscure record, but there we are.

Thing is, the previous four named storms haven't amounted to much, certainly not to anything like a hurricane.  One of the four, Bertha, formed in the Pacific, crossed over Central America into the Caribbean and stayed active just long enough for NOAA to give it a name before it headed onshore and petered out. The other three (Arthur, Cristobal and Dolly) formed in the Atlantic but barely had time to get christened before quite literally going off the radar.  The NOAA meteorologists have predicted an above-average hurricane season this year: giving every thundercloud a name is certainly one way to ensure they're right!

You can scroll through the NOAA website to find out all about Edouard. It was given a name (thus becoming the "earliest ever fifth named storm") when it was located about 36 degrees north of the equator. It's a long time since I studied geography, but I'm close to 100 percent sure that's a very long way north of the tropics. And check out the location -- the nearest land is the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, where icebergs are a much more common sight than hurricanes.

This may well turn out to be an above-average hurricane season -- there are two more possible candidates out there even now -- but I'm not sure NOAA is doing anyone any favours by crying wolf so much. Serious suggestion: a depression that doesn't build up to the required windspeed until it moves out of the tropics really should not be called a tropical storm. Or here's an alternative rule: if a storm forms near St. John's, Antigua it could be a tropical storm; if it forms near St.John's, Newfoundland, it definitely isn't!

What the Teck??

Last week Teck Resources Limited, a Vancouver-based mining corporation, announced its latest financial results. It made mention of its Frontier oilsands project in Alberta, warning that failure by governments to approve the project would cause it to take a write-down in excess of C$ 1 billion.

Meanwhile, even as it faced the rail blockades, the Trudeau government was wrestling with its decision on whether to give Frontier the green light, having promised an announcement by the end of this month. There were media reports that many of Trudeau's parliamentary caucus opposed the deal.

At the start of last weekend, the Alberta government announced deals with two First Nations communities whose lands would be affected by the project, clearing a major stumbling block.

And on Sunday evening.....Teck abruptly withdrew its application for approval for Frontier, effectively killing the project after years of planning. It duly took the C$ 1 billion write-down.

Cue the blame game.  Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was quick to point the finger at Ottawa, citing Trudeau's commitment to emissions reduction -- oilsands mining is notoriously polluting -- and even suggesting that the rail blockades had persuaded Teck that it could not proceed with the deal.  Teck's own reasoning was rather more subtle.  It noted that international investors were looking for energy projects in jurisdictions that had "reconciled resource developments with climate change", something that the Kenney administration has largely (and loudly) refused to do. 

It is quite possible that Teck has done itself, Alberta and Canada a favour here.  Even if approval had been granted this week, the project would have taken years to complete and would have seriously strained Teck's balance sheet. Payback for the investment would have taken decades.  Can anyone seriously suggest that a highly-polluting fossil fuel project that will not pay off until well after the middle of the century is a smart move right now? 

The loss of jobs (7000 for construction of Frontier; 2400 ongoing once operational) and government revenues (projected at C$ 70 billion lifetime) may be a blow.  However, Alberta's oil industry already has huge unfunded back-end costs, with abandoned wells littering the Province. Adding a 270 square kilometre open-cast mine to that burden would seem the height of folly. If Teck's decision forces Alberta and Ottawa to start looking at alternatives to megaprojects such as Frontier, that's a good thing, even if it may not seem that way at the moment. 

The stranded Province

The Federal election results paint a picture of a deeply divided Canada.  Solid Liberal red in southern Ontario; the revival of the Bloc Quebecois in la Belle Province; and in the three Prairie Provinces, a sea of Tory blue with the exception of one NDP redoubt in Alberta.  Governing for the next four years, or however long the minority government lasts, is going to be challenging.

If the media are to be believed, the West is up in arms at the results, fearful that its interests will be neglected in Ottawa.  There's talk, especially in Alberta, of a renewed fervour for separation from Canada -- inevitably, this has been dubbed "Wexit".  Albertans need to think long and hard before even considering this.

It should first of all be said that there's no evidence that Justin Trudeau has it in for Alberta. He has tried everything he can to secure the extra pipeline capacity that the Province needs to export its oil, up to and including the purchase of the Trans-Mountain pipeline from its former owner, Kinder-Morgan. Attempts to expedite expansion of that pipeline have been stymied by fierce opposition from the government of British Columbia, as well as by some (but not all) of the Indigenous communities along the route.

The other potential pipeline routes run east and south.  The Energy East plan was intended to supplant imported oil in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, but Quebec is even more fiercely anti-pipeline than BC is.  Expansion of pipelines across the border into the US similarly faces strong opposition in North Dakota and elsewhere; the US, now self-sufficient in oil, has a dwindling interest in helping to solve Alberta's problems.

And that's Alberta's immediate problem in a nutshell.  It lacks ready access either to tidewater or overland export markets.  It's hard to see how poisoning relations with the rest of Canada, and potentially threatening an acrimonious divorce, would alleviate that problem in any way -- rather the reverse, in fact.

In truth, though, the problem is much worse than that. Albertans may not like it, but the world is on a path away from fossil fuels, at an ever-increasing pace.  Investors are already starting to worry about oil wells and related infrastructure becoming "stranded assets" and are marking down share prices in response. Any new pipeline built today will take decades to pay off, and it seems very unlikely that the Alberta oil sector is going to last that long, at least not at anything like its present scale. We may not yet be talking about "the orderly management of decline", but we must surely be well past reckless doubling-down on what looks like a losing bet.

In short, Alberta is both boxed in by its geography and on the wrong side of progress.  That seems like a situation where you would want all the help you can get from your friends and neighbours, rather than trying to barge ahead on your own.  There's much that can be done to make the job easier: this very thoughtful article from the CBC website, written by a professor from the University of Calgary, is a good place to start.

Greta Expectations

All power to Greta Thunberg and her environmental activism, but...is the elaborate virtue signalling represented by her current sea voyage to New York really a good look?

It seems to suggest that in order to save the planet, you need super-rich friends with an expensive racing yacht, plus enough time on your hands to spend sixteen days on a journey that can be done in six hours.  Remember, from New York she's heading to Chile, and she won't be doing that by boat.  It doesn't seem to be the kind of message that will win many converts among ordinary folk.

So, bon voyage and a safe arrival, Ms Thunberg.  But if you want to take the people along with you, you're gonna need a bigger boat.

No honeymoon for you!

Elizabeth May is the leader of Canada's Green Party and is currently the party's only MP in Ottawa.  She recently announced her engagement to a gent named John Kidder, who happens to be the brother of the Canadian actress Margot Kidder.

Here's a little piece from the Toronto Star about the upcoming nuptials.  As you might expect, May is promising that it will be "a low-carbon wedding".  That's just as well, because if you read the entire story, you'll find that the happy couple recently jetted from Vancouver to Poland to attend a climate conference.  Then they came straight home, right?  Well no, actually -- they hopped another jet down to Sicily for a little private time.  I'm guessing they're not voyaging home from there by sailing ship or rowboat.

Congratulations to Ms May on her engagement -- but she's going to have to stay awfully close to home for a good long time just to get her carbon footprint down to the level of the ordinary folk she aspires to lead.  No exotic honeymoon for you, John and Elizabeth!  And maybe cut back on the four far-flung homes the two of you currently divide your time among.  It's only fair. 

It's not about the pipelines

Justin Trudeau's government delivered its long-awaited verdict on three pending pipeline projects yesterday, approving two (Trans Mountain and Line Three) and nixing one (Northern Gateway). Right on cue, protesters immediately took to the streets, in Vancouver and elsewhere, to protest the government's temerity in approving any pipeline construction at all.

I don't suppose Trudeau and his colleagues need me to tell them this, but here goes anyway: for environmentalists, opposition to these projects (or to the much bigger Keystone XL pipeline, which may be revived under a Trump presidency) is not about the pipelines.  The environmentalists want to see fossil fuel use phased out as quickly as possible, so they are opposed to anything that allows fossil fuels to be brought to market.  There is no compromise possible here.  If God were to come down from heaven and declare that the Trans Mountain pipeline would never leak, the environmentalists would still oppose it.  They want the fossil fuels to stay in the ground.

The fact that many indigenous communities are also opposed to pipelines -- in the ongoing Standing Rock confrontation, or in the areas in northern British Columbia that have successfully seen off the Northern Gateway project -- is a blessing for the environmentalists.  It allows them to cloak their opposition with a higher cause: native rights.  Truth to tell, however, if the Standing Rock community did a U-turn and decided to support the pipeline, the environmentalists would abandon them in a trice and find another basis for their opposition.  They just want the fossil fuels to stay in the ground.

What about those indigenous groups and their own objections to these projects?  Some of the fears over the potential for polluting vital watercourses are undoubtedly justified, but there's more to it than that.  These communities would be no happier if the proposed project was a railway across their territory, or an airport*.  Once again, it's not really about the pipelines.

I'm probably giving the impression here that I'm all gung-ho to build pipelines hither and yon, and damn the ecology.  Far from it: as the leader of Canada's Green Party, Elizabeth May, has pointed out, with world fossil fuel consumption seemingly having peaked, with fossil fuel supplies abundant, and with the cost of renewable energy falling fast, the economic case for any of these pipelines is far from being established.  Any or all of them may turn out to be a white elephant from day one.

The truth is that "debate" and "compromise" are no longer terms that have any relevance when it comes to pipeline projects, because one side has its mind firmly made up.  That being the case, Trudeau's announcement yesterday just sets the stage for endless rancorous legal debates in the months and years to come -- and by the time any of the projects is approved, let alone built, the economic rationale will very likely have dwindled even further.  

* Or, as The Donald may be about to discover, a wall.  There's a 70-mile stretch of the US-Mexico border that's part of a historic, treaty-protected indigenous homeland.  The people there are determined not to allow Trump or anyone else to put a wall across their land, and the courts will very likely support them.

"Events, my dear boy, events"

Justin Trudeau's Government has had a good first six months. The PM has larged it up on the world stage, attracting fawning press coverage; the plan to admit Syrian refugees has fallen a bit behind schedule, but retains broad public support; the resort to deficit financing in an effort to jumpstart the economy has met with only muted criticism; and much of the baleful legacy of the Harper Tories has been unwound. Trudeau and his party appear to command even higher voter support than they did on election day last October.

Now, things are set to get harder, as the Alberta wildfires put the Government to its first tough test.  Back in the 1960s British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked by a journalist if there was anything that might derail his government.  His response: "Events, my dear boy, events". It's the unexpected and unplanned-for that puts any government to the test, and the fires near Fort McMurray certainly fall into that category.

So far, the Government seems to be reacting well, expressing sympathy and pledging financial and other assistance, while leaving most of the front-line work to the Alberta Provincial Government.  However, as the fires start to recede, or at least move away from the city itself, there will be some tough questions to be answered.  For example:

• Everyone is pledging to rebuild Fort McMurray, as you'd expect at this stage.  However, this is a community that lives and dies with the oil sands industry.  Given Canada's belated conversion to climate change activism, what is the future for that industry, and what in turn does that mean for the future size and shape of Fort McMurray? 

• How much should the rest of Canada contribute to the rebuilding effort?  Alberta has never been particularly good at squirelling away part of the proceeds of oil sales to provide for the future.  The so-called Heritage Fund has never been more than a fraction of the size of, for example, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which has around US$ 900 billion in assets.  Famously, Albertans' prayer whenever oil prices fall has been "Please God, send us another oil boom.  We promise we won't p*ss it away this time".  Once the sympathy factor wears off, how much will Trudeau be able to persuade the rest of Canada to pony up to help out? 

• This being Canada, anything Trudeau does for Alberta will inevitably lead other parts of the country to demand similar largesse. One obvious example: Quebec's Bombardier Inc, which has been holding out the begging bowl ever since the new government took office. Trudeau's team has reportedly been taking a tough stance in negotiations. Will that be politically sustainable if Federal monies start pouring into Fort McMurray?

No doubt there are worse crises to come as the G overnment's term rolls along for the next four years.  However, this crisis is the first time that this relatively inexperienced set of Ministers has been forced to take big decisions on the fly. It will tell us a lot about how they might cope if and when something really testing comes along.    

Your candle is killing the planet!

This letter, which appeared in the Toronto Star on Thursday last, is worth quoting in full:

During Earth Hour we spent much of the evening chatting on Twitter. We were shocked by how many pictures we saw of people gathered around candles.

Earth Hour can be such a teachable moment for all of us, especially the young. They can learn that global warming is caused by extra carbon dioxide in the air. They can learn that CO2 release is really the enemy of all creatures who share this planet and anything we can do to reduce this rate of release is a good thing.

But on this Earth Hour, we lit candles, which are CO2 emitters, and we kept our furnaces online, which are a major carbon dioxide source.

What happened to the teachable moment? It’s gone. Better to bring out the batteries and flashlights and to explain why CO2-emitting candles and furnaces are not appropriate for Earth Hour.

By using that short lesson we strengthen the association in children’s minds between the problem of CO2 release and global warming.

That's right. It's not enough that we turn the clock back to the start of the industrial revolution in order to save the planet.  According to this gent, we have to go much further, even forgoing the candlelight that our ancestors, or at least the better-off among them, used in much earlier times.

I wonder how the author of this letter imagines that his "batteries and flashlights" got powered up. I wonder where he bought the clockwork computer that I am assuming he must have used to access Twitter during Earth Hour.  I wonder if he's aware that batteries, including the rechargeables that he presumably favours, are full of toxic chemicals.

But leave all that aside.  The really important point that he's missing is that doing something about climate change is much easier for us than it was for our great-great-great-great grandparents, because we're so much wealthier.  That's why the pea-souper fogs I can vaguely recall from when I was growing up in London haven't been seen for decades. It's why pollution levels in major North American and European cities have been brought under control. It's why, according to some estimates, global carbon dioxide emissions seem to have plateaued in the last couple of years. And it's why the big challenge in the immediate future is to stop the rise in CO2 omissions in massively populated countries like China and India, which aspire to reach the developed world's standard of living.

Most well-informed experts assure us that we can make the transition to a low carbon economy without sacrificing our overall standard of living.  That's good, because if we're all supposed to adopt the hair shirt that the Star's correspondent seems to advocate, people will start falling by the wayside very quickly -- starting with me.  

McGuinty's goat

I was living in the UK for almost the entire time that Dalton McGuinty was Premier of Ontario. He unexpectedly resigned just after I moved back here, which I'm sure is just a coincidence.  Even from afar you could tell that he wasn't doing a good job, but it was only when I got to see him on TV that I realized what a self-righteous, arrogant dolt he was.

A succession of wildly expensive boondoggles made his position untenable, and might have been expected to consign his Liberal Party to a long spell in the wilderness too. The fact that his successor, Kathleen Wynne, managed to win the provincial election is mainly a tribute to the ineptitude of her opponents on both left and right.

McGuinty is now trying to rebuild his reputation. He's published a memoir that, based on the extracts I've seen, is unlikely to trouble the Christmas bestseller lists*. And today the Globe and Mail has given him space for a column in which he purports to explain why going "green and clean" won't come cheap.

He's right about that, at least based on his own record. As the province's Auditor-General reported last week, the McGuinty-led push for green energy saddled Ontarians with $35 billion in unnecessary costs, with much more to come in the next decade. Notice, please: the $35 billion is not the cost of the green energy measures: it's the excess between what they actually cost and what they would have cost if the government had been half-way competent. It is, purely and simply, taxpayers' money down the drain.

McGuinty's self-apologia today is nauseating, but it's also important. Now that the Paris climate accord is in place, controlling the costs of the shift to cleaner energy is paramount. If there are many more Dalton McGuintys out there, voters and taxpayers will quickly rebel, however virtuous the underlying goal may be.

* Think I'm being harsh?  Check this out!

Mr Good Example

Before Stephen Harper came along, Canada's international reputation was positive, though maybe not quite as positive as Canadians liked to believe. Governments of both parties were quick to stretch the underfunded military gossamer thin in order to contribute to peacekeeping missions around the world, and the country could generally be counted on to pull its weight whenever there was a refugee crisis. Budgets always seemed to be tight, so Canada's deeds always fell short of its words, but at least we were generally on the side of the angels.

That all changed under Stephen Harper, whose contempt for most of his fellow Canadians was matched by his disdain for foreigners -- the man couldn't even bring himself to be friendly to the United States.  The only countries Harper seemed to have time for were Israel and Ukraine, in both cases as much for domestic political reasons as for any point of principle. The aid budget shrank even further and instead of peacekeeping, Harper sent the still-underfunded military into combat zones, deploying ancient fighter jets to the Baltic and, more recently, to Iraq to join the fight against ISIS. As The Economist scathingly put it just before the recent election, Canada under Harper was "Strong, proud and free-loading".

In his speech to his supporters on election night, Justin Trudeau made a point of speaking about this. Directing his remarks to foreign countries that missed the "old Canada", Trudeau announced "We're back!"  He will have a chance to prove it soon enough: in the next few weeks he will be travelling to the G20 summit in Turkey, to a Commonwealth meeting in Malta, and to the climate summit in Paris. This article from today's Toronto Star looks at how he might try to reposition the country on key issues.

The Syrian refugee crisis will be a key issue at the G20 meeting, not least because the host country, Turkey, has taken in more than 2 million refugees, as well as playing a growing military role. Trudeau has already pledged to end Canada's air campaign against ISIS.  This was probably not a welcome decision in Washington, London or Paris, but it is a recognizable return to the policies of his Liberal predecessors -- Jean Chretien famously upset George W Bush by refusing to join the invasion of Iraq.

Trudeau has also pledged to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada by year end, a hugely ambitious goal. Here is where we start to see the old, self-righteous Canada starting to rear its head again: according to the linked article, Trudeau has said he hopes that commitment stands as an example for other nations. Well, which nations would those be? He can't mean Turkey, obviously, or neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, both buckling under the strain of the refugee influx. He can't mean Sweden, which with a population less than a third of Canada's has been seeing more than 25,000 refugee arrivals per month. He certainly can't mean Germany, the preferred destination of hundreds of thousands of refugess, or France, which has pledged to take far more than Trudeau is proposing.

I'm not trying to put Trudeau down here: any contribution to the crisis is better than none. However, in the overall context, what Trudeau is proposing is not much more than a pinprick.  It's more than a little pompous to set it up as some kind of example to others, many of whom are already doing much more.

Then there's the climate summit. Stephen Harper was famously cavalier about climate change, withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol and muzzling the country's climate scientists, while enthusiastically boosting the oil sands industry. Trudeau has pledged to change all that, but once again there's a risk that the rhetoric will far outrun the action.

Trudeau's team has been heard to say that Canada will be taking a leadership role at the Paris summit,  but it's hard to imagine countries that have been focused on the issue for years allowing the prodigal son to take a seat at the head of the table. In truth, the main decision that Canada could have taken to look good at the conference, the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, has already been taken in Washington. Recall, too, that Trudeau expressed his "disappointment" at President Obama's decision, though to be fair that statement may have been made for a domestic audience.

Truth to tell, and oil sands aside -- and I acknowledge that's a huge aside -- Canada's environmental record is not all bad. No developed country gets more of its electrical power from renewables, largely thanks to the abundant hydropower resources found from Niagara Falls to Churchill Falls to Quebec's awe-inspiring Baie James. Quebec must be the only major jurisdiction in the world in which electricity is the most economical form of home heating, and it's all produced from renewables. That said, however, this is a vast country, cold in winter and stifling in summer, that will always be a relatively heavy energy consumer. Trudeau will have to weigh his long-term commitment to the environment with the need to avoid short-term damage to the economy.

What it comes down to is that, in energy policy as well as the refugee crisis, Trudeau needs to avoid committing to more than he can safely deliver. Given the budget constraints he faces, there is a risk that Canada will quickly be seen as a country that speaks loudly but carries a small checkbook.  Trudeau's fellow world leaders may be glad to see the back of the lumpen Harper, but they won't want to be preached at by the new guy.

Thoughts on Hurricane Patricia

To the relief of millions of Mexicans, Hurricane Patricia turned out to be much less fearsome than had been forecast. There may still be more damage to come, as the remnants of the storm head across the already soaked plains of Texas and up towards the Great Lakes, but for a storm that was briefly being described as the strongest ever recorded, it turned out to be, well, not all that.

Patricia's sudden burst of strength -- it went from a depression to a strong Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours -- was clearly due to the powerful El Nino in the Pacific, but that hasn't stopped meteorologists from drawing links to climate change. Maybe the most panicky weather guy of all, and the one most shameless about attributing individual weather events to climate change, is Eric Holthaus over at Slate. Here's what he wrote just before the storm started to weaken.

If I were to cite a one-off event, say the fact that last February was the coldest ever recorded in southern Ontario (you could look it up) to proclaim that climate change was a myth, I'd be quickly and condescendingly put in my place by an army of self-appointed experts, telling me that climate and weather aren't the same thing. Holthaus and others don't seem to be governed by the same rules, but that doesn't save them from withering sarcasm from the internet when their dire predictions turn out to be wrong -- just check out the comment string on the linked article.

Of course, that criticism in turn brings out the acolytes of climate science to silence the dissent. If you care to scroll through the comments on the article, you'll find one skeptic asking why the storm weakened sharply even before hitting land. This prompted one "expert" to respond: "Cooler water near the shore. Next question?",  At this point I was foolish enough to get involved, wondering why nobody had suggested that might happen until after it actually did. This got me into a minor scrap with a guy posting under the charming handle "Fetus Gerulaitis", who challenged my suggestion that climate science is much better at coming up with explanations for what just happened than at providing useful predictions of what will happen.

I'm not a climate scientist and I'm not a climate change denier.  I'm truly agnostic about the whole thing, but tend to think a version of Pascal's Wager is the best way to proceed -- better to be safe than sorry.  However, the fact that I may not be able to cite chapter and verse from peer-reviewed academic papers on the subject doesn't disqualify me from using my logical faculties to express an opinion on it. Let's give it a try, assuming you're still with me.

The most famous proposition in modern climate science is the Hockey Stick graph of global temperatures, most closely associated with Professor Michael Mann. Now of course, in looking back many centuries for climate trends, Mann did not have access to actual temperature records, so he had to use a proxy, and the main one he chose was tree rings. So far, so good, although there seems to be some dispute about whether the size of the rings in bristlecone pines is really a good indicator of temperature changes.

Within the last couple of centuries, actual temperature measurements have become available, so the researcher has the opportunity to splice that data onto the older, tree-ring derived stuff. In doing that, however, you'd surely want to check that for the period for which you have both sets of data, there's some degree of congruence between the two measurements. One of the main criticisms of Mann's work is that on finding that the tree ring data for recent decades did not match the rise in temperatures he discerned from actual measurements, he went ahead and spliced the two series together anyway.    

The other major criticism of Mann's work (and others on similar lines) is that the tree ring data seem to imply no natural variance in temperatures for many centuries, until a sudden upward trend emerges as fossil fuel burning leaps higher after the Industrial Revolution. What about the well-documented Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent Little Ice Age?  Well, guess what -- climate scientists are busying themselves in proving that those things never happened.  All that well-documented evidence of the River Thames freezing over every winter, of Europe-wide crop failures and the rest of it is apparently invalid when compared to studies prepared by academics using unverifiable proxy measurements of their own devising. (Unverifiable because if actual temperature data were available, there'd be no need to use proxy measurements in the first place).

One more thing and I'll stop! Climate change skeptics have been claiming for some time that the most recent data were showing a "pause" in the global warming trend, starting around 1998. Climate scientists, including the aforesaid Dr Mann, have come up with a number of explanations for this, mostly focusing on the theory that the deep oceans were somehow absorbing the extra energy. Needless to say, this possibility was never mooted until it became necessary to come up with an explanation of the pause.

But here's the thing -- the NOAA, usually seen as the go-to source on climate measurement, has gone back and adjusted the supposedly historical data and....there never was a pause at all! As the Church Lady would say, "isn't that conVEENient?'  Well actually, not really. If the new NOAA data are correct, then all of the highly confident theories that Prof Mann and others concocted to explain away the "pause" are wrong, aren't they?

I very much doubt if Fetus Gerulaitis will ever read this, but I'd like to thank him for getting me to think these things through again.  The science isn't settled: it never is.

The Pope knows?

Is it just me, or is there something distasteful about all those scientists falling over each other to applaud Pope Francis for his encyclical, Laudato Si?  Most of these folks doubtless think that the Papacy is a midden of medieval superstitions, but hey, if the Pontiff is prepared to endorse the consensus on global warming, he's our man. Behind his back, most of them are probably thinking of him in rather the same way that Lenin supposedly referred to communism's fellow-travelers and apologists in the West: a useful idiot.

We haven't yet seen anyone resort to misusing the concept of papal infallibility to bolster the case further, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time.

Cause for the pause

The standard view among climate change scientists is that people who don't buy the story are in the pay of the Koch brothers or some similar nefarious interest group. Maybe some of them are, but there are also moderate skeptics, such as yours truly, who find that the climate change scientists can be their own worst enemies. This week's report from the NOAA's National Climatic Data Center is a case in point.

The new report in essence claims to prove that the much-discussed pause or hiatus in global warming, which seems to have started in 1998 (an El Nino year), never actually happened. Now of course, the belief in a pause was itself based on data that were collected and analyzed by climate scientists, rather than by stooges of the Koch brothers. Still, if the conclusion isn't what the NOAA wanted, the data must be wrong, so they've undertaken an exercise to remove "biases" from the dataset, and hey presto, no pause!

The thing is, slightly dodgy treatment of the data is nothing new when it comes to climate change science. The most famous example is, of course, the scientists at UEA in England, who used a very long data series to demonstrate the reality of global warming -- and then destroyed the literally irreplaceable data! Or there's Dr Michael Mann''s iconic "hockey stick" graph of long-term climate change. Nobody was collecting climate data back in medieval times. so Dr Mann used tree ring data to analyze the situation back then, and right up to the 20th century. But then a funny thing happened: tree ring data in recent decades have not shown any evidence of rising global temperatures -- so Dr Mann spliced on a completely different set of data to prove the conclusion he wanted.

Problem one for the moderate skeptic then: can we really trust the data? But even assuming we can, there's another issue. Many climate change scientists tried to ignore the pause in the early years, arguing (not unreasonably) that they had never suggested that warming would be a straight-line process.  However, as the pause has moved well into its second decade, this stance has become harder to justify.  Earlier this year, even the UN's IPCC report was forced to acknowledge the reality of the pause.

After denial, then, attempts at explanation. Most climate change scientists looking to explain the pause, including the aforesaid Dr Mann, seem to have settled on the almost untestable hypothesis that the deep oceans must be somehow absorbing the heat; and if so, woe betide us when the oceans' ability to act as a heat "sink" is used up, because then the atmosphere will really start to heat up. But...if there never really was a "pause" to begin with, then these great theories, posited by scientists who are in some cases quite willing to sue you if you don't believe them (Dr Mann again) were, quite simply, wrong.

Problem two for the moderate skeptic, then: the science isn't "settled", or anything like it, so please stop insisting that it is. Shouting down people who disagree with you -- and the latest worrying theme here is that climate change deniers are "a threat to national security", which is just a step short of accusing people of being traitors -- is not big, and it's not clever.

For a much angrier analysis of the new "data", check this out.

Ontario's year of the CAT

The Ontario government has announced that the Province will introduce a so-called "cap-and-trade"  (CAT) system in a further effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions.  Smart move, too little too late, or just another tax grab? Let's take a look.

We can begin by addressing one of the criticisms that's already been heard from the environmental movement: instead of CAT, Ontario should have imposed an outright carbon tax in order to change behaviour all across the economy. Well, there may not be anything actually labelled as a carbon tax in Ontario at the moment, but look at the facts.

• Ontarians already pay some of the highest prices in North America for electricity, despite having one of the world's most recognizable and long-established renewable power sources at Niagara Falls. Power bills have shot up in recent years as a result of previous governments' commitment to phase out coal-based generation (now accomplished) and to provide hefty subsidies to renewable alternatives, such as wind and solar. The generating system is so messed up that surplus power frequently ends up being sold at a loss to neighbouring jurisdictions.  Millions of "smart meters" have been installed to allow punitive rates to be charged for electricity use in peak periods. Yet the Energy Minister recently pointed out, with something that sounded almost like pride, that electricity bills will rise by a further 10 percent in each of the next three years, as Ontario continues to pursue its "green" goals. 

• Fuel for transportation is already heavily taxed by the Province, with the result that the recent rout in global energy prices is far from being fully reflected at the gas pumps.

All in all, you'd have to say that if high energy prices were sufficient to persuade corporations and citizens to curb their energy use, Ontario should already be one of the least-polluting jurisdictions on the continent. But it isn't, so maybe it's no surprise to find the Province looking at the more dirigiste  approach of CAT instead.

CAT, as the name implies, involves setting an overall cap on carbon emissions, with businesses then allocated pollution quotas. Those quotas can be sold (traded) by companies that don't need them to those that do. This is supposed to create incentives for companies to become more fuel efficient over time.  Ontario has provided absolutely no details of how its scheme will work, but two things seem certain: there will be a lot of bureaucracy, and all manner of investment banks and such will be gleefully figuring out ways to get in on the "trade" part of the action. Come to think of it, that means that three things are certain, the third being that someone (ultimately the taxpayer) is going to be footing the bill.

Business reaction has been muted so far. General Motors almost seemed to welcome the CAT announcement, seizing on the opportunity to toot the horn for its expanding line of electric and hybrid vehicles. However, Jayson Myers of the Canadian Manufacturers Association was more cautious, warning that CAT might prove to be just another factor helping to force businesses out of the Province, unless some of the revenues were used to help firms to pay for more efficient equipment. I suspect that the Government will retort that it's businesses' own responsibility to do that, and in any case it's clear that the money is already spoken for, as far as the Government is concerned. The proceeds will apparently be applied to environmentally-friendly uses such as transit expansion, an area in which Ontario's needs are immense.

In adopting CAT, Ontario is joining its neighbour in Quebec and a number of other significant North American jurisdictions, including California and British Columbia, in attempting direct controls on polluting activities. Even after the wholesale factory closures in recent years, Ontario is much more dependent on the manufacturing sector than any of those other jurisdictions, so it has more to lose if the scheme goes awry and, as the CMA's Myers warns, drives more businesses out of the Province. As more details of the likely costs emerge, CAT is likely to become unpopular among voters, and success is far from assured.  Still relatively early in her term in office, Premier Kathleen Wynne is taking her biggest gamble.      

Unsettled

According to this article, the weird North American weather this past couple of winters -- benign out west, frigid in the east -- may be due to a "blob" of warm water that's parked itself in the Pacific.  That's according to one group of scientists, who are risking their careers by suggesting (those of a sensitive disposition should skip the next few words) that the blob may not actually be the result of global warming.

Up till now, the favoured theory has been that global warming is inducing a loosening of the "polar vortex", the wind circulation that normally bottles up the coldest air in the Arctic, and that this has been forcing cold air to the south and east.  Then again, if you read on in the linked article, you'll find a reference to another guy who thinks the culprit is warm water a whole lot further south, near Papua New Guinea.

And the theories don't end there. Meteorologists in North America have discerned a link between the snow pack in Siberia and winter temperatures in eastern North America. The last two years have seen exceptionally large snow pack in Siberia, and sure enough, there have been two very cold winters in a row from the eastern Prairies all the way to the Atlantic coast.

So if there are four possible explanations for recent weather just in this part of the world, how can climatologists claim that "the science is settled", when it obviously isn't? And why do the rest of us allow ourselves to be cowed into submission by the bully-boy fringe among climatologists, when it's clear they don't understand nearly as much as they want us to think they do?

Still, enough about the climate -- let's talk about the weather!  Beautiful spring day today in God's country, under cloudless skies. Neighbours coming out of hibernation, trees and vines starting to bud.  Bring it on!