At a Climate Policy Tipping-point

Joe Oliver explains at National Post We’re at a climate policy turning-point.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  Much as the term “tipping-point” is overused regarding physical and natural systems, it is relevant to socio-political systems.  Oliver’s article was written before the US election vote between two candidates with completely opposite climate/energy positions.  It was a few days after an important vote in energy rich Alberta affirming the vital role of hydrocarbons. [See Alberta: “CO2 Gas of Life, Not Pollutant!” Media Outrage Ensues]

Across Europe and North America, voters are increasingly skeptical
of climate alarmism and worried about the high cost of net-zero policies

Climate alarmism is facing daunting scientific, economic and political challenges to its credibility with the public and its influence on government policy in Europe, the United States and Canada. It may finally have reached an historic turning point.

The public is constantly warned about a dangerous surge in warming since the late 1970s due to increased man-made GHG emissions. But a recent peer-reviewed article by five academicians with expertise in oceanography, mathematics and statistics contradicts that conventional wisdom. They find no statistically significant change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s — even though emissions have risen 121 per cent since then, from 24 billion metric tonnes in 1970 to 53 billion in 2023.

They are not alone. John F. Clauser, 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, is one of 1,960 scientists and professionals from around the world, including 146 Canadians, who have signed the Clintel World Climate Declaration, whose central message is that there is no climate emergency.

These results pose two basic challenges to the core beliefs of climate alarmists.

♦  If warming has not accelerated in the past half century, where is the crisis? And,
♦  If a doubling of GHG emissions is supposed to directly impact temperatures, why have temperatures not shot up?

The latter question also applies to the 1970’s, when go-to experts and the mainstream media were hyperventilating about a return to an Ice Age, though GHG emissions had doubled in the previous 30 years.

Meanwhile, European economic growth has stalled, in large part due to the high cost of energy, which makes industry uncompetitive and drives energy-dependent companies to the United States. Germany, now the sick man of Europe, is de-industrializing, a direct result of former chancellor Angela Merkel’s reckless abandonment of nuclear energy and her country’s consequent reliance on Russian gas. The German automotive sector is also in crisis, the loser in a failed bet on EVs.

Tellingly, the issue of climate change has been virtually absent
from the American presidential campaign, even though the
two candidates have opposing views on the subject.

Donald Trump has made some headway condemning Kamala Harris for senseless green policies that damage the economy and hurt American workers. The one climate issue that has been high-profile is fracking. In a dramatic reversal from her position in 2019, Harris now supports it, which is important in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to her election chances. If she wins, she will back subsidies for renewables and discourage fossil fuel development. If Trump wins, it will be “Drill, baby, drill,” a rejection of climate alarmism and a retreat from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, all of which would reverberate globally.

Although most Canadians claim to be concerned about global warming, it is no longer high on their priority list and they were never prepared to pay much to deal with it, in any case. Axing Ottawa’s key climate policy, the carbon tax, has become a powerful vote-winner for Conservatives across the country. Ontario Minister of Energy and Electrification Stephen Lecce has come out in favour of every source of energy to produce electricity, including nuclear for base load and natural gas to back up wind and solar. Without gas, the province would suffer from brownouts and blackouts, ballooning costs and an uncompetitive industrial sector.

Despite all this, Canadian politicians are not yet ready to acknowledge publicly three increasingly evident realities that contradict climate orthodoxy:

• • Net zero is unattainable without devastating economic and social costs — and may be unattainable, period.
  • Canada cannot on its own make a discernible difference to the global climate. And, therefore,
  • Climate policies are mainly an extremely expensive form of virtue-signaling.

The federal Liberals, blinded by catastrophism and the appeal of big-government solutions, will not retreat from their crushingly costly climate program. But they almost certainly will be gone within a year, though their death throes seem interminable. A new Conservative government should focus on adaptation and research, which are effective and affordable ways to deal with extreme weather and moderately rising temperatures.

Though the signs are encouraging it is still too early to be sure we have reached peak climate alarmism. But the time is coming when common sense and rationality re-emerge — first gradually and then probably suddenly. One day we will look back with deep regret and wonder how collective madness captured the Western world and caused it to sacrifice hundreds of trillions of dollars to a false idol.

This article (At a Climate Policy Tipping-point) was created and published by Science Matters and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Ron Clutz

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