Climate change alarmists ignore nature's role

Herb Pinder

The July 11 opinion piece by Peter Prebble raising fears about climate change cries out for historical and factual context. His real agenda is a political one and much broader than climate issues.

Over the almost six billion years of the earth’s existence, the climate has constantly changed. Lengthy periods of glaciation have been followed by much shorter interglacial interludes averaging 10,000 years. These natural cycles are normal and one would think that a true scientific process would include understanding nature’s way before rushing to judgment with the oxymoronic declarations that “the science is settled.”

Every scientist agrees that C02 is a greenhouse gas. Along with methane, and primarily water vapour, they serve to hold radiated heat in our atmosphere, without which, neither humans nor animals would survive the cold temperatures. Prebble is correct when he indicates that C02 emissions have grown by a third in the past 50 years, from roughly 300 parts per million (ppm) to 400 ppm. But he fails to further advise that as a component of the atmosphere that equates to only .04 of 1%. The change of 100 ppm over 50 years equates to .01%, an average annual rate of change of one-fiftieth of .01%. For that the activists want to rush into economically damaging policy changes?

There is no scientific rationale that such an infinitesimally small change in the level of C02 in the atmosphere would cause a catastrophe, the theme of his opinion. Global warming is a political construct under the auspices of the United Nations. Its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on climate models by Michael Mann purporting to show how such a minuscule level of C02 creates such a disproportionately high impact on the atmosphere.

His models have been discredited conceptually, mathematically and by their increasingly inaccurate forecasts. Denied in the request to Mann for his data, two Canadians, Steve McIntyre, a geologist, and Ross McKitrick, a professor at Guelph University, found other ways to analyze the Mann models. Mann’s forecast of sharply increasing temperatures has not occurred despite increasing C02 emissions, a fact acknowledged by the IPCC in its Fifth Assessment describing this dynamic as “The Pause.” In a further study McKitrick wrote “there has been no statistically significant temperature change for the past 15-20 years.” In fact, temperatures remain below average for an interglacial period.

To further his case, Prebble selects an El Nino year (and a record one at that) to support his thesis of “highly dangerous” warming. Temperature graphs, available for Prebble to review, show periodic spikes in the world’s temperature as a result of a natural phenomenon called La Nina. Perhaps Prebble has forgotten the two unusually cold winters that preceded El Nino.

The real objectives of the core purveyors of climate propaganda were revealed last fall in Toronto as the Leap Manifesto was introduced by Naomi Klein. As with her recent book, she and fellow travellers are exaggerating minor normal long-term cyclical changes in the climate as a back door to a replace our market system with socialism. Already, we have seen more regulation, higher taxes and attacks on critical infrastructure such as pipelines as a result of this information.

Prebble criticized Premier Brad Wall’s strong stance in support of Canada’s largest and most important industry. He is right that the climate changes and that C02 is a greenhouse gas. The notion that natural cycles are catastrophic and that they are caused only by C02 emissions is a belief, not a scientific fact.

While Prebble is entitled to his beliefs, most people in Saskatchewan are grateful to Wall for his national leadership in what has become the most important issue to protect the long-term prosperity of our province and our country.

Pinder is a Saskatoon resident who manages a small private equity business investing in early stage oil and gas companies. He has a strong interest in public policy and has served on boards of the C. D. Howe Institute, The Fraser Institute and the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.