The Conservative plan to combat climate change, “Secure the Environment,” contains several factual errors and is based on a faulty premise. It reads in part:
“Climate change increases the risks of fires, droughts, flooding and extreme weather events. Canada is already demonstrably feeling the impact of this given the fact that insurance payouts due to environmental events – particularly flooding – have dramatically increased in the last 12 years. As a result, homes are becoming harder to insure, costs for insurance are going up, and maximum payouts are going down.”
The “feeling the impacts” statement is not supported by science. The “dramatic” increase in insurance payouts over a climatologically trivial period ignores economic growth and is based on suspect sources.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS?
The gold standard source for information on extreme weather events is the sixth and latest “Assessment Report” (“AR6”) published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (‘IPCC’). To understand climate change, it is absolutely crucial to refer directly1 to the work of the hundreds of IPCC scientists who reviewed thousands of published scientific papers. Don’t rely on the CBC and the Toronto Star! The ‘AR6 Working Group’ findings on extreme weather events may be found here. Unfortunately, IPCC’s AR6 report is about 8,000 (!) pages long, filled with thousands of footnotes and citations – a challenging read! Luckily, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has summarized the results in an article readily accessible to the average reader – “What the IPCC Actually Says About Extreme Weather.” The subtitle is: ”I promise, you’ll be utterly shocked.” In his article Dr. Pielke Jr. directly quotes the IPCC AR6 report:
• An increase in heat extremes has emerged or will emerge in the coming three decades in most land regions (high confidence)
• There is low confidence in the emergence of heavy precipitation and pluvial and river flood frequency in observations, despite trends that have been found in a few regions
• There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions.
Yes, the globe has warmed at the rate of 1.5 ⁿC / Century since 1979, onset of credible satellite measured global temperature measurements. But – IPCC findings on floods and droughts directly contradict the message in “Secure the Environment.”
Environment Canada agrees with IPCC: ECCC’s “Canada’s Changing Climate Report,” Section 4.3.2.1 – Observed changes: “There do not appear to be detectable trends in short-duration extreme precipitation in Canada for the country as a whole based on available station data. More stations have experienced an increase than a decrease in the highest amount of one-day rainfall each year, but the direction of trends is rather random over space. Some stations show significant trends, but the number of sites that had significant trends is not more than what one would expect from chance.“
1 The work of the IPCC scientists is “reviewed” by IPCC politicians. The resulting “Summary for Policymakers” is crafted to deliver a politicized alarmist message in support of carbon taxes and “renewable energy” programs.
Statement by Former Environment Minister Catherine McKenna: “Extreme precipitation is also projected to increase in the future, although the observational record has not yet shown evidence of consistent changes in short-duration precipitation extremes across the country.” The source authority was ECCC’s Dr. Xuebin Zhang, our nation’s leading expert in the field.
Study titled “Southern Ontario Extreme Rainfall Intensity Trends – Update from Environment Canada Engineering Climate Datasets” concluded: 100-year intensities have decreased 0.1% on average in southern Ontario since 1990 based on ECCC’s Engineering Climate Datasets.
CBC Ombudsman reviewed Corporation’s claims of “increasing” extreme rain events: “Reporter had ‘unprofessional bias,’ CBC refused to address facts and the Corporation lacked editorial oversight.
Financial Post articles “Why insurers keep hyping ‘climate risks’ that don’t materialize” and “Fast flood science needs slow thinking – Media stories on rain and floods bungle the science” here and here discuss misinformation by the insurance industry and the media.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT WILDFIRES?
Linking wildfires to climate change is difficult. The majority of fires are not natural, they are caused by man. The U.S. National Park Service reports that “nearly 85 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson.”
The Canadian National Fire Database (CNFDB) records show that wildfires fluctuate greatly year to year. 2023 was a record high, 2020 was a record low! Until the 2023 extreme year, wildfire frequency and hectares burned had both been declining since 1980. Scientists do predict increasing “fire weather.” They also predict increasing rain.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT REASONS FOR INCREASED INSURANCE PAYOUTS?
The 2021“Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues” report by the Environment Canada concludes that increasing insurance costs related to extreme weather are the result of growth, not climate change effects. For example, page 349 states “Costs associated with damage from extreme weather events in Canada are significant and rising, largely due to growing exposure and increasing asset values,” Page 365 states “the majority of rising losses related to extreme weather events are the result of growing exposure and rising asset values.” And page 372 states “Since 1983, the increasing trend in insured losses associated with extreme weather disasters in Canada has primarily been due to an accumulation of value (e.g., people, assets, wealth) year-on-year.”
Page 151 of The National Research Council’s 2021 “National Guidelines on Undertaking a Comprehensive Analysis of Benefits, Costs and Uncertainties of Storm Drainage and Flood Control Infrastructure in a Changing Climate” emphasizes the need to consider “…projected changes in climate as well as demographic trends that would result in higher population densities in hazard areas or greater affluence.” The report also points out a direct (and natural) correlation between the increasing value of assets insured and payouts.
The insurance industry admits that there is no reliable comparator to recent insurance losses. The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction bulletin states: “Take disaster data for one. Systematically collected insured catastrophe data has only been collected in this country for about a decade. The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction data that goes back further than this, while helpful to show an overall tendency, has been cobbled together from various sources and is not very robust.”
Globally, normalized disaster losses as a percentage of GDP have declined.
A further serious weakness in the “Secure the Environment” document is the reliance on insurance payouts for the “last 12 years.” This is but a blink of an eye in climatological terms. The generally accepted minimum period for differentiating “weather” from “climate” is thirty years.
COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
The Conservative Party is missing a golden opportunity to educate the public to the realities of climate change and to propose fact-based policies. Voters should know that while the globe has warmed and further warming is a concern, the widely predicted dire impacts have not come to pass. We were told that a temperature rise of 1.5 ⁰C above pre-industrial levels would have calamitous consequences. We are there – 2023 came in at 1.48 ⁰C. Where are the massive famines and millions of climate refugees?
As discussed above, there has been no increase in severe storms and droughts, hurricanes have declined in frequency and severity. The rapid decline in the Arctic sea ice minimum extent has halted – in 2023 there was 40% more ice than the 2012 record lows. Polar bear populations have tripled. Pacific coral islands are not sinking, they are growing! Deaths from climate disasters have declined 99% from a century ago. Etc.
Conservatives should inject realism into the cost / benefit analysis of “renewables” projects. Instead of measuring “success” in incomprehensible tonnes of CO₂ emissions, results should be measured in degrees. How would voters have reacted had they known that the apparently impressive 90 Mt projected emission reduction in the original carbon tax would defer annual global warming by 0.00015 ⁰C, or 1⁰C in 6667 years?
Temperature cools with increasing altitude. This ‘adiabatic lapse rate’ is 1.98 °C/1,000 ft. The 90 Mt impact is the same as an altitude increase of 0.9 inches or 2.3 centimeters – the ‘climate change’ one would ‘feel’ by stepping on a thick carpet! (Calculations available upon request.) Would voters have judged this to be a win?
None of the above is intended to “deny” climate change. The examples simply demonstrate how effectively the massive “climate change alarmist industry” controls the narrative. All of our major institutions, the media in particular, have been infiltrated by brainwashed innumerate climate activists.
As currently written, “Secure the Environment” simply adds to the misinformation.
Pav Penna
BSc Math and Physics
March 2024
P.S: I strongly recommend that you fact-check the information above by following the links provided. Please report any errors. I would be pleased to respond to questions
* The author of the above article is Pav Penna who has been active in dispelling the claims made by the eco-warriors and does his best to ensure politicians are well informed. This was sent to all MPs in the CPC to ensure they had correct scientific and well-informed data! When he sent his report to those MPs, he offered the above to them in the event they wanted further information.
Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives 