By Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun
It’s like something out of George Orwell’s 1984.
Canada’s Competition Bureau, an arm’s length agency funded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to the tune of almost $50 million annually, investigated three organizations accused of denying mainstream climate science for over a year, following a complaint from an environmental group.
The bureau discontinued its 14-month probe in June, citing “available evidence, the assessment of the facts in this case, and to ensure the effective allocation of limited resources”, according to Josephine A.L. Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Competition, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate.
But it will re-open its investigation should it receive relevant new information from the public.
The complaint was filed by Ecojustice on behalf of six “prominent” Canadians, including former Ontario NDP leader and UN ambassador Stephen Lewis.
It accused three groups, Friends of Science, the International Climate Science Coalition, and the Heartland Institute of making false and misleading claims about climate change, including that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
When it launched its complaint in December, 2015, Ecojustice told the National Observer it would press the Commissioner of Competition to refer the matter to the Attorney-General of Canada for “criminal charges against the denier groups”.
In response to the Competition Bureau discontinuing its probe, Calgary-based Friends of Science said on its blog that: “The Competition Bureau is a very important enforcement agency. We regret that any of their time had to be wasted on this matter. We are not a commercial entity, we do not have federal lobbyists, we are not tax-subsidized as environmental charities are, we do not represent any industry. We only present the professional insights and expertise of our core team and represent the views of our individual members (not corporations). The typical process for Competition Bureau inquiries is confidential; Ecojustice appeared to use this call for inquiry to grandstand.”
In May, 2015, Advertising Standards Canada, a voluntary industry group that does not enforce its decisions other than through public suasion ruled, following 96 public complaints, that two Friends of Science billboards in Montreal stating: “The Sun is the Main Driver of Climate Change. Not You. Not CO2” contained, “categorical and unequivocal claims .... (that) could not be supported by the preponderance of current evidence on the matters in dispute ... (and) omitted relevant information, namely that a number of factors have led to climate change, of which the sun is just one.”
As someone who has written extensively on climate change for a decade, my view is that all of this is madness. We are entering into dangerous territory, a fundamental attack on free speech.
If we’re going to use agencies of the federal government to investigate and even prosecute “climate deniers”, for making “false and misleading claims” then let’s damn well do the same for “climate alarmists”, who do the same thing all the time.
I read and hear politicians making “false and misleading claims” about climate change almost daily, particularly with regard to what federal and provincial carbon pricing schemes will actually accomplish, as opposed to what our governments are claiming they will accomplish.
But the way to decide these issues is through public debate, not running to an agency of the federal government to shut up people we disagree with, particularly a government that itself makes false and misleading claims about man-made climate change all the time.
Last week I explained in general terms why the basic methodology used by the UN to justify its climate alarmism is hopeless for the purpose and proves nothing other than how gullible the Climate-industrial Complex (CIC) thinks the world is. This week Fox News has published an analysis showing how the Draft National Climate Assessment Report publicized by the New York Times as a great “scoop” last week really has long been available on the Web. The analysis explains how the Assessment’s main “contribution” is that the authors are being bolder in hyping their personal opinions as to how much of the “global warming” is attributable to human activity (they claim 100%, which is farcical given the huge emissions of carbon dioxide from natural sources) even though they do not cite any new basis for going beyond the more cautious but unsupportable alarmist conclusions of the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2013.
The Fox analysis speculates that the CIC is planning to use the Congressional “due date” (August 18) for the Report to hype the alleged perfidy of the Trump Administration in not agreeing with this most recent extension of all the previous outrages attempting to justify the unjustifiable in terms of climate alarmism. That this is even under discussion is a result of the decision of the Trump Administration not to directly confront the bad science employed by the CIC and exemplified by the Draft Assessment Report. Rather, the EPA Administrator’s current position is that he does not know what contribution humans make to climate change. This appears to be a political rather than a scientific conclusion since I suspect that he knows better.
It is long past time for the Trump Administration to directly confront the climate “science” exemplified by this Draft Report for what it is: bad science. Stalling further or waiting for a “red/blue” confrontation will not make the ultimate debate any more palatable politically. The climate alarmists have too much invested in their scientific scam to ever admit that their “science” is what Richard Feynman characterized as “cargo cult science,” regardless of how much EPA invests in either time or effort in “red/blue” debates. The most likely result of red/blue debates would be to decrease the likelihood that sufficient time will remain during the Trump Administration to revoke the GHG Endangerment Finding (EF), the legal underpinning for most EPA attempts to impose the climate alarmism ideology.
The Extreme Importance of Revoking the GHG Endangerment Finding
Revoking the EF is the only way to bring the climate alarmism scam to the untimely end it so richly deserves in the US and hopefully indirectly elsewhere. Until that happens the CIC will continue to pursue its bad science through reports such as the National Climate Assessment with the recommended disastrous policies that would seriously damage the environment, impoverish the less wealthy, and bring economic disaster for our Nation by raising the prices and decreasing the availability and reliability of fossil fuel energy which is so central to our way of life and economy. If a genuine debate is desired, it would best be undertaken as part of a reconsideration of the GHG Endangerment Finding where the outcome would have some practical and important consequences. Each day that this reconsideration is postponed increases the risks that EPA will be forced by court decisions to impose unjustified carbon dioxide emission reduction regulations based on implementing the EF.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, WeatherBELL Analytics LLC Meteorologist
Harvey came ashore as a major hurricane overnight but was down to 75mph in the late morning advisory and downgraded to a tropical storm early this afternoon. It was the first hurricane this decade in Texas and the first major hurricane since Alicia for Texas in 1983.
This put an end to the record lull of major landfalling storms that reached 4326 day (almost 12 years). The last major storm was Wilma in October of 2005. The previous record lull was around 8 years in the 1860s.
Hurricanes are no stranger to Texas. From 1980 to the present, at least 70 tropical or subtropical cyclones affected the U.S. state of Texas.
On September 8, 1900, the port city of Galveston in the U.S. state of Texas was struck by a Category 3 or 4 hurricane which resulted in the deaths of at least 8,000 people. It is the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States and the third costliest hurricane ever to strike the mainland.
According to David Roth of the Weather Prediction Center, a tropical cyclone makes landfall along the Texas coastline about three times every four years, and on any 50 mile segment of the coastline a hurricane makes landfall about once every six years. His analysis was used to create the above graph of decadal hurricane and major hurricane landfalls in Texas.
Already over 20 inches of rain has fallen in a few spots as of early Sunday.
See how far reaching the spiral bands around Harvey extend with heavy rains even to Louisiana.
See the storm surge continue with the continued southeast flow and the feeder bands.
See the major river and stream flooding.
With the storm not forecast to leave the state until perhaps late next week, it seems likely to rank high among the record rainfall events and maybe challenge Amelia’s record of 48 inches in the week long rains in Medina, TX in July 30-August 5, 1978.
Tornadoes frequently occur new the tropical storm bands as higher winds aloft get carried down in downdrafts in thunderstorms, spinning up vortices (usually EF0 or EF1 though some EF2 to EF4 tornadoes have occurred). 26 have occurred so far with more to come.
Enlarged
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NHC note: Harvey is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 15 to 30 inches and isolated maximum amounts of 40 inches over the middle and upper Texas coast through Thursday. During the same time period Harvey is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 5 to 15 inches in far south Texas, the Texas Hill Country and southwest and central Louisiana. Rainfall of this magnitude will cause catastrophic and life-threatening flooding.
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Note: You can see cycles in Atlantic hurricane intensity.
The hurricane activity in the Atlantic is tied to cycles of the Atlantic AMO warm and cold modes.
See the frequency of major hurricanes and landfall in the warm and cold modes.
The current warm mode may have peaked in 2005, when we ran out of storm names. That was the year of Katrina and Rita and Wilma.
One last point - why did Harvey stall? With amazingly cool high pressure for August spread to the north, Harvey was blocked from recurving like most storms. The top 10 wet storms listed above were all trapped and long lived events. The biggest snowstorms come from storms that get captured and stall. CO2 plays no role in storm movement. A quiet sun though tends to produce more persistence.
