Here come the carbon taxes. And there they go again. Can’t anybody here play this game? For some time an outfit called the Ecofiscal Commission has tried to offer the conservative solution to climate change. Frankly I believe that solution has to begin with the science, or rather with skepticism about what alarmist non-scientists tell us the science is saying. (For instance the Climate Discussion Nexus newsletter and videos including our latest on the 10th anniversary of Climategate [Read more]
Column: Fuel for me but not for thee?
Hypocrisy is an ugly vice. And a revealing one. Normally it just reveals that people who make haughty demands of their fellows overestimate what even their own flesh is capable of especially in the direction of self-denial. But climate hypocrisy casts an especially sickly light on what alternative energy is not capable of. When rich people who claim to believe the oceans are rising inexorably buy fancy properties by the sea, like the clickbait my browser recently dangled before me in a list [Read more]
Column: Hot news
Apparently the climate change debate just ended, for about the 43rd time since 2000. This time heat waves did it. Environment and Climate Change Canada just bellowed: “Climate change is real and Canadians are feeling the impacts—from wildfires that choke the air with smoke, to devastating floods and deadly heatwaves.” But don’t lose your cool just yet. As I’ve complained before, there’s a kind of rotten-cherry-picking going on when heat waves are blamed on climate change and cold snaps [Read more]
Robson: Let them eat carbon
Hypocrisy is far from the worst among vices. But it has a special shabby ugliness. And while the weakness that leads someone to say one thing in public and do another in private may inspire at least some pity, the arrogance of those who loudly demand that others submit to limitations unbecoming to their exalted status deserve public shaming. Which brings me to Canada’s Prime Minister… wherever he is. As you know, Justin Trudeau loudly proclaims that we face a “climate emergency” requiring [Read more]
Robson: The Sermon on the Carbon Tax
Oh well. The Pope has spoken. So now it’s settled. What’s that, you say? We’re giving up divorce? Abortion? Pre-marital sex? Not exactly. It’s something else the head of the Roman Catholic Church is apparently entitled to speak on with dogmatic authority and in this case to all mankind rather than just to often inattentive Catholic faithful: carbon pricing. After years of the Pope calling for drastic action on climate change, it is apparently a big news story that the Pope has issued a call [Read more]
Robson: Word War III
There’s a famous remark attributed to Albert Einstein that while he didn’t know what weapons would be used in World War III, World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. And indeed when 2001 Nobel Economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz declared that “The climate emergency is our third world war” my immediate thought was that indeed if taken seriously the climate alarmists’ remedies would leave those who survived back in the Stone Age. It’s a pretty big “if”. With just 12 years until we [Read more]
John Robson: Harvest of woe
What if the crops fail? It’s not very likely, at least in North America and Europe, given the extraordinary proficiency and resilience of our high-tech agriculture. But apparently they might. At any rate, climate alarmists have been predicting manmade-global-warming-driven crop failure since at least the Canadian government’s 2001 Canada Action Plan pamphlet warning of declining yields on the prairies due to drought. (Indeed, they’ve been predicting widespread famine before they were climate [Read more]
Robson: It came from outer space
“Unless this really is just an argument about climate change.” Andrew Coyne concluded an argument in favour of carbon taxes with this withering dismissal of doing nothing in the face of a universally acknowledged crisis. To deny it you’d have to be from outer space. What a coincidence. If we’re not arguing about climate change, I’d sure like to be. And though I’m not from outer space, certain eccentricities notwithstanding, some important evidence is. Including warming on Mars, Jupiter, Pluto [Read more]
John Robson: Staying warm is important
When it’s really cold, especially out of season, people joke that they wish we’d get some of that global warming they keep hearing about. And there’s many a true word spoken in jest. Of course if you talk that way, even if you’re not Donald Trump, you get irritated lectures that global warming isn’t about the good warmth that leads people to, say, vacation in the Caribbean. It’s the terrible kind that causes droughts, floods, hurricanes, the extinction of every species that’s cute or useful [Read more]
John Robson: Right man, wrong job
Nice to see that my old friend Mark Cameron has a deputy ministerial job with Jason Kenney. Hi Mark. Now I wonder if I can get you fired for your views on carbon taxes. Well, not fired exactly. More like transferred to a job where your abundant talents can be useful and you can't do harm on the climate file. Possibly in a different province. I try to wish nobody ill. But Mark is in the rally-round-the-white-flag camp on climate. He's been pushing hard for carbon taxes as (a) the most [Read more]