For example, the Federal Budget published April 7, 2022, contained this phrase: “Canada is already experiencing an increase in heat waves, wildfires, and heavy storms.”

All three claims were demonstrably factually incorrect. An Access to Information Act request to provide the scientific basis for phrase was denied. Stated reason: “Cabinet Confidences!” Really!

An activist Canadian press ‘cheer leads’ the alarmist narrative. By not correcting the record, Environment and Climate Change Canada (‘ECCC’) also tacitly supported the misinformation.

The objective of this document is to give the lay reader tools to easily fact check accuracy of climate change reports. Just follow links provided below to unimpeachable sources.

Temperatures.We are routinely told that increased CO₂ levels have made our summers hotter. Is this true? Canada Weather Stats uses data from Environment and Climate Change Canada (‘ECCC’).

Their site provides data for dozens of climate characteristics for hundreds of Canadian locations in an easy to interpret graphical format. Check out the weather history of your home town! What can we learn from Ottawa’s historical weather records dating back to 1890?

The red curve shows us that the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily. The yearly temperature maximum readings in blue show a great deal of annual variation with a cluster of high readings in the early 1900’s.

In climate science there is a convention that thirty years of data is required to separate short-term ‘weather’ fluctuations from ‘climate change.’ The thirty-year running average shown in black indicates that Ottawa’s maximum annual temperature has declined over the period at a linear rate of – 0.94⁰C per century.

This is not what we you get from press reports.

‘Heat Waves’

The Federal budget claimed that ‘heat waves’ have become more severe and more frequent. ECCC does not monitor ‘heat waves’ but it does track the number of annual days with temperatures 30⁰C, or higher.

Here again we see that the trend has been declining.

Mean temperature

Contrary to Finance Department claims, official government sources show that Ottawa’s annual extreme high temperatures have cooled and there are fewer hot days despite higher CO₂ levels.

Does this ‘prove’ that climate change is not ‘real?’ No. However it does show how poorly the public is served by our activist press. The reality of moderating temperatures does not support an alarmist narrative or carbon taxes as a solution.

We can see that Ottawa mean annual temperature has increased at a linear rate of 1.23⁰C per century. This is because our winters have become warmer. In summary, since 1890, Ottawa temperatures have become more moderate, with cooler summers and warmer winters.

A moderating climate does not support the activist agenda. Hence it is not discussed.

‘Heavy storms’

The Budget document asserts that ‘Canada is already experiencing’ an increase in ‘heavy storms.’ The latest major climate study published by ECCC is “Canada in a Changing climate.” Page 168 of the document states:

“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.”

This directly contradicts the Budget narrative.

‘Wildfires’

When the Budget was published in 2022, wildfires had been declining since 1980 in both frequency and extent. Since then, the extremely high fire season in 2023 did reverse the area burned trend.

Note that a historical low was set just three years earlier in 2020.

Wildfire statistics are ‘noisy’ and difficult to interpret. About 50% of fires are set by man, the area burned varies with fire fighting budgets, available equipment, location of the fire, etc.

Summary

The Government claims that Canada is “…already experiencing an increase in heat waves, wildfires, and heavy storms” are demonstrably false according to their own sources! In spite of having had this pointed out, the Government refused to admit the error, implausibly citing ‘cabinet confidences!’

An appeal of the Finance Department’s ATIP ruling to the Information Commissioner proved futile. She supported Finance’s obfuscation.

Canadians deserve better.

Global context – temperature

The “climate change industry” wants the public to believe that there is a simple tidy relationship between CO₂ emissions and weather. In fact, the situation is extremely ‘messy.’ There is a great deal of local variability, the uncertainties remain high and predicted disasters have failed to come to pass.

This is the likely reason for the press failure to cover readily available information that contradicts or confuses the desired narrative.

Since 1979 we have had the ability to monitor temperature from space.

This credible information is published monthly, but you rarely see it covered by n the media. The likely reason for that is that Mother Nature refuses to follow steadily and predictably increasing CO₂ levels.

Yes, there has been a temperature increase at a linear rate of 1.5⁰C per century, a rate significantly lower than apocalyptic predictions twenty years ago. The erratic swings and the eighteen years of no temperature increase in the 2010’s are difficult to explain.

Solution – let’s hide the information from the public!

Global context – extreme storm events

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes periodic “Assessment Reports” which involve thousands of scientists reviewing tens of thousands of published technical papers. The latest of these (“AR6”) lists the IPCC’s current ‘state of the art’ on extreme weather events.

See Table 12.12, Page 1856. The IPCC makes it clear that science has not established a statistically significant correlation between ‘climate change’ and floods, heavy precipitation, droughts, fire weather, wind, hurricanes and cyclones, etc.

Contrast this with media stories that consider nearly every extreme weather event as ‘proof positive’ of climate change. The press routinely and breathlessly cites catastrophic predictions (‘scientists say’) and ignores the cold reality of actual weather history.

Relationship between CO₂ and temperature

A brilliant successful scam of the climate industry is to measure the success of ‘environmental’ programs in terms of tonnes of emissions. This is a totally meaningless metric when the actual objective is to ‘control’ global temperature which is measured in degrees, not tonnes. Duh!

So, what is the relationship between emissions and temperature? For the sake of this discussion let’s assume the IPCC has it right. According to the IPCC’s latest comprehensive report (“AR6”) – See Page 19: “For every 1000 Gt CO₂ emitted by human activity, global surface temperature rises by 0.45°C (best estimate, with a likely range from 0.27°C to 0.63°C).”

Translated to more commonly used metrics, this is a very broad “likely” range of 0.00000027°C to 0.00000063°C temperature impact per megatonne (Mt) CO₂ emitted. (The science seems pretty unsettled!)

Canada’s total emissions in 2023 were 694 Mt. Using of IPCC’s “best estimate” of 0.00000045°C/Mt, Canada’s impact on global warming is a matter of simple arithmetic:

0.00000045°C/Mt x 694 Mt/yr = 0.0003123°C/yr.

This is equivalent to 1°C in 3202 years.

The objective of Canada’s original carbon tax was to reduce emissions by 90 Mt. If achieved, this was equivalent to postponing global warming by 1°C in 24,691 years!

Why does the public not know this? How can we be asked to vote onthe ‘effectiveness’ of environmental programs and carbon taxes without understanding their impact on temperature?

Conclusions

There is no question that we are subjected to a constant flow of climate change misinformation from the government and the activist media. The links provided in this document all lead to non-controversial credible public sources.

By using these resources, non-scientist readers can easily make personal judgments about the quality of the information they receive.