Bank of Canada
Head Office
234 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G9
ATTN: Tiff Macklem, Governor, Bank of Canada
RE: New Report: “Fighting Climate Change: Can Humans Regulate Earth’s Climate”
Governor Macklem and Staff,
Thank you for your response to our letter of Aug. 2, 2021.
We note in your response that:
The Bank of Canada Act instructs the Bank “to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada.”
…and that you have been actively engaged on assessing climate-related risks since 2019.
Friends of Science Society was formed in 2002, so we have been assessing climate-related risks since that time and before. Our co-founders were semi-retired professionals who had worked in earth, atmospheric and solar sciences, engineering and business, and our view was that the Kyoto Accord (the Paris Agreement of the day) was deeply flawed in terms of science and economics. We also work closely with CLINTEL – the climate intelligence organization of over 900 scientists and scholars from around the world, who confirm there is no climate emergency.
To summarize the current situation on climate and energy, our team of Professional Engineers and scientists have compiled a new report “Fighting Climate Change: Can Humans Regulate Earth’s Climate?” sponsored by Canadians for Sensible Climate Policy.
In reviewing Bank of Canada’s climate risk assessments, we find that practical considerations of the challenges of achieving net zero is absent, and that improper assumptions are being made about extreme weather events.
For example, in Box 4, Chart 4-a, of your 2021 Financial System Review, the claim that natural disasters are increasing due to human-influenced climate change is not supported by evidence in the event record or the temperature record. A common claim (also echoed in your report) is that the Fort McMurray wildfire was a climate change event. In fact, it began as an ordinary wildfire that was not properly managed in a timely way. Despite warnings from the Alberta Government’s post-Slave Lake fire analysis, the 2012 Flat Top Fire Complex Review (FTFCR), that wildfire crews must be prepped and ready to go by mid-April, the new Alberta NDP government had reduced spring wildfire services.
The FTFCR revealed that late April-early May is a high-risk time for wildfire – often a very dry time between snow melt and spring rain. Who can forget Wild Rose opposition leader Brian Jean in the Alberta Legislature on May 4th, 2016, desperately calling for then Premier Rachel Notley to send water bombers to Fort McMurray immediately, while Premier Notley chastised him in the legislature for fearmongering? Hours later Mr. Jean’s house, along with those of 2,500 others, burned to the ground and ~100,000 people had to run for their lives.
Fort McMurray wildfire of 2016 is not a case of climate change, sir. It was mismanagement of wildfire fighting resources in a time of extreme wildfire risk.
Likewise, the 2013 Calgary flood was the product of a known, but rare meteorological pattern and not a climate change driven extreme weather event. Eight of the worst floods in Calgary’s history were before 1933. It is unfortunate that high profile climate scientists like Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and most media commentators continue to make these false attributions on the Fort Mac wildfire and the Calgary flood.
We ask that your climate-related staff carefully review our report “Facts vs Fortune-Telling”, our rebuttal to Dr. Hayhoe’s report “Alberta’s Climate Future”. For Dr. Hayhoe’s report, she worked with climate models, ‘downscaling’ global climate models to Alberta regions. Our team worked with Alberta data and long-term evidence and temperature records. The evidence from long-term record does not support Dr. Hayhoe’s downscaled modelled conclusions.
As Fiedler et al 2021 pointed out, climate models are not fit for long-term forecasting, and not fit for climate risk assessment in banking and investment.
The problem with ascribing natural disasters to climate change is that important practical actions to mitigate future natural events are forgotten. We address this in a post for a journalist from SLATE magazine, concerning the 2020 wildfires in the US. Billions of dollars are thrown at ineffective climate change initiatives like wind and solar farms, which actually raise surface area temperatures regionally and contribute to climate change through “Carbonless Anthropogenic Global Warming”, but they do nothing to mitigate damaging wildfires which happen every season.
Just as it would be laughable to not prepare Canada’s army of snowplows and sanders for winter, it is a puzzle that the Bank of Canada and insurance companies are busy with climate change policies, when they could be promoting effective FireSmart and flood mitigation strategies for communities and citizens, because wildfires and floods happen seasonally every year. There would be a much greater likelihood of saving lives and reducing property damage than wasting millions of dollars on climate models, something Canadian taxpayers are already funding at a national level through a myriad of climate initiatives, ENGOs and of course the various climate modelling centers in Canada.
To be clear, the funding of climate models is also an ineffective use of public funds as the Canadian climate models are forecasting warming that is seven times that of observed trends. This kind of error would never be acceptable in your industry; most businesses would fire analysts that were seven times off the mark of reality. Canadian taxpayers are being forced to fund this source of climate hysteria and no organization, such as your own with a sudden interest in climate risk, is calling this group to task.
“We draw attention to the CanESM5 model: it simulates the greatest warming in the troposphere, roughly 7 times larger than the observed trends.” The Canadian government relies on the CanESM models “to provide science-based quantitative information to inform climate change adaptation and mitigation in Canada and internationally.” I would be very surprised if the modelers at UVic ever put warning labels on their briefings to policy makers. The sticker should read: “WARNING! This model predicts atmospheric warming roughly 7 times larger than observed trends. Use of this model for anything other than entertainment purposes is not recommended.”
Had a few thousand dollars been spent making sure that every house in Fort McMurray was “FireSmart”, or even a few hundred million dollars, to create a large fire break around the town (or other towns at risk in the BC Wildfire corridor) – and had the Alberta NDP provincial government ensured that fire crews were contracted and ready to go by April 13 as outlined in FTFCR, the Fort McMurray wildfire might have been better contained and losses greatly reduced. For instance, look at this year’s success of the town of Logan Lake as a “FireSmart” community. Why is this not front-page news instead of the constant harangue about BC wildfires being caused by climate change? Why are media reporting on Lytton as being a climate change hotspot, when research reveals the high temperature was related to the foehn (aka Chinook) winds. Taking ‘climate action’ through carbon taxes and building wind and solar farms will do nothing to stop Mother Nature.
Roger Pielke, Jr. is a climate policy analyst in the United States and long-time consultant to the global insurance industry. He has been tracking extreme weather events and costs for more than 25 years and can show that it is false to claim that climate change disasters are increasing. He recently also called out Swiss RE on their climate catastrophe assessment in which they claimed climate change risks could cause an “18% hit to global GDP by 2050”. Pielke, Jr., reports that Swiss RE used the implausible scenario (known as RCP 8.5) and then multiplied the potential future costs for ‘unknown unknowns’ by 5 and 10 times!
This kind of ridiculous assessment is distorting markets and destroying essential energy industries like conventional power generation plants, the oil sands, conventional oil and gas development, coal mines, mining, and forestry. This is where a proper assessment by people like Pielke, Jr., sponsored by the Bank of Canada, would provide valuable insights – rather than relying on reports by climate activists, insurance companies, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports which now use climate models that run so hot, they are deemed to be ‘scary and wrong’ by Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS. Likewise, as Donna Laframboise revealed in her 2011 book “The Delinquent Teenager…” the IPCC reports have been skewed by the involvement of green-agenda driven activists from WWF and Greenpeace; in fact some IPCC reports have been loaded with citations from Greenpeace press releases.
If you recall in the court challenge of Resolute Forestry Products against the Greenpeace activism that has damaged the reputation and the forestry industry, evidence was presented that this is how Greenpeace writes press releases:
If the Bank of Canada is truly interested in promoting the economic and financial welfare of Canada, it would be incumbent upon you to state some realities to Canadians, to the federal government, and to international trading partners and parties to the Paris Agreement.
These are the realities we hope you would address:
1) Canada is not Europe – “Green New Deal” energy policies are not a fit for this vast, cold, sparsely-populated, resource-reliant nation. Abandon the Paris Agreement.
2) Canada will not fund the Green Climate Fund which has no accountability, and the unattainable promise of big money (bribe) for developing nations. This has caused disillusionment by countries like China and India, which were led to believe that if they participated in the Paris Agreement, then they would have access to $100 bn/yr Green Climate Fund, paid by Western Nations, and that those funds would be released with no accountability requirements. It is doubtful that Canadian taxpayers are fully aware of what this would have meant for them. It is sad that China and India both had to issue a ‘demand’ notice in the fall of 2019 for this promise, that could not be kept then, and post-COVID, cannot be kept now. It is curious that in your 2021 analysis, you focus on Canadian household debt, but have nothing to say about this international arrangement that, if implemented, would further drain Canada’s tax pool and burden working Canadians for no benefit.
3) Stand up for the Alberta oil sands. Bank of Canada is in a position to be straight with other banking institutions about the Alberta oil sands, which have been subjected to a >20-year long demarketing campaign, commonly known as the “Tar Sands Campaign” – a Green Trade War campaign filled with “Dirty Lies” by environmental non-governmental organizations, many of which (in Canada) are federally registered charities. Thus tax-subsidized ‘charities’ are working against the interests of taxpaying Canadians and against the interests of Canada in general.
4) NetZero 2030 or 2050 is an impossible and unnecessary target. As Roger Pielke, Jr. and Justin Ritchie have found, thousands of climate change papers have been based on the implausible scenario known as RCP 8.5 which is based on outdated science, and which was never meant to be used as a ‘pathway’ for policy making. This is the source of the belief that there is a ‘climate emergency’. When RCP 8.5 is removed from the picture, there is no emergency. You must take this news to the international community and stop the claims of ‘climate emergency’. The climate emergency is over. We do have time.
It is very clear that even if a catastrophic scenario was a reality, Canada could not achieve NetZero – certainly not in 9 or 29 years. There is no existing technology to replace oil, natural gas, and coal at this time. We cannot plan a future on energy technology that does not exist as discussed by Emeritus Professor Vaclav Smil in this public policy brief published by the University of Saskatchewan, no matter what Greta Thunberg demands.
5) The Carbon Tax must be cancelled. In your assessment of household debt, you do not consider the fact that Canadian taxpayers are being drained of finances due to the cumulative cost of carbon taxes – which will not stop climate change or extreme weather. As we have noted in a recent op-ed: “The FUND economic model calculates (see table 4) a negative social cost of carbon dioxide meaning that the Social “Cost” of Carbon is actually beneficial, thus carbon taxes should be eliminated. Even this calculation is biased as it falsely assumes that all of the recent climate change was due to greenhouse gas emissions and none by urban warming and natural climate change.”
6) Recommend that governments stop funding tax-subsidized ENGOs and Non-profits: On top of the carbon tax abuse of taxpayers, governments in Canada are handing out ~$5,000 per year for every man, woman, child and peoplekind in Canada to already tax-subsidized charities! Imagine if Canadians had that $5,000 back in each of their pockets; would this not largely right the concerns that your 2021 report expressed regarding debt load in Canada? A family of four would have $20,000 back in their annual budget! Likewise, many of these tax-subsidized ENGO ‘charities’ are also funded by all levels of government for their partisan climate change causes (which often include berating banks and insurance companies in an effort to shut down our job-creating revenue generating resource industries).
In 2018, Environmental Defence reported to the CRA that ~30% of its income came from government. It is unclear why the federal government would be funding the richest charities in Canada for millions of dollars in direct grants unless it is to curry favor for votes. These groups are partisan activists, and many have been funded by foreign sources, apparently as part of the ClimateWorks plan “Design to Win” – to agitate for policies these foreign cap-and-trade interests want, making it appear as if this demand is from grassroots Canadians when it is a case of Potemkin environmentalism.
See also:
Dark Green Money
7) Recommend to banks and insurance companies to finance and insure Canadian resource pipelines and resource development.
Insurance and finance are fundamental needs to support the safe operation of major corporations that provide essential energy services. Unelected, unaccountable environmental groups are battering these industry sectors and putting Canadian society at risk of economic decline and potential power generation blackouts. Many banks, in an effort to mollify these reputational saboteurs, have made some kind of alliance with them or even financed their hare-brained schemes, such as RBC’s contribution to the Great Bear Rainforest project driven by TIDES(MakeWay)/ForestEthics (now renamed STAND.Earth). As a reward for their efforts to cooperate, RBC’s reputation is now being shredded by Tzeporah Berman’s “STAND.Earth” a foreign-funded Canadian arm of the San Francisco-based operation, and operation that sits just a short distance from the Phillips 66 refinery that processes oil from competitor and despot nations! No protests there!
Clearly there is a Green Trade War going on against Canada and the Bank of Canada is in a position to do something about it.
As the Bank of Canada, we believe you have an obligation to confront these economic saboteurs on behalf of Canadian taxpayers and citizens and stop these attacks, which you could advise/direct agencies to do through your own financial powers and those of the Competition Bureau.
For instance, in the case of the beleaguered Trans Mountain Pipeline, it is clear that people in British Columbia are suffering high gasoline prices due to a combination of factors like the carbon tax, but also a shortage of supply. Trans Mountain serves consumers – as detailed by energy economist Robert Lyman.
8) War Measures Act for a “Climate Emergency” and Personal Carbon Ration? We are deeply concerned at the intimation in a recent article in “Metro” that some parties might be contemplating the implementation of the War Measures Act/Emergency Measures Act to address the alleged climate crisis, and institute a personal carbon ration, exploiting the establishment of COVID tracing apps and ‘vax-ports’.
We are concerned about similar promotions by others who promote a personal carbon ration (i.e., MasterCard’s DOconomy climate action card). The presence of these concepts in the media suggest they are moving into the Overton Window of political acceptability, despite being based on a greenwashing lie.
Carbon dioxide is not the control knob that can fine tune climate. We expect you, as the Bank of Canada, to clarify these matters to the Canadian public, that such greenwashing is unacceptable and unscientific and that there is no need to implement the War Measures Act/Emergencies Act.
9) Curious Correlation between Impossible Climate Aspirations of Fall 2019 and Fulfillment of Emissions Reductions by COVID Lockdowns of 2020-2021. Further, we are deeply concerned that many of the climate goals expressed in this September 2019 document entitled “Exponential Roadmap” were effectively achieved by the COVID lockdowns of 2020, which were devastating to the Canadian economy. Perhaps you may have some insights on whether these influential parties had any role in the destruction of the Canadian economy and the economic slaughter of millions of us. Is it possible that climate interests, through the bond market or others, influentially capitalized on the economic challenges of late 2019 in the repo market and early 2020? Henri Lepage, French economist has noted that on Feb. 20, 2020, there was a major financial market event.
One week later, Mark Carney, then still Governor of the Bank of England, sent a letter to Rt. Hon. Mel Stride, Chair Elect of the Treasury Select Committee discussing climate risk assessments and the green bonds market (see Appendix I). A month later, global COVID lockdowns were declared, despite the fact that the UK, on March 20, 2020, had declared that COVID was no longer considered a High Consequence Infectious Disease.
Is the Bank of Canada aware of any undue influence by climate bond/catastrophe bond markets or other global financial powers on the implementation of the COVID lockdowns – perhaps to achieve the otherwise unattainable goals of the 2019 Exponential Roadmap? Science commentator Joanne Nova of Australia has long postulated that there would be a ‘sub-prime carbon meltdown’ as these markets are based on ‘the lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one’. Did the world experience a climate Tulip-O-Mania?
Following the publication of the “Exponential Roadmap”, the UNEP called for “Cut global emissions by 7.6% a year every year for the next decade” – and indeed, WEF reported that global emissions were cut by 8% due to lockdowns – but at the sacrificial price of millions of lives and dreams. As pointed out by Prof. Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University, lockdowns have caused between 4 to 282 times the harm to people than a more restrained and selective protective program for the more vulnerable. Consequently, it is a valid question to ask if climate interests were influentially behind the COVID lockdowns? Perhaps you can explore this and report back to Canadians.
Obviously many climate activists and interests, see economy-wide lockdowns as the ‘cure’ for climate – but as reported in this letter, there is no climate emergency, so no such measures are necessary.
If indeed “The Bank of Canada Act instructs the Bank “to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada” then it follows that the foregoing actions should be taken to protect the interests of Canadians.
We reiterate that our new report “Fighting Climate Change: Can We Humans Regulate Earth’s Climate?” should be required reading for all of your climate change/Net-Zero staff and we request that you open a public dialogue on the topic of climate change and ENGO interference and costs to the banking industry and to Canadians.
We would be happy to provide our expertise to aid this cause of establishing common sense climate and energy policies for Canadians.
Open, civil debate on these matters is of the utmost importance. We see now in the UK, where the public climate debate has been solely devoted to the green agenda, with BBC censoring skeptical views and The Guardian intentionally instituting ‘climate emergency’ language, power prices have now skyrocketed as there is no safety redundancy of reliable coal built into the UK power grid system. It is shocking to think that, going into winter in a modern, First World region, food rationing is imminent due to poor public policy on climate and energy. Heat-or-eat poverty has already been killing thousands of people in the UK every year. Yet public debate about climate and carbon tax/energy policies has been actively censored there by the media, government, and climate dogma-compliant corporations.
These are life and death matters, Governor Macklem. This must not happen in Canada.
Sincerely,
Michelle Stirling
Communications Manager
Friends of Science Society
Appendix I
via Friends of Science Calgary
September 20, 2021
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