Canada Warming Twice as Fast?

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Dec 2019


Canada’s new Minister of Climate Change, Jonathan Wilkinson, recently claimed that Canada was warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world.  His predecessor, Catherine McKenna, said the same thing.  They were conveying an opinion expressed in a Ministerial document entitled, “Canada’s Changing Climate Report.”

There it is in Section 4.2, headed ‘Temperature:’ “It is virtually certain that Canada’s climate has warmed and that it will warm further in the future.  Both the observed and projected increases in mean temperature in Canada are about twice the corresponding increase in the global mean temperature regardless of emission scenario.”  It goes on, “It is likely that half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities.”

(Satellite measurements show no global warming since 1998 – the “pause.”)

On that basis, Canadians are to be guilt-tripped into accepting whatever climate change prescriptions the Trudeau Liberals cook up.

Some people can be educated into stupidity.  Good evidence of this than that no one has challenged the glaring flaws in the statements and in the conclusion, that we have to take our medicine.

The obvious, yet unasked, questions about Canada’s warming at twice the rate of the world mean are - why?  How?  Canada shares its atmosphere with the rest of the world.  There isn’t a twenty mile high wall around Canada.  There is no more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above Canada than anywhere else.  If CO2 is the climate control knob the climate alarmists say it is, then the cause of Canada’s warming at twice the rate as world as a whole cannot be CO2.  Why does this other cause only operate in Canada?

It seems impossible that Canada’s projected temperatures could long rise at twice the world rate.  Wind blows Canadian air south across the border, and winds carry American air north to Canada.  Given wind patterns, how could a thermal anomaly over Canada persist?  And get worse year after year?

Two other troubling statements are: ‘It is virtually certain that…’ and ‘…regardless of emission scenario.’  If Canada is going to warm at twice the world’s rate ‘regardless of emission scenario,’ then nothing Canada or the world does concerning CO2 emission reduction is going to change the outcome.  What, then, is the point of doing anything if ‘regardless of emission scenario’ Canada is screwed? And why two unrelated causes act synchronously to produce double the world rate regardless of emission scenario goes unexplained.

The remark, ‘It is virtually certain that…” does not begin a scientific statement; it begins an opinion.  Opinions have the property that they can be right or wrong.  Beginning an opinion with the assertion, ‘it is virtually certain’ is intended to impart the prejudice that the opinion is right.  Nevertheless, it’s guessing.


Then the report undermines its political thrust, “It is likely that half the observed warming is due to the influence of human activities.”  Half?  Only half?  Here again, guesses and opinion are offered in place of fact.  If CO2 is the climate control knob, natural variation accounts for the other half of the observed warming? 

In fact, no research has been funded that explores the question of the proportion of warming due to natural variation to CO2 induced increase.  Because it would embarrass policy makers to admit that maybe other factors are at play in global warming.  We have nothing but blind guesses.

That these statements from the Climate Change Ministry go unchallenged in the media, in academia, and in political circles is a condemnation of all three.  Progressivism loves the theme of evil western society, and students in the soft disciplines like journalism and the “ studies” courses, beginning in the 1970s, got indoctrinated in neo-Marxism all though school..  A whole generation doesn’t know any better.  Academia is bought – it needs federal money to survive.  And so we are at the mercy of those who would destroy western economies, incrementally, for the sake of the godless cause of “progress.”
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Vincent J. Curtis is a retired research scientist and occasion free-lance writer.