Alberta says no!

 Vincent J. Curtis

5 Dec 23

RE: Canada proposes new methane emissions rules. CP story by Mia Rabson. The Hamilton Spectator 5 Dec 23.

In 2014, Alberta agreed to commit to a reduction of its methane emission by 45% by the year 2025, and achieved that target early, in 2022.  Now, quite arbitrarily and without consultation, Minister of Climate Change Steven Guilbeault announces to the world that Alberta will eliminate nearly all its methane emissions by 2030.  As recent court cases have demonstrated, the Federal government has no authority to impose such a standard.

Guilbeault knows this, and doesn’t care.  Needless to say, Alberta has grown tired of this style of arbitrary governance and is about to invoke her Sovereignty Act to assert that she will not be bound by this commitment, and will fight in court, if necessary, to resist this imposition of arbitrary and unconstitutional assertion of Federal power.

What’s thunderingly stupid about this whole matter is that methane is of no consequence as a greenhouse gas.  It ranks a distant fourth on the list of GHGs after water vapor, CO2, and ozone.  The contention that methane is so much more powerful as a GHG falls apart under critical examination.

There’s the lab, and then there’s the real world.  In the real world, methane’s infra-red absorption peak is masked under a large band of water vapor absorption, and the absorption peak is in a low energy part of the spectrum.  In addition, methane only comprises 2 ppm of atmospheric gases. It simply isn’t worth the economic effort, nor the risk of destroying confederation over.

Canada won’t survive four more years of the arbitrary nonsense of fanatics.

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