From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen

What if the scariest climate predictions are more fiction than fact?

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aims to highlight the urgent threats climate change poses. It projects severe consequences, including longer and more intense urban heat waves, as the World Resources Institute noted, along with increased storms, floods, and crop failures. IPCC claims that our current path leads to a temperature increase of at least three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial (circa 1750-1850) levels if the world does not drastically reduce carbon dioxide or just carbon emissions. However, this assessment and the attendant predictions are dubious.

The first uncertainty is the pre-industrial global temperatures. There were no precise thermometers at random sites or in major towns until late in the 19^th century. Therefore, researchers use ice cores and lake and sea sediments as proxies. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration admits that pre-1880 data are limited. It provides many examples showing how even modern temperatures can be incomparable from region to region and from past to present and consequently are adjusted to approximate comparability.

What cannot be explained away is the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from about 800 AD to around 1300 AD, and the subsequent cooling period that ‘bottomed’ about 1700 AD called the Little Ice Age. Human activity did not cause either one, and they were not merely regional phenomena confined to the North Atlantic and Western Europe. In the Middle Ages, Vikings settled in Greenland and were able to grow crops. The weather cooled dramatically, and they abandoned their colonies in the 15^th century. During the Little Ice Age, there were many crop failures and famines in Europe, and the river Thames reliably froze over, with ice thick enough to hold winter fairs on.

Temperatures did not rise significantly until well into the 19^th century. Suppose the recent temperature increase between one and one and one-half degrees Celsius is correct. This is only a third of the way toward a more tolerable  (i.e., more livable, with less disease and fewer cold-related deaths) climate and cannot be termed “global boiling,” as the Secretary-General of the United Nations called it in 2023.

At three or more degrees of warming, IPCC researchers (“Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report:  Summary for Policymakers Sixth Assessment Report,” “AR6” pp. 15-16) have “high confidence” in more severe hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones; large floods; deadlier heatwaves and droughts; lower glacier-fed river flow; and lower crop yields.

Yet, their predictions are vague and generalized. So far, there are few signs that these calamities are increasing in frequency or intensity – hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are not. Indeed, humanity is coping well: The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization observed that 2024 grain production was the second-highest on record.

Here are a few erroneous predictions the New American found: the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)’s 2005 warning of 50 million climate refugees by 2010; the University of East Anglia’s 2000 prediction that the United Kingdom would rarely have snow in winter; and several early-2000s prognostications of the Arctic Ocean being ice-free in summer by 2016 – none has happened. A critique from May of 2020 of the thirty-eight models used to predict futures observed that the predictions of the amalgamated model used by the IPCC consistently and substantially overestimated actual warming.

Longer and hotter heat waves in cities are not the end of the world. They are unpleasant but manageable. Practical methods of urban cooling are spreading globally. Heat-related deaths are still far fewer than those from cold (by a ten-to-one ratio). If it gets hotter occasionally, humanity can and will survive.

Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Gerry Bowler

Well, they’re at it again. A year after a Canadian Human Rights Commission position paper labeled Christmas “discriminatory” and an example of “colonialist religious intolerance”, an Alberta public school has cancelled a winter concert because marking Christmas isn’t inclusive enough. The principal of Whitecourt’s Pat Hardy Elementary stated, “Not all students celebrate Christmas, and their families may or may not choose to have them participate in the Christmas concert. Other families celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday but do not want children engaging in the non-religious parts such as Santa, Christmas trees, etc.” It was suggested that a spring concert might be more inclusive, presumably on the theory that no one gets too worked up about the vernal equinox.

The principal’s actions are scarcely news; for years schools and public officials have been reluctant to stage any activity around the celebration of the Nativity. “Christmas concerts” have been relabelled or cancelled; “Christmas trees” have been termed the “Holiday Tree.” Or a “Care Tree.” A “Multicultural Tree.” A “Tree of Lights.” A “Community Tree.” A “Winter Solstice Tree.” A “Grand Tree.” A “Special Tree.” A “Family Tree.” The “Annual Tree.” A “Festive Bush.” A “Unity Tree.” A “Culture Tree.” Activists in Saskatoon objected to city buses displaying a “Merry Christmas” wish; a Toronto judge ordered a Christmas tree removed from the courthouse lest it makes non-Christians feel unwelcome; inspired by the American school that mandated that the lyrics to “Silent Night” be changed to “Silent Night, mmm, mmm, mmm, / All is calm, all is bright, mmm, mmm, mmm”, a principal at an Ottawa school excised the C-word from the ditty “Silver Bells”. Thus: “Ring-a-ling, hear them sing; Soon it will be a festive day.”

There are several ways of dealing with this perennial issue. One is to remove religion from the public square altogether – that would certainly suit the secular fundamentalists – another is to play the majoritarian card and insist that since Christians outnumber other faith communities their will should hold sway. Some might want to dilute any mention of Christianity from the season while others might wish to include every other religion’s holy days on the school calendar.

I have a solution to this seasonal dilemma. It is to adopt the attitude taken by leaders of racial and religious minorities in Canada when asked if they are offended by mentions of Christmas. Their invariable answer is, of course not, Christmas is an integral part of Canadian culture.

Christmas is indeed Canadian, as native to our land as Hockey Night in Canada, Stompin’ Tom Connors, or pineapple on pizza. It has been Canadian longer than poutine, mediocre socialized healthcare, or the last time Toronto won the Stanley Cup. The Vikings who found a home in Newfoundland a thousand years ago likely celebrated Christmas, and there’s no doubt that the holiday has been observed for half a millennium by later European settlers.

Though a current American politician may regard Canada as the 51^st state and a current Canadian politician may opine that we are a post-national entity with no core identity, Canada, over the centuries, has developed a unique Christmas culture. We have beautiful carols of our own – “D’où Viens-Tu Bergère?”, the “Huron Carol” (“Jesus Ahatonia”), the first ever written in a North American indigenous language, and J.P. Clarke’s 1853 “A Canadian Christmas Carol”– not to mention secular seasonal music such as “Voici Le Père Noël Qui Nous Arrive” by the legendary Mary Bolduc, the melancholy “River” by Joni Mitchell, Bob and Doug Mackenzie’s take on “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and the immortal “Honky the Christmas Goose,” as sung by Johnny Bower (the last Leaf goalie to win a Stanley Cup).

We have unique Christmas foods – the taffy pull on St Catherine’s day, the tourtière of the revéillon, rapee pie, cipâte, butter tarts, Nanaimo bars, ragoût de pattes, “chicken bones,” and “barley toys.”

Though Santa Claus has his own Canadian postal code (H0H 0H0), we do not count him as a citizen, but we do have our own native Gift-Bringer in the form of Mother Goody (also known as Aunt Nancy or Mother New Year).

Canada can boast the first Christmas tree in North America, the custom introduced by Baroness Frederika von Riedesel whose husband Baron Friedrich Adolphus von Riedesel had brought 4,000 German Brunswicker soldiers in 1776 to protect Canada from American invasion. The first department store Santa was employed in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1869. Our post office issued the world’s first Christmas stamp in 1898. Eaton’s department store in Toronto staged the first Santa Claus parade in 1905.

Only in Canada can we see mummers of all sorts at Christmas – Janneys, Ownshooks, Fools, Belsnicklers, and Naluyuks; only in Canada do door to-door canvassers under the guise of “la guignolée” solicit donations to charity while singing a song threatening to torture the oldest daughter of the house.

So the next time objections are raised to the appearance of Christmas in the public square, simply state that it’s a long-standing Canadian custom, sanctified by time and universal practice, as deeply embedded in our culture as the red maple leaf. It’s what we do. Canadians do Christmas.

Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy