Frontier Centre for Public Policy
‘Hottest Year in History’ Alarms are False
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/07/tvrd-hdn-heat-temperature-climate-change-global-warming-image-2024-07-01.jpg)
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
It’s that time of year for breathless reports about planetary heating. Multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, recently made worldwide headlines, proclaiming 2023 as the hottest year in history.
The increase in average temperature, versus the longer-term average from 1850 to 1900, was a rise of 1.48 degrees Celsius. However, with the considerable difficulty of having truly comparable sets of measurements (from different sites in different years), one should treat such claims carefully. Interested parties use them to promote ‘solutions’ that could do more harm than good. It is notable that this new ‘high’ temperature was only 0.17 degree Celsius higher than in 2016.
NASA notes five factors explaining higher temperatures. Only one is the ‘usual suspect,’ greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, ‘CO2’). The other four are: the El Niño Southern Oscillation, ‘ENSO’, cycle; aerosol levels (such as smoke, dust and air pollution); volcanic eruptions; and general ocean temperature level and trends. NASA says the first and last of these affect current overall temperature.
The world has been in what meteorologists call an El Niño phase, which brings much higher temperatures to most of the world when it prevails. The oceans have also been gradually warming for decades, with occasional pauses, as in the period 1998-2013.
There are other major reasons to make an observer skeptical of extreme claims. The first is that this is a ‘history’ that is relatively short; i.e., the past 150 years (or even, in practice, much less). A second reason is that wide-scale, reliable global satellite temperature measurement has only been possible since the 1970’s. Before that, temperature monitoring was not systematic.
Until the 1880’s, temperature recordings were mostly in either North America or Europe, and hence show major data biases. Another crucial bias was that many weather stations are in or close to cities, which grew and warmed as they burned more coal (and, later on, more oil and natural gas), causing the heat island effect. The cities, growing gently warmer, also grew toward the weather stations, usually located on the outskirts of cities, especially the stations at airports.
For example, there are two weather stations in Winnipeg – one at the wind-swept airport and the other in the heart of downtown at the Forks. An analysis back in 2007 showed the temperature difference between the two locations to be 1.57 degrees warmer at the Forks. So closing or ignoring the airport temperature measurement location would “on paper” show warming in Winnipeg. It will be the same with most major Canadian airports.
Another valid way to challenge an assertion that 2023 was history’s hottest year, is to examine other time periods to see if one was hotter. The most well known such period came in the 1930’s, which was hotter and drier than the decades before or after. High temperatures set many new records that remain unbroken. The 1970’s were cool, despite rising CO2 emissions.
The Medieval Warm Period, approximately AD 750-1350, was much warmer than today. Farming was commonplace in Greenland, and vineyards grew in Britain. Industrialization began in the 1750’s, so, increased levels of greenhouse gas emissions could not and did not cause ancient warming. Nor did lower CO2 emissions cause the subsequent cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere, which culminated in what is now called the Little Ice Age, AD 1350-1850, from which we are still emerging.
According to interested parties the past year may have set records, but there is no evidence that it was the ‘hottest’.
Its summer time. Enjoy the hot weather. Ignore the climate doomsters.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
UBCIC Chiefs Commit A Grave Error In Labelling Authors As Racist Deniers
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/tvrd-fcpp-aboriginal-protests-image-2024-09-06.jpg)
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Rodney A. Clifton
UBCIC Chiefs attempt to suppress open debate on residential schools.
Is anyone surprised that the Union of BC Indian Chiefs on Aug. 12 wrote to many provincial municipalities (Powell River, Kamloops, and Quesnel, for example) demanding they reject “Residential School Denialism”?
Their demand is in response to a book edited by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools). The authors of the 18 chapters include several well-known Canadian anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and lawyers, many of whom have published extensively on Indigenous/non-Indigenous issues.
Even so, the organization of Chiefs call this book an “ardent dissemination of racist misinformation.”
Their letter to municipal leaders concludes with the following:
“The UBIC Chiefs Council stand with survivors and intergenerational survivors of Residential Schools and their families, as well as the children who never made it home and those who are harmed by the actions of those involved with the production and distribution of the book … and the deeply troubling trend of Residential School racist denialism and any unwillingness to accept facts and the work of experts.”
“We look forward to your response.”
As an author of a chapter in Grave Error, as co-author of two other chapters, and as a co-editor with Mark DeWolf of From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, I am pleased to respond to the Chiefs.
My recommendation to municipal leaders, and other concerned Canadians, is that before you respond to the Chiefs, you should read Grave Error and make up your up your own minds.
On Amazon, Grave Error has over 800 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5. In fact, this book is ranked first on three Amazon lists, and it has been a best seller for many months.
One of the top Amazon reviews begins, “A well-researched, non-partisan and balanced approach to the hysterical outpourings of recent years.” Another review says, “There is not one whiff of racism or hatred in this book.”
As a contributing author to Grave Error, I will add a little of my history.
I lived for four months during the Summer of 1966 in the teachers’ wing of Old Sun, the Anglican Residential School on the Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nation in Southern Alberta. At the time, students were still in residence, and I was a 21-year-old university student intern working at the Band Office, where about half the employees were Siksika members. Also, most of the employed in Old Sun, where I lived, were Siksika.
In the fall of 1966, I became the Senior Boys’ Supervisor in Stringer Hall, the Anglican residence in Inuvik, NWT, where I looked after 85 mostly Indigenous boys in three dorms. About half of the employees in this residence were Indigenous.
I returned to the University of Alberta for the 1967-68 academic year, and in the summer of 1968, I was employed as the Beach Supervisor and Swimming Instructor in Uranium City, Northern Saskatchewan, where I taught swimming to many Indigenous children in a local lake.
Finally, in September 1968, Elaine Ayoungman, a young Siksika woman I met in 1966, and I were married in the Anglican Church in Strathmore, Alberta. Elaine had been a student in Old Sun for 10 years, and this September, we will celebrate our 56th wedding anniversary. We are still married, and, no doubt, surprisingly to the BC Chiefs, we are still in love.
By now, readers will realize that I strongly reject the UBCI Chiefs’ claim that I, or any of the other authors with chapters in Grave Error, are “racist deniers” of the reality of Indian Residential Schools.
In short, my message to the BC municipal leaders is to resist echoing the opinion of the UBCIC, me, or the opinions of over 80 percent of the reviews on Amazon who awarded the book a 4 or 5. My message is simple: Read Grave Error and make up your own mind. Likewise, my message to Canadians who want to know more about Indian Residential Schools is to listen to the survivors and Chiefs but also read the Truth and Reconciliation Report and then read both Grave Error and From Truth Comes Reconciliation.
Rodney A. Clifton is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His most recent book, with Mark DeWolf, is From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (Sutherland House Press, 2024). The book can be preordered from the publisher.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
A letter to five Canadian Churches
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/tvrd-fcpp-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1930-image-2024-08-02.jpg)
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Two years ago, Eric Metaxas, the conservative Christian American author wrote a short, but important, book addressing the American Church. He was concerned the churches were forsaking their Christian principles in not speaking out against the anti-Christian ideologies and practices occurring throughout the U.S.
My letter is limited to admonishing the Canadian churches involved with Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. These churches have not spoken out in support of the missionaries they commissioned to work in these schools, people who poured their lives into their work, and who have been wrongly accused of abusing and murdering residential school children.
Obviously, those employees who are guilty should be condemned and punished, but those who are innocent should not be falsely accused of perpetrating horrific crimes.
Between 1883 and 1996, there were 143 Indian Residential Schools included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a complex agreement between various Indigenous groups, the federal government, and the churches that managed residential schools.
The Roman Catholic Church managed 62 (43.4%) of the schools, the Church of England (Anglican) managed 35 (24.5%), the United Church (including the denominations that joined together in 1925) managed 19 (13.3%), the Mennonite Church managed 3 (2.1%), and the Baptist Church managed 1 (0.6%) residential school. The federal and territorial governments managed the remaining 23 (16.1%) schools.
There are four historical points to be reviewed.
First, in May 2021, Rosanne Casimer, Chief of the Kamloops Band, announced that ground penetrating radar (GPR) had found 215 unmarked graves of children in the residential schoolyard.
Surprisingly, this was the first public report suggesting that children buried in residential schoolyards had been murdered. There is, however, no credible evidence of murdered residential school children in the 3,500-page Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report which was published 6 years earlier.
Second, despite being absent from the TRC’s “Calls to Action,” the federal government has awarded almost $8 million to the Kamloops band to excavate part of the schoolyard, and set aside over $300 million for other bands to search for soil anomalies or presumed graves.
Third, as expected with such strong incentives, many other bands have claimed that they too have graves of missing and presumed murdered children buried in the schoolyards on their reserves.
Finally, in an impressive gesture of support, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knelt beside a grave in a well-known cemetery with a teddy bear in his hand decrying the genocide perpetrated by the churches. Later, he had the Canadian flags at government buildings around the world flown at half-mast for 6 months so that both Canadians and citizens of the world would mourn this Canadian tragedy.
Since the spring of 2021, almost 100 Christian churches have been vandalized, desecrated, or set on fire, supposedly because of the “genocide” that had taken place at the sites of Indian Residential Schools. Sadly, some of these churches, the Lutheran and Orthodox churches, for example, did not manage any of the schools.
No doubt, most Canadians are thankful there is no forensic evidence that children have been murdered and buried in schoolyards. Of course, there are children’s bodies in parish cemeteries that are often close to the schools, but most of them died of communicable diseases like influenza and TB, and they have been given proper funerals.
My concern is that over the last three years, the five churches that managed Indian Residential Schools have said little or nothing to defend themselves or the staff they commissioned to work in the schools.
In a time of need, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Christians stepped forward to care for children living in residential schools. But the churches have not stepped forward to defend their staff in their time of need. These people are getting old, and they need support now. Instead, the churches have abandoned, or worse, condemned their faithful employees for abusing children.
Equally surprising, no church leader has supported the fundamental principle of Canadian law: individuals (and churches) are considered innocent until they are proven guilty.
It grieves me, and the few other living residential school employees, that our churches have not publically supported their innocent employees. Surely, they have a moral obligation to ensure that truth and justice prevail.
Eric Metaxas has tried to awaken American churches by pointing out where they have gone wrong. Should we not try to awaken Canadian churches to defend their involvement in Indian residential schools?
Is it too much to suggest that the church leaders think back to lessons learned from Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood up for Christian principles against the evil practice of dehumanizing people—Blacks in the U.S. and Jews in Europe?
Not only will these churches be judged by the moral and ethical lessons they preach, but, more importantly, by the principles they live by. Canadians will see the true values of church leaders in their actions, especially concerning those they commissioned to work in their schools.
Rodney A. Clifton lived for 4 months in Old Sun, the Anglican residential school on the Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nation during the summer of 1966, and he was the Senior Boys’ Supervisor in Stringer Hall, the Anglican residential hostel in Inuvik during the 1966-67 school year. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His most recent book, with Mark DeWolf, is From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The book will be out on November 5, and it can be preordered from the publisher.
Rodney A. Clifton is a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He lived for four months in Old Sun, the Anglican Residential School on the Blackfoot (Siksika) First Nation, and was the Senior Boys’ Supervisor in Stringer Hall, the Anglican residence in Inuvik. Rodney Clifton and Mark DeWolf are the editors of From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (Frontier Centre for Public Policy, 2021). A second and expanded edition of this book will be published in early 2024.
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