From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Must we cancel fossil fuels to save the earth? No.

James Warren, adjunct professor of environmental sociology at the University of Regina said so in a recent paper for the Johnson Shoyama School of Public Policy, a joint effort by his university and the University of Saskatchewan. The title says it all: “Maximizing Canadian oil production and exports over the medium-term could help reduce CO2 emissions for the long-term.”

The professor admits on the face of it, his argument sounds like a “drink your way to sobriety solution.” However, he does make the defensible and factual case, pointing to Canadian oil reserves and a Scandinavian example.

Decades ago, Norway imitated the 1970’s Heritage Fund in Alberta that set aside a designated portion of the government’s petroleum revenues for an investment fund. Unlike Alberta, Norway stuck to that approach. Today, those investments are being used to develop clean energy and offer incentives to buy electric vehicles.

Norway’s two largest oil companies, Aker BP and Equinor ASA have committed $19 billion USD to develop fields in the North and Norwegian Seas. They argue that without this production, Norway would never be able to afford a green transition.

The same could be said for Canada. Warren laid out stats since 2010 that showed Canada’s oil exports contribute an average of 4.7% of the national GDP. Yet, this noteworthy amount is not nearly what it could be.

Had Trans Mountain, Northern Gateway, and Energy East pipelines been up and running at full capacity from 2015 to 2022, Warren estimates Canada would have seen $292 billion Canadian in additional export revenues. Onerous regulations, not diminished demand, are responsible for Canada’s squandered opportunities, Warren argues this must change.

So much more could be said. Southeast Asia still relies heavily on coal-fired power for its emerging industrialization, a source with twice the carbon emission intensity as natural gas. If lower global emissions are the goal, Canadian oil and natural gas exports offer less carbon-intensive options.

China’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are more than four times what they were in 1990, during which the U.S. has seen its emissions drop. By now, China is responsible for 30% of global emissions, and the U.S. just 11%. Nevertheless, China built 95% of the world’s new coal-fired power plants in 2023. It aims for carbon neutrality by 2060, not 2050, like the rest of the world.

As of 2023, Canada contributes 1.4 percent of global GHGs, the tenth most in the world and the 15th highest per capita. Given its development and resource-based economy, this should be viewed as an impressively low amount, all spread out over a geographically diverse area and cold climate.

This stat also reveals a glaring reality: if Canada was destroyed, and every animal and human died, all industry and vehicles stopped, and every furnace and fire ceased to burn, 98.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions would remain. So for whom, or to what end, should Canada kneecap its energy production and the industry it fuels?

The only ones served by a world of minimal production is a global aristocracy whose hegemony would no longer be threatened by the accumulated wealth and influence of a growing middle class. That aristocracy is the real beneficiary of prevailing climate change narratives on what is happening in our weather, why it is happening, and how best to handle it.

Remember, another warming period occurred 1000 years ago. The Medieval Warming Period took place between 750 and 1350 AD and was warmest from 950 to 1045, affecting Europe, North America, and the North Atlantic. By some estimates, average summer temperatures in England and Central Europe were 0.7-1.4 degrees higher than now.

Was that warming due to SUVs or other man-made activity? No. Did that world collapse in a series of floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes? No, not in Europe at least. Crop yields grew, new cities emerged, alpine tree lines rose, and the European population more than doubled.

If the world warms again, Canada could be a big winner. In May of 2018, Nature.com published a study by Chinese and Canadian academics entitled, Northward shift of the agricultural climate zone under 21st-Century global climate change. If the band of land useful for crops shifts north, Canada would get an additional 3.1 million square kilometers of farmland by 2099.

Other computer models suggest warming temperatures would cause damaging weather. Their accuracy is debatable, but even if we concede their claims, it does not follow that energy production should drop. We would need more resilient housing to handle the storms and we cannot afford them without a robust economy powered by robust energy production. Solar, wind, and geothermal only go so far.

Whether temperatures are warming or not, Canada should continue tapping into the resources she is blessed with. Wealth is a helpful shelter in the storms of life and is no different for the storms of the planet. Canada is sitting on abundant energy and should not let dubious arguments hold back their development.

Lee Harding is Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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.