Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons Friday June 16, 2017 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
With Catherine McKenna as Canada’s climate change minister, it’s as if we’re all trapped in high school whenever the subject comes up.
I mean, literally, given McKenna’s tweet Sunday that she is “so done” with the Conservatives on climate change.
Excuse us. “So done”?
What set McKenna off was Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole telling The Canadian Press, ironically, that the Tories wouldn’t attack the Liberals during Canada’s NAFTA negotiations with the U.S. and Mexico.
Unless, he said, they spend too much time “virtue signalling” on the environment, gender and Indigenous issues, which Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has identified as Canadian priorities for NAFTA.
“What I want to see out of Canada,” O’Toole said, “is less of the virtue-signalling type of approach where we put the centrepiece of Justin Trudeau’s image-building – the gender-equal cabinet, the reconciliation — they’re all important but this is an economic trade agreement.”
That set off McKenna, who tweeted, “Ensuring NAFTA is not a race to the bottom on the environment isn’t virtue signalling. #CPC just doesn’t get it #environment #economy.”
She followed that with: “And so done with ridiculous language from #CPC like ‘virtue signaling’. We will continue to stand up for Canadian values at home and abroad.”
McKenna posted more tweets and a longer rant on her Facebook page, concluding with: “If anyone needs more evidence that Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party is still Stephen Harper’s party, look no further than this first interview given by Scheer’s newly-minted Foreign Affairs lead. It is telling.”
A spokeswoman for Trudeau told CP McKenna’s Facebook post was, “the official government response to O’Toole.”
That’s alarming, because in it McKenna made the common error of attributing specific weather events to man-made climate change.
This, of course, is part of the fiction Trudeau is anxious to maintain, that his carbon pricing plan (i.e. raising our cost of living) will somehow have a salutary effect on forest fires in B.C., flooding in Windsor, and hurricanes like Harvey and Irma.
McKenna came closest to reality when she said the environment and economy can’t be separated.
True, although not in the way she meant, which was that the Liberals, unlike Conservatives, care about both.
The real reason the environment and economy can’t be separated is that Trudeau’s national carbon pricing plan is a bad economic policy masquerading as an environmental one.
It isn’t going to lower Canada’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions to anywhere near the levels Trudeau committed us to when he signed the Paris climate deal.
The Liberals know that because Environment Canada told them so soon after they took office.
Rather, Trudeau’s national carbon price — imposed by the provinces — is a massive tax grab on Canadians, which will have no significant impact on emissions.
The only way it’s relevant to NAFTA is that it places an added cost on our industries — and Canadian consumers and taxpayers who ultimately pay it — that the Americans don’t have.
Canada’s position on NAFTA is to get the Trump administration to agree to an equivalent national carbon price for the U.S., which it has never had, despite the fact the U.S. just withdrew from the Paris climate deal. Right.
Canadians should be “so done” with this half-baked logic from their government.
Ref.: http://m.torontosun.com/2017/09/06/im-so-done-with-liberal-climate-nonsense
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Hot summer ends with cold blast and ‘abnormal’ August snow
Yakutia in a white blanket as temperatures dip to minus 6C as winter ‘comes too soon’.
The snowfall was especially strong in Udachny village, in Mirny district. Picture: The Siberian Times
This region is the coldest in the world, yet locals also enjoy warm and even hot summers, but this year the season ended abruptly in several districts.
Snowfalls hit the towns of Neryungri and Aldan in stark contrast to a summer high of 37C in Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic.
The snowfall was especially strong in Udachny village, in Mirny district.
Snowfalls hit the towns of Neryungri and Aldan in stark contrast to a summer high of 37C in Yakutia. Pictures: @denissaperov, Yakutia.com
Local weather bureau specialists explained the unseasonal August snow by a strong cyclone coming from the Arctic.
‘This is a weather abnormality, but we do get such interventions from the Arctic from time to time,’ a bureau spokesman said.
Locals greeted summer snow with Instagram messages like: ‘Why oh why snow? This summer was so good!’ (Olga from Aldan).
‘This is a weather abnormality, but we do get such interventions from the Arctic from time to time.’ Pictures: The Siberian Times, Aizhan Bakesheva, @denissaperov, Mariya Uvarova
‘I woke up, got to the window and couldn’t believe my eyes – the trees were all completely covered with snow!’ (Roman from Aikhal).
‘Go away winter, you came too soon!’ complained Alyona from Neryungri.
The region can expect temperatures falling to minus 60C or below in the winter.
Ref.: http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/hot-summer-ends-with-cold-blast-and-abnormal-august-snow/
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Unusual Clouds and Strange Early Snow Begins in North America
Dangerous Climate Change in 2019 – What the Government and Media has Not Told You
David Dilley, former NOAA Meteorologist and current CEO and senior research scientist – Global Weather Oscillations, Inc., gives a presentation on Mind Your Own Business TV with Debi Davis. Mr. Dilley provides the viewer a full picture and understanding of climate change cycles and carbon dioxide cycles. Mr. Dilley combines his own research with peer reviewed research from other scientists and applies it to what is happening today, and to the likely dangerous climate change that will occur between the years 2019 to 2050.
