Canada Ends Probe Against Climate Change Doubters

Billboard in Calgary Alberta gives rise to complaint to Canada’s Competition Bureau.

The vigilantes report on their setback in this National Observer article Feds halt probe of climate doubters.  Some excerpts give the flavor of their perspective.

After more than a year of investigating, the Competition Bureau abruptly dropped its inquiry earlier this summer into three groups that had displayed information in public raising doubts about the international scientific consensus on climate change.

The groups put up websites and billboards that promoted statements like, “the sun is the main driver of climate change,” and “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” according to an application filed with the bureau, a Canadian independent law enforcement agency.

Those views are contrary to mainstream climate science and the government of Canada itself, which states that “changes in solar irradiance have contributed to climate trends over the past century but since the industrial revolution, the effect of additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has been over 50 times that of changes in the sun’s output.”

From the Bureau letter to the Complainant:

The inquiry concerned allegations that Friends of Science Society, International Climate
Science Coalition and Heartland Institute made misleading representations regarding climate change on their respective websites and, in the case of Friends of Science Society, on billboards.

At this time, considering the available evidence, the assessment of the facts in this case, and
to ensure the effective allocation of limited resources, the Commissioner has discontinued the
inquiry. 

A statement was provided to National Observer by Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, but was incompletely quoted in the article. The full statement posted at International Science Coalition is below:

“The complainants apparently think that they know the truth about the causes and consequences of climate change. But this makes no sense. This is not just because the science is enormously complicated with scientists holding at times radically different points of view. It is also because scientific hypotheses, and even scientific theories, are not truth; they can be, and often are, wrong. Truth applies to things like mathematics or chess in which we write the rules. But truth never applies to our findings about nature, which are merely educated opinions based on scientists’ interpretations of observations.”

“When authorities promote truth about science, progress stops. I am glad the Competition Bureau did not fall into this trap. Its time to open up, not shut down, the debate about climate change, one of the most complex and costly issues of our age.”

More complete account of this encounter from Friends of Science:  Responding to the National Observer Article on the Competition Bureau/Ecojustice Call for Inquiry

Key Points:

• First, Ecojustice asked for an honest debate. We provided one.[1] They never responded.
• Secondly, presently there is no such thing as a ‘low-carbon economy’ because everything in the modern world is made from or powered by fossil fuels – even hydro dams, nuclear facilities and geothermal require fossil fuels to create the power plant.
• Thirdly, climate change is mostly driven by natural factors and might only be marginally mitigated by the Paris Agreement.
• Fourthly, despite claiming humans caused most of the recent warming, the IPCC, perhaps inadvertently, revealed in its 2013 AR5 report that climate change was mostly due to natural factors. (This point is more fully explained in post Warming from CO2 Unlikely
• Finally, the Paris Agreement targets are unattainable and if attempted, would lead to the complete destruction of the Canadian economy. This is contrary to the UN Charter’s explicit principles. 

These are our opinions, protected by the Charter of Rights.

For examples of proven false advertising by climate activists, see Truth in Climate Advertising

Summary

The complaint was filed by an “ecojustice” lawyer. Free speech about a matter of opinion is attacked as false advertising. Sad. We are still waiting for the evidence supporting global warming claims. Keep on firing away, Tom Harris and Friends of Science.