In the new Cold War between the prairie West and Laurentian Canada, the most offensive moves (in both senses of the term) have been made by the easterners..Now it’s our turn to take the initiative. Here’s how..At the centre of the conflict that is notionally over environmental and tax policy, but is really an assault on the prosperity and autonomy of the prairie west, lies the never-to-be-questioned dogma of human-caused or anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, the first move on our part is to question it..Yes, question the importance of human-caused climate change..Can’t you hear the outrage already? It is shocking! It’s denialism! It’s the worst kind of anti-science attitude imaginable..No, it’s not. Science, especially natural science, is a mode of inquiry, not a belief..At the heart of scientific inquiry is a generalized distrust of received results. Real scientists are sceptics. The very word comes from the Greek word for lookout..A sceptic is on the lookout for evidence. If there is anything we have learned from the rubbish issued by so-called scientific experts during the COVID-19 event it is that 'trusting the science' when scientists disagree (or even when they do not) is a mug’s game..Scientific experts are sometimes ignoramuses. Sometimes they tell fibs — for our own good, of course..The first response of supporters of the dogma of anthropogenic climate change is the evidence for it is overwhelming..Look at the burning of Kelowna and Yellowknife! Look at the inundation of southern California!. Laurentian ice sheeetThe Laurentian Ice Sheet. Alberta and Saskatchewan were under a mile of ice. (At least.) It wasn't humanity that caused it to melt. .Steven Guilbeault, minister of environment and climate change, said there was a scientific consensus on the matter. His supporters at the CBC and Toronto’s 'national' newspapers chant the cliché: “the science is settled.”.But consensus about 'science' is not itself science. Consensus means a general agreement regarding an opinion and opinions differ. So, where did this alleged consensus come from?.It was invented in a study, using content analysis of a collection of scientific papers by an Australian climate activist named John Cook. It’s called Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming. .Unfortunately for him the original website on which he posted the results of his efforts, called Sceptical Science, was hacked in 2012 and the bogus nature of the entire enterprise was exposed — rather similar to what followed the Climategate hack in 2009. Cook violated every rule required for a valid and reliable content analysis protocol..The second and even more iconic source of the dogma regarding anthropogenic climate change came from an even earlier study by Michael Mann and his colleagues..His 1999 paper on northern hemisphere temperatures included a dramatic graph in the shape of a hockey stick. The image claimed to map global temperatures in such a way that, starting at the turn of the twentieth century, the relatively flat handle of the hockey stick gave way to the blade, which tracked a huge spike in temperature..The hockey stick was featured several times in the 2001 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in Al Gore’s prize-winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth. In later UN reports it appeared less frequently, chiefly because it had been shown to be bunk..In 2005, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (a genuine scholar about whom I have written before) showed definitively that the hockey stick was a result of the algorithm Mann had used, not the data he created..A series of random numbers would produce a hockey stick if you used Mann’s model. In other words, it was as meaningless as the invented data that purported to show a consensus among climate scientists..In the past decade or so dozens of scientific papers and books have appeared disputing the phony consensus, along with the data and methods that claim that anthropogenic climate change is not only real but presages a coming catastrophe..To be clear: no one disputes the reality of climate change. After all, the land where Calgary now stands was once under thousands of feet of ice, but the ice did not melt because of human activity..How to distinguish the human component (if detectable) in recent climate change is not so much a question of climatology as of philosophy of science..It is probably fair to say that most climate activists and alarmists do not even understand the significance of the distinction between anthropogenic and natural climate change. If they did, they would fall silent..That said, even the most dim-witted climate alarmist can understand the significance of the appearance in recent years of many responsible studies showing the benefits of hydrocarbon use..My personal favourite is by Alex Epstein. It is called Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Coal. Oil, and Natural Gas – Not Less. I warmly recommend it as a serious study of the benefits to the world of using hydrocarbons to create energy. Hydrocarbons are, he persuasively argues, a uniquely cost-effective source of energy. He is hardly alone in defending the value of coal, oil, and gas..So, here is the state of play..Ottawa is attacking Alberta and Saskatchewan on the grounds that the CO2 emissions from hydrocarbons are a danger to the world. But the evidence of any connection between CO2 and climate change is doubtful..Moreover, any serious attempt to reduce CO2 emissions comes with an enormous price tag. Laurentian Canada wants the prairie West to pay it. Westerners have seen this movie more than once..As a first step to oppose this tangle of misinformation, lies, ignorance and aggressive political posturing, here is some free advice to premiers Moe and Smith: announce plans for a large, well-funded and well-publicized international conference to discuss the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change..I’d personally be happy to suggest a list of names from which our political leaders might chose a representative sample of genuine scientists as participants..Some of them are on the reading list of a course on ideology I teach to incoming political science students. And to be sure, there are some real scientific disputes involved in formulating a rational environmental policy..However, this proposal is not merely to discuss some interesting intellectual puzzles. It concerns sound public policy, which both Westerners and Laurentians need to be aware of..Of course, we would invite Monsieur Guilbeault to attend. He might learn something if he showed up..It may be late in the day to seize the initiative, but it is a first step. Scientific conferences seldom decide anything practical, but it should at least show the Laurentians and bureaucrats everywhere that there are serious problems with the non-consensus regarding causes of climate change..Truth may not defeat power, but it can give it a bad conscience..More to the point, doing nothing or even postponing a controversial initiative simply cedes the ground to people who are not our friends.
