The EU's climate narrative — As scary as it sounds？
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we talk to Dr. Michelle Sterling, Communications Manager for the Friends of Science Society. She says the climate emergency is high stakes, just not in the way you might imagine it. In this episode, Dr. Sterling talks about what's going on with climate change, and why it's not as simple as you might think.
Transcript
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We are currently outside on what can be described as a moderately warm August day,
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but this is contrary to what EU climate researchers have recently described as the third hottest July
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on record. But the only problem is there is no global temperature. This is according to Michelle
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Sterling, Communications Manager for the Friends of Science Society. She says the climate emergency
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is high stakes, just not in the way you might imagine it. You know, the temperature has been
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widely ranging and not in conjunction with CO2, sometimes, but usually not. So to actually get
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accurate surface air temperature, you'd have to have a stack of thermometers about, you know, 50 feet high
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and, you know, all over the place and then average out whatever those readings are. So it's almost
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impossible to define a real surface air temperature. And if you look at the work of Roger PLK Sr.,
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he shows that, you know, in the city, like for instance, in the inside London, England, the
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temperature might be 11 degrees warmer than out in the country. You know, and that's very common.
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It's known as the urban heat effect, urban heat island effect. So surface air temperature is a very
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misleading kind of reading. And not to mention, once they aggregate all these different temperature
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readings, they aggregate them, average them, and come up with a number. That's not the temperature
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anymore. That's metric. And there's a very good paper by Dr. Ross McKittrick and Christopher Essex on the
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fact that there's no global average temperature. Even though this is still used very commonly by the
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climate community, that it is something that really doesn't exist. Because we a we don't have enough
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temperature monitors that are equidistant around the world, that are all stable and all well maintained.
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And B, it doesn't make sense because temperature operates locally and regionally.
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It doesn't operate globally. You know, we, so by creating this kind of sense of global fear,
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it makes people want to comply with the climate catastrophe. But when you look at the fact that
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people live and work in the Arctic, in the Antarctic, in the tropics, out on the ocean, in the Rockies,
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in Calgary, in Toronto, in Washington, all these places have extremely different temperature
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variations during the day. You know, we're spending about 467 million dollars on climate policies,
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initiatives between 2020 and 2030. That works out to over $11,000 per person, per resident of Canada.
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So that's a huge burden. And there's no discernible benefit. I mean, like I said, if we're going to
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reduce global warming in Canada, our Canadian temperatures in Canada by seven thousandths of a
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degree Celsius by 2100, but we're paying millions and billions of dollars to do it, is it worth it?
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What have we done? You know, China every week is building one or two coal plants.
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You know, their emissions are more than anybody in the world. They're at least, I think, 38% of the
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world's emissions come from China alone. And our emissions are 1.5%. You know, and now people will
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say, oh, well, you know, we have to do our part. Well, if our part is inconsequential, like seven
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thousandths of a degree Celsius, then what are we doing? Well, I think a lot of it is tied to
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pension fund investments. And I think that these are things that nobody asks questions about. But
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a lot of the big pension funds are signed up to what's called the United Nations Principle for
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Responsible Investment. And it's about, it's like an umbrella body that has about, I don't know,
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a thousand, maybe even more signatories now. And most of Canadian pensions, like the CPP,
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the Keste Depot, BC Teachers Pension, most of the AIMCO in Alberta, which manages all the provincial
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pension funds, they're all signed up to it. And this really sways where these investors put their
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money. So by agreement, they are pushing for clean energy. At the same time, there's another group of
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big green philanthropies. The biggest one is called Climate Works. And they are funding all the NGOs
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to push for these policies as well, making it look as if it's like grassroots coming from the people.
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So, you know, they spent the past probably 20 years or more, building this enormous infrastructure of
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the investors, the ENGOs, the big green philanthropies, funding these projects, COP28,
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I think it was, where they came up, you know, with the emissions cap. The Trottier Family Foundation CEO at
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the time, who's now an MP, Eric St. Pierre, I believe his name is, he wrote an article in a philanthropy
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magazine online. And he was saying, you know, how at COP28, they had funded most of the environmental
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groups that were there. They were connected to all these state groups in the states, like Climate Alliance
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100, and Climate Works, and, you know, that they were all working together. So it's definitely going
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on here in Canada, too. That's, wow, that's crazy. And I feel like it's, even though it's wrong,
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it's like very smart, because then they can wrap it up like they're doing something good for everyone.
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Well, that's it. And that's what we see also with the environmental groups. Most of them are charities,
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you know, so when you hear the word charity, you feel like, oh, they've got a big halo around there,
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you know, on wings, and they're, they're saving the planet. So, of course, we should let them do