A few weeks ago, the mindless small talk when people bump into each other on the prairies might well have included the old chestnut “we’ll pay for this”. That’s the standard gloomy line that occurs to a lot of us when the weather in the fall is unusually kind. Depending on the age of the person speaking, the other popular line is “If this is global warming, let’s have more of it”.
Both Manitoba and Saskatchewan enjoyed the mildest November in 140 years. Official weather records don’t go back any further than that, which is part of the problem when it comes to global warming.
The ‘unofficial’ record includes observations by the men who commanded the lonely outposts of the Hudson Bay Company. That takes us back almost 200 years earlier, and it paints a rather different picture than what the Al Gores of the world would have you believe.
The people who mention this history are immediately dismissed as shills for the oil industry who have no credibility. It doesn’t help that their numbers include a few nutbars like Lord Moncton. He and his media cheerleaders like Ezra Levant of The Rebel manage to kill the possibility of reasonable debate by branding Justin Trudeau as an out and out ‘communist’ for supporting a carbon tax.
It’s against a background of all this that the prime minister gathered the premiers and territorial leaders in Ottawa to try and finalize a national strategy on climate change.
It’s fascinating how an issue can change in just six months. Last March, when the first ministers talked about the issue, almost nobody imagined that Donald Trump would be preparing to move to the White House. He’s no longer suggesting that climate change is a hoax, but that’s probably still what he’s thinking.
The most enthusiastic supporter of The Donald in Canada is probably Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall who truly hopes that any leader supporting a carbon tax should be “locked up” !
Ooops ! .. who said that ?
I’m Roger Currie
