LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

U

Search

Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

M

Menu

!

Menu

Your Source for Free Speech, Talk Radio, Podcasts, and News.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

What does Ottawa, Canada, have in common with Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Montreal? They are all cities that experience cold weather, at times very cold, but all have essentially ignored the dangerous impacts of cooling in their climate change plans. This is despite the fact that according to a study in the British Medical journal The Lancet:

“Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries.”

As I emphasized in my April 18, 2023 testimony before the City of Ottawa Environment and Climate Change Committee: Twenty times more people die from the cold than the heat! So, cooling is clearly far more dangerous for high-latitude cities such as Ottawa, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Montreal.

At least Chicago implies a need to prepare for cold weather in their plan (p. 138):

The Office of Emergency Management and Communications “proactively plans for hazards and oversees citywide operations for public safety such as the initiation of the City’s Emergency Operation Plan, activation of warming and cooling sites, and communicating through public messages systems such as Notify Chicago.”

Ottawa’s Climate Change Master Plan is incredibly irresponsible. Despite the City’s assertion that “Ottawa must be an energy-conscious city where people can live, work and play in all future climate conditions,” cooling adaptation is entirely ignored.

Temperature trends apparently follow in accordance with solar cycles. This should seriously concern councilors from all of these cities since we may be entering a Grand Solar Minimum when the Sun may be at its weakest in the past 300 years. This could result in significant global cooling, which these municipalities must prepare for. The Epoch Times reported on November 23, 2021:

“In an exclusive interview, scientist Valentina Zharkova told The Epoch Times that her 2015 paper predicting the onset of a grand solar minimum between 2020 and 2053 has been borne out, prompting her to warn that temperatures could soon rapidly fall.

“Grand solar minima last for multiple solar cycles, during which the Sun produces less energy and sunspot activity is low. During a previous grand solar minimum, the Maunder minimum between 1645 and 1715, glaciers expanded, and the River Thames in England frequently froze over.”

Professor Zharkova has a Ph.D. from the Solar Division of the Main Astronomical Observatory, Kyiv, Ukraine. She is now a Professor of Mathematics at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. In “Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling,” her editorial published on August 4, 2020, in the journal Temperature, which publishes papers related to interactions between living matter and temperature, Professor Zharkova wrote:

“This period [upcoming grand solar minimum in which solar magnetic field and its magnetic activity will be reduced by 70%] has started in the Sun in 2020 and will last until 2053. During this modern grand minimum, one would expect to see a reduction of the average terrestrial temperature by up to 1.0°C, especially during the periods of solar minima between the cycles 25–26 and 26–27, e.g., in the decade 2031–2043.

“The reduction of a terrestrial temperature during the next 30 years can have important implications for different parts of the planet on growing vegetation, agriculture, food supplies, and heating needs in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. This global cooling during the upcoming grand solar minimum 1 (2020–2053) can offset for three decades any signs of global warming and would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth.”

It is irresponsible for high-latitude cities to only prepare for warming when cooling is far more dangerous and, some scientists say, more likely. It would be like going camping in an area known to be infested with black bears and mosquitos and only planning for the mosquitos. Yes, the bugs can drive you crazy, but the bears can kill you. Similarly, heat in these cities is not fatal except for the elderly and other vulnerable citizens, people we need to protect. But everyone can die if they have no heat when it is -20 degrees Fahrenheit, as it is at some point every year in Ottawa and Montreal, and occasionally in Chicago.

To make matters worse, Ottawa, Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal – all push for greater electrification, especially the use of electric vehicles.

A secure and prosperous city is impossible with a weak electrical grid, and these cities’ grids would be the weakest imaginable if they do go full bore on electrification. Electricity-powered systems have been found to fail far more often than those powered by natural gas or any other energy source. Greater electrification means lower reliability. And when they fail, the results can be catastrophic. Think of Hurricane Ida: New Orleans lost power. It didn’t lose natural gas flow. The City was running natural gas-fired temporary generators to meet its needs, which were limited, so people evacuated. What if they couldn’t vacate because their means of evacuation—their electric cars—couldn’t be charged?

If a power failure like that which occurred in Texas in February 2021 happened in any of the aforementioned cities in the depths of winter, and we had gotten rid of the most reliable power, we would likely see vast numbers of casualties. Local air pollution would soar as citizens increasingly resorted to fossil fuel-powered home generators.

Consequently, the only sensible actions for Ottawa, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Montreal, and indeed, cities and other jurisdictions around the world, is to:

  • Prepare for future climate change with sensible, risk-weighted, and cost-effective adaptation strategies. For high-latitude cities, the major focus should be on preparing for possible cooling impacts, as this would be by far our greatest threat. Societies that did not adequately prepare for climate change are no longer with us.
  • Promote economic prosperity so as to provide the wealth we need to ensure resiliency.
  • Instead of moving to more wind and solar power, expand our use of fossil fuels to ensure reliable, affordable energy supplies to safeguard our citizens and maintain our standard of living, without which we cannot afford effective environmental programs.

In her testimony before the April 18, 2023, Ottawa Environment and Climate Change Committee meeting, Ottawa resident Danielle Maillott put it well:

“Research shows that we do a far better job protecting the environment by continuing with our reliance on fossil fuel than by making a massive transition to so-called renewable power… The prosperity created by fossil fuels has made environment protection both highly valued and financially possible.”

We must push our elected representatives to make climate plans that put the safety and prosperity of their citizens their top priority. Texas did not do this, and the result was up to 700 dead and $200 billion in damages as a result of the February 2021 blackout. This must never happen again.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

Join our community: Your insights matter. Contribute to the diversity of thoughts and ideas.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Sitewide Newsfeed

More Stories
.pp-sub-widget {display:none;} .walk-through-history {display:none;} .powerpress_links {display:none;} .powerpress_embed_box {display:none;}
Share via
Copy link