RCP 8.5, the extreme "doomsday" coal-heavy scenario from Van Vueren et al. (2011), underpins modern climate policies despite being deemed unrealistic—cited by groups like Alberta’s Climate Future report (Hayhoe, 2019) and Quebec’s flawed EV transition plans. Friends of Science debunks claims of unprecedented warming, highlighting urban heat biases in Calgary’s data and regional factors like Chinook winds ignored in models. Quebec’s cap-and-trade fails federal standards, while Europe’s biofuel mandates and renewable expansions threaten food security, as shown in The Uncertainity Has Settled and Paradogma. Policies built on this flawed model risk misallocating resources and ignoring practical constraints, leaving both economies and ecosystems vulnerable. [Automatically generated summary]
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
Tonight, my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, and we're talking about how one flawed doomsday scenario seems to be the thing all other climate policies are based on.
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One flawed doomsday model has become the basis for most modern climate policy.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I know that most of the climate change fear-mongering and many government policies today are based on Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5, or RCP 8.5, as it is commonly known.
It's very confusing stuff, but here's Robinson Meyer describing what an RCP is in the Atlantic.
When climate scientists want to tell a story, interesting choice of words, story, about the future of the planet, they use a set of four standard scenarios called representative concentration pathways or RCPs.
RCPs are ubiquitous in climate science, appearing in virtually any study that uses climate models to investigate the 21st century.
They've popped up in research about subjects as disparate as southwestern mega droughts, future immigration flows to Europe, and poor nighttime sleep quality.
Each RCP is assigned a number that describes how the climate will fare in the year 2100.
Generally, a higher RCP number describes a scarier fate.
It means that humanity emitted more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the 21st century, further warming the planet and acidifying the ocean.
The best case now from her home in Calgary is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
It's always a joy to have Michelle on the show because she tried to pay attention to all these things in the world of climate change and climate change rebuttal.
But even when I think I know it all, Michelle's like, Sheila, there's something else we should talk about.
It just came out today, which I think is great.
Michelle, thanks for coming on the show.
You wanted to talk about Ross McKittrick's new article because he focuses on something that you frequently talk about.
And that's how all of climate policy really is built on this false premise.
Well, I would say all climate policy is built on it, but certainly the more catastrophic view, the climate emergency view, we're all going to die, we're all going to be crispy critters.
This is based on what's called the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5, which is one of several scenarios that the IPCC has used as modeling scenarios.
And this was developed by Van Vueren et al. in about 2011.
And the whole purpose of it was to evaluate what factors change climate over time.
But it wasn't meant to be a particular pathway or choice.
And you'll find groups like the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices, which is a recycled version of the Pan-Canadian Collaboration of Experts on Carbon and also Eco-Fiscal.
You'll find that they use it.
The Environment Canada's report uses it, and they compare this dramatic catastrophic scenario that would be CS using like five or seven times more coal than the world presently uses with no climate mitigation, no climate policies.
This is completely unrealistic, but as Ross McKittrick points out in his article in the Financial Post today, that this is the commonly used reference, point of reference.
This is where the climate emergency comes from.
And Roger PLK Jr. has pointed out that actually Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Stayer, two green billionaires, actively promoted this report called Risky Business, which is also founded on that same catastrophic scenario.
So that's where the emergency comes from.
And you'll even find in Bjorn Lomborg's new book, which I have, yay, a pre-press copy.
You'll even find in there that Bjorn Longberg says the same thing, that it's a false alarm.
He explains the same scenario and how it is being misused.
So, you know, people should calm down a little bit, be more rational about climate policy.
Speaking of calming down a little bit, you folks at Friends of Science have done a really incredible rebuttal to, I think, one of Catherine McKenna's favorite experts on climate change, and that's Dr. Catherine Hayhoe.
She did a report called Alberta's Climate Future, and you guys rebutted that with a report called Facts versus Fortune Telling.
Why don't you tell us about that?
Okay.
Yes, Alberta's Climate Future was a report that was commissioned by the previous NDP government.
And Dr. Catherine Hayhoe is a very well-recognized climate scientist.
She has been criticized, again, by Roger PLK Jr. for the fact that she does have a commercial enterprise associated with her climate work.
And yet she's also been part of things like the Fourth National Climate Assessment in the States, which also gave a very catastrophic view.
And he felt that there was some conflict of interest in that, that she did not identify that in that report, that she has a commercial operation.
So in our report, we looked at what she had done, and she chose a certain time period from about 1950 to 1980 as a baseline, and then up to 2013 to evaluate climate changes.
So we took a longer view.
So we took the longest records in Alberta from like the 1800s up to the present day.
And we can show you that the evidence shows that her claims of a catastrophic future are not true based on the historic evidence.
Now, she likes to say that, of course, climate changed in the past, but now we're the factor changing the climate.
But you don't see that in any of the evidence presented.
In fact, as many people in Calgary will know, eight of the worst floods in Calgary's history happened before 1933.
And two of those floods, the volume was much greater than the catastrophic flood of 2013.
So, you know, why was that not climate change back then?
You know, there was no human influence deemed to be affecting climate prior to 1950.
So where did all those big floods come from?
Why that big precipitation back then?
And why is this singular flood of 2013 now human-caused climate change?
We also identified the fact that she chose 21 locations in Alberta to analyze.
And those 21 locations just happen to fall in the most industrialized heartland of Alberta, the biggest agricultural area of Alberta, the place where most of the population since 1950 has grown in Alberta.
And so, you know, there's what's called an urban heat island effect, which means there's a lot of retained heat from human activities, industrial activities, from buildings in major cities.
And all these factors, land use, water diversion, deforestation, and industrial or residential buildup, these all do cause some warming.
But we don't find any sign of CO2 warming in the evidence presented.
So, you know, we dispute her findings, basically.
You know, it's fascinating.
I think you had a speaker actually at one of your fantastic Friends of Science banquets that pointed out that many of the temperature measuring stations around the world are put in places where they happen to be on pavement.
So if the sun is shining, naturally it's much warmer.
They aren't in places where they're sort of sheltered from those external factors that cause the temperature to increase.
And it appears as though Catherine Hayhoe is doing much the same in her examinations.
Well, you know, I'd have to go and look at all the particular sites that she chose, and I haven't done that.
But the fact is that many of these stations are placed on the outskirts of town, and then town grows into a city.
And so then they end up inside the city.
And I think it's on What's Up With That.
I think that Anthony Watts has done a lot of work on this area and submitted a couple of papers on it where they actually did go and take pictures of all these places showing that what used to be in the middle of a field is now a temperature monitoring device that's in the middle of eight lanes of traffic, you know, all paced around and within the midst of a city.
So obviously you're going to get very distinct and different readings.
Like Roger PLK Sr. has a paper on land use and its effect on climate.
And it shows that in the city of London, for instance, there can be an 11 degree difference between the interior of the city and the exterior of the city out in the rural area.
So I can send you a link to that.
You know, it's quite a significant difference.
Well, most rural Albertans know when you see the weather being reported in Edmonton or Sherwood Park or one of the bedroom communities, in the winter, knock five degrees off that and plug your car in because it's always colder out in the country.
And of course, of course, people and cars and buildings and heating those things, that generates heat, of course.
But does that cause major atmospheric shifts?
I'm not sure.
However, if Catherine Hayhoe's promises hold true, she's promising us a one degree Celsius rise in winter temperatures.
Don't threaten me with a good time, lady.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, the problem with some of, you know, she's downscaled, it's called downscaling the global climate models.
So she's taken a global climate model and tried to, you know, zero it down into Alberta.
And the problem with doing that is that each region of the world is quite unique.
Like we are definitely affected by the Pacific Ocean, El Niño, the Rocky Mountains, especially in the south by Chinook winds.
So these are fairly unique features that would not show up in a global model because they're not tuned to that.
So, you know, on the one hand, she was saying, well, you know, there might be warmer temperatures, there might be more droughts.
Well, there probably will be more droughts because we had 40 droughts in the past 100 years on the prairie.
So it's a pretty common feature.
And part of Alberta and Saskatchewan are right in the Palliser Triangle, which is a semi-arid region that was discovered in 1865 by Captain John Palliser.
So yeah, it's a drought-prone region.
And floods, yes, you know, most of southern Winnipeg or southern Manitoba and part of Saskatchewan are in the basin of Lake Agassiz, which is a glacial lake.
So that indent is still there.
The soil is quite fertile.
But when there's a lot of rain or a lot of snowpack and runoff in the spring, it's going to flood.
It's a flood-prone region.
Impact Of Biofuels On Food Supply00:16:37
Yeah, it's funny.
The people who named High River didn't have a crystal ball.
They named it that because the river did get high and did sometimes flood.
It wasn't like, okay, well, we have a crystal ball.
We're looking, we're there, we're seeing 2013, let's name this town.
No, it's a name, like so many places, it's a feature of the region.
Now, you guys have, changing lanes a little bit, a really great series of videos on your YouTube channel.
I thought the editing was very clever, where you sort of debunk myths that Quebec seems to hold about itself as far as how green they are.
And I thought it was really clever.
You sort of presented the myth and how Quebec feels about itself and then kind of shot it right down.
And it's two Michelles for the price of one.
And in English and in French.
Yeah.
Yeah, my French is a bit rusty, but I thank people for being very kind about my efforts.
You know, it's funny, especially this will resonate with people in Western Canada, that Quebec prides itself on being all green and hydro-based and everything.
But it's actually the second largest petroleum user in the country.
And they use a lot of natural gas, a lot of oil for their home heating and their industrial base.
You know, they claim to, they have some very, very stringent climate targets, like ridiculously stringent climate targets.
They're already one of the lowest emitting jurisdictions in the world.
But it's going to be very, very hard for them to meet these targets.
You know, we often think they're very progressive, and you know, they've got the $7 a day daycare and all this stuff that our equalization payments are paying for.
But they have a cap and trade system with California, so they don't have any carbon tax and no carbon tax rebate.
But the price of that, of the value of those carbon tax permits, is quite low now compared to the carbon tax.
And the whole point of the federal carbon tax is that the provinces are allowed to have a different program, but it has to meet the same standard as the federal carbon tax, and it doesn't now.
So the people don't get a rebate, and there probably will be some punishing after effects because they're not meeting the targets.
And also, another interesting thing, you know, they often say, oh, we can all go EV, we can build an east-west grid, you can have power from James Bay out to Alberta.
What a great thing.
We'll run on wind and hydro.
Well, that grid is impossible.
And not only that, there was an article by Jean-Michaud and Germain Bellezile, who wrote that even though there's all this tremendous hydro output from James Bay Dam, it's not enough to run an EV fleet for Quebec.
They'd run out of power.
So there goes that idea, too.
Anyway, very interesting to look at the contradictions in their policy.
Like, who dreamt it up?
It's really crazy.
Some liberal somewhere, probably.
Now, you've issued or reissued, I guess it is, a report by Robert Lyman why renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels by 2050.
It's the consensus among some pretty mainstream, I guess, politicians, including Elizabeth May, who think that we can go full 100% renewable electricity generation by 2030.
For me, even just dreaming of the infrastructure required to do that, I think it's just insurmountable.
But I mean, there's the whole reliability issues with green energy that we need to factor into all of this.
There's no possible way we can ever go fully green by any point in human history, I don't think.
Well, let's say there's some new technology down the road, like small modular reactors or something to that effect.
Or maybe there's some grand innovation in battery storage.
It doesn't look that likely in the near term.
But over time, we have developed new technologies.
So let's say that there's hope, but it's certainly not within the near term.
So, you know, when Elizabeth May is saying that we can go 100% renewable, she is, of course, imagining that we could run power lines between Quebec and Muskrat Falls and Site C Dam and Manitoba and La Di Da, we'd all be well and fine and good.
But once you start digging into the details, and Robert has done that, he assessed the wind, water, solar plan, which was developed by some scientists in the United States, where they believed that by simply interconnecting all of these different renewable modules, all would be good.
But Robert did the math on it.
He found that it would take about 200 years to put out the relative number of solar panels that are required, for instance.
So that's not in the next decade.
We've had other people do assessments here in Canada that we don't have enough power to run the present EV policy.
Another fellow named Canzare did a paper which refutes a paper that came out of BC where these authors in BC, Keller et al. 2019, they felt that it would be possible to go all EV using renewable energy in BC, voila, but he found that that would mean you'd have to wipe out all of the vineyards and put solar panels there instead.
So, you know, once you start to get into the details, you find that these things are extremely complex.
The power grid is very, very complex.
And it's not just like Lego.
You can't just stick parts together and it works overnight.
It's a very complex system.
And as you point out, if you don't have hydro like Norway, then you better have coal and natural gas because that's what you're going to need.
If you don't have nuclear like Ontario, you better have coal and natural gas.
And if you want to put wind and solar on the grid, you better have natural gas and preferably some coal for your base load because it's the cheapest.
You know, as you were talking, I wrote down land use when you were talking about solar.
And then right after that, you mentioned wiping out the vineyards to put out solar panels.
And just think about how much arable farmland that produces the nation's food and exports cheap, reliable, potable dry goods like chickpeas to developing countries.
Just think about how much of that supply would have to be absolutely destroyed to produce green energy to what?
To Virtue Signal?
I mean, really, Canada's net zero already, if not, you know, a carbon sink.
Well, again, you know, a lot of people don't realize that you have to put up so many wind and solar farms to try and create the amount of power generation because it's not actually generating power.
It's capturing kinetic energy and turning it into power.
But unlike a coal plant or a gas plant that is burning a fuel and generating power as it goes on demand, you can turn it up or down.
You know, wind or solar are completely reliant on Mother Nature and she's just not very reliable.
Not to mention, you know, people will say, oh, here we have the nameplate capacity of X number of megawatts, but that's not the actual generation that will happen in the course of a year.
So when you look at the Alberta Electric System Operator reports from 2018, you find that the most generation came from coal.
The next came from cogeneration, which is actually waste heat from the oil sands and other industrial operations that are turned into power and turned back to the grid.
And wind, it was down there around maybe 7%.
Solar didn't show up at all.
And, you know, biofuels and others are very, very tiny.
And in the middle, there's natural gas from either combined cycle or the simple cycle gas plants.
So, you know, wind cannot provide the power that we need.
Not at this time.
Probably never.
Probably never.
Now, I said pottable, I think, there, but I meant portable when I was referring to dry goods because potable refers to water.
Or portable means you can give someone a sack of chickpeas.
Now, chickpeas And beans and lentils and pulses, all those things that Canada is so vital in providing the food supply to the developing world.
And that would absolutely be destroyed if we tried to go green.
Now, you mentioned biofuels, and that is an incredible segue into the next thing I want to talk about because one of these movies is about, at least in part, the impact of the push for biofuels, how that actually harms the food supply, the domestic food supply in Europe.
And that movie is a movie by Marian Pools.
And he's got two really great documentaries out right now.
I've had Marian on the show a couple times to talk about them.
Now, you guys are going to be hosting those documentaries on your YouTube channel.
And I cannot recommend these documentaries enough.
So why don't you tell us about them?
Right.
Well, Marian Poole's is a European filmmaker originally from Holland.
And he worked around the world in conflict and poverty countries for about nine years.
He made about 50 films.
So he was really a favorite of particularly the left wing.
And he came back to Europe and was astonished to find that in a country that once had been a breadbasket and self-sufficient in its own food, you know,
farmers had turned away from producing potatoes and moved to producing biofuels and creating these monocultures and putting up solar panels and putting up wind farms and tragically also becoming indebted to the bank over these supposed income earners because the subsidy ratios, when they're cut off, you know, then you're finished.
So now you don't have a crop and of edible food and you also can't pay for your installations.
So this he found this very disturbing and he wondered why it was because he'd just come from these countries where people literally are living hand to mouth and they can't produce enough food for themselves.
And so he started looking into the climate policies and found that was the root of this evil and started interviewing climate scientists, skeptics, and those who go along with the anthropogenic global warming view and also interviewing farmers.
And there's a very moving point in one of in The Uncertainty Has Settled where he talks about how at the end of World War II there was very little food in the city and this woman came to a farmer out in the country with a beautiful jewel necklace and offered it to him for a bag of potatoes and he gave her half a bag of potatoes.
But there was almost no food.
So you know he sees this as a very very concerning trend in the West that we're not self-sufficient in food anymore.
We don't value our farmers like we should and farmers are being run off their land because they're entrapped in these wind and solar deals and biofuel deals that are negative and destructive to society as a whole and it's based on you know this false alarm of the climate emergency.
So that's one film.
The second film is Paradogma and Paradogma began or originated in the fact that when he made The Uncertainty Us Settled, he got such pushback.
You know, formerly, if he sent out a press release about one of his films made in one of these conflict countries, oh, you know, the press was all over him.
They republished his press releases everywhere.
And now, you know, he sends out a press release on his climate change issues.
Boy, you know, he's a heretic.
He's a leper.
You know, we don't even want to talk to you.
And he usually goes with his films to the screenings so that he can answer questions to the audience after.
You know, he's had protests, he's had threats.
People have tried to ban his films.
So that's what Paradogma is about.
Like, how can we have a democratic society?
if people are not allowed to express opposing views, you know, in peaceful, civil manner.
So I think it's quite timely in light of everything that's going on in the world at this time.
And in full disclosure, I'm in that second film, Paradogma.
Marian interviewed me outside of a screening for the previous movie that he made, The Uncertainty Has Settled, which, I mean, I enjoyed that movie so much because I hadn't even thought about the effect on the food supply.
And I should have.
It should have been something that mattered to me, but I was more concerned about the macro effects of climate policy on, you know, the nation's economy.
When frankly, to my embarrassment, I wasn't even thinking about farming and the food supply.
I was thinking about how a carbon tax hurts a farmer, but I wasn't thinking about, you know, when you switch from growing grain to growing corn and that corn doesn't end up in the food supply or it doesn't go to feed cattle somewhere, it goes to be turned into, you know, biodiesel.
Well, you know, what effect does that have on society and the food supply?
I didn't even consider that.
And it was a very eye-opening movie.
And I'm so happy that those movies are going to be available over on the Friends of Science YouTube channel.
So please, everybody, subscribe to the Friends OF Science YouTube channel so that you know and ring that little bell so that you know when they've posted those movies, so that you don't miss them.
And yeah, I'm in that second movie for like a minute and a half they'll be, they'll be offered for free yes, and so you know, just screen them.
So we're gonna start with the Uncertainty Is Settled on the 24th and then July 1st we'll start with Paradogma and he has a third one coming out back in the fall, Back To Eden, I believe it's called anyway, so that one will be screened at that time as well.
Fantastic now, and beautifully shot, I must say I you know, I worked in film and television for many years and really the Uncertainty Is Settled, is beautifully, beautifully shot.
If you've got a big screen, watch it on that.
Yeah, and you know it's funny because, from what I understand, Marian works usually just him alone, or him and somebody else, and so he's doing a lot of this beautiful cinematography by himself.
So I mean it's, it's really great.
Now, another thing that I'm very embarrassed of, I did not know that you had a children's book out, and and as soon as we're done recording this interview, I'm gonna order it because my kids need it.
Kids' Climate Change Alternative00:05:16
I think parents who are looking for an alternative to Climate change fear-mongering that's shoved down our kids' throats at school.
And if, God forbid, they're watching CBC or CBC Kids or something, you've got sort of a solution, a gentle solution to that.
So, please tell us about your children's book.
Well, we had done a video that was based on a little family of hedgehogs and how the little girl was having a nightmare every night, fearing climate change, afraid of what Greta had said, and these words were echoing in her head.
And so, you know, she wakes up with a nightmare one night, and mom, and dad, and little brother, who's also scared, all come into her room.
And Dad, you know, says, I'm going to show you what climate change, where the climate change monster is, and basically, you know, flips over the bed and there's nothing there.
So, it's a cute little tale, nothing very long, nothing very complicated, but it does show kids that, you know, this is out of proportion.
And just as Bjorn Lomborg keeps saying, you know, it's a false alarm.
So we try, and then at the end, we offer just some information about, say, the Holocene, which is the period of time that we're in the past 10,000, 12,000 years, where there has been warming and cooling, warming and cooling, warming and cooling on a cyclical basis.
So, you know, much of what we're experiencing now is quite natural.
It doesn't mean that humans have no impact.
It certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't care for our environment.
We should.
We should not be dumping sewage in the ocean.
We should not be dumping plastic in the ocean.
But those are practical things we can deal with.
But to scare little kids about climate is wrong.
Even Judith Curry, Dr. Judith Curry, says, I don't know why they even bother teaching kids this at school.
It's not within their realm where they can do anything about it.
Far too complex for them to understand it.
And you're scaring them, you know, and for what purpose?
So anyway, thanks for noting the book.
Yes, how do people get the book?
Well, it's on my Amazon Kindle page.
And you can also see our video because we have it online with that little video story.
So one video version has a scream that is a bit loud for kids who would be under 10.
Name of the book?
You didn't even give the name of the book?
Kid-Friendly Climate Tales.
Perfect.
With the cutest little hedgehogs.
Michelle, how else do people support the work that you do?
So we've got the YouTube page, we've got the book that you should have told me about sooner.
And how else do people support the work that you do at Friends of Science?
Well, you can become a member and donate on our website.
There's a little button there.
And share our stuff.
You know, some people may not be financially able at the moment to deal with membership, but please to share our material.
And, you know, we don't want you to blindly agree with it.
We're quite willing to engage in debate and discuss the different perspectives.
Our view is that the sun is the main driver, but that doesn't mean there are no other factors.
And we do actually, though, state quite clearly that a carbon tax is not going to change the weather.
And in fact, people should know about this.
I don't know if you know, James Hansen, the climate scientist in the United States who is probably the root of the climate change concerns, he's now pressing Canadians to support a petition for a $210 carbon tax by 2030.
This is a real petition that's online.
And he's working with Citizens Climate Lobby and the director of the executive director of Citizen Climate Lobby is on the non-profit foundation of Greta's associated with the We Don't Have Time Green Billionaires.
So, you know, this is all about carbon offsets.
Anyway, he claims that if people support this $210 a ton carbon tax by 2030, the reason for supporting it is that then the beneficiaries who get the rebate would find it to be enough money.
So talk about robbing Peter to save Paul.
I mean, I mean, pretty transparent about what this is all about, that it's a wealth transfer thing and definitely not a climate change thing.
But you know what?
Iran and China and Saudi Arabia, they're going to be laughing all the way to the bank while we destroy our own economy.
Of course.
Of course.
There's a geopolitical warfare going on, and this is part of it.
So places that are fossil fuel rich are going to be punished by places that are not.
So you might, Albertans would recognize this as a grandiose geopolitical equalization scheme.
But we don't have to play.
That's a great way to put it.
Geopolitical Warfare Cost00:00:57
Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show.
You're always so generous with your time.
And it's, I just feel like I'm getting blasted in the face with a fire hose of information every time you're on the show.
We'll have you back on again real soon.
thank you so much sheila well i'm very excited to hear that friends of science is hosting moriah pool's documentaries The first one is The Uncertainty Has Settled, and the second one is Paradogma.
And again, I make a cameo in Paradogma, so please watch.
And I'm also thrilled about Michelle's children's book.
What a wonderful antidote to the fear-mongering our children receive at school about the climate and their role in ruining the earth.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.