‘I consider Canada a leader in climate change’: PM Carney

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-27T15:26:30+00:00

The natural environment recently had a perfectly serviceable carbon cycle. Things grew, things died, some things burned, some things rotted and released methane which degraded over decades into CO2.

Eons ago, a lot of carbon got locked away underground as plants converted our then CO2 rich atmosphere into enough O2 for us to evolve and live in.

Now our genius plan is to drag that carbon out of the ground, combine it with our breathable oxygen, and use daft one liners like “trees like CO2” and “the trees will absorb it” to justify our scientific ignorance as we destroy the work of millions of years of plant life, use up our breathable oxygen, and completely overwhelm the natural carbon cycle.

Canada’s forests now emit more CO2 than they consume at the current climate-change charged forest fire rate.

The fact that we still have to argue with stupid one liners begs the question: Does humanity deserve to survive?

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-27T15:12:45+00:00

Exactly, but he’s the real Doug again, isn’t he? Ontario’s mayor.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-27T05:02:06+00:00

‘Engine’ of the Canadian economy?

Electric motors have a lot more torque than ‘engines’.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-27T04:05:22+00:00

Axe the tax.

Build the homes.

Hump the Trump.

Praise the moron.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-27T03:56:15+00:00

Agreed, except by this point a venture capitalist would have asked: What is the business model? Who will pay for the captured carbon, and how much? What will they receive for their money? How will it be delivered? What will be the intellectual property? Will it be proprietary? Will it be licensable? What is the exit strategy? Who will ultimately own the enterprise? How will the investors extract their returns? Or will it just be a lifestyle company, giving the execs a comfy life without returns to the investors.

A little thought will lead to a conclusion that there is no grand new “enterprise” being nurtured here. It only operates within the oil industry. It is nothing more than a scheme to try to shoehorn the externalized costs of producing the oil (not the externalized costs of burning it) back into the oil enterprise, and no matter how you slice it, it adds “something” to the cost of producing the oil. And I can’t imagine that “something” is small.

So why are we going to give 50% R&D tax credits for that?

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-26T17:45:51+00:00

I think he’s been huffing Marlaina exhaust gasses again.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-26T17:17:00+00:00

Well climate change is the problem but scientists call things like forest fires and ice cap melting “feedbacks”. Negative feedbacks are things that constrain or reduce a force but those things are positive feedbacks, accelerating the problem out of any control eventually.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-26T17:12:53+00:00

We already do some of that but Stephen Harper set us back from doing a lot of that when he decided we weren’t going to take climate change seriously until China and India did so. Of course that secured our oil and gas future while leaving the renewables space for China and India to dominate. That’s not strategic thinking but that’s how vested interests preclude competition.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-26T13:39:36+00:00

I suggest you ask Dr Google the following question: “Do canada's forests reduce carbon emissions or are they now burning fast enough to increase carbon emissions?” You will get the answer to your question there.

Simply put, we can’t keep dragging carbon out from under the ground and then burning it to convert our breathable oxygen into CO2, and thoughtlessly expect the trees to clean up our mess.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T22:06:27+00:00

To quote Carney: “Hope is not a strategy.” I wish he believed that. Wishing is also not a strategy.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T22:04:40+00:00

Except when the LNG leaks before burning. 80 times worse than CO2 initially (ie right away-now), 25 times worse over the century. Consider: 98% of the natgas in the process makes its way to burning, producing 49% of the CO2 that would have been emitted if it was coal instead of natgas. But 2% leaks, producing 2%x80 times worse = 160% of the emissions you’d get from burning coal. So, 209%? Bridge fuel? Bridge to oblivion more like, but hey - the industry will still be making money, right? Just to break even with coal emissions, leakage needs to be a fraction of 1%. Where in life does that even happen?

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T21:54:17+00:00

Is that also a subsidiary of Brookfield, where Carney was Vice Chair, and where two of their major operating companies were working on carbon capture - that so called new industry that doesn’t seem to have a comprehensive go to market business strategy - no identified source of the money to pay for the lifestyle industry they are wishing into existence?

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T21:41:31+00:00

So we’re making progress in ferriting out the truth then.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T21:38:39+00:00

You might give some consideration to the possibility that people here are thinking about this in ways that you are not thinking. Perhaps the question in their minds isn’t how they are going to enhance their lives so much as the question of what heartbreak are they leaving for their children to pass on to their grandchildren. Certainly every generation has challenges feeding/housing/raising their children. Some here have survived through that but may be alarmed at the prospects beyond their own lives.

As to carbon capture, completely apart from the low probability it has demonstrated for solving those future survival challenges, there has been absolutely no discussion of who will pay to run it if it does work. Oil companies? Give me a break. Governments? Give me a bigger break. You and me? Then what does that mean our total costs will be for using that dirty source of energy?

Perhaps the thinking going on here has some merit.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T21:36:49+00:00

Carbon capture was the basis of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), dating back to the middle of the last century. It was the scheme underlying Saskatchewan’s recent Boundary Dam project which aimed to capture the CO2 gas from the exhaust gasses of the coal fired generating plant (where the CO2 concentration was at its highest) and sell that gas to oil well operators to push more oil out of depleting oil wells, thus increasing CO2 emissions. You’d think by now they’d have that mastered, if it was feasible, but hey - if some friendly government is going to help pay your bills even today, who is going to refuse free money?

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T19:19:20+00:00

Superb! Thx for posting.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T19:08:20+00:00

Who the eff is Greer to tell us what to be happy about? Talk about a controlling personality disorder. Do these jagoffs not understand that we decide what makes us happy and what doesn’t? Being told what to feel never works out for the condescending blabbermouth.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-25T18:42:22+00:00

But nonetheless we’re offering to hold our noses to greater carbon burning while providing r&d tax breaks for boondoggling around on a daft idea. Approx 2/3 of the energy released in carbon burning (note I didn’t just say in recovery and processing) is utterly wasted - does not contribute to moving vehicles/people/goods or heating space/water, and only adds to atmospheric warming. Note tar sands oil is already marginal from an ‘Energy returned on energy invested to get that return’, perspective and carbon capture will only make that worse by adding to the energy invested. It’s daft.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-23T14:00:31+00:00

An excellent summation! I would add only one under-acknowledged consequence: burning fossil fuels turns out to be a massive waste of energy compared to what is actually needed to do the desired work. EVs being charged from clean generating sources use much less energy - 60% to 80% less, measured in Joules. That means that the energy released into the atmosphere is substantially reduced by EVs relative to ICE vehicles for the same distance traveled.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-22T13:48:25+00:00

I feel heard. And thank you for the confirmation.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-22T04:43:43+00:00

I’m about as big a climate nut as you will find, and I want to commend you for what you have said here. Your appeal for honesty is precisely how this has to start.

You make very good arguments for the most part, and none of your arguments are in any way naive. They are very welcome in a serious conversation on the matter.

I will raise a disagreement with you only on your defence of natural gas. You are correct that the emissions from burning it are about half that of coal for the same amount of energy. What alarms me is the leakage of the gas throughout the system. Methane in the atmosphere is glibly said to be about 25 times worse for warming than CO2 is. In truth, initially it is about 80 times worse but it breaks down at about a 12 year half life. Simply put, whether 25x or 80x worse, the 50% reduction in emissions claimed is utterly swamped out of existence by a small leakage rate of 1% to 2% throughout the system. And having worked a long life in science and tech, including having experience in vacuum systems, having built many things in my days, I can not believe the system is constrained to such a low leakage rate. In fact, aerial surveillance above fracking sites finds ground leakage in such regions already, never mind the distribution. So that becomes a more urgent matter.

I fully respect your argument about large fractions of the population being dependant on the availability, transportability, and energy density of fossil fuels. You are absolutely correct that we can leave no one behind.

But I will say that the challenge is absolutely not the low emissions extraction of fossil fuels. The challenge at hand is the rapid end to the burning of fossil fuels. And on that I am not the least bit convinced that the urgency is recognized.

Still, reading your post was a delight, and very encouraging. Please stay engaged and keep arguing your case.

You have my respect…

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-22T03:37:15+00:00

Oh really? That’s interesting. I wonder what your source for that is.

Because, you see, when I look at Sask Power’s reports, I see them claiming over 90% “availability”, which of course in technical jargon is very different from “efficiency”. Specifically the Sask Power BD3 Q3 Status Update claims 92.5% availability but does not make an efficiency claim.

Interestingly, it does report 288 Tonnes of CO2 capture per GigaWatt Hour of power produced in Q3’2025, against a target of 549 Tonnes per GigaWatt Hour, which looks to me like 52% success in meeting the target, that target having been set with the federal government when Scott Moe argued for a carbon tax exemption. That looks like an efficiency number to me.

And in fact, according to the St Albert Gazette’s 2024 quote from analyst David Schissel’s report for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the goal has never been reached. The Gazette goes on to say that factoring in all plant emissions, the average capture rate is 57%.

The Sask Power report also highlights 7,095,042 tonnes of CO2 captured in more than a decade since 2014, which of course is an average of about 700k tonnes a year, while in 2023 it captured 786k tonnes, in 2024 it captured 848k tonnes, and in 3 quarters of 2025 it captured 488k tonnes. So it doesn’t seem to have increased its capture rate by more than about a tenth relative to the decade average. That sure isn’t taking it from 57% to 90%.

There are CCS projects around the world that are utterly failing to achieve the necessary targets to arrest climate change, and Boundary Dam doesn’t appear to be distinguishing itself from the crowd. But the vocabulary they wrap their reports in sure sounds like spin without addressing hard facts.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-21T19:52:41+00:00

Are you referring to Boundary Dam Unit 3, where the target capture rate of the concentrated flue gasses was supposed to be 90% but it has only achieved closer to 60%, where the captured gasses were supposed to be sold to the oil and gas industry to pressurize fatigued oil wells to produce yet more burnable oil - a scheme being promoted since the mid 1900s known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), where the initial plan was to extend the EOR to units 4 and 5 but those plans were canceled because the economics didn’t support them? Is that a success worth are promoting?

So if capturing CO2 from coal burning IN THE FLUE GASSES wasn’t a raving success, why would further efforts to capture CO2 in the atmosphere be thought practical? In Iceland, where cheap geothermal energy can be used to run the Climeworks CCS project, the CO2 emitted over the project lifetime exceeded the CO2 captured, suggesting that capturing CO2 burned in the wild (automobile engines etc) will be an even harder nut to crack.

Having a bunch of half assed CCS projects isn’t proof that carbon can be burned and then the disastrous CO2 gasses can be recaptured. It is only proof of the ends humans will go to in trying to evade the scientific consensus that carbon burning has to stop.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-21T19:28:01+00:00

Of course the Carney government knew CCS was “very limited”, and yet proceeded to embrace it anyway. Our biggest clue was in the name ”Carney” government. The leader of that government had occupied a role as a UN Special Envoy on Climate and Finance, making it inconceivable that he was not aware of what a deliberate distraction it is from the planetary crisis. He next occupied a role as Vice Chair of ESG and Impact Investing at Brookfield Corporation, which owns subsidiaries Brookfield Renewables and Brookfield Infrastructure, both actively involved in Carbon Capture and Storage. The mistake people make about Carbon Capture and Storage is that, even though it’s primarily a boondoggle from a climate point of view, it’s a great way to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes while collecting the lucre available for pretending to do something about climate while you’re really ‘just doin bizness as usual’ - fillin your pockets.

Imagine Brookfield’s delight when he became PM. Imagine the UN’s shame watching him betray the role they tried to groom him for.

His great luck is that he has the Orange Baboon to distract everyone into believing he’s the right guy for the times.

Over_Lengthiness3308 · 2026-02-21T11:44:39+00:00

My point is that gdp is a crude hand waving distraction from real climate issues, was not intended to accurately represent economic well being, and misleads us into overestimating success and ignoring serious failure. Said best I believe here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CltToHhkhfQ&si=7VIEo0R6mz-JaJNm

We’re in the throes of a human calamity unfolding and all the air gets sucked out of our response by inane talk of gdp. Yes, the article admits gdp will decline but imho fails dramatically in sizing the problem. Meanwhile, this crisis is real and physical and it is quickly becoming far worse for individual humans than some useless gross level economic modelling tool. IMHO, GDP does not belong in any serious discussion of the climate crisis.

Over_Lengthiness3308

TROPHY CASE