The February 28 General Committee meeting had to be moved to the Algonquin Theatre in order to accommodate delegations on opposite sides of the climate change spectrum and their supporters.
Barb Perkins and Christine Graham of Muskoka Canadians For the Truth and Peggy Peterson all took turns trying to refute the climate emergency resolution passed by the Town of Huntsville in 2021. The resolution cites a 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report while committing to increasing climate resiliency and reducing municipal greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
“This is not about climate change. This is about conformity, acceptance of only one narrative and control,” said Perkins. She said the climate change narrative is being used as a tool by government, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and all of their branches to “usher in a new world order of one world government.” One world government, she said, modelled after the Chinese Communist Party.
Attention soon turned to the Town’s 2024 budget passed with a tax rate increase of 10.68 per cent. Graham said people are upset with the increase, they are suffering and for some, the increase would put them over the edge. “So even if tackling global warming and sea levels rising in 50 years was an emergency, although we know it’s not, these are not their top priorities. Most, if not all, of the local people just want to feed their families and keep their homes,” added Graham.
Huntsville Councillors were accused of falling for the globalist agenda, an agenda which they were told seeks to redistribute the world’s wealth to an elite few. A group that, they said, also controls the mainstream media. Suicide rates among youth were also blamed on climate change fear-mongering and councillors were told not to spend another penny on climate change mitigation.
Councillors were told to verify the science they were relying on. Graham cited what she said was a declaration from over 1800 credentialled scientists and academics who declared there is no climate emergency. “We rely on you and if you’re spending taxpayer dollars you need the verify the science you’re relying on and we will provide you with our sources and you need to show some kind of cost-benefit analysis before committing any more tax money… from what we witness out here, no one seems to have any control of spending and our beautiful town is going broke,” she said.
Peterson told councillors the planet is just fine. She said the climate change agenda was created “by people who want the earth for themselves. They will do anything to get it, including lying to you about a climate change emergency. I’m speaking again for the third time to this council about the United Nations and its international affiliates’ control. There’s a spider web of lies, and carefully crafted the quiet takeover of every level of government including the Town of Huntsville,” she said. “And even though they are not elected by anyone, the federal government got us into this deal. We were signed up with Agenda 21 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1992,” she said referring to the Rio Earth Summit and its primer on local strategic directions for municipalities related to sustainable development.
Peterson insisted that the global elites are putting out a false narrative “that we’re facing extinction due to high CO2 levels.” She said reducing C02 makes no sense. “The planet is actually in a measurable C02 drought and actually needs more of it since C02 is what created all green growth.” Peterson also said oil and gas have been referred to as fossil fuels to trick people into thinking they are scarce, “even though they are constantly being produced by our sentient planet… free energy will be available very soon to heat our homes. Everyone will soon be aware of these technologies that were available to people over 100 years ago,” she said, adding that they were stolen by the people behind the globalist agenda to “weaken humanity, and deny us our health, wealth and happiness. In 2020, they started taking our freedoms with mandates, and lockdowns, false tests— all compliments of the same agenda, medical tyranny at the highest level forcing experimental vaccines…”
Peterson spoke of chemtrails and geoengineering programs she said were designed by the UN and related agencies. She spoke of the harm of cell towers but reiterated there is no climate emergency and that the UN is controlling weather, like causing hurricanes, through technology. She spoke also of attempts to create 15-minute cities with the use of electric vehicles. She told people not to be afraid and said climate change is a hoax.
Things got a little heated when Huntsville Councillor Bob Stone said, “For those of us who do believe the climate is changing, we’re acting not out of fear but out of prudence and this council doesn’t spend wildly towards those efforts,” Stone asked Peterson “what is the harm if we encourage a reduction of vehicle emissions? What is the harm if we ensure less salt goes into our waterways? What’s the harm if we improve our infrastructure to prevent it from flooding?” While someone in the audience shouted back, “We’re losing our homes,” and Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock asked them to quiet down.
Peterson, who seemed irritated, said she wanted an apology from Stone for laughing and smiling at her presentation at a different meeting and said the onus is ultimately on him to prove that there is a climate emergency. She also questioned what impact the Town of Huntsville would have by cutting its emissions if everyone continued doing business as usual.
No one else had a question for Peterson. “Are you afraid to ask a question,” she asked councillors.
A fourth delegation went before council, Sue McKenzie and Leslie Hastie with Climate Action Muskoka (CAM). Hastie was CAMs delegate to Huntsville Council in June 2021 and at that time asked council to call a climate emergency, commit to reducing greenhouse gasses and adopt the required actions to get to zero emissions by 2050.
She encouraged council to continue fulfilling the plan as well as the soon-to-be-released District-led greenhouse gas mitigation plan. “This will reduce pollution across Muskoka from the burning of fossil fuels. As we know, combustion of fossil fuels—methane, propane, gasoline, diesel and oil, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere where it may stay for 100 years or more wrapping the planet in a warm blank and heating it,” she said, adding that last year was the hottest year on record globally. “In Canada, we recently experienced extraordinary climate events. Atmospheric rivers, wildfires, and devastation of forests and towns such as we had never known. Remember Fort McMurray, remember Lytoon? And it will get worse because carbon pollution is still increasing,” said Hastie.
She reminded council that in December, 190 countries, including Canada, and all of whom rely on advice from the world’s top economists and climate scientists, signed COP28 which includes a commitment to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Hastie said if nothing is done to mitigate climate change, the planet will be facing irreversible changes such as the increased melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica causing sea levels to rise and submerge coastal towns, cities and islands, and said up to a billion of earth’s people will have to migrate.
Locally, the risks include erratic weather, an increase in blue-green algal blooms, a loss of biodiversity in forests and lakes and compromised wells and domestic water supplies. Other impacts include extreme heat, increased risk of forest fires and more extreme precipitation and flooding, including increases to property insurance. She also noted that most of the impact will be felt by municipal infrastructure.
McKenzie said Canadians have been exposed to “massive propaganda campaigns from big oil and you see it every day whether it’s a podcast, television, anything you read, Facebook, social— big oil has been propagandizing about fossil fuels,” she said, adding that “almost half of Canadians are still willing to donate that one per cent of their personal income to address climate change.”
Councillor Scott Morrison thanked all of the presenters. “I am not a scientist, I don’t claim to be. I just know that I was elected by the people of this town to sit at this seat and I consider this seat a privilege. Obviously, there is misinformation out there, and maybe on both sides, and everybody has to be careful what they read and what they believe. For instance,” said Morrison, “the notion that 1,609 scientists have written that climate change is a hoax, that’s been debunked. Hundreds of those people weren’t even scientists and six of them were deceased, and I’m sure there’s stuff that you’ve read that you’ve looked through and found out it’s not true.”
Morrison spoke of thinking in future generations, say, 100 years from now. He also asked how to get those who do not believe climate change is real to see the other side. Both McKenzie and Hastie said they no longer knew. McKenzie said young people, who were spoken about earlier, need to see that adults around them are taking the issue seriously “and really putting their future over our own convenience, comfort… we have to do that. We are the generation that can do this,” she said.
The CAM representatives said people do want council to take action. Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock agreed. She said when the Town was seeking input for its strategic plan from well over 1,000 residents one of the issues people said was important to them was climate change and council’s response to it.
*The Town of Huntsville passed a 10.68 per cent tax rate increase, not a 9.68 per cent increase as perviously stated. The number has been updated.
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disappointed that Ms Peggy J Peterson will not acknowledge the inappropriateness and harm of her threatening misbehaviour at the General meeting.It is true we should expect respect from all of our councillors in response to our delegations no matter what they may think, and Ms Petersen obviously has hurt feelings and feels unheard despite the time granted to her, which I understand. In the moment, human emotions are not always controlled but we can all do better to treat each other with respect if we are to live peacefully and remember our common ground and best intentions. Is this respect for individuals possible with The “Peace Order and Good Governance” espoused by her ally Shelagh Mc Farlane ( http://www.SheLaw.ca) presented to council in general terms, which proposes reforming Town council and assigning its own “mentors” to each councillor to fall in line with the agenda of” Canadians for Truth” or resign to be replaced by the mentor? Is that what was meant when Ms Peterson said ” we are coming for you” addressing a councillor. I wonder what happens to any person who disagree with the “Truth” of “Canadians for Truth” or asks questions as I am now.
By the way the modest tax increase by the town on my modest home pales vs my grocery bills and utilities, so it must be asked if “Canadians for Truth” are part of a political “Axe the Tax” campaign wanting to build Wealth and Happiness for some few.
Right you are, Alan Markle. There is no such thing as: “The science is settled.” It can be challenged, and the prevailing orthodoxy has often been rejected in favour of a hypothesis that fits the observed data better, as long as the data is accurately measuring what it purports to measure (and that is sometimes in doubt).
One of the data collection problems that CERES (formed by a group of geophysicists and other earth scientists whose founder was an astrophysicist at Harvard for many years) has noted, is that there was a significant problem with the corruption of the data in the sampling, when it comes to global warming. They tested the algorithms used in the model’s analysis of the sampling data; they never got the model’s predicted answer., let alone more than once, as required by scientific rigor. That told them that either the data was wrong or the method of analysis in the model used, was wrong. The opinion that they have is that the data is skewed from such a large amount of it being collected in urban areas (currently only about 4% of the earth’s surface area.) When a majority of the data is collected from urban “heat islands,” it doesn’t take a “rocket scientist” to figure out that the data will be skewed toward an exaggeration of the actual heating of the planet.
That doesn’t mean that the planet has not heated, but that it might have been caused by something other than “carbon emissions.” Many politicians have latched onto carbon emissions as a way to squeeze more tax dollars out of the taxpayers, as there is no way to tax the sun’s energy output or even the release of methane from the melting permafrost. There is a fair bit of data suggesting that the earth is now going into a cooling phase (hint* that is why “global warming” turned into “climate change”). The earth’s climate is an enormously complex system and to think that our pathetic small efforts at tinkering with it are going to make a beneficial difference for anyone, is at the extreme end of hubris.
Interesting comment as we experienced one of the warmest winters in history and with +14 on the day you state this in the beginning of March.
In high school we had a science teacher who constantly told us that science doesn’t ‘prove facts’. “There are no such things as facts, only ideas that haven’t been debunked yet, or found worthy of retesting”. That may not be word for word because grade 13 was a long time ago. But that is the gist of what he said.
You start with a thought, evolve a theory, then formulate a hypothesis. Which science says must be tested over and over. If it is finally debunked it will join the rest of the ‘wrong’. If not, it must remain open to more testing and further re-examination. It will just never get to ‘proven’.
Someone made the remark about the world must be flat, just look out the window. But the answer could be different if the view was on the side of a mountain, bottom of a valley, or a porthole at sea. Same as the questions “Which way is up?”, “Howcum there’s nothin’ in holes?” or “Why does the wind blow both ways?” Depends on your perspective or maybe sense of humor.
I know we all have reached a point where we feel the discussion has gone where no man wants to tread. You might want to laugh, but unless it’s a good joke, you have to fight that urge. But apparently that’s not so with some people.
If Joe Friday had uttered “Just the facts !” to my teacher, ‘Dragnet’ might never have made it to prime time.
Maybe there can be ‘facts’ on television or to councilors, but never to science.
Have you considered that climate change is real AND politicians use it to grift taxpayers at the same time?
The West needs to stop falling for the political trap that these issues are diametrically opposed.
Climate change has been constant, with temperatures going up and down, at times significantly so, in either direction from where they are today, long before first humans walked the earth. Scientific consensus can easily be arrived at, when scientists who oppose the narrative are silenced. The last 4 years is a prime example.
Global CO2 levels are close to the lowest they had ever been when looking back at our planet’s geological history and more people die of cold than of heat every year. Just two of countless inconvenient scientific facts clashing with the “climate change” narrative that forces Canadians to pay increasingly absurd taxes.
Well said Bob Slater!
Many thanks to the Doppler for reporting on these meetings, I appreciate that I was quoted accurately however what was missed is the fact that the local Tax increase is 10.68 % not 9.68. % It was unfortuntely that you have not reported on the efforts launched in this town on January 29th to stop the tax increase and convince the Mayor to freeze the budget at 2023 rates , with the exception of the Fire Department . Something else that was missed was the behavior of the Councillor who continued to laugh during our presentations on Wednesday and when I was appealing the tax Increase on Monday at the General Meeting. There is nothing funny about poverty Mr. Stone and he should be the one to apologize.
Any effects on the progress of climate change that can be caused by such a tiny little place like Huntsville are indeed unlikely to be noticeable in the random noise out there on this topic.
This fact does not, however, mean that we should just ignore the issue and do nothing.
Kathy Kay points out we can do better, and she is right and we can do better without breaking our economy.
For every job lost by de carbonizing our economy others are created by that very change. It is more a matter of the speed and amount of disruption we can handle than the final goal which has to be to reduce carbon.
Hugh Holland, as usual, has some interesting data.
Even though all of Canada is a small part of the global equation, we should try, within acceptable economic limits, to set an example and aim for a more carbon free future.
Jim Smith says it well when pointing out that science does not care what you think. Science is what it is and it slowly discovers the truth of any situation. We need to follow that science. Opinion polls do very little useful. An incorrect idea is still an incorrect idea, no matter how many people you can find to support it.
Science is how we get to the truth of the universe. Science is published in scientific journals where people who know what they are doing can learn and comment. That is an integral part of the scientific process.
1800 people signing a petition is not science. Science (the truth) doesn’t care about your opinion.
Reading peoples rebuttal of science on the internet is a waste of time. Repeating them is a bigger waste of time. My condolences to members of council that had to waste their time listening to primary school logic (eg. the world is flat, just look out the window).
Discussing what to do about scientific fact is exactly what council should be doing. Thank you for your efforts.
This is a complex issue. While it is clear that we have been through a warming spell, it is most probably due to something called a grand solar maximum {from around 1914 to 2008}, when energy output from the sun warms all the planets in our solar system. The more water (earth has a great deal) the more energy is stored. As everyone in the Great Lakes region knows, the huge amount of water in the Great Lakes, keeps us a little warmer in winter, as it releases its heat to the atmosphere and a little cooler in summer when the water again takes up and stores heat. Water in the form of bodies of water and atmospheric water vapour has a MUCH larger impact on heat storage than the tiny increase in CO2 from human sources.
In addition, methane (which is about 25 times more efficient in storing heat than is CO2) has been released, in huge amounts, to the atmosphere from the melting permafrost (which will refreeze if we are entering a cooling phase). As long as the permafrost melting continues, putting a cork on both ends of our cows {or eliminating cows entirely} is a fool’s errand, as it will do nothing to end the warmth. What it will do, is guarantee that hunger and malnutrition increases among the poorest people on the planet. Methane disperses in about twelve years from the time it is released.
What CO2 does do is linger for a much longer time in the atmosphere than does methane and so it builds up when there is insufficient vegetation to take it up. Deforestation is contributing greatly to the build up of atmospheric CO2. Forests are magnificent users of CO2 as is all of plant life. But CO2 levels have been higher in the fairly recent past as has been shown through various scientific studies of ice cores and sediments at the bottom of streams, There was the Roman Warm period and warming during the Medieval Warm periods. The Roman Warm period was so warm that farmers were able to grow grapes in northern Scotland (something not possible now–too cold) as well as melting back the Greenland glacier so much that settlers were able to form small farming communities there. The remnants of those communities have been found by archeologists exploring the lands at the southern tip of Greenland, as the ice melts back.
In contrast, there have been cooling periods when tens of thousands of northern Europeans starved because of extensive crop failures. There were some years, during that period, when there were no frost-free months.
The sun appears to be entering a much quieter phase. This is marked by a lack of sunspot activity which solar watchers say has been very low for the past couple of years.
So everyone should just relax and plant some trees and a vegetable garden as their contribution to taking up CO2. If we are indeed entering a solar minimum phase where cooling will be arriving, we may be very happy to have our CO2 blanket. :-}
Sue McKenzie, do you have some proof that the oil companies are doing what you accuse them of or is that just a “conspiracy theory”?
Bob Slater, thank you for your very logical , scientifically sound response.
Bob Slater, the surest way to destroy the global economy is to destroy a livable climate. There are 203 countries in the world. In 2022, 33% of global emissions came from China, 33% came from 9 other large industrialized and / or oil-producing countries. (USA 12.6%, India 7%, Russia 4.9%, Japan 2.8%, Germany 1.74%, South Korea 1.8%, Iran 1.7%, Saudi Arabia 1.6%, and Canada 1.5%). And 34% come from the other 193 countries, with all of them less than Canada’s 1.5 % of global emissions.
But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. On a tonnes of CO2 per capita basis, Saudi Arabia makes 16.98, Canada makes 15.22, USA makes 14.44, Russia makes 13.31, South Korea makes 12.26, China makes 8.85, Japan makes 8.61, Germany makes 8.16, Iran makes 8.08, and India makes 1.91.
Obviously, every country could make excuses for doing nothing, and the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 would never be achieved. To avoid the rapidly growing impacts of climate change, all countries must do their part, especially the wealthier industrialized countries. That is what 190 countries agreed to at COP 28 last November.
I was notified of this event but I’ve come to realize that this kind of thing neither forwards any progress or changes people’s opinions. I’m interested in solutions and I know a) that Council will use balanced judgement regarding our role, as a community, toward mitigating Climate Change (adapting); we elected them to do so. and b) as Kathy Kays wrote; we can carry on doing our part. I follow SCIENCE not theorists and screaming at our elected Councillors, when they don’t acquiesce to lunacy, is unacceptable. I appreciate that Councillor Morrison refuted the “faulty facts” that were being thrown around so freely. Thank you for covering this meeting..so glad I didn’t attend. KK is correct..we all can do better.
If I understand this conflict correctly, on the one side there are folks who believe and trust the scientists and the evidence, and on the other side are the people who believe the conspiracy theories and the fossil fuel industry. Hmmm, what a conundrum! Who do believe and support?
I was at the meeting and felt like councils mind was made up on tax increase and climate change and no matter what they had no intention of being open minded from the start. Maybe they should hold dinners at gheur house for our homeless and broke.
We all can do better. True, we can’t control others, but we can influence, we can model appropriate action and make a difference. Think globally, act locally. What choices you make today have an impact on tomorrow. Plant a seed, literally and figuratively, and create something better for tomorrow.
WOW! When you consider what Canada’s world climate change impact # is less than 2% ,, I wonder if it is SMART to destroy the economy via additional restrictions and cost to everyone? When the big contributors are doing nothing like Canada is doing and has done ,, ie China, India,Russia and USA! As you can see by those that presented info .. lots of opinions. IMO .. if you want all the climate change actions implemented to protect Canada you better build a dome over the entire country to control temp, winds, storms and air flow etc to live in your fantasy world! LOL!
There’s a place for these conspiracy lunatics, it’s called the United States of America.
thank you for your comprehensive report summarizing the Climate change delegations at the General Committee meeting. However you do not mention the incident at the break after the deputations, when I expect video streaming had been paused. A representative of the protagonists that believe in a global conspiracy controlling our local council behaved in a shocking inappropriate manner. She pounded the floor of the stage with her fists and shouted “we are coming for you”, naming a councillor. There were many other people in the theatre who witnessed it and you can verify it with staff and council. I was very upset and anxious all day that a councillor was threatened this way. I hope the person uses this forum to apologize to the councillor and also to all the other persons who had to witness this behaviour. Disagreement with an issue does not give anyone the right to threaten or hurt a councillor or anyone else. This behaviour is very hurtful and disappointing. It is deeply saddening that someone I have respected in the past behaved in this manner. Indeed as Sally Barnes and Hugh Mackenzie have discussed, polarization and anger like this seems to be growing even in Huntsville.