For today, let’s assume anthropogenic climate change (man-made global warming) is a serious environmental problem requiring effective action.

Here are five myths that undermine realistic and rational responses to it, globally and in Canada.

Myth 1: Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are effective means of lowering industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

Demonstrably, they are not.

Norway has the world’s oldest, most sophisticated carbon tax. Government researchers concluded 13 years ago this tax, introduced in 1991, has not significantly lowered emissions.

Carbon taxes are ineffective for the same reason the world’s largest cap-and-trade market -- Europe’s decade-old Emissions Trading Scheme -- is ineffective.

Politicians cave in to political and economic pressure exerted by major emitters, led by giant energy and industrial corporations, and grant too many exemptions from carbon pricing, destroying its effectiveness.

Carbon pricing raises our cost of living. It doesn’t lower emissions.

Cap-and-trade -- a stock market in emissions trading -- which Premier Kathleen Wynne is imposing on Ontario, has been particularly vulnerable to political corruption, fraud and organized crime in Europe.

British Columbia’s carbon tax, which returns the money it raises through income tax cuts, is better, but ineffective. It will reduce B.C. emissions by three megatonnes annually by 2020. China emits that every 2.5 hours.

Myth 2: Wind and solar power are effective in lowering emissions.

Demonstrably, they are not.

They are unreliable, inefficient and require massive public subsidies.

They cannot supply power to the electricity grid on demand and have to be backed up, ironically, by fossil fuel energy.

Ontario claims it eliminated coal-fired electricity with wind and solar power, which is nonsense.

Ontario eliminated coal through non-emitting nuclear power and low-emitting (compared to coal) natural gas

As Robert Bryce explains in Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green Energy” and the Real Fuels of the Future, nuclear power and natural gas are the best practical sources of clean energy we have for the short and long-term, supplemented by renewables when they become economically feasible, through technological advancement. They are nowhere near that now.

Further, many environmentalists who grew up as “ban the bomb” hippies, irrationally oppose nuclear power, making a mockery of their claim to be serious about reducing emissions.

Myth 3: Canada’s oilsands are a major source of emissions.

Demonstrably, they are not.

Canada’s oilsands account for one, one-thousandth of global emissions, a rounding error.

Peer-reviewed research by Canadian climate scientists Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart in 2012, published in Nature, concluded all of the oilsands could be developed without a significant impact on climate change.

Weaver, a lead author for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a Green party MLA in the B.C. legislature, is highly critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s policies on the oilsands.

Nonetheless, his research found the major impact by far on climate change globally comes from burning coal.

The world’s three biggest emitters, China, the U.S. and India, respectively get 80%, almost 40% and 70% of their electricity from coal. In Canada, under 11%.

Myth 4: Canada is an international laggard on climate change.

Demonstrably, we are not, despite this allegation being repeated -- ad nauseam -- by two climate bodies yet again last week.

Between 2001 and 2011, Canada’s share of global emissions dropped from 2.1% to 1.6%, a 23.8% decrease.

Let’s compare that to the world’s top three emitting nations, China, the U.S. and India, during this same period.

China’s share of global emissions grew from 14.4% to 24.1%, an increase of 67.4%.

The U.S. dropped from 20.4% to 15.4%, a decrease of 24.5%, virtually identical to Canada’s 23.8%, despite the fact Canada is a much larger, colder country.

India’s share rose from 4.6% to 5.7%, a 23.9% increase.

As for Brazil, which was giving Canada a hard time at an international climate meeting last week, its share of global emissions, at 2.6%, dropped 0% from 2001 to 2011.

Myth 5: Politicians understand climate change.

Demonstrably, they do not.

I’ve been writing about climate change for more than eight years, having read more than 50 books on the subject, scores of scientific papers and hundreds of articles.

During that time, I have found only one Canadian federal politician who understands that UN climate treaties are not about reducing emissions, but, as senior UN climate official and German economist Ottmar Edenhofer acknowledged in 2011, to “redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

That’s Harper, who, sadly, has decided Canadians can’t handle the truth and now pays lip service to green hysteria.

Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau are lost causes.