Environment Canada, led by Justin Trudeau–appointed environment minister Catherine McKenna, is all in on the hypothesis that man-made global warming is an existential threat to humanity. It is so important to hand control of energy use to the government that mere actual, historical data that might raise doubt about the extent of purported warming over time must be thrown out and replaced by "models" of what the "scientists" think the historical temperature record must have been.

In other words, the computer models Canada uses to measure and project "global warming" are themselves based on other computer models. The expression "garbage in, garbage out" refers to the vulnerability of all computer models to poor-quality data used as the basis of their calculations. This raises the awkward question of the quality of the models used in place of actual historical data. And it raises the question of why this scrapping of actual data and substituting guesses (AKA models) was not made clear from the outset.

We know about this fundamental issue only because of the efforts of an intrepid reporter in Ottawa, who digs through Canadian government documents. Lorrie Goldstein explains in the Toronto Sun:

Canadians already suspicious of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's carbon tax are likely be even more suspicious given a report by Ottawa-based Blacklock's Reporter that Environment Canada omitted a century's worth of observed weather data in developing its computer models on the impacts of climate change. The scrapping of all observed weather data from 1850 to 1949 was necessary, a spokesman for Environment Canada told Blacklock's Reporter, after researchers concluded that historically, there weren't enough weather stations to create a reliable data set for that 100-year period. "The historical data is not observed historical data," the spokesman said. "It is modelled historical data ... 24 models from historical simulations spanning 1950 to 2005 were used." These computer simulations are part of the federal government's ClimateData.ca website launched by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on Aug. 15. She described it as "an important next step in giving our decision-makers even greater access to important climate data for long-term planning. The more each of us uses this type of information, the more it will help."

Blacklock's Reporter notes that in many cases, the data that were scrapped indicated higher temperatures in the past:

For example, Vancouver had a higher record temperature in 1910 (30.6C) than in 2017 (29.5C). Toronto had a warmer summer in 1852 (32.2C) than in 2017 (31.7C). The highest temperature in Moncton in 2017 was four degrees cooler than in 1906. Brandon, Man., had 49 days where the average daily temperature was above 20C in 1936, compared to only 16 in 2017, with a high temperature of 43.3C that year compared to 34.3C in 2017.

Those of us who are castigated as "science deniers" for questioning the output of the models forecasting doom must point out that real scientists don't hide or downplay the source of their data used as inputs. They are completely upfront and transparent.

James Delingpole of Breitbart points out that this sort of shenanigans is a time-honored practice among the climate hysteria promoters.

McKenna's Environment Canada is merely following the bad example set by several other institutional climate gatekeepers including NASA, NOAA, and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. NOAA, for example, has frequently been caught adjusting past temperatures downwards and more recent temperatures upwards in order to make "global warming" look more dramatic. During the Climategate scandal, scientists at the CRU admitted that they had thrown away much of their raw data, leaving only their revised data intact. Their excuse was that it had been done to "save space". As the London Times reported: Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. Nobody was fired. And the scientists at CRU were subsequently rewarded with a visit from the Prince of Wales who pointedly congratulated them on their fine work.

If global warming is not a fraud, why do the promoters of it so often do the sorts of things that fraudsters do?

Graphic credit: Pixabay.