Ontario´s energy minister takes heat for quoting from magazine casting doubt on climate change
(The Star Food)

Ontario Energy Minister Greg Rickford is taking heat for quoting from an online magazine — which denies the scientific consensus on climate change — to justify scrapping more than 750 renewable energy projects at a cost to taxpayers of $231 million.For the second day in a row, Rickford referred Tuesday to an article in the U.S.-based Climate Change Dispatch headlined “Germany pulls plug on wind energy as industry suffers severe crisis,� as the NDP raised concerns about the Ontario government’s cancellation of wind turbine and solar projects. Rickford called it “one of my favourite periodicals� and quoted from the piece, stating Germany is “struggling to keep the (electricity) grid stable� because of erratic wind energy and its subsidies that caused “German electricity prices to become among the most expensive worldwide.�Opposition parties jumped on Rickford for relying on the magazine, whose website says it “does not believe in consensus science� and describes “global warming alarmists� as “those who believe man is wholly or largely responsible for any fluctuation in the planet’s overall surface temperature.�“It’s shocking,� said New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath, slamming the Ford government for cancelling the Liberal cap-and-trade program aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, firing the independent environmental commissioner and scrapping programs to promote electric vehicles.“Everything they’re doing is falling in line with people who would be denying climate change.�The magazine’s main headline Tuesday was “Why apocalyptic claims about climate change are wrong.�Rickford maintained it was “appropriate� to quote from Climate Change Dispatch because the German experience with wind farms is “remarkably similar to the situation that we have.�While Germany has been running in ...