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Posts Tagged ‘Climate Change’

With the second week of the Copenhagen conference underway a post about the goings on in the ongoing discussion of climate change is merited. I know that I haven’t been following the Canadian media’s response to ‘Climategate’ as much as I should, but I was still surprised and saddened when a link to this blog posting was sent to me. The US blogosphere has been afire since a series of emails that were hacked from servers at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were posted on the internet in late November. Apparently these emails not only debunk all existing climate research, but also expose a vast conspiracy by the world’s scientific institutions to forge and falsify evidence of global climate change. On the one hand it is relatively easy to highlight any number of falsehoods that climate change deniers fabricate. Unfortunately it is harder to compete with the volume and ferocity of many of those voices crying FOUL (and more!) in response to a selective reading of an email exchange from more than a decade ago. Look, they are so organized they even have a Facebook group!

So, to attend to my first claim; it is easy to demonstrate falsehoods and disingenuousness in the stance that many have taken in response  to these emails. Not until these emails came out had I heard so much about the CRU at East Anglia. If they were the only scientific body doing climate analysis, did not subscribe to any kind of peer review process and were demonstrably falsifying data then there would be a big problem. None of these things are the case. First, from Bradford Plummer at the New Republic:

CRU isn’t the only group in the world tracking global temperature trends. As Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois, points out, there are at least three other groups, including NASA, NOAA, and the Japan Meteorological Agency, that have been analyzing surface temperature data for well over a century (there’s a fair bit of overlap in what raw data they use, but they all have their own ways of analyzing it).

He was even kind enough to include a chart with each of these groups datasets plotted on it:

Global Temperature Departures

I’m no statistician but that sure looks like an upward trend to me. Plummer goes on to say:

[Y]es, climate scientists should take pains to be as transparent as possible, and some of the CRU e-mails cut against that. That needs to be remedied. Georgia Tech’s Judith Curry also has a sharp take, noting that good-faith engagement with skeptics can be a positive thing. But there’s no evidence that climate data has been fudged, and even if there was a smoking gun in the CRU e-mails, the basis for what we know about man-made climate change still comes from a vast array of sources.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has a good post about a common tactic that deniers use quite frequently.

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For far too long, Canada has been content to let her international image and reputation warmly bask in the residual glow of glories and

Van Doo's Paratroopers in Part Said, 1956

good works long gone past. However, our squeaky clean image is quickly diminishing in the worlds eyes.

Post World War Two, this countries most prominent moment on the world stage arguably came during the Suez Canal Crisis. For his leading in role in organizing the first UN Emergency Force that was then deployed to Egypt, as well as spearheading negotiations amongst the disputing parties, Lester Pearson, then the Minister of External Affairs and later to be Prime Minister, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When the prize was announced, the selection committee stated that Pearson had been responsible for “saving the world.”  Since that time, Lester Pearson has been considered the father of the modern day idea of peacekeeping, and peacekeeping has been a central pillar of ‘Canadianess.’

As the leader of a minority government from 1963-1967, Pearson also oversaw several other key developments in how Canada is perceived, both by herself and the world. The adoption of universal health care, an open immigration system and the current Canadian flag were all realized during Pearson’s tenure as Prime Minister. Pearson’s work has also helped foster the image of Canada as a helping, caring nation. The still as of yet unrealized goal of developed nations contributing 0.7% of their Gross National Income (GNI) towards  official development assistance (ODA) was born of out of a commission that Pearson headed for the World Bank in 1969. Tying these accomplishments together presents a rather typical viewpoint of Canada; a nation of peacekeepers that provide the basics of healthcare to all their citzens. A country that provides high levels of aid to the world, works for the betterment of the planet and also actively encourages immigration into it’s expansive borders,  where new citizens are charged with both assimilating to the tenets of a liberal democracy, while also retaining elements of the culture from ones homeland. Unite all the people who hold those ideals under the red maple leaf and you get: Canadians. These giant progressive leaps forward have served as the foundation for Canada’s stellar international reputation for decades.

Canada’s claim as a peacekeeping nation has been severely undercut by the realities of how many boots we have we have on the ground that are available for peacekeeping missions. As of October 2009, Canada ranked 56th amongst nations with 179 military and police personnel attached to peacekeeping missions. Those numbers put us just ahead of Cote d’Ivore, Cameroon and Zimbabwe. Of course Canada’s contributions to the NATO mission in Afghanistan have severely limited the numbers of bodies that could be made available to peacekeeping missions, but our contributions have been on the decline well before the start of the quagmire in Afghanistan.

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I’m a little late coming to this, but while reading through some CBC news stories from earlier in the week I came across this.  What a joke.  Environment minister Jim Prentice tells us that Canadian climate change legislation is several years off and that there is no way forward until both a cross border agreement with the US and and international treaty to replace Kyoto are completed.  Of course an international accord is needed.  Of course a deal with our American partners is needed.  None of these is a barrier to Canada moving forward in trying to meet goals that we have already set out.

When I was writing about this issue earlier, I hedged my initial skepticism towards the Prime Ministers comments from overseas.  Harper’s statement that a global coalition is needed to create real progress on the climate change issue, while correct, smelled like a delay tactic to me.  Being that the Conservatives have tabled specific goals (be they correct or not is not for me to speculate on) my view was that the most important step was still to be taken; developing legislation to realize these goals.  It seems like there is no such luck, at least so far.

With the Americans actually moving forward on enacting laws on this front (a bill has passed the House and it’s expected to be taken up by the Senate in the new year) what is the real cause for Canada’s seemingly continued ambivalence?  More likely than not it does stem from something nefarious, but rather apathy.  It’s time to move forward.

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Seeing this news clip* over the weekend got me to wondering about Canada’s current environmental policy.  I was getting ready to slag the governments inaction on this front over the past couple years but I figured on gathering some information first.  I remember that in 2006/07 this was at the forefront of discussion in this country but seemed to fall by the wayside without any resolution occurring on the way to go forward.  The Conservatives put forward a plan that was widely panned as emissions targets were pegged to growth in industry; the end result would be that while relative levels of carbon emissions would go down, it was possible that the overall levels could increase.  Harper then took another kick at the can and released a proposal to reach somewhat more ambitious targets and scrapped the mechanism that would have allowed the scenario I just mentioned.  Since then the issue seems to have fallen by the wayside, both in any developments and in the nations consciousness.

In the linked to video Harper is speaking to reporters about the need for unified action on this issue.  He is right about this.  Canada is a very small emitter relative to others and even combined plans from the developed world (US, Canada, Eurozone) would not be sufficient.  It is imperative that BRIC nations are included in efforts to reduce emissions as well.  For whatever reason though I had a very hard time taking what Harper was saying in good faith.  To my ear, it sounded more like a delaying tactic than a true, practical assertion; necessary players aren’t moving forward (China, India) so there’s no point in us doing so until they are on board.

This suspicion is what prompted me to ask what our environmental policies currently are.  So I fired up my magic connected tubes and headed over to Environment Canada’s webpage on climate change.  It turns out things were much as I remembered them.  Some goals have been set to reduce emissions, 20% by 2020 and 60-70% by 2050.  Reduced 20% from what though? 2006 levels.  This was a sticking point with environmentalists (scientists too?) for not being ambitious enough.  I don’t have any level of expertise to judge this but other targets I’ve seen use 1996 as the baseline year to judge reductions against.  Another goal listed is to have 90% of Canada’s power production come from non carbon emitting sources by 2020.  I believe that it is important that we have goals set to work towards.  The feasibility/merits of those goals are for others to judge.  I am happy that we at least have targets to work towards.  More important though are the underlying policies; what mechanism are we going to use to meet this goals? Cap and Trade or a Carbon Tax? Is there some other tool that I haven’t heard of?  This section would seem to indicate that those policies have not been set

The Government of Canada is taking an aggressive approach to achieve real environmental and economic benefits for Canadians.

Our plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is on track.  We are currently fine-tuning our approach to tackling climate change, and will introduce a full suite of domestic policies addressing all major sources of emissions prior to the UN meetings in Copenhagen this December. The content and timing of the regulations implementing these policies will be driven by Canada’s national interests, while also accounting for the actions of our trading partners, including the U.S.

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