All posts in climate change science

  • March 27, 2013

    Disappearance of a Canadian Institution: Part 2

    Here is the story so far: the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NTREE ) made arrangements to transfer its 25 years of records to Sustainable Prosperity, a national research network based in the University of Ottawa, which would make them available on the Web.  Peter Kent, Canada’s Minister for Environment, countermanded those arrangements and demanded that the records be transferred to Environment Canada. Kent also insisted that no new material be placed on the NTREE site.

    A Communications Officer speaking for Kent advised that all records and information generated by NTREE will be “widely available” on the Environment Canada Website.

    “Available” does not necessarily mean readily accessible.  Some Websites are difficult to search and to navigate, so finding information is not simple.  Robert Page, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Business School and the last Chairperson of NTREE, confirmed that publicly available documents on the NTREE site were properly indexed and easily searchable. He called the decision “a gut reaction of the Harper Government.”

    If 4RG’s experience of Environment Canada’s website is typical, certain pages disappear.  A surfer receives a 404 Response, indicating that Website was not able to find what was requested.  How easy it would be for Environment Canada to withdraw information claiming that nobody was using the information.

    Yesterday there was a slight modification in the Government’s position. The Communications Officer referred to the Library and Archives Canada Website as the location of the information.  A curious change:  why would the Minister personally intervene to cancel the Sustainable Prosperity arrangement if the information is to be stored with Archives Canada?

    Perhaps because the Minister now realizes that the environmental and university communities do not trust Environment Canada. In their view, the Minister’s original instructions were part of a Government strategy of limiting debate and discussion on climate change.

     

  • February 12, 2013

    Climate Change and State of the Union Address

    In his State of the Union address President Obama indicated his way forward to combat Climate Change.  He has appealed to Congress to come up with a bipartisan solution, but if this appeal fails to produce action, he will exercise executive authority to reduce pollution, support communal defences against extreme weather and encourage the growth of renewable energy.   Here are the most relevant extracts from his remarks.

    “. . . . over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.

    But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.

    The good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

     Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.”

  • January 18, 2013

    Global Warming isn’t going away!

    Sceptic websites and AGW (anti-global warming) militants have been emphasizing that despite increased atmospheric CO2 world average temperatures have not risen since 1998.  Both the US NOOA and the UK Met office recognize that their theoretical models projected increasing average temperatures during the years since 1998.

    Sceptics consider that there is an inconsistency between observed increases in CO2 and the actual warming experience, which was slightly less than the UK Met office predicted.  The most vocal among the sceptics attribute this inconsistency to the Met Office’s “fraud” on the UK taxpayer.  Fraud is a great exaggeration. The real complaint (not by any means substantiated) is that UK Government meteorologists are committed towards a theory of global warming that will encourage government financial support of the Met Office. Sceptics ignore that nearly every university climatologist in the UK supports the conclusions of the Met Office and regards its scientific investigations as sound.  

    This anti-scientist mindset here appears to be shared by the Canadian Government.  Certain Federal Conservatives consider that the Government scientists are also biased towards global warming theory. So to limit the influence of this “bias” on public opinion the Government cut back financing for environmental projects and limited the access of scientists to the media.

    The US Nation Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office (NOAA) concentrated on the United States to conclude that the 2012 temperature records show continued warming.  Another US institution, the National Administration for Space and Aeronautics (NASA), likewise monitors global warming.  NASA found that 2012 sustained the long term climate warming trend. To avoid debate over what year to choose for the start of trend analysis, NASA focused on warming trends over decades.   NASA concluded:

    “Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.”

    There is general agreement that projections based upon climate modelling are just that, and where experience does not support the projections there is need for further research to explain the differences.

    But in the meantime, as we have often said – global warming won’t go away !

     

     

  • December 30, 2012

    A Website for Grandparents

    We have been in touch with a colleague, John Price, a retired physician and university teacher living near Ipswich, Australia. John has his own website, one of the best on climate change at

    http://www.grandkidzfuture.com/grandkidzfuture.com/Welcome.html

    Price is motivated – as is For Our Grandchildren – by a concern that if we don’t take action to stop global warming our grandchildren will have to struggle with an inhospitable climate.

    Price comments on his welcome page:

    “My young grandchildren don’t know this yet. It is a peculiar circumstance of their time and ours, that what we do about the climate problem in the next 10 years or so will count for or against their happiness much more than anything long life could bring.”

    The explanations on his site take the most complicated climatic issues and present them in clear and un-technical language.  His site has many pictures and graphs with text explanations of what the graphs show. The site is set up to lead you through all the issues, and you can revert to a previous explanation on another page very easily.

    His presentation is fair and objective. He asks the question:  Are scientists in serious disagreement about the climate problem?  He acknowledges that there are certain scientists who do not subscribe to opinions held by the vast majority.  He explains this disparity by emphasizing the important science of climatology, an area of science that has made great progress in the last thirty years. Climatologists are unanimous that the world’s climate is changing, and Greenhouse Gas emissions are the cause of global warming.

    Price is a thoughtful narrator of the videos that feature pictures of his grandchildren.  You will be charmed by the grandchildren. These videos are a real feature of this Website.

    Price is preparing new resources for kids and teachers and has suggested that we might use this material in our presentations.  In the meantime we will be covering articles that appear on his Website

  • December 20, 2012

    Biases in Media Coverage of Climate Change

    Newspaper headlines influence readers, and often leave a stronger impression than the text of an article. This impression could well be misleading, as headlines may not be balanced or the article may not present the full facts, a practice known as selective reporting.

    For example, the December 13 Canadian edition of the Epoch Times, a weekly newspaper published throughout the world, headlined an article on climate change “New Funding to help poorer countries combat climate change”.  The article quoted Peter Kent, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, who explained that the financing provides ‘concrete help for some of the most vulnerable countries’.

    The headline could well lead readers to think that Canada was doing its share of combating climate change by generously aiding “poor” countries with new funds. Yet Canada had previously committed to provide funding for developing countries to fight climate change under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord .  The amounts referred to by Peter Kent were not new: they were part of Canada’s commitment under Copenhagen.

    Many readers would probably not appreciate the complete picture: two weeks before, at the 2012 Doha UN Conference on Climate Change, Canada refused to advance further sums to support the Green Climate Fund for developing countries; a fund that had been agreed on at Durban in November 2011, until a climate change treaty was in place.

    The Times article had a further sub-headline: “The Science is unclear” – words that are known to be the mantra of Denialists.  That assertion was based on a letter signed by 134 scientists to the Secretary General of the United Nations. The Times did not explain that these individuals represented a very small percentage of the scientific community, a community that has overwhelmingly concluded that global warming is a reality, and threatens the future of our world.

    The letter stated:  “ . . . the weather of the past few years cannot be caused by global warming that has not occurred. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown”.

    This conclusion was based on data from the UK Met Office that shows that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.  As the UK Met Office has pointed out, these years are all record high temperature years.

    Global warming is here to stay! Unfortunately so is denialism!

     

  • November 19, 2012

    It is worse than you think!

    For many years scientists have been analysing the future progression of climate change. Their conclusions generally presented a best and a worst case scenario. The differences between these scenarios were striking.

    Denialists seized on the wide variation in these conclusions as demonstrating the weakness of climate change theory. The more extreme projections were categorized as “alarmist” and their authors were heavily criticized, even to the point of suggesting that they had been dishonest in the formulation of their projections.

    Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, was frequently the target of denialist criticism.  He was one of a group of academics that produced a graph of reconstructed temperature data that was dubbed the “hockey stick”, a description seized on by denialists. He continues to be the target of personal attacks: recently the National Review stated that he had been guilty of fraud.

    Mann recognizes that scientists were cautious in formulating their conclusions, knowing that grim  predictions would lead many Denialists to explode with verbal fury.  As a result scientists tended to be “conservative in their forecast out of fear that they will be attacked for overstating evidence”. As a result of this caution, their best case scenarios were over optimistic, and their worst case scenarios underestimated. There were scientists who predicted that catastrophic results of climate change would arrive much sooner, but their conclusions were generally lost sight of in the public debate.

    The reality is that, assuming “business as usual“, the severe conditions that will be the result of climate change will arrive sooner than anticipated. There are two examples where the worst case had materialized when before it was expected. No scientist forecast the actual rate at which Arctic ice has disappeared.  No scientist foresaw the disappearance of island states because of rising sea levels in the time frame now considered probable – within a decade!

    Mann also acknowledges that there remains uncertainty about climate change.  So even projections based upon a realistic recognition of the actual progress of global warming may not give us the real picture!

    For more about the disappearance of Arctic ice go to

    Climate Breakdown   is right here, right now!

    2000   – 2010 Warmest Decade Ever

    A   Canada Day Message

     

     

    (Sources for the information appearing in this blog: Care2.com and the Manchester Guardian)

     

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