Quote of The Day
"Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with." Steven Guilbeault, the director of the Greenpeace movement for Quebec. Source: Globe and Mail How convenient when you can blame every conceivable manifestation of the weather on a single phenonmenon...

However, I guess I should be grateful to Steven as he has now cleared up something that has long troubled me. After all, one reason I have had a hard time believing in all the warnings of global warming is that when I went to school, my social studies textbooks contained many very earnest warnings of the new Ice Age that was on it's way, shown by the trend of global temperature records. In fact, I remember doing a week-long project on the implications a new Ice Age would have on Alberta. Since the last Ice Age covered most of the province under layers of glacial ice, I didn't see many implications other than humans would have to go someplace else.
But now that 'global warning can mean colder' I understand it all and can forgive those 1970s textbook writers for indoctrinating me with their stories of a new Ice Age when they should have been indoctrinating me with 'Global Warming' instead (though I'm sure they're making up for it now)! And the beautiful thing is that if in the next 20 years, global temperatures begin to slide downward, we can still blame 'global warming'!! Unlike all the other 'scares-theories' of the past where we were all going to starve to death, or procreate ourselves to death, or run out of aluminium or zinc, 'global warming' will always be with us as long as we have weather!

From the above, you're forgiven for considering me a Climate Change sceptic. Now, it's not that I dispute the phenomenon itself. After all geological records show that at various times that the location where I live has been at times buried under many metres of glacial ice and at other times has been a steaming swamp (and I trust geologists far more than I trust many of those who've involved themselves with the 'science' -- read industry, of climate change). The scepticism enters when I consider at the time of both of those climatic extremes, Alberta (and the world for that matter) was entirely unoccupied by humans.

You see, the problem I have is the arrogant assumption that human activity is causing the latest variations in the global climate. Ask any serious medieval historian about the 'mini-Ice Age' and you will hear how a drop in temperatures in Europe affected everything from agriculture to social mobility in feudal Europe. In other words, we were seeing profound climate change at a time when the ultimate achievements of human industrial activity were the forge and the mill. Climate change did not just begin after the industrial revolution...

Moreover, having made the arrogant assumption that humans are responsible for climate change, they take it even further by insisting that we do it again by restoring the world to some convenient equilibrium. To me, this is like a doctor, who having observed his patient suffering from a high temperature for a few seconds, immerses that patient in ice-water to counter the symptoms without trying to understand the cause...

Now, I confess, I didn't pay much attention to the climate change conference that's wrapping up in Montreal, because a brief scan of the headlines has told me they're singing the same old songs about scaling back greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, how Kyoto is only the first step and more cuts will be needed, about carbon taxes, international cooperation and emissions trading, and all the blah, blah, blah that's going nowhere. Instead, we should be focussing on humanity's greatest strength, our ability to adapt.

Because, sooner or later, we're going to encounter a climate change phenomenon that we didn't cause, and won't be able to 'stop' with some reduction in human-produced greenhouse gasses (if we aren’t encountering it already). Instead, let's take the varying 'scary predications' of a two-degree rise in global temperatures over a 20 or 50 or 100-year span and see how we can adapt to them. Surely some of the global computing and brain power currently dedicated to 'proving' a rise in temperatures and humanity's responsibility for said rise, could be used to provide realistic assessments about the impact of said rises and how we can mitigate them.

In other words, how will global warming change our agricultural practices (e.g. should we be looking at irrigation strategies, different crops?)? What actions can we take to preserve our water supply? What will be the impact of rising (or shrinking) sea levels on our coastal habitats (which includes Hudson’s Bay and Cape Breton Island as well as Halifax and Vancouver)? What are the implications for Climate Change on Hydro Power? Where can we adapt? What will we have to give up? And, even, where can we gain? There are thousands of such questions.

So, if government (at all levels) is serious about contingency planning, than I feel those are the climate change questions we need to address. Let’s face it, Canada’s emissions are small as a percentage of human activity and very minute as a fraction of all greenhouse gas emissions. Whether we commit economic suicide to meet arbitrary reduction targets isn’t going to make a damn bit difference, especially as the three largest emission producers (USA, China and India, who together account for over half of human GHG emissions) show no signs of ever getting their act together. And while it is emotionally satisfying for some march in protest and blame this (along with everything else) on George W. Bush, I prefer a more positive action.

Canada has an opportunity to become a Climate Change leader, not by jumping on the Kyoto bandwagon, but because we have the intellectual, financial, industrial, and technological capabilities to raise and answer the issues of climate change adaptation. By pioneering this subject and sharing our knowledge, Canada could make a far more useful contribution to the field of humanity and climate change than was asked of us by Kyoto…