Monthly Archives: Nov 2009

The Worst in the World

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Stephen Harper is coming to Copenhagen. It really surprised me when the Canadian media started patting him on the back for announcing this, as if he was finally cleaning up his act and showing some leadership. Coming to a conference – and most likely only for a day or two, for a photo op – doesn’t show leadership. As I’ll explain in this post, it’s the latest in a chain of attempts by the Canadian government to look like they’re doing something about climate change, without actually doing anything at all.

Obama is only coming to Copenhagen for one day. Almost certainly a photo op. But I find this somewhat more excusable because the US is already working on their own climate change legislation, independent of Copenhagen. The US has something against international agreements, but they’re being proactive and finding ways to achieve the same ends regardless. Canada hasn’t done any such thing.

And it’s not just the Conservatives that are being difficult. Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition, says that Canada has wasted four years on climate change action. Actually, we’ve wasted twenty. But Ignatieff will only say four years, because beyond that, it was his party that was the problem. The Liberals were the ones to sign Kyoto and agree to an emissions cut of 6% below 1990 levels. Instead, as of 2006, they were 22% above.

The recommended emissions target for developed nations is a 25-40% cut from 1990 levels by 2020. Most developed nations have stepped up to the plate. Norway has pledged a 40% reduction. Japan has pledged 25%. Australia has agreed to 5-24%, depending on whether there is an agreement at Copenhagen. The EU will cut 20% no matter what, and will increase this to 30% with an international agreement. Britain has increased this even further, with a 34% pledge.

The US is a little trickier. Waxman-Markey will cut 14-20%, but from 2005 levels, not 1990. Does anyone know how to convert this so we can properly compare it to other countries?

Then there’s Canada. Canada has pledged 3% from 1990 levels. Absolutely pitiful. Depending on what the US conversion turns out to be, there’s a good chance that our humble country is the worst in the world for climate change action and leadership.

The government knows this, and they’re spending a great deal of time and energy trying to cover it up. For example, they won’t say “3% by 1990”, because it’s so obviously pitiful. Instead, they say that they’ve pledged “a 20% cut by 2020″…..from 2006 levels. What is the point of deviating from the standard baseline among countries who signed Kyoto, unless you’re deliberately trying to keep your citizens happy with you?

And that’s not all. In the summer, I wrote about how Canada was still advertising its Turning the Corner plan, even though it appeared to have abandoned it. When I went to PowerShift in October, I had the chance to talk to a lot of people who knew a lot about Canada’s climate change policies. And yes, our government has definitely abandoned Turning the Corner. But it’s still one of the first links in their sidebar. And when you click on that link, you discover that it hasn’t been updated since August 2o08, and the legislation is supposed to come into effect in January 2010. Yet another example of keeping the citizens happy without having to do anything.

Stephen Harper’s climate change website is full of talk about emissions intensity and CSS. There are pictures of him shaking hands with Obama and planting trees. But trying to get any real information out of it is next to impossible.

The government is spending so much time trying to convince Canadians that they’re taking bold action on climate change. They’re devoting so much energy to putting on sustainable masks that contradict all their talk of a transparent government. All without having to take any action at all.

What I ask is, why not spend all that time and energy actually doing something? Why not cooperate with other nations and realize that this is the way the world economy is going? Why not be proactive and prepared instead of hoping that the whole issue will just go away?

It actually makes me ashamed to be Canadian. Ashamed to be part of this country that tosses around the future of our civilization, the future of my generation, so lightly. And for what?

Where to Go for Answers

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To all of our new readers, thanks to CBC and StumbleUpon, this is for you!

Most of us don’t read scientific journals. We read the newspaper instead. We read our news feeds. We watch CNN.

These sources, as we know, are fairly low on the credibility spectrum. But how are people like you and I supposed to understand the more credible sources? Scientists don’t seem to speak plain English. And you can’t even read most of their studies without a subscription.

Usually this isn’t much of a problem, because the popular press and the scientific journals say basically the same things – that there’s going to be a lunar eclipse on a certain date, that red meat increases your risk of a heart attack, that a new kind of dinosaur was just discovered.

However, when you start reading about climate change, the newspapers start going crazy.

The world is warming. The warming is caused from the world coming out of an ice age. The warming stopped in 1998. Glaciers are melting. The warming is caused by human activity. The warming is caused by sunspots. The warming is inconsequential. The warming is catastrophic and is going to kill us all. New York is going to be underwater. Scientists faked the whole thing.

As someone who keeps up-to-date with the scientific literature – that is, sources from the top few tiers of the credibility spectrum – I can tell you that it is not under the same confusion as the mass media. There are a lot of myths about climate change that go around the newspapers and the Internet, but were never in any sort of legitimate scientific study. I cannot stress this point enough.

For example, have you heard the one about NASA getting the Y2K bug, and later discovering that the warmest year on record wasn’t 1998, but in fact – whoops – 1934? Global warming must be fake!

Actually, that’s not correct at all. NASA discovered that 1934 was the warmest year on record in the United States. And that “United States” part got dropped in translation somewhere in the blogosphere. Contrary to what American media would have you believe, the United States is not the whole world. It makes up less than 2% of the Earth’s surface. And the warmest year on record globally is either 1998 or 2005, depending on how you measure the Arctic temperatures.

There are dozens of stories like that. So many of the explanations you hear for global warming being natural/nonexistent/a global conspiracy are based on misconceptions, miscommunications, discredited data, or flat-out lies. They were never in the scientific literature. They are not endorsed by the sources at the top of our credibility spectrum. They are, shall we say, urban myths.

But how are we, humble non-scientists, scanning through the newspaper on the way to work each morning, supposed to know that? We need some kind of a link between the scientists and the public. Some journalist who actually knows what they’re talking about, and cites all of their claims with credible sources. Some sort of encyclopedia that will dispel all the myths about climate change.

Luckily, there are many of these encyclopedias. There are a lot of people out there trying to fulfill this very purpose.

One of my favourites is Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week video series on YouTube. He debunks common claims like “global warming stopped in 1998”, “global warming is caused by the sun”, and “temperature leads CO2 in the ice cores”. Sinclair is a professional journalist, so all of the videos are well explained, easy to understand, and fun to watch.

Another great source is Coby Beck’s How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic series. These articles cover just about every objection out there. Equally comprehensive is Skeptical Science. They’ve even compressed their explanations into “sound bites”, so you can answer your uncle’s objections in just a few sentences over Thanksgiving dinner.

Some of the sources from the top of our credibility spectrum have also chimed in. Environment Canada has created a fantastic FAQ document about climate change. It covers everything you need to know to wade through YouTube comments or online debates, along with citations you can actually trust.

Finally, Scott Mandia, a regular reader here at ClimateSight and a meteorology professor in New York, has just posted a copy of his presentation to the public about climate change. What I like about this document is that it’s very up-to-date. All of the graphs are the most recent of their kind. It also provides some philosophical perspectives to really sink your teeth into, like an analogy about medical advice, and some memorable quotes at the end.

We shouldn’t have to double-check everything the newspaper says about climate change. But the objections to anthropogenic global warming have such an awful track record that we really should, at least before we go and spread them around. These sources will cover just about everything you need to know.

A World Without Ice

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Dr Henry Pollack, the author of A World Without Ice, is a geophysicist and an IPCC author. According to Al Gore, in the foreword, he is also “a scientist with the rare ability to engage ordinary people and to translate scientific ideas into everyday terms that are easy to understand”.

I couldn’t agree more. Pollack didn’t write A World Without Ice like a scientific journal, or like a textbook. Rather, he wrote it with the air of an enthusiastic science teacher introducing his students to new topics.

I was introduced to many new topics throughout the book – basic glaciology, the Earth’s geological thermostat, the Maunder Minimum – and I didn’t have to struggle to understand the terminology, or read anything twice. Pollack wrote with such clarity that learning new scientific topics felt almost effortless.

But absolutely top-notch were his metaphors. For example, this is how Pollack explains how the three factors of the Milankovitch cycles can combine to cause climatic change:

The composite is like listening to sound from an electronic synthesizer, which uses only three tones with different volume settings. The combination is usually some gentle cacophony, but from time to time there is some harmony between two of the tones, and on occasion with even one tone dominating, coming through loud and clear. The right combination of these Milankovitch factors sets the stage for snow accumulation at high latitudes and the beginning of an ice age.

Brilliant, no?

My one complaint about A World Without Ice was that Pollack tended to step too far away from his central topic of ice as a geological and climatic force. He ended up explaining everything that was even remotely related to ice, instead of sticking to what made his book unique.

For example, the North and South Poles are dominated by ice, so the first 30 pages were devoted to a history of polar exploration. Interesting stories, but not really necessary in a book about geology. It’s easy to find entire books about polar exploration if the reader is so inclined.

Later, when global warming came into the discussion, Pollack spent several chapters going through the basic lines of evidence for anthropogenic warming. I would wager that most readers of A World Without Ice are familiar with An Inconvenient Truth, or something similar, which has these explanations as its central purpose. Therefore, I don’t feel that running down this path well travelled is necessary for the audience at hand.

I feel that pieces of A World Without Ice could have been taken out, and the book as a whole would have actually benefited. So the next time I read it (and yes, I’m quite sure there will be a next time), I may not read the whole thing. I may skip the story of Captain Cook’s Antarctic voyage, or the explanation of the Keeling Curve. But I will read, many times over, the explanations of how ice is tied to geology, glaciology, and paleoclimatology. That’s what Pollack, this enthusiastic science teacher, intended the book to be about. And that’s what he does best.

TLC Book Tours is offering one free copy of A World Without Ice to a ClimateSight reader! The first person to correctly answer this question will be the winner:

What chapter of the IPCC AR4 did Dr Henry Pollack contribute to?

Leave your guesses in the comments. This contest is open to Canada and US readers only.

Loose Ends

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A couple of stories that couldn’t be elaborated into an entire post:

I met Elizabeth May (the leader of the Canadian Green Party) not long ago when she came to my local university. We had a chat about their emission reduction plans – a 30% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020, and 90% by 2050. (However, they couple this with a “say no to nuclear” plan, so I’m not sure how plausible it is).

Then she said, “So are you a student here, or a professor?” And I was like, “Umm, I’m still in high school…..”

Then, today, someone asked me what I wanted to do after high school. I said that I wanted to study climate change, and followed that with, “Maybe modelling.”

Then I suddenly realized that perhaps not everyone automatically associates the word “modelling” with climate modelling like I do. Perhaps I gave her the impression that I was choosing between a career in climatology and a career as a fashion model. Definitely not my style. I tried to talk my way out of that, fairly unsuccessfully.

And finally – I will have six climate change videos posted within the next few weeks. They were a public education project that I worked on this summer, with an organization named Climate Change Connection. They’ll be posted on YouTube and then I’ll embed them here. Keep your eyes open!

Two Great Canadians

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It’s a rare day when you find a book about climate change written by a Canadian. The authors are American, mostly. Some are British or Australian. And that’s a real shame, because there’s a lot going on in Canadian politics about climate change – but you can’t read about it anywhere. The newspapers don’t report it (I hadn’t even heard of Bill C311 until I went to PowerShift). The government website certainly doesn’t report it. Currently, my only source of Canada-specific climate news is the One Blue Marble blog. We’re going into Copenhagen as the least committed and least cooperative developed nation in the world. And most Canadians don’t even know it.

That’s why it was so refreshing to read Keeping Our Cool by Andrew Weaver, a top Canadian climate modeler. He is a professor at the University of Victoria, the chief editor for the Journal of Climate, a lead author for the IPCC, and the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis. Certainly some impressive credentials. I sort of dream of doing my Master’s under him.

The book was very well-rounded for climate literature. It covered basic scientific processes (with lots of fancy graphs), the history of climate science, and policy alternatives. But my favourite chapters had to do with the media and politics – purely because they were Canada-specific.

I know all about George Bush’s inaction on climate change. But until I read Andrew Weaver’s book, I didn’t see just how blatantly Stephen Harper was carrying on the torch. I’ve read Boykoff and Boykoff’s study, which surveys American newspaper articles. But I was less aware of how the Canadian media reported climate change, apart from my local newspaper and news channel (and Rick Mercer, of course).

It was so refreshing to have a sense of what was going on at home for once, after wasting so much time trying to figure it out for myself.

My only complaint was that the book was poorly organized. It constantly switched back and forth from scientific explanations, to Canadian news, to examples of vested skeptical interests, to Canadian politics. This was probably deliberate, so that the chapters wouldn’t get monotonous, but it makes it a lot harder to find what you’re looking for later (like while writing a book review!)

Another great Canadian, military expert and geopolitical analyst  Gwynne Dyer, wrote a very different book. It was probably  different to anything else I’ve read about climate change. It was  definitely a lot scarier.

Every alternate chapter of Climate Wars described a different  future scenario, exploring how climate change would affect  international relations. United States, 2029, where masses of  starving immigrants from the drought-stricken Mexico lead the  American government to close the southern border and arm it with barbed wire, machine guns, and land mines. Northern India, 2036, when water disputes with Pakistan lead to a nuclear conflict that destroys the Taj Mahal. China, 2042, when geoengineering gone wrong corresponds with a massive volcano, leading to a sudden (albeit temporary) drop in temperature. The Arctic, 2175, when the oceans begin to smell like rotten eggs – anyone familiar with previous mass extinctions will know why that’s not as trivial as it may sound.

Scary, scary stuff. And most of it within my lifetime. Military “scenarios” are not predictions or even projections. But they’re based on such projections, so they hold a frightening grain of plausibility.

When people claim that the consequences of turning away from fossil fuels will be worse than just letting climate change happen, tell them to read Climate Wars. It shows us just what’s at stake here.

Naming

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What can we call organizations like the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Fraser Institute, and so many others?

Technically, they’re think tanks. But they don’t really fulfill the purposes of think tanks, which are supposed to provide independent research to advise the government on policy issues. These as-yet-unnamed organizations do provide some research about climate change, but it’s full of the most elementary mistakes, obviously designed to mislead the reader. It’s an insult to classical think tanks, like the Center for a New American Security, to label Heartland et al as think tanks.

No, their purpose isn’t research, but PR. Influencing the public opinion. But they don’t even use PR responsibly, as Jim Hoggan explains in his new book, Climate Cover-Up (review coming soon). It’s an insult to PR firms to label Heartland et al as PR firms.

I’m also unsure about the term “conservative think tanks”. It better describes their purpose, but it seems to imply that since these conservative think tanks are so despicable, there’s something wrong with conservatism in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with being conservative. It only becomes a problem when it leads to the denial of science. A similar problem is present with the term “free-market fundamentalists”.

A friend of mine suggested “anti-science advocacy groups”. I’m not sure if this is correct either. Their ultimate purpose is not to deny science, but to advance a certain political agenda. The former is simply a consequence of the latter, and is not present in all of their objectives, eg health care. Additionally, these groups are not completely anti-science. They’re very pro-selective-science, such as science from the 1700s when a link between CO2 and temperature hadn’t been established, or discredited science like the initial satellite readings.

Martin Vermeer suggested “dark Satanic mills”. I find that somewhat hilarious, but it requires a little back story. An audience of high school students wouldn’t grasp the character of Heartland et al simply by hearing that phrase.

I’m kind of at a loss. How can we sum up these organizations in two or three words, without denouncing conservatism or insulting the more responsible organizations that would fall into the same category? Any ideas?