Tag Archives: politics

Change

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If you know what these colours mean, you probably share my surprise:

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Canadian politics, past and present, here’s a quick brush-up. (If parliamentary democracy or constitutional monarchy is new to you, Rick Mercer gives a great explanation.)

Liberal Party (Red Seats)

  • Politics: More liberal than the American Democrats, but not by a huge amount.
  • How they usually do: They’ve won elections so many times that they’re deemed “Canada’s natural government”. Whether it’s a majority or a minority, a Liberal government is the rule, rather than the exception.
  • What happened on Monday: 34 Liberal MPs were elected – only 11% of the available seats. The leader of the party, Michael Ignatieff, wasn’t even elected in his riding – a rare (but not unprecedented) occurrence.

Conservative Party (Dark Blue Seats)

  • Politics: Somewhere between American Republicans and Democrats. Canada’s most right-wing party that’s mainstream enough to win seats.
  • How they usually do: When it’s not a Liberal government, it’s a Conservative one. The last time they had a majority, it was under Brian Mulroney – an event that eventually led to the party’s collapse and division. The two halves of the party rejoined for the 2004 election, under Stephen Harper, the leader of the more right-wing of the two. Since 2006, he has held seemingly never-ending minorities. Again, Rick Mercer hits the nail on the head.
  • What happened on Monday: They got their first majority – 54% of the seats, but with only 40% of the popular vote.

Bloc Quebecois (Light Blue Seats)

  • Politics: Diverse, as the party’s sole platform is the intent to make Quebec a sovereign nation. These days, it’s pretty liberal.
  • How they usually do: Fifty-some seats in Quebec.
  • What happened on Monday: Only four Bloc were elected – most seats were lost to the NDP. The leader, Gilles Duceppe, lost the election in his riding. Now they don’t even have enough seats for party status.

New Democrat Party (Orange Seats)

  • Politics: The most liberal of the mainstream parties, they subscribe to social democracy. If Tea Partiers think Obama’s a socialist, I wonder what they’d say if the NDP swept the US Congress.
  • How they usually do: Twenty seats or so, scattered throughout the country, but rarely any from Quebec.
  • What happened on Monday: The NDP unexpectedly swept Quebec, and won 102 seats – for the first time, they’re the Official Opposition. Many of their MPs are brand new and never expected to get elected. Some are still university students. One spent her campaign in Las Vegas, but ended up winning the riding. Their growing popularity wasn’t limited to Quebec, but in many ridings – most notably some in Ontario – they split the vote with the Liberals, giving a lot of seats to the Conservatives.

Green Party (I’ll let you work out their colour of seats)

  • Politics: Not quite as left-wing as the NDP. They focus on environmental issues, climate change mitigation, and the legalization of marijuana.
  • How they usually do: Over the past few elections, they have held between 1 and 10% of the popular vote, but have never had an MP sit in Parliament. Once a Liberal MP switched to the Green Party, but Parliament was dissolved for an election before he got to sit in it as a member of the Greens.
  • What happened on Monday: Elizabeth May, the party leader, won the election in her riding, defeating a Conservative cabinet minister. She is the first elected Green and will be the first to sit in the House of Commons.

If that isn’t enough to convince you of what a massive change this election was, look at the diagrams on this page. Start at the bottom for the most recent Parliaments.

It is arguable that, although the Conservatives only have 40% of the popular vote, Stephen Harper has 100% of the power in the federal government. They hold a majority not only in the House of Commons, but also in the Senate – their five years of minorities have ensured that only Conservatives get appointed to the upper house. It is common for party leaders to demand that their caucus vote the party line on important issues, so Harper can pass pretty much any bill he wants. Also, unless his own party turns against him, he doesn’t have to call an election for another five years. Despite a more left-wing opposition that will be stronger on issues such as climate change (Elizabeth May, in particular, is a fabulous debater), they can’t actually sway results away from what Harper wants. Additionally, the new NDP MPs will have to prove their worth quickly if they want to be taken seriously.

But this is nothing new. It’s nothing specific to Harper. This concentration of power happened before with all the Liberal majority governments, as well as the Conservative exceptions such as Mulroney. This is the way majority governments in Canada work. They will pass a great deal of legislation in their favour, much of which will be undone when the opposing party eventually takes over. I am just worried because, given the Conservatives’ stance on climate change mitigation, we will likely move backwards on an issue where we don’t have time to waste. These decisions, or lack thereof, cannot be undone or reversed.

Thoughts?

Data from Elections Canada

More coverage from CBC News

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Where Activism Fails

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Cross-posted from NextGen Journal

This weekend, 10 000 young people converged in Washington, D.C. and protested the American government’s inaction on climate change. Students stood in front of government buildings wearing green hard hats, holding signs saying “Make Polluters Pay, Not the EPA”. Students stormed the House of Representatives and sang a song about climate change, to the tune of the American national anthem. Fifteen minutes with President Obama, who agreed with their concerns but said “I can’t do this alone”, was PowerShift 2011’s biggest accomplishment.

This isn’t working.

The climate change mitigation lobby is currently a fringe group, at least in North America. It’s mostly made up of university students who mimic the campus protests of the 1960s, creating images that scream “socialism” to baby boomers who witnessed the original events. Governments, which are mostly made up of said baby boomers, largely ignore such fringe groups. Elected officials say what they think people want to hear, and most people don’t seem to care about climate change.

So what should we do instead? We don’t have a lot of money or connections to wealthy businesses. Youth don’t even vote in large enough numbers for governments to care what they want. What we do have, however, are facts on our side. We have the weight of the entire scientific community, agreeing that humans are causing a potentially catastrophic climate change which will only be stopped by major international action.

Instead of attempting to communicate with elected officials by marching around in front of their offices with our faces painted, I think we should focus our efforts on the public. If governments think people don’t care about climate change, we have to reverse that trend.

I believe that anyone who truly understands this issue will care about it and want to fix it. Who could honestly examine the overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic climate change and still have reasonable doubts about its existence? Who wouldn’t want to prevent future wars, famines, extinctions, and waves of environmental refugees? Of course, there are the crazies who will scream about “climate scientists in Al Gore’s pocket” and “the world needs more CO2” no matter what we tell them, but we shouldn’t bother engaging with these people. Instead, we should engage with those who are constantly exposed to the crazies, and who are at risk of dismissing climate change because they think people are still debating its existence.

We need public education to create a social movement, but not like the “Green Movement” in 2007 when magazines everywhere advertised “10 easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint”. We need people to understand the severity of climate change, and to see that planting a tree and buying organic lettuce will not solve the problem. We need people to understand that meaningful action, such as putting a price on carbon, is necessary to solve the problem.

Climate change education will spread most easily through the media, whether it is mass media or new media. People need to be aware of the level of scientific support surrounding this issue, and the reality that climate scientists are not ignorant or fraudulent. Researchers know that correlation does not equal causation, and they know that the climate has changed in the past. Many people still take these arguments seriously, though, because they are thrown around and not challenged. We need to challenge the media outlets that have spread dangerous, libelous misinformation regarding climate change for years. We need to challenge them on the level of lawsuits, not on the level of writing letters to the editor.

It is vital to engage with the apathetic and show them why they should care. Apathetic youth are particularly problematic. Why should the government care about the needs of the next generation when most of its members don’t even vote? We have to make the youth vote strong enough that political parties will compete for its support, just like they do with the ethnic vote and the women’s vote. As Canadian comedian and political analyst Rick Mercer said, “If you are between the ages of 18 and 25, and want to scare the hell out of the people who run this country – this time around, do the unexpected: vote.”

When faced with a depressing reality, many will turn away and ignore the problem. However, the only way to prevent the scary stuff from happening is to suck it up and face it. Just because we wasted 20 years of potential action and got ourselves into a bad situation doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and give up. It’s never too late to act, because this bad situation can always get worse if we let it.

The Rest of the World

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Here in North America, we are surrounded with rhetoric denouncing the feasibility of climate change mitigation. It’s not possible to reduce our emissions, people say. It’s not worth it.

The situation in the U.S. Congress regarding this issue is becoming so bizarre that hopes for an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have grown faint. Without the U.S. on board, many countries (see: Canada) will bail out entirely.

Not all countries are waiting for everyone else, however. Many developed countries, particularly in Europe, have gone ahead and achieved significant cuts in their emissions. Let’s take a step out of the little bubble of North America and see what the rest of the world managed to do while we bickered about whether or not there was even a problem.

***

Countries: the European Union (EU), representing most of Europe

Emission Targets: 20% below 1990 levels by 2020

How They’ll Get There: The EU started a cap-and-trade system in 2005. They also plan to target energy efficiency and develop the use of renewable energy.

How They’re Doing : The total emissions of the EU have declined slightly since 1990. This is partly because many Eastern European countries are still transitioning from communism, and their emissions are fairly low while their economies recover. However, some rich countries such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK have made significant cuts in their emissions, and, as of 2008, were already around 10-20% below 1990 levels.

***

Country: the United Kingdom (UK)

Emission Targets: 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2012, as per their Kyoto targets. Through their Climate Change Acts, the UK has also set a goal of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

How They’ll Get There: The government is aiming for 40% of their energy to come from low-carbon sources (both renewable and nuclear). They are also focusing on efficiency, and planning a cap-and-trade system.

How They’re Doing: The UK is well on track to meet, and even exceed, their Kyoto agreements. By 2010, their emissions were predicted to be 11% below their Kyoto targets.

***

Country: Norway

Emission Targets: Norway has some of the most ambitious targets in the world. Not only are they aiming for emissions to be 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, they are planning a carbon-neutral economy – 100% cuts – by 2050. If a major international agreement comes to pass, like Copenhagen was supposed to be, they will pledge for carbon neutrality by 2030.

How They’ll Get There: In addition to their cap and trade system, Norway is investing a lot of money into carbon capture and storage (CCS). They have also introduced taxes on natural gas and stricter efficiency standards for new houses.

How They’re Doing: Norway’s emissions have increased by 8% since 1990. Hopefully their extensive plans will reverse that trend.

***

Country: Australia

Emission targets: If an international agreement comes to pass, Australia will reduce their emissions to 25% below 2000 levels by 2020. Otherwise, they will shift that target to 5-15%. Normally, using a baseline that’s later than the standard 1990 is a warning sign, a clever trick that governments use to make their targets look stricter than they are (see: Canada). However, since Australia’s emissions fell slightly between 1990 and 2000, the equivalent target with respect to 1990 is actually more than 25%.

How They’ll Get There: The Australian Parliament has had difficulty passing cap-and-trade legislation. They are hoping to implement this eventually, but will focus on energy efficiency and renewables in the mean time.

How They’re Doing: Originally, Australia refused to sign Kyoto, but in 2007 a new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was elected. He committed the country to Kyoto targets, just a little late. So far, it looks like Australia will easily meet their targets of 8% over 1990 levels by 2012.

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Country: Japan

Emission targets: Japan has set solid targets of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050.

How They’ll Get There: Japan has a cap-and-trade system, and is considering a carbon tax. They also want 10% of their energy to come from renewables by 2020.

How They’re Doing: Japan’s emissions have increased slightly since 1990. As of 2008, they were about 6% above 1990 levels.

***

Country: Canada

Emission targets: The Canadian government has pledged to reduce emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. However, emissions in 2005 were quite a bit higher than they were in 1990. When you adjust this estimate to the standard baseline, it’s actually a 2.5% increase. The Environment Canada website describes this as an “ambitious target”. Go figure!

How They’ll Get There: So far, the Canadian government has tightened up fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles, but that’s about it. The current administration refuses to consider meaningful action until the United States does. In fact, the House of Commons recently passed a bill setting meaningful emission targets (20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050)…but the Senate, which has a Conservative majority, voted the bill down with absolutely no debate. Given the fact that Senators are appointed by Prime Ministers, not elected by citizens, it’s hard to see this action as anything less than anti-democratic.

How They’re Doing:By 2008, Canadian emissions had soared to 24% above 1990 levels.

***

This data almost makes me feel ashamed to be Canadian, to be a part of such an obstructionist country. Look at what countries in Europe have managed to do. It wasn’t impossible, like so many North American politicians warned. And then look at countries like the United States and Canada, that have not only failed to reduce their emissions, but have actively worked against any kind of a plan to do so.

Future generations will not look on us kindly. We will become the villains of our own history books.

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Update: By popular request:

Country: United States of America

Emission targets: None

How They’ll Get There: Despite not having a formal target for emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to regulate emissions from fossil-fuel fired power plants and refineries in late December. The Republican Party is resorting to all sorts of silliness to try to change this.

How They’re Doing: As of 2008, US emissions were 14% above 1990 levels.

Ozone Depletion and Climate Change

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“Global warming…doesn’t that have something to do with the ozone?” Well, no. Environmental issues are not all the same. It’s common for people to confuse climate change and ozone depletion, but they are separate issues – although they are indirectly connected in some interesting ways.

Ozone, which is made of three oxygen atoms stuck together (instead of two, which is what normal oxygen gas is made of), is vital to life on Earth. It forms a layer in the stratosphere, the second layer up in the atmosphere, that is very good at absorbing ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun. UV radiation severely damages organisms if enough of it reaches the surface. The 3% or less that gets through the ozone already gives us sunburns and skin cancer, so you can imagine what the situation would be like if the ozone layer wasn’t there at all.

In the middle of the 20th century, synthetic gases known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) became popular for use in refrigerators and aerosol products, among other applications. They were non-toxic, and did not react easily with other substances, so they were used widely. However, their chemical stability allowed them to last long enough to drift into the stratosphere after they were emitted.

Once in the stratosphere, the CFCs were exposed to UV radiation, which was able to break them down. Free chlorine atoms (Cl) were liberated, a substance that is very reactive indeed. In fact, Cl acts as a catalyst in the decomposition of ozone, allowing two ozone molecules to become three oxygen molecules, losing their UV absorbing power in the process. Since catalysts are not used up in a reaction, the same Cl radical can continue to destroy ozone until it reacts with something else in the atmosphere and is removed.

Over the poles, the stratosphere is cold enough for polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) to form. These PSCs provided optimum conditions for the most reactive chlorine gas of all to form: ClO (chlorine monoxide). Now there wasn’t just a catalytic cycle of free Cl radicals depleting the ozone, there was also a cycle of ClO. It turns out that Antarctica was more favourable for ozone depletion than the Arctic, both because its temperatures were lower and because its system of wind currents prevented the ozone-depleting substances from drifting out of the area.

Before long, there was a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica (due to the PSCs), and concentrations were declining in other locations too (due to the basic Cl reactions). The issue became a frontier for scientific research, and scientists Crutzen, Rowland, and Molina won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work with atmospheric ozone.

In 1987, politicians worldwide decided to ban CFCs under the Montreal Protocol. This movement was largely successful, and the use of CFCs has become nearly negligible, especially in developed nations. They have been replaced with gases that safely decompose before they reach the stratosphere, so they don’t interfere with ozone. The regulations are working: the ozone hole in Antarctica has stabilized, and global stratospheric ozone concentrations have been on the rise since 1993.

In contrast, climate change is a product of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Unlike CFCs, most of them are not synthetic, and they are released from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), not specific products such as refrigerators. Rather than destroying a natural process, like CFCs do, they strengthen one to the point of harm: the greenhouse effect. This phenomenon, which traps heat in the atmosphere, is absolutely vital, as the Earth would be too cold to support life without it. Increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases with fossil fuels becomes too much of a good thing, though, as the greenhouse effect traps more heat, warming the planet up.

Just a few degrees Celsius of warming can cause major problems, as agricultural zones, wind and ocean currents, and precipitation patterns shift. The sea level rises, submerging coastal cities. Many species go extinct, as the climate changes faster than they can adapt. Basically, the definition of “normal” in which our civilization has developed and thrived is changing, and we can’t count on that stability any more.

Unlike the Montreal Protocol, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have more or less failed. Fossil fuels permeate every part of our lives, and until we shift the economy to run on clean energy instead, convincing governments to commit to reductions will be difficult at best. It remains to be seen whether or not we can successfully address this problem, like we did with ozone depletion.

Although these two issues are separate, they have some interesting connections. For example, PSCs form in cold areas of the stratosphere. That’s why the ozone hole is over Antarctica, and not somewhere else. Unfortunately, global warming is, paradoxically, cooling the stratosphere, as a stronger greenhouse effect means that less heat reaches the stratosphere. Therefore, as climate change progresses, it will make it easier for the ozone depletion reactions to occur, even though there are fewer CFCs.

Additionally, CFCs are very strong greenhouse gases, but their use has drastically reduced so their radiative effects are of lesser concern to us. However, some of their replacements, HFCs, are greenhouse gases of similar strength. They don’t deplete the ozone, but, per molecule, they can be thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. Currently, their atmospheric concentrations are low enough that they contribute far less forcing than carbon dioxide, but it wouldn’t take a large increase in HFCs to put us in a bad situation, simply because they are so potent.

Finally, these two issues are similar in that ozone depletion provides a smaller-scale analogue for the kinds of political and economic changes we will have to make to address climate change:

  1. Unintended chemical side effects of our economy posed a serious threat to all species, including our own.
  2. Industry representatives and free-market fundamentalists fought tooth and nail against conclusive scientific findings, and the public became bewildered in a sea of misinformation.
  3. Governments worked together to find sensible alternatives and more or less solved the problem.

We’ve already seen the first two events happen with climate change. Will we see the third as well?

Legislating Scientific Truth

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Cross-posted from NextGen Journal

Scientific statements rely on uncertainty and error bars. If our understanding changes, the scientific consensus changes accordingly, in a more or less implicit manner. There’s no official process that needs to be followed to update our knowledge.

Laws passed by governments work in the opposite way. Official technicalities are paramount, and acknowledgements that the government’s understanding could be wrong are rare.

Why, then, are attempts to legislate scientific truth – an archaic practice to any reasonable person – becoming far more common in the United States?

One of the most early, and infamous, incidents of this manner occurred in 1897, when the government of Indiana attempted to legislate the value of pi (∏). The text of the bill, describing a circle, clearly says “the ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four”. If you do a bit of simple fractional algebra, this comes out to ∏ = 3.2, rather than 3.1415952…and so on. The scary part is that this bill passed the House without a single nay vote. Luckily, it was postponed in the Senate indefinitely.

More recently – in fact, just last month – Joe Read, a member of the Montana House of Representatives, penned a bill that is equally disturbing. Let’s take a look at what he is planning to turn into state law:

“The legislature finds:

(a) global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana;

(b) reasonable amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere have no verifiable impacts on the environment; and

(c) global warming is a natural occurrence and human activity has not accelerated it.”

At least ∏ = 3.2 was moderately close to the correct value. This bill, however, proclaims exactly the opposite of what the scientific consensus tells us. I would argue that it is even more dangerous. A fundamental constant that is 0.1 or so inaccurate could cause a couple buildings to fall down in Indiana, but a law that orders the government to believe the opposite of what the scientific community says – a law that outright denies any possibility of a problem which, if not addressed, will likely harm the citizens of Montana for generations to come – could cause political ripples leading to mass destruction.

It looks like a case of government officials burying their heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge a problem because the solutions are politically problematic. The physical world, though, does not obey the Thomas Theorem, a sociological theory of self-fulfilling prophecies. No matter how passionately people like Joe Read believe that climate change is natural/nonexistent/a global conspiracy, the problem won’t go away. In fact, it’s more of an inverse prophecy: if enough politicians refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change, no action will be taken to address it, and the problem will get worse. It doesn’t seem like Joe Read et al have thought through this line of logic, though. Peter Sinclair wittily describes their mindset as “[s]o simple. Just pass a law. Command the seas to stop rising.”

Dana Nuccitelli goes one step further, claiming “Republicans have decided that they can repeal the laws of physics with the laws of the USA”. In this instance, he is referring to a second, similar, bill that the Republican Party is attempting to pass, this time at the federal level. Basically, Republicans are desperate to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating  greenhouse gas emissions – which they have the authority to do, under the Clean Air Act, as they can “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare”.

There are two ways to take away this responsibility of the EPA. First, Congress could create a system of their own to control emissions, such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax – both more capitalist than standard regulation. Republicans aren’t too chuffed about this option, as they don’t want to have to control emissions at all. So they are invoking desperate measures by choosing the second option: if greenhouse gases were found to no longer pose a danger, regulation by the EPA would be unnecessary.

Legitimately reaching this conclusion would call over a century’s worth of physics and chemistry into question. If they could actually do it, the Republicans would probably win a Nobel Prize. Apparently, though, they aren’t interested in legitimacy. The “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”, by Members of Congress Fred Upton and James Inhofe, claims to overturn the EPA’s endangerment finding and, therefore, takes away their authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The justification for such an unusual scientific finding consisted of a couple of testimonies from climate change deniers, spouting out the usual long-debunked myths that scientists thought of, considered, and ruled out long before you and I even knew what global warming was. They offered no new information.

Ed Markey, the Representative from Massachusetts, took the opportunity to openly wonder what field of science Republicans will “excommunicate” next: will it be gravity, the heliocentric solar system, or special relativity? Watch and listen to his brief remarks. (Aside: I am amazed at how quiet and civil the House of Congress is. In Canada, Members of Parliament from opposing parties like to shout and pound their desks when others make speeches.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVrE1NTgxI&feature=player_embedded

The Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee invoked amendments to this bill that, instead of repealing the scientific consensus, acknowledged it:

Congress accepts the scientific finding … that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal”; that the scientific evidence regarding climate change “is compelling”; and that “human-caused climate change is a threat to public health and welfare.”

Zero Republicans on the committee voted in favour of these amendments. Why am I not surprised?

I wouldn’t place these words of legislation in the same category as the others. Instead of saying “this is how the physical world works”, the amendments state, “we, as politicians, accept what our scientists tell us.” Most importantly, the Members of Congress aren’t trying to outsmart experts in a field in which they have no experience.

However, I agree with Henry Waxman, the Representative from California, who says that such amendments shouldn’t be necessary – not because they’re wrong, but because the “finding is so obviously correct”. To me, governments accepting what their scientists tell them is the null hypothesis. The idea of politicians stamping down ideas that they don’t like, by attempting to legislate scientific truth, seems unspeakably bizarre. How did the most powerful and developed nation in the world reach this point?

Climate Scientists Out in the Cold

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Cross-posted from NextGen Journal

In the current economy, it’s not surprising that many countries are reducing funds for scientific research. It’s necessary to cut spending across the board these days. However, North American governments are singling out climate science as a victim – and not just reducing its funding, but, in many cases, eliminating it altogether.

Climate change research is largely supported by government money, as there aren’t many industries that recognize a vested interest in the science. Pharmaceutical companies often fund biomedical researchers, and mining companies fund geologists, but there’s no real analogue for climate scientists. Additionally, many global warming studies are particularly expensive. For example, transporting researchers and equipment to the North Pole via helicopter, and building climate models on supercomputers that stretch the limits of our data storage capacities, cost quite a bit more than injecting rats with chemicals in a lab.

In Canada, where I live, the federal government recognized these unique characteristics of climate science, and, in 2000, set up a special foundation to fund research in the field: the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS). Over the past decade, it has spent $118 million supporting most of Canada’s university-based climate research, and it was assumed that it would be continually renewed as the country established itself as a leader in the field.

However, since the Conservative Party formed a minority government almost five years ago, it has only extended the foundation’s lifespan by a year, and refuses to consider long-term funding commitments. The CFCAS only has a few months left before it will run out of money and close its doors. Many of Canada’s premier climate research projects and laboratories will have to shut down as a result, as they have always relied on CFCAS, and general federal funds such as the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) simply won’t be able to fill the gap. Some researchers are leaving the country to pursue more fertile academic ground, and as an aspiring climate scientist, I am wondering whether I will have to eventually do so as well.

If it seems cruel to abandon funding for researching the greatest threat to our future, rather than simply reducing its budget until the economy recovers, take a stroll south to what my sociology professor likes to refer to as “that wild society”. The U.S. House of Representatives is becoming dominated by politicians who hate the idea of government, and wish to tear most of it down in anger. Add to that mindset a staunch denial of climate science, and you can see where this is going.

The House of Representatives just passed a bill that not only prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases that cause climate change, but also repeals a great deal of clean air and water protection. Other cornerstones of the bill include repealing the new American health care system and cutting off funding of Planned Parenthood.

Since not a single Democrat Member of Congress voted for this bill, it is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority. However, Republicans have threatened to take away all federal funding, effectively shutting down the entire U.S. government, if the bill is not passed into law.

An amendment to this bill, which also passed the House of Representatives, completely cuts off federal funding to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC, a scientific organization of the United Nations, doesn’t do any original research, but writes extensive summary reports of the academic literature on climate change. It’s hard to overestimate how important these reports, published every few years, are to governments, scientists, and citizens alike. Instead of having to dig through thousands of scientific journals and articles, with no idea where to start, people can simply read these reports to find out what science knows about climate change. They are painstakingly reviewed, are offered in several levels of technicality, and include carefully organized references to the multitude of studies whose conclusions contributed to the text. For a field of research that is quickly expanding, these reports are absolutely vital, and it’s hard to imagine how they could carry on without support from the American government.

Blaine Luetkemeyer, the Republican Member of Congress that proposed the amendment, justified cutting off the IPCC by asserting the oft-debunked, but disturbingly popular, meme that climate science is some kind of worldwide conspiracy. If the IPCC really is “corrupt” and “nefarious”, as Luetkemeyer claims, then why can’t they afford to pay any of the scientists that write the reports – not even the IPCC president? Why do they allow anyone to help review the draft reports? Why do they permit their Summary for Policymakers to be watered down by policymakers? And, most importantly, why is climate change progressing faster than the IPCC expected?

We shouldn’t have to spend time addressing paranoid conspiracy theories like Luetkemeyer’s . Sadly, the government of the most powerful country on Earth is being taken over by people who buy into these conspiracy theories, and who want to punish climate scientists as much as possible for crimes they haven’t committed. Countries like Canada, even if they refrain from public accusations, are following suit in their actions.

“It’s quite clear by their actions [with CFCAS] and its lack of funding that [the Canadian government is] basically saying ‘We don’t want your science any more’,” Andrew Weaver, Canada’s top climatologist, told the Globe and Mail.

“[Cutting off the IPCC] is like putting our heads in the sand, denying the science, and then stopping the scientists from working – because they might come to a different conclusion from the Republican Party’s ideology,” Democrat Member of Congress Henry Waxman argued.

Is this really a wise move?

The Pendulum

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Cross-posted from NextGen Journal

A few years ago, climate change mitigation became a major political issue. Before 2005, governments certainly knew that human-caused climate change was a serious problem – but the public knew next to nothing about it, so there was no incentive to act. However, between 2005 and 2007, a perfect storm of events splashed the reality of climate change onto the world stage.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, finally came into force in early 2005, after years of negotiation. The United States refused to sign, and Australia signed on a little late, but every other developed nation in the world agreed to emission targets. Here in Canada, the Liberal government enthusiastically pledged its support for Kyoto. My local newspaper ran editorials exploring the different ways we could meet our targets, through combinations of clean energy, green infrastructure, and efficiency standards.

The summer of 2005 was a wake-up call for the United States, as Hurricane Katrina mercilessly demonstrated the amount of damage that extreme weather can bring. It’s impossible to say, at least with our current technology, whether or not Katrina was caused or even worsened by a warming planet. However, such devastating storms will become the norm as climate change progresses. Scientists aren’t sure whether or not hurricanes will become more frequent in a warming world, but the average hurricane is expected to become stronger and more damaging, and we are already beginning to see this rise in storm intensity. Katrina gave us an example of what we can expect from climate change – even if it wasn’t a direct effect in itself – and the world was shocked by the suffering that ensued.

2006 marked the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary about climate change. For scientists studying climate, the film was an admirable, up-to-date example of science communication, albeit with a few minor errors and oversimplifications. However, for citizens new to the issue (I particularly remember my classmates in grade 9 social studies discussing the film), An Inconvenient Truth was a disturbing reality check – scarier than any horror movie, because it was real.

The major scientific event of 2007 was a drastic, unexpected drop in Arctic summer sea ice. That season’s melt was exacerbated by coincidental weather conditions, so the next years weren’t quite as bad, but the trend was still worrying, to say the least. The research community had assumed that summer ice would stick around for at least a century, but this timescale was soon halved and quartered as ice melt exceeded even the worst projections.

By 2007, lead-up to the 2008 US presidential election was underway, and political awareness of climate change was obvious. It was no surprise that Democrat Barack Obama had ambitious plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but even the Republicans seemed to be on board. During his time in office, George W. Bush had insisted that, since climate change could be natural, any mitigating action was not worth the economic risk. Republican presidential candidates seemed to realize that continuing to adopt this attitude would be political suicide. The most extreme example, John McCain, who would eventually win the Republican presidential nomination, had emissions targets only slightly less extensive than Obama’s. As he said in 2007,

The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak havoc with God’s creation…The problem isn’t a Hollywood invention nor is doing something about it a vanity of Cassandra like hysterics. It is a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge.

However, McCain, once an author of a bill designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, would soon completely change his stance. By 2010, he was asserting that cap-and-trade legislation was unnecessary and carbon dioxide posed no harm to the American people. He even went so far as to question the political motivations of science he once wholly accepted:

I think [global warming is] an inexact science, and there has been more and more questioning about some of the conclusions that were reached concerning climate change. And I believe that everybody in the world deserves correct answers whether the scientific conclusions were flawed by outside influences. There’s great questions about it that need to be resolved.

The story of John McCain isn’t too surprising. Politicians frequently base their statements on public sentiment rather than personal opinion. They say what people want to hear, rather than what they truly believe is important. This aspect of our political system is depressing, but persistent. The real question, though, regards what changed public sentiment so quickly. Why did politicians like McCain feel compelled to denounce the importance of action on this problem, or even the existence of the problem itself? What happened since 2007 that made the pendulum swing so far in the other direction?

Strike one was the economy. The global recession that began in 2008 was the largest since the Great Depression, and concern for all other problems promptly went down the drain. It’s understandable for citizens to not worry about the environment when they don’t even have the means to feed and clothe their children properly. However, for governments to not realize the long-term economic implications of allowing climate change to continue, along with the potential job-creating benefits of a new energy economy, was disappointing, even though it wasn’t surprising.

Strike two was the all-out war on climate science, spearheaded by the fossil fuel industry and the far right. This PR campaign has been underway since the early 1990s, but was kicked up a notch just over a year ago. Since public understanding of the causes and effects of global warming was growing, and the science was becoming more solid by the month, the PR tactics changed. Instead of attacking the science, they attacked the integrity of the scientists. The most extreme example occurred in November 2009, when private correspondence between top climate researchers was stolen, spread on the Internet, and spun in an attempt to cast doubt on the scientists’ motives. This event, known as “Climategate”, spurred a great deal of anger among the political right, and everything from bitter editorials to death threats against scientists ensued. Perhaps most distressingly, by the time investigations found that the scientists involved were innocent, and the reality of climate change untouched, Climategate was old news and media outlets failed to adequately follow up on the story. Citizens heard the accusations, but not the exonerations, so political will to cut greenhouse gas emissions slipped even further.

Strike three – well, there has been no strike three, and a good thing too. Strikes one and two were so bad that some are hoping the pendulum has swung as far as it can go. It’s certainly difficult to imagine how the situation could get worse. The Kyoto Protocol is set to expire next year, and the Copenhagen meetings failed to create a replacement. As it was, many developed nations failed to meet their targets, and the Canadian government backed out completely.

The possibility of federal climate legislation for the United States is laughable now that not a single Republican Senator thinks action is necessary, and most doubt the reality of the problem, choosing to believe that the entire scientific community is out to lunch and/or an agent of conspiracy. President Obama’s director of climate policy, Carol Browner, recently left her position, although none of her major goals had been met. Obama’s recent State of the Union address included lots of hopeful statements about clean energy, but absolutely no mention of climate change, as if merely acknowledging the most pressing reason for a new energy economy would be political suicide. The time-honoured tradition of saying what the public wants to hear has even reached Obama, the man who promised change.

In Canada, legislation to simply set targets for emission reduction passed the House of Commons (made of elected representatives), but the Senate (composed of appointed politicians) chose to use their newfound Conservative majority to strike down the bill with no debate whatsoever, in a blatantly undemocratic move that has not happened since the 1930s. The Canadian government is all for a new energy economy, but not one based on environmental and social responsibility. The Alberta tar sands, which are substantially more polluting and carbon-intensive than traditional oil, continue to expand, and both federal and provincial governments are worryingly enthusiastic.

From 2005 to 2007, politics was high on promises of mitigation, but low on delivery. Since then, it has been devoid of both. It’s starting to seem as if it will take a major global disaster that can be unquestionably tied to climate change for governments to get their act together.

This would all be very well if there was no lag time between cause and effect in the climate system, but it doesn’t work that way. It takes several decades for all the warming in the pipeline to show up. If we waited until climate change became unbearable, and then cut off our emissions completely, the situation would still get worse for decades before it stabilized.

The worldwide failure of governments to take action on climate change is baffling. It seems that the best they can do is occasionally promise to fix the problem, but never actually get started. If this continues for much longer, we’re all going to pay the price for their mistakes – and so will people for generations to come.

The Unofficial Climate Change Book Awards

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Cross-posted from NextGen Journal

As an aspiring climate scientist, I have read dozens of books about climate change over the past few years. Here are my all-time favourites, which I present with Unofficial Climate Change Book Awards. (Unfortunately, the prizes consist entirely of bragging rights.)


Best Analysis of Future Scenarios
Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer
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Most of us are aware of how climate change will impact the world: more extreme weather, prolonged floods and droughts, dwindling glaciers and sea ice. In this book, renowned Canadian journalist and military historian Gwynne Dyer goes one step further, and explores how these physical impacts might affect geopolitical relations. Will India and Pakistan engage in nuclear warfare over clean water? Will the United States and Russia begin a “Colder War” over Arctic sovereignty? Many of the scenarios he writes about are, frankly, terrifying, and all have a frightening grain of plausibility to them. Read the full review


Best Introduction to Climate Science
The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart
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Scientists overwhelmingly agree that human-caused climate change is underway, but instead of simply stating this conclusion, Weart tells the story of how it was reached: tracing the theory from the 1800s to today. This innovative approach to science education, combined with Weart’s elegant prose, makes the book a joy to read. It doesn’t feel like a textbook, although it contains as much information as one. Read the full review


Best Exposé
Climate Cover-Up, by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore
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If scientists are so sure about the reality of anthropogenic climate change, why does so much of the public think that it’s natural/nonexistent/a global conspiracy? Why does the media present the issue as an equal-sided scientific debate? This confusion didn’t just happen by accident – it was deliberately constructed. Over the past two decades, lobby groups representing industries or ideologies that seek to delay action on climate change have engaged in a campaign to spread doubt about the reality of the problem. This book, rather than throwing around baseless accusations, methodically examines the paper trail of this widespread campaign. Reading Climate Cover-Up is an infuriating but absolutely necessary journey to take. Read the full review


Best Policy Discussion
Storms of my Grandchildren, by Dr. James Hansen
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James Hansen is possibly the most prominent climate scientist alive today, and that title is well-deserved. Throughout his career at NASA, he has frequently made discoveries that were ahead of his time. Dr. Hansen is a very intrinsic scientist who doesn’t enjoy being in the spotlight or talking about policy, but he wrote this book for fear of his grandchildren looking back at his work and saying, “Opa understood what was happening, but he did not make it clear.” Although he couldn’t resist slipping in a few chapters about the current frontiers of climate science, the bulk of the book is about policy, featuring compelling arguments for expanded nuclear power, a moratorium on coal, and a rising price on carbon. Read the full review


Best Canadian Focus
Keeping Our Cool, by Dr. Andrew Weaver
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Andrew Weaver is Canada’s top climate modeller, and a fantastic role model for science communication. This book gives a high-level, yet accessible, explanation of the mathematics of climate change – if you have some basic knowledge of calculus and statistics, you should be fine. However, what really makes this book stand out is its focus on Canadian climate journalism and politics, a rare quality in a field dominated by American research. We all know about George W. Bush’s track record of inaction, but what has Prime Minister Stephen Harper done (or not done)? High-profile studies exist on American media coverage of global warming, but how does the Canadian press compare? Read the full review


Best Insider’s Account
Science as a Contact Sport, by Dr. Stephen Schneider
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The late Stephen Schneider, who unexpectedly died last summer of a heart attack, is a true pioneer of climate modelling. He has been active in the field since the 1970s, when computers became fast enough to handle mathematical models. This memoir explains what it’s like to be a climate scientist, and how that has changed over the years. In the 70s, Schneider and his colleagues filled their mind with purely analytical questions, but today, they have to deal with the media, politicians, and hate mail as well. Science used to just be about science, but now it’s about communication as well. Read the full review


Most Gripping
Snowball Earth, by Gabrielle Walker
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Gabrielle Walker is a brilliant woman, as she possesses the ability to make a book about geology every bit as gripping as a murder mystery. Granted, Snowball Earth, a recent theory of climatic conditions during the Precambrian Era, is fascinating. In short, the continents were arranged in such a manner that the Earth would swing back and forth between “Snowball Earth” (frozen oceans and frozen land all over, even at the Equator) and “Hothouse Earth” (massive global warming from volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide). Until this period of massive climatic swings, the only thing that lived on Earth was unicellular goop…but immediately following the Snowball Earth cycles, complex life appeared. Many scientists don’t think this evolutionary timing was a coincidence. It’s possible that multicellular organisms, including us, only exist because of an accident of plate tectonics. Read the full review


If you would like to contest any of my decisions for these awards, please feel free to do so in the comments!

Merchants of Doubt

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I waited a long time to read this book – in retrospect, too long. I have long been a fan of Naomi Oreskes; I believe she is a brilliant and sensible scientist with a compelling way with words. On the other hand, nothing depresses me more quickly than reading about those who deliberately spread confusion on climate change for political reasons. After a particularly battering year for climate science in the public eye, I want to make sure I stay sane.

However, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, was oddly comforting. How could it be so, you might ask, given the subject matter?

It’s a good question. The book traces several key players, such as Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer, Bill Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow, in their fight against mainstream science. Many of them were physicists in the era of atomic bomb development, and nearly all had been deeply influenced by the Cold War – they were anti-Communist to the point of extremism.

This extremism soon extended into science: any new discovery that seemed to necessitate government action was vehemently attacked by Seitz et al. Whether it was the harmful health effects of smoking, second-hand smoking, or DDT, and the existence of anthropogenic acid rain, ozone depletion, or climate change, the same people used the same strategies to sow doubt in the public mind, delaying the cry for action. The algorithm was relatively simple:

  • construct arguments against the phenomenon, which scientists had already addressed and ruled out
  • widely publish these arguments in the popular press, rather than scientific journals
  • demand that the mainstream media be neutral and provide “equal time” for their side of the so-called controversy
  • attack the professional integrity of the scientists who discovered and studied the phenomenon; label them as frauds and/or Communists
  • claim that action on this issue would be the beginning of the “slippery slope to socialism”

It’s enough to anger anyone who has the least bit of sympathy for science. The authors say it best:

Why would scientists dedicated to uncovering the truth about the natural world deliberately misrepresent the work of their own colleagues? Why would they spread accusations with no basis? Why would they refuse to correct their arguments once they had been shown to be incorrect? And why did the press continue to quote them, year after year, even as their claims were shown, one after another, to be false?

History repeated itself many times over, within the course of just a few decades. The attack against climate science that we are currently witnessing is just a larger-scale rehash of the pro-industry, anti-Communist fight against epidemiology, environmental chemistry, and so on. Until now, few attempts have been made to connect the dots, but Oreskes and Conway present a watertight and compelling thesis in Merchants of Doubt.

The hopeful part came when I realized this: all of the previous issues that Seitz et al attempted to discredit were eventually addressed, more or less successfully, by the government, even if some of the public is still confused about the science. Restrictions and regulations on smoking, along with education regarding its harms, has made tobacco use a semi-stigmatized practice in my generation, rather than a near-universal activity. The Montreal Protocol was largely a success, and stratospheric ozone is on the rise. The world, at least so far, has managed to avoid nuclear warfare.

Climate change is undoubtedly a more inevitable and wide-ranging problem, as it strikes at the heart of our fossil-fuel based economy, and will probably surpass, both in rate and magnitude, any change our species has seen in the global environment. However, since the attack against climate science has tracked so closely with previous campaigns, I can’t help but hope it will eventually end the same way: with the public and the government realizing the problem and employing effective measures to address it. I know it’s probably not very scientific of me to make this connection, but hope doesn’t have to be rational to be effective.

Storms of my Grandchildren

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I hope everyone had a fun and relaxing Christmas. Here’s a book I’ve been meaning to review for a while.

The worst part of the recent book by NASA climatologist James Hansen is, undoubtedly, the subtitle. The truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity – really? That doesn’t sound like the intrinsic, subdued style of Dr. Hansen. In my opinion, it simply alienates the very audience we’re trying to reach: moderate, concerned non-scientists.

The inside of the book is much better. While he couldn’t resist slipping in a good deal of hard science (and, in my opinion, these were the best parts), the real focus was on climate policy, and the relationship between science and policy. Hansen struggled with the prospect of becoming involved in policy discussions, but soon realized that he didn’t want his grandchildren, years from now, to look back at his work and say, “Opa understood what was happening, but he did not make it clear.”

Hansen is very good at distinguishing between his scientific work and his opinions on policy, and makes no secret of which he would rather spend time on. “I prefer to just do science,” he writes in the introduction. “It’s more pleasant, especially when you are having some success in your investigations. If I must serve as a witness, I intend to testify and then get back to the laboratory, where I am comfortable. That is what I intend to do when this book is finished.”

Hansen’s policy opinions centre on a cap-and-dividend system: a variant of a carbon tax, where revenue is divided evenly among citizens and returned to them. His argument for a carbon tax, rather than cap-and-trade, is compelling, and certainly convinced me. He also advocates the expansion of nuclear power (particularly “fourth-generation” fast nuclear reactors), a moratorium on new coal-generated power plants, and drastically improved efficiency measures.

These recommendations are robust, backed up with lots of empirical data to argue why they would be our best bet to minimize climate change and secure a stable future for generations to come. Hansen is always careful to say when he is speaking as a scientist and when he is speaking as a citizen, and provides a fascinating discussion of the connection between these two roles. As Bill Blakemore from ABC television wrote in correspondence with Hansen, “All communication is biased. What makes the difference between a propagandist on one side and a professional journalist or scientist on the other is not that the journalist or scientist ‘set their biases aside’ but that they are open about them and constantly putting them to the test, ready to change them.”

Despite all this, I love when Hansen puts on his scientist hat. The discussions of climate science in this book, particularly paleoclimate, were gripping. He explains our current knowledge of the climatic circumstances surrounding the Permian-Triassic extinction and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (usually referred to as the PETM). He explains why neither of these events is a suitable analogue for current climate change, as the current rate of introduction of the radiative forcing is faster than anything we can see in the paleoclimatic record.

Be prepared for some pretty terrifying facts about our planet’s “methane hydrate gun”, and how it wasn’t even fully loaded when it went off in the PETM. Also discussed is the dependence of climate sensitivity on forcing: the graph of these two variables is more or less a parabola, as climate sensitivity increases both in Snowball Earth conditions and in Runaway Greenhouse conditions. An extensive discussion of runaway greenhouse is provided, where the forcing occurs so quickly that negative feedbacks don’t have a chance to act before the positive water vapour feedback gets out of control, the oceans boil, and the planet becomes too hot for liquid water to exist. For those who are interested in this scenario, Hansen argues that, if we’re irresponsible about fossil fuels, it is quite possible for current climate change to reach this stage. For those who have less practice separating the scientific part of their brain from the emotional part, I suggest you skip this chapter.

I would recommend this book to everyone interested in climate change. James Hansen is such an important player in climate science, and has arguably contributed more to our knowledge of climate change than just about anyone. Whether it’s for the science, for the policy discussions, or for his try at science fiction in the last chapter, it’s well worth the cover price.

Thoughts from others who have read this book are welcome in the comments, as always.