GENERAL
climate change
Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate
In the mid-1980s, when I was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and beginning to study climate change, I attended a lecture by a specialist in plant physiology at nearby Harvard University. He spoke about global warming’s impact on crop productivity. He was quite optimistic. More carbon dioxide in the air, he explained, causes certain kinds of plants to grow faster. So, on balance, food output should rise in a warmer and CO2-rich world.
Climate Summit Was a Pathetic Exercise in Deceit
There’s really only one label for the pathetic exercise we’ve just witnessed in South Africa: deceit. The whole climate-change negotiation process and the larger political discourse surrounding this horrible problem is a drawn-out and elaborate exercise in lying—to each other, to ourselves, and especially to our children. And the lies are starting to corrupt our civilization from inside out.
And Now the Weather: Nasty and Brutish
People who think this winter’s brutish weather proves climate change isn’t real might want to think again.
Disaster at the Top of the World
Standing on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change.
Responding to the Skeptics
with Andrew Weaver | Skeptics often say Earth’s climate is showing a trend toward stable or even declining temperatures. But they have to cherry-pick data from the climate record to support this argument.
The Great Transformation: Climate Change as Cultural Change
A critical conversation about climate change is going on right now through the UNFCCC process; a key stage in this process will be the Copenhagen meeting at the end of this year. This conversation, to the extent that it is prescriptive, generally emphasizes technology and economics. It stresses strategies for dealing with the climate problem that involve technical aspects of, for instance, societies’ energy mix and energy efficiency. I don’t want to disparage these approaches or suggest that they shouldn’t be pursued. But, the fact remains that despite all our efforts we seem to be falling further and further behind.
Clean Coal? Go Underground, Alberta
with Julio Friedmann | Alberta appears to be in a box – an energy box – that constrains policy options in every direction. The province’s wealth is critically tied to exploitation of its vast hydrocarbon resources.
Climate Change, The Arctic and Canada: Avoiding Yesterday’s Analysis of Tomorrow’s Crisis
Paper Prepared for the 20th Anniversary Conference of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Ottawa, Ontario
Blocking the Sky to Save the Earth
with David Keith | To the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.
A Win-Win-Win Situation
with David Keith | What should we do with the carbon we produce when we burn fossil fuels? Some experts say we should fight climate change by putting the carbon back underground, whence it came.
Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency about Global Warming
A Globally Integrated Climate Policy for Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2008.
With Cracks and Holes in the Greenland Ice Sheet, We May Well Have to “Geo-Engineer” the Climate
A few years ago, these scientists regarded global warming as a matter of serious concern; now many appear to think that it's a matter of grave urgency - that we may be running out of time. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are increasingly viewed as out of date.
A Swiftly Melting Planet
The Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic experts in global warming. But we shouldn’t be shocked, because scientists have long known that major features of earth’s interlinked climate system of air and water can change abruptly.
Terror in the Weather Forecast
DOES climate change threaten international peace and security? The British government thinks it does. As this month’s head of the United Nations Security Council, Britain convened a debate on the matter last Tuesday. One in four United Nations member countries joined the discussion — a record for this kind of thematic debate.
The End of Ingenuity
Having to search farther and longer for our resources isn’t the only new hurdle we face. Climate change could also constrain growth. A steady stream of evidence now indicates that the planet is warming quickly and that the economic impact on agriculture, our built environment, ecosystems and human health could, in time, be very large.
Unleash Capitalism’s Creativity on Climate Change
If we unleash Canada’s capitalist creativity, we could be an international leader in a suite of technologies urgently needed in a warming world that will depend on fossil fuels for many decades. These include technologies for the clean combustion of coal, for storing carbon dioxide underground, and for using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. We could make staggering amounts of money selling these technologies around the world.
Ahead: More – and Worse – Katrinas
with James Risbey and Karl Braganza | The science of climate change is the kind of topic that gives journalists great difficulty. As they bounce from issue to issue in our info-glutted world, they aren’t able to explore each one in depth or develop detailed expertise about a subject. So when it comes to complex scientific problems, journalists tend to cherry-pick findings and cite opinionated statement by outspoken researchers. Context and nuance are lost. And in the case of research on the links between global warming and hurricanes, context and nuance are everything.
Coal in a Nice Shade of Green
with S. Julio Friedmann | When it comes to energy, we are trapped between a rock and several hard places. The world’s soaring demand for oil is pushing against the limits of production, lifting the price of crude nearly 90 percent in the last 18 months.
Out of the Energy Box
with S. Julio Friedmann | The prognosis for the future of climate change is indeed alarming. Scientists say plausible scenarios include terrible droughts, crop failures, and dying forests around the Mediterranean and in the United States, South America, India, China, and Africa. Sea levels are expected to rise significantly, drowning islands and possibly displacing hundreds of millions of people from coastlines, where more than a third of the world’s population lives. Ground water supplies are set to shrink, reservoirs to dry up. Wildfires and violent storms will strike more often and much harder. And much of this change is expected within the next 50 years.
Cold Truths About Global Warming
By February, Canadians’ love of fresh snow and winter sports has given way to annoyance, as we shovel our driveways for the umpteenth time. This winter, we’ve had some particularly nasty weather. But far colder and much nastier winters could be in store for us, especially for eastern Canadians and perhaps very soon. The culprit, weirdly enough, could be global warming.
Response to Baliunas et al.
with Karl Braganza, David Karoly and James Risbey | Complex issues like climate change are surrounded by a dense tangle of scientific theory and evidence that is difficult for any non-specialist to verify or understand. People can exploit this situation to tell very different stories about the issue. Because countless bits of evidence are available, it’s possible – by selecting and connecting the bits carefully – to construct practically any picture of the world and make it seem real.
