Like many Canadians, I stood outside this past Sunday, November 11th, at a local cenotaph to commemorate Remembrance Day. I couldn’t help but notice the weather: it was almost 20°C in Toronto and record-breaking weather for Southern Ontario. You shouldn’t read too much into one warm day and elsewhere in the country places like Edmonton and Winnipeg were getting blanketed by snow and sub-zero temperatures, but I think most people can agree that 2012, like many recent years, has been both remarkable and unpredictable.
To start the year, Southern Ontario and Quebec enjoyed a very mild winter. After experiencing warm temperatures for most of February, a snap frost in March wiped out most of the fruit crop, costing farmers millions of dollars in lost apples, pears, cherries and plums. During the summer months parts of the US and Canada were hit with record drought that has pushed up food prices and caused many US counties to declare states of emergency. Summer Arctic sea ice melted to a record low, surprising many top scientists. All across Canada, the weather has been unusual and costly.
Last week Barak Obama was re-elected President of the United States in a close contest. Days before voters went to the polls, the election campaigns were interrupted by the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. Hurricane Sandy caused billions of dollars in damage and likely influenced the outcome of the election. I actually stayed awake until after 2am EST to watch Obama’s victory speech. Many environmentalists were encouraged by his mention of the threat presented by the destructive power of a warming planet. It is a problem that our politicians and leaders are having a difficult time ignoring, and hopefully the Obama administration is able to work toward some policy solutions. In Canada, the Harper government has committed to following US actions to combat climate change, so we may see some progress in climate policy over the next several years.
With the impacts of climate change accelerating and international negotiations in a stalemate, 2012 will likely be remembered as a year of lost opportunity. The next UNFCCC conference begins in two weeks in Doha, Qatar, and will bring together delegates from over 190 nations (except Canada, who remains the only country to leave Kyoto). The COP talks in Qatar will attempt to reach a new international agreement to curb GHG emissions, although based on the results of past negotiations the chances of success is doubtful.
Perhaps when I’m standing for Remembrance Day in the future, warm November temperatures won’t be out of the ordinary. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that we’re heading toward a new conflict, not with other nations but against a warming world. While there will likely be political wrangling over issues such as water scarcity and Arctic sovereignty, the fact remains that as a global community we all will be facing challenges posed by climate change. Images of the US National Guard providing disaster assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy may be an indication that we’ll need our troops more than ever.
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Re. extreme weather? deja-vu
Thanks for your comments Bill! I find it fascinating how extreme weather events can change public perception toward climate change, and I'd like to see some research that correlates weather events (Katrina, Sandy, US southwest drought) with belief in climate change and how it fluctuates over time. Just this past week both the World Bank and IEA publically warned about dangerous warming by 2060, but I suspect that people need to see damage first before acting. Once again thanks everyone for commenting!
extreme weather? deja-vu
For those of you who have been caught up in 'extreme weather' news - the
UScentric heatwaves and drought and more global - I highly recommend
venturing back to another era to add a historical dimension by reading
NYTimes science writer William K. Stevens' excellent THE CHANGE IN THE
WEATHER: People, Weather and the science of climate published in 1999.
Stevens is writing about extreme weather events - mostly in America - in
the 90s and how both informed and general publics perceived weather,
climate, science and the possibility of mitigation in an America where
it's the economy, stupid. Our perception of weather and climate has a
long history.
Stevens is knowledgeable, prescient, incredibly informing. He's
corresponding with Jim Hansen, Steve Shnieder, Phil Jones, Tom Karl (and
Dick Lindzin and Pat Michaels) while he writes the book. In a chapter on
trying to find a Greenhouse Fingerprint he profiles a young scientist
named Ben Santor and his use of statistical testing of climate models
(Muller and Hansen this summer) and how his success led to a dust-up in
the 1995 IPCC report deliberations about whether and how the science
community and their nation-state minders could say that 'the balance of
evidence suggests there is a discernable human influence on climate
change'.
Same old, same old but do you really appreciate how much we did know
about climate change more than a decade ago, at the end of the century?
Extreme weather and hope in Kyoto. Wake up and get off the hopium. Climate change is an emergency and we should have treated it as an emergency for at least five years.
http://bravenewworld.in/2012/07/11/bridging-silos-the-case-for-emergency...
It's too late
How many climate blame scientists to change a bulb?
None but they have consensus that it will change.
If science had all along just simply said climate change “would” and “will” happen instead “might” and “could” happen, this wouldn’t have happened:
*In all of the debates Obama hadn’t planned to mention climate change once.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Canada’s voters had already killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially you fear mongers and the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
Now we need the millions in the global scientific community step up to the plate and SAVE THE PLANET.
Exaggeration wasn’t a crime and “science” gave us pesticides don’t forget.
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