Some people say that the climate
change we see today is part of natural
fluctuations in the climate. There are web
sites proclaiming this and suggesting
scientists calling for action are phonies.
This is false news tied up in political dogma.
Now is indeed time to take serious measures to
stop global warming. All countries should do
it.
Happily,
people favouring action to address global
warming were dominant in the October 2019
Canadian Federal election. True the ruling
Liberals were reduced to a minority
government. But responding to climate change
played a role in their survival. The
Conservative challengers who had no plan to
address global warming and who called for
dropping the tax on gasoline - a key response
according to leading economists - did not
prevail. The Bloc Quebecois surged in Quebec
likely in part around this issue. But the
deniers of human-caused climate change and
their web sites should be addressed head on
anyway.
It
is true that during the life of planet earth
the climate has changed many times. But these
changes were different from what is happening
now. First, some big changes took place
thousands of years ago. There were Ice Ages.
After another 100,000 years there will be the
next. Note three things about these. 1. they
were not a consequence of human activity. 2.
they took place over thousands of years. 3.
they caused cooling – not warming.
Second, there were volcanic
eruptions. For example, 75,000 years ago the
biggest eruption took place at Mount Toba in
Indonesia. This killed a large part of the
human population of the day. An article in
Nature, March 2018, reports that settlements
in South Africa at that time experienced ash
from the eruption but survived. Closer in time
to us, we know that the eruption of Krakatoa,
Indonesia in 1993, caused a cooling and a loss
of crops for several years in Europe. Third,
it is said that a hit by a meteor changed the
climate and killed the dinasaurs.
All these changes caused cooling.
And - yes - all were by natural causes. But
the change now is very different and has
become tied up in political dogma. 1. The
change now is a warming and it is not local -
it is world-wide 2. It is caused by a
contamination of the atmosphere by increasing
concentrations of gases. 3. These gases relate
to human activities and they do other things
affecting life on the planet. They are not
simply an agent of climate change like ash
from a volcano. 4. A majority of scientists
and international scientific panels called
together by the UN for the purpose of advice
to the governments of the world believe that
the present warming is dangerous for the life
of the human population and that it calls for
increased action.
In July 2019 results were published
from research by an international
collaboration of scientists on the history of
global temperatures from 1 AD to 2,000 AD -
pretty much the span of recorded human
history. They confirmed what a majority of
scientists had been saying. Today’s warming
that comes from human activity is
unprecedented. It is much larger than any
fluctuation and it is continuing to increase
rapidly. This adds a little bit more weight to
why the world needs to take measures to stop
this climate change as quickly as possible.
In 1989 everyone
knew that this global warming was a problem
for humanity. Republican President George Bush
created a program to monitor global warming,
the US Global Change Research Program, and in
1990 he signed it into law. At that time it
was thought that responding to global warming
would be a bi-partisan issue.
The situation
changed in North America with President George
W Bush. The Republicans promoted doubts and
uncertainties about the origin and reality of
warming. They questioned the truth of the
science. The Conservative government of
Stephen Harper in Canada also gave rise to
some uncertainties. The lower interest in
responding to climate change at that time
appeared linked to the oil industry in Canada
that Harper supported.
All that
questioning of the causes of global warming
took 10 years which could have been used to
take measures to address the global warming.
According to James Hoggan, the author of the
book “Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny
Global Warming” (Greystone, 2009), this loss
of time with doubts and uncertainties was the
result of major efforts by the international
Oil Industry and its allies.
So at this time,
people with opinions about climate change have
a right to them. But they should in no way
prevent or slow actions to address a threat to
survival declared by the majority of
scientists.
The advice of a team of scientists assembled
by the United Nations to warn the world about
a danger is more important than the opinions
of a few. No longer should there be delay of
needed measures that matter to a large part of
humanity.