UN says climate change effects similar to nuclear war

By Peter Calamai

Apr. 8— The long and uneasy alliance between politics and science to combat global climate change has finally broken down, perhaps irrevocably.

And the real losers are certain to be the public.

The bust-up came this week in the aftermath of the recent Bush administration decision to oppose the Kyoto Protocol — the international treaty to fight global warming — which the US government helped negotiate.

The White House move, reversing campaign promises by President George W. Bush, concerns researchers around the world who say they’ve kept their part of the bargain: to find convincing scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are altering the Earth’s climate, and heading toward much more drastic upheaval.

“Science delivered the goods but politics failed,” says Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria professor and world-ranking expert in computer climate models. Similar disillusion ran through the ranks of delegates from almost 100 governments who met this week in Nairobi, Kenya to formally accept reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-convened conclave of top researchers in all aspects of climate science.

The reports, summaries of which were made public earlier this year, provide the strongest scientific evidence yet for immediate global action to come to grips with the inevitable effects of climate change.

We’re now sure that the Northern Hemisphere is warming more than during any period in the past 500 years and likely more than any time in the past millennium.

Most of the warming over the past 50 years has probably been caused by such human activities as leveling forests and burning fossil fuels. But natural factors like volcanic eruptions, variations in the sun’s radiation and cows belching methane also play a role.

Computer models do faithfully reproduce most of the climate twists and turns of the 20th century on a global scale. The models have also become much more credible in projecting what’s likely to happen to the world’s climate if the increase in greenhouse gases isn’t curbed.

Scientists can now say with high confidence that regional changes in temperature have had “discernible impacts on many physical and biological systems.” This most recent conclusion was based on long-term studies of more than 400 plants and animals and more than 100 telltale processes, such as the retreat of glaciers.

Science isn’t likely to find a savior, a technological or biological marvel that allows the world to keep burning coal, clearing rain forests and driving gas-guzzling SUVs without having to pay a climate-change price.

But do these five answers justify a radical remaking of the world’s economy that would bring decades of upheaval, especially for North American society?

“It’s all a gamble, but at some point soon we’ve got to throw the dice,” says University of Calgary professor Bill Leiss, an expert in contentious risk issues such as genetic engineering and climate change.

The climate change crusade has stirred passions from its beginnings, which many pinpoint as a sweltering Canada Day weekend in Toronto in 1988.

That’s when an international conference called for a 20 percent reduction by 2005 in the global emissions of greenhouses gases, backed by a major push to nail down the underlying science that would prove the necessity for such a huge cut.

Thirteen years later, science has largely delivered the evidence. Yet emissions of greenhouse gases have gone up, rather than down.

Forget the oft-quoted target of reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent below the 1990 level, or by 20 percent below the increased levels of today. The best scientific estimate is that the world would have to cut total emissions of greenhouse gases by more than half over the next few decades simply to hold this century’s rise in global average temperatures to no more than 3 degrees, which is roughly five times the temperature increase during the last century.

For an energy-intensive country like Canada, the best estimate is that emissions would have to be cut by almost 70 percent - to about a third of today’s level. The mere whisper of this figure paralyzes most Canadians and their institutions, says Leiss, who is also president of the Royal Society of Canada.

“It would appear to mean the end of our industrial civilization.

Governments are in complete denial. They can’t deal with this. It’s too big, too horrendous,” he says.

“They’re terrified of the kind of dialogue they would have to have with the public.”

Leiss researches and teaches such dialogue - called risk communications - at Queen’s University and the University of Calgary where he holds a research chair.

For more than a decade, governments have avoided any tough decisions on climate change, saying science had to provide better answers. Scientists rose to the challenge. Working without pay, they provided their latest research and best analytical expertise to governments through the UN’s climate change panel.

The agreement was that the policy-makers would then deliver the political goods. But the US opposition to Kyoto, and Canada’s subsequent waffling, left the scientists disillusioned, says Weaver.

“Politics is losing touch with the science. The problem is that most people don’t recognize slow change in the climate, so governments are not being pushed by the public to deal with the issue,” he said.

The science hasn’t managed to convince enough people that the necessary societal changes are in the best interests of the economy and health, as well as the environment, says Ralph Torrie, an Ottawa environmental consultant long involved in climate issues.

“The prevailing paradigm is still that it’s a boxing match with the economy in one corner and the environment in another,” he says.

“In the end, to get action is going to require a positive motivation, not people acting under the threat of losing a vote or losing a buck. That’s a corner we have to turn yet.”

Source: The Toronto Star