climate change effects

Without Vision We Perish

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The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is in its third day, and so far there’s been enough drama, accusations, and threats to put a soap opera to shame. It would be entertaining, if the health of our planet didn’t hang in the balance. To read more of the details, check out this link or this one.  In thinking about what is at stake, consider these voices that are being drowned out by the drama:

  • In Copenhagen this week, in response to the proposal from developed nations of $10 billion dollars a year to combat climate change, Lumumba Di-Aping of Sudan, the head of the 135-nation bloc of developing countries, said.

“If this is the greatest risk that humanity faces, then how do you explain $10 billion?Ten billion will not buy developing countries’ citizens enough coffins.”

Remember, to date, over $1 trillion dollars has been spent on rescuing financial institutions!

  • Joshua Mukusya is a Kenyan farmer who, 30 years ago, set up the Utooni Development Project (UTP) to help rural families improve food and water security by terracing land, building sand dams and planting trees. The UDP’s motto is “Without Vision We Perish”.

For Mr. Mukusya and other Kenyan farmers, climate change is not a debate, it’s a reality.  These subsistence farmers are trying to adjust to the negative effects of climate change, but it is difficult. Mr. Mukusya states:

“The climate is changing—it is very clear…The majority of people here have no resources to cope with the situation. If we don’t make changes, we cannot survive… For us, this is a matter of survival. God created abundant land. We need to find solutions to the destruction we have made for ourselves.”

Africa, the world’s poorest continent, is most at risk because of climate change, yet it is the one that has contributed the least to global warming. To hear more about the situation of Mr. Mukusya and other African farmers, check out the video below.  “Taking the Heat” is a Canadian Foodgrains Bank video about African agriculture and climate change:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IFBhKb6Kkk]

Fourteen Days to Seal History’s Judgement on this Generation

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Published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages, the editorial 14 Days to Seal History’s Judgement on This Generation, is a call for action from world leaders on climate change:

Today 56newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action,  climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear.

Read more

Rising Temperatures, Rising Seas

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Today on CBC Radio’s National Science Show Quirks and Quarks the topic will be “Rising Temperatures, Rising Seas“.  Sea levels have already risen 20 cm over the last 100 years, and are predicted to rise up to a meter over the next 100 years due to climate change. As the Quirks website states:

this increase in sea level would have vast impacts around the world, especially in heavily populated low-lying river deltas, like those in Bangladesh, China, southeast Asia, Egypt, the southern US and British Columbia.

Click here to listen to the program, or tune in to CBC One at noon today if you are in Canada.

If you haven’t already checked out the 350.org website to find or organize a Vigil for a Real Deal during the Weekend of Action December 11 – 13, do so now!

BBC News Video “A Journey Through The Earth’s Climate History”

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For a 2 1/2 minute review of the earth’s climate history and where we are now, click on this link to the BBC News video “A Journey Through The Earth’s Climate History” which looks at the dual questions of how the Earth’s climate arrived at its current state and how scientists delve into the secrets of our planet’s past.  To get a expanded text version of it, including the sources and resources for the video, click here.

The Queen in on Climate Change Conspiracy

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Queen Elizabeth II addressed the Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad and Tobago yesterday by urging the heads of state to lead on climate change.  She told the delegates:

“The threat to our environment is not a new concern but it is now a global challenge that will continue to affect the security and stability of millions for years to come.”

Not known for her fanatical, unconventional ideas, it seems that even the Queen of England can be duped by the lefty, liberal, radical, nazi, communist, terrorist, world-wide conspiracy of scientists trying to fool everybody into believing that the burning of fossil fuels is affecting our environment, and that the window of opportunity we, as a global community, have to act is swiftly closing.  Those lefty/liberal/nazi/communists/terrorist scientists are obviously in it for themselves.  And the corporations that make money from all of us burning those same fossil fuels are pure as the driven snow, wanting nothing but to save us from these nasty people trying to gain financially from pulling the blinders over our eyes and getting us to swallow anthropogenic climate change whole.  These corporations want to help us out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s not like they having anything – like billions of dollars in profits every year – to gain by continuing along this path that we are currently on.  Nope, not them.  It’s those nasty scientists getting rich off of us suckers.

Want to learn more?  Check out James Hoggan’s book Climate Cover-Up – The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Or go to the DeSmogBlog website, whose mission is to clear “the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science“.


The Science of Climate Change- It’s Elementary

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I recently spent an afternoon at Science World in Vancouver, escaping a cold rainy day.  In one corner was a display on how global warming works.  I thought it was worth repeating here, paraphrased and expanded upon.  The explanation went something like this:

Carbon dioxide (Co2) is what is put into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned.         Humans, mostly in Europe and North America, have been burning more and more fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil are the 3 major culprits) at an increasing rate since the Industrial Revolution started several hundred years ago.  At the same time we have been cutting down more and more trees.  Trees clean the air by taking in carbon dioxide and putting out oxygen.  Carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere trap heat. Therefore:

More Carbon Dioxide + Less Trees to Absorb Carbon Dioxide =

More Carbon Dioxide than ever before in the atmosphere, trapping heat in a way the planet has never experienced before

Now I am not a scientist, and admittedly there are disagreements even among scientists about the rate of heat trapping and its effects on the global climate.  There are also other gases such as methane and nitrous oxide that are also affecting our environment.  But this was such a straightforward explanation, one that a child could easily understand.

Maybe Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Environment Minister Jim Prentice need to spend an afternoon at Science World.

Canada Unable to Formulate Its Own Climate Policy

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Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice appeared on CBC Radio’s “The Current” with guest host Susan Ormiston this morning.  He kept repeating the now standard Conservative mantra that Canada can’t do anything until the U.S. takes definitive action on capping its emissions and adopting green technology.  This brings into question our nation’s sovereignty.  Although Canada has always had the U.S. elephant as our neighbour, it hasn’t deterred us from taking independent stances in the past.  Mr. Prentice and Mr Harper just need to look into the Progressive Conservative Party’s history – whether it is former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership role in curbing acid rain emissions or former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s refusal of nuclear arms for Canada.  If either of these Conservative leaders had taken the present Conservative Prime Minister’s stance of letting the Americans take the lead, our country would be a very different place.

To hear the whole interview, click here and go to Part 1 of today’s program.

In other coverage leading up to Copenhagen, Robert J. Kennedy Jr. wrote an interesting commentary in the Huffington Post yesterday on “The New Arms Race”.  In the article, Mr. Kennedy asserts that the Chinese are now spending as much on green energy technologies as on the military.  38 % of the recent Chinese stimulus package went to renewable energy, in comparison with just 12% of the U.S. stimulus package.  (Here in Canada, the Conservative government designated a whopping 8 % of the stimulus package to renewables in last January’s budget).

Also in yesterday’s Huffington Post, James Hoggan asserts that the climate denial industry should foot the bill for delayed action on addressing climate change (see my post yesterday on the CBC coverage of this issue). The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently announced that every year of delayed action to address climate change will add $500 Billion to the price tag of saving the planet.  

Climate Change Cover-up on CBC Radio Today

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The last half hour of today’s CBC Radio current affairs show The Current discussed “climate coverup” .  Their first guest was James Hoggan, author of Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Mr. Hoggan is president of the PR firm James Hoggan and Associates as well as being the chair of the David Suzuki Foundation.  He was followed by University of Toronto computer network manager Jim Prall who keeps tabs on climate skeptics and climate scientists.  The final guest was Lawrence Solomon, a climate change skeptic and author of  The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud – and those who are too fearful to do so.

Click here to go to the CBC.ca website, and scroll to the bottom of the page to click on “Part 3” to listen to this interesting exchange.  One of the interesting “facts’ that Mr. Solomon asserts is that oil companies are funding environmental groups that push the whole “false” climate change theory.  Now that’s an new one!

Tonight on CBC Radio’s evening news show, As It Happens, c0host Carol Off will be looking into a national radio ad campaign mocking the whole idea of climate change. If you miss it, check back because I’m hoping to post the link to it.

Canada Continues to Procrastinate on Climate Change Legislation

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Canada’s Conservative government is waiting for others to act on climate change, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said less than 3 weeks before world leaders meet in Copenhagen to negotiate an agreement on climate change.  Prentice said the further delay is necessary because Canada has to wait until a global treaty is reached, and a Canada-U.S. agreement on climate change is reached. *heavy sigh*

In contrast, American President Barrack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced yesterday that there is the need in Copenhagen to “rally the world” toward a solution to climate change. And it flies in the face of Denmark’s Prime Minister’s call to all developed nations to bring specific pledges to the table at Copenhagen next month.

It used to be that Harper et. al. had company in obstructing and procrastinating on climate change agreements, when John Howard of Australia and American President George Bush were on the international stage doing the same thing. In 2009, however,  Bush and Howard are gone, but Harper remains, trying to sound a little more green while at the same time doing nothing about this crucial issue.

Dr. Tim Flannery, scientist and author of  “‘The Weathermakers” and “Now or Never”  has expressed his disappointment in Canada’s lack of leadership and disengagement in what former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has called the most important global meeting of this century. He points out that Canada, one of the top 10 global polluters,  is falling behind in achieving the targets scientists tell us we need to avoid runaway climate change.

The United States already has the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill passed by Congress and making its way through the Senate.  Australia has passed its own climate change legislation. Flannery points out that enacting legislation on reducing emissions requires a substantial amount of legwork, and that it would behove the Canadian government to already be at work on it. Flannery says:

Time is exceedingly short for Canada with its very different economy and very different approach to this problem to be able to follow the lead of the U.S. in any meaningful way.

Click here to see Tim Flannery talking about Canada’s inaction on this issue.

Contact Minister Prentice and let him know that Canada needs to become a leader, not a laggard, on climate change.  If you are a mom with a child or children 17 or under, go to Moms Against Climate Change to upload your child’s picture to remind Prime Minister Harper who he is representing in Copenhagen.

“Saving the planet isn’t about everyone doing everything.  It’s about everyone doing something.” Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth

Global Survival, Not Suicide, Pact urged by President of Maldives

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With world leaders backing away from reaching a legally binding treating on climate change in Copenhagen next month, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives delivered a powerful message at the Climate Vulnerable Forum last week.

Here is an excerpt from his moving call to action:

“We gather in this hall today, as some of the most climate-vulnerable nations on Earth.

We are vulnerable because climate change threatens to hit us first; and hit us hardest.

And we are vulnerable because we have modest means with which to protect ourselves from the coming disaster.

We are a diverse group of countries.

But we share one common enemy.

For us, climate change is no distant or abstract threat; but a clear and present danger to our survival.

Climate change is melting the glaciers in Nepal.

It is causing flooding in Bangladesh.

It threatens to submerge the Maldives and Kiribati.

And in recent weeks, it has furthered drought in Tanzania, and typhoons in the Philippines.

We are the frontline states in the climate change battle.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Developing nations did not cause the climate crisis.

We are not responsible for the hundreds of years of carbon emissions, which are cooking the planet.

But the dangers climate change poses to our countries, means that this crisis can no longer be considered somebody else’s problem.

Carbon knows no boundaries.

Whether we like it or not, we are all in this fight together.”

President Nasheed goes on to say about Copenhagen:

“At the moment every country arrives at the negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible.  They never make commitments, unless someone else does first.”

“This is the logic of the madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.”

“We don’t want a global suicide pact.  And we will not sign a global suicide pact, in Copenhagen or anywhere.  So today, I invite some of the most vulnerable nations in the world, to join a global survival pact instead.”

To read the complete speech and sign a pact to stand with President Nasheed for the survival of all nations and peoples, go to the 350.org website. For more information about which nations are most vulnerable to climate change, and why, go the UK Government’s webpage “Act On Copenhagen”.