Does this wacky weather have you concerned? Record high temperatures, floods, superstorms, and drought -- climate change has landed squarely on our front doorstep.
I'm concerned. I think most of us know that we have to take action, but unfortunately the political establishment has its head buried in the sand.
I'm disheartened that none of the six Ontario Liberal leadership contenders mentioned climate change in their campaigns to become Premier. At a time when the Harper Conservatives have abandoned Canada's Kyoto commitments, we desperately need leadership from Canada's largest province.
Climate change threatens our economy, environment, and quality of life. I admit that the critical need to address our warming planet can be a tough sell to Canadians in the middle of winter, but we need to take a look at how dire this issue really is.
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In Copenhagen in 2009, international targets were set to reduce carbon emissions with a goal of preventing a global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned us that two degrees warmer is not a safety zone. It's a tipping point.
Unfortunately, we are now certain to chug past that tipping point. According to a recent study in Nature, a two-degree rise is now inevitable. We are already experiencing the negative effects on our environment and quality of life.
The financial bills are also piling up. Climate change will cost Canada's economy $5 billion by 2020 and up to $43 billion by 2050 according to the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. Environment Commissioner Gord Miller says that climate change could cost the Ontario forestry industry $75 billion by 2080.
So is there any hope? Well, the good news is that reducing carbon emissions is still on the table as the only way to dodge some of the most catastrophic climatic effects. And taking action will boost our economy to create jobs.
World leaders last week at the World Economic Forum called for a $14 trillion investment in greening the world's economy. Whether politicians and business leaders heed the call, there is no doubt that new job growth will be in clean tech and low carbon infrastructure.
The big question is whether or not Ontario will be a leader in creating jobs to green the world's economy.
The first step is having a Premier that will talk about the issue. It would help if the opposition parties at Queen's Park were not missing in action. Instead of taking action on climate change, the NDP is focused on lowering taxes on carbon pollution, specifically gasoline and heating fuels, and the Conservatives seem to want to kill green energy.
Ontario desperately needs political leadership to reduce carbon pollution and to create jobs and prosperity in the emerging low carbon economy. Our leaders to date have emulated Nero, the Roman emperor accused of playing his fiddle as Rome burned.
Our Earth is heating up. It's time to stop fiddling around.
Follow Mike Schreiner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeSchreiner
That said I was in China in 2010 and didnt notice anything unusual in Shanghi, Bejing, Daliaon... My spelling of the cities is off....
Science is able to help us build better structures to withstand harsher weather. Science is able to tell us the best places to build our structures, so we are less impacted by the changes brought about by climate change.
Planning for the future, a warmer future is what our governments need to focus on. We don't need to waste billions on green dreams, the planet is already green, brown & blue.
And really, climate change "will" cost & climate change "could" cost. Yes & the moon is made of cheese, when you actually have some idea what those "will" & "could" costs are for, let us know.
We don't need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, we need to put proper pollution controls on vehicles & the industries that burn fossil fuels.
Each generation must suffer for the actions of the previous generation, such is life. Where I am sitting the next couple generations have it pretty darn good!
If you could rid your thoughts of all this doom & gloom hysteria the fanatics are spreading you might actually see that.
In that paragraph lies the biggest reason some people still reject the scientific information about climate change. There's a huge difference between weather and climate.
Definition of weather is "The state of the atmosphere at a place and time as regards heat, cloudiness, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc."
Definition of climate is "The weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period of time"
This shows that the current weather outside your door is not what is meant when the climate of the planet is discussed. We have to take the time to understand the difference between the two in order to understand what the scientists are telling us about the dangers as the overall climate of the planet warms up.
Fewer hurricanes, less brush fires, higher crop production and living in Canada, more warm weather is welcome.
Problems I see are increases in sea ice in the southern hemp, need to get the ice down to average
Durham Region's (east of Toronto) climate change initiative;
http://www.durham.ca/community/climate_change/2012DurhamLAP.pdf
Nearly half of the warming we're concerned about isn't even directly the result of CO2 per se, but in fact particulate matter such as black carbon. This material is ejected from many industrial stacks, and though it only measures in miniscule parts-per-million, the collective effect is rather massive.
Current technology could easily as-but-elminate this source of warming altogether and would improve air quality worldwide.
It's not even a terribly expensive thing to do all told.
I agree we need to limit CO2, but honestly, why aren't we pushing the easy stuff, the hard-to-argue stuff, first?
I mean who's going to argue against reducing particulate pollution of this nature?
The "Nature" editorial goes on to say crude from the oil sands is not "as dirty from a climate perspective as many believe" and it calls on the President to approve the pipeline. In the words of the editorial: "By approving Keystone, Obama can bolster his credibility within industry and among conservatives...But all will be for naught unless the president can...somehow reset the climate discussion."
The weather effects we are feeling prove many of these points have passed.
Any action taken today will have a long pause before having any effect, We have loaded the atmosphere and cut the forests Earth needs time to clean up our mess.
Our leaders have tossed in the towel Corporations now run the show.