Hill Times

Climate change: adapt or die!

By May 14, 2012March 18th, 20202 Comments

Tired of the sterile debate between dogmatists on both sides of the climate change debate? Time for a fresh look at a hugely complex issue that both sides are guilty of turning into a caricature for their own benefit. It is not necessary for the science to be “settled” (whatever that means) for us to take the possibility of climate change seriously. But taking it seriously doesn’t mean we have to take leave of our senses and acquiesce in extreme policies that are in any case highly unlike to eliminate climate change. Have a look at my latest column on the topic in The Hill Times. As I argue there, “The key discussion, then, is not about whether climate change is occurring, but how great we think the risk is, and how big the insurance premium is we are willing to pay to mitigate the potential damage. ” Enjoy!

2 Comments

  • Norm Kalmanovitch says:

    Climate is too variable to be certain about anything but the climate change issue is strictly about global temperature and there is absolute certainty about global temperature because there are five independent global temperature datasets and all five demonstrate that global warming ended by 1998 and that the world has been cooling since 2002.
    This is hard fact and as such there is a 100% absolute consensus among climate scientists that there has been no global warming since 1998.
    There is also a continued increase in global CO2 emissions of over 26% from 26gt/year in 2002 when the current global cooling trend started to over 33Gt/year today as the Earth continues to cool.
    A decade of increased CO2 emissions coupled with a decade long cooling trend that is expected to last until the end of solar cycle 25 in 2032 represents absolute certainty the trillion dollars spent on climate change initiatives over the past ten years has been entirely wasted!
    People in your position do not have the right to be uncertain about the facts; only the interpretation of these facts but your uncertainty is not based on fact but merely whether or not you believe in the conjecture.

    Go to http://www.climate4you.com click on HadCRUT3 global temperature and draw a trend line fron 2002 to the last entry for March 2012. This is raw monthly data from the same dataset that the IPCC used in both the 2001 report and the 2007 report to convince the world of a global warming threat.
    See if you can find the same warming threat on the same data over the past ten years as the Earth cools.
    You can also go to http://www.friendsofscience.org and check the graph on the front page of their website which shows the raw monthly temperature data from satellites along with the raw CO2 data from MLO.
    The trend since 2002 is posted on this graph confirming absolute certainty that the Earth is currently cooling as CO2 concentration continues to increase.
    If you want the true story google “Norm Kalmanovitch CO2 insanity”
    Norm Kalmanovitch P.Geoph

  • Jim Baird says:

    Brian, a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute shows climate change alone could reduce the economic value of key ocean services by up to 2 trillion USD a year by 2100.

    A joint 2009 report by the World Wildlife Fund and the insurer Allianz SE projected sea level rise could increase the value of at-risk assets in 136 key coastal cities worldwide by up to $28 trillion.

    At a minimum carbon emitters should be paying a premium based on these actuarial risks and technologies that reduce or eliminate the damage should be subsidized to the same extent.

    Fortunately Canada has the technological capacity to resolve both the cause and effect of climate change, as it captures a large tranche of the renewable energy sector.

    The global warming mitigation method would produce all of the renewable energy mankind will ever need using ocean thermal energy conversion, which converts a damaging heat source – accumulating in the oceans – to productive use.

    Two positive environmental consequences derive from this production:

    The thermal expansion of the oceans is diminished.
    Cooler oceans suck more carbon out of the atmosphere than warmer oceans.

    The other contributor to sea level rise is melting glaciers and ice caps and the depletion of aquifers for irrigation.

    You can mitigate this by desalination, electrolysis or by capturing melt water before it enters the oceans.

    Oil tankers deadheading to their home ports in the MENA are a way to transport some of this as ballast to this region. The global tanker capacity is in fact about the same volume Saudi Arabia was pumping for irrigation at significant cost even as it depleted its deep aquifers.

    Hydrogen from the conversion of liquid volume to gas is also an energy/water currency. You can transport it (1/9th the weight of water) to the desert to recombine it with resident oxygen to produce water and power to operate pumps for irrigation.

    The consequence of irrigated deserts is more carbon is sucked out of the atmosphere and you get all of the food and fiber an expanding population requires.

    This Canadian solution is a win/win/win with respect to energy, the environment and humanity.

    (The water produced by this method can be used to replenish any and all aquifers but the deserts are the only land masses with the capacity to sequester the amount of water and CO2 required to right the atmosphere)

    Regards.