The question of whether there is climate change or not seems to miss the point. Ten thousand years ago, all the coastal mountains, Vancouver and beyond, were covered with a huge layer of ice. A period of ice age was coming to an end.
Our focus must be on being stewards of the Earth.
- Avoid buying anything in plastic, starting with plastic water bottles.
- Buy clothes second-hand.
- Buy bulk food and prepare simple meals from scratch.
- Walk and use public transit instead of your car.
- Stop wasting water.
- Plant flowers instead of lawns.
- Plant trees instead of cutting them down.
Marianne Werner
Vancouver
Have you looked for the survey that shows 97 per cent of climate scientists agree climate change is caused by human activity? You won’t find one. What you will find is a link to IOPScience, which reviewed the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in peer-reviewed scientific literature. It found “66.4 per cent of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and 0.3 per cent were uncertain about the cause of global warming.”
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, “97.1 per cent endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.”
This conclusion is a long way off from the claim about 97 per cent of scientists accepting climate change as caused by human activity. Can any conclusion be drawn from this analysis? No. The analysis and conclusion are meaningless because the method used is non-scientific, but it provides a headline that readers would not bother to dig into.
For a more scientific look at climate change, check out friendsofscience.org.
Joan Davies
Coquitlam
I am dismayed that you would give equal coverage to the position supported by more than 97 per cent of climate scientists (that climate change is caused by human activity and is a grave threat) and one supported by less than three per cent.
That is not balanced journalism.
Joan McCance
North Vancouver
I want to express my gratitude to the thoughtful correspondents who wrote on the subject of climate change and to the editor for devoting space to this discussion. My thanks go especially to Mark Norbury for laying out the contours of the issue in such measured terms. To add to just a few points emerging from this conversation:
- Those interested in the remarks (previously cited by one writer) of Jim Skea, Chair of the IPCC, will find that they are intended to counter not the gravity (let alone the reality) of anthropogenic climate change but rather the risk of fixating on the figure of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as an all-or-nothing threshold.
- The relevant question is not so much whether the earth will go on to support any life at all in times to come (or, alternatively, “incinerate itself”), as whether the ecological systems that have supported lives and societies throughout human history can cope with the pressure of various changes (including but not limited to those directly related to greenhouse gas levels) without significant disruption and cost.
- I wholly agree that these questions require careful discernment in assessing reliable information from credible sources, treated without prejudice and without caricature.
- I share the hope that we will move beyond the use of labels such as “denier” and “alarmist” as terms of automatic dismissal, and toward thinking through the supposed conflicts between economically and ecologically sound development.
Connor Page
Surrey
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