Climate-change skeptics have it wrong, memo to minister says
By Mike De Souza, Canwest News ServiceApril 5, 2010 11:48
People stop to look at a snow-covered "Cool Globe" part of an exhibition about combating global warming and climate change in the Kongens Nytorv area in the center of Copenhagen on December 19, 2009 at the end of the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference.Photograph by: Getty Images, OTTAWA — Canadian scientists from six different federal departments have shot down a recent controversy that raised doubts about whether humans are causing global warming and have urged the government to base its climate-change policies on peer-reviewed research.
In a memorandum, prepared for Environment Minister Jim Prentice prior to his participation at the Copenhagen conference last December, the top-ranking official at Environment Canada said a controversy surrounding stolen e-mails from a climate-research centre in the United Kingdom does not call into question the reliability of the science.
The personal e-mails exchanged by climate scientists wound up in the hands of special-interest groups who say they are skeptical about peer-reviewed research that concludes humans are causing global warming. Many skeptics, including Conservative MPs such as Maxime Bernier and Colin Mayes, have suggested the messages in the e-mails prove a massive conspiracy to manipulate or hide evidence by climate scientists.
But in the memorandum obtained by Canwest News Service, Environment Canada's deputy minister, Ian Shugart, suggested the skeptics had it wrong. He explained the scientific information in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment of climate-change research was still the best reference tool for the negotiations.
"Recent media reports in the aftermath of the hacking incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia . . . has raised some concerns about the reliability and robustness of some of the science considered in the (fourth assessment of climate science released in 2007 by the) IPCC," said the memorandum to Prentice from his deputy minister, released following an Access to Information request by the Pembina Institute, an environmental research group.
"Despite these developments, the department continues to view the IPCC (fourth assessment) as the most comprehensive and rigorous source of scientific information for climate-change negotiations."
The memorandum was drafted by Francis Zwiers, the director of the climate-research division, science-and-technology branch, on Dec. 3, 2009, and explains the recommendations are based on an inter-departmental group of scientists from six different departments who were brought together in July 2008 to advise the government on key scientific developments for international negotiations.
The document noted that new scientific research produced since the last IPCC report suggests the panel underestimated some impacts of global warming, such as rising sea levels and disrupted ecosystems in the oceans.
For example, the memorandum said the latest research about melting ice sheets suggests the estimated rise in sea levels in the 21st century could be more than one metre, or nearly twice the maximum 0.59-metre sea-level rise predicted in the IPCC.
Clare Demerse, the associate director of climate policy at the Pembina Institute, said the document should have given Prentice more incentive to negotiate a binding deal at the Copenhagen conference. In the end, countries only agreed to a framework without any binding obligations or targets.
"Unfortunately, the real message of these notes still doesn't seem to have sunk in with Canada's government," Demerse said. "Instead of adopting ambitious climate policies based on science, the government has chosen to base its approach on waiting for the U.S."
The international community is working on finalizing a new climate treaty over the next few years, but might not be finished before the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, leaving a gap between current targets and future binding goals.
The memo also advises the government to consider cumulative emissions over the years when it sets an individual target for a given year, since carbon dioxide emissions stay in the atmosphere for decades and will continue to warm the planet, regardless of whether there are reductions in pollution in the future.
The IPCC has been criticized in recent months following revelations about some statements in its report that were not based on peer-reviewed research, including a misleading prediction about melting glaciers in the Himalayan mountains. The United Nations has since launched an independent probe to review IPCC practices and fix any potential problems.
But the memorandum, drafted before some of those mistakes were revealed, said the IPCC was still the best source of information on climate science, backed up by findings of many major national science academies around the world.
"The IPCC assessments rely primarily on scientific research published in well-established journals with robust peer-review processes," said the memo. "While not 100 per cent foolproof, the peer-review process results in science with a high degree of reliability and credibility. The peer-review process, together with the possibility that scientific results and interpretations, once published, may be challenged by others, ensures that scientists take full responsibility for their published results."
The document also noted that temperature records in the report, which have been challenged by climate skeptics, were based on four different scientific agencies.
"All four data sets provide a very similar picture of the warming over land over the 20th century."
Another warning from the memorandum highlighted new research that suggests significant impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on oceans.
"Ocean acidification caused by the absorption of CO2 from burning fossil fuels is altering the fundamental chemistry of the oceans and raising concerns about potential impacts on ecosystems," said the memo. "High-latitude ocean surface waters in particular are expected to show large adverse effects within the next several decades."
The new revelations from the memo follow a British parliamentary committee report, investigating the e-mails stolen from the university, which concluded that scientists should be more open and transparent about their research by publishing raw data and methodologies to avoid criticism and doubts. The British committee also concluded there was no evidence of a systematic attempt by the scientists to mislead the public about their research on climate change.
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