Yesterday, I used a plastic bucket to water a plant I put in the garden. I left the bucket sitting, empty, on the grass. Today, when I came home from work, there were more than two inches of water in it.
The news sites tell me that there was a tornado in Fergus, north of Guelph, early in the afternoon. During this time, I was parked at my desk, trying to do three things at once - and one of those things was book a flight. I noticed an advisory for Pearson Airport, warning of flight delays and cancellations due to weather.
I heard plenty of emergency vehicles today, too, but it didn't occur to me to connect these to anything other than random accidents.
My office has a big window. I noticed nothing. I can't really figure this out: was there a particularly calm cell over southern Guelph, and all the storms bypassed it? Was I that into the notes I was working on? What? How could I miss green skies? But I did.
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Weather is a default topic of conversation. It's probably more of a topic in my world than most people's, though - not so much because of the outdoor addiction, but because I spend a good chunk of my working life working thinking about climate change adaptation.
I'm tired of explaining it: climate change is not (just) global warming. Severe weather - like this summer's heat, last summer's cold and wet, a tornado warning for Toronto and all of that - is not "proof" of climate change (just like a statistically cold year is not proof that there is no climate change. I'm looking at you, Margaret Wente). Leaving aside hockey stick diagrams and fellows of the Fraser Institute, I'm prepared to accept the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific consensus that will be and are already facing altered climate regimes. There is overwhelming evidence of the canary in a coalmine variety, and I've spent enough time listening to Inuit elders to know that some of these observations, they're visible to the naked eye, ever the span of a lifetime. And I know enough about statistics to know that that, alone, doesn't mean a thing, because - as those who would rather not deal with the whole climate change mess are so fond of pointing out - we've had decadal variations in our climate record before - the Little Ice Age, the Dustbowl years, the cool 70s, and so on.
Thing is? I don't need statistical proof. I don't even need to be sure that the GCM-predicted changes - even if phrased in a range of scenarios - will come to pass. All of that, sure, it's important, but we get so hung up in arguing about how much change, and where, and at what resolution can we predict, and is this natural variation, and is this tornado today because of climate change and so on, we forget another very important issue: adaptation.
We have enough indications that something is happening. We have a farm sector in trouble, for instance, due to one bad growing season after another. I don't care if it's due to high concentrations of greenhouse gases, oceanic circulation, BSE, or someone having a bad day. I don't want to wait for definitive identification of a single root cause before we act: we can act now. We can make sure our policy options and research programmes are geared toward a more resilient sector, not just to dry years or cold years or trade embargo years...
But, we aren't. If I'm going to stick to just one of those issues - potential climate change and actual (admittedly not unprecedented) variability in weather, it seems that we spend almost all of our time discussing greenhouse gas reduction via Kyoto and related issues of carbon sequestration. I think all of that is important. (Unlike Margaret Wente, I don't take pride in driving my car just because I can afford to and screw the rest of them because hey, less obnoxious options, they're for poor people.) But just as important is working on means of coping with change and stress *now*.
(I'm on the editorial team for a book. We met about it today. Its subject matter wouldn't come as a surprise if I brought it up now...)
Posted by Johanna at August 19, 2005 10:25 PM