Blog
March 31st 2009 | 3
A strange take on global warming
Apparently, the person in charge of leading Canada’s fight against global warming thinks the phenomenon could be good for polar bears! Well, that’s great news.
On March 20, Mia Rabson of the Winnipeg Free Press reported that federal environment minister Jim Prentice is questioning the science behind claims that polar bears won’t do so well when their habitat melts away.
As reported in the Free Press, he stated:
“I don’t think anyone disagrees the whole process of climate change has implications for polar bears. … What those implications are is still under scientific investigation. It could be positive, it could be negative.”
This coincides with officials from his department signing an agreement with the world’s other polar bear nations stating climate change is the biggest factor threatening the creatures.
Prentice will have to go up against a fair bit of science as well as common sense to prove that polar bears are actually benefiting from climate change. While there are debates over the extent of polar bears’ peril, I have not heard any data saying climate change will improve their situation.
I wonder about the point of Prentice’s statement other than to subtly stick it to Canadians concerned with the environment. It’s as if he wanted to hint that no matter how many polar bear summits he organizes, in the end, he’ll find a way to undermine any progress.
Such a nonsensical comment is about as close to climate-change denying as an environment minister can get, and it’s unacceptable. It makes a mockery of the federal government and makes their stance on progressive environmental change abundantly clear, as if it wasn’t already.
Worst of all, if the first in command on environmental policy is willing to make statements that reveal his distorted vision of environmental action, what hope does that leave those working from the bottom up?
Check out Steve Currie’s comments piece on another federal minister’s questionable beliefs in issue 25 of The Uniter.
Discussion
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“It could be positive?” Don’t you have to know something about the environment before you can become Environment Minister?
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I am a student of Environmental Studies, and I will be graduating shortly. Anyone with an appropriate background in the science of climate change will tell you that the effects of climate change are not the least predicatable. There’s a reason it’s referred to as ‘climate change’ and not ‘global warming’—the effects of a changing climate due to a combination of anthropogenic emmissions, land use change, and non-anthropogenic factors are difficult to predict.
So yes, it is indeed possible for the effects of climate change to be positive. Longer, more productive growing seasons have been predicted for the Canadian prairies. Certainly a positive effect, but we have no idea if it—or any other suggested effects—will be manifest, or how long an effect will last, or the time it will take for that effect occur or reverse.
Yet again, we must include efforts to mitigate climate change, which further complicate our ability to predict the effects of climate change.
So please tell me, how can it not be possible for climate change to have positive effects, when we clearly have a low predictive ability? Jim Prentice is correctly stating that we don’t know the effects, and any reasonable hypothetical effects cannot be proved until after they have occurred.
– Foster in WInnipeg | May 21st 2009 at 12:46pm | Link
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Point taken, but Prentice was talking specifically about positive effects for polar bears, who, as far as I understand, depend on a frozen climate.
But if you can explain the possible ways polar bears will benefit from climate change, I’m all ears- always glad to be educated. Plus I’d be happy to hear such news.
– Sandy Klowak | June 2nd 2009 at 6:01pm | Link
