A lack of federal funding is driving away highly qualified Canadian climate scientists and  the vast majority of remaining scientists rely on resources from other countries for their research, according to a report released Wednesday by two non-profit groups.

The report comes less than three months after a scientific study revealed Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average and follows calamitous spring floods in Atlantic Canada and drought and forest fires in the west.

“Canadians are already being affected by climate change,” said Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence for Democracy, which co-authored the report.

“Without continued research … decision-makers will be unable to make informed decisions about any aspect of climate policy.”

The 30-page report examines the state of funding for climate science in Canada based on a survey of scientists in the field.

It concludes that vital work in the atmospheric sciences is being neglected even though funding has increased for climate-related research in ecology and other fields.

Scientists at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Nunavut. Photo: Dan Weaver

Canada not able to keep climate scientists

Climate scientist Dan Weaver said there is a consequent “bleed of expertise” from Canada.

“If we train people and then cut out the funding they’re going to go to other places, because they’re valued in Europe and Japan and the United States,” Weaver told The Narwhal.

“We’ve got to compete for talent and right now we’re not keeping the talent we have.”

The report zooms in on the fate of Canada’s climate change and atmospheric research program. Established in 2000, the program received $110 million from the government to invest in university-based research in climate and atmospheric sciences.

Since funding for the program ended last year, Canada has lacked a dedicated funding stream for climate science, Weaver said. Among other research, the program focused on the changing Arctic ocean, changes in sea ice and snow (primarily in the Arctic) and weather processes.

“All of these topics are linked together into the big question of how Canada’s climate is changing,” said Weaver, a board member for Evidence for Democracy, which promotes the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making in Canada.

Climate scientist Dan Weaver says there is a “bleed of expertise” from Canada due to a lack of funding.

Loss of funding impacts international data

The federal government funds work on climate education, mitigation and adaptation, Weaver noted.

“But we are lacking a key piece of the puzzle — and that is a comprehensive, long-term approach to climate change science and the Arctic.”

The loss of funding will negatively affect international atmospheric data sets and projects that depend on Canadian researchers’ work, says the report, co-authored by the Canadian Climate Forum, which focuses on using evidence-based climate knowledge in decision-making.

“It also means the loss of the skills, expertise and productivity of hundreds of climate science trainees, which the country has invested in over the decades.”

Almost 75 per cent of scientists surveyed reported that highly qualified personnel have left the field.

The significant costs of infrastructure — such as icebreakers, satellites or Arctic research laboratories — can distort funding trends, the report warns, “giving the appearance of significant investments in fundamental science and scientists.”

The dome of a Brewer spectrophotometer, a Canadian-designed instrument used to measure atmospheric ozone using observations of UV light. They are deployed world-wide to monitor the ozone layer, as well as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Photo: Dan Weaver

No plan to replace Canada’s only science satellite

Climate scientists rely heavily on government-funded infrastructure, the study notes.

Yet a “flagship” Canadian satellite for measuring atmospheric gases and ozone is now 14 years past its planned lifetime and planned science experiments on the 40-year-old CCGS Amundsen — an icebreaker and Arctic research vessel operated by the Canadian Coast Guard — have been cancelled due to a general lack of icebreakers.

Canada has historically been a leader in satellite technology, measurements and communications, Weaver pointed out.

“We’re really not continuing that proud history.”

Once the satellite is no longer in operation, Weaver said “we lose our only dedicated Canadian science satellite — and that’s really a failure in long-term planning and investment in the infrastructure that we need to do atmospheric science and climate science in this country.”

Without a science satellite Canada will lose even more climate science expertise, he predicted.

“If the satellite stops we’re going to have all these experts in remote sensing and they’re going to go off and work for the Europeans or the Americans or somebody else and it will be very hard for us to decide to get back in the game.”

Many Canadian climate scientists rely on international support

The survey shows 94 per cent of Canadian climate scientists depend on international support, in the form of satellites, aircraft and ships.

More than 60 per cent of scientists surveyed said “foreign resources” were extremely or very important for their work, while only six per cent did not rely on any foreign resources.

Weaver said Canadian scientists ask their own questions and have their own priorities.

“These are not always going to be identical to those of other countries. . . We can’t just take everyone else’s models, take everyone else’s satellite data and that will give us everything we need. We need to be a participant, actively, to make sure our part of the story is in there.”

The report says Canada is in an “exceptional position” to be a leader in Arctic science and in global climate, atmospheric and ozone research, noting that Canadian climate scientists have pioneered research in atmospheric sciences, meteorology and oceanography.

In 1976, Montreal’s Canadian Meteorological Centre launched the world’s first operational global computer weather-modelling system, the report points out.

“Reducing our capacity for climate science research in northern and Arctic regions not only leaves Canada lacking in knowledge about the changing climate, but also fails to place the North at the forefront of government policy and diminishes the involvement of these areas in cutting-edge science.”

The 2019 federal budget proposes up to $21.8 million over five years to support critical repairs and upgrades at the Eureka Weather Station on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, the report notes.

Yet the future of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) is uncertain following the cancellation of the climate change and atmospheric research program.

PEARL has been instrumental in monitoring and conducting research on atmospheric ozone. In 2011, the laboratory observed the largest ozone depletion event ever seen in the Arctic, “an event that may indicate the potential for climate change to compromise the recovery of the ozone layer,” according to the report.

“Canadian climate science requires both investment in infrastructure and in academic research as part of a clear strategy,” the report emphasizes.

The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) is the most northern atmospheric observatory of its kind. The lab hosts dozens of instruments across three main facilities. The ridge lab sits atop a ridge at an altitude of 610 metres, approximately 12 km from Eureka. It was originally built by Environment Canada in the early 1990s as the Arctic Stratospheric Observatory, but its operation was ended in the early 2000s. A group of academics revived the lab in 2005 and re-opened it as PEARL. The data sets produced by PEARL contribute to a variety of global work, including studying the carbon cycle, ozone depletion, water cycle, air pollution and aerosols. Photo: Dan Weaver

A team of Canadian scientists install instruments on the roof of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory ridge lab. Photo: Andrew Weaver

Canada needs science funding strategy: report

The report recommends Ottawa establish a climate science funding strategy, develop more monitoring stations and include climate science in long-term plans for icebreakers, research aircraft and satellites.

It also calls for climate scientists to have better access to climate data, potentially by creating a Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Climatic Data Center.

The report is based on interviews with nine academic climate scientists and survey responses from 84 climate scientists working in higher education, government, non-profit groups or the private sector. More than 80 percent of the respondents worked in higher education while 12 per cent worked for government.

Since scientists who have concerns about their research funding are more likely to respond to the survey, the report acknowledges that respondents’ views may not represent the entire Canadian climate science community.

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For 18 months, the federal government has claimed that its support for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is science-based.

Despite pledges to increase transparency and elevate science in policy decisions — which earned kudos during the 2015 election — it’s hard to find the scientific basis for their science-based decision.

Some in the Trudeau government seem to be getting the message.

Less than three weeks ago, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna called for the creation of a new scientific advisory panel to reconsider concerns about the environmental risks of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. Many scientists — including ourselves — are eager to contribute.

An advisory panel of independent experts could address the deficiencies of a National Energy Board process that is widely acknowledged to have been both industry-biased and insufficient.

However, this begs an important question: if concerns are sufficient to convene a new science panel to address the NEB’s failures regarding the risks of diluted bitumen in B.C.’s coastal waters, shouldn’t the decision to approve the pipeline have waited for just this kind of information?

Prior to the November 2016 pipeline approval, we shared with government a peer-reviewed study that evaluated scientific understanding of 15 types of environmental impact to the oceans caused by the production and transport of diluted bitumen.

This heavy petroleum product would be pumped through the Trans Mountain pipeline at three times the current volume and create a seven-fold increase in tanker transport through Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet.

Our research found large gaps in scientific understanding of the toxicity of diluted bitumen products to marine species and how the products will behave in the ocean. Filling both gaps is necessary before determining whether the Trans Mountain pipeline is in Canada’s best interests.

In fact, our study was one of at least five major scientific reviews, published by the Royal Society of Canada and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Office of Response, among others, in the lead up to the approval of the Trans Mountain project.

All five identified major gaps in scientific understanding and preparedness for environmental impacts generated by the coastal transport of diluted bitumen.

The gaps in knowledge, combined with incomplete risk assessment and insufficient baseline data, make it impossible to address the full suite of threats to ocean species and their habitats, or to assess the effectiveness of emergency actions, including spill response.

Given the paucity of information on these key issues, the B.C. government’s call for additional scientific review and research, made last January, was well grounded, and has proven to be prescient.

McKenna’s proposal for a new look at the science followed on the heels of reports that a high-ranking government official had instructed public servants to find a “legally-sound basis to say ‘yes'” to the Trans Mountain project, while discouraging them from raising concerns identified by independent research, including our own.

A credible review, by a panel of independent scientists, at arm’s length from influence by industry or government, is long overdue.

In the absence of sound science, government has a duty to delay construction, and err on the side of coastal protection and climate progress.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s public commitment to transparency and evidence-based policy demands no less.

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Polar bears have long been a symbol of a warming climate, a visible victim of shrinking sea ice cover and changing weather patterns. The bears’ loss of habitat was among the early signs of climate change, and one that was easily communicated to the public.

But in recent years, a sprawling network of climate change deniers are, strangely, using the symbol of the polar bear in their fight against climate science.

“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it,” says Ian Stirling, a prominent polar bear biologist.

Stirling is a co-author on a new paper in the journal BioScience that describes a tactic used by climate-denial blogs to attack visible symbols of climate change instead of the science backing it.

“Because this evidence is so overwhelming, it would be virtually impossible to debunk; the main strategy of denier blogs is therefore to focus on topics that are showy and in which it is therefore easy to generate public interest,” the authors write.

“Proponents of creationism and intelligent design use the same strategy: Instead of providing scientific evidence in favor of their opinions, they instead focus selectively on certain lines of evidence for evolution and attempt to cast doubt on them.”

One of the darlings of this network of denial blogs is a University of Victoria adjunct professor named Susan Crockford.

Crockford is a zoologist who has never published a peer-reviewed paper on polar bears, or conducted any original research on them, yet who has been referred to by the Heartland Institute as “one of the world’s foremost experts on polar bears.”

Crockford Built up by Denial Organizations, Blogs

Real polar bear researcher Stirling, who spent more than four decades studying polar bears and publishing over 150 papers and five books on the topic, says Crockford has “zero” authority on the subject.

“The denier websites have been using her and building her up as an expert,” says Stirling.

The paper found that 80 per cent of the denier blogs they studied had referred to her blog. Crockford has also been featured as a speaker and panelist at Heartland Institute conferences.

Her popularity in denier circles is no surprise, given Crockford’s comforting, status quo-friendly stance.

A favourite line of reasoning Crockford returns to is that polar bears will be able to adapt to changes in sea ice — if the ice is in fact disappearing at all.

“Quite simply, the fact that a few individuals die during early breakup years in Western Hudson Bay is a good thing for future polar bears, not a catastrophe,” Crockford wrote on her blog, arguing that evolution will happen at a fast enough rate that the population will benefit from years of low sea ice.

That view is not shared by the paper’s authors.

“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it.” https://t.co/g6i09Gv2UN #climatechange

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 30, 2017

Adaptation an Uphill Battle for Polar Bears

“Sea-ice habitat reductions during past interglacial periods occurred over millennia (rather than over the decadal scales that accompany AGW), giving the bears more time to adjust their behavior and distribution,” write the authors, among whom, once again, are actual polar bear researchers who do actual research on polar bears.

“Because current warming cannot be reversed without human action, the prognosis for polar bears and other Arctic biota without GHG mitigation is bleak.”

A study last year by University of Alberta researcher Andrew Derocher found that the predators are not able to get enough energy from alternative food sources, like bird eggs, that they can find on land.

“It’s a nice idea, but the energy density of these foods is low, their abundance is low — and there’s a whole other idea that if it was really a significant potential contribution, the bears would have been using this, and using it all along,” Derocher told me for an article in CBC when the paper was released in September 2016.

“And of course that’s not what we’ve seen.”

Crockford would likely be a lonely voice in the corner if it weren’t for the amplifying impact of larger climate-denial blogs like Junk Science and Climate Depot. But given her convenient narrative of fat, happy polar bears snubbing their noses at climate change, she has become a star. That’s a problem for actual science.

“The considerable influence that blogs exert on public opinion and decision-making should not be underestimated,” write the study’s authors.

“Among users, trust for blogs has been reported to exceed that of other traditional news or information sources.“

The paper calls on scientists to play a more public role in defending their work and to challenge the unscientific claims of climate deniers.

Stirling says it’s a mistake to let the sideshow go on any longer.

“They distract the public at large, particularly in the U.S.… from taking on the biggest threat that the world has ever experienced,” he says.

“Eventually these people will all be disproved but we’re going to pay a terrible price.”

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Canadian conservative commentator and climate science denialist Ezra Levant has won his battle with the United Nations to have staff from his media outlet accredited  to cover climate talks starting next week in Morocco.

Three staffers from Levant’s online outlet, The Rebel, were initially denied media accreditation for the COP22 talks in Marrakesh, after the UN described Rebel as “advocacy media”. The Financial Post is reporting that the UN has granted Rebel two spots, but Rebel is pushing back for a third.

Since hearing from the UN in early October, Levant has been campaigning furiously to force the UN to change its mind.  He gained support from three journalism groups, gathered 10,000 names on a petition and won the backing of Canada's environment minister, Catherine McKenna.

Levant even travelled to New York to hand the petition to Canada’s permanent mission to the United Nations.

But along the way, Levant has repeatedly shown footage from the last major climate change talks in Paris to bolster his case. Levant says the footage shows journalists in the Paris media room “jumping for joy”. This, according to Levant, shows their lack of objectivity and just why his "real journalists" should be allowed inside the COP22 talks as media. 

But DeSmog has investigated the origins of the clip and can confirm that the footage does not show journalists and was not filmed in “the media room”, as Levant has repeatedly claimed.

The clip was originally filmed and shared on Twitter by a passing journalist  — Miranda Johnson, of The Economist — who has confirmed Rebel did not seek permission to use her footage and, if it had, it would have been refused. 

WE HAVE A #ParisAgreement pic.twitter.com/Xh7HSPWXSD

— Miranda Johnson (@MSLJeconomist) December 12, 2015

Instead, the clip shows a side room, well away from the media centre, where civil society groups who had campaigned for action on climate change for years had gathered to watch the final moments of the Paris talks.

Levant has told viewers: “Here’s a clip from the UN global warming convention last year showing journalists in the press room cheering.”

In another Rebel video, Levant says: “The most striking video clip of the entire Paris conference last year was when an international agreement was finally announced and the media room burst into applause and cheering. Some actually jumping for joy – you know, the way objective reporters do.”

DeSmog can also confirm the person seen “jumping for joy” was not a journalist either, but a media liaison officer for a climate action group.

Other media outlets have asked for permission to use Johnson's footage, including US outlet Fox News, but all have been refused.

Levant has used the footage at least five times in at least four different videos posted on YouTube and his Rebel media website. Each time, Levant says it shows journalists in the media room.

In a segment with one of his formerly “banned” staff members, Sheila Gunn Reid, Levant says the UN is “terrified that we will turn the camera on the UN approved journalists… the pets.”

He adds:  “We can’t show this enough.  I want to show the clip of the official approved accredited journalists, who are more objective than you Sheila, jumping for joy at some climate announcement…. That’s the media filing room. That’s the press room. Every person in that room was a journalist that met [the UN officer] Nick Nuttall’s standards.”

As well as using the footage to gain support from the public, Levant also uses the clip to support a crowdfunding campaign to send Rebel staff to cover a different UN conference in India later this month. In that video, Levant again describes the “reporters” in the footage as “squealing like teenagers at a Justin Bieber concert.”

DeSmog has approached Levant for comment.

Rebel is currently crowfunding its trip to Marrakech.

Rebel writes: "One thing we won’t scrimp on is security, though — especially in a place like Morocco. So we need a driver/handler to make sure we get to and from the conference site each day safely." This, despite visitors to COP22 having access to official shuttle buses running 12 routes, each route covered from 6am until midnight and, in peak hours, running every 15 minutes.

Levant is trying to raise more than CA$27,000 for the India trip, including $14,000 to hire a private security firm. And The Rebel is crowdfunding for Morocco as well.

DeSmog has reported that Rebel’s intentions in Morocco were not to mainly report on the proceedings, but instead to film journalists.

Levant told an audience that Rebel had joined with climate science denier Marc Morano, of the US-based Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), who Levant appointed an “honorary Rebel” at the talks.

CFACT, which has received funding from fossil fuel interests, has been accredited as a non-governmental organisation at several UN climate summits.

According to a CFACT Facebook post, “Rebel wanted to join CFACT at the UN climate conference in Marrakech."

One of the three Rebel staff members heading to Morocco, Sheila Gunn Reid, told an Edmonton audience in September 2016 that “people who believe in global warming really seem like a doomsday cult.”  

Main image: Ezra Levant. Credit: University of Saskatchewan/Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Marc Morano is never short of a superlative or two, but when it has come to promoting his long-gestating documentary Climate Hustle, the climate science denialist extraordinaire has been outdoing himself.

"We are putting together what I think is the most comprehensive, unique, entertaining and humorous climate documentary that has ever been done or attempted,” Morano has said.

His documentary Climate Hustle will get its “big red carpet premiere,” as Morano has described it, on 7 December in the Cinéma du Panthéon in Paris at the beginning of the second week of major United Nations climate talks taking place in the French capital. 

"The reason that this is a unique film,” Morano has said, “is that we are going for a pop culture-friendly… sarcastic approach and we actually give both sides in this movie.”

Morano is the head of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and runs the Climate Depot blog. 

CFACT, credited as the film's producer, has accepted cash from fossil fuel interests including ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as more than $7million from Donors Trust – a slush fund of rich conservatives which acts to conceal the identities of donors to projects.

As DeSmog explains, Morano has no expertise in climate science. He has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “King of the skeptics,” and a “central cell of the climate-denial machine.”

He was also listed as one of 17 top “climate killers” by Rolling Stone Magazine. Before joining CFACT, Morano was a communications adviser to Republican Senator James Inhofe, who called climate change science “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

That Morano is not a climate scientist or that actual experts regularly debunk his talking points seems not to matter to the numerous conservative news outlets that regularly seek his views.

Same old myths

But while Morano is promising viewers of Climate Hustle something new, pre-publicity material and statements elsewhere suggest the movie will be a rehash of old climate science denialist myths from the usual suspects. 

One high-profile scientist attacked in Climate Hustle has told DeSmog that the documentary should be seen as “propaganda” and that Morano was “digging around in the trash to look for old news.”

Morano seems to have been promising the imminent release of his documentary for almost as long as climate science deniers have been promising global cooling.

CFACT executive director Craig Rucker first announced the plan for the film in July last year at the Heartland Institute’s Las Vegas conference for climate science deniers. Then, Morano said the movie would be out “in the fall” but it never appeared.

Morano, who ran a crowdfunding campaign to help finance the film, has been promising in interviews that he will be bringing new voices to the documentary. In an interview with Canadian conservative TV host Ezra Levant, who thinks climate change is a “multi-billion dollar scam,” Morano said:

I am not interviewing a lot of the main climate sceptical scientists because I feel like they have been interviewed by many other people and their stories have been told. I am trying to find another layer of scientist whose stories have not been out there yet. You will see a lot of new names in this.

But if Morano really was looking for new faces for his documentary, he does not seem to have tried very hard. During Morano’s Heartland presentation, he told the audience he would carrying out interviews during the conference. 

The Heartland Institute conferences have been a mainstay of climate science denial for years, where presenters, most of which have no genuine expertise in climate science, will claim that either global warming is not happening, that its not caused by fossil fuel emissions, or that impacts will be minor or beneficial.

Who's featured in Climate Hustle?

Pre-publicity material and blogposts suggest that among the climate sceptics and contrarians featured in the film will be Professor Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology, Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex, Ivar Giaever a retired physicist, the statistician William Briggs, geologist Dr Robert Giegengack and Canadian climate science denier Patrick Moore.

Moore has said that human-caused climate change is largely a hoax and that “we should celebrate CO2 as the giver of life that it is.”

Tol claims the economic impacts of climate change will be minor and has attacked studies showing the vast majority of climate scientists agree that humans are the main cause of climate change.

Briggs recently co-wrote a paper with Lord Christopher Monckton, who believes that climate change is a United Nations plot to install world government. Briggs’ paper argued that global warming would be much less than other studies had predicted, but a response in the same journal pointed to fundamental errors in the work of Monckton and Briggs, which was “riddled with errors.”

Earlier this month Curry wrote a column for Fox News questioning if government scientists may have been part of a political conspiracy to deliberately adjust temperature data upwards – a long-running theme from climate science denialists.

Blunt attack on Michael Oppenheimer

In several interviews about the movie, Morano has bragged of a section of the movie where he confronts scientist and climate change expert Professor Michael Oppenheimer.

In a speech to a Heartland Institute conference, Morano said he “had a quote” from Oppenheimer where the Princeton University scientist had said that “sceptics were quite literally motivated financially to be sceptics.”

Morano was referring to a quote from a 2006 Tom Brokaw documentary, where Oppenheimer said that “there are some people who have a financial interest in not believing” in climate change. Oppenheimer did not actually refer to sceptics.

Morano accused Oppenheimer of having a conflict of interest because he had accepted a grant from a foundation led by actress Barbara Streisand. He also challenged Oppenheimer over an award from the Heinz Foundation.

Oppenheimer told DeSmog the Streisand grant was received in 1989 while he worked at the Environmental Defence Fund. The Heinz Award was from 2010. 

He said he was “proud” and “honoured” to have received both awards which had always been fully disclosed. He said it was “ludicrous” for Morano to suggest he had been influenced by the grants, especially because his work on climate change and his advocacy for cuts to human emissions pre-dated both the awards. He told DeSmog:

I imagine the only reason [Morano] is doing it is because he can’t find a better example and I happen to be salient in the press and I’m a good whipping boy. But that’s fine. I don’t mind. 

I think it’s all fair to demand disclosure from people in the public arena and to ask where their support is coming from.

But I have met that criteria and now it’s up to people themselves to judge whether they think that the relationships that Morano has presented means that I can’t be objective about climate change. I think it’s a ridiculous notion but for people who don’t know me I think it’s perfectly fair to ask.

When asked about his 2006 quote, Oppenheimer said:

That was some years ago now. [Morano] is sort of digging around in the trash to look for old news because he has nothing currently available to talk about.

Marc is a propagandist and let him do more of his propaganda. If the strongest thing he has to say about me is that sentence then… bring it on… who cares?

Global cooling myth

So what else should people expect from Morano’s movie, besides non-scandals over a grant made to a scientist 25 years ago and the same old climate contrarian spokespeople?

In August, Morano told former Alaska Governor Sara Palin, who also rejects climate change science, that he would uncover the true agenda, saying: “Centrally planning economies. They want to go after the energy sector.”

Morano has also said the film will include clips of newsreaders in the 1970s warning of “global cooling” as if to suggest that scientists had changed their mind. But despite some news outlets warning of global cooling in the 70s, a review of the scientific literature has found that even then most scientific studies were actually saying the world would warm because of greenhouse gas emissions.

In an interview with Alex Epstein, author of the book Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Morano claimed his movie would “present essentially both sides and let the viewer make up their mind” and how "this film is set to rock the climate debate."

Rather than “rock the debate,” Climate Hustle is just another attempt to spread doubt and confusion about climate change science.

Morano’s well-worn myths are almost as old as the 1907 Paris theatre where Climate Hustle will get its premiere. 

Watch the trailer for Morano's film: 

Continue to Part 2: The Evangelical Christian Climate Deniers Behind Marc Morano’s Climate Hustle Documentary

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Mel Arnold, a federal Conservative candidate from the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding in B.C., told the CBC he remains “unconvinced” by climate science and that the role of human activity in the rise of global temperatures remains undetermined.

In an interview with the CBC’s Daybreak South radio show this week, Arnold told host Chris Walker he believes only 1.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are human-caused.

Arnold also said cycles in climate could be responsible for recent changes in temperature.

"I don't know that it has been determined for sure that human activity is the main cause. It is part of the process," he told Walker. “But how much of it is actually naturally occurring, that's I think where the debate is."

"As you know, this area was once buried in kilometres of thick ice during the ice ages. And we have approximately 30-year cycles on weather conditions here. Those types of things are still in play."

Cindy Derkaz, federal Liberal candidate from the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding, said Arnold was simply toeing the Conservative Party line.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Derkaz said. “I feel that he is following a party line and bound to do that and I’ve noticed that there’s been no rebuttal of [Arnold’s statements] from the party.”

Derkaz said the science of climate change, including the role of human activity, is “unequivocal” and that constituents in her region are already feeling the effects of warmer global temperatures.

“We are experiencing some of the hottest years on record one after another. We are experiencing serious forest fire seasons, problems with our water supply drying up which leads to a diminished flow in rivers which negatively affects the return of fish.”

“These are all problems we are dealing with.”

NDP candidate Jacqui Gingras said Arnold is “actively denying climate change” and it is “outrageous and dangerous to hold the view” that humans are not contributing to increasing temperatures.

“We’ve been measuring climate change for 150 years and have been able to reconstruct climate going back 8,000 years,” Gingras said. “Thirteen of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.”

Gingras said that researchers from Climate Central calculate that the odds of climate change not being attributable to human activity is one in 27 million.

Gingras said Arnold is apparently willing to bet against those odds.

“To the south of us in Kelowna there were terrible fires this year that had enormous costs on people's lives,” she said. “Our local industry, the forestry industry, relies on those trees.”

“We’re on the brink of something traumatic, not only locally, but globally there’s a crisis building.”

Wildfires and trees were also present on the mind of federal Green Party candidate Chris George.

“These fires have been a big issue,” George said. “All of the surrounding forests are vulnerable to beetle kill because winters don’t get cold enough to kill the insects off which means that more dry standing forests and they are more vulnerable to wildfire.”

George added that before this season’s wildfires, heavy rainfall caused mudslides in the Shuswap region.

“We basically lost our tourism season. The mudslides wiped out roads, filed our lakes and streams with mud and shut down houseboat operators.”

George said the increased intensity and frequency of both drought and heavy rainfall are “easily linked to climate change.” Both tourism and agriculture, which the area depends upon, are being “disproportionally hit” by the effects of warmer temperatures, he said.

George added he’s surprised to hear any candidates would question the impacts of human activity on the climate. “I was a bit astonished that that’s still a position out there.”

According to Environment Canada, greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere as a result of transportation, oil and gas development, the production of electricity, energy use in buildings, industrial and trade activities, agriculture and the production of waste.  

Andrew Weaver, climate scientists and MLA for the B.C. Green Party said the comments are “outrageous” but he is “not surprised” to hear them coming from a representative of Conservative Party.

“This is common within the Harper Tories to find people whose views are based on… I don’t know where they get their views from, but they’re not scientific,” Weaver said.

He added the statements point to the larger problem of scientific literacy in political decision-making.

“If you make decisions as a matter of faith — ‘I believe this to be true’ — it’s the beginning of the downfall of society.”

Campaign manager Linda Hawkes said Arnold was unavailable for comment.

Image: Mel Arnold via Twitter

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The B.C. Supreme Court awarded $50,000 in damages to climate scientist Andrew Weaver in a ruling Friday that confirms articles published by the National Post defamed his character.

The ruling names Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post, Peter Foster, a columnist at the National Post, Kevin Libin, a journalist that contributes to the Financial Post and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher.

Four articles published in 2009 and 2010 refer to Weaver, now MLA for Canada’s Green Party, as an “alarmist” who disseminates “agit-prop” and a “sensationalist” that “cherry-picked” data as “Canada’s warmest spinner-in-chief.” Weaver was previously a lead author on a number of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports.

In the damages section of the ruling (attached below), Madam Justice Emily Burke notes, “the defamation in this case was serious. It offended Dr. Weaver’s character and the defendants refused to publish a retraction.”

Justice Burke concluded the defendants “have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts,” adding, “they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts."

Weaver told DeSmog Canada he’s “thrilled” with the ruling.

"I am absolutely thrilled with today's B.C. Supreme Court judgment in my libel case against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Kevin Libin and Gordon Fisher.”

Weaver said he initiated the lawsuit in 2010 when the National Post refused to retract the offending articles “that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held."

“I felt I had to take this matter to court to clear my name and correct the public record. This judgment does precisely that.”

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, said the ruling “is a victory for climate scientists everywhere.”

There is “an extremely long history of efforts by climate deniers and contrarians to attack not just climate science, but climate scientists: to smear their scientific reputations, to distort their statements, and to make false and defamatory accusations,” Gleick told DeSmog Canada.

Gleick said defamation “has been a standard tactic for years, especially as the science of climate change has continued to strengthen and solidify.”

The attack on Weaver’s credibility is unfortunately only one of many examples, he said.

“While I'm sure the ruling will not stop the continued assault on climate science and scientists, it should certainly put people on notice that there is a responsibility to avoid such irresponsible attacks and a real cost for failing to do so. I hope this ruling has that effect."

Weaver said he is looking forward to the defendants “publishing a complete retraction and removing the offending articles from electronic databases.”

The four articles in question, as listed in the court ruling, can be seen below. Three of these articles still appear on the National Post’s website at the time of publication.

As part of his suit, Weaver also argued the National Post should take responsibility for the articles republished on third-party sites.

“I further look forward to them withdrawing consent given to third parties to re-publish the articles and to require them to cease re-publication,” Weaver said.

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Downward Google trends

"The largest upward spike in Google searches for global warming occurred just after Earth Day in April, 2007, a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide to protect human health, and two months after the film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Since 2007, however, Google searches for the term global warming have declined to almost the same flat, relatively low level of searches for climate change."

Has climate become 'background' noise?

Overcoming crisis fatigue

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Politicians should not look to science and engineering for a relatively quick fix to effectively deal with climate change caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions, a new academic study has determined.

The only solution to global warming is a massive rejection of toxic fossil fuels, vastly improved energy efficiency and substantially altered human behavior, found the recently released study — An interdisciplinary assessment of climate engineering strategies.

“In light of their limitations and risks, climate engineering approaches would best serve as a complement to — rather than replacement for — abatement, and the latter should remain a focus of climate-change policy for the foreseeable future,” said the study written by six academics in the U.S. and Canada.

Jonn Axsen, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, said in an interview Thursday that politicians need to get serious about making a relatively rapid transition away from the fossil fuels that are warming our atmosphere.

“We have to really start that transition now,” said Axsen, who along with five other academics spent two years analyzing more than 100 peer-reviewed studies dealing with the implications of various geo-engineering technologies and their effects on carbon emissions.

Their study has been published in the June edition of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Simon Fraser University issued a media release about the study earlier this week explaining that the new study is the first scholarly attempt to rank a wide range of approaches to minimizing climate change in terms of their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, risk, public acceptance, governability and ethics.

The new research found that some geo-engineering technologies — such as improved forest and soil management — can work to help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, shows some promise too.

But other technologies, such as fertilizing the ocean with iron to absorb CO2 and employing solar radiation management by injecting particles directly into the atmosphere to block sunshine, are likely doomed to failure.   

Only abatement will give humankind a chance to avoid the worst implications of climate change, the study added. “We conclude that although abatement should remain the central climate-change response, some low-risk, cost-effective climate engineering approaches should be applied as complements.”

Axsen said it is up to politicians to be clear about their intentions, if any, on dealing with climate change so that the electorate can make a decision on who to vote for at the polling booth.

He said the Canadian government through its support of the Alberta tar sands and the B.C. provincial government with its ambitious plans for a liquefied natural gas industry have demonstrated a lack of action on climate change because they have been relying on technological solutions rather than quickly embracing the needed transition to a low-carbon future.

“I think the U.S. is doing a better job in taking climate change seriously,” Axsen said, referring to a recent plan by the Obama administration that would see a 30 per cent drop in coal-fired electricity plant emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. He also said California is a good example of a state government aggressively fighting climate change.

“We know what policies would work,” he said. “It’s just a matter of having the political will and leadership.”

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The Antarctic ice sheet is falling into the ocean, $1.1 trillion of investments are at risk due to a carbon bubble and the U.S. President is saying climate change is already affecting his country — by all accounts, you'd think the debate over global warming would be settled once and for all.

Yet it rages on. Recent polling shows public concern over climate change has fallen in Canada, the U.S., Britain and Australia over the last several years.

If there’s agreement among the world’s experts, why on earth is their disagreement among the world’s non-experts? And why is that disagreement so deeply polarized?

In a recent public lecture about polarized public discourse, DeSmog Canada founder and president Jim Hoggan posed the question: “Why are we listening to each other shout rather than listening to what the evidence is trying to tell us?”

This is not a rhetorical question.

This type of question, however, does tend to be posed rhetorically, perhaps with your hands being thrown up in desperation, moments before walking away. But it’s a question that matters, because so long as we’re just shouting at one another, we fail to make progress on the world’s big issues.

So let’s take the question seriously — it deserves it and it just might get us somewhere.

Cultural cognition: we're all running in cultural packs

Sometimes, arguments aren’t really at all about what they appear to be about. So-called "debate" on environmental or economic policy, for example, can at times be more about articulating competing perspectives than it is about "debating" how we might make progress on important issues.

"Debates" like this can (and arguably do) remain on an entirely superficial level.

But if we’re not engaging in real dialogue, then what are we actually doing?

According to experts at Yale University, we’re engaging in the practice of “cultural cognition.” Simply put, cultural cognition refers to our tendency to conform our beliefs to the cultural packs that we run with. What we might be doing in a “debate” is actually articulating the position our cultural group has on an issue.

This becomes really interesting, according to the folks at Yale, when we’re looking at issues of scientific consensus — that is, issues that aren’t really up for debate.

Debates are as much about culture as about science

Climate change, the disposal of nuclear waste and gun control are all contentious issues that rely heavily on scientific research. Yet, these issues are also largely cultural, and of significant political importance. They tend to be issues for which there is high scientific consensus and low public consensus.

So, how can we better understand the deep running undercurrents of cultural polarization that happen as a result of "cultural cognition?"

According to Dan Kahan, a Yale law and psychology professor who works on the university's cultural cognition project, we’d need to explain how we develop our viewpoints, not based on the research of experts and scientists, but in response to our community, as a means of identifying with our social group.

In a recent paper, "Cultural Cognition as a Conception of the Cultural Theory of Risk," Kahan and his colleagues outline how individuals develop opinions on scientific matters by identifying trustworthy experts. But just who passes the test of being a trustworthy expert varies widely between groups with opposing worldviews.

“We hypothesized that scientific opinion fails to quiet societal dispute on such issues not because members of the public are unwilling to defer to experts but because culturally diverse persons tend to form opposing perceptions of what experts believe,” the report states.

Overall, this leads to a sort of group-think confirmation bias.

“Individuals systematically overestimate the degree of scientific support for positions they are culturally predisposed to accept as a result of a cultural availability effect that influences how readily they can recall instances of expert endorsement of those positions.”

A little more plainly, this means that sometimes we’re a little overzealous in our endorsements of those we like. If the right person says it, we’re a little too quick to listen. If it came from "our side," we’ll tone down the criticism.

We listen to the science — when it agrees with us

And it gets more interesting. Kahan ties the tendency to agree or disagree with scientific consensus into deep and opposing worldviews. He divides these into two basic camps: those holding "hierarchical and individualistic” views and those holding “egalitarian and communitarian” outlooks — more or less the groups falling on one side or the other of the left-right divide.

But, even more interesting than that, there was no argument to be made that groups on the "left" were any better at discerning scientific consensus than groups on the "right."

As Kahan’s team found, both groups diverged from scientific consensus and expertise (scientific opinion endorsed by the National Academy of the Sciences) “in a pattern reflective of their respective predispositions.”

It turns out, “both hierarchical individualists and egalitarian communitarians are fitting their perceptions of scientific consensus to their values.”

That means taking a stand on issues like environmental policy is more a matter of personal identification than scientific “fact.”

For this reason, our belonging to a group (which, of course, we all do) can be problematic. We might buy into a group’s entire ideological system, rather than retain an open and nuanced view of a contentious political issue.

Maybe hold off on drinking the Kool-Aid

And, to make matters worse, groups often have internal inconsistencies. And what happens then, when we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and have adopted a wholesale perspective on an issue, instead of recognizing that a single group can be right on some things and wrong on others?

Advocating for any given environmental policy shouldn’t have to mean you immediately agree with every other supposedly progressive grassroots opinion emerging from that group.

That’s an important distinction: you can say one thing, without saying all those other things. You can advocate environmental policy change without joining the entire club.

Why does that matter?

When we think of polarized debate, we picture opposed extremes talking past one another in a state of logic schism. Two groups, missing one another’s point, and depicting one another in an adversarial light.

How much of your thinking is done for you?

But there is another side to polarization. It’s not just about the two sides repelling one another; it’s also about what happens to each side individually. And it’s about us, as individuals.

The issue is one of how the individual sits within group mentality. Clearly, we share both a cultural and evolutionary propensity for grouping ourselves together. This has, and continues to, serve us well in many regards. But group mentality has a particularly adverse effect: if you’ve already decided which side you’re on, then a lot of your decisions are already made.

A lot of your thinking is done for you.

So, back to that original question: “Why are we listening to each other shout rather than listening to what the evidence is trying to tell us?”

It’s not just because two sides are talking past one another. The problem with this image is that, in it, we fail to take responsibility for our own shortcomings, as if we were saying: "We’re right, but they’re just not hearing us!"

The challenge of overcoming “cultural cognition,” then, lies in our intentional open-mindedness and also our careful communication.

Keeping an open mind is for our own sake: so our thinking doesn’t become stagnated, so that we can remain open to those big ideas when they finally come to us.

If current climate science is any indication (and yes, we’re aware that we’ve chosen to identify with the world’s most prominent scientists), the stakes are high.

Photo: Screen grab from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): Climate change debate

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As cuts to federal science budgets continue, former government scientists and academics who’ve lost their funding say the cuts have upended their careers, compromised knowledge about Canada’s environment and undercut the development of the next generation of scientists.

The cuts were cast into the national spotlight earlier this year when CBC’s Fifth Estate ran an episode called Silence of the Labs.  

As the list of affected departments grows, DeSmog Canada has reached out to former government and university scientists to hear their stories.

Mercury and Climate Unwatched?

Britt Hall, a biogeochemist at the University of Regina, would travel every summer to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), a freshwater research institute, to study the way chemicals move in the environment. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

There, she examined mercury, a neurotoxin, found in the environment naturally, but predominantly from burning coal for electricity.

Thomas Duck, a climate scientist at Dalhousie University, spent 18 years travelling to a remote weather station on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic to do climate science at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Eureka, Nunavut.

Both Duck and Hall worked at world-renowned research institutes that faced elimination in 2012 — and then were saved, but their careers have by no means returned to normal.

The ups and downs of the Experimental Lakes Area’s 58 lakes in northwest Ontario have been well recorded in the media. When the federal government chopped the area’s $2-million annual funding in May 2012, world-renowned scientists decried the cuts.

All seemed lost until the Ontario and Manitoba governments stepped in to support the International Institute for Sustainable Development as the new manager.

For seven years, Hall and other scientists had been feeding a lake, a forest and a wetland with mercury at the Experimental Lakes Area. They were studying how long it takes mercury to leave fish when the doors were shut.

Funding for Duck’s polar lab dried up after the Harper government cut off money to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, a fund for climate science created by the Chretien government.

Running on reserves until early 2012, the lab was forced to close for part of the year when it couldn’t secure $1.5 million in annual funding. Then, a year and a bit later, the government stepped in with $1-million-a-year for five years.

Prior to the doors closing, Duck was working on “cutting edge” research into how the atmosphere and permafrost were interacting. The Arctic’s infrastructure — roads, buildings and bridges — is built on the permafrost and if it melts “we have real problems,” Duck says.

A recent survey of Arctic dwellers found residents want research to be focused on issues relevant to their daily lives. 

Just because the Experimental Lakes Area and the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory were saved doesn’t mean Hall and Duck’s return is certain, however.

“I am hoping to get out there [the ELA], so we will see if I can scrape together a small amount of money to go,” says Hall, who says she lost her funding as a result of a fundamental reordering of the way science is funded in Canada.

Duck, meanwhile, says funding was restored — 40 per cent lower than the original amount — but the closure kneecapped his research and gutted his capacity to carry on research into the impact of climate change on the permafrost.

“It took the ability to even propose these kinds of ideas out of our hands — the loss of capacity meant we could no longer make a credible case for it,” he says.

Disappearing Dollars

For environmental scientists, the main source of funding for research has traditionally been the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Hall says.

Changes to the council over the last few years cut back money for discovery grants for blue-sky science and shifted internal money to research with an industry partner. These changes resulted in Hall losing her discovery grant, she said.

She contacted three industries that release mercury, but to no avail.

“I can’t solve a problem for industry,” Hall says. “I can help study the release of the mercury, but I can’t stop their mercury release — I am not an engineer.”

Disappearing support for research that doesn’t directly benefit industry was a story we also heard from former federal forestry scientist Philp Burton. He told DeSmog Canada in Part 1 of our Cuts to Science series that this is the first time in his 30-year career he has run out of ideas on where to look for research dollars.

In addition to the changes at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, “there are no other programs specifically related to forestry as there had been in the past,” Burton said.

Lost Capacity

Duck’s team at Eureka helped build a $1.2-million advanced laser radar called lidar, but it’s currently turned off and “its future remains somewhat in doubt,” Duck says.

When the polar lab closed, Duck went from working with 10 people — undergraduate and graduate students, research associates, and a senior scientist — to having one graduate student. All of the instrument operators, who were highly skilled at operating 25 different complex instruments in the hostile Arctic environment, were laid-off, Duck says.

“It was a loss of exceptional people…it also breaks the chain in training graduate students,” Duck added.

The two-year break halted the cycle of senior graduate students passing their knowledge onto junior graduates, resulting in huge loss of “institutional knowledge and capabilities.”

Hall echoes the sentiment. Losing federal funding halted her research and dropped the number of students working under her from around five to one (who is only there because he gets his salary from someone else), she said.

“That engine of training scientists, training students to be scientists, and producing new knowledge basically stopped,” Hall says. “I have seen it throughout my entire department.”

If more funding for research does not become available, Hall says she would take on more teaching responsibilities, while Duck is contemplating changing his research focus after such a major setback.

“This was a life-changing event,” Duck says.

Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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