GOLDSTEIN: We need to think more rationally about global warming

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The problem with a study by the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation is that many people aren’t going to get past its title: IRREVERSIBLE, EXTREME HEATH: PROTECTING, CANADIANS, AND COMMUNITIES FROM AN EETHAL FUTURE.

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Many will hear about its predictions.  Climate change has caused heat waves to be longer, hotter and more deadly in Canada and other major cities, such as Toronto, between 2051-2080 and 1976-2005.

Fewer will read the legal disclaimer in the study sponsored by Intact Financial Corp., “Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer” helping “homeowners, communities and businesses to reduce risks associated with climate change and extreme weather events.”

It warns:

“The Intact Centre cannot make any guarantees of any kind, as to the completeness, accuracy, suitability or reliability of the data provided in the report … You should not act upon the information contained in this publication without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this publication, and Intact Centre employees and affiliates do not accept or assume any liability, responsibility, or duty of care for any consequences to you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this report or for any decision based upon it.”

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Basically, this is a study sponsored by an insurer which sells policies to customers to protect themselves financially from extreme weather events, whether they’re caused by natural or human-induced climate change.

It also notes: “We (society) cannot prevent extreme weather caused by climate change in the short term, but we can — indeed must — adapt to it” and that, “The good news is that heat-related illness and death are largely preventable with knowledge, education, and adaptive action.”

True. But how many people are ever going to hear the “the good news” given all the “bad news” preceding it?

The bulk of the study is about finding ways to adapt to human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change — such as building more resilient infrastructure.

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This makes sense. The huge damage caused by flooding in B.C. last year, for example, whether induced by natural or anthropogenic climate change, was primarily the result of the failure of the province’s antiquated dike system. Despite many years of warnings, it was still in a state that threatened to collapse.

The irony is that adapting to climate change is dismissed by many in the environmental movement, who argue it detracts from the real issue — mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it will take decades, if certainly not centuries, for mitigation to have any discernible impact on the climate.

And yet today, we are bombarded with a daily diet of apocalyptic warnings about an imminent, existential threat posed by climate change that the United Kingdom’s Institute for Public Policy Research has rightly described as “climate porn” — a never-ending rhetoric of Children are terrified by despair and adults feel hysterical.

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Keep in mind all the dire warnings that have failed to come true over the years to keep things in perspective.

Urban planners fretted as we entered the 20th century that the world’s major cities would soon be buried under horse manure, because they failed to anticipate the invention of “the horseless carriage” — gas-powered automobiles — and public transit.

Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich’s dire predictions of global famines and societal collapse by the 1970s and 1980s in his highly popular 1968 book, The Population BombMassive improvements in food production prevented the apocalyptic idea of a “new world order”, which was a precursor to a new generation of apocalyptic thinking.

The “global cooling” scare of the 1970s, predicted to plunge humanity into a new Ice Age — with extreme cold being a far more dangerous killer of human beings than extreme heat — never happened.

The worst-case scenarios of decades past regarding pesticides, acid rainfall, the hole in ozone layer, and early climate change warnings that major cities worldwide would be under water by now are still valid.

Some of These predictions were completely wrong. Others were averted by human ingenuity, technological advancement and, to give credit where it’s due, warnings by scientists and environmentalists that resulted in corrective action.