Evidence of meeting #3 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:35 p.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Mr. Normand Radford
Order, please.
Honourable members, since the chair is absent and the two vice-chairs are absent, we have to elect an acting chair for this meeting.
Does anyone wish to make a motion to that effect?
Mr. Godfrey.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
3:35 p.m.
The Clerk
Moved by Mr. Godfrey that Mr. Cullen do take the chair of the committee.
(Motion agreed to)
3:35 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
I get to speak for 35 minutes now, apparently, according to the standing rules of the House.
Committee members, this was just talked about within the last five or ten minutes, so I haven't done any preparation for today's agenda. Just give us a minute to catch up and be ready, and we'll work together on today's agenda.
Thank you, everyone, and thank you to our witnesses.
There's some business we need to take care of before we call this meeting to order.
There are two motions in front of us. There's been some debate, I know, among committee members as to how to deal with these, some question as to calling them forward and as to whether they'll be withdrawn or debated.
Is it the committee's interest to have these motions in front of us now, before we go to witnesses?
We'll agree to this only if we can do this in a quick and orderly manner. I hesitate to waste any of the witnesses' time. If this is going to be a long and protracted debate, then we'll move it back. But let's give it an initial shot and see if we can get through the motion or motions quickly, and then move from there.
Is that agreed?
3:35 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Let's first of all find out how many motions are still on the table. There is Mr. Warawa's, and is yours still on the table?
November 22nd, 2007 / 3:35 p.m.
Conservative
3:35 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
Okay, just for clarity's sake, then, I'll have the clerk hand this out as a motion from Mr. Warawa. Let's deal with it now.
Mr. Warawa, are you prepared to speak to it?
3:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Yes, thank you, Chair.
I talked to the minister and shared the agenda that we're looking at between now and the middle of December, when we break after our last meeting on December 13.
On November 29 the minister is coming. On December 4, at the following meeting, we had planned supplementary estimates. I've talked to the minister. He would also be available to come to that meeting. The suggestion is that on December 4 we have the supplementary estimates, as planned, and also the Environment Canada budget, and have the minister available at that meeting also, so the committee would have access to the minister at two meetings back to back. That's on December 4.
December 6, 11, and 13 would all be on Bill C-377, and you would get a flow of continuity; that, I think, would be helpful to the committee.
That's the motion.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
Thank you, Mr. Warawa.
I'm wondering if any committee members have any comments on this before we see a vote.
Fine, then I will call the vote on Mr. Warawa's motion.
(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]
3:40 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
It is carried unanimously. Thank you.
We'll now call the meeting to order.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is commencing its study of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. We have a number of witnesses before us, as well as a witness by teleconference.
From Carleton University, we have someone familiar to us, Dr. Stone. Dr. Stone will be making a presentation of some 20 minutes.
We also have with us Mr. Gray and Mr. Zwiers, both from Environment Canada.
Have you a presentation for us, or are you here as support for any questions committee members might have?
3:40 p.m.
Dr. Brian Gray Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Technology, Department of the Environment
We're here for the latter.
3:40 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
Thank you, Mr. Gray.
As well, via teleconference we have Dr. Weaver.
Dr. Weaver, are you there with us?
3:40 p.m.
Prof. Andrew Weaver Professor and Canada Research Chair, Atmosphere Science, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria
I am indeed.
3:40 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
Wonderful. Let's proceed. The first round of questioning will be ten minutes per party, the second round five minutes, and we'll see how the flow goes.
Yes, Mr. Warawa.
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
I have a question through to you, Mr. Chair. If the first round is ten minutes, I look forward to your perspective, and now with your being chair you wouldn't have that opportunity. I'd be willing to split my time with you, if that's permitted. I have ten. I'll take five and you can take the second five, if it's okay with the committee. I think it would be healthy for you to have an opportunity to also question the witness.
3:40 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
Christmas comes early. It's a generous offer. What I might suggest is that rather than preventing you from having your full time on such an important topic, if it's okay with the committee, I will take my normal sequence of time at the fourth round. Is that fair? Is that approved?
3:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
3:40 p.m.
NDP
The Acting Chair NDP Nathan Cullen
I'll pass you the clock.
Let's proceed. First, I believe Dr. Stone has a presentation for us.
Dr. Stone, when you're ready.
3:40 p.m.
Prof. John Stone Adjunct Research Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members.
I was only asked yesterday afternoon if I would come to speak to you, and I am always delighted to do that. It didn't give me very much time to prepare a presentation specifically for you, I'm afraid. At lunchtime today I gave a lecture to the Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. If you would allow me, I would use some of that presentation to talk to you and to illustrate some of my points. It is much more scientific than I think appropriate for this audience, so I won't go through all of the diagrams in detail, but I urge you more to listen to what I'm going to say.
I think it's important for you all to understand what the IPCC is--that's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--and how it does its work. The IPCC was set up twenty years ago by the United Nations with the express purpose of providing to governments information on our state of knowledge of climate and climate change, and to do that in a balanced, authoritative, clear and accessible manner. It's important for you to understand that the IPCC does not do research; it assesses the products of research.
The assessments are written by scientists—Francis Zwiers here is one of the committee lead authors. They compose three massive volumes: one is on the science; one is on the impacts adaptation; the final one is on mitigation, on emission reductions and technology and economics. Each of those is then condensed into what is called a summary for policy-makers, and there are three of them. I have copies of them here with me today. They are actually now available on the IPCC website in all six UN languages. So I encourage you to see them.
The significance of the summary for policy-makers is the following. Although they are drafted by scientists, they're actually negotiated with governments. Nothing goes into them that the scientists do not believe is supportable. Therefore, they are scientifically rigorous documents. By having governments there, one ensures that the summaries for policy-makers are balanced and they're accessible, they're in a language that governments can understand, and they provide useful information. The key to it in the end is that when the summary for policy-makers is agreed to by governments, they're effectively owned by all governments. So these three summaries for policy-makers are owned by the Canadian government, the Government of the United States, the Government of Russia, the Government of Saudi Arabia, and the like. I think it's important for you to understand.
Now, there's a fourth volume, which is called a synthesis report, and we worked on that last week. It's also now available. The synthesis report contains several significant, clear, and I think important messages. I'll go through them, and this is my own interpretation, my own words.
The first message is that climate change is a reality and the evidence for that is now unequivocal.
The second message is that we human beings are the main cause of those changes in climate and that observed temperature increases since the middle of the 20th century are very likely due to human activities. When the IPCC uses the term “very likely”, it's a calibrated language, and it means it's stated with at least a 90% confidence. In science, if you get 90% confidence that's usually as good as it gets.
Furthermore, it concludes that we are already committed to some impacts because of what we've already done to the composition of the atmosphere, and therefore that some impacts are now inevitable. If we do not curtail growth of our emissions, those impacts are only likely to increase, and some of them may be abrupt and irreversible. Because of that, in my view, adaptation no longer is a policy option; it becomes a policy imperative.
The good news, according to the IPCC, is that we can actually do it. We can stabilize emissions at levels that will avoid dangerous anthropogenic influence with the climate system. In fact, we have the technologies already that we can start to implement. For that to happen, it's important that governments give clear encouragement, that there are clear policies, that there are clear and acceptable incentives.
The final point in my view as an old policy wonk is that climate change really has to be seen in the context of development. It is an environmental issue--that's how it was first defined--but it also can be defined as a development issue, as an energy issue, as a security issue. The broader one understands how one frames the issue, then in my view the broader the coalition of interest that one can bring together to solve it.
This diagram in front of you shows the temperature record over the last 150 years. Accompanied by it is the text above, the exact language from the Summary for Policymakers of working group one. As I said earlier, it just concludes that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal”. What you can see from this diagram is a series of black dots, and that's the global mean temperature for every year, going back to about 1850. The interesting point is if you try to draw a straight line through the last 150 years, you will get the red curve. If you try to do it for the last 100 years, you will get the purple curve, for the last 50 years you will get the orange curve, and for the last 25 you'll get the yellow curve. What I'm sure is evident to you is that the closer one gets to the present, the steeper that curve is. In other words, the closer one comes to the present, the rate of temperature increase seems to be increasing.
There is similar evidence of an acceleration of the increase from sea level rise and from Arctic sea ice extent, and several other indicators. For example, global sea level rise in the years between 1961 and 2003 rose at about 1.8 millimetres per year, but over the last 10 years, from 1993 to 2003, that rate was actually double.
Satellite information shows quite unequivocally that the average Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk, particularly in the summer, by as much as 7.5% per decade to a level this year that is lower than we've ever seen it before. There's also evidence from mid-latitude westerly winds, the sorts of winds that struck Vancouver and Stanley Park a couple of years ago and Halifax the year before, that have strengthened in both hemispheres. The evidence on tropical cyclones and hurricanes is much more subtle, but there is strong evidence that the strongest of the hurricanes have increased in frequency over recent years.
So if there indeed is evidence that the climate has changed, one needs to ask if it's due to natural or to human causes. The answer is clearly the latter; it is due to human causes.
The right-hand side of this diagram shows some of the evidence that has been brought to bear to support that conclusion. I'm not going to go into detail, but basically the black line you see is the observations you saw in the previous diagram, and the blue line is the result of output from the climate models, if you force the climate system over the last 100 years only with natural forcing, which means changes in the solar variability, and volcanos, and the like. The orange graph on the upper part of that diagram shows you what would happen if you added anthropogenic forcing, which is primarily that due to greenhouse gases and aerosols. Although at the beginning of the century the fit using only natural forcing is not bad, as you come to the present date the fit gets worse and worse. In fact, you cannot fit the observed lines without evoking the forcing of greenhouse gases.
On the left-hand side is a rather complicated diagram, but in short what it shows is that the forcing due to solar variability is in the order of one-tenth of that due to natural anthropogenic forcing. This is, again, a complicated diagram, and I apologize for it, and I'm not going to go through all of it.
On the left-hand side there are some model runs done with lots of computer models of the climate. It shows that with all of the IPCC's emission scenarios, in the next two or three decades there's almost the same warming regardless of what scenario you use, basically due to what we've already done to the composition of the atmosphere, and that is that you're going to get a warming of about one degree by the year 2025.
If you go out to the end of the century the choice of scenarios does make a difference, and the warming is between 2°C and 3°C. To put that into context, the warming in the last century was 0.6°C. The 3°C rate is therefore a fivefold increase over what we saw in the last century.
There are other results that show what would happen if you could freeze the concentrations at certain levels. The climate system, because of inertia, because of its memories, keeps on growing in temperature and the sea level keeps on rising for several centuries afterwards. In fact, if you could freeze the concentrations in the atmosphere at today's level--which of course is entirely hypothetical, you can't do it in reality--then over the next two to three decades you will have an increase of 0.1°C per decade. That's because of the climate system inertia.
There's also inertia, of course, because of our technological and socio-economic systems. We can't go out and overnight have everybody drive a Prius or change all the coal-fired power plants to renewable energies. That also has an inertia, and it means that we are more likely to see a 0.2°C increase in each of the next two or three decades, about which we could do nothing. In other words, what it says is that in fact that part of history has already been written.
I'm not alone in this concern. The chairman of the IPCC at the press conference in Valencia on Saturday was quoted as saying “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
I'm not going to go into all of this diagram, but what you see there is a diagram from the third IPCC assessment, and it talks about several different reasons for concern, which range from threatened ecosystems to the possibility of rather large discontinuities in geophysical systems.
The synthesis report looked at these and concluded that the five reasons for concern that were identified in the third assessment remain a viable framework for considering vulnerabilities, and--this is important--that these reasons are assessed in the fourth assessment to be stronger than in the third assessment. That's due to increased confidence that temperature increases greater than 2°C are likely to lead to significant threats to many ecosystems and have consequences for biodiversity, and there is increasing evidence from some of the extreme events we've seen that there is indeed a greater vulnerability. There is greater evidence that specific groups, such as the poor and the elderly, are much more vulnerable than we anticipated in the third assessment report.
And all of that allows some scientists to draw the diagram on the right-hand side—you won't see that in the third assessment, and you shouldn't take it too literally. But it's, again, an illustration, a schematic that shows the reasons for concern have become stronger.
The IPCC also looked at regions and sectors that are going to be impacted in the future and drew diagrams. You can't see these that well; you can see them better in the material on the web. There's one here, which is for sectors; you can see it for water ecosystems and the like. There's also a table, which is in the synthesis report, on the threats to geographical regions.
It also was able to identify regions that are particularly vulnerable, and I will mention them. There are four. The first is the arctic, because of high rates of projected warming on the natural systems. There's Africa, because of current low adaptive capacity as well as the large projected climate change impacts. There are the small islands, due to the high exposure of their populations and the infrastructure that's at risk from sea level rise and increased storm surges. And there are Asian mega-deltas, due to the large populations there that are exposed not only to sea level rise, but to increasing storm surges.
This slide gets back to the root causes of what I term the threat of climate change, and that's what has happened to the composition of the atmosphere. We now know that we have taken the composition of the atmosphere into areas we have not experienced for the last six or seven ice ages, going back at least 650,000 years if not a million years. We have therefore taken the atmosphere into uncharted territory. That is why, in my view, climate change should be viewed as a threat.
There is indication from recent publications that the rate at which CO2 is building up in the atmosphere has increased, and the emission of greenhouse gas is now higher than any of the plausible emission scenarios that the IPCC had previously developed. This diagram shows in brief that in order to stabilize emissions we will have to peak global emissions at a certain level and then come down. The rate at which one does that depends on the stabilization level one chooses. That's of course not entirely a scientific decision; it's much more of a political decision. It depends on what you think is at risk and what you value.
The economic results depend on whether you look from the top down or the bottom up. If you look from the bottom up, you're essentially looking at various technologies and trying to estimate what they can achieve. If you look down, then you use these equilibrium economic models and understand what the economic system can tolerate.
But it's estimated that if you want to achieve no more than a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, the cost will be between a 3% decrease in global GDP and a small increase compared to the baseline. Baselines, of course, are rather difficult to estimate, but at worst the impact on the average annual reduction in GDP until the middle of this century will be in the order of 0.1%. I'm not an economist, but I think that is usually regarded as a rounding error by most economists.
