Michael Riordon

the view from where I live

Tag Archives: climate change


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Weather report: no climate change.

extreme weatherPhoto: National Geographic

This week in Canada, the Harper regime decreed:

Henceforth, there will be no talk of climate change from any meteorologist employed by the Canadian Meteorological Service (a division of Environment Canada).

Investigative reporter Mike De Souza revealed the new ban here.

A government official who is permitted to talk to the media – but not to say anything of substance – told De Souza that meteorologists are qualified to talk about extreme weather, but not climate.

The ban – officially known as a “communications protocol” – extends the Harper regime’s aggressive silencing of scientists whose research might provoke questions about the regime’s pro-corporate, anti-environment agenda.  True to the most insidious forms of censorship, the boundaries of what’s forbidden are not specified.

Apparently this ongoing reign of terror works.  De Souza reports that, since the government’s 2007 decree that all federal scientists must obtain management approval before giving any interviews on their research, an internal Environment Canada analysis noted an 80 per cent drop in media coverage of climate change issues.

Fortunately, scientists are resisting.  Follow their stories in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, autumn 2014 from Between the Lines.


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Good news: The ELA is saved!

In April 2012, the government of Canada announced that it would close the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northwest Ontario.  Since 1968 the world-renowned research station has hosted a unique whole-ecosystem approach to studying how lake ecosystems and fish respond to human and natural disturbances.  The resulting data, unattainable anywhere else, is essential for objective, evidence-based decision-making.

Save ELAWithin hours of the closure announcement, marine biology PhD candidate Diane Orihel launched an international campaign to save the ELA.

Two years later, victory!  Today the grassroots Canadian organization Evidence for Democracy announced that a final agreement has just been reached to transfer operation of the ELA to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), based in Manitoba.  It will be backed by the governments of Ontario and Manitoba, which appear to be less hostile to evidence-based decisions and policies.

For more on the vital connections between science, evidence and democracy, Evidence for Democracy offers two public events:

5 pm, Thursday April 3, Dr. Munir Sheikh, former Chief Statistician of Canada, on why public policy needs to be informed by evidence.  The event will be live streamed. Details here.

Governing in the Dark, a recent public talk by Canadian biologist Scott Findlay can be seen or read online, here.

In dark times, signs of hope.

Follow the Save ELA story in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, coming from Between the Lines, autumn 2014.


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Climate Threshold: 2036?

Climate change, disappearing islandsMarshall Islands, going under.  Photo: Agence-France Press

Unafraid to make his findings public, US climate scientist Michael E. Mann has become a favourite target of climate change deniers.   For anyone interested in a livable future, he’s worth reading.

In the March 2014 issue of Scientific American he analyses the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and counters predictably comforting distortions in the mainstream US media.

Michael Mann concludes that the situation is not without hope, but argues that hope is rapidly fading.  “Destructive change has already arrived in some regions.  In the Arctic, loss of sea ice and thawing permafrost are wreaking havoc on indigenous peoples and ecosystems.  In low-lying island nations, land and freshwater are disappearing because of rising sea levels and erosion.”

Read the full article here.

For an inside look at science and climate disruption, see Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, coming from Between the Lines, autumn 2014.


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What are we waiting for?

As Atlantic gales batter the south of England, and historic rains swamp other parts of it, a scan of mainstream British print media reveals that less than 1 in 10 of the stories about the floods venture to suggest any possible link to climate change.

Can we talk about climate change(Photo: Climate Outreach)

At the same time, polls indicate that two thirds of people in the UK have never talked about climate change outside their immediate social circle, and a third of people have never talked about it with anyone at all.

I strongly suspect that the British are not unusual in their deathly silence on this most vital of all subjects.  But:

This short February 13 commentary looks at one local attempt to break the silence, and make the link.

More on scientists and climate change/global warming in Pesky Facts: unspun science for dangerous times, coming from Between the Lines, autumn 2014.