4 - Wednesday, August 5, 19982 - North Shore News eport too important to be shelved YOU MAY have read about the ‘‘bureaucratic glitch’’ that kept an Environment Canada report marked URGENT ACTION on the shelf for two years because an earlier study fell behind schedule and the department didn’t want to upset its numbering system by publishiag the series out of order. It would be truly comical if the issue didn’t indeed require urgent action, but unfortunately it does. It is one of the two most urgent situations facing humanity, the other being the decaying of the ozone layer. The critical report that got side- tracked for two years is titled Global Warming: Implications for Canadian Policy. It was prepared for the Cana- dian Climate Centre by C. lan Jackson of the highly respected Institute for Research on Public Policy. My paranoid instincts tell me that a report containing such alarming information couldn’t possibly have been delayed purcly because of fear of getting numbers out of order. I would suspect that somewhere ap above, someone decided to sit on it for a while — until, say, after the Rio Summit In any event, the report is available aow, and it makes for very unsettling reading. This isn’t science fiction, al- though I wish to God it was. Some highlights: ® ‘The scientific evidence for global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions of human origin, and for severe ef- fects on glubal climate and sea level, justifies urgent action by Canada and other nations to fimit or reduce such emissions. e ‘itis anticipated that crop production on the Canadiun Prairies will become more vulner- able to drought. @ “‘Ecoclimatic conditions favor- ing the coreal forest may be vir- tually eliminated west of Quebec by 2650. Fire is likely to be a ma- jor factor for change and may be uncontrollable throughout much of the present boreal forest zone. @ ‘Seasonal sea ice distribution may be drastically reduced in Arc- tic Canada, with implications for Canadian sovereignty.’’ More to the point, Atlantic cod, salmon, capelin and redfish would be affected by any change in the position of the ice margin, which is the zone of high biological pro- ty. Taken one by one, the problems confronting the forest, agriculture and fisheries sectors would be ma- jor disasters. Happening all at once, they could be overwhelming. The report, even if it wasn't two years late in being released, would contain few scientific sur- Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL prises, since it is a review of the findings of earlier globai warming impact studies. What is new about it is that, until now, the studies were so highly specialized they gave no real picture of the overail effects. Jackson notes that the basic difficulty with bringing science to bear on the problem of global warming is that most impact studies are necessarily location- specific — concerned with such ivities as wheat-growing in the ies, permafrost-melting in the Mackenzie Valley, and ciec- tricity generation in the St. Lawrence and Niagara rivers. Such studies are not only limited in scope, to the point of being nearly useless when it comes to anticipating global ramifica- tions, but they almost ai] adopt what has been described as the “EERE assumption,"’ namely that everything else remains equal. With something happening on a global scale, the EERE assump- tions most emphatically do not hold. What is mos: Frustrating, ac- cording to Roger Street of the Canadian Climate Centre, is that the detailed records of regional change cannot go back far enough for any significant trends to be detected, other than the measur- able generai heating that has been taking place over the last century. At the macro level, however, thanks to increasingly sophisticated Global Climate Models (GCMs), it is possible to say now that the main uncertain- ties about changes occurring in the composition of the atmosphere have been eliminated, he said. cost your ad budget Ww advertis th co-op Most major manufacturers offer co-operative advertising plans. This means your purchases may have earned dollars with which can pay all or some of your newspaper ad costs. It costs nothing but a phone call to find out about all available co-op advertising dollars you qualify for. Co-op Advertising 980-0511 The scientific evidence in sup- part of a definite warming at the global fevel has passed the poi of ‘intriguing,’ as scientists ‘ike to say, and moved to ‘‘compelii- ing’? — meaning that something really oughta be done, folks. The report notes that Canadians have managed to shrug off the dire implications of global warimn- ing ‘‘possibly because of an in- Stinctive feeling that the effects ... will be mainly beneficial.”’ Yet when we look at the projec- tions up close we see that nothing could be further from the truth. Take Saskatchewan. At the cur- rent rate of carbon dioxide in- crease, the frequency of drought by ‘about 2030" will have in- eased by a factor of three to 10, which would lead to ‘‘severe repercussions on employment and provincial economies.’ Does global warming therefore ultimately mean the end of life as 300,0CO farm families know it on the Prairies? Quite possibly. Forestry? Hf present trends continue, by the year 2050, half the boreal forest in Canada will be gone, consumed by fires so vast they will be ‘tuncontrullable,”’ unless there is a quantum leap in the technology to fight them. Fisheries? . The key climate issue isn’t sea level change, it is changes in water temperature, wind-induced upwelling, and circulation pat- terns. All this, remember, from a report that sat on the shelf for two years — while governments sat on their hands. SUITS SPORTS JACKETS SLACKS CASUAL WEAR Including New Fall SUITS and PORTS JACKETS