Weather and climate aren’t the same. It’s one thing for people who spend little or no time learning about global warming to confuse the two, but when those we elect to represent us don’t know the difference, we’re in trouble. For a U.S. president to tweet about what he referred to as “Global Warming” because […]
Climate change
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Children should be seen and heard
Summer 2018 was Sweden’s hottest since record-keeping began more than 260 years ago — marked by drought, wildfires and extremely low reservoir levels. That was too much for 15-year-old Greta Thunberg. She heard politicians talking about climate change but didn’t see them doing enough about it. So she refused to go to school until a […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Diet for a healthy planet and people
Just as avoiding climate catastrophe isn’t the only reason to phase out fossil fuels, it’s not the only reason to curtail meat consumption. Phasing out fossil fuels will reduce habitat destruction and land, air and water pollution—and leave us reserves for fuels that remain necessary and for other petrochemical products. Reducing meat consumption has similar […]
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Pipeline push promotes false and misleading claims
An Angus Reid poll found 58 per cent of Canadians think lack of pipeline capacity is a national crisis. They can be forgiven for this. The company that owns a near monopoly on newspapers in Canada, aided by politicians and fossil fuel interests, has put significant effort into convincing them. That the number rises to […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Major health study shows benefits of combatting climate change
During the holiday season, people often drink toasts to health. There’s something more we can do to ensure that we and others will enjoy good health now and into the future: combat climate change. “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century, and tackling it could be our greatest health opportunity,” […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Politicians who deny reality aren’t fit to lead
When faced with conclusive evidence of a major threat to citizens, a true leader would do everything possible to confront it. So, what was the U.S. president’s reaction to a U.S. scientific report compiled by more than 300 scientists and endorsed by a dozen different agencies, including NASA, NOAA and the defence department, that warned […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Decades of denial and stalling have created a climate crunch
In a 1965 speech to members, American Petroleum Institute president Frank Ikard outlined the findings of a report by then-president Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee, based in part on research the institute conducted in the 1950s. “The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Ocean study criticism shows benefits of scientific method
Errors in a recent ocean warming study illustrate global warming’s complexity. They also show the depths to which climate science deniers will stoop to dismiss or downplay evidence for human-caused climate change. The study by researchers from the U.S., China, France and Germany concluded, “ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates” and […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Tackling climate change requires healing the divide
Canadian climate change opinion is polarized, and research shows the divide is widening. The greatest predictor of people’s outlook is political affiliation. This means people’s climate change perceptions are being increasingly driven by divisive political agendas rather than science and concern for our collective welfare. Over the past year, the Alberta Narratives Project gathered input […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Economists’ Nobel puts spotlight on climate solutions
As the U.S. administration denies or downplays climate science, some more sensible Americans have been rewarded for developing climate solutions. Economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer recently won the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on, respectively, “integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” and “integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” The award […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Are governments giving up on global warming?
The U.S. president may think global warming is a hoax perpetrated by China, but his administration has concluded Earth’s average temperature will rise 4 C over pre-industrial levels by 2100 if we fail to address the causes. Overwhelming scientific evidence concludes that such a rise would be catastrophic for humanity and many other animals and […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Will the world act on climate change before it’s too late?
When our children and grandchildren and those of us still here in 20 years look back to this time, will we say it was when the world finally got serious about the climate crisis? Or will we mark a tragic time when political and business leaders prioritized short-term economic gain over the future of humanity? […]
