ENSU Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 6, 1997

• 0907

[Translation]

The Chairman (The Hon. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): Good morning.

[English]

Good morning. We welcome you, Mr. Street. We apologize for the delay. We are very anxious to hear you talk to us about whichever study you would like to elaborate on. We have an hour for your presentation and the questions. Welcome again. The floor is yours.

Mr. Roger Street (Director, Environmental Adaptation and Research Group, Atmospheric Environment Service, Environment Canada): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the standing committee for the opportunity to come to speak to them about some of the work that's going on in Canada on the impacts and adaptation potential associated with climate change.

Either you have a deck or it's being passed around, a deck I hope will provide you with the information about the Canada country study. I'm not going to go through the entire deck. It's there to provide you with some information. What I would like to do is to go through parts of that deck and elaborate on some of the points there.

I'm going to be using some overheads reflective of the slides in the deck. I'm going to start out by talking about the Canada country study on climate impacts and adaptation. I've included on the first slide the web site, which is now up and operating and is being built to provide that information.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): Have you got this in French?

Mr. Roger Street: Yes, I have a copy in French, but I do not have it with me today.

[English]

Oh, there is one. I wasn't sure we had both.

My presentation will be in the language of presentation. Some of the slides are in English, some in French. I ask you to bear with me on that. We can make the entire set available in both languages.

As I was indicating, the web site identified on this overhead is the web site for the Canada country study.

I would like to start off with some key messages I think are helpful in trying to understand the Canada country study.

On this next slide the thing I would like to point out is that within Canada particularly, climate is a key variable in defining social and economic well-being. It has been in the past, it is now, and it's expected to be in the future. I'm positive most of the members of this committee can reflect on that and understand that where they have grown up and where their families are living climate has been and is a defining variable.

• 0910

[English]

I think another key message to get across is that existing and evolving climate sensitivities and vulnerabilities, both within Canada and internationally, are expected as a result of projected changes in climate to have significant environmental, social, and economic implications.

I think these are the conclusions reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is the international body within the UN. These were also conclusions that started to become evident as we undertook the initial work on the Canada country study.

What I'd like to do today is give you a brief understanding of what a Canada country study is and why there is one. I would like to describe some very basic linkages internationally, and then I'd like to focus in on providing some highlights of our current level of understanding as reflected in this research.

The Canada country study officially began at the start of the summer of 1996. There have been a number of international activities in which we looked at the impacts of climate change globally. It was decided that we needed to better understand what was going on in Canada. What were the impacts on Canada and on Canadians? So we needed to be able to understand what we knew right now. What was our current level of understanding?

We wanted to base that current level of understanding on the information that is contained within scientific and technical documents. We also wanted to be able to understand where we needed to focus our research and efforts for better understanding the impacts and adaptation potential. Therefore, we wanted to identify the principal gaps in our knowledge.

But also, in terms of doing this type of work, it became very evident to most of us that we could do it as a research community alone. We had to do it by engaging Canadians. We needed the rest of the research community, but also Canadians at the community and industrial levels. So a major effort was needed to engage people in this research, and also in the policy community and private sector.

After we launched this, it became very evident that it would provide an opportunity for us to have a better understanding of the issue of climate change and its impacts for our discussions at Kyoto.

We're now trying to make this initial information available so that the discussions occurring with respect to Kyoto are done in an informed method. We'll understand not only the cost of mitigation, but the cost of inaction and adaptation.

What we've decided to do in the Canada country study, in terms of making this information available and in order to get information out in the published literature, is to release six regional volumes. There's a volume each for Pacific and Yukon, Quebec, prairies, Arctic, Atlantic, and Ontario. These are just being released. Some of them came out in the last couple of weeks.

The Pacific and Yukon volume came out on June 4. That was the first one to come out. The Quebec one came out on October 22. The Atlantic one went out yesterday. We are expecting that, in the next two weeks, we'll have an Ontario volume, and we will have an Arctic volume. They will be going out next week.

We 're also undertaking to put out a national sectoral volume in which, instead of just looking at climate change in a particular region, we tried to look at it across a sector and provide a national picture. These are in areas in significant sectors, such as forestry, agriculture, water, and those types of sectors. This is so that we could get that information out there. That will be published in a sectoral volume.

Then we looked at a number of other issues: domestic trade and commerce, extraterritorial concerns, the cost of inaction, and dealing with the two economies. We have concerns over the fact that we have a subsistence economy in this country. We have to look at the relationship between those two economies under climate change. Those are some of the issues we did in the national cross-cutting issues volume.

• 0915

What we're also doing—and I'm showing you this on the next slide—is that there will be a summary for policy-makers at the national level that will try to give an indication of what we currently understand about the impacts of climate change. This is the cover for that national summary. There'll be a plain-language version that we hope to get out at the national level, and that we also hope to get out to Canadians. There will also be for each region a plain-language version that will go out and be available to the constituents in each of those regions.

The national summary for policy-makers and the national plain-language version will be released at a symposium, the Canada country study national symposium, scheduled for November 24 and 26 in Toronto. This will provide us an opportunity to share the results of the study with Canadians among the scientists who have been involved as well as stakeholders and members from the private and public sector at all levels.

It will also give us an opportunity to decide where we need to go with respect to the Canada country study on biodiversity, and what are the next steps we need to look at. This symposium will be taking place at the University of Toronto on Monday, November 24. Then we'll slip down to the convention centre for the last two days to try to look at it in a little bit more detail and at the same time take the opportunity to examine the next steps.

I want to point out that the Canada country study on biodiversity is linked to a lot that is going on internationally. There is a recognition that within “climate change impacts community” we need to start looking at what's happening not just on a global basis but also regionally.

Within the IPCC they were challenged by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change people to start to look at regional impacts. They were challenged to do that in order to provide information to the negotiators at Kyoto.

So a special report was commissioned by the IPCC to look at ten regions around the globe. One of those regions was North America. It was further defined, in order that our Mexican colleagues could work with their Latin American neighbours, that North America would be Canada and the United States.

A gentleman from the United States and I were the lead authors on this report. It was released officially last week or the week before in Bonn. It is now being printed up. This is chapter 8, the chapter for North America.

A summary for policy-makers was negotiated in the Maldives at the end of September. It will also be released. It is a full description of the impacts on a regional basis.

The other thing that's happening internationally—and you'll see this in your package—is that the United States has also taken on a national assessment. in the deck I've passed on to you there's a description of the U.S. effort. They are encouraging us and we are encouraging them for greater co-operation between Canada and the United States, because climate does not respect borders, and neither does its impact.

I want to talk a little bit about the state of science. Impacts research and adaptation research also are very much in their infancy. We're just learning the right ways to do this type of research. We're just learning about how to get at and how to better understand the impacts. It's a very complex research initiative, mainly because it just does not involve a single discipline. It is multidisciplinary research. We are not dealing with a response in a test tube, we're dealing with the response of humans. We're dealing with responses to complex systems, and therefore need to involve a lot of researchers. So I want to emphasize that it's in its infancy.

The impacts you're about to hear about are not predictions; rather, they're an indication of what we understand about our sensitivities in Canada and our vulnerabilities as a result of projected changes in climate. Some of the sensitivities and vulnerabilities that have been identified are based on responses that we have seen to historical climate variability. They're also based on how those responses would change as a result of the intensity or projected changes in climate that are expected to be greater than we've seen in historical times.

• 0920

So there's a combination. We're looking at what happened in the past, and we're looking at the responses. We're therefore identifying the sensitivities or vulnerability, and what we're then trying to do is determine what would happen if we saw the climate change as projected by the general circulation models, the climate models. What would happen? What type of response would we see?

So they are based on projections of the climate change that is expected to occur over the next century, a two-times CO₂. I think we're becoming more and more aware that a two-times CO₂ is not a magic number. It has never been seen as a magic number. Unless some significant action is taken, the two-times CO₂ will be but a point on the curve as we move to a three- and a four-times CO₂. I think the impacts we are seeing here are based on the two-times CO₂, but that does not necessarily say this is what we're limited to.

Another key point it's necessary to make there is that the diversity impacts you will see in this country, and the response options, reflect very much the diversity and breadth of Canada. Again, I go back to my main point I started out with. Climate is a key defining variable in this country. It defines our social and our economic well-being. We are very much a diverse country. We have a broad geographic extent. There is no way you can say the impacts on the forest industry or on the agricultural industry or on individual Canadians all across Canada will be the same, nor will the responses be the same. There will be some diversity.

I'd like to go through some of the significant findings, if I can. This is re-echoing the message that the impacts we are expecting will vary significantly across the country. They may be more pronounced at the regional and community level, reflecting that regional and sectoral difference in vulnerability. I'll try to explain that using the next slide.

Across the horizontal access, at the bottom, you have the number of people. These are just ballpark numbers; they're not numbers saying it will be only one person. You can see extent: site, local, regional, continental and global. And up the vertical axis, we look at the benefit costs of climate change.

This is a pictorial expression of this regional differentiation that you may see, and it's also an expression of the averaging that might occur. If you look at a particular impact of climate change, and if you look at it at a global level, there will be what have often been called winners and losers. I don't like to use those words, but they're often called these in the literature. A winner is someone who, because of climate change, may experience a benefit. The losers are those who are going to lose because of climate change, those for whom there will be a negative impact.

If you average things out over a large area, such as the global or continental level, you can see that the loss can become minimized. We'll just look at the bottom curve first, the solid curve. As you go down and you start looking at it at regional levels, the loss becomes greater.

I can give you an example of this. There are many communities and individuals dependent upon one sector, one industry, one part of the natural environment. If that natural environment is negatively affected, then that one individual or one community is going to be significantly negatively affected. But if you look at it on a global basis, there will be some pluses and some minuses, and everything averages out. I think that is a key thing.

The Chairman: It's the same thing you can say of international trade.

Mr. Roger Street: Yes, very much so.

We can go through the winners one as well. You can see that at an average level, there may be some very significant winners at a local level.

Just for completion, what the dashed line is trying to show you there is that adaptation has the potential of reducing a negative impact. That's what is occurring there: adaptation. We adapt already in this country. We spend millions of dollars, billions of dollars, every year in adapting to our current climate. In order to minimize the climate change we're already committed to, we are going to have to adapt. This is trying to show in a pictorial form that adaptation can change even a global loss to a global gain, but that adaptation does not come without significant economic social and environmental costs.

• 0925

I'm going to try to go through these rather quickly, just so that I can give you time for questions.

One of the things we found not only in the Canada country study, but which was reflected also when we joined with our partners in the United States, was that when we looked at the impacts of climate change for Canada and for North America, water was key to defining the overall impacts. That's because of the central role water plays in everything we do. Water excesses, water shortages, changes in extreme amounts—droughts and floods—and impacts that are projected or expected because of the result of the projected changes in climate will have significant implications.

I can give you a couple of examples just to illustrate very quickly. First, there is a lot of concern over the amount of water that's going to be available in the prairies. The prairies receive a significant amount of their water from snow melt, from run-off from the Rocky Mountains. The projections that we have for climate change suggest there will be a change in the amount of snow melt and snow that is available, as well as the timing. Therefore, those industries, those communities that rely on this water, may not have the amount of water they need throughout the entire season.

This becomes particularly important when you look at adaptation. Agriculture, for example, is looking at using increased irrigation to deal with the pressures of climate change that suggest drier periods in the prairies. Well, if there's less water, there are more people, and there's more of a demand, then we have some problems. That's what this is starting to show.

There's also a lot of concern for water levels on the Great Lakes. We've been going through a period of very high water levels on the Great Lakes, but there are some indications that those levels will drop, and there may not be the water in the Great Lakes that is essential to the vitality of the Great Lakes basin.

There is a lot of concern with respect to the natural ecosystems. We see some changes in the function and structuring of these systems due to changes in species distribution, changes in actual populations and habitats for wildlife, and also new competition.

I can show you the next two slides, which are based on some projections. The first slide shows the distribution of major biomes under current climate. I apologize that I only have a global view here, but I thought it might be informative for you to look at this. For Canada, you can see the blue area, which is the tundra, and the green area, which is boreal forest. You can look at the size of those areas in particular, as well as the grasslands area that sticks up throughout the Great Plains. For those who are from the east and are concerned about that, you can again look at the boreal forest and the extension of the deciduous or temperate forest up into the area north of the Great Lakes.

Now, take a look at the changes that are being projected as a result of models. You can see that there is a significant potential push of the boreal forest northward. Temperate forests in the Great Lakes area potentially go right up into the northern parts of Ontario and northern parts of Quebec. And the extension of the grassland prairie area is falling in behind some of that.

This change is only a potential change. You can look at some of those areas—for example, the extension of the boreal forest—and there just is not the soil to support those changes. There's not the soil to support such potential moves, so what happens in my example is that the boreal forest gets squeezed out.

Another concern in the Arctic is that some of the ecosystems that currently support the subsistence lifestyles of a large fraction of the Inuit community are no longer going to be there.

• 0930

[English]

We get invasion of some species from the south. That is going to cause greater competition with weed species coming in. We'll get disruption of the ecosystems as different species come in and affect the dynamics, the balance that exists within these ecosystems. There are concerns that as the climate no longer supports the existing trees, for example, those trees will start to be under greater stress. There is a suggestion that diseases and pests that have been limited from moving northward will be able to move up into Canada. That puts greater stress on some of these trees. There are a number of stresses and all of a sudden the trees start to die, increasing the possibility for fire, that having a disruptive nature in terms of not only the natural ecosystem but the industries that rely on the trees.

Adaptation is essential for Canada. As I said, we are already committed to climate change. We are seeing changes occurring such as those in the Mackenzie basin, in the report handed out to you. We are already starting to see changes there. We feel there is a commitment to these changes. There will be impacts. It doesn't wait until the climate changes as we reach the two times CO₂. We're worried about thresholds being passed, as has been indicated in the past. We need to be able to adapt. We need to have the information and financial mechanisms in place in order to allow us to adapt.

One very important thing is that Canada is not an island unto itself. Because of our dependence on trading, our relationships within the international community, we are going to feel the impacts of changes that occur in the international community, particularly among our trading partners and competitors. You can think about agriculture. You can think about forestry and the response.

It's not only the impacts in those communities, it's the response. For example, if the trees die off in a particular area of the world and they decide to dump their pulp or whatever onto the market, it's going to affect international prices and it's going to affect our competitiveness. I think there is a strong belief that the implications internationally are just as important as those that occur directly in Canada itself, or of significant importance.

One thing you should be aware of is that, as a northern country, the fact that the temperature increases are expected to be most significant in the winter, the minimum temperatures are supposed to be increasing, cannot mean all bad things for Canada. There are expected to be some positive impacts. You can think about less snowfall and the implications for roads; but even that has implications when you consider that those people who rely on snow cover, those natural ecosystems that rely on snow cover for their existence, will be negatively impacted. It's a double-edged sword. But there will also be opportunities, such as in the spread of the movement of the agricultural belt northward, the opportunities for crops to be grown in certain areas where they weren't grown before. Some opportunities will present themselves.

There is a lot of concern about extreme events. An increase in mean temperature means an increase in variability, and with that there are some changes in the occurrence and severity of severe weather. This will have serious implications for our security and the integrity of not only our natural resources but also our social system and the associated infrastructure. It's of particular concern to the insurance industry and supporting public sectors. If there is a change in the number of floods that occur, a change in the amount of hailstorms that occur, a change in the number of droughts that occur...and you can go all the way through there and picture in your own minds the implications that would have for the insurance industry and also for the supporting public sectors, such as emergency preparedness, police and other security forces.

• 0935

On the next steps we want to look at that we think are very important, through the Canada country study on biodiversity we've essentially said these are the things we know, these are the things we have some concerns about, and these are the things we think need more work. A lot of this material has been hidden and very difficult to find. It's in the scientific literature and has not been made available to Canadians in the public sector or the private sector so they can start making informed decisions. It's very important that we start to communicate the information and outreach to these communities so we can start to understand what information they need in order to help them make decisions and more informed decisions.

We need to engage the industry much more effectively than in the past. We need to engage communities so they can undertake adaptation activities, for example, or better understand their impacts, but also help us understand what information they need. We need to provide a network or forum for impacts and adaptation research. It is essential.

Canada is recognized as one of the leaders in the world in undertaking impacts and adaptation research. This has been a known fact for a number of years. They always look to Canada internationally when there's anything to be done on impacts and adaptation. The Mackenzie River Basin project and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Basin project are touted as some of the top ones in the world.

We need to have a new research focus on regional-national priorities. The community has realized that a lot of the work we have done has been on natural ecosystems. We have to start moving impacts and adaptation research into understanding what it means to the urban and urban-rural interface. We have to start moving in that area.

One of the things we've taken on, and again we're one of the first to move in this area, is something called the Toronto and Niagara region study. We're going to look at not only the impacts of climate change, but the impacts of other air issues on that area of this country. We're going to start the focus on that, but we want to expand it to include the greater Vancouver area, the Montreal area, and some of the other areas in this country. But we have to start somewhere, and the Toronto-Niagara region is where we're going to start. We have to strengthen the North American perspective because the impacts are that way. There isn't just one.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Street. You have certainly helped us enormously get an insight into the potential gravity of the situation. I hope you will have an opportunity to make a similar presentation to a committee of cabinet before a decision is made.

Mr. Casson, would you like to be first?

Mr. Rick Casson (Lethbridge, Ref.): Sure, thank you.

Thank you very much. It was a good presentation.

You said this is not a forecast or a prediction. What have you used as a base to project the degree of climate change? In order to have some kind of a plan for adaptation you have to have an idea what the degree will be. What information did you use? Did you gather that, or did you use other studies?

Mr. Roger Street: No. I welcome the opportunity to clarify that. We went through and looked at what the literature is now saying about Canada and its impacts. A variety of scenarios was used based on two times CO₂ in terms of the projections. All of them used the ones recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of the studies were based on the older models and some were based on the newer ones.

We've tried to clarify what was used when we described each one of them. We're very clear about that. In the North American chapter we were very explicit about what had been used. But as I said, the older models give a little more climate change than the newer ones in the next century, but they're all based on two times CO₂. The concern is we will be moving past two times CO₂.

When I present this information I try to talk about not so much the magnitude—although you can't ignore some of the significance—but portray that these are things where we're sensitive, at risk, where there are some vulnerabilities and we need to take some action. That's the key message to take home with respect to this.

• 0940

What we tried to do in all of these studies is identify where there are some risks, where there are some sensitivities and where we need to take action of some sort—adaptation. And there are some things we cannot adapt to and you and I will not allow ourselves to adapt to. We don't want to do those things. We want some things for our children and for our grandchildren.

What we've tried to do in here is say here are some risks; here are some sensitivities; we may have to make some decisions in order to not allow some of these things to deteriorate past the point we would accept.

What we would like to do in the next piece of research—and the international community is starting to rally around this—is to select two or three scenarios, and all the impacts work will be done based on those scenarios. It will still not be a prediction, but that will help us to better understand what the risk is across the country, and on a standard basis. Then we can start making some decisions, as you suggested, on adaptation.

Mr. Rick Casson: You mentioned that the processes you use are in their infancy and just starting. When you put out your findings and then you say you're just learning how to do this, at what point in time or how long will it take for you to be more comfortable with the process?

Mr. Roger Street: I'm comfortable with the process and the way it's proceeding now. I'm comfortable with what we can say about the sensitivities and vulnerabilities, mainly because a lot of that is based on what we've already seen has happened.

What we will start to get more comfortable about in terms of our impacts is when we are able to do that comparison, and when we can say we have used the two or three scenarios and we have done a comprehensive analysis across the country.

We didn't pick; we chose everything. But researchers have not done a comprehensive analysis of this country. They have not done that because the resources have not been available. This type of work is new and we are just starting to engage the research community. We want to do that comprehensive analysis. That's when I'll feel comfortable.

Mr. Rick Casson: Good. That would make me feel more comfortable too.

Mr. Roger Street: Yes.

Mr. Rick Casson: Are copies of your reports available to us?

Mr. Roger Street: Right now, we're just getting copies of these. Like I said, some of them are just coming out.

What I can do is make some copies available here as soon as we get ours. These are the only copies. This is the largest set that exists right now, and it's that one set. But I will.

Mr. Rick Casson: You mentioned the prairies and irrigation and things that are dear to my heart. But when our part of the country was settled, the initial report was you can't live here because it's too dry.

Mr. Roger Street: That's Palliser's work.

Mr. Rick Casson: Palliser's Triangle. So we're there and there are a lot of us, and irrigation and water management is part of life there.

How do you say one part of the country is going to get wetter and one is going to get drier?

Mr. Roger Street: I think most of you were here when Gordon McBean came in and talked about the science. When we start talking about wetter and drier and starting getting down, as the scale gets down a lot smaller we get a little less confident about what we're saying.

In terms of the water in the prairies, one of the things we're very interested in is some of the recent work done by the Geological Survey of Canada. It is suggested that maybe Palliser wasn't as wrong as he had indicated. When they went back 4,000 to 5,000 years in the past, they found that the drier periods were more prevalent than the wetter periods, as we have been experiencing since 1940. So there is a lot of concern about that.

What we can do is again go back to my sensitivities. Water, as you've indicated, is not something you ignore on the prairies. Indications are that because of the changes in precipitation, because of the changes in water that's going to be available coming from snow melt, the prairies are going to experience drier periods than they do now. That's a concern.

We cannot get down and say Red Deer is going to be drier than Regina. We won't even try to do that. But what we can do is start to look, and when we get to the continental scale we can see things happening in the west compared to what's happening in the east, things that are happening in the north compared to what's happening in the south. Then we can start looking at sensitivities and vulnerabilities, and then we can start to say the things we're hinting at now, that there are sensitivities and there are vulnerabilities.

• 0945

Mr. Rick Casson: Do I have time for one more question?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Rick Casson: You mentioned that the level of the water in the Great Lakes has been high.

Mr. Roger Street: In the last number of years it has been high.

Mr. Rick Casson: Okay. Then you said the indications are that it's going to go down.

Mr. Roger Street: Yes. The indications are that in the Great Lakes the water levels will drop over the next century as a result of climate change.

There is one in some of the projections.... And again, these are early projections based on global level analyses and trying to look at a region with them. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Basin study suggested that parts of Lake St. Clair will lose significant amounts of shoreline. It will retreat from one to six kilometres, I think, in certain areas. There'll be a drop of a metre of water in the St. Lawrence. Those are things the models are suggesting. But again, we're getting down to that finer scale where we're not as confident. Here we're pointing at suggestions of concern.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Casson.

[Translation]

Ms. Guay, welcome to your former committee.

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be able to join you here today. I am, obviously, replacing someone, but I am very familiar with the environment file and am very concerned about climate change and greenhouse gases.

Good morning, sir. I would like to congratulate you on the work you are doing and on the study you have undertaken. Naturally, I am perhaps going to talk to you a little bit more about the political scene. Right now, Canada is preparing its position. As of yet, we do not know what this position will be.

On the international scene, I recently met with some American senators and representatives. One of the topics discussed was climate change. We can see that the Americans do not feel very strongly about this. This is not one of their priorities. Consequently, even if we, here in Canada, decide to make improvements with respect to climate change, if our American neighbours do not come on board, the risks will remain the same because we are all sharing the same territory.

I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.

[English]

Mr. Roger Street: The point you're making is very much the point that it not only deals with our neighbours to the south, the United States, it is a global issue, and all have to take action. If one country like Canada stands up and takes action, since we only contribute something like 2% of the greenhouse gases on a global basis, the implications would be very small in terms of not experiencing some of the negative actions and the benefits we might achieve.

It is very important to have a global response. That is the reason there is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is calling for action at a global level. That's why there are discussions going on in Kyoto about how all have to act. It is also the reason the scientific community has got together. And we are starting to look at it on a regional basis, in terms of both Canada and the United States working together to better understand the impacts of what's happening in our part of the world. I know that we have keyed in on working together to better understand the impacts along with the adaptation that will be necessary.

As I indicated, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has always suggested that a portfolio of responses would be the most acceptable one because we are committed to climate change to a certain degree. Therefore we cannot just try to mitigate. Mitigation will not be enough. We also have to do some adaption to those changes that we will experience.

I don't know if I'm answering your question.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Yes, in part. However, there will obviously be an adaptation period. We cannot get around this. There is also the matter of cost.

• 0950

Alberta is ardently defended by our Reform colleagues, as well as others, because this province does not want to get involved in climate change. Alberta is one of ten provinces. Somewhere, action has to be taken as quickly as possible and all government levels must be made aware of the issue. It starts at the bottom and grows from there.

Among other things, I would like to ask you what impact climate change will have on the Arctic.

[English]

Mr. Roger Street: As I said, a chapter on the Arctic is coming out. It's in its final stages. It will be a particular look at just the Arctic.

You have before you a report on the Mackenzie basin. It tries to identify some of the work we have done in that particular area. There is a lot of concern, as I mentioned, about the subsistence lifestyle and the sustainability of that lifestyle, which is significant in the Arctic community. We have often looked to the Arctic as a frontier, as an opportunity to continue our development. The changes we're seeing in the Arctic, such as the suggested changes in the permafrost, will reduce the stability of those ecosystems and will have significant impacts not only on the natural ecosystems but on people's ability to work in that area.

One of the concerns about the Arctic is the sea. Under certain projections the Northwest Passage is suggested to become ice-free for a significant portion of the year, if not all year-round. That would open up those ports and open up the navigation of the Northwest Passage not only to Canada but to the international community.

At the same time, because you no longer have an ice cover that protects the storminess of the sea, the potential for storm surges and damage to ports in the Arctic is going to be significantly increased. We're already losing substantial portions of the shoreline because of erosion and because of permafrost lost in the Arctic, and that could only be accelerated if the sea is more open and the wave action is allowed to be stormier.

The other thing is if you take a look at it from an ecosystem perspective, the loss of sea ice is going to be significant for the wildlife in that area, which depends on the ice for feeding, for transport, and for movement. There is a suggestion that the polar bear, for example, may become an endangered species, because it will no longer be able to sustain its lifestyle when there is no ice in the Northwest Passage.

So there are significant implications for the Arctic as well.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Thank you very much, sir.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Herron, please.

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): I'm looking to have your opinion on perhaps a little more simplistic a question. After the IPCC was formed in 1988, it produced two major reports. The first one was a little inconclusive on the divergence of science and whether there was indeed a large human influence on climate change, but in the introduction here it refers to the 1996 report. It says the IPCC, which was established by the United Nations, concluded that

...recent variations in the climate could not be due to natural forces alone. The panel said that continued increases in concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would lead to a warming of the world's climate.

Would it be indeed that there is a consensus today that the evidence does suggest there is a discernable human influence on global climate change?

Mr. Roger Street: Yes. The way you stated the statement in your question is almost word for word what is included in the summary for policy-makers within the IPCC, and evidence continues to mount to support that statement.

• 0955

Mr. John Herron: So when they say the science is divided, it's sort of like 98% to 2%.

Mr. Roger Street: I'm not too sure of the exact numbers.

Mr. John Herron: As an example.

Mr. Roger Street: What the scientific community is arguing about is the last 5% to 2%.

Mr. John Herron: Thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Charbonneau, you will ask the first question on the Liberal side.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): Our witness today has talked about some interesting things. Rather, he has referred to some things that could prove to be interesting. While I believe he made some preliminary comments, in the main, his message was that he is doing some important work now which will, over the next few years, enable us to have a better grasp of what we are trying to talk about today. He even used the word "infancy". He said that their studies were in their infancy.

This could lead us to two conclusions. Some people could say: Oh well, if we don't know anymore than that, it's not worth getting all upset and taking drastic measures; we'll see what happens later on. The same people often raise economic fears. They bury their head in the sand, saying: They want to levy new taxes; these measures will hurt the economy. They draw certain conclusions which, if we were to act upon them, would cause us to do nothing. Obviously, this is not how we see things.

However, we must admit that we don't know all that there is to know about this issue and that it is just as pointless to start talking about possible catastrophes based on the data that we currently have. This would be the other extreme, which would not be of any help in a debate that we want to be well balanced.

In certain circles, people are predicting terrible droughts, extreme storms and very violent changes, whereas the data that we have is saying: be careful, we don't know a great deal about this issue; we have a general idea about it, but we don't know exactly what's going to be occurring on a regional basis; all of this has to be refined and will be revealed through future research.

Consequently, I am asking you to try to adopt an approach that is both realistic and pragmatic, one that will enable us to lay the groundwork, to take initiatives which, at any rate, we will not regret. When we talk about launching initiatives such as measures to save energy or changes to the composition of our energy base, we can't go wrong. There are several measures we could take, measures to achieve savings, as well as certain orientations. We could even look at certain aspects of our tax system. We can't go wrong taking certain measures, however, I don't think that it would be appropriate to become alarmed if we don't have scientific data available.

You mentioned that our research was at the infancy stage and you quoted from the second report submitted by the intergovernmental expert panel on climate change. We will have to read this report, Mr. Chairman.

According to this report, we have a general idea about the issue, but the literature concerning the impact of this climate change is controversial. People often extrapolate on the basis of mathematical models, however, there is no consensus as to how to assess the value of a statistical life or to group statistical lives for several countries together.

The report says:

For the planet to warm up by 2 to 3 degrees Centigrade, the literature consulted results in a very wide variety of specific estimates of total damages taking into account the forecasted increase in greenhouse gases. [...] Such estimates contain a great deal of uncertainty...

• 1000

After this introduction, I would like to ask you, Mr. Street, to tell us how your research program will attempt to eliminate these uncertainties, given the current level of our knowledge.

I have been told that water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas and is responsible for 70 per cent of atmospheric warming. This is not dependent upon human activities. Are we going to be able to gain greater insight into the factors responsible for warming up the planet beyond this data?

I've been told that the measurements that lead us to state that the planet is warming up are taken at the surface, whereas if you go up into the lower atmosphere, you will see that it is cooling down. I have been told that several studies illustrate that at least 70 per cent of the temperature increases can be explained by the cyclical nature weather systems and of solar fluctuations. I have been told about a phenomenon referred to as heat-islands. When you take measurements in an urban area, there may be some distortion. If you take these measurements on board large modern ships which emit heat, you may have some distortion, etc. Will you provide us with data that will eliminate this distortion or that will enable us to reduce the controversy that currently surrounds the data we are discussing right now?

[English]

Mr. Roger Street: I'll try to answer some of your questions in the time available. I'm not too sure how much time I have.

One thing about the impacts of climate change.... You're right that it is, as I indicated, in its infancy, but as with the rest of the IPCC report, there is a community in the neighbourhood of 400 to 500 scientists who have been working on this, and it represents a large fraction, almost the majority, of the impacts community. So there is a growing consensus within that community as well with regard to the impacts.

As I mentioned earlier, what we have tried to do.... I don't think there are many of us or anyone around here who will be able to question the fact that Canada is sensitive to the variability, to changes that have occurred in climate. We've seen it in the past. As we heard before, when Palliser initially went through the prairies, he identified it as a non-viable area of the country. That was based on an assessment done because of the climate that had been occurring during the time he was there. So we are sensitive to it, and those are the things we're trying to do initially with this particular work. We are sensitive.

Climate has changed in the past and will continue to change, naturally. We all agree to that. The evidence, as was presented by Dr. McBean when he was here, is suggesting that the humans are now having an influence on that climate. And the evidence is mounting. The evidence is based on very sound science. The points that I know he raised during that presentation, again, are not argued by the scientific community, for the most part. The last 2% to 5% is being discussed.

There are different ways of looking at our climate. There are different ways of looking at what is happening with our climate. It's the same as going up with your eyes blinded and touching something and saying, “Is it a tree? Is it an elephant? What is it?”, because we're only looking at a short time. We have some proxy data and we have some information based on historical analyses that supports the climate change hypotheses and the directions we're moving in or the projections we have.

• 1005

With respect to looking at the different types of data, I'm a firm believer that you also have to look at the responses of the system to changes that are occurring. For example, some recent research has come out that has suggested we are seeing, especially within North America, an increase in atmospheric moisture consistent with the projections associated with the changes in climate projected by the models. These have led to greater intensity in the amount of precipitation that is occurring as a result of this.

This is consistent. The air warms up; it holds more water; more dynamics can occur, because you have the differences in latent and sensible heat transfers; and you get more intensive storms. The climate change models do suggest that the upper atmosphere—the stratosphere, for example—will cool as a result of climate change. Those are some of the things we're seeing.

We can look at satellite information, or even the questions that have been raised by satellite information, and at the response of the natural ecosystems. When we take a look at that very short piece of information, we see in Canada a three-week increase, or earlier greening up of the northern ecosystems. That's a result of we're not too sure what—we can't definitely say—but there has to be something triggering this earlier greening up.

We're seeing the freshets coming down from a number of the rivers on the west coast a lot earlier than they used to. Again, it's consistent with a warmer spring and a greater melting. This is all evidence that has come out recently.

The research we're doing is trying to take that information about projections and climate change and start to understand what it means to you as a Canadian, to me, and to your constituency, as well as the rest of Canada, and also what it means to Canada as a country.

We are trying to do that. Our research won't get that answer tomorrow, but we hope to do that by engaging, as I said in my last slide, more people, more researchers, and more Canadians.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Go ahead, Mr. Charbonneau. Very briefly, please.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: I believe that the answers provided by our witness cause us to look ahead and suggest that we should encourage and support, in concrete terms, research activities and activities designed to make the general Canadian public and various sectors aware of the issue. We should support serious research, research based on very rigorous methodology, but which also involves communication. This is what I would like to emphasize, if I may, in 15 seconds.

Often, research is conducted in institutions, in specialized, scientific circles, or at the departmental level. But as governments, with or without the assistance of the opposition, called upon to take action and to make economic and budgetary decisions in the here and now, we need to establish a continuing dialogue between the research sector and the public. Otherwise, we will no longer understand each other and everyone will interpret things in his own way. We have to have constant interaction.

I think we have a lot to do in that regard, if we are to come up with policies that are supported, understood and implemented not only by departments but also by the sectors involved, be it industry or voluntary action groups.

It is therefore in our best interest to support this work. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Charbonneau. We also need to have a chat with the Minister of Finance to find the money we need, don't we?

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: Probably, since the Minister of Finance has to make some immediate decisions. He cannot put them off for three years until these gentlemen reach their conclusions. He must make decisions every year. And he needs to find support, based on understanding, among Canadians.

The Chairman: That, Mr. Charbonneau, is a speech for the Liberal Party caucus.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: It is a speech for everyone, because here there are parties...

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Street, I would like to ask you a question in relation to your very impressive presentation this morning. It's certainly been very helpful and extremely revealing.

Evidently, because of your mandate, you have to tiptoe around the question of stabilization dates and the requirements to achieve stabilization, as did your colleagues who were in charge of the Canada second national report on climate change. They very carefully tiptoed around questions of when we stabilize by, when we reduce by, and which measures are required.

• 1010

So the question I'm interested in, and maybe you're not in a position to answer, is on what is needed to stabilize by 2005. What would be needed to stabilize by 2006? What would be needed to stabilize by 2007?

Evidently there is an arsenal of measures we can bring to bear, from conservation to efficiency to improved policies to switches to natural gas—you name it. Each of them has a bearing on the achievement of stabilization.

The question to you—and I fully understand if you can't answer it—is, what is needed in terms of policy measures to stabilize by 2005?

Mr. Roger Street: Your comment that I may not be able to answer that is correct. My main focus—and I've been involved in this since 1979—is in understanding the impacts, trying to understand adaptation. Those are the two questions I've dealt with.

As I indicated, it is my belief that as a country we need to include a portfolio of responses that includes adaptation. But as I think I mentioned to another member, there are certain things that we will not accept as a way of adapting. We will not accept, for our children and our grandchildren, certain actions or things that will occur. Therefore the only response, I would suggest, is a mitigative action of some sort.

So I can't give you those figures. I apologize. It's not my area of expertise.

The Chairman: We have yet to find a witness who's prepared to do that. You can see why we are probing.

Thank you, Mr. Street. Please be free to stay at the table if your schedule permits.

Mr. Roger Street: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: We are now calling on Dr. Clarke from the Bedford Institute to make a brief presentation so that we can ask questions. We have to adjourn at 11 o'clock.

Welcome, Mr. Clarke. We're very glad to have you. Please proceed.

Mr. Allyn Clarke (Acting Manager, Ocean Sciences Division, Bedford Institute of Oceanography): Mr. Chairman, honourable members, I'm very pleased to have been invited to this committee to share with you the perspective of an oceanographer who works within the world climate research program, the international program that does research on this issue.

I will focus my remarks on the ocean's role in the climate system, especially its role with respect to climate variability. I'm not sure if my c.v. was distributed, but if you look at my c.v. you can see that I very clearly appear to be a firm member of the climate research establishment. However, it's only in recent years that the oceans have been brought into climate research. As one of the people who was part of bringing the oceanographers into the climate research establishment, I think the meteorologists would say that I'm a fairly strong scientific critic of the meteorological models, particularly the aspects related to the oceans.

I passed around the material from the world ocean circulation experiment, a large international experiment that I chaired. In the start of one of those pamphlets, the pamphlet for the Canadian program, there is an outline of the role oceans play in the climate system.

As a climate scientist and an oceanographer, I truly believe the climate system will eventually respond in significant ways to the changes in the atmospheric composition resulting from human activity.

• 1015

I'm a scientific skeptic in the sense that the current crop of climate models is particularly good at predicting the future in any sort of forecast sense. But I think you've heard that from all the scientists who have appeared before you. These are scenarios, they are ways of exploring the physics of the situation, but they are not true forecasts.

As a scientist debating with my colleagues, I can often explain away each new strange climate index which appears as being within the range of natural variability. However, when I consider the basic processes that operate in the climate system, when I consider that the magnitude of the changes of the radiative forcing due to these increased gases is getting to be of the same order of magnitude as the radiative changes associated with the triggering of the switches between glacial and interglacial periods, when I consider the speed at which those switches occur in the new geological records we get from ice cores and deep-sea sediment cores, and when I consider the whole mass of anomalous conditions which seem to have been appearing in the last one to two decades, I am convinced that climate change in the near future is a real possibility.

I was at the plenary for working group one of the IPCC in 1990 and I fully supported the policy-maker statement produced at that time. I was at sea during the plenaries for the 1995 meetings, but I would have fully endorsed that policy-maker statement as well. So while I'm a skeptic on a lot of the details in the overall picture that was debated and fought over by so many scientists who are my colleagues, I am in agreement with their overall conclusions.

What is the climate system? The climate system is what allows the earth to radiate back out to space all the energy it receives from the sun. It does that in a variety of ways. It does that by adjusting its temperature profile within the atmosphere so we get warmer conditions on the earth's surface and colder conditions higher up in the atmosphere. It does it by moving heat away from the tropics and moving it up to the mid-latitudes so we can live in this country, Canada, and make a living.

In moving that heat, the climate system operates both by the atmosphere and by the oceans. At around 30 degrees north and south the ocean transports as much heat towards the poles as does the atmosphere. That is an important point, because until the 1990 assessment almost all the climate predictions were made by atmospheric-only models and they were missing half the poleward transport of heat.

The ocean does this transport in two major ways. First of all, it moves heat through its large, wind-driven gyre circulations. What people learn in school about the Gulf Stream warming Europe is true, and that system operates in all the ocean basins. There is the equivalent of the Gulf Stream in each ocean basin.

The ocean also transports a great deal of heat through what is known as its thermohaline overturning. Water, when it gets cold, gets heavier. Water, when it's salty, is also heavier. The North Atlantic is the saltiest of the world's oceans. In the high latitudes of the North Atlantic, in the Labrador Sea and the Nordic seas, which are the seas north of Iceland, in the wintertime the water gets cold, it's relatively salty, and it sinks and forms the bottom water of the global oceans. That water then flows down the Atlantic into the southern ocean, where it gets modified once again. It then flows into the other ocean basins. That process takes centuries.

• 1020

The Chairman: Before you proceed, could you tell us please the meaning of the word “adsorb” in your text? Is it opposite to absorb? You have used it twice, in the second line as well as in the sixth line of your final paragraph on page 1.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: I wrote these notes late last night, and I think that's probably simply a spelling mistake, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: All right, thank you. That is very helpful.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: These are speaking notes more than text, and as you notice, I'm not necessarily following them.

The Chairman: That's fine. Dealing with scientists, you never know.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: Dealing with word processors, sometimes you never know either.

So you have this large-scale thermohaline circulation, which is driven in present day by what's called de-convection in the North Atlantic.

At McGill University in the late 1980s, one of my scientists went on a study leave and worked with a young scientist from Switzerland. They developed a very simplified two-dimensional ocean model, which had the advantage that you could run very long simulations and run them very rapidly.

So they tuned the model up to look like the present-day overturning circulation, which has 16 million cubic metres of water per second participating in this large global overturning. That's about a hundred St. Lawrence Rivers. Then they added the equivalent of an additional St. Lawrence River of fresh water into the North Atlantic of that model, and they shut down that circulation completely. That's important because the geological evidence says that's how the climate system switches between ice ages and interglacials, that it turns off the convection in the North Atlantic and decides it will convect in the southern ocean instead.

We have since worked with more sophisticated ocean models and are beginning to understand some of the multiple equilibriums of the ocean part of the climate system.

About the same time, the climate modellers were trying to couple ocean models to their atmospheric models. One of the difficulties, even when you didn't change the present-day climate, was that their models kept going into other states. The modellers learned how to make their coupled ocean atmosphere models stable.

I think you have to realize there are now two classes of models around. There are the models that the IPCC uses and my colleagues use to predict that 50 years from now the global temperature will be somewhere between 1.5 degrees and 4.5 degrees warmer globally. Those can be thought of as your conservative projections of current conditions forward.

Then there are these other...what the IPCC report refers to as “climate surprises.” These are when the system, being a non-linear system, goes into a different equilibrium state. The geological record shows that those switches can take place very rapidly indeed, in less than a century.

The ocean is also the source of climate variability. You have the El Nino event, which is hitting the news right now, which is driven by changes in the sea-surface temperature in the tropical Pacific. You also have a pattern called the North Atlantic oscillation, which is a strengthening of the Icelandic low. It's the second-largest climate variability signal in the globe.

• 1025

I thought I wasn't going to use the projector because it looked like it was going to be complicated, but I thought I'd put up just one slide. This is an example of an alternate interpretation of the current temperature signal. This is an analysis by Hurrel and Trenberth. They're at NCAR in the U.S.

They've taken the winter atmospheric temperature data over the northern hemisphere from 20° north to the pole. They've identified what contribution to that temperature anomaly they could ascribe to the North Atlantic oscillation and the southern oscillation, which are the top two curves shown in this slide. They're red and blue for the warm anomaly and the cold anomaly. The next curve down is the sum of those two contributions.

The fifth curve is the raw data. That's the anomaly signal of the temperature changes, which is this rise of a half a degree over this period. But then when you separate the contributions from these two known climate variability signals you get something that looks more like random noise.

But does this mean that all you're seeing in the present climate signal is random noise? Perhaps it does, but you also then have to ask whether it is significant that over the last decade we've had both the North Atlantic oscillation and the southern oscillation indexes locked for this long period of time in the one mode.

I believe these modes of variability are the natural modes of a climate system, so it would probably be naive to think the climate system when it reacts to a changing composition in the atmosphere wouldn't use some of these natural modes in order to effect the change. So while on the surface this could be used for evidence in saying it is just natural variability plus noise, it still can raise the question of whether the climate system is really changing. Because have we in the past seen these two signals locked for such a period of time?

I presently chair the scientific steering group for a new program on climate variability and predictability. We are just getting up into our implementation program. We have international documents, and over the next few years we might get a Canadian program so we'll have Canadian documents on this program. It is to focus on both the climate variability and predictability aspects of these climate variability signals, but its purpose is also to improve the climate models and the process of detecting climate change.

The WCRP has put these all in one program because it is all one problem. You have to be able to understand the climate variability to understand the climate signal and to be able to move forward on the models.

Thank you for your attention.

The Chairman: Thank you. It was most interesting, Mr. Clarke.

We have time for at least one question each for a good round. Mr. Casson, would you like to go first? Then it will be Mr. Knutson, followed by Ms. Carroll.

Mr. Rick Casson: Thank you very much. That's interesting.

On this slide, I noticed just at the end that both in the North Atlantic and the south it's starting to dip again in 1994. Do you have data right up to 1997?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: We do, and of course in the southern index we're into the largest ENSO, so the southern index has returned to being red, but the North Atlantic oscillation has stayed blue.

Mr. Rick Casson: When we had the dip in the 1960s and 1970s, what was the forecast then? It was all cooler. Was there a hypothesis then that the climate was cooling?

• 1030

Mr. Allyn Clarke: In the 1960s and 1970s the North Atlantic was warm and salty, but there was a lot of concern during that period about coming ice ages. It was early in my career then and I was trying to get my PhD and not thinking about these larger questions. I can recall people were talking about damming the Bering Strait and about whether a new ice age was coming. So I think people were concerned about the cooling period at that time.

Mr. Rick Casson: As you look back on that now, what caused that? Has there been a solution?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: No. On the southern oscillation, ENSO, we have pretty good models and a pretty good theory about what's behind them. On the North Atlantic oscillation, which is the second-largest climate variability signal, we are actually still debating what's causing it. Is it an ocean mode, a couple of ocean atmosphere modes, or is somehow the atmosphere remembering from year to year what it did last year, which seems to be somewhat difficult to understand.

Mr. Rick Casson: The El Nino effect we're experiencing now seems to be one of the hottest or biggest in recent history. In recorded time has there ever been one of this temperature?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: There's never been one that's been as warm as this so early in the season. As the chair of CLIVAR I also defend the research on ENSO predictions, so I have to be careful about some of my colleagues. The claim is it's the largest on record, but that's really because the temperature rise occurred very early in the year. A lot of other ENSOs rose that quickly but they did it much later in the season. They're saying it's the largest July on record, the largest June on record, and therefore it's the largest ENSO on record.

I'm a little more skeptical about that, and it remains to be seen where it will plateau out. It is a big ENSO signal, but whether over its whole history it will become the largest on record or not still remains to be seen.

Mr. Rick Casson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Mr. Knutson, followed by Madam Carroll.

Mr. Gar Knutson (Elgin—Middlesex—London, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Are you familiar with Dr. Pocklington?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: Yes.

Mr. Gar Knutson: He's an alumni of Bedford Institute.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: I was the co-ordinator of the climate program at Bedford Institute and I had to deal with Roger.

Mr. Gar Knutson: He gave evidence to our committee a couple of days ago, and one of the things he said was that the cooling off the coast of Newfoundland between Newfoundland and Greenland that wiped out half the cod stocks—the other half was due to overfishing—was not something anticipated in the original models. When the data became clear that the cooling had occurred, the modelers went back and more or less tweaked their model to take it into account. They came up with this explanation of the polar ice caps melting and more cold water going into that part of the ocean. He suggested they came up with that explanation more or less to fix their model and sort of drive it to some predetermined conclusion.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: Most oceanographers and North Atlantic people say the current cold period is because of the North Atlantic oscillation. While that phase in the North Atlantic oscillation shows this red peak, that's for the whole northern hemisphere. In the North Atlantic sector it shows a significantly cold peak. So this whole period that's red is in fact cold.

Mr. Gar Knutson: So you're saying it's warmer....

Mr. Allyn Clarke: What Roger says is somewhat true. We don't have any coupled climate models that adequately predict a North Atlantic oscillation. This is why that's a research question. It's not a question about which I can come and say I can forecast the North Atlantic oscillation. We can't even have an adequate North Atlantic oscillation appear in the best coupled ocean atmospheric climate models at this stage.

• 1035

Mr. Gar Knutson: Here is my more specific question: do we know that the water has cooled as a result of global warming, the melting of the polar ice?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: No. We know the water has cooled. We know that the coldness of the deep water has to do with the strengthening of the Icelandic low. We know that's happened.

We also know there has been a freshening of the water. There's some active debate on where that freshening has come from. We wonder whether it has been an increased outflow of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean or whether it has just been an increased number of storms bringing moisture up from the subtropical gyre up into that area.

There's a lot of debate on that. It's the same question as this. I would certainly not say that it's good evidence of global change, but it's an intriguing possibility. That's because of the long sustained period it has been in this state. It's not because it did it for a short period of time, but because it was sustained for a long period of time in this state.

Mr. Gar Knutson: The other thing you implied was that carbon dioxide by itself was a relatively minor factor when compared with such things as water vapour and greenhouse gases. You more or less left the impression that a doubling of carbon dioxide, because it's so minor in determining overall climate conditions, may not have any effect or may have a negligible effect.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: You're getting well beyond my expertise in the radiative balances. It's true that water vapour is the largest of the natural greenhouse gases. I'm convinced, when I sit around tables and hear the radiation people debate at the WCRP, that what is presented in this report, which gives the actual radiative forcing of each of these increases of gases, is an accurate estimate of what the reality is.

Mr. Gar Knutson: So you don't have the sense of people acting in bad faith trying to tweak models. You suggested that Environment Canada in 1989 declared that climate change was the policy of the government and that all science had to be consistent with that view of the universe. So you don't have a sense of the politics overtaking the legitimate analysis and research.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: No. Most models are generated by individual scientists working within a large group; it's not just an individual scientist working on a bench. These scientists are driven by wanting to have the best model, which means better incorporating various physical processes in their model than somebody else.

In order to get a model published in the literature, you have to have a better model than somebody else. Model development has been driven by this somewhat impure scientific desire to be smarter than some other team.

Knowing George Boer and Norman McFarlane, who championed the Canadian model, they're out playing that game as strongly as anyone. I think they would ignore anything that AES management would tell them to do. Their peer group is made of their international peers, and they are competing with them.

Mr. Gar Knutson: They're not tweakers.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: Modellers are tweakers. The credibility of your model depends on how well it simulates what you know about the system. When you're building a model, you're tweaking models in order to simulate the system.

• 1040

So tweaking is part of the art, but you're trying to tweak it to explain different.... Physical processes are a different part of the system. So I use the word “tweak” in what I consider a good sense. They're not trying to get this result, but before they start a model, they're trying to simulate present conditions.

Mr. Gar Knutson: Thanks.

The Chairman: Thank you. It's very interesting.

Madam Carroll.

Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.): I'm listening so intently that it almost hurts.

I think Mr. Knutson has drawn you out in a way that I would have done, particularly when we came to your last statement that the modellers are tweakers, and that tweaking is not necessarily, as we lay people might conclude, an attempt to alter the model to fit the data, rather than to move the data to its natural conclusion.

What I'm hearing you say is that tweaking is a positive thing because you have to accommodate an hypothesis. You have to almost say that this is what you think might be so. This is where people have been going so far, but you think it might be slightly off in a different direction or a larger one so you have to alter something to reach that.

This is very heavy stuff. Insofar as we are lay people in your field, we have to assess what you're telling us very carefully.

Also, as my other colleague pointed out, we are dealing with the great communications dimension of this, whereby headlines go quickly off in a way that sells papers. The implication is that sometimes politicians and bureaucrats follow.

When I listen as carefully as I can, and indeed it is very careful.... I heard Mr. Street earlier refraining from replying to a question not because he feels in any way intimidated by policy or the status quo, but because his research and the work of his department can allow him to go no further on a scientific basis. That is as far as the research data will allow him to go. I hear you in a similar way.

All that being said, we look to you for guidance. The onus is heavy on us as a committee of many people and on you as the representatives of our scientific community.

I have the great joy of going to a cottage in the summer on an island in Georgian Bay. This summer we all noticed and discussed that the water level was higher than ever. What is “ever”? For me, it is ten years. When I chatted with a neighbour who has cottaged for fifty years, he smiled knowingly. He has kept charts, and he showed me that this is cyclical.

I guess that's my microcosm. I come now to the macrocosm with you. You kept saying “on record, on record”. Within the timeframe of this globe, this planet, which we're studying, what is “on record”? Am I correct in saying that we have kept records for—I understand this from Dr. Pocklington and others—a couple of hundred years? Do we have records for that?

I guess I really don't have a question, except that when I read the report of the IPCC and I heard you tell us this morning, doctor, that you endorse the IPCC's conclusion.... Their conclusion, of course, is picked up in this kind of a headline: “Chrétien's Wacky Weather”. That's exactly the communication thing we're dealing with.

In fact, there is no evidence that extreme weather events or climate variability has increased, in the global sense, through the 20th century. Is that on record, the 20th century, or is it longer than that?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: No, it would be largely the 20th century. The instrumental record begins in the 19th century. I mean, we have records from ships' logs back into the second half of the 19th century, so that is an accurate scientific statement. There is no evidence that, on a global basis, things have changed systematically over the instrumental record in terms of storminess and these other criteria. Locally, there have been changes on these shorter time scales, which are the ones that you have noticed—the lake levels go up, the lake levels go down. Agencies notice that as well.

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On these larger climate variability issues, we can go back much further in the records because we have paleodata. We can use tree rings, we can use the annual cycles on corals, we can use the ice cores. We are using those to extend the record back to about 1,000 years or 2,000 years, on an annual basis. But those records don't give you things like storminess. They'll tell you whether it was a wet or dry summer or a cold winter, depending on what index you're actually using.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Charbonneau, please.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: I would like to thank our guest for helping us towards a better understanding of the issue, and pointing out just how important it is to take the time to look at the data, not only in terms of measurements made on the surface of the earth, but also in terms of considering the phenomena in the major oceans.

In a short time, we have to skim over data and indications that you have been accumulating for years. We receive a brief and we must try to ask certain questions. In page 2 of your brief, you state that:

[English]

Climate modelers have identified their lack of ability to model ocean circulation and processes as one of the greatest barriers to improving their ability to predict climate change and variability.

[Translation]

So, like the witness that preceded you, you are not concealing reality. You are very clear about where you are at. The witness before you said: We are at a preliminary stage, a stage where we are starting to implement programs that, with time, will make it possible for us to understand the relationship between what happens on the earth, in the atmosphere and in major oceans.

We know that far more of the earth is covered by ocean than by land. We have to look at them in depth, and examine broad circulation patterns. What you are really saying is that we have to take a much better look at what is going on in the oceans in order to gain a better understanding of climate change.

You add:

[English]

“The modellers have now learned how to keep their models `stable'.”

[Translation]

First, I would like you to come back to that in order to comment on the notion of model stabilization.

Secondly, you say that:

[English]

“The ocean is also believed to be the principal source of climate variability over time scales of months to decades”. Does “variability” imply also a possibility of stabilization? It could go both ways. It could be an approach towards compensating or offsetting other factors. Variability means it goes up, it goes down, but what is the final, overall direction?

And on your third page, you leave us with more question marks than responses: “looks more like random variability than the original anomaly signal.” Does that mean you ask yourself a question and you answer by asking: “Does this mean then, little sign of global warming? Perhaps...Might not the response to changes in Greenhouse Gases manifest itself through those natural modes?”

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I appreciate what you give us, and I take into consideration the question marks you are leaving with us.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: I'm a scientist. I'm low down in the management structure in DFO, and I intend to stay down there, because I am a scientist, not a manager.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: What is this DFO?

A voice: The Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: When I attended the plenary session for the IPCC 1990 assessment, it was I and a few other scientist colleagues who insisted that the policy-makers statement include the uncertainty as well as the means. It was actually three UBC graduates who insisted that the statement be put in that there are climate surprises. But what I said is that I agree with the policy-makers statement. I recognize that it puts policy-makers in a quandary because they're having to make a decision on the basis of great uncertainty.

The scientists believe that in the present signal, they can't explain the signal wholly by natural variability. That's what the IPCC said. That's being very hedging, but that's a group of hundreds of scientists who have looked at this evidence and have said that's really as far as they can go—but that's pretty far.

In terms of proving the connection to the level that we had to prove, say, in the cigarette and tobacco industry, it's going to take several more decades, yet we're accumulating these gases. The evidence in the IPCC says the longer you wait, the worse the problem gets. Even if you start solving the problem, the system itself is going to take decades to work itself out.

I'm emphasizing the uncertainty in this because that's my field, because I'm an oceanographer, and because I felt you wanted to hear about the uncertainty in the variability. But I think the message that was given in the IPCC was that in spite of all this, the scientific community thinks that sometime down the road, if we do nothing—or even if we do something—it's going to become clearer and clearer that climate change is here. We're just seeing a glimmer in our data that it's here. We see much stronger evidence in our models.

The Chairman: This last exchange is extremely interesting. It brings back memories, at least to me, of the 1987 conference in Toronto. There, the scientific community had a very vigorous debate on this issue. It brings back memories of the meeting in Bergen, where the precautionary principle was adopted by the scientific segment present at that conference. It brings back memories also of the Geneva conference a couple of years later.

In other words, it is a constant question of the doubt that is, however, overcome or bypassed by the adoption of the precautionary principle idea, Mr. Charbonneau. In other words, you don't wait for the smoking gun before you take action. You move. This is where the political arm has to make up its mind and decide when to move. It does so when there is what it thinks is sufficient evidence—not conclusive, but sufficient evidence. I think Mr. Clarke has helped us in that respect.

In order to understand these infernal scientific bureaucracy acronyms that we deal with—and this is the last question before we adjourn—you mentioned the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How does WCRP fit into that—the World Climate Research Program? Does it report to it?

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Mr. Allyn Clarke: No. The WCRP is a program that is sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and ICSU, the International Council of Scientific Unions.

The IPCC reports to the UN, and it's an assessment body. WCRP does the research. The IPCC assesses the results.

The Chairman: Where does WOCE fit into the scheme of things?

Mr. Allyn Clarke: WOCE is a program of the WCRP, as is this new program, CLIVAR.

The Chairman: So it's a program of WCRP.

Mr. Allyn Clarke: That's right.

The Chairman: Okay.

Our colleagues are streaming in. The next committee is coming onstream. We thank you very much indeed. This was extremely helpful and inspiring and motivating. We hope to see you again, Dr. Clarke. Bring our best wishes to your institute, particularly to Elisabeth Mann-Borgese.

The meeting is adjourned.