Well, Let's Add This to Our Growing List of Dire Warnings

Another day another warning that humanity is pushing its luck, overstressing this Earth, our one and only biosphere.

For those of you who can't handle stress, don't fret. It'll be down the Memory Hole by the end of the weekend at the outside.  We've already forgotten Tuesday's dire warning from the World Resource Institute about the dire freshwater crisis that has beset a quarter of humanity.  So many crises, so little time, how is a girl supposed to remember them all?

Dirt. Who gives a damn about dirt? Apparently the UN does.  The latest report from its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, visits a recurring theme - soils degradation.

It's a topic that's been considered in depth before. Agronomists have been howling their warnings for years. We're exhausting our stocks of arable land, the soils we need to grow our food. It finally led the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to issue a report in 2014 warning that we were heading toward a collapse in agricultural production within 60 years. Even the best remaining farmland, the agency claimed, were already somewhat degraded. We even got a map showing the then state of soils degradation. Then - whoosh - straight down the Memory Hole.

That 2014 report was followed up by another in 2018 that seemed to disappear into that hole of oblivion even faster. With it was a report warning that we would need a 50 per cent increase in agricultural production to feed the herd in 2050. Damn, if we were just a tiny fraction as good at responding to these warnings as we are at ignoring them, and we're so very good at ignoring them, we might just have some hope. Yeah but ignoring them until we've completely forgotten about them comes just so naturally to us. It's effortless and demands nothing of us and,  when it comes to change, our favourite flavour is nothing.

Today's report layers man-made climate change atop man-made soils degradation. I suppose you've guessed it's not good news.

The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some of the world’s top scientists. 

Global heating is increasing droughts, soil erosion and wildfires while diminishing crop yields in the tropics and thawing permafrost near the poles, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Further heating will lead to unprecedented climate conditions at lower latitudes, with potential growth in hunger, migration and conflict and increased damage to the great northern forests. 

The report, approved by the world’s governments, makes clear that humanity faces a stark choice between a vicious or virtuous circle. Continued destruction of forests and huge emissions from cattle and other intensive farming practices will intensify the climate crisis, making the impacts on land still worse.

What came through for me in reading those four paragraphs was how bland the message. It's almost as sterile as the soil itself and it's from The Guardian!  I know, ask George. Monbiot calls this report a miserable failure.

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production.

The second accounting method is more important. This could be described as the capital account: how does farming compare to the natural ecosystems that would otherwise have occupied the land? A paper published in Nature last year, but not mentioned by the IPCC, sought to count this cost. Please read these figures carefully. They could change your life.

The official carbon footprint of people in the UK is 5.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year. But in addition to this, the Nature paper estimates that the total greenhouse gas cost – in terms of lost opportunities for storing carbon that the land would offer were it not being farmed – of an average northern European diet is 9 tonnes a year. In other words, if we counted the “carbon opportunity costs” of our diet, our total footprint would almost triple, to 14.4 tonnes.

Okay, well, I'm not sure we're ready to give up meat, poultry, even fish for a diet of swill and soya. I could be wrong but I just don't see it. Still, I like Monbiot's closer:

Are we prepared to act on what we know, or will we continue to gorge on the lives of our descendants?

But wait, there's more. We can avert the worst of the worst. All it will take is a little sacrifice.

However, action now to allow soils and forests to regenerate and store carbon, and to cut meat consumption by people and food waste, could play a big role in tackling the climate crisis, the report says.

Such moves would also improve human health, reduce poverty and tackle the huge losses of wildlife across the globe, the IPCC says.
Burning of fossil fuels should end as well to avoid “irreversible loss in land ecosystem services required for food, health and habitable settlements”, the report says. 

“This is a perfect storm,” said Dave Reay, a professor at the University of Edinburgh who was an expert reviewer for the IPCC report. 

“Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency. Earth has never felt smaller, its natural ecosystems never under such direct threat.”

Didn't you just know that our fossil-fuel economy would get in there somehow?  We know we've got to shut it down but even our Eco-warrior prime minister has other plans. He wants to take us in exactly the opposite direction. Burn baby, burn.

Prof Jim Skea, from the IPPC, said the land was already struggling and climate change was adding to its burdens. Almost three-quarters of ice-free land was now directly affected by human activity, the report says. 

Poor land use is also behind almost a quarter of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions – the destruction of forests, huge cattle herds and overuse of chemical fertilisers being key factors.

Emissions relating to fertilisers have risen ninefold since the early 1960s. Rising temperatures are causing deserts to spread, particularly in Asia and Africa, and the Americas and Mediterranean are at risk, the report says. 

One of the most stark conclusions in the IPCC report is that soil, upon which humanity is entirely dependent, is being lost more than 100 times faster than it is being formed in ploughed areas; and lost 10 to 20 times faster even on fields that are not tilled. 

The report recommends strong action from governments and business, including ending deforestation and enabling new forests to grow, reforming farming subsidies, supporting small farmers and breeding more resilient crops. Many of those solutions, however, would take decades to have an impact, the IPCC says.

Decades. We haven't got decades to turn this around. Not unless we act now to buy more time.  That could begin by at least exploring new economic models to replace our current three-pack-a-day neoliberalism with its impossible growth-centric focus. And shutting down fossil fuels as fast as possible would be a great help. That could begin by putting an abrupt end to high-carbon fossil energy, thermal coal and bitumen.

The key to all of these crises is quite simple. Mankind has to accept the mortal need to live within the sustainable limitations of our very finite planet, Earth. We're way beyond that now and we just want to grow bigger, faster, all the time. If we can't find and adopt ways to again live in harmony with this, our one and only biosphere, it will surely eliminate us. And that is suicide.

It's Just a Sense, a Feeling.

If there's one thing we need to get much better at it's learning to deal with the unexpected.

It's a huge understatement to note that, on so many fronts, we're already passing through uncharted waters. Human lifespans being as brief as they are, life experiences can be very limited in depth and breadth. And so when change sets in, seismic change, and the ground begins shifting beneath your feet it's natural to become confused, disoriented.

A lot of what's happening today, the early onset stuff, was not foreseen by us just a decade or two ago. It can be incredibly depressing to think back to the 80s and 90s and the relative stability and security we enjoyed in those days and then look at what is upon us now.

Many science types tell us we're on the verge of a mass extinction event, the sixth in Earth's history. Extinction. Try to wrap your head around that. Delving into that idea reminds us that we, and most of the species trying to share this planet with us, are merely the latest iteration of life on Earth. We are the dominant species today but we weren't in earlier times. The human species didn't exist in these previous eras. Other life forms did going back about 3.8 billion years. Some other life form was the dominant species in each of those eras.  And those former species, plant and animal, died and were buried and became the coal, oil and gas that we've used to trigger the extinction of life in our era. Ah, the irony.

Our base of knowledge today is greater than at any time in the history of mankind. We amass data faster than we can hope to process it. There is no much information at your fingertips and yet you can only access it in slivers and even that in a most haphazard fashion.

We once imagined a future extending into something akin to infinity, at least in a practical context. Hitler proclaimed a thousand year Reich. Now, as our knowledge base expands at explosive rates, we struggle to foresee where we might be twenty, thirty or forty years down the road. We just don't know.  It wasn't that long ago that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that, if we didn't slash greenhouse gas emissions and pronto, dire change such as the loss of Arctic sea ice might be upon us by the end of the century, 2100. They were attempting to peer 90 years into the future and yet they were out by 70 years. It can feel like you're driving down a highway at full speed in a dense fog.

Our demonstrated inability to gauge the pace of the onset of climate change, arguably the greatest threat to mankind and life on Earth generally, is unsettling. What else have we overlooked? What else have we gotten wrong?

Even those who resist doing anything to mitigate against climate change, i.e. abandoning fossil fuels, are more open to adaptation strategies. In Florida, for example, they might refuse to accept the link between global warming and sea level rise and yet they're quite open to planning to adapt to sea level rise. However how do you adapt unless you have a pretty good idea of what is coming and by when? The later you leave it the fewer good options you may have remaining when you do decide to act. On the other hand should you act too soon, perhaps on flawed assumptions, you may squander irreplaceable assets pointlessly. Decisions, decisions.

You might not be able to save the first little piggy's house or the second little piggy's house but there may be things you can do to ensure that all three piggies are getting along when it comes time to take refuge in the third little piggy's sturdy brick house. When you think about it, the first little piggy and the second little piggy become dependent for their very survival on the generosity of the third little piggy. It's the third little piggy who has to share his abode and presumably his pantry to keep all three alive. That's what you call "social cohesion."

Imagine how well that wolf would have dined had the piggy community been as profoundly divided as our societies are today. Imagine if those piggies were as divided economically, politically, racially and socially as we are today, hostile and distrusting of each other.

What if there had been a political pig caste who groomed the little piggies with lies and fear and anger and suspicion, manipulating them for the political caste's own benefit? Isn't that what's happening to us today? Our trust in government and in each other is being eroded, diluted.

I have a cousin in the States. While he's not uneducated it's plain that his worldview and his social senses are shaped by FOX News, Limbaugh, Alex Jones (or this sphincter) and that crowd. The world he sees and the world we see are radically and irreconcilably different. He believes. He takes what he selectively hears on faith. And the only way to maintain that belief is to dismiss fact and evidence-based information as the stuff of conspiracies. The real world is one giant plot, a hoax, intended to lure him into some diabolical trap. Once you're in his place, Pizzagate and chem-trails become all too believable.

And so we sail into the uncharted waters of the unknown and perhaps unknowable with a crew ready to mutiny against itself and no one at the helm. I've got a sense, a feeling, that this is not shaping up well.

Remember, It's the IPCC and It Can Never Tell the Whole Truth

The oft-maligned Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is, admittedly, something of a strange bird.  It doesn't conduct climate change research.  It merely collects the research undertaken by universities, government agencies and NGOs, digests the important stuff and then issues advisory reports to governments.

The IPCC reports are usually off-mark.  They sometimes, albeit rarely, overstate conclusions.  Far more often they understate projections of the arrival, severity and duration of climate change impacts.

Contrary to what denialists claim, the IPCC is, if anything, unduly optimistic. For example, until recently the IPCC was predicting that the Arctic Ocean would be seasonally ice-free by the end of this century, about 85-years from now.  The US Navy now predicts a seasonally ice-free Arctic by 2019 at the outside, perhaps as early as 2016.  The Navy's research has the IPCC about 80-years off the mark.

The IPCC reports are the products of a team of "lead authors."  They come to their findings by consensus.  Everybody has to agree and so hold outs can extract compromises on the authors' conclusions.

It's this consensus factor that means it can be important to carefully consider the language that does find its way into the reports.  When the IPCC reports there is an "increasing likelihood" that global warming has already become "irreversible" it's using loaded words.  It's not talking about vague possibilities.  It's speaking of probabilities and it's speaking of probabilities that are increasing, approaching certainty.

When the report speaks of "irreversible" that's also a loaded word.  Irreversible means that global warming is already out of our control.  We can't turn off the tap. We have passed one or more tipping points that lead to runaway global warming, the triggering of natural feedback mechanisms of, as yet, unknown consequence.

So, if the IPCC is to be believed, it's at least somewhat probable and growing increasingly probable that we have triggered irreversible as in runaway global warming.  That's the consensus view.  That's the compromise opinion.

Does that mean we should throw in the towel?  Hardly.  There's much work to do. We need to explore what we can do to safely mitigate this warming, runaway or not.  We need to figure out how people on every corner of this world can live with each other, make common cause.  We need to work out adaptation strategies.

Above all else we need to understand that, while tackling climate change is going to be demanding, expensive and, well, hard, we can still make sure that it's worse for our kids and grandkids, much worse, and that, unfortunately, is easy - for us.

Remember, easy is what got us in this mess in the first place.  It's time to try a different strategy.

Ooooh! Bad Talk, More Stark.

Another report from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. The Associated Press has managed to thumb through the latest report, a synthesis report based on the previous three.  AP says there's nothing much new in the report except, "the language is more stark and the report attempts to connect the different scientific disciplines studying problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas."

It's apparently the usual, "cut that out, dammit, or we're so screwed" sort of report.  It notes that "currently observed impacts might already be considered dangerous."  Well, duh! Except for the observation by the Panel that it is increasingly likely that global warming could already be irreversible.  In other words, it's "increasingly likely" that we have already set in motion irreversible, as in "runaway", global warming.  We may have already passed one or more tipping points to trigger natural feedback mechanisms driving uncontrollable global warming. 

Given that the IPCC has been consistent on just one thing, continuously underestimating the pace and extent of anthropogenic global warming, it's safe to assume the Panel's dire warnings come from the optimistic end of the spectrum. For our kids and grandchildren, that's decidedly not a good thing.  It's a very bad thing.

It'll be interesting to see how the report deals with Canada's fossil fuel of choice, high cost/high carbon bitumen.  

What kicks me in the cojones is that our government has never made the slightest effort to keep Canadians informed about the state of climate change and our options for dealing with it.  To the contrary they have kept our climate scientists gagged.  That's a calculated policy to keep the Canadian people in the dark, leaving them vulnerable to the impacts already here and the worse consequences to come. This is abjectly treasonous, exposing the nation and our people to unwarranted dangers and loss in furtherance of this deviant government's private agenda.  That makes this prime minister, and those in his service, very dangerous enemies of Canada.

"Unequivocal"

Leaving no doubt; clear; unambiguous.   The latest IPCC report concludes that mankind's influence in driving climate change is beyond doubt, clear and unambiguous.   Anthropogenic global warming is here, it's here to stay and, unless we want a better future enough to change our ways, it's going to get a hell of a lot worse in our grandkids' future, our kids' future and even in our own.

For, you see, it's already having major impacts.   Those floods in Calgary, the floods in Toronto, the floods in Colorado, the floods in Europe and across Asia?   Welcome to the new normal.   The droughts in central and southern U.S., southern Europe, Russia, Africa and the Middle East?   Welcome to the new normal.

High Arctic Oil Rig

What did we expect?  We've already warmed the Arctic twice as much as anywhere else.   Did we think that wasn't going to matter?  We heated the Arctic ocean and the atmosphere above it.   A warmer atmosphere has more energy and it holds more water vapour.   You probably learned that in high school.

Polar Jet

And now that we've got this warmer, wetter and more energized atmosphere in the Arctic, we've unleashed a very powerful Polar Jet Stream that changes the way precipitation moves through the northern hemisphere.   Instead of the gently undulating ribbon of air currents that move steadily west to east - the sort that gave us such agricultural bounty - we now have these Rossby Waves that look like an oscilloscope cranked up, that go way up north and plunge way down south, and tend to stall as they move west to east.  They can plunge Venice into a deep freeze, turning the canals solid, or bring mid-90 degree temperatures to an Alaska village in early June.  That's serious stuff.   They can also park right over places like Calgary or Colorado where they dropped a year's worth of rain in a matter of days.   Meanwhile states near Colorado remain in the grip of drought.   Go figure.

There are a lot of places in Canada, heavily populated centres, where people can write it off and say, "well it's getting a little bit warmer, so what?"   Those are places where the impacts of climate change are more subtle or even obscured by the urban habitat.  Yet there are far more but much less populated places in our country where climate change is already much more obvious, the impacts inescapable.

One of the big giveaways is species migration.  In our hemisphere plants and animals have already begun the trek north.   Marine life is coming into the north Pacific that was formerly seen only to the south.   Imagine pelicans in Victoria.  Or Humboldt squid in their hundreds washing ashore on the beaches of Tofino.

Mosquito-borne Dengue fever is beginning to enter the United States.  Some of our old pests are finding global warming to their liking.  The Lodgepole or Mountain Pine beetle population no longer has to endure the massive winter kill-off, enabling it to multiply and destroy vast swathes of our forests and they've now crossed the Rockies into Alberta.

So, we're seeing all these things already and we're only just getting started with this global warming business.  It's been said countless times before but I'll say it again - even if we stopped our greenhouse gas emissions today, existing atmospheric carbon levels will ensure we continue to warm for at least a century.   So you can count on it being worse for your kids and your grandchildren.

One thing the IPCC hasn't touched on in much depth is mankind's resilience to climate change.   How much can we take - as individuals, as communities, as nations?   That's a really tough one to answer because every individual is different.   There's great disparities in our wealth, our resources and our circumstances that come into play in answering these questions.

England's New Normal

Climate change is going to be tough on everyone but it's going to be a real bitch on poor people.   Here's one example - flooding.  Canadians can't get flood insurance.  If water comes in through your doors or your windows, you're on your own - at least until the government arrives to bail you out.   In the U.S., where flooding is a chronic problem, the federal government operates an insurance programme but they just had to jack up premiums.  One lady used to pay $1,700 and will soon have to pay $15,000 a year.  That, she predicts, will drop the resale value of her house by half.  That's a pretty big hit, especially if you're not rich, if that's your main or sole asset.   That's an enormous hit if you're already struggling with a hefty mortgage.

Let's put it this way, a lot of people around the world are currently occupying very devalued homes even if they don't realize it.   Maybe the Bitumen Barons of Athabasca will help out.  Nah, forget it, they're mainly foreign companies.   Maybe Ottawa will use its bitumen bounty to extend flood relief into the future.   No, that money, if it exists at all, is long gone already.   Ditto for Alberta.

But we are really, really well off.   Canada, when it comes to these things, is rich.   It's the poor countries and the poor societies that populate them that are going to take it in the neck.

...average land and sea temperatures are expected to continue rising throughout this century, possibly reaching 4C above present levels – enough to devastate crops and make life in many cities unbearably hot.

As temperatures climb and oceans warm, tropical and subtropical regions will face sharp changes in annual rainfall...

East Africa can expect to experience increased short rains, while west Africa should expect heavier monsoons. Burma, Bangladesh and India can expect stronger cyclones; elsewhere in southern Asia, heavier summer rains are anticipated. Indonesia may receive less rainfall between July and October, but the coastal regions around the south China Sea and Gulf of Thailand can expect increased rainfall extremes when cyclones hit land.

Okay, sucks to be them eh?  But it also sucks to be Australian where the people have just elected the denialist government of Tony Abbott. 

Tony Abbott's Australia

Australia is expected to experience a 6C average temperature rise on its hottest days and lose many reptile, bird and mammal species as well as the renowned wetlands of Kakadu by the end of the century..

IPCC figures show that Australia will experience an average overall increase of 2C by 2065, with that figure slightly lower at the coast. Beyond that, the temperature is expected to rise another 3C-4C by 2100.  

Rainfall patterns are set to change, with annual precipitation, humidity and cloud cover predicted to decrease over most of Australia. But for north Australia and many agricultural areas, rainfall is predicted to get heavier. Soil moisture will decrease, mostly in the south of the country.
  
In Australia, an increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves is expected to lead to more heat-related deaths, while warmer temperatures, changing rainfall and an influx of pests will "negatively impact" many temperate crops, such as fruit and nuts.

Yet we magnify our risks if we consider AGW climate change in isolation.   It's a huge, multi-faceted problem that poses a host of challenges yet it is compounded and in turn magnifies a variety of other pressing problems that we're also going to have to confront with our sapped strength.  We have to factor in challenges such as deforestation and desertification (the exhaustion of farmland and its transformation into sterile desert); resource depletion and exhaustion, particularly global groundwater reserves and global fisheries; overpopulation and population migration; and a host of gathering security problems including food insecurity, inequality, resource wars, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.   That list is by no means exhaustive nor does it play much role in the IPCC warnings.   Yet if we're to avoid becoming a civilization of Easter Islanders, we have no choice but to deal with global warming and all of these associated problems.

Here's the thing.   If we can't rally to act effectively on climate change our chances of being able to confront all these other challenges on our own terms are slim to nil.  That, too, is unequivocal.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet - "Rational" People Will Be Convinced By the Science - IPCC

There are encouraging signs that, this time, climate scientists are coming prepared for a fight against the forces of denialism.

You can tell the Fossil Fuelers and the rest of their supporting cast in the denialist community have their knickers in a bunch over the pending release of the next IPCC report on climate change.

Their worry over the report's findings has sent them into a tizzy rehashing the "5 Stages of Denialism" - 1. Deny the Problem Exists; 2. Deny We're the Cause and Deny the clear Scientific Consensus; 3.  Deny It's a Problem; 4. Deny We Can Solve It; and, 5. Claim It's Too Late for Anything but Adaptation.

Now the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has fired a shot across the denialists' bows, saying "rational people" will be convinced by the science in the new report.

"There will be enough information provided so that rational people across the globe will see that action is needed on climate change," Pachauri told a conference call.

"I really wouldn't want to say anything about any perceived effort for a pushback," he went on. "We are doing our job and we are reasonably confident that rational people in government and all over the world will see the merit of the work that has been done."

Organisations that dismiss the science behind climate change and oppose curbs on greenhouse gas pollution have made a big push to cloud the release of the IPCC report, the result of six years of work by hundreds of scientists.

Those efforts this week extended to promoting the fiction of a recovery in the decline of Arctic sea ice.

Half of Nothing Is Still Nothing

It seems someone is trying to con us every day. Watching television, reading a magazine or even answering the phone, we're barraged by people trying to con us with half truths, outright lies and hollow promises.

By now we ought to know better. We ought to know that the "free cruise" is just a scam, that no power exists to turn back the clock on 40-years of aging, and that the fine print is just a confession of deceit, and yet these people just don't quit. Why? Because they know we can be hustled, we can be conned. They know we're gullible or at least enough of us are to make the con worthwhile.

The last time Stephen Harper was honest about global warming and climate change he dismissed it as a "socialist plot." I'm not saying he was right, I'm saying that Harpo was telling us what he actually believed. An honest mistake.

Over the past couple of years, the True North's own Mustapha Mond has done an eardrum shattering, 180 on global warming. Now, he tells us, he "gets it." Now he proclaims it to be the greatest threat to mankind, a real emergency. Now he's really conning us.

The heel-dragging International Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC") has finally reached the point of declaring that human activity was "very likely" the main culprit behind global warming and that we're in for centuries of higher temperatures and rising sea levels, regardless of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we're hooped.

A lot of people think the IPCC is radical but any fair examination of their reports over the past several years reveals the panel has consistently understated the time and severity dimensions of the threat. Time and again the latest research and observed changes have far outpaced the IPCC forecasts. That's because the denialists have a presence among the IPCC scientists and operate as something of a sea anchor on its "consensus" reports. In other words, you can take the IPCC scenarios as "best case" predictions that have repeatedly been shown to be unduly optimistic.

But we also must understand that the understated IPCC findings are routinely compounded by the under-committed political responses they evoke. Put another way, even if the IPCC's best case scenarios were accurate it wouldn't matter because our politicians are treating the problem more as a hoax than a threat. Of course they can't admit that so they openly proclaim the Great Danger and then give us nothing but vague promises they or some future government will actually do something about greenhouse gas emissions.

Enter the CCCC, Consummate Canadian Conservative Conman, Big Oil's own Stephen Harper. His response to the IPCC report acknowledges that climate change is an "enormous" problem but then adds that it's "fantasy" to think greenhouse-gas emissions can be cut overnight. Karl Rove could've written that line, maybe he did. Yes we acknowledge a base reality, then bury it under a totally irrelevant and erroneous presumption to create a diversion. "Climate change is an enormous problem" - the base reality. "It's fantasy to think greenhouse-gas emissions can be cut overnight" - the con, the irrelevant diversion.

Memo to Steve and anyone stupid enough to listen to this jackass: NO ONE THINKS GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS CAN BE CUT OVERNIGHT!

That's right, Steve. No one thinks greenhouse-gas emissions can be cut overnight. Even David Suzuki knows that and says that. But, then again, you know that full well, don't you Steve? You're just throwing up a Straw Man to distract the plebs and defuse their demands for action. You're messing with their minds, Steve, and Big Oil couldn't be happier or more grateful. Are you so stupid that you honestly believe anyone thinks that? You damn well know that no one thinks that but that doesn't mean a deliberate diversion won't let you slip away yet again.

Change the argument from "what are we going to do" to "can't be done overnight" and you've substituted an irrelevant question for a meaningful enquiry. Neat trick - very Rovian, very Republican, very Cheneyist (and of course very Stalinist at heart). You can leverage relatively significant proportions of public naivety, ignorance, and those simply wanting to hear what they want to hear, and thereby undercut the demand for action or accountability.

And this little intellectual rot isn't just confined to Harper, it's permeated throughout his cabinet. Look at this and you'll see what I mean:

Environment Canada came out with a climate change warning today and Harper's Health Minister Tony Clement was prompt to stomp on it, using the "bait and switch" approach of his boss.

The Health Canada report warned Canadians of the new risks they're already going to have to face and the need for immediate, drastic action on man-made global warming if we're not to be confronted with far worse, likely deadly problems. Health Canada, relying on the IPCC's latest, far understated findings, warned that we face, at a minimum, spikes in heat-related deaths, an increase in respiratory and cardiovascular problems, and the spread and emergence of diseases.

Clement, as a good drone of the boss, came out and deflected the bullet. From CBC News:

"Milder winters, heat waves and summer droughts could affect mosquito and tick populations, triggering the spread of West Nile virus and Lyme disease, the report says.

"Climate change could tip the ecological balance and trigger outbreaks of disease previously rare or unknown in Canada," the report states.

The report also says that communities in Canada's North are most vulnerable to climate change. Avalanches and landslides are projected to be more frequent. Northern communities will also have to contend with food shortages and less clean drinking water.

"This report makes it clear that Milder winters, heat waves and summer droughts could affect mosquito and tick populations, triggering the spread of West Nile virus and Lyme disease, the report says.

"Climate change could tip the ecological balance and trigger outbreaks of disease previously rare or unknown in Canada," the report states.

The report also says that communities in Canada's North are most vulnerable to climate change. Avalanches and landslides are projected to be more frequent. Northern communities will also have to contend with food shortages and less clean drinking water.

Speaking to reporters at the Conservative caucus retreat in the rural Quebec town of Levis, Health Minister Tony Clement said Canadians will "have to get used to" the gloomy scenario laid out in the report.

"This report makes it clear that if you have bad health outcomes now, you're likely to be more impacted by extreme weather events than if you're at the top of the health ladder," he said.

There it was in all it's glory. Appear to acknowledge the severe implications of the report and then tell Canadians, "they will have to get used to" it. The guy even goes on to blame the most susceptible. "This report makes it clear that if you have bad health outcomes now, you're likely to be more impacted by extreme weather events than if you're at the top of the health ladder," is Greaseball Tony's way to suggest that most of those who lose their lives are at least partially to blame for allowing themselves to become more vulnerable to these environmental predations.

It's subtle, sort of, but it's there for anyone who wishes to see. They're acknowledging the problems but then, instead of honestly embracing the problems and proposing meaningful action, they veer far off track with distracting nonsense. "Fantasy" to really do anything right now about it. "Top of the Health Ladder" argument to diminish concern by holding up a certain segment of the inevitable victims as somehow responsible for their fate and thereby avoiding having to embrace the problem and advocate the appropriate emissions response.

In any real democracy, the leader's first responsibility is to do everything necessary to safeguard his/her citizens. Failing to do everything necessary to safeguard Canadians against any avoidable consequences of climate change is a complete violation of that responsibility. Shirking that responsibility and using these sorts of diversions demonstrates that there's nothing inadvertant about this affront. It's entirely deliberate. It's not just neglecting the safety and welfare of the Canadian people, it's wilfully putting the interests of certain powerful governments and wealthy companies ahead, and in direct detriment to, the safety and welfare of the Canadian people.

Think about that. 1. Global warming presents this truly urgent, existential threat to humanity. 2. Some countries must, by example, lead and even cajole other nations to embrace action. Those countries most able to afford setting that example have to lead if the rest are to follow. There's no other way. It's essential that a few, advantaged countries can lead so as to establish a norm for others to achieve at subsequent intervals. Only by leading by example can the most advantaged countries wield both the carrot and the stick to get other nations to follow. 3. Without common action, individual or bloc action has no probable hope of avoiding the worst consequences.

If you can accept those three simple statements of fact, you must then judge the actions of our prime minister and his health and environmental ministers accordingly. If they're using logic diversions as smokescreens to deflect popular demands for responsible action, measures that would, in turn, be adverse to the interests of certain governments and companies, there's a message in that. Diversion = Deliberate. It demonstrates culpability. What of a government that culpably acts to the detriment of the safety and welfare of its people for the sole benefit of the elite, advantaged and powerful?

Government is service. We elect our governments to serve our interests, our welfare. Surely that principle defines our relationship more than any other. Surely we hand to them the power to govern us, to make even life and death decisions upon us and our families, in exchange for their implicit, but often unacknoweldged, promise to govern so as to achieve our greatest security and welfare.

Is it not virtually, if not legally, treasonous to abuse one's powers to refuse to act on an existential threat and then distract public attention from it by misleading or confusing diversions? You decide.