A few weeks back we experienced one of those rare occasions when strong southeast winds combined with a seasonal high tide of close to 15 feet. All the major media outlets were parked down in at Boundary Bay giving play-byplays of the scene.
There was a breach at one beachfront property but nary an ounce of seawater made its way to Centennial Parkway as was the case 10 years ago and on other occasions in history. The "state of emergency" thankfully turned out to be little more than a windy high tide and Armageddon was avoided.
I can recall a few years ago that MP Elizabeth May suggested that sea level rise could amount to 20-plus feet due to man-made global warming. We have seen the renderings of Beach Grove, a community built on stilts, in some of the crystal ball modeling of disaster. How do we mitigate further breaches in the future? I think a good place to start would be to heed the advice of letter writer Bill Jones who suggested that earthen dikes and rock/rip-rap would greatly assist in diminishing the effects of storm surge. These techniques are used all over the world.
I am indifferent to the sea level debate because I am not convinced that human caused climate change should be a legitimate election plank for elected or potential politicians. I also do not think the electorate is capable of making sound voting decisions based on what has turned out to be an unnavigable gumbo of contradictions and infighting amongst governments, NGOs, environmentalists and, frighteningly, the scientific community.
There are dozens of examples where respected scientists are deemed "skeptics" because they don't buy into the man-made warming argument. I thought skepticism was one of the primary drivers of scientific inquiry?
Dozens of summits and UN sponsored climateer fests have been held over the past several years, none of which have been able to produce any reasonable solution that would allow countries and, more importantly, citizens, to benefit.
The environment minister of India, who will be hosting U.S. President Barack Obama in a few days to talk climate change, has already publicly stated that although they are doing their part to reduce emissions, their primary goal is to eradicate poverty. To me, that just makes sense.
Additionally, 20 per cent of the population of India (250 million people or seven times the Canadian population) is without electricity and a top priority is to fix this so that standards of living will increase. Emissions will rise as a result.
Last November there was the big climate march in New York. It coincided with the launch of Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything.
What is the book about? Steven Hayward, contributor to Forbes magazine in his piece Climate Change has jumped the Shark, says that it can be summed up in one sentence: "that only overthrowing capitalism can we solve climate change."
Indeed, the left leaning website Common Dreams, also referred to in Hayward's piece, comes clean to say: "Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it's not about carbon-it's about capitalism."
If fear mongering around sea level is really meant to deconstruct capitalism, I think we have more problems on the horizon than we realize.
