By Tom Harris, Ottawa Community News, March 13, 2014
Your report on the Feb. 5 Ecology Ottawa event, The Future of Snow and Skiing in a Warming World, held at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, contains information to which I would like to reply:
1 - The International Climate Science Coalition asserts that the causes of climate change are not properly understood due to the immature nature of the science. We "deny" nothing. We say that human activity causes climate change by land use change, urban heat island effect, and emissions of greenhouse gases. However, we doubt that rising GHG is causing dangerous climate change either now or in the foreseeable future. ICSC advocates increased funding for research so that someday we may be able to better predict future climate change, however caused. We also advocate helping vulnerable populations prepare for climate change and extreme weather. Of the $1 billion a day spent across the world on climate finance in 2012, only six per cent of it went to adaptation. The rest went to trying to stop what might happen decades in the future. We regard this as immoral, effectively valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those suffering today.