'Significant' Canadian content in final document prepped to tackle global climate change

UNDATED - Canadian research makes a significant contribution to a report setting out the scientific groundwork for world government talks on climate change in the future, a top Canadian scientist said Tuesday.

John Stone, a lead scientist with the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of at least 40 Canadian scientists from government agencies and universities that have contributed to the final report expected to be released on Saturday.

"We can hold our head high," Stone said in an interview with The Canadian Press from Valencia, Spain where about 400 delegates from 140 countries, including Canada, are negotiating the final document on climate change.

It is a condensed version of three earlier reports, but meshes the evidence of climate change with its potential impacts more closely than before.

The Synthesis Report summarizes the work of 2,500 contributing researchers and hundreds of authors who reviewed and organized the data.

"The Canadian contribution is very significant. We've had some really top-rate people from the government, from universities, from the private sector, even," said Stone, an adjunct research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and a former Environment Canada climate science director.

In closed-door sessions on Tuesday, government representatives and scientific experts made slow progress in a line-by-line reading of the draft summary of the scientific understanding of climate change, and what can be done to slow the gradual warming of the Earth.

"I think part of the problem we're facing, increasingly, is that the science is getting much more subtle and sophisticated and, hence, difficult to understand," said Stone, adding the talks were going "painfully slow."

"People know that this is going to be a document that's going to be referred to quite a lot afterwards by governments, decision makers, policymakers, and it's going to carry a lot of weight."

The document is important because it is approved by consensus, meaning that all participating governments subscribe to its findings.

It will be the first point of reference for delegates to a major conference next month in Bali, Indonesia, that will discuss the next stage in the global effort to combat climate change.

"So they want to make sure that, as much as possible, it's useful to them," Stone said.

On Monday, it was reported that delegates were unable to agree on the five most serious climate change concerns. According to early drafts obtained by The Associated Press, the concerns include extreme weather events, rising sea level rises and the threat to biodiversity in vulnerable areas.

Temperature increases of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above the average of the last two decades of the 20th century would risk the widespread extinction of animals and plants, the draft said.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. That agreement set mandatory targets for 36 industrial countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an average five per cent below 1990 levels, and created markets for industries and countries to profit from successfully controlling their emissions.

Currently, North America produces more than one-fourth of the carbon dioxide released worldwide by burning fossil fuels and other activities, according to a new report by the U.S. Climate Change Science program.

The Bali conference will try to draw in the United States, which rejected the Kyoto accord, and countries like China and India, which say they cannot accept regulations that could limit their prospects to develop their economies and lift their populations from poverty.

Canada committed to the Kyoto agreement in April 2005, under then-prime minister Paul Martin. A year later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada could not meet the targets and, instead, announced a so-called Clean Air Act which sets new targets on greenhouse gas and other pollution.

Stone said it's time for governments to tackle climate change.

"What we need is the governments to use their will to put in place the mechanisms that will get the individuals, companies, (and) governments themselves to actually begin to reduce emissions, to bend that curve downwards," he said.

"I'm frankly getting worried. And I am not an alarmist," said Stone. "I'm going by what science I read, because there's an urgency, and I don't see Canada or lots of other countries tackling this issue with the urgency I believe we need to apply to the issue."

© The Canadian Press, 2007