Perceptions by Gerry Warner

The big rainstorm last week brought back a flood of memories for me from my childhood near Castlegar when I used to monitor the relentless rise of the Columbia River every spring and gape in awe of the power of that great river before it was dammed and tamed.

Fortunately, in my opinion at least, not all western rivers have been tamed as they found out with a vengeance this week in Southern Alberta and parts of southeastern B.C.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not glad to see 75,000 people evacuated in Calgary and all the property damage in the communities surrounding Alberta’s biggest city. But I don’t think it hurts to be reminded once in a while of who’s really in charge in the world.

Mankind in his hubris thinks he’s in charge with his intelligence, technology and infrastructure when really it’s Mother Nature that can reduce all the foregoing into detritus flowing down a stream by just one rainstorm. Think for a minute about what awaits us in the future as global warming ratchets up the pressure with ever-greater rainstorms, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.

Think I’m indulging in idle fear mongering? Go tell that to all the people displaced by flooding in Europe this spring or the many people who have lost their homes and even their lives in Tornado Alley in the U.S. this spring or forest fires in Colorado.

Are we on the doorstep of ‘end times,’ a popular theme in the movies these days? I certainly don’t know, but the situation does have a bit of a Biblical Revelations-like ring to it.

Last Thursday, I attended a climate change conference sponsored by the Columbia Basin Trust, and as could be expected, the question of what’s causing our increasingly erratic      weather came up. One of the conference participants, while not denying climate change, questioned whether the current world-wide warming trend was human caused or was a natural phenomenon. The consensus in the room was plainly behind man-made causes for global warming and the certainty of most scientists that the works of man – especially the industrialization of the globe – is the major culprit behind climate change.

Personally, I don’t belong to either camp in the global warming debate. I know that climatologists, scientists and opinion leaders like Al Gore and David Suzuki are absolutely adamant that mankind and womankind are responsible for the Earth’s rapidly accelerating warming in the last century or so – especially the last 20 years – and the dire consequences that will inevitably follow. But call me contrary, or call me what you want, because I don’t share the unblinking certainty that so many have in the global warming debate.

Let me explain. I don’t for a second deny that the Earth is warming and warming up very quickly and this will lead to major global consequences in a matter of a life time. The worldwide retreat of the Earth’s glaciers is ample proof of that. Industrialization, and all the greenhouse gases that spew into the atmosphere from it, is obviously not doing the Earth any good either.

But global warming has happened before. Several times before followed by long glacial periods eons before the Industrial Revolution a mere 200 years ago. So how do the scientists explain that? Go back an epoch or two in geologic time and there were redwood forests growing in the high arctic north of where the tree line is today. Dinosaurs once roamed the Yukon and Siberia chewing away on each other and tropical vegetation. There were no dirty factories belching out smoke then. So how do the scientists explain this?

The media tends to be very friendly to scientists who blame the works of man for climate change and gives short shrift to other theories. But there is a Russian scientist who postulates that the Earth’s regular warming and cooling is caused by the sun going through similar temperature cycles. Other scientists say ancient volcanic eruptions triggered climate change.

In other words no one knows for sure why the Earth has warmed up so much in our lifetime. The Earth’s atmosphere is an incredibly huge and complex system that no scientist can make predictions about with any certainty.

Yes, that was a big rainstorm last week and the flooding in Alberta was severe. But if you look up the records the biggest floods ever in Alberta and B.C. occurred in June 1894, more than 100 years before the global warming debate.

As a result, I say yes Virginia, the world is a very complex mechanism. So is climate change.

– Gerry Warner is a Cranbrook City Councillor and retired journalist. His opinions are his own.is opinions are his own

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