Canada's climate is changing. It's changing every minute. That doesn't mean we are in for global Warming, or even global cooling.

Scientists around the world have been looking at this phenomenon for years and have never agreed on the outcome.

But now, along comes the Kyoto accord which orders its signatories to cut greenhouse gases to help prevent global warming. 

And again, of course, the scientists can't agree.

In the United States, the science related to global climate change has been vigorously scrutinized, challenged and perceived biases exposed.

As a result, politicians, government bureaucrats and the public have been able to better make an informed decision on the question of climate change and, therefore, on Kyoto.

The U.S. has rejected signing the accord and will go it alone to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its own way and in its own time. 

This has not been the case in Canada. Here there has been a government organized lobby to promote the carbon dioxide greenhouse warming theory to an unaware public. Alternate data and interpretations have not been presented.

I would like you to look at some other climate information.

As I said earlier, climate is always changing - that's a 100 per cent certainty.

So, what are the causes of these changes?

The public has been reminded constantly that the production of carbon dioxide ( CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels will (or has) caused global Warming.

The evil CO2 has been presented so repetitively that many now believe it to be a fact.

It has been said that a lie presented 1,000 times becomes a fact.

I am not suggesting that CO2 as a cause of warming is a lie, but I intend to present scientific information that casts it as a very unlikely candidate.

Here are a few facts about our atmosphere and carbon dioxide:
Our atmosphere consists of 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen, argon and trace gases (so-called greenhouse gases water vapour, CO2, methane and ozone
Among the trace gases (including CO2), 97 per cent of the so called greenhouse effect is due to water vapour and clouds.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is not harmful to humans and it is sometimes referred to as a fertilizer as it is essential for plant growth.
We know that CO2, originating from the burning of fossil fuels, was not the cause of earlier dramatic climate change. For example, 1,000 years ago, scientific and historical data show that the Earth was in the pleasant medieval warm period - with agriculture established in Greenland and Iceland and settlements established in Newfoundland.

This was followed by the Little Ice- Age, starting about 1350 AD. This harsh cold period lasted until about 1860 AD during which time Greenland and Iceland settlements virtually perished. We are still emerging on the warming trend that came after the Little Ice Age period.
In the 20th century, there is lack of correlation between temperature changes and CO2 levels. Scientists are in basic agreement that over the past 100 years, there has been a 0.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature. However, that average hides some significant details.

In the period 1910 to 1940 alone, a rise of about 0.5 degrees Celsius occurred during which time there was an imperceptible rise in CO2. From 1940 to 1975, the temperature decreased about 0.2 degrees Celsius while CO2 levels started to increase more rapidly. The out-of-sync relationship is obvious.
Ice cores taken from three glacial - interglacial periods in the Antarctic show that temperature rise preceded rises in CO2 by 600 years. That clearly indicates increasing levels of CO2 were not the cause of increased temperatures.
World Climate Report (January .2002) shows that CO21evels have remained essentially flat since 1975, during a time of maximum production of CO2 from fossil fuel.

If the burning of fossil fuels was not the cause of earlier changes in climate, what might the possibilities be?

A group of scientists have found an excellent correlation between varying global temperatures and the sun's variable radiant energy. Others, working with Earth's eccentric orbit, the varying tilt of the Earth's axis, and its wobble (precession) have found an acceptable theory for the major ice ages and warm periods. 

During the middle of the Little Ice Age (1620 to 1710), the 11-year sunspot cycle essentially stopped; as one scientist noted: "It's as if the sun stopped breathing."

As the sun's radiant energy varies with sunspot activity, it is reasonable to conclude that the sun had some effect on climate during that period.

So, climate change could be as variable as it is for a variety of reasons, not just global warming, or cooling for that matter.

Yet, in Canada, there seems to be a rush to sign the Kyoto accord and one culprit to blame.

l Interpretive information is provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Environment Canada, both of which rely heavily on general circulation models (GCMs) and both involve CO2 as the demon.

These computer models, which are intended to forecast temperatures, embody an immense number of assumptions in attempting to forecast events 50 to 100 years into the future - variables in population; per capita income, amounts of fuel consumed, predictions of future industry and so on.

Such simulations must track more than five million parameters including water vapour and clouds, whose effects are still not understood.

It is not surprising that the IPCC forecasts for temperature have had to be revised downwards several times in the past 10 years.

For those wishing to gain a better understanding of the science problems inherent in IPCC, the reader is referred to:

For those wishing to gain a better understanding of the science problems inherent in IPCC, the reader is referred to:

And to make matters even more complicated, what about recent temperatures?

Surface-recorded temperatures since 1979 show an upward trend with a dominant spike due to El Nino in 1997-98, whereas satellite temperature records in the lower troposphere show little change.

Scientists have found the main Antarctic continent to be cooling while in the Arctic, there is evidence of warming in the western Arctic and cooling in the eastern Arctic.

So, should we be worried about the forecasts of droughts, hurricanes, ice storms and other extreme weather events?

These exaggerated forecasts which Environment Canada and special-interest groups correlate with global warming do not have scientific support.

Studies show that the frequency and intensity of severe weather events such as hurricanes have not increased.

So, what is going on here? Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it's a trace gas with minor potential for greenhouse warming. Water vapour and clouds produce the main greenhouse effect, but that contribution is nearly impossible to model.

Increases in CO2 are shown to lag temperature increases and are not the proven cause of increases. We see with near certainty that temperature changes in the past came about from variations in the sun's radiant energy and the Earth's orbit.

These questions and others may explain why thousands of scientists and others objected to the science behind the Kyoto deal - the Heidelberg appeal in 1992 (4,000 scientists including 70 Nobel Prize winners), the Leipzig Declaration in 1997 (100 scientists) and the Oregon petition in 1998 (more than 17,000 signed, including 2,500 who were specialists in the field).

Any balanced, objective look at the science should tell us that we need to stop and answer a lot of relevant questions before proceeding with the Kyoto accord.