Study
| EST. READ TIME 2 MIN.Greenhouse Gas Reductions: Not Warranted, Not Beneficial
Increasingly, the debate over climate change is moving from alarmist global climate predictions, to alarmist regional climate predictions-reports purporting to predict the future climate impacts of rising greenhouse gas concentration on specific regions of the Earth, and calling for a laundry list of regulations long-favoured by old-school environmentalists. One of the latest alarmist reports of this nature, Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Ecological Society of America, and bearing the imprint of the David Suzuki Foundation, offers an example of the new local thrust in climate change activism.
Among other dire predictions, the UCS report warns the American Great Lakes states and the province of Ontario of a host of environmental threats including: declining lake levels; loss of lake ice; changes in fish distribution; invasions by non-native fish species; nutrient depletion; changes in run-off patterns; drought; river flooding; wetland shrinkage; depleted food for migrating birds; greater crop growth; more crop pests; increased ozone levels; higher shipping costs; losses of winter recreation; and more. But regional climate modeling of this sort is highly flawed. Despite the assertions of scientific certainty, the evidence supporting claims of extreme man made climate change is limited and mixed. Climate scientists, even those within the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, disagree about the extent of climate change seen in the last 150 years, the cause of that change, and the risk it poses.
While the threat of rapid climate change is certainly one to be taken seriously, it is equally important to be sure that we understand what is really happening with the climate. We must know what the causes of observed changes are before we take actions that will divert scarce resources into potentially fruitless, or even harmful policies that hurt individuals by raising the costs of energy and forcing them into less safe technologies, and hurt societies by reducing their economic freedom and ability to compete in a global setting.
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Kenneth P. Green
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Kenneth P. Green is a Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of over 800 essays and articles on public policy,published by think tanks, major newspapers, and technical and trade journals in North America. Mr. Green holds a doctoral degree in environmental science and engineering from UCLA, a master’s degree in molecular genetics from San Diego State University, and a bachelors degree in general biology from UCLA.Mr. Green’s policy analysis has centered on evaluating the pros and cons of government management of environmental, health, and safety risk. More often than not, his research has shown that governments are poor managers of risk, promulgating policies that often do more harm than good both socially and individually, are wasteful of limited regulatory resources, often benefit special interests (in government and industry) at the expense of the general public, and are almost universally violative of individual rights and personal autonomy. Mr. Green has also focused on government’s misuse of probabilistic risk models in the defining and regulating of EHS risks, ranging from air pollution to chemical exposure, to climate change, and most recently, to biological threats such as COVID-19.Mr. Green's longer publications include two supplementary text books on environmental science issues, numerous studies of environment, health, and safety policies and regulations across North America, as well as a broad range of derivative articles and opinion columns. Mr. Green has appeared frequently in major media and has testified before legislative bodies in both the United States and Canada.… Read more