It’s a stretch in Southern Alberta to pay much attention to what’s going on this week in Poland at another United Nations Climate Change Conference. This session is billed as “the halfway mark in the negotiations on an ambitious and effective international response to climate change. The deal is to be clinched in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and will take effect in 2013.”

A look at the Southern Alberta sky hardly suggests we have anything to worry about. Snow falls from it as we expect in December. We’re told by Environment Canada the temperature this winter here will be average: highs in December of  -0.2, January -1.8, February 1.5 and March 6. Ice is forming on Henderson Lake and the Oldman River as it should and will melt in the spring.

Snowbirds who want it warmer and are able will head to the southern U.S. as they’ve always done, many driving blissfully in large trucks pulling larger trailers. The recent drop in the gas price has them breathing easier.

So, why should we give climate change or global warming a second thought? Isn’t warmer better?

Lethbridge has had more than its share lately of speakers further documenting the case that global warning is a serious problem. People with no-less credibility than Andrew Weaver, Nobel prize-winning climate scientist, and Gwynne Dyer, respected journalist and military expert, are clear: there’s no debate – global warming is a fact. They don’t argue against the role of the Earth’s cyclical climate change. They show clearly how humans in the past 50 years have accelerated the change.

I scratch my head over what those who don’t believe Weaver or Dyer have to gain by continuing to reject the view that without serious action now to cut emissions, temperatures by the end of the century are projected to rise 1.1 to 6.4 degrees.

Dyer says, “Scientists are frightened. They perceive that global warming is proceeding faster than their models had predicted and they have reason to be worried.” The consequence, he says, is forecast by the U.S. military: global-warming-caused cuts in food production will result in wars.

Says Weaver: “We can handle 1.1 but 6.4 is bad news bears.” And, he emphasizes, “Policies made now have an impact at the end of the century.”

So, maybe that’s why there’s not unanimous acceptance we need immediate action. Those of us who could actually influence decisions-makers, and act ourselves, won’t be around at the end of the century. In fact, my 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter Lily will be in her 90s. The real impact will be on her children and grandchildren.

Would it not be prudent to give the benefit of the doubt to the climate experts who signed the 2007 United Nations unanimous declaration attributing “with 90 percent certainty the increase of average global temperatures since the mid-20th century to the increase of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?”

News of the Poland conference was clearly displaced by the manufactured political crisis in Ottawa this week which deflected attention from more pressing matters. That crisis will go away. As much as the nay-sayers would like it to, the global warming crisis won’t.

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