The "fierce urgency of now": Lessons for Canada from the ghosts of climate past

Dr. John P. Smol, Queen's University

By many measures, the greatest challenge facing humanity today is anthropogenic climate change. Recent opinion polls, however, suggest that a significant portion of the general public believe that there remains scientific controversy regarding global warming. This is untrue, as very strong scientific consensus exists on the reality of human-related climate change. One of the biggest misconceptions is that current warming may simply be part of a natural, longer-term cycle. This arises partly from the assumption that little is known about natural climate cycles beyond what can be determined from relatively short-term meteorological records. Fortunately, the ecosystems around us have been recording long-term environmental conditions for millennia in a wide spectrum of natural archives, including the wealth of long-term environmental information that I have been tracking in lake sediments. This presentation examines the importance of using data acquired over appropriate time scales to inform evidence-based policy decisions, using examples of marked ecosystem changes as well as episodic events, such as recent flooding, which we can link to recent climate change.

JOHN P. SMOL, OC, PhD, FRSC, FRS is biology professor at Queen's University, where he also holds the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change. Smol founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL), a group of ~40 students and other scientists dedicated to the study of long-term global environmental change, and especially as it relates to lake ecosystems. John has authored ~600 journal publications and chapters since 1980, as well as completed 21 books. Since 1990 John has received 6 honorary doctorates and has been awarded >70 research and teaching awards and fellowships, including the 2004 NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal as Canada's top scientist or engineer. In 2013, John was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for his environmental work and in 2018 a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). He was recently elected President of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada.

This discussion will be in English - Simultaneous translation available.