Climate change is one of those topics which has seemed to cool, at least in terms of grabbing media headlines.
Such is the nature of this business. Media jumps from one hot topic to another in response to the short collective attention span of newspaper readers and television viewers. In a world growing up on music videos, video games and the quick blurbs of social media on the Internet, a story, even one potentially as world altering as climate change, can't hold the headlines for long.
However, in Saskatchewan the question about what global climate change may ultimately bring must be on the minds of many of us in light of what we have faced the last couple of years.
Flooding of Highway 1 in the summer of 2010, torrential rains leaving Yorkton flooded in what was termed a one-in-100 year storm last July 1 and now snowplows cleaning hail from highways near Regina this August all seem to herald climate change of some kind.
Of course when it comes to climate change one of the problems is that it is something of a new science, and forecasts of what may occur seem to vary widely based on what model one uses and who interprets the available information. The result is differing visions of how severe the change may be, and in particular what the effects may be on a given geographical area.
If you were to speculate based on the last couple of years, and as climate change will be more gradual than that the last two or three years are not likely typical of the future, you might assume hotter summers and more severe weather occurrences.
In terms of temperature warmer appears to be in our future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has come out and said temperatures over land will rise more than over water, a not so surprising expectation since the water is likely to have a cooling effect. If correct that would mean Canada, Siberia and Alaska would experience the largest percentage increase in temperature as a result of global climate change.
That will change agriculture in Canada but hardly ruin it. If we have hotter summers crops such as corn and soybeans are likely to be more viable and those have been the moneymakers for American farmers for years.
At the recent Canola Council of Canada annual convention held in Saskatoon Robert Thompson, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said there will also likely be higher levels of precipitation during winter and summer in Canada, Siberia and Alaska.
The potential of more heat, and more moisture is not a bad thing in terms of farming, if the severity factor is limited moving forward.
The world is going to face some challenges, perhaps even severe ones, as climates change into the future, but in terms of farmers on the Canadian Prairies, it should be change they can adapt to and remain productive through.
And that will be critical because a productive area such as the Canadian Prairies will be critical if the world is to have a chance to feed itself in the decades ahead.
