Working without pay, they provided their latest research and best analytical expertise to governments through the U.N.'s climate change panel. Covered in a cloud of smoke, a Greenpeace protester wearing a cut-out mask of President George Bush, holds a frying pan with a world globe inside during a protest in front of the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday April 3, 2001. The protest was held to criticize Bush's recent declaration that its mandatory cuts on carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels are no longer acceptable to the United States. The Kyoto protocol calls for countries to cut heat-trapping emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. However, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have continued to grow since the treaty was signed and are now nearly 15 percent above what they were in 1990.
Many scientists believe such emissions are causing the Earth to warm up significantly.
The agreement was that the policy-makers would then deliver the political goods. But the U.S. opposition to Kyoto, and Canada's subsequent waffling, left the scientists disillusioned, says Weaver. The problem is that most people don't recognize slow change in the climate, so governments are not being pushed by the public to deal with the issue,'' he said. The science hasn't managed to convince enough people that the necessary societal changes are in the best interests of the economy and health, as well as the environment, says Ralph Torrie, an Ottawa environmental consultant long involved in climate issues. The scientist creating the regional climate model for Canada says the model's projections of temperature and precipitation aren't yet credible.