Environment committee  I do not know what an equity allocation is, but if we are talking about equity, this would seem to be a political policy judgment rather than a scientific one. The climate cares about the total amount of carbon dioxide that's in the atmosphere.

Environment committee  We have a negotiating team. I'm not privy to the work of that negotiating team. I work in a different part of the Department of the Environment.

Environment committee  I'm sure they are working very hard on their preparations. The only evidence I can provide you is that I am a member of the science working group that briefs the negotiating team at their request, and we do get requests from them.

Environment committee  I won't pass judgment on what is a tough target or what is not a tough target. Recent research that has looked at this question of what total cumulative emissions are consistent with a limit of 2°, or a limit of whatever you would choose to set—that again is a policy question, not a scientific question—indicates that the choice of baseline is actually not that important.

Environment committee  I think these are questions that I'll defer to others. These are questions that consider policy choices as opposed to questions that are purely scientific.

Environment committee  The impacts research community is a very large community. It's multidisciplinary and includes biologists, physical scientists, and people undertaking social science. So it's a community where consensus is not the easiest thing to obtain. But there is, by and large, a broad understanding that as temperatures rise, the impacts will become more widespread and more severe, and that these will then start to be felt increasingly as you go from 1.5°C to 2.5°C to 3.5°C.

Environment committee  The word “scenarios” refers to a number of different things. It could refer to emission scenarios; it could refer to resulting estimations of how the climate will change in response to those scenarios. Emission scenarios are developed to cover a range of possibilities. They start with current atmospheric concentration and rates of emission and build from there, proposing a range of possibilities.

Environment committee  I can relate to you that the kinds of requests that come to me from up the management stream are requests that are designed to inform our negotiating position, for example. Within Environment Canada, we have a science working group that briefs up to our international negotiating team, our COP 15 negotiating team, on current developments in science, at the request of that negotiating team.

Environment committee  I think this is a policy question that's being posed as opposed to a scientific question, so I'll defer. Thank you.

Environment committee  I'm a scientist working for Environment Canada. I don't think I can comment on work that policy analysts in our department or in other departments might be doing. Thank you.

Environment committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be a witness. I'll start by describing a little bit about the IPCC assessment process. I have a heavy involvement in the IPCC. I'm a vice-chair of the IPCC bureau, as Professor Stone has been in the past. The principal products of the IPCC are sets of comprehensive reports, issued roughly every six years, on the science of climate change, impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and the mitigation of climate change, together with a synthesis report.

Environment committee  It's the graphic that indicates the forcing effects of different greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so it shows, for example, that the effect of carbon dioxide increases has been to warm, that there is a net warming contribution from ozone, that our level of scientific understanding of that contribution is medium.