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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

From shrinking sea ice to wetter weather, the latest Arctic Report Card catalogues a year of rapid-fire climate change – and the world’s lagging efforts to slow it down. Today, we talk not just about climate change, but political transformation, too.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

1. Technology: U.S. startup teams up with Canadian producer to launch carbon capture study in Alberta’s oil sands
2. Profile: Meet Tim Hodgson, the unconventional Energy Minister with a Bay Street eye for deals
3. Policy: Federal government releases more stringent methane rules for oil and gas producers, landfills
4. Investing: Ottawa names expert coalition to roll out stalled green investing guide
5. Pollution: Surface water in Alberta oil sands contains high levels of dissolved metals, report finds

Ivan Semeniuk is a science reporter for The Globe. For this week’s deeper dive, he talks about the latest Arctic Report Card from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It’s easy to pinpoint when climate change became a central part of the public conversation in the United States.

In early 2006, Americans were still reeling from the shock of seeing New Orleans inundated by Hurricane Katrina the previous summer. For months, newscasts replayed scenes of the flooded city that looked more like a science fiction disaster movie than real life.

Then, the Al Gore-fronted climate documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, debuted in January, 2006. It both captured and amplified the urgency of the climate crisis. By April, Time magazine ran a cover story featuring a polar bear on a melting ice floe together with the line: “Be Worried. Be VERY Worried.” All over mainstream media, the idea that the planet was changing no longer needed to be qualified with a question mark. The only question was what to do about it.

It was in this atmosphere that the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration launched its first Arctic Report Card in 2006. More of a synthesis than a traditional report card, it was intended to provide decision-makers and the public with a snapshot of climate change in a unique and critical setting.

Through a combination of factors that are collectively called “Arctic amplification,” the circumpolar region is warming several times faster than the global average. It’s a change not just in degree but in character as a vast region that had been frozen for thousands of years irrevocably crosses the melting point.

This past week saw the release of the 20th edition of the Arctic Report Card. It remains a U.S.-led effort but includes important contributions from Canada and other partners. And while it continues to show that the Arctic is undergoing tremendous change, what is even more striking is the transformation in the political and media environment into which the report card has been released. As the climate picture has become more worrying, the current U.S. administration has abandoned climate initiatives and sought to keep climate science out of public view.

The latest example: On the same day that this year’s Arctic Report Card was released, White House budget director Russ Vought called the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Col. – a world-leading facility for climate science – a source of “climate alarmism.” Without providing further details he said that the centre would be “broken up.”

All of this suggests that a more robust Canadian climate science program will be needed to fill the holes that are being created by U.S. downsizing.

In part because of trade battles with the U.S., Canada is scaling back on its own emissions commitments. But that doesn’t mean Canada can afford to increase its level of climate uncertainty. In the absence of more aggressive climate mitigation, northern communities will be forced to adapt to a warming Arctic – or fail. Going forward, it will be essential for them to have a clear and detailed picture of what is coming.

- Ivan

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