Canada and global warming: a state of denial

New scientific data released today indicates carbon dioxide concentrations have now reached a new record, the highest ever during mankind's existence, further emphasizing the need for urgent action on a worldwide basis to deal with the consequences of global warming. 

 

The relentless rise of carbon dioxide: Graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide in ppm versus years for 800,000 years humans have been on Earth

https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-ris...

According to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is over 415 parts per million (ppm), far higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years, since before the evolution of homo sapiens.

High levels of CO2 in the atmosphere -- caused by humans burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests -- prevent the Earth's natural cooling cycle from working, trapping heat near the surface and causing global temperatures to rise and rise, with devastating effects. 

The release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases has already led to a 1C rise in global temperatures, and we are likely locked in for a further rise, if more immediate action is not takenby the world's governments. ...

According to 70 peer-reviewed climate studies, in a world that is 2 degrees warmer, there will be 25% more hot days and heatwaves -- which bring with them major health risks and risks of wildfires. 

Around the world, 37% of the population will be exposed to at least one severe heatwaves every five years, and the average length of droughts will increase by four months, exposing some 388 million people to water scarcity, and 194.5 million to severe droughts. 

Flooding and extreme weather like cyclones and typhoons will increase, wildfires will become more frequent and crop yields will fall. Animal life will be devastated, with some 1 million species at risk of extinction. Mosquitoes however, will thrive, meaning a further 27% of the planet will be at risk of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. 

That's all at 2 degrees, a target that is increasingly becoming a hopeful one. At a temperature rise of 3 or 4 degrees, we enter a "hothouse Earth" stage that could render many parts of the planet uninhabitable.

All of this has been predicted for decades now. We also know what needs to be done to stop it -- a drastic cut in carbon emissions, reforestation and creation of carbon sinks, and new technologies for carbon capture and other innovations, or, in the words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society." 

This can be done, and many are organizing to try to force their governments to take action, but we are running out of time to avoid a world that we literally do not know how to handle.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/health/carbon-dioxide-world-intl/index.html

Climate change is also playing a major role in reducing biodiversity with one million species under threat of extinction as the world warms up according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report released on May 6th. 

Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.

Based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, the Report also draws (for the first time ever at this scale) on indigenous and local knowledge, particularly addressing issues relevant to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. ...

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-un...

The report emphasizes that climate change is playing a major role in reducing the planet's biodiversity:

• Permitting climate change from the burning of fossil fuels to make it too hot, wet or dry for some species to survive. Almost half of the world’s land mammals — not including bats — and nearly a quarter of the birds have already had their habitats hit hard by global warming. ...

Fighting climate change and saving species are equally important, the report said, and working on both environmental problems should go hand in hand. Both problems exacerbate each other because a warmer world means fewer species, and a less biodiverse world means fewer trees and plants to remove heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air, Lovejoy said. ...

The world’s coral reefs are a perfect example of where climate change and species loss intersect. If the world warms another 0.5 degrees Celsius, which other reports say is likely, coral reefs will probably dwindle by 70-90 per cent, the report said. At 1 degree, the report said, 99 per cent of the world’s coral will be in trouble. ...

“We’re in the middle of the sixth great extinction crisis, but it’s happening in slow motion,” said Conservation International and University of California Santa Barbara ecologist Lee Hannah, who was not part of the report. Five times in the past, Earth has undergone mass extinctions where much of life on Earth blinked out, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5243622/un-extinction-biodiversity-report/

Climate research has shown that the record-setting 2017 and 2018 BC wildfire seasons have been greatly intensified by global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. 

Research suggests British Columbia's record-setting 2017 wildfire season wasn't an accident and Environment Canada scientists say that climate change stacked the deck against the province from the start.

In a newly published paper, researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis say hot, dry weather directly caused by greenhouse gas emissions increased the province's fire risk that year by up to four times. The same factors are likely to have increased the amount of land scorched by up to 11 times.

It's an example of science's growing ability to attribute the influence of climate change on specific events, said Megan Kirchmeier-Young, lead author of the paper published online by the journal Earth's Future. ...

Kirchmeier-Young's team reached its conclusion through a complicated statistical analysis. They first built climate models based on two scenarios. One used current levels of greenhouse gases and one used levels from 1961 through 1970 before the strongest temperature increases began.

They took the measure of 2017's wildfire risk from an index developed by Natural Resources Canada and calculated how likely it would be for that risk level to occur under both scenarios. "By comparing these two likelihoods, we can make a statement about how the human climate factors changed the risk," said Kirchmeier-Young.

The researchers concluded, with 90 per cent certainty, that the addition of greenhouse gas emissions at least doubled and may have quadrupled the chance wildfire risks would reach the extreme values the province experienced in 2017. ...

The scientists also compared the average area burned each year between 1961 and 1970 with area scorched in 2017. The paper attributes about 90 per cent of the 12,000 square kilometres burned that year to the influence of climate change.

That figure dwarfed B.C.'s previous record for wildfires. The fires forced about 65,000 people from their homes and destroyed 509 structures, including 229 homes. The province spent more than $522 million fighting the blazes.

Last summer was even worse. A new record was set when 13,000 square kilometres were devastated. Because the 2018 fires were in different parts of the province, the team wasn't able to tease out how climate change may have loaded the dice last year. But they do estimate about 85 per cent of the area burned can be blamed on climate change.

Scientists have long warned that more frequent and larger fires are the likely consequence of a warming climate as more heat and less precipitation lengthens the fire season and adds to the fuel load in forests. Kirchmeier-Young said her findings are more evidence that climate change in Canada is much more than a distant threat."Our climate is changing as a result of human influence and Canadians are feeling the effects of that already."

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/climate-change-doubled-risk-of-b-c-s-rec...

While the NDP needs to answer some serious questions about their climate change plan, the track record of failure on climate change for the Liberals for more than twenty years was once again brought home by the Environment Commissioner Gelfand's report just last month. As Gelfand notes, the failure to meet targets has been common to both Liberal and Conservative governments.

Why would anyone believe anything the Liberals or Conservatives say on global warming given their track record? 

Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand says Canada is not doing enough to combat climate change.

Gelfand delivered her final audits Tuesday before her five-year term expires, looking at fossil-fuel subsidies, invasive aquatic species and mining pollution.

But her final conclusions as the country's environmental watchdog say it is Canada's slow action to deal with the warming planet that is most "disturbing" to her.

"For decades, successive federal governments have failed to reach their targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and the government is not ready to adapt to a changing climate," she said in a statement Tuesday morning. "This must change."

Gelfand's rebuke came a day after Environment Canada scientists sounded an alarm that Canada is warming up twice as fast as the rest of the world, causing irreversible changes to our climate. ...

Gelfand said neither Liberal nor Conservative governments have hit their own targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target, despite policies like the national price on carbon that took effect this week. ...

Gelfand's audit says the Liberals are not keeping a promise to get rid of "inefficient" fossil-fuel subsidies, which are undermining efforts to combat climate change, encouraging wasteful consumption of fossil fuels and discouraging investments in cleaner energy sources.

Canada has pledged to eliminate inefficient subsidies by 2025 as part of both the G20 and G7 economic groups of nations, and the Liberals also campaigned on a promise to get rid of them. Gelfand concludes that both Finance Canada and Environment Canada have defined "inefficient" so broadly they can't decide what subsidies fall into that category.

Finance Canada's work on the subsidies focused exclusively on fiscal and economic considerations without giving any attention to the social and environmental issues at play. For its part, Environment and Climate Change Canada only looked at 23 out of more than 200 federal organizations when it compiled an inventory of potential subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry, Gelfand found. ...

Philip Gass, a senior energy researcher for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said Tuesday using the World Trade Organization definition of subsidies, his organization found several that could or should be phased out. The IISD list shows more than $1.2 billion in fossil-fuel subsidies from the federal government.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...

Climate change induced by increasing greenhouse gas emissions has had a devastating effect on the Midwest of the United States this year, demonstrating that flooding is not simply a concern of coastal cities that are subject to flooding from sea level rise.  We have also seen record once in a hundred year floods along the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers. 

The following article's statement that "This country’s system of flood insurance is broken, in large part to an under-investment in resiliency and a willful ignorance of climate risk." applies equally to Canada and the Liberal and Conservative governments of the last 25 years. 

 

Wednesday, March 20, 2019 aerial photo shows flooding near the Platte River in in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, south of Omaha. The worst of the flooding so far has been in Nebraska, southwestern Iowa and northwestern Missouri.

For areas of the Midwest hit by this year’s deluge of rain and melting snow, extreme weather has caused some of the worst flooding in living memory. Governors declared states of emergency in Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, and North Dakota. Thousands of homes and farms are facing water damage and the problem will get worse before it gets better. 

As the record snowpack from the wettest winter on record melts over the next few weeks, it’ll add to already overflowing waterways. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts major flood risk along the Missouri, Mississippi, and Red River of the North, defined as “extensive inundation of structures and roads, significant evacuations of people and/or transfer of property to higher elevations.” Federal officials warn that 200 million people in 25 states face a flood risk through May. 

“This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season,” Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, told Wired.

The midwestern floods join the lengthening list of unprecedented and unexpected natural disasters accelerated and made worse by climate change. And, just like other climate events that have caused widespread damage, our planning, resiliency, and flood insurance programs are ill-equipped to cope. ...

When flood risk in the country is discussed, it’s often in the context of coastal communities and rising sea levels brought on by climate change. “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate,” a detailed analysis of future flood risks and property damage by the Union of Concerned Scientists, predicted that by 2045, roughly 300,000 homes and commercial properties on the country’s coastline may face chronic, disruptive flooding, threatening $135 billion in property. 

But overflowing rivers and inland flooding present similar threats. Scientists are still determining the degree to which climate change impacted this spring’s flood cycle, but they do know that warmer temperatures, which lead to more moisture in the air, can potentially turn a minor flood into a full-blown disaster. This winter and early spring, the Mississippi River basin received three times as much rainfall as normal. 

The last few decades have witnessed an unmistakable trend towards more extreme weather in the Midwest. Heavy-rain events have risen 37 percent since the 1950s, per the National Climate Assessment, which says climate change will bring extreme heat, drought, and heavy downpours to bear on America’s farms and eventually decrease productivity. Going forward, the Midwest is expected to receive some of the greatest increases in yearly precipitation. ...

This country’s system of flood insurance is broken, in large part to an under-investment in resiliency and a willful ignorance of climate risk.

Unlike recent hurricanes, which cost insurance companies billions of dollars, this current wave of river floods in the Midwest hasn’t registered as much with the industry, because they have little risk. Few Midwesterners have policies, and few realize the risk, since federal flood insurance maps are often outdated or don’t factor in future risk. ...

But the economic damage, and insurance risks, of the current disaster will only exacerbate the business woes for farmers in the affected regions, who are already facing economic pressures from current trade wars. 

The number of U.S. farms fell by 100,000 between 2010 and 2017, according to the USDA, as consolidation pushed out small farmers. That process will only accelerate after this spring’s flood. Without flood insurance to help get farmers rebound, government at all levels, as well as charitable groups, will need to step in and help.

https://www.curbed.com/2019/3/29/18286602/flood-insurance-midwest-climat...

Today in Alberta we had people return to Marlboro near Edson after being evacuated due to a wildfire nearing the community, but remaining on evacuation alert because of the ongoing danger. Meanwhile, in northern Alberta near Wood Buffalo Park, the 4,000 people of High Level received an evacuation order due to another wildfire. The First Nations community of Bushe River also received evacuation orders issued by Chief and Council of the Dene Tha’ First Nation. 

Meanwhile people debate if we should do anything about climate change. 

The order was issued by Chief and Council of the Dene Tha’ First Nation, saying that all residents must register at the Four Chiefs Complex in Bushe River prior to leaving. ...

About 4,000 people are being forced from their homes in High Level late Monday afternoon as an out-of-control wildfire moved within three kilometres of the northwestern Alberta town. ...

Officials rescinded an evacuation order covering parts of the small community of Marlboro at 9 a.m. Monday morning. Residents were allowed back into the area west of Edson but were told they may need to evacuate again if the fire situation changes.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/six-out-of-control-wildfires...

 We are even close to the height of the wildfire season in Alberta or Canada. All of the above wildfires threatening the above communities are part of the 23 wildfires, six out of control, occurring in one single day in a wildfire season that now starts March 1st, lasting much longer and more intensely than two short decades ago. On March 1st, the following article describe the smoke covering much of the province. 

As hard as it is to believe with snow still blanketing much of the province, wildfire season is now underway.

In Alberta, the season opens March 1, which means Alberta Wildfire has begun preparing firefighting crews to ensure they’re in place around the province. The season begins this early to account for how much longer Alberta summers are lasting in recent years, and so experts have enough time to forecast what kind of season to expect.

“We’re already seeing longer fire seasons, we’re seeing bigger, more intense fires. British Columbia has had two really bad seasons in a row,” said Glenn McGillivray, managing director with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2019/03/01/alberta-officials-begin-geari...

On May 20, a total of 23 wildfires were active across Alberta.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5295987/wildfire-concerns-southern-alberta/

There are now 5,000 people out of their homes, primarily form High Level where the ongoing nearby wildfire threatens the town. With the expanded wildfire season now starting on March 1st because of global warming, there have already been 430 wildfires with 30 still active in Alberta even though we are a long way from the height of the wildfire season. The High Level wildfire is a Level 6 wildfire, the highest category and is still out of control after burning 920 square kilometres, an area larger than metro Calgary. Because this wildfire is so intense, it is only being fought from the air, as it is too dangerous to have firefighters on the ground attack it. Alberta is bringing in 267 firefighters from BC alone, as well as from elsewhere, as its own firefighters are already overmatched. 

The number, intensity of the wildfire season, as well as the length of wildfire season in Alberta, are all a reflection of the impact of global warming on daily life. 

(Smoke billows from the wildfire near High Level. Photo courtesy Lee Filliol via Facebook.)

An out-of-control wildfire burning Tuesday near a town in northwestern Alberta is rated at the highest possible danger level, and the dry, windy weather means the danger is expected to increase this week, says Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

"The fire is jumping from crown to crown of trees," Kenney said at a news conference Tuesday. "Unfortunately, the dry conditions in northern Alberta are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, with the fire danger possibly increasing this week."

The fire near the town of High Level is ranked as a Level 6, the top of the wildfire intensity scale. Increased fire danger is common during the spring because of the abundance of dry, flammable materials in the period between the snow melt and the green-up of the landscape.

The High Level wildfire is being fought from the air, because it's not safe to have people on the ground attacking the fire, Bruce Mayer, assistant deputy minister for Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, said at Tuesday's news conference. ...

There have been 430 wildfires in Alberta since March 1, of which 30 are still active and five are classed as out of control. ...

Evacuation has been ordered for more than 4,000 people living in High Level, a town about 730 kilometres north of Edmonton, as well as about 750 people living at the nearby Bushe River Reserve of the Dene Tha' First Nation.

 

 

In the summer of 2018 during the hottest July in the history of Montreal, there were 66  heat-related deaths and the number of hospilizations almost doubled to 6,000. In the province of Quebec there were 89 heat-related deaths.

However, in Ottawa and Ontario there were no recorded heat-related deaths. It turns out that the real difference was in the way data was recorded. In Ontario only those who died directly of heat stroke are recorded as heat-related deaths, but nearly all such deaths are not of heat stroke but of the stresses put on the body by extreme heat, such as heart attacks. In other words, in Ontario there were almost certainly more than a few heat-related deaths brought on by last summers extreme temperatures induced by global warming. So the true death toll during last summer's heat wave is well above the recorded number.

The article below discusses this and also discusses how are cities are currently designed as heat traps that put many more people at risk. The peril of heat-related deaths is almost certainly going to grow as temperatures rise in the future. 

Sixty-six people died from the heat in Montreal in the first week of July 2018. Eighty-nine across Quebec. Yet zero in Ottawa. Zero in Ontario. ...

Some speculated that a lack of air conditioning caused more people to die in Quebec. Statistics Canada data seem to bear this out. Only 53 per cent of households in Quebec have central air or use a window unit, while 83 per cent of Ontarians have some form of A/C at home. In Montreal, 65 per cent of households have A/C, while in Ottawa it’s 82 per cent and 87 per cent in Toronto.

But could this really account for the stark difference in deaths between the two provinces? Dr. David Kaiser, a preventive medicine specialist with Montreal public health, doesn’t think so. “It’s because of the way things are counted,” he said.

Rather than being an issue of more people dying in Quebec, the death discrepancy reflects the fact that Montreal health-care workers count better. They’re finding the kinds of heat-related deaths that are surely occurring in Ontario as well but remain hidden because no one is looking for them.

This is because people who die during heat waves are not dying from heat stroke, a medical diagnosis that is coded into medical records, Kaiser said. If you only count deaths by heat stroke, you’re missing the vast majority. ...

Depending on how quickly we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, extreme heat that now occurs once every 20 years could happen once every five, or even every other year, by 2050, the report says. Couple that with the fact that heat is worse in cities, where more than 83 per cent of Canadians live, and, contrary to our snowy reputation, we’re going to have a heat problem.

Why is it so hot in cities? Urban areas can feel as much as 12 degrees hotter than surrounding rural areas thanks to the heat island effect. Concrete, asphalt and shingles, which cover much of a city's surface, absorb sunlight and retain and radiate heat even after sundown. By contrast, rural areas have more vegetation to deflect the sun's radiation and trees that provide shade, both of which help keep temperatures cooler.

People who die in heat waves are often already very frail, and this can obscure for health-care workers the role that heat might have played to hasten their demise. ...

“Somebody who has a weak heart and is exposed to high temperatures for a couple of days, they tend to have heart attacks because it just is an additional stress on a system that is already strained,” he said. The people who died from the heat last summer were predominately low-income, elderly and living alone, and many had severe mental health illnesses, alcohol dependency or chronic heart or lung disease.

http://projects.thestar.com/climate-change-canada/quebec/

Sav Dhaliwal, who was elected Metro Vancouver chair in November, sees climate change as his top concern. Metro Vancouver, which includes 21 municipalities, the Tsawwassen First Nation and Electoral Area A, is responsible for services such as drinking water, solid-waste disposal and sewage treatment for more than 2.5 million people. It also does work to improve air quality.

“We recognize that no matter how well we reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, our infrastructure must be able to withstand the inevitable impacts of climate change like rising sea levels, stronger and more-frequent weather events and prolonged drought,” he said during his keynote speech. ...

He described climate change as a “complex” problem that will require collaboration among everyone living and working in the region. He cited recent reports finding that Canada is heating up at twice the global rate and that one million of Earth’s eight million species are at risk of extinctiondue to human activity. “These are critical, shocking findings by scientists,” Dhaliwal said. “The problem cannot be fixed by governments alone. All of us — the citizens, the businesses and the government — must be united in our resolve to combat climate change by taking bold action.” ...

“In 30 years, the world is supposed to also change dramatically,” he said. “Whether it’s the rising seas, whether it’s the earthquakes — all of it. Well, how do we make sure that systems, our pipes … and our facilities, our dams, can withstand (that)? That’s a big challenge.”

For Metro’s part, it’s increasing work to adapt to the changes and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Last year, it approved its Climate 2050 Strategic Framework, and over the next two years will develop its Climate 2050 Roadmaps, which will provide specific goals, strategies and actions for issues such as nature and ecosystems, infrastructure, human health, transportation and energy.

In 2020, Metro will complete an update of its Clean Air Plan. In 2021, it will develop its next regional emissions inventory to track emission sources and trends.

Dhaliwal said Metro has also been focused on building energy-creating facilities, replacing aging infrastructure with cleaner infrastructure, and steering local governments toward committing to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

“We’re taking it very seriously, to make sure that our planet is a little better than what it is now, 25 years from now,” he said.

Asked by an audience member how Metro was dealing with waste-management issues, Dhaliwal said it’s making progress, with diversion of waste from landfills reaching about 63 per cent in 2016, up from below 50 per cent 20 years ago, according to Metro. ...

Mustel capped the Q&A by asking Dhaliwal how he hopes to remember his one-year term when it comes to an end. “It would be to do some work (in a) more meaningful way on the climate-change strategy that we have, to actually set some plans into motion not just for ourselves but bringing everybody to the table,” he said. “This is way beyond Metro Vancouver.”

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/climate-crisis-tops-concerns-fo...

The August 7, 2018 extensive flooding that occurred in Toronto, followed by another major downpour just ten days later and 2019's Toronto Island flooding  is a reflection of how a regional climate that is changing due to global warming combines with local conditions to increase the risk of flooding on an ongoing basis. This followed massive downpour that immersed the Toronto Islands for months in 2017.  When the increase is torrential downpours that are now occcurring every two or three years is combined with an infrastructure designed to deal with the previous climate where such rainfalls had a historical once in 50 to once 100 year rate of occurrence, a massive buildup in concrete and pavement that prevents ground absorption, and a very low level of investment in stormwater runoff, the result is an ongoing risk of massive flooding in Toronto.

Police officers look on as water floods King St. W. during heavy rain, stopping a streetcar in Toronto on Tuesday, August 7, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Shlomi Amiga

Historical data shows that Toronto temperatures have increased 1 to 1.5 degrees over the last 30 years, said Kent Moore, a professor of physics at the University of Toronto. Snow-melting rains are the most obvious example. Compared to Toronto winters of 40 years ago, Moore said there are now an extra 10 days when temperatures creep above zero.

Moore is a specialist in climate change and does not overstep the boundaries of evidence. He will say Toronto’s rainfall is “consistent with the view that as we warm the planet, we intensify the hydrological cycle or the rainfall cycle. That is consistent. But the devil is in the details — exactly how that happens ... and I think that is where the uncertainty is. All we can say is that it is consistent.” ...

Canada’s mean annual temperatures are now double the global warming rate, increasing by 1.7 degrees between 1948 and 2016, with higher temperatures in the north than the south, particularly in the winter, according to the report called Canada’s Changing Climate. Rainfall is increasing too. Weather patterns will vary nationwide, but scientists agree that Canadians can expect more wildfires, droughts and, floods. ...

The reason is both simple and complex. Rising temperatures that accompany climate change can add moisture to the air, increasing the odds of intense rainfall. But those heavy rains fall on Toronto neighbourhoods serviced by sewers built a century ago when the weather was, frankly, a lot more civilized. ...

Old infrastructure — nearly one-quarter of the city has a single pipe carrying raw human sewage and stormwater — might have been sufficient in gentler times but is now overwhelmed by volatile storms that stall over a slice of the city and unleash rains of 70 mm or more. Just 10 days after the storm of Aug. 7, Toronto took another hit, with as much as 50 mm of rain falling through the late afternoon and evening, once again flooding Queens Quay and Union Station, forcing pedestrians in neighbourhoods like Trinity Bellwoods to walk through ankle deep water. ....

If the weather has changed, so too has Toronto’s above-ground landscape. The city used to have acres of greenspace that could absorb rain, allowing the storm sewers to manage the rest but Toronto is increasingly encased in concrete and asphalt, from condos to big box stores and acres upon acres of shopping mall parking lots. ...

All of that impermeable space creates a massive volume of runoff with nowhere to go but to follow the natural flow of water toward Lake Ontario. It rushes through waterways, like the Black Creek in west Toronto, into old combined sewers, where pressure builds until the excess explodes into basements or streets, destroying homes and streetcars, not to mention shoes and suits. ...

All of that impermeable space creates a massive volume of runoff with nowhere to go but to follow the natural flow of water toward Lake Ontario. It rushes through waterways, like the Black Creek in west Toronto, into old combined sewers, where pressure builds until the excess explodes into basements or streets, destroying homes and streetcars, not to mention shoes and suits. ...

Wild downtown rains in May of 2017 left the Toronto Islands immersed for months. In July of 2013, a slow-moving cluster of thunderstorms drenched the city, particularly Etobicoke, destroying basements and turning Tom Riley Park’s baseball diamond into a lake. ...

here’s a third factor adding to Toronto’s vulnerability, said Dianne Saxe, Ontario’s former Environmental Commissioner, whose office has been eliminated by the Ontario government. ... City hall politics, Saxe said, have led to “gross under-investment” in green and stormwater infrastructure, such as permeable surfaces in parking lots, holding tanks and landscaping that directs runoff toward trees and greenery built into the hard cityscape. ...

In 2017, Toronto councillors, including Gord Perks, tried and failed to get a “stormwater management charge” applied to homes, shopping malls and other businesses. Despite a staff report supporting it, Toronto’s infrastructure improvements still rely on water consumption fees that all residents pay. ... While some politicians remain reluctant to embrace change, most scientists, urban flood experts and climatologists agree that hot, moist summer days leading to intense rains are the type of weather created by a warming climate. ...

http://projects.thestar.com/climate-change-canada/toronto-flooding/

I am no fan of Francois Legault or CAQ, but I am happy to see Legault's proposal to shift Quebec from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Hopefully, this will not be an empty promise like those of the federal Liberals and Conservatives over the last 25 years where promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ended in ever increasing emissions.

However, although CAQ had almost no climate change policies during the campaign, it make turn out to be true for Quebec because its hydroelectric potential could save the province billions of dollars in such a shift.

Legault also mentioned that he got the message from the youth protests demanding that the shift to renewable energy needs to begin in a major way now. The proposal drew support from the David Suzuki Foundation and Le Pacte Pour La Transition. 

Legault announced he wants the province to cut its oil consumption by 40 per cent by 2030, to be replaced by clean electricity. Currently 36 per cent of the energy consumed in Quebec is electric.

“Instead of pumping our money into the coffers of oil companies, we will keep it here to create wealth for people here,” Legault said in his speech to 1,300 delegates at a downtown hotel Sunday.

“The path I invite all of us to follow is to electrify our economy. That’s the way for more prosperity and a greener economy.” Addressing the province’s growing environmental lobby, which has accused him of not doing enough to save the planet, Legault said: “I want to be perfectly clear — we got the message from our youth. We are going to do more. The skeptics will be proven wrong.” ...

Following a weekend in which environmentalists cranked up the pressure and the party adopted a package of green political resolutions, Legault chose to run with the movement rather than fight it. ...

That includes using more electric power in Quebec and exporting surpluses for profit to the power-hungry states south of the border.  Making use of that power also represents Quebec’s contribution to reducing greenhouse gases everywhere, he argued. ...

 Dominic Champagne — the media-savvy theatre director who launched a major environmental movement in November known as Le Pacte pour la transition and recently joined the CAQ membership — beamed as he left the council, as did representatives of the David Suzuki Foundation. Noting the CAQ has come a long way after winning the Oct. 1 election with almost no environmental platform, Champagne said the party now has the makings of a good one. ...

Legault’s plan has three tiers: converting homes and public buildings such as hospitals and seniors’ residences from oil and gas heating to electric; weaning industry off oil; and, by far the largest chunk of the plan, a massive investment in the electrification of public transportation systems. That includes finishing and expanding Montreal’s $6.3-billion REM light-rail network, extending the Blue métro line and adding a tramway to the city’s east end, plus tramways on Taschereau Blvd. in Longueuil and in Quebec City.

There was no mention of Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante’s pet project, the Pink métro line, which the CAQ government does not support, but the party does endorse improvements in bus transportation. In all cases, any new trains, tramways and buses financed by the Quebec government will have to be electric by 2030 and, for the most part, built in Quebec, Legault said. ...

As a bonus, he estimates Quebec will be able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37.5 per cent of the benchmark 1990 levels by 2030. If potential deals to sell power to Massachusetts and New York materialize as he hopes, greenhouse gases would be cut by five million tonnes a year and Quebec would be richer by $1 billion from the sales, Legault said. ...

Asked if he is sending a message to newly elected Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who dreams of exporting oil via pipelines through Quebec, Legault said Quebec will still need oil for many years. He cautiously did not repeat his previous comments about Alberta’s oil being a form of “dirty energy.” Quebec already gets 80 per cent of its oil from Alberta and the United States, and that won’t stop for now, he said. “We want to decrease (consumption) but we won’t be able to reduce it to zero in the next few years,” Legault said. “It’s a transition.”

The upside to cutting oil consumption by the reduction goal, he added, is Quebec would save $10 billion a year, which is what it pays now for oil supplies.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/francois-legault-presents-electr...

Jason Kenney's solution to the wildfires threatening Alberta's boreal forests and communities is to pretend it has no relationship to global warming and the production of fossil fuels. At least he's consistent. Meanwhile former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith and the vast majority of Edmonton's MSM scream what problem. 

Wildfire near High Level Alberta

It is an irony, though not a particularly satisfying one to observe, that while Premier Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government moves swiftly to repeal Alberta's carbon tax, the province is aflame, with more than 5,000 Albertans required to leave homes and communities in imminent danger of destruction. It is only May. ... In other words, it's barely spring. God only knows what things will be like around here by midsummer. 

Well, get used to it. It gets harder by the day to deny the reality of global climate change. One of the effects of this inconvenient fact on Alberta's part of our planet is that there are going to be more frequent and more severe forest fires -- the kind that destroyed large swaths of the town of Slave Lake in 2011, Fort McMurray in 2016, and which are now threatening High Level.

"Fire driven weather is 'new reality' for Canada and elsewhere, expert cautions," said the headline on the news summary of an episode yesterday of The Current, CBC Radio's daily news analysis program hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti. Tremonti's interview with Ed Struzik, author of Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future and a fellow of the Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, was playing on the car radio as I drove to work. Fire-caused weather that results in dynamic, fast moving fires is "the new reality," Struzik was saying. "We saw it in B.C. in the last two years, and Alberta the year before, Waterton National Park. Ontario got hit hard last year. I think this is what we're going to be seeing more of every summer."

Pine beetle infestations that have killed vast swaths of trees in this region, another manifestation of global warming, have left explosively dry dead forests in their wake, compounding the problem.

Kenney's response to this situation is to pretend it isn't happening. Oh, sure, he and members of his government make pro forma acknowledgements of global climate change from time to time, but their actions and intentions belie them.

This includes, of course, their Trump-like efforts to dismantle all of the inadequate measures taken by the previous NDP government to reduce Alberta's massive carbon footprint. Alberta oilsands extraction operations alone add more carbon pollution to the atmosphere than the entire economies of British Columbia and Quebec combined.

Bill 1, An Act to Repeal the Carbon Tax, was introduced in the provincial legislature on Wednesday and will take effect on May 30. A federal carbon tax will likely replace it, although Kenney has vowed to fight that in the courts. The position of this bill atop of the government's radical agenda is intentionally symbolic and tells you everything you need to know about where Kenney really stands on climate change.

Premier Kenney also intends to fight measures to ameliorate climate change in the court of public opinion. In the fall he plans to travel to his native Ontario to campaign against the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and try to install another climate-change denying Conservative government in the nation's capital. ...

Scheer, whose energy policies are drawn from the same playbook as Kenney's and Ontario Premier Doug Ford's, has his own answer to stories like the CBC's interview with Struzik. Back in 2016, he promised that if he became prime minister, he'd shut down the CBC's news division. Easy-peasy, that solves the problem of stories about global warming! ...

"Alberta's public sector unions back doomsday anti-oil campaign," screeched former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith in a column typical of the drivel published on this topic by Postmedia, the U.S.-controlled corporation that dominates media in Alberta. "It simply doesn't follow that catastrophe awaits humanity with an additional 1.5 degrees more," insisted Smith, who nowadays hosts a right-wing talk radio show. "The record shows that humanity has proven remarkably resilient and adaptable to climate change. There’s no reason to believe that will stop."

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2019/05/jason-kenney-f...

https://globalnews.ca/news/5336307/smoke-alberta-wildfire-blocking-out-s...

This map from earlier today is already out of as CBC on the evening news is showing the smoke from the Alberta wildfires extending over Vancouver and Vancouver Island as well going as far east as Northwestern Ontario which is shown on the map. There has been more than 500 wildfires so far this year as global warming continues its exponential growth on impacts around the world. 

The  article accompanying the map that states there are 5,000 people out of their homes in Alberta is also out-of-date. There are now 9,500 people out of their homes.

The Chuckegg Creek wildfire alone is spreading at the previously unheard of rate of 29 hectares a minute and" is now estimated to be 230,000 hectares (2300 squar km.) in size, having grown from 150,000 hectares Wednesday morning." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/evacuation-md-opportunity-chipew...)

By yesterday Alberta wildfire smoke had caused major smoke  visibility and health advisories in Edmonton as seen above, with those problems extending to Calgary today. Smoke from Alberta wildfires is now affecting air quality as far east as New England and as far south as North Carolina. 

The area burned in Alberta wildfires has increased from 2300 square km to 4,976 square km since yesterday from 552 wildfires that have now displaced more than 10,000 people, according to CBC. The area burned will all but certainly surpass the area of Prince Edward Island (5,660 square km) soon even though we are still early in the wildfire season that lasts until October and typically reaches its height in July-August. 

Meanwhile Jason Kenney cancels celebration of carbon tax repeal to get briefed on wildfires but leaves out any mention of climate change in later comments. As the title of the following article says, Kenney is not a climate change denier, but a climate change dodger. Unfortunately, he sees campaigning for Doug Ford and Scheer in Ontario as more important than dealing with the reality of global warming and wildfires in Alberta.

Last week, when wildfires forced 5,000 people to flee their homes in and around the northern Alberta community of High Level, Premier Jason Kenney headed to Ontario on a business trip.

And then stayed there over the weekend to campaign with federal Conservatives.

No surprisingly, Kenney has since been lambasted by the NDP Opposition as a later-day Nero who fiddled while Alberta burned.

“Sticking around an extra two days to campaign for his buddies in the Conservative party when people were being evacuated from towns in northern Alberta doesn’t show leadership,” said NDP leader Rachel Notley. “He could be reaching out to people who have been dislocated, talking to them. They’d like to see their premier.” ...

The NDP argues the disturbing number of large forest fires the past decade in Alberta, including the 2011 fire that destroyed one-third of Slave Lake, is evidence that climate change is making wildfires more likely and more destructive.

It’s a position put forward by climate scientists. But Kenney is apparently having none of it. “There have always been forest fires,” he said on Monday. “Back before human contact there were forest fires that took millions of acres of forested land.”

It’s this kind of comment that has Kenney’s critics calling him a denier of man-made climate change.

But Kenney is careful in his wording. “I accept the science on anthropogenic climate change and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” said Kenney. He says nobody can point to any one wildfire and say it’s the result of climate change — and on that point he is correct. ...

[Wildfire expert Mike] Flannigan points out, Alberta’s wildfire season now starts in March, not April. His conclusion: “It’s climate change in action, absolutely.”

Flannigan is not alone. His argument that climate change is a force multiplier making large, devastating fires more likely has long been supported by other scientists.

Federal research scientist Megan Kirchmeier-Young, for example, studied the devastating fires in BC in 2017 and concluded in a report early this year, “As the climate continues to warm, we can expect that costly extreme wildfire seasons — like 2017, in BC — will become more likely in the future. This will have increasing impacts on many sectors, including forest management, public health, and infrastructure.”

But if Kenney was to accept the science, he’d have to then explain what he’ll do about it. And that tends to take politicians down the road of carbon taxes and climate leadership plans — and Kenney just won a provincial election campaigning against both.

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/05/29/kenney-not-a-climate-change-denier-but-a...

Man-made barriers set up to prevent flooding on Ward's Island. 680 NEWS/Momin Quresh

Lake Ontario water levels set a new record in reaching the highest level in recorded history with strong winds increasing the impact on the Toronto Islands, as climate change hits home in the city, as described by Councillor Joe Cressy. The second url deals with a report on long-term climate change adaptation and resilience measures commissioned in 2017 following similar flooding in the Toronto Islands will be released on June 21st.

Water levels on Lake Ontario have reached the highest point in recorded history, putting the Toronto Islands at risk of significant flooding.

Current levels have reached 76.03 metres above sea level, topping the previous record of 75.93 metres which was set in 2017 when the islands were inundated with water.

Ferry service to Hanlan's Point has been suspended and the area around Gibraltar Point has been closed off as a result. Worse, strong winds are expected on Thursday afternoon, something that could lead to "significant wave action," local Coun. Joe Cressy warned. "This is a difficult time for local residents, who are also working tirelessly to protect the Islands. We are all grateful for volunteer assistance from visitors and the public," Cressy said in a tweet. ...

City officials say the winds and rising lake levels could lead to further breaches of the Islands' shoreline, which has been heavily sandbagged in anticipation of flooding.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lake-ontario-record-levels-1.5155962

While Cressy considers those efforts crucial, he also sees them as a band-aid fix to the larger issue of climate change, and he’s hoping a report due for publication on June 21 will lead the city towards more sustainable solutions.

The city commissioned the report on long-term climate change adaptation and resilience measures with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) after the devastating Islands flooding in 2017 that shuttered the popular tourist destination and caused extensive property damage to homes and businesses.

“In an era of escalating climate change … an annual sandbagging effort is not and cannot be the solution,” Cressy said. “As the local councillor I am not satisfied with having my residents every year going out and sandbagging their front doors in order to keep their properties and their friends and families safe. We see that climate change is real, it is happening daily and it’s not just Toronto,” he added. “But if we don’t get in front of it the water will consume us.”

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/05/29/toronto-islands-flooding-wind-storm/

The following Chatelaine article gives a good description of some of the many challenges of global warming that Canada's regions are facing, including: an ice-free Arctic will create security concerns andinvite oil drilling; thawing permafrost will destabilize infrastructure; likely extinction of the polar bear; B.C. and Alberta will experience even more fires, as well as nothern Ontario and Quebec; B.C. salmon stocks will dwindle; the Canadian Prairies will get a longer growing season but parts of it will become a dust bowl; warmer Great Lakes mean more  invasive species; Central Canada temperatures will often be scorching; loss of significant Atlantic coastal areas to sea level rise.

https://www.chatelaine.com/news/climate-change-will-impact-your-region-o...

Young people advocating for a Green New Deal in the recent European elections played a major role in the outcome of the election. In addtiont to dealing with climate change, the European Green New Deal is even bringing up the word that cannot be spoken - nationalization, in terms of some private real estate and corporations like BMW for breaking antitrust rules. The extent of the Green New Deal activism of youth on the federal October election results remains to be seen. 

With major votes occurring within the span of five months this year, the European Union and Canadian federal elections are critical in deciding our planet’s future.

The results of the EU election — in which each European country elects an allotted number of representatives to the EU parliament — have already resulted in big changes, largely due to youth getting involved in politics.

Young people around the world are demonstrating a thorough understanding of the larger economic and environmental threats that are endangering not only individual freedom, but the very survival of our own species and more than a million others.

Around the world, youth protest movements like #FridaysForFuture have been growing steadily. Student protesters recently turned out in 120 countries and 1,700 cities to demand action on climate change just days before the EU elections on May 26. The next global student strike has already been announced for Sept. 20 and is expected to draw even bigger numbers. ...

There was a renewed brawl pitting democratic eco-socialists and liberals against conservatives and far-right parties, as Europeans witnessed most strikingly in the first debate of the lead candidates of the pan-European parties.

The debate focused on “digital Europe,” “sustainable Europe” and the future of Europe. 

The prospect of a European Green New Deal — popular among young voters — has been increasingly paired with renewed discussions about democratizing the European Union not just politically, but also economically. 

Yanis Varoufakis’s transnational party European Spring included a Green New Deal in its platform, with the following pledges: “To dismantle the habitual domination of corporate power over the will of citizens; to re-politicize the rules that govern our single market and common currency.”

The party only marginally missed the threshold for securing seats in Germany and Greece, but more than 1.4 millions Europeans voted for a Green New Deal. In Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) won on a Green New Deal platform.

As World Economic Forum writer Katie Whiting explained, a European Green New Deal would invest “at least five per cent of Europe’s GDP in emissions-free transportation infrastructure, renewable energies and innovative technologies, while creating jobs and transitioning Europe to zero-emissions — all without raising taxes.” ...

The European Greens, with 69 projected MEPs in the European Parliament, will certainly need to respond to calls from the Left Bloc (38 seats) and the Socialists and Democrats (153 seats) to work together on making Europe environmentally green and socially just.

They’ll have to do so while dealing with MEPs from pan-European parties like Volt Europa who want to democratize the European Union as far-right parties like Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) embrace increasingly nationalist and isolationist views.

The EU environmental agenda is also being shaped by particular national New Green debates. For example, in Germany, there is talk of reappropriating apartment units and car manufacturers to alleviate inequality and establish a more sustainable Europe. ...

Soon after discussions about nationalizing real estate properties emerged in the state of Berlin, Kevin Kühnert, the head of the 80,000-member-strong youth movement of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was recently in the news for public remarkscalling for the nationalization of corporations like BMW as well. 

BMW is in the spotlight due to allegations it “breached EU antitrust rules from 2006 to 2014,” according to the European Commission. It’s being investigated for allegedly using illegal defeat devices to cheat regulatory emissions tests.

It’s not just young people making the case for abolishing private ownership of some entities. These daring remarks by young people, sometimes considered taboo, have inspired older generations too. As Germany celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Federal Republic and its German Basic Law, even Baby Boomers are reminding the public about the law’s Article 15 that allows the nationalization of private property. 

Demands for action on climate change are growing louder every day. British parliament recently declared a climate emergency due in part to ongoing protests organized by the Extinction Rebellion movement, which has also been supported by #FridaysForFuture student activist Greta Thunberg.

https://theconversation.com/how-youth-influenced-the-eu-election-and-cou...

Unsurprisingly, scientists have linked the extensive wildfires this year, as well as those that destroyed part of Fort McMurray in 2016 and did extensive damage to BC in 2017 and 2018 to global warming. We are still early in the wildfire season but wildfires have already burned 6,700 square kilometres in Alberta, 3.8 times the five year average of 1,400 sq. km.

The Chuckegg Creek fire in northern Alberta 

As another extreme fire season starts with more people on the run, scientists in two recently published articles conclude they are already seeing signs that climate change is playing a role again .

In May 2016, a wildfire near Fort McMurray forced more than 80,000 people to flee the northern Alberta city, destroyed 2,400 buildings and burned nearly 6,000 square kilometres of forest. A year later, the fire season in British Columbia broke records as 2,117 blazes consumed more than 12,000 square kilometres of bush.

Both have been connected to climate change in two separate research papers published earlier this year by scientists with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“We are seeing climate change in action,” says University of Alberta wildland fire Prof. Mike Flannigan.

“The Fort McMurray fire was one-and-a-half to six times more likely because of climate change. The 2017 record-breaking B.C. fire season was seven to 11 times more likely because of climate change.”

The largest community evacuated in Alberta so far this year has been High Level. The vast Chuckegg Creek fire still churns in the woods south of town. It grew to 2,660 square kilometres in the first few weeks and remains one of several blazes currently burning out-of-control in the province. ...

It takes time for scientists to research and connect individual events to climate change, but Flannigan says it has become a major factor in Canadian fire seasons.

“We burn about 2.5 million hectares a year on average — that’s using about a 10-year average,” he says. “It’s more than doubled since the late ’60s and early ’70s. Colleagues and I attribute this to human-caused climate change. I can’t be any more clear than that.”

Most fire experts use a 10-year average for comparisons but even using a five-year model, the number of fires in Alberta so far this year is already closing in on that number.

Alberta Wildfire data shows that, as of Friday, there were 569 wildfires in the province. The five-year average is 616. But they have already burned nearly 6,692 square kilometres, much higher than the five-year average of 1,387 square kilometres. ...

He says there are three reasons: longer fire seasons; drier fuels and more lightning, which research has shown is increasing by 10 to 12 per cent with every degree of warming.

“Increasing temperatures, like those observed across Canada, will lead to drier fuels, and thus increased fire potential, as well as longer fire seasons,” says a federal report that looked into the Fort McMurray fire.

“The study demonstrated that the extreme Alberta wildfire of 2016 occurred in a world where anthropogenic warming has increased fire risk, fire spread potential, and the length of fire seasons across parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/5370840/alberta-wildfires-climate-change/

There is incresing evidence that extreme weather and its connection to climate change is starting to break through as a major ballot box issue, thanks in part to a new field of science called attribution science, as well as the extreme flooding and many wildfires that have already marked this spring. 

Polls in the US and Canada that are described below show a large increase in the last five years in the percentage of people in both countries who believe that climate change and extreme weather are closely linked with 74% of Americans now believing climate change has affected extreme weather and half of Canadians believing climate change is already harming people in Canada. 

The shift from pussyfooting around how climate change leads to more extreme weather events to talking about it so forcefully hasn’t happened by chance. It’s the result of a concerted effort by researchers to create a new field called “attribution science.” The challenge they faced was that climate is so complicated that teasing out a single cause for, say, a flood or a fire is impossible. So they devised methods for calculating how much climate change had contributed. The watershed report was published by researchers from the University of Oxford in 2004, explaining how global warming caused by humans had at least doubled the risk of the heat wave that baked Europe the previous year.

Since that landmark study, attribution science has taken off, including in Canada. The federal government’s “Canada’s Changing Climate Report,” released early this year, listed 14 Canadian attribution studies published from 2015-17, on everything from forest fires, to flooding, to thinning Arctic sea ice. 

 

In a widely noted report, Environment Canada researchers analyzed the awful 2017 forest fire season in British Columbia, when 65,000 were driven from their homes and millions left breathing smoke-filled air. They concluded that the extreme summer temperatures behind those fires were made more than 20 times more likely by human-caused climate change.  

Megan Kirchmeier-Young, an Environment Canada climate scientist and one of the report’s lead authors, said the research team ran 50 sophisticated computer simulations, modelling the way B.C.’s climate changed depending on tiny tweaks. “We can run the simulations of our climate considering all of the emissions that humans have done, and we can also run simulations without humans, with just natural factors, and then we can compare the types of extreme events we see in the two scenarios or how frequent they are,” she said.

The researchers working on attribution studies like Kirchmeier-Young tend to be acutely aware that their work isn’t the typical kind of scientific study that’s conducted without much attention to political debate. These studies are in part intended to make the public see climate change not in terms of vague impacts in the hazy future, but about fresh memories and real damage done. “It can help people relate to climate change,” said Kirchmeier-Young. “You’re talking about climate change in terms of how it increased the odds of an extreme event that they’ve either heard of or experienced themselves.” ...

But is the message getting through? According to a poll released early this year by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, fully 74 per cent of Americans say their opinion of climate change has been influenced over the past five years by extreme weather. Polling by EcoAnalytics—a Canadian joint venture of charities, non-profit groups and academics, meant to provide research support to the environmental movement—found that in 2017 and again in 2018 more than half of Canadians thought that climate change was already harming people in Canada, up dramatically from about a third of those polled in 2014.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/extreme-weather-may-finally-make...

While Scheer continues to denies the effects of climate change discussed in the last post, even Susan Yurkovich, the CEO of  BC's Council of the Forest Industry openly admits the damage to the forest industry by global warming in saying  in an email “Dry conditions and other effects of climate change are an ongoing worry for our forest industry. As droughts and devastating fire seasons unfold, these challenges are impacting the fibre available to supply B.C. mills at a time when we are already experiencing the effects of the mountain pine beetle natural disaster.”

But there are other BC economic sectors that have been damaged by climate change over the last fifteen years under the drought and high temperatures that the province has faced, including recreational and commercial fishing, agricultgure, and even the oil and natural gas sectors. "And a provincial forecaster said it could get worse this, which could also jeopardize the province’s fishing and forestry industries."  

The week before this photo of a Cowichan River tributary, water was flowing and contained thousands of salmon fry. 

A photo shared by the B.C. Wildfire Service shows the Lejac wildfire burning near Fraser Lake on May 11, 2019.

Drought conditions caused by warm temperatures and a lack of rain could result in the suspension of water withdrawals in B.C.’s oilpatch as early as this week, months before they usually are issued by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission. ...

Commission hydrologist Suzan Lapp said the last 10 to 15 years have been dry and the commission has had to issue water suspensions because of drought in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2018. ...

Drought level warnings for Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and B.C.’s northeast have already increased to the voluntary water-restrictions stage, and Dave Campbell, head of the B.C. River Forecast Centre, said Tuesday the current forecast points to provincewide drought conditions in the coming weeks. ...

The winter snow packs this spring are half of what they would normally be and between 55 per cent and 100 per cent of the snow that feeds many of the province’s waterways has already melted, he said. If spring rains don’t arrive soon, the drought conditions will increase, he said. “To some extent, the way things are setting up, I don’t think it’s too early to raise some of those alarm bells,” said Campbell, suggesting more use of voluntary water restrictions and communities and farmers practising conservation measures. ...

Last year’s dry weather also contributed to B.C.’s record wildfire season, with more than 2,100 fires consuming more than 13,000 square kilometres of forests, grasslands and property.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/alarm-bells-its-spring-but-b-c-...

Climate scientists are becoming increasingly assertive in fighting climate change deniers, including in court, in the mainstream media and in social media. Using the courts, Michael Mann has forced a climate change denier to apologize for accusing him of fraud, while when Conservative deputy leader  Lisa Raitt, who as the holder of a masters environmental degree has absolutely no excuse for her conduct, tweeted that there is no connection between climate change and extreme weather, was forced to withdraw to delete the post and admit that greenhouse gas emissions cause cause climate change. 

In 2011, renowned scientist Michael E. Mann sued a Canadian think tank that published an interview suggesting his work on climate change was fraud.

Eight years later, the Winnipeg-based Frontier Center for Public Policy — which often promotes climate change denial — apologized Friday and wiped the inflammatory interview from its website. “(The apology) gives me faith in our legal system that truth can still win out, even in an era of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts,'” Mann said in an email to National Observer.

In the fight against climate disinformation, experts like Mann, an atmospheric scientist at Pennsylvania State University, are turning to new arenas. Mann is best known as the lead researcher on a landmark 1998 paper on climate change. He and three colleagues reconstructed global temperatures going back about 500 years, producing a now-infamous sideways-hockey-stick-like graph of global temperatures that showed a sharp upswing beginning in the 1900s. ...

In a message posted to its website, the Frontier Center apologized for publishing “untrue and disparaging” comments about Mann. ...

“Making false and malicious allegations about a scientist is illegal,” Mann said by email. “The law is the appropriate recourse, and often an effective one, as this latest episode demonstrates.”

Climate scientists should be challenging climate disinformation publicly more often, said University of Calgary climatologist Shawn Marshall, “but it is a matter of picking our battles.” Scientists aren’t marketers, Marshall added, but now find themselves in the business of convincing the public their findings are real — an especially difficult task in the polarized realm of social media.

One example played out in real-time Saturday when Milton MP and deputy Conservative party leader Lisa Raitt — who has a master’s degree in environmental biochemical toxicology — tweeted a link to a Financial Post opinion piece that falsely claimed, against scientific consensus and a report released by the federal government in April, that there’s “no solid connection between climate change and the major indicators of extreme weather.” The story was authored by an economist who does not believe in climate change.

Soon after, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe replied. “Hi Lisa — I am a climate scientist,” tweeted Hayhoe, a Canadian working at Texas Tech University, linking to YouTube videos explaining the climate crisis. “The article you quote above is incorrect and dangerously misleading. For the sake of our shared country, please have the courage and the integrity to update your understanding.”

Hayhoe, who wasn’t available from National Observer before publication, shared several more links and invited Raitt to reach out if she had questions. Raitt deleted the original tweet in short order and shared one of Hayhoe’s, saying it was “important to read this as well.” ...

“Well I’ve learned my lesson in tweeting anything about climate change,” Raitt posted later the same day. “I’m not the one to fight with on this because like most I believe that emissions cause climate change and we should reduce emissions.”

https://grist.org/article/michael-e-mann-took-climate-change-deniers-to-...