Canada and global warming: a state of denial

If only the Liberals would deal with climate change as if it was a national emergency. Their 25 year history of promising to deal with global warming has been one long series of promises followed by actions that always fail to meet their greenhouse emissions reduction targets and often result in an increase in emissions.

“Canada has missed two separate emission reduction targets (the 1992 Rio target and the 2005 Kyoto target) and is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well. In fact, emissions in 2020 are expected to be nearly 20 per cent above the target.” (https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/news/canada/2018-09-18-canada-failing-to-red...)

The Liberals were deeply involved in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Accord agreeing that "Canada's Kyoto target was a 6% total reduction by 2012 compared to 1990 levels of 461 Megatonnes (Mt)". Instead the 1997 emissions of 671 Mt during the year of the signing of the Kyoto Accord had risen to 747 Mt in 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government before the Conservatives took over. This was 33% above the 1997 Liberal Kyoto target. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

The Liberals declared a climate emergency yesterday and then announced today the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. Trudeau won the understatement of the year award today when he said "Not everyone will agree with this".  

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna called climate change a “real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity,” requiring the government to make deep emissions reductions to meet its Paris commitments. The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005.

In March 2018 the auditor general concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)

In April 2019 Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target,". These targets were actually those of the Conservative Harper government. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...)

Eugene Kung, lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, and lead on the First Nations case against the pipeline commented on Trudeau's announcement that profits from the pipeline would be used to promote green energy: "That’s like saying we need to keep selling cigarettes to have money to fight cancer". Former Liberal Environment minister point out "There is no credible evidence to suggest that Asia is likely to be a reliable or a significant market for Alberta bitumen". (https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wjvkqq/canada-justin-trudeau-declares...)

By the way "there are no refineries in Asia that can currently handle Canadian bitumen, which needs to be processed first into synthetic crude." (https://globalnews.ca/news/5399442/5-things-to-know-about-trans-mountain/) So the line that we will be able to sell it for higher prices in Asia is a myth. 

The Liberal solution: declare a national climate emergency and immediately announce more pipeline and fossil fuel production. Does anybody see a pattern here?

The Trudeau Liberals also made their announcement of expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline as more evidence piled up on the scientific link between the Alberta wildfires and climate change.

As another extreme fire season starts with more people on the run, scientists say they're already seeing signs that climate change is playing a role again.

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

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. ...

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 burning out-of-control in the province. ...

"We are seeing climate change in action," said University of Alberta wildland fire Prof. Mike Flannigan. "The Fort McMurray fire was 1 1/2 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." ...

"Northern Alberta is covered by the boreal forest," said Flannigan. "The boreal forest burns. It survives and thrives in a regime of semi-regular stand-replacing, stand-renewing high-intensity fire." ... 

"We burn about 2.5 million hectares a year on average — that's using about a 10-year average," he said. "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." ...

"There's been a lot of research that's shown as we warm, we get more fire," says Flannigan. 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."

A study by federal scientists into British Columbia's 2017 wildfire season found the area burned was seven to 11 times larger than it would have been without human influences on the climate. Extreme high temperatures combined with dry conditions increased the likelihood of wildfire ignition and spread, the report says.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-wildfires-climate-change...

Fed up with inaction on climate change  environmental activists have launched "More than 1,000 climate-change-related lawsuits are winding through courts around the world, according to a database compiled by the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York", including in Canada. The first victory on this issue was in the Netherlands in 2015 where

The government was found to be disregarding its constitutional duty to protect citizens from climate change. The decision forced the Dutch government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 per cent compared to 1990 levels. Similar legal actions are underway in Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Colombia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

"The courts are where politicians sometimes fear to tread," says Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada. Whether you're looking at women's rights, civil rights, equality in marriage, it was often the courts that pushed the politicians … the courts can blaze that path." ...

But it's not only policy makers who are being held to account for lack of climate action. In the U.S., the world's most litigious country, lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies are also on the rise. Cities such as New York, San Francisco and Oakland are seeking to hold dozens of oil and gas companies to account for their contributions to climate change, including BP, Chevron, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.

In Canada young environmentalists in Quebec have launched a climate change lawsuit and Greenpeace is pushing several Canadian cities to sue fossil fuel companies. The risk of paying out many billions in lawsuits is beginning to force fossil fuel companies to look at alternatives. However, some argue we don't have the time to fight years long lawsuits when climate change is hitting with increasing impact every year. 

No stranger to climate activism, the 20-year-old college student Zy St-Pierre-Bourdelais is part of a Quebec environmental group asking the courts to declare that the Canadian government is violating the rights of an entire generation by depriving them of a right to a healthy environment. "The justice system is supposed to be based on laws, on fact, on science," says St-Pierre-Bourdelais. "Climate change is based on science. Politics are not." ...

The case is unprecedented in Canada, but it's part of a growing wave of climate litigation worldwide. It's led by environmentalists and communities aiming to force cuts to carbon emissions, and win damages to pay for the costs of adapting to climate change. ...

"If we had taken [climate] action when I was a kid, things would be much different than they are right now," says 29-year-old Catherine Gauthier, executive director of ENvironnement JEUnesse, the non-profit behind the Quebec lawsuit. Perhaps we wouldn't need legal actions to make sure our rights and the lives of future generations would not be at stake right now." ...

Greenpeace Canada’s Keith Stewart, a longtime environmental activist, used to think environmentalists should avoid court actions, considering them too slow and expensive, with slim chances for success. But that thinking has changed, and now Greenpeace is lobbying councillors in several Canadian cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, encouraging them to sue fossil-fuel companies. ...

Stewart compares climate litigation against "Big Oil" to class-action suits against "Big Tobacco."

"These are some of the richest corporations in the history of the world. They have made billions of dollars in profits while knowing their product was causing these harms," says Stewart, who argues that courts can force corporations to share the costs of adapting to climate change. This [the awards for damages] would go back to communities to help them with adaptation, whether it's building seawalls or bike paths or …  be prepared for extreme weather that we can't avoid." ...

Not everyone agrees with fighting climate change in the courts. Earlier this year, the city of Victoria seemed to be leading the way for Canadian municipalities wanting to explore legal avenues to climate action. ...

But after other Vancouver Island municipalities chose not to pursue the case and the federal government released a report that suggests Canada is warming at twice the global average, Helps had second thoughts about the legal approach. "Why spend time suing fossil fuel companies? If the tobacco lawsuits are any indication, it's going to take 20 years just to officially get to court," Helps says. "A climate action lawsuit would be a giant swath of legal resources … there are much more important things we need to do with our limited time and limited resources."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/the-national-climate-change-courts-1.5182876

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick has just released a report discussing how climate change is affecting the health of New Brunswickers.

Damage from extreme weather events (e.g., flooding and ice storms) is already disrupting our lives, and harming our physical and mental health.

Slowing climate change requires drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (also called carbon pollution), mostly from phasing out coal and oil to make electricity and gasoline for transportation. A clean electricity system – one that relies mostly on renewable sources such as hydro, solar, wind, and sustainable biofuels – will power zero-emitting transportation, homes, buildings, and industrial processes. At the same time, a clean energy system also cuts air quality pollution. The co-benefits of less air pollution are lower risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic and acute respiratory illnesses, lung cancer, and preterm births, according to the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. A clean electricity system can improve indoor air quality, and help reduce energy poverty because energy bills can be lower in an energy-efficient home.  ...

Coping with extreme events like spring and winter flooding, ice and windstorms, and the power outages that go with these events, affects our physical and mental health. Acute, or extreme, events are becoming more intense because of human-caused climate change. Rising temperatures fueling these extreme events are also associated with chronic concerns like increasing exposure to ticks causing Lyme disease or ragweed worsening allergic reactions.

Making the link between climate change and physical and mental health is important because most people do not realize that climate change affects the environmental and social determinants of health and can undermine provincial strategies to improve well-being.  ...

The Government of New Brunswick reports that temperatures in our province have increased by 1.5°C relative to historical norms and seasonal temperatures have increased in all parts of the province. Most of this warming has occurred since the late 1970s. The level of warming in our province is similar to the average for the rest of Canada (1.7 degrees Celsius between 1948 and 2016) and it is a rate twice that of the global average. 

Warmer air holds more moisture, meaning there can be more rain or snow when there is precipitation. All that heat is already increasing precipitation because 71 per cent of the Earth is ocean. Scientists calculate that for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold seven per cent more water. That extra water increases the volume of precipitation by one to two per cent per degree of warming.

From 2000 to 2010, there were more extreme rainfall events (50 millimetres or more of rain over a 24-hour period) in Fredericton and Moncton than any other decade on record. Climate models project that New Brunswick will experience less frequent, but more intense, precipitation events, increasing the annual total  precipitation throughout the province. 

New Brunswick experienced record-breaking floods in 2018 and 2019, partly caused by an above average snowpack and rain partly due to a changing climate .

https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Healthy-Cl...

The devastation of the pine forests by the mountain pine tree beetle, which is now able to survive in the BC over winters because of climate change, is having a devastating effect on the BC forest industry as mill after mill closes down, as the following article illustrates with the list of closures since the beginning of the year. 

Just two weeks ago, the independent chief forester of the province, Diane Nicholls, announced a drastic reduction in the allowable annual timber harvest on West Fraser’s tree farm licence (TFL) No. 52 near Quesnel.

“The new cut level is a 36 per cent reduction and reflects the end of mountain pine beetle salvage operations in the area,” she wrote. The change amounts to a reduction of more than 300,000 cubic metres in the annual harvest on that one TFL. ...

Starting in January, notices went out for temporary closures of between one and six weeks for sawmills in Chetwynd, 100-Mile House, Chasm, Mackenzie, Houston, Vavenby and Fort St. James.

From March through to May, operations were suspended and production cut in Alberni, Grand Forks, Castlegar, Adams Lake, and for a second time in Mackenzie and Fort St. James.

May 10: Tolko Industries announced the permanent closure of its sawmill in Quesnel, with the loss of 150 jobs, plus a one-shift reduction at the mill in Kelowna.

Before the month was out came more cuts and temporary closures in Armstrong, Soda Creek, Surrey, Honeymoon Bay, Merritt and another round of hits for 100-Mile House, Chasm, Castlegar, Adams Lake and Grand Forks.

June 3: Canfor announced the Vavenby mill will be closed permanently as part of a timber swap with Interfor’s Adams Lake operation.

In quick succession over the next week came bad news for mills at Fraser Lake, Smithers, Quesnel, Williams Lake, Chetwynd, Saltair, Duke Point, Chemainus, Elko, Radium, Prince George, Vanderhoof and Bear Lake.

Plus another round of suspensions in Armstrong, Soda Creek, Chetwynd, Fort St. John and Houston.

Then came news of indefinite, perhaps permanent closures of the OSB (oriented strand board) mills in 100-Mile House and Fort St. John, plus a five-week shutdown at the pulp mill in Taylor.

At mid-month, West Fraser announced the temporary closure of the Chasm sawmill was now permanent.

https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-premier-preach...

The current outbreak of mountain pine beetle in British Columbia began in the early 1990s and is considered to be the largest ever recorded, affecting over 18.1 million hectares, or an area five times the size of Vancouver Island. The mountain pine beetle infestation has had a devastating effect on the forest of British Columbia and has killed about 50% of the total volume of commercial lodge pole pine in the province. ...

Scientists believe that warmer summers and milder winters play an important contributing role to the beetle infestation. Cold Canadian winters with temperatures below -40°C normally kill the beetle as well as pine beetle eggs and larvae.

https://opentextbc.ca/geography/chapter/7-6-case-study/

There is growing concern in the global financial sector about global warming causing another world-wide financial crisis. In June Rustin Behman, a member of the US  powerful five-member Commodity Futures Trading Commission, warned that the financial risks from climate change are equivalent to those that brought about the mortgage meltdown, thereby causing the 2008 global financial crisis. “If climate change causes more volatile frequent and extreme weather events, you’re going to have a scenario where these large providers of financial products—mortgages, home insurance, pensions—cannot shift risk away from their portfolios,” Behnam said. “It’s abundantly clear that climate change poses financial risk to the stability of the financial system.”

The following quote is part of Behman's address to the Market Risk Advisory Committee on the risk of climate change to the US and global financial system. 

Worldwide economic costs from natural disasters have exceeded the 30 year average of $140 billion in 7 of the last 10 years.[1]  In 2018, the total cost was $160 billion.  Our commodity markets and the financial markets that support them will suffer if we do not take action to mitigate the risk of contagion.  As most of the world’s markets and market regulators are taking steps towards assessing and mitigating the current and potential threats of climate change, we in the U.S. must also demand action from all segments of the public and private sectors, including this agency.

Among the many lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis, the interconnectedness of our global financial system is one, if not the single, most important.  All risk analysis, including risk derived from climate change, must include a holistic examination of the systemic relationships throughout all of our financial markets.[2]

The impacts of climate change affect every aspect of the American economy – from production agriculture to commercial manufacturing and the financing of every step in each process.  With that said, any solutions seeking to address and mitigate climate risk must be equally focused on ensuring the safety and continued prosperity of our urban cores and rural communities.  Failing to address financial market risks associated with climate change will impede economic growth, and most likely hit rural communities the hardest.

Recent extreme weather events across the nation’s Midwest, including record rainfall and reported tornadoes, have further elevated the impacts of climate change in the lives of everyday Americans.  Flooding and soil saturation resulting from torrential rains has impacted planting of major crops.  On June 2, the USDA reported that only 67 percent of U.S. corn was planted. [3]  The average percentage on this date from 2014-18 was 96 percent.  For soybeans, the number for 2019 was only 39 percent.  The average percentage on this date from 2014-18 was 86 percent.[4]

As recently as last week, heightened fire threats in northern California, at the very outset of wildfire season, brought fresh reminders of the devastation sewn across the western United States last year.  With all of these weather events paralyzing large swaths of our country, in fear of making decisions that could preserve their livelihoods— and even save lives— amidst a complex web of unknowns, I believe it is time to examine the relationship of these terrible, and sadly, more frequent events, to financial market risk and more generally, market stability.

The human element of these tragedies is real and heart wrenching.  But, the economic element is also just as real.  Risk exposures to insurance providers, asset managers, pension funds, commercial and retail banks— all users of derivatives markets—to price and shift risk, cannot be understated.  But, ultimately, the final risk often weighs on farmers, investors, customers, consumers, and homeowners.  We, collectively, must act now to address the persistent risks posed by climate change.

Looking to our international counterparts who have already begun taking important steps to address the impacts of climate change on financial systems is a start.  The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) is a group of more than 40 central banks and supervisors, from around the globe, including the European Central Bank, the World Bank, and the People’s Bank of China, working to understand and manage the financial risks of climate change.[5]  Many of these central banks oversee the very same market participants that the CFTC oversees.

https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/behnamstatement061219

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2015 to 2018 years are the warmest four year period on record and that 2019 is set to make this a five year period as the impact of global warming hits home. Furthermore, the 20 warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 22 years. Global warming has also greatly increased the severe impacts of extreme weather events during this period according to the WMO.

gmt_pre.png

In a clear sign of continuing long-term climate change associated with record atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 have been confirmed as the four warmest years on record.

A consolidated analysis by the World Meteorological Organization of five leading international datasets showed that the global average surface temperature in 2018 was approximately 1.0° Celsius (with a margin of error of ±0.13°C) above the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900). It ranks as the fourth warmest year on record.

The year 2016, which was influenced by a strong El-Niño event, remains the warmest year on record (1.2°C above preindustrial baseline). Global average temperatures in 2017 and 2015 were both 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. The latter two years are virtually indistinguishable because the difference is less than one hundredth of a degree, which is less than the statistical margin of error.

“The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one, “ said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. The degree of warming during the past four years has been exceptional, both on land and in the ocean.”

“Temperatures are only part of the story. Extreme and high impact weather affected many countries and millions of people, with devastating repercussions for economies and ecosystems in 2018,” he said.

“Many of the extreme weather events are consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. This is a reality we need to face up to. Greenhouse gas emission reduction and climate adaptation measures should be a top global priority,” said Mr Taalas.

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-past-4-years-...

Linda McQuaig calls the Liberal climate change plan "a dangerous fraud".

It's possible that the world's top climate scientists are lying. If so, we can relax and feel confident that Justin Trudeau has dealt with the climate crisis in the appropriate way.

Although the prime minister approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline last month, he's vowed to channel pipeline profits into clean energy projects. Compared to the Conservatives, Trudeau's climate package, which includes taxes on carbon, seems reasonable and balanced -- with a sweetener of environmental activism thrown in. (After all, it's 2019.)

But if climate scientists are not lying, if they're just honestly reporting their scientific findings, Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud -- one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.

I'm inclined to believe the scientists. Convened by the United Nations, they reviewed more than 6,000 scientific studies and reported last fall that we have only about a dozen years left if we are to prevent truly dire climate conditions which go well beyond the kind of horrific wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods we're already experiencing.

To avoid this, the scientists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called on the world to make urgent and unprecedented changes that would dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption. The chances of the world doing so are, of course, slim. But that slim hope would be reduced to a thread by the Trans Mountain expansion, which would triple the pipeline's capacity to transport the province's heavy crude oil, one of the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels. ...

A 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications ranked Canada among countries with the world's least effective climate policies. The study found that if Canada's policies were adopted worldwide, global temperatures would rise by a disastrous 5.1 C by the end of the century. And that assessment was made before Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Given the potential catastrophe ahead, it's amazing the subject is often discussed with detachment. ...

This attitude -- let's dump every bit of carbon into the air while we can still make a buck from it! -- reveals a stunning indifference to the enormity of the crisis we face, and the fighting spirit we'll need to summon if we're going to save ourselves and future generations.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/07/trudeaus-climate-plan-dangerous-fraud

The extremely hot June in Europe this year helped make it the warmest June ever recorded as European temperature records were "obliterated", another sign that global warming is occurring faster than even the climate change models predicted.

European temperature extremes in June.

Sahara Desert winds that blasted Europe last month, concentrated in a five-day heat wave that left people sweltering, made it the hottest ever June for the continent — and the world.

"We are likely to see more of these events in the future due to climate change," said Jean-Noël Thépaut of the Copernicus Climate Change Service in a statement on the record-breaking heat.

Temperatures soared as high as 114 degrees Fahrenheit (45.5 degrees Celsius) in France during the heat wave at the end of June which forced the closure of thousands of schoolsand had people swimming in the fountains near the Eiffel Tower.

The heat wave was enough to make June top the past global record-holder for warmest month, June of 2016, according to the climate service of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

“We knew June was hot in Europe," University of Reading Hydrology Professor Hannah Cloke told the Independent, "but this study shows that temperature records haven’t just been broken — they have been obliterated."

Temperatures averaged 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal across Europe last month, with the height of the heat wave from June 25 to June 29.

The blast came during the quarter finals of the Women's World Cup in soccer, attracting world attention.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/europe-heat-wave-hottest...

Canada's prairies have been historically subject to long periods of droughts, with the twentieth century, when European habitation and exploitation grew exponentially in this region, being the wettest extended period on record as the following research paper notes. So in an already dry region, global warming is not only increasing evaporation rates, reducing precipitation as snow and rainfall, it is melting the glaciers that have in the past provided much of the water people, plants, animals, including cattle need, increasingly putting the prairies' agricultural industries at risk. As the last post noted, half of the massive volume of the Athabaska Glacier has already disappeared greatly increasing the risk of a severe water shortage crisis on the Prairies while the Trudeau and Kenney governments continue to expand fossil fuel production. 

Meanwhile Trudeau and Kenney continue to pretend that we can continue down the road of fossil fuel exploitation without devastating consequences for this region. Below is an abstract's conclusions on the future of this region. The full article can be found at the url below. 

Canada is usually considered to be a country with abundant freshwater, but in its western prairie provinces (WPP), an area 1/5 the size of Europe, freshwater is scarce. European settlement of the WPP did not begin until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fortuitously, the period since European settlement appears to have been the wettest century of the past two millennia. The frequent, long periods of drought that characterized earlier centuries of the past two millennia were largely absent in the 20th century. Here, we show that climate warming and human modifications to catchments have already significantly reduced the flows of major rivers of the WPP during the summer months, when human demand and in-stream flow needs are greatest. We predict that in the near future climate warming, via its effects on glaciers, snowpacks, and evaporation, will combine with cyclic drought and rapidly increasing human activity in the WPP to cause a crisis in water quantity and quality with far-reaching implications.

https://www.pnas.org/content/103/19/7210

Across northeastern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario wildfires, aided and abetted by global warming, have forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from their communities and caused the release of air quality warnings from Environment and Climate Change Canada. Many of those forced to leave are members of First Nations because their communities are often located in the northern boreal forest that is being devastated by climate change. 

                                      The fire as seen from Little Grand Rapids.

 

Wildfires have forced hundreds of people to evacuate from First Nations communities in northeastern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario. The fires have also prompted special air quality statements for parts of both provinces. ...

The Red Lake 23 wildfire has grown to 719 square kilometres and remains out of control, burning just eight kilometres south of Keewaywin First Nation. About half of the communty’s 450 residents fled for Sioux Lookout, Ont., and Timmins earlier this week.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Saturday that military would help to evacuate the community from Pikangikum First Nation. ...

It’s unclear how many of the community’s 2,000 residents will be temporarily moved, but so far only the elderly, pregnant women, people with respiratory problems and their immediate families are being flown out.

The evacuations come just over one year after a wildfire forced 2,000 people to evacuate from Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi First Nation. ...

On Sunday, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued special air quality statements for all of Manitoba east of Lake Winnipeg.

“Smoke from forest fires over eastern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario drifted west into the Red River Valley yesterday resulting in poor air quality over eastern and south-central Manitoba,” the statement reads. ...

The government agency also issued special air quality statements Sunday for parts of northwestern Ontario, including Dryden, Fort Frances, Kenora, Lake Nipigon, Pickle Lake, Red lake and Sandy Lake.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/wildfires-force-hundreds-to-flee-in-manito...

Stand.earth International Program Director Tzeporah Berman describes the consequences of proceeding with the Trans Mountain Pipeline below emphasizing how it helps greatly expands tar sands emissions and how the billions the Liberals have poured into buying and building the pipeline could have been used to build green energy projects instead.

Tzeporah Berman, Stand.earth: This pipeline would facilitate the significant expansion of the tar sands in Canada. The emissions just from the production of that oil alone are the equivalent to putting about 2.2 million cars on the road. This is going to facilitate significant oil expansion. Oil and gas are the fastest growing and largest source of emissions in Canada. It means that Canada won't be able to meet our climate targets. 


DA: Here's the thing though. Trudeau is saying that he's actually committing to directing money earned from that pipeline to investments in clean energy projects. What do you make of that argument that he's putting forward?


TB: The market is moving away from high-cost, high-carbon oil, which is what we have in Canada. And demand is softening. Many countries around the world are banning the fossil fuel car, and that's why investors pulled out of this pipeline in the first place. So our federal government bought it, is using $7 billion of taxpayer money to buy this pipeline and build the expansion. They could be using that $7 billion directly to fund clean energy without increasing pollution. If a wealthy country like Canada with a stable democracy can't do our part to address climate safety — when we're all experiencing the rise in floods and fires — then who can? We need Canada to step up to the plate and address climate change. Expanding oil production and building new pipelines is not the way to move away from fossil fuels. 


DA: How do campaigners like yourself then take this fight forward? Because environmental campaigners, organizations, and groups are all saying that this project will not go ahead without a fight.


TB: There have been many approvals of pipelines — Keystone XL, Northern Gateway in Canada — none of them have gone forward because what we're seeing is growing opposition. It's not just environmentalists and Indigenous nations who are opposed to this project. It's 19 municipalities, the city of Vancouver, the city of Burnaby, the province of British Columbia. So there will be more legal challenges. There are already protests. There were hundreds of people in the streets in Vancouver tonight. It remains to be seen, but I think this project will continue to be challenged. We will continue to try and delay it, and hope that our government will see that we need to invest directly in clean energy at this moment in history and not build more fossil fuels. I think the fact is, Canada, like many other countries, our climate politics are being held hostage by the oil and gas industry — a very powerful lobby that is pushing to expand at a moment when we know we need to move away from fossil fuels.

https://www.stand.earth/blog/people-vs-big-oil/trans-mountain-pipeline/t...‘canada’s-climate

More signs of the enormous problems created by climate change have come from the United States. Not only was 2018 the fourth warmest American year, it was also the third wettest. Furthermore the annual period from May 2018 to April 2019 was the wettest on record creating massive flooding throughout the USA. 

Many other places around the world also exprienced similar extremes as noted below.

An aerial photo of Davenport, Iowa, shows Modern Woodmen Park, top, and the surrounding area covered by Mississippi River floodwaters on May 3. (Kevin E. Schmidt/Quad City Times via AP)

 

“In a warming climate, one of the things we anticipate seeing is precipitation extremes at both ends,” she says—meaning the wet places are likely to get wetter and the dry places drier.

The 2018 pattern toward extremes was global. Places like Austria, which are generally not rain- or snow-limited, saw huge extremes: last January, the country piled up nearly double their normal precipitation for the month.

“We’ve seen a marked upward trend in short-duration extreme events,” says Ken Kunkel, a climate scientist at North Carolina State University who was not involved in preparing the reports. “It’s an obvious trend that’s been going on for the last few decades and continues to go up.” ...

The ripping winds of Cyclone Mekunu, for example, dumped 12.9 inches of rain on Salalah, Oman, in just 36 hours—more than double the rain it usually gets in a whole year. And Hurricane Florence doused North Carolina in several feet of rain in the few days it hovered over the state, far more rain than the rivers, soils, and communities could absorb.

And a single tropical storm dropped just under 50 inches of rain on Kauai in 24 hours, breaking the U.S. record for most rain in a single day by over six inches (the record was previously held by a 1974 storm in Texas.

There is growing scientific evidence that a warming planet fuels stronger, wetter storms.

In the southeast and eastern U.S., the trend toward stronger storm events is primarily driven by strong warming in the oceans that fringe their shores. The Gulf of Mexico and the western part of the Atlantic Ocean have seen temperature increases of up to four degrees Fahrenheit over their long-term average in recent years. That number bounces up and down as phenomena like El Niño’s cycle through, but the long-term pattern trends steadily upward.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/2018-third-wettes...

In just over a year’s time, the nation’s rainfall fortunes have shifted suddenly and dramatically. Rainfall famine has turned to rainfall feast.

Thanks to its wettest 12-month period in recorded history, the amount of U.S. real estate covered by drought has plunged to its lowest level in recent decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday. But at the same time, excessive rainfall and flooding plague large areas of the country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/08/united-states-is-virtu...

There is growing evidence that fighting global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions has many side benfits. Unfortunately, our federal and most of our provincial governments are still promoting their fossil fuel addiction and denying that their climate change greenhouse gas emissions plans are not meeting their reduction targets. 

In a cartoon that went viral before the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, a conference presentation lists some of the side benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from cleaner air to green jobs, as a man in the audience asks: "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

Ten years after U.S. cartoonist Joel Pett penned that cartoon, there is stronger scientific consensus than ever that climate change is real, and more and more evidence that fighting climate change has positive side effects or "co-benefits."

Environmental researchers and policy advisers now say it's crucial to take those into account when making decisions about climate change mitigation and adaptation. ...

Co-benefits such as reducing deaths from air pollution and boosting technological innovation may lower the net costs of climate action to zero or even lead to a net economic benefit rather than a cost, studies show.

And failing to take those into account — effectively miscalculating the costs of climate change action — may lead to bad decisions and inaction that are more costly in the long run, says Canadian environmental economist Kirk Hamilton.

"Essentially, we're just leaving dollars on the table by ignoring co-benefits," said Hamilton, an economic consultant and visiting professor at the London School of Economics who has studied the co-benefits of climate change mitigation in depth. "In some ways, we've been doing the modelling wrong."

Positive side effects from cutting emissions will occur even if they're not accounted for, he noted. "You're just not feeding [them] into your decision making process, which means you're making bad decisions."

The UN acknowledged in a 2016 brief on sustainable development that the co-benefits of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren't always well documented, "which underestimates their positive impact." ...

The value of that positive impact can be quite a lot — to the point that in some cases, climate mitigation measures can have a net economic benefit per tonne. Air pollution may reduce the GDP by more than 10 per cent in some countries like China, and a 2016 UN report found that halving greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2050 would reduce premature deaths related to air pollution by 20 to 40 per cent.

Hamilton's research has found that the health co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions could be worth $100 US per tonne of CO2 in high-income countries like the U.S. and Canada and $50 US per tonne in middle-income countries like China. That's quite a lot, given that the cost of abating a tonne of carbon pollution in 2015 was estimated to be less than $36 US per tonne on average — meaning that any country that cut its emissions would get a significant net benefit from health impacts alone. ...

The UN report also found:

• In some forest projects to mitigate climate change, co-benefits represent between 53 to 92 per cent of total benefits.
• Co-benefits typically represent more than 50 per cent of direct benefits from investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy.
• Reducing fossil fuel dependence in the U.S. decreases the danger of disruptions in the energy supply and economic losses due to price volatility, worth about $5 US per tonne of CO2.

Some co-benefits, the UN notes, are indirect, such as freeing public resources for other uses. It added there are also effects of climate-related investments on growth and employment.

Hamilton said environmental regulations targeting emissions can give companies an incentive to invest in knowledge and technology. "That's a big plus," he said, adding that such technologies can often then be applied in new ways to other sectors and activities, amplifying the positive impact. 

Hamilton said getting governments worldwide to act on climate change has been hard because reducing greenhouse gas emissions is costly in the short-term, but the impact is uncertain, won't be felt for years, and is spread around the world: "It looks like a bad deal."

The deal looks a lot better when co-benefits are taken into account, because their impact tends to be certain, immediate and local, he adds.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-mitigation-co-benefits...

Despite the ever growing evidence of the damage created by climate change around the world the Trudeau Liberal government is pushing for for carbon credits for fracking natural gas! Furthermore, the carbon that is extracted and burned elsewhere does not count in Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory for the Paris Agreement.

In other words, the greenhouse gas emissions produced from Canadian fossil fuels is far greater than the official total and will grow greatly with further expansion of pipelines to our coasts. 

In Question Period on Friday (June 14), Paul Manly said he was "astounded to learn" that the Trudeau government thinks it can invoke article 6 of the landmark climate pact "to earn carbon credits for exporting fracked gas to Asian markets".

It was in reference to previous comments by Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi.

"Does the government not realize that fracked gas has the same carbon footprint as coal?" the recently elected Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP asked.

Sean Fraser, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, replied that he's aware of article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

It authorizes "internationally transferred mitigation outcomes to achieve nationally determined contributions". These "shall be voluntary and authorized by participating Parties".

"Our plan to reduce emissions is not just to displace global emissions by producing more and more oil and gas products in Canada," Fraser said, "but to actually reduce our consumption in Canada as well. ...

Proponents of the LNG industry claim that this fuel will replace the use of coal in other countries, reducing overall emissions globally.

But critics, including Manly, say this overlooks the magnitude of methane emissionsassociated with fracking natural gas, which is later liquefied and shipped abroad.

"While carbon dioxide is typically painted as the bad boy of greenhouse gases, methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat trapping gas," Science Daily reported in 2014, citing research at Princeton University.

That was made clear in a 2017 report by Marc Lee, a senior economist in the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In Extracted Carbon: Re-examining Canada's Contribution to Climate Change Through Fossil Fuel Exports, he pointed out that just over half of the carbon extracted in Canada is used for domestic purposes, with the rest exported.

Overall, Canada's extracted carbon resources rose by 26 percent from 2000 to 2015, according to Lee.

"A major shortcoming of the Paris Agreement is that countries have committed to reducing emissions within their borders, but not the carbon that is extracted and burned elsewhere," he wrote. "For example, when Canada expands its production of fossil fuels, only the emissions from extraction and processing prior to export are counted in Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, not the much larger emissions when those exported fossil fuels are combusted in the United States or Asia."

https://www.straight.com/news/1255576/climate-shocker-canada-aims-carbon...

One of the major problems that governments around the world are in denial about when it comes to climate change is the exponentially growing problem of climate change refugees. There are already 24 million catastrophic weather event refugees each year. "Currently, forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis, with 200 million being the most widely cited estimate, according to a 2015 study carried out by the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University." (https://unu.edu/media-relations/media-coverage/climate-migrants-might-re...)

Furthermore, the Refugee Convention does not recognize climate change refugees as refugees and governments, including the Trudeau Liberals, are in no rush to include climate change it in the definition because it would expand the total population of eligible people exponentially. The following article is about what is happening in Australia, but much of it applies to Canada. 

If we don’t do anything now, the response to climate change will extend existing inequities, with the burden heaped upon the poor and the weak.

If you want to imagine the politics of the future, think about climate refugees. This week the ABC published internal briefing notes from the Australian Defence Force warning about huge population flows spurred by environmental disasters, with the former defence force chief Chris Barrie telling the broadcaster he once estimated the number at 100 million people.

Already, catastrophic weather forces some 24 million from their homes each year. We can expect more of that: more sudden floods and storms and other disasters of the kind that send people seeking shelter. ...

Meanwhile, arid countries also face an existential threat, from desertification and permanent drought.

By 2050, the World Bank expects the displacement of perhaps 143 million people from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

Those are, of course, some of the poorest regions in the world, places that benefited least from the Great Acceleration of consumer capitalism in the post-war era. The carbon-belching industries of the 21st century have not enriched the average person in Somalia – and yet the UNHRC now warns of climate change in that nation exacerbating the floods and droughts already sending millions into camps.

“The oft noted scandal of climate change,” say Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright in their book Climate Leviathan, “is that whose who caused it will not live to see its full consequences and those who are suffering or will suffer worst did not cause the problem.”

Crucially, the Refugee Convention offers no succour at all to those displaced by climate.

It defines a refugee as “any person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country”. ...

As international law now stands, they’re not entitled to anything. The urban theorist Mike Davissuggests that: “Instead of galvanising heroic innovation and international co-operation, growing environmental and socio-economic turbulence may simply drive elite publics into more frenzied attempts to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity. Global mitigation … would be tacitly abandoned – as, to some extent, it already has been – in favour of accelerated investment in selection adaption for Earth’s first-class passengers. The goal would be the creation of green and gated oases of permanent affluence on an otherwise stricken planet.” ...

Australian refugee policy provides a pretty good inkling of what that might look like, with one of the richest countries in the world obsessively preoccupied with excluding desperate people seeking assistance.

Note that authorities classify the vast proportion of those detained in Australia’s offshore facilities as “refugees”. They’ve passed all the assessments; they’ve jumped through all the hoops – they’re legally entitled to protection.

Yet, according to the Refugee Council of Australia, the government spends more than $573, 000 on each of them, not to provide them with a new home but to keep them incarcerated. ...

If we don’t do anything now, the response to climate change will exacerbate and extend existing inequities, with the burden heaped upon the poor and the weak.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/16/australias-orwelli...

The Trudeau Liberal government is proceeding with the Trans Mountain Pipeline despite the enormous risks it presents to BC's coast, to say nothing of the BC Interior. A look at the staggering damage created by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989  gives some indication of the potental damage. 

The Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska, which was only the 34th largest oil spill in history, caused catastrophic human, environmental and economic tanker problems:

The impact of an oil spill lasts for decades. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez crashed onto the shore of Prince William Sound in Alaska, contaminating 1,300 miles of coastline with 250,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil. The tourism industry immediately lost over 26,000 jobs and more than $2.4 billion in sales. By 2003, it still hadn't recovered completely.

Direct contact with the oil slick killed at least 140 bald eagles, 302 harbor seals, 2800 sea otters and 250,00 seabirds within a few days. Four people died as part of the clean-up efforts. …

Over 2,000 Alaskan Native Americans and 13,000 other subsistence permit holders lost the source of their food. This continues today, as many are afraid of being poisoned by contaminated fish. …

The tourism industry immediately lost over 26,000 jobs and more than $2.4 billion in sales. By 2003, it had recovered somewhat. This cost the state government $2.8 billion, and Alaska also has never fully recovered since vacationers still think of the area as contaminated. …

Twenty years after the spill, about 20 acres of Prince William Sound shoreline are still contaminated with oil. Two species have never come back, ten species haven't quite come back, and the fate of five is unknown. Until all species recover, the economy that depends upon them cannot fully recover, either. (http://useconomy.about.com/od/suppl1/p/Exxon_Valdez_Oil_Spill_Economic_Impact.htm )

With all the above risks to BC, if,  the Trudeau Liberals propose thatCanada should just continue to ignore all the global problems associated with climate change in order to maximize economic development of fossil fuels, similar logic says BC should block the transmission of such resources through it, since the health, economic and environmental risks for BC far outweigh any benefits. In other words, ignoring the problem of global warming for short-term economic concerns on a local, provincial or national basis doesn't work. 

Linda McQuaig discusses why Trudeaus's climate change plan is a fraud below.

Although the prime minister approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline last month, he's vowed to channel pipeline profits into clean energy projects. Compared to the Conservatives, Trudeau's climate package, which includes taxes on carbon, seems reasonable and balanced -- with a sweetener of environmental activism thrown in. (After all, it's 2019.)

But if climate scientists are not lying, if they're just honestly reporting their scientific findings, Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud -- one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.

I'm inclined to believe the scientists. Convened by the United Nations, they reviewed more than 6,000 scientific studies and reported last fall that we have only about a dozen years left if we are to prevent truly dire climate conditions which go well beyond the kind of horrific wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods we're already experiencing.

To avoid this, the scientists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called on the world to make urgent and unprecedented changes that would dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption.

The chances of the world doing so are, of course, slim.

But that slim hope would be reduced to a thread by the Trans Mountain expansion, which would triple the pipeline's capacity to transport the province's heavy crude oil, one of the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels.

That would be equivalent to adding 34 million cars to our roads, according to the environmental group Oil Change International.

Renowned U.S. climate scientist James Hansen has said if Alberta's oilsands are fully exploited, it's "game over."

So Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy -- as good as that sounds -- is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research. ...

A 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications ranked Canada among countries with the world's least effective climate policies. The study found that if Canada's policies were adopted worldwide, global temperatures would rise by a disastrous 5.1 C by the end of the century. And that assessment was made before Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/07/trudeaus-climate-plan-dangerous-fraud

Former Unifor economist Jim Stanford recently discussed how the Liberal and Conservative government's  dependance on the fossil fuel industry as a staple of our economy, leaves us in a precarious position as the world starts to shift away from fossil fuels, a situation that keeps repeating itself over history with our staple industries. 

If you forget everything else, just remember this about our country's incessant and often bitter debate about fossil fuels: "Canada is never going to run out of oil, just like we never ran out of beavers." ...

"I can assure you it isn't because we ran out of beavers," Stanford observed. "We definitely didn't run out of beavers. In fact, you can't get rid of the fuckin' little things! Right?" ...

Stanford's point, of course, is that as incredible as it might sound in 2019 -- or, might have sounded a decade ago in 2009, anyway -- the day may be coming soon when what happened to Canada's world-class ethical beaver industry happens to our world-class ethical oil industry too.

None of this should be a surprise to Canadians, or at least Canadian economists, Stanford noted, because Canada has always significantly depended on the export of staples like timber, fish, beaver pelts, minerals and oil for its economic well-being, and the problems of such economies are well understood.

"So we have a whole history, and there's a whole school of economics, Canadian political economy, that has studied the boom and bust cycles, these various waves of staples development and how they've shaped Canada's economy over this time. And it's not all bad. There's huge benefits to these industries. They have stimulated investment, jobs, regional development. They have had a crucial role to play in the building of Canada as a nation. … But we have to be thoughtful about this and recognize that there's lots of downsides to an economy that's unduly dependent on extracting staples resources, not adding value to them, not processing them, just gathering them together and then sending them away, making some money.  ' … 

"Wild swings in the prices of the staple products. Huge swings in foreign demand for the staples that we produce. Enormous costs in investing in the infrastructure that's required to facilitate the export of staples. Conflict and injustice with Indigenous peoples. … The environmental consequences of thoughtless, knee-jerk, maximized staples production."

Plus, of course, he added, "there's a new dimension to this challenge now with climate change."

Which brings us back to what happened to the fur trade, which prospered from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century. "A very important and highly technical case study in the risks of staples development is of course provided by this little creature, the beaver," he explained. "Any economy based on getting stuff from nature, harvesting it, not processing it, and just selling it to others is just incredibly vulnerable. 'Cause you're always subject to changes in tastes and technology that will undermine the demand for those natural products. It's occurred in the past and it will occur again." ...

"And it will occur to our staples today," Stanford averred. "No matter how much we stand up and tilt at windmills, no matter how much we point fingers at environmentalists and others, the reality is the world is going to stop using oil."

"If we get ahead of the process -- and there are, believe it or not, places in the world that do produce oil that are thinking down the road -- then we can position ourselves for maximum benefit," he said. "If we just deny that it's happening, stick our heads in the sand and point fingers, we will absolutely be left behind."

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2019/07/canadas-fossil-fue...

There is a quickly growing consensus among environmentalists that we do not have 12 years to deal with global warming as virtually every day brings new evidence of climate change impacts on the world. Instead, we must address this crisis in a major way by the end of 2020 if global catastrophe is to be avoided.

Meanwhile Trudeau and Scheer continue to promote the fossil fuel industry as if the crisis is off in some distant future. Unlike some politicians in other countries or Singh and the Greens they slumber on.

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time. (Photo: Clint Spencer)

Now it seems, there's a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges. 

Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year. 

The idea that 2020 is a firm deadline was eloquently addressed by one of the world's top climate scientists, speaking back in 2017. "The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus of the Potsdam Climate Institute.

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time. ...

One of the understated headlines in last year's IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C.  Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5. 

As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met then the plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020. ...

The first major hurdle will be the special climate summit called by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which will be held in New York on 23 September.  Mr Guterres has been clear that he only wants countries to come to the UN if they can make significant offers to improve their national carbon cutting plans.  This will be followed by COP25 in Santiago, Chile, where the most important achievement will likely be keeping the process moving forward. 

But the really big moment will most likely be in the UK at COP26, which takes place at the end of 2020. ...

Whether it's the evidence of heatwaves, or the influence of Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg, or the rise of Extinction Rebellion, there has been a marked change in public interest in stories about climate change and a hunger for solutions that people can put in place in their own lives. 

People are demanding significant action, and politicians in many countries have woken up to these changes.  Ideas like the green new deal in the US, which might have seemed unfeasible a few years ago have gained real traction. Some countries like the UK have gone even further and legislated for net zero emissions by 2050, the long-term goal that will keep temperatures down.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736

One of the major factors contributing to the high water levels and record flooding in Lake Ontario and the rest of the province, and indeed the rest of the country, is climate change. The other major factor is the destruction of wetlands, fields and forests to build our modern society. These two factors reinforce each other, so both need to be dealt with. In the case of climate change, the conditions that contribute to rapid spring melts and torrential rains are going to get worse over time, even if we were able to stop producing greenhouse gases on a global basis immediately because the full effect of past emissions is not fully realized. However, we can mitigate some of the effects by rapidly reducing emissions greatly and by changing the agricultural and industrial practices that make the situation worse. 

There are two main factors that are driving elevated water levels in lakes, explained Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation and professor at the University of Waterloo.

“We’re getting more storms of greater volumes of water coming down over shorter periods of time… and we’ve removed over the course of the last 100 years about 73 per cent of the natural infrastructure that was originally here,” he said. ...

While the former can be explained by a changing climate, the latter is due to humans turning lands that used to be forest, fields and wetlands into paved areas or farmland.

Both pavement and agriculture development are less permeable.

“In either case, when water hits these areas of development it doesn’t absorb quickly into the groundwater system or stay on the land for long periods of time,” Feltmate said.

That means more water is running off into the rivers and streams that feed into Lake Ontario. ...

“Canada is going to become wetter going forward due to climate change,” Feltmate explained, noting that Eastern Canada and the Great Lakes regions will be hit the hardest.

That means many are asking, “Is this the new normal?”

While extreme weather is more common today than it was in the past because of climate change, Canadians’ “normal” will continue to evolve and change over the coming years — and Feltmate says it’s going to get worse.

“What’s normal today is not what was normal 25 years ago, and what’s normal 25 years from now will be beyond the extremes of weather we’re experiencing today,” he said. “We’re not going backwards on climate change. Climate change has happened is happening and will continue to happen and we need to better prepare for high water levels and flooding.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/5693391/lake-ontario-water-levels-climate-cha...

ETA: Trudeau just visited Canada's North in order to try to promote the Liberals climate change program, especially for Canada's Arctic by creating the Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area. Tuvaijuittuq means “the place where the ice never melts”, which shows how meaningless this made for TV promo was because at the same Greenland is undergoing a severe heat wave that is accelerating its glaciers melting at rates even beyond climate change scientists worst prognosis.

Free-floating ice floats jammed into the Ilulissat Icefjord during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 near Ilulissat, Greenland. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Amid an ongoing heat wave, new data show the Greenland ice sheet is in the middle of its biggest melt season in recorded history. It’s the latest worrying signal climate change is accelerating far beyond the worst fears of even climate scientists.

The record-setting heat wave that sweltered northern Europe last week has moved north over the critically vulnerable Greenland ice sheet, triggering temperatures this week that are as much as 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.

Weather models indicate Tuesday’s temperature may have surpassed 75 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of Greenland, and a weather balloon launched near the capital Nuuk measured all-time record warmth just above the surface. That heat wave is still intensifying, and is expected to peak on Thursday with the biggest single-day melt ever recorded in Greenland. On August 1 alone, more than 12 billion tons of water will permanently melt away from the ice sheet and find its way down to the ocean, irreversibly raising sea levels globally.

A tweet from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the official weather service of Greenland, said “almost all the ice sheet, including Summit” measurably melted on Tuesday. According to a preliminary estimate, that melt covered 87 percent of the ice sheet’s surface, which would be the second-biggest melt day in Greenland’s recorded history. Separate weather monitoring equipment at Summit Camp at the top of the 10,000-foot-thick Greenland ice sheet confirmed the temperature briefly reached the melting point.

Downhill, meltwater was seen dramatically streaming off the edge of the ice sheet in massive waterfalls. ...

Ice core records show melt days like these have happened only a handful of times in the past 1,000 years. But, with the advent of human-caused climate change, the chances of these full-scale melt events happening are sharply increasing. ...

Even just a few decades ago, an event like this would have been unthinkable. Now, island-wide meltdown days like this are becoming increasingly routine. The ongoing melt event is the second time in seven years that virtually the entire ice sheet simultaneously experienced at least some melt. The last was in July 2012, where 97 percent of the ice sheet simultaneously melted.

In the 1980s, wintertime snows in Greenland roughly balanced summertime melt from the ice sheet, and the conventional wisdom among scientists was that it might take thousands of years for the ice to completely melt under pressure from global warming. That’s all changed now.

With a decade or two of hindsight, scientists now believe Greenland passed an important tipping point around 2003, and since then its melt rate has more than quadrupled.

This week alone, Greenland will lose about 50 billion tons of ice, enough for a permanent rise in global sea levels by about 0.1mm. So far in July, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 160 billion tons of ice — enough to cover Florida in about six feet of water. According to IPCC estimates, that’s roughly the level of melt a typical summer will have in 2050 under the worst-case warming scenario if we don’t take meaningful action to address climate change. Under that same scenario, this week’s brutal, deadly heat wave would be normal weather in the 2070s.

Xavier Fettweis, a polar scientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who tracks meltwater on the Greenland ice sheet, told Rolling Stone in an email that the recent acceleration of these melt events means the IPCC scenarios “clearly underestimate what we currently observe over the Greenland ice sheet” and should revisit their projections for the future.

“This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need change our way of
living,” said Fettweis. “It is more and more likely that the IPCC projections are too optimistic in the Arctic.” Altogether, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 24 feet.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greenland-ice-sheet-...

Global warming hits home again with the July being the warmest July ever, following a June that was the warmest June ever. 

July this year was the warmest month ever recorded worldwide, satellite data has confirmed.

The assessment was carried out by researchers at the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Scientists say it's the latest sign that Earth is experiencing unprecedented warming.

Scorching heatwaves saw records tumble across Europe last month, with unusually high temperatures within the Arctic Circle as well. ...

However, it's notable that the 2016 record followed a strong El Niño weather event, which boosts average global temperatures beyond the impact of global warming alone.

The new July mark follows on from a global record for June, which was confirmed by data from several different agencies.

According to Copernicus, every month this year ranks among the four warmest on record for the month in question.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49238745