Canada and global warming: a state of denial 2

Ontario has issued an emergency order because of the wildfire situation in the northwest of the province. The desperation, as numerous wildfires burn across BC, the prairies and northwestern Ontario, can be heard in Chief Dean Owen of the Pikangikum First Nation in northwestern Ontario said in a written statement: "With so many communities being evacuated due to the fires, we are all competing for limited resources and space." Global warming is stressing Canada's ability to fight wildfires to the limit and beyond as our boreal forests burn and threaten lives. 

Forest fires rage across northern Ontario (Toronto Star)

The province issued an emergency order early Wednesday due to forest fires in northwestern Ontario, allowing the government to "take special measures to ensure the safety of people and the protection of critical property."

As of Wednesday morning, more than 70 forest fires were burning in the region, a day after 18 new ones were reported.

Some of the forest fires are close to communities, and have led to evacuations, including in the First Nation communities of Deer Lake, Pikangikum and Poplar Hill. ...

A restricted fire zone remains in place for the Kenora, Fort Frances, Dryden and Thunder Bay districts, and portions of the Sioux Lookout, Red Lake, and Nipigon districts. No outdoor burning is currently allowed in those areas.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/emergency-order-forest-fires-...

 

Because of flooding brought on by torrential rains induced by the rising temperatures created by global warming,  the atmosphere absorbs more moisture before letting it go in a sudden outburst. As a reuslt of such torrential rains, there are 125 confirmed dead and more than a thousand people missing in western Europe. The url below includes a video of the damage done as buildings collapse, houses collapse and helicopter rescues occur. When will people start taking global warming seriously?

This aerial photo shows flooding in Erftstadt, Germany, on Friday.

Rhein-Erft District/@BezRegKoeln/Twitter

More than 1,000 people are still missing after record rainfall caused devastating floods in Germany and neighbouring Belgium. Helicopter rescue teams have been sent in to assist residents stuck in cities and villages inundated by floodwaters. Rivers and reservoirs burst their banks across the region, triggering flash floods when the saturated soil couldn’t absorb any more moisture. In parts of western Germany, more than 150 litres of rainwater per square metre fell over 24 hours.

More than 100 people are known to have died in that country. Ross Hull takes a closer look on the damage, and reports on what’s ahead in the forecast.
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=607KH-6jcxQ

NDPP wrote:

If this one report does not turn heads and create a sense of panic to get off fossil fuels, as soon as yesterday, then nothing will ever move the needle to fix the planet's broken climate system.

Nothing will ever move the needle to fix the planet's broken climate system.

It is pretty obvious that earth's climate is now in the grip of 'positive feedback' loops that are unstoppable in the foreseeable future, and perhaps forever. The situation arises from the fact that there are too many people in the world, far too many of whom have become wedded to a lifestyle of unending over-consumption. Even if they could be convinved to accept the chaos that would result from voluntarily making drastic changes (which they will not) I thnk it is too late to avert the disaster that we now see beginning.

Edzell wrote:

The climate chaos nightmare IS reality and has little or nothing to do with party politics, it's with mass  human behaviour.

To say that party politics has nothing to do with the situation we are is to ignore the evidence to the contrary. While no government anywhere has done enough to combat climate change, some governments have been worse than others. In the US Jimmy Carter started an alternative energy program that Reagan terminated and then helped accelerate fossil fuel development. 

As my 20 year old son says, if we had started as late as 1980 decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 2% a year we would already be more than 80% of the way towards eliminating fossil fuel emissions. Instead, mainstream economists, like the politicians they advised, ignored the problem.

Western Europe hasn't done enough, but it's done far more than Canada to reduce emissions. While China has done more to develop solar energy than any other country, they also chose to continue exponentially growing its coal production, thereby becoming the world's number one emitter. Russia is showing no signs of cutting back on its emissions. 

However, Canada is the world's number one emitter on a per capita basis among the top ten greenhouse gas emitters. The oil producing provinces and their political parties have been significant contributors to the emissions. And the track record of the Liberal and Conservatives governments has been atrocious. But the Conservatives, until 2019 didn't even pretend they were trying to deal with global warming. The Liberal record has been of promising to reduce emissions and doing the exact opposite for 24 years as the following outline of their history shows.

(1) “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 Chretien 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. Martin did little in office to fulfill the Liberals Kyoto promises.  The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

(2) The Trudeau Liberals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 as he prepared for an election and then announced the next day 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".  

(3) 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)

(4) 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-...)

(5) the Trans Mountain pipeline to the BC coast to triple tarsands oil transportation that Trudeau purchased and is building it with "the total cost of taxpayers' investment in the Trans Mountain expansion to more than $17 billion" (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trans-mountain-pipeline-...) that will further increase emissions, money that could have been used to shift to green renewable energy;

(6) Trudeau looked at approving the Frontier Mine in Alberta, which "would  cover 24,000-hectares (roughly double the size of the City of Vancouver) and would produce 260,000 barrels of bitumen each day at its peak (https://thenarwhal.ca/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-massive-new-o...) making it one of the largest oilsands mines until the company pulled out of the plan;

 (7) Trudeau pushed the completion of Enbridge's Line 3 to Manitoba in December 2019 that " will have oil export capacity of 760,000 barrels per day (bpd)" when the US portion is finished this year (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/enbridge-line-three-shipping-oil-1.5377031) The final approval and start of construction of the American portion began at the beginning of December 2020 over the legal objections of two American First Nations, thereby contributing to more Canadian greenhouse gas emssions in the future.

(8) Trudeau supported a $14 billion LNG pipeline from Ontario to Saguenay Quebec for export to Europe, Asia and Brazil that only failed to come to fruition when Warren Buffet concluded it was not going to work financially (https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2019/quebecs-natural-gas-ex...)

(9) Trudeau also supported Energy East to build a pipeline to the Maritimes until he realized its lack of support in Quebec threatened his 40 Quebec Liberal MPs. "The reason Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent billions of taxpayer dollars to keep the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion alive while letting the Energy East pipeline proposal die is simple.“Just do the seat count,” Black, an elected member of the Canadian Senate representing Alberta, told BNN Bloomberg in a telephone interview from Calgary. “Quebec was opposed to Energy East and at that point in time it just became insurmountable.” (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/do-the-seat-count-why-trudeau-chose-trans-mo...)

(10) The Trudeau government "treated Donald Trump’s election as “positive news” for Canada’s energy industry and welcomed the help of Canada’s main corporate oil group in lobbying the US administration, documents show." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2018/feb/09/trudeau-g...) Therefore, there is no doubt the Trudeau Liberals are celebrated the announcement that work on the US portion of the XL pipeline would resume in February. Again this fell through, this time because of US court action, not because of the Trudeau government. 

(11) Once again the Trudeau government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth as it changes offshore drilling rules in Newfoundland in order to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to meet them and then proclaiming that the industry must live up to those standards while environmental organizations complain about the changes.  The Liberal government has also excluded new drilling from environmental assessment there. This has become even more important with the announcement of the discovery of oil in two new places in the Newfoundland offshore. 

(12) The Trudeau Liberals are redefining emissions to make them look lower. 

Canada's vast managed forest lands used to be critical allies in our climate fight and efforts to build a sustainable, carbon neutral forestry economy. That's because these forests used to be healthy enough to absorb the huge amounts of CO2 created by the logging industry's harvests — plus lots more. ...

Unfortunately for all of us, our forests' deep and valuable carbon sink has nearly dried up. Decades of human abuses — from climate disruption to clearcutting — have left them too battered and weakened to even keep up with business-as-usual logging. Put simply: Our continent-spanning managed forests are now being cut down faster than they are growing back. The result has been a rising flood of CO2 pouring out of our managed forests and accumulating in our atmosphere — worsening both the climate and ocean acidification crises. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/02/opinion/co2-forestry-Canada-...)

(13) In December 2020 , the Trudeau Liberals gave $41.5 to Husky Oil in Newfoundland to keep the "idled West White Rose offshore oil project going, particularly to "protect the option of restarting" in the next year — although there is no guarantee that will happen." Meanwhile Trudeau continues to proclaim his devotion to stopping greenhouse gas emissions. I guess he is just following his strategy before the last election of proclaiming a climate change emergency one day and literally the next day buying the Trans Mountain pipeline.  The $41.5 million, which is half the project cost, is in addition to the $325 million the Trudeau government handed the Liberal Newfoundland government to support the Newfoundland oil industry, after Husky stopped construction on the project in April due to the low price of oil. More subsidies poured into a sunsetting industry. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/west-white-rose-1.5...)

(14) The Trudeau Liberals are following the same delay, delay, delay climate plan they have since Chretien in 1993 by refusing to have a target for greenhouse emissions reduction target for 2025 and instead setting the target date as 2030, when they would have been in power for 15 years, which given history is unlikely to happen. In other words, they don't want any target that could hold them accountability for failure in the forseeable future, depsite demands from environmentalists that early target dates are critical to dealing with global warming. 

     A prominent French-Canadian scientist who chairs France’s High Council on Climatesays Canada needs to commit to a 2025 carbon pollution reduction target and strengthen its net-zero advisory body. Le Quéré has led a new scientific analysis of global emissions, published March 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, that found global pollution cuts need to increase tenfold to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. ... The analysis, “Fossil CO​2​ emissions in the post-COVID era,” points out that Canada is one of 150 countries where emissions increased between 2016, after the Paris Agreement was adopted, and 2019, the year before the pandemic.(https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/05/news/wilkinson-not-keen-plan...)

Edzell wrote:

It is pretty obvious that earth's climate is now in the grip of 'positive feedback' loops that are unstoppable in the foreseeable future, and perhaps forever. The situation arises from the fact that there are too many people in the world, far too many of whom have become wedded to a lifestyle of unending over-consumption. Even if they could be convinved to accept the chaos that would result from voluntarily making drastic changes (which they will not) I thnk it is too late to avert the disaster that we now see beginning.

(Apologies for quoting myself) :). I see nothing there I would retract but perhaps it would somewhat clarify my ideas to say: The majority of voters has always been more concerned with loyalty to a party and the effect of its ideology on personal wealth, than in distant/complex concepts like the health of the planet; and: Political parties recognize this and pander to it in order to gain or retain power. None of  them would ever have taken the steps needed, or risked the grim consequneces, to significantly affect climate change. And they still won't - but it probably no longer matters.

NDPP wrote:

Greenland Bans All Oil Exploration

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greenland-oil-1.6105230

"The government of Greenland has decided to suspend all oil exploration off the world's largest island, calling it 'a natural step' because the Arctic government 'takes the climate crisis seriously.'

'The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain,' the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it 'wants to take responsibility for curbing the global climate crisis..."

Canada should do the same.

Some governments are responding in a major way to moving away from fossil fuels, such as Greenland which is stopping exploration for oil, but not Canada, which, under Trudeau, is trying to increase our oil reserves. As a result, he has opened up offshore Newfoundland for further oil exploration that has already had two test wells find oil and is even excluding this exploratory drilling from having to undergo a federal impact assessment. 

Canada’s environment minister defended government regulations Wednesday related to the impacts of oil drilling off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told the House of Commons environment committee that “all drilling projects must respect high environmental standards” after a Bloc Québécois MP raised questions about a government rule change meant to help industry.

Monique Pauzé asked Wilkinson about the Liberal government’s announcement in June that it was excluding individual exploratory offshore drilling projects from having to undergo a federal impact assessment. 

That change was touted by the government at the time as lending a helping hand to Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil industry, which has been battered by the pandemic’s economic toll as well as low global oil prices. Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan said it was the “number 1” request that “business and investors” had been asking for. ...

Last week, energy company Equinor said it had discovered oil in two locations east of St. John’sfollowing an exploration drilling campaign. Newfoundland and Labrador's oil and gas industry group called the discoveries, which Equinor made with partner BP Canada, an “encouraging” sign for business “at a time when encouraging news is needed.”

Environmental groups have raised concerns about the government’s exploratory drilling exemption. WWF-Canada, Sierra Club Canada Foundation and Ecology Action Centre have said a larger regional assessment of the impacts of exploratory oil drilling off the province’s coast was “flawed” and so cannot be used as a basis for allowing individual exemptions.

One of Canada’s marine refuges, the Northeast Newfoundland Slope is also east of St. John’s. The 55,000-square-kilometre section of the ocean is important for biodiversity since it contains fragile corals and sponges that help out other marine life by acting as spawning grounds or nurseries, according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“In your documents, you talk about biodiversity of oceans,” Pauzé asked Wilkinson in French. “You excluded important offshore drilling projects from environmental assessments ... is there not a contradiction in terms of what the government’s saying?” ...

Equinor's two discoveries appear to have been made to the southeast of the marine refuge's southern tip based on location data sourced from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and the fisheries department.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/05/news/environment-minister-de...

 

 

BC has become "Canada's first province to introduce a business and environmental strategy on how renewable and low-carbon hydrogen can reduce emissions and create jobs in the clean technology sector." It propses using hydrogen hubs to provide energy for transportation and industry. While hydrogen itself does not emit greenhouse gases, it can be produced from sources that do or do not produce these emissions. The minister said the government is open to exploring both options. But if it chooses the latter this shift in energy source defeats a large part of the reason for shifting energy sources. 

Funding will support additional hydrogen fuelling stations and the development of a hydrogen and fuel cell partnership organization in British Columbia

Bruce Ralston, minister of energy, mines and low carbon innovation, said Tuesday the strategy uses actions involving government, industry and innovators to help achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

He said the short-term goals include establishing regional hydrogen hubs to supply fuel to industries and consumers, while increasing the numbers of medium and heavy-duty vehicles powered by hydrogen on highways and at industrial sites. Ralston said hydrogen produces no carbon emissions when burned or used in a fuel cell and is considered a climate-friendly solution to industrial activities where the use of electricity is not practical.

Hydrogen can be produced from many sources, including both fossil fuels and renewable resources, although the B.C. plan would support the so-called green pathway, using hydro electricity to create the fuel. 

The Pembina Institute, an organization that focuses on energy policies, said in a statement Tuesday it welcomed the hydrogen strategy but was concerned the province would still allow development of so-called blue pathway uses of hydrogen from fossil fuels, including natural gas. "While B.C.'s new strategy proposes to ramp up production of green hydrogen, made from the province's abundant renewable energy resources, it also encourages continued development of natural gas for the production of blue hydrogen, which still has significant greenhouse gas emissions," said regional director Karen Tam Wu. B.C.'s gas sector produces the highest amount of carbon pollution in the province at 20 per cent of total emissions, she said.

Ralston said the green hydrogen pathway has the potential for development because of the province's electricity grid, but blue hydrogen initiatives could also be explored. The minister acknowledged B.C.'s previous attempts to embrace the technology more than a decade ago that included development of a hydrogen highway from B.C. to California, were ahead of their time and are now better positioned to succeed. Ralston said B.C. is a global leader in the area, with more than 50 per cent of Canada's hydrogen and fuel-cell companies located in the province and where about 60 per cent of research investment is conducted.

More evidence that Enbridge's Line 5 which carries 540,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Canada through the American Midwest and back into Canada may be shut down relatively soon, not by the actions of Trudeau but by the Americans because of its environmental risks. 

A 2017 map illustrates Line 5's route among the network of Enbridge pipelines called the Lakehead System. Leaders of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation on the south shore of Lake Superior is crossed by Line 5, say the pipeline should be decommissioned and its contents diverted through other routes. Credit: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

For several years, one of Enbridge’s main arguments for continuing to operate the pipeline, Line 5, was that it would soon build a tunnel to encase the riskiest portion of the pipeline, the part that crosses through the Straits of Mackinac. The Straits of Mackinac is an environmentally sensitive channel connecting Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, and a spill from the aging pipeline would be devastating to the local economy, ecosystem, and drinking water. The risk of such a spill is what pushed Whitmer to revoke Enbridge’s right to operate the pipeline. But Enbridge has said its proposed tunnel, which it said it planned to start building this year, will protect the waters from any potential spill.  

“Placing a pipeline in a new Great Lakes Tunnel will provide extra layers of safety and environmental protection and make what is currently a safe pipeline even safer,” Enbridge said in a statement emailed to Grist. 

Last week, however, federal officials made a decision that casts severe doubt on Enbridge’s optimistic timeline, increasing the likelihood that the Line 5 pipeline will eventually be shut down for forever. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that regulates civil works projects, is now going to require Enbridge to conduct an environmental impact statement for the proposed construction of the tunnel, instead of the more surface level “environmental assessment” that Enbridge initially proposed doing. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, an environmental impact statement is required if a proposed federal project is determined to significantly affect the environment.

“This would be the first federal NEPA analysis that [Line 5] would be subject to, ever,” said Oday Salim, a lawyer for the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation organization that works to protect the Great Lakes. “It really does affect everything,” he told Grist. 

Because the pipeline, built in 1953, predates certain environmental laws, it has never before been subject to an environmental impact statement.  Enbridge has acknowledged that this environmental review will delay construction of the tunnel, calling into question the idea of the tunnel as a quick fix. 

https://grist.org/energy/the-feds-just-threw-a-wrench-into-enbridges-pla...

BC First Nation & Partners Propose New $10 B LNG Megaproject

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bakx-ksi-lisims-lng-1.6107901

"...The Nisga'a Nation, whose territory is north of Prince Rupert near the Alaska border, is partnering with a group of Western Canadian natural gas producers called Rockies LNG Partners and a Texas-based energy company called Western LNG.

The project is called Ksi Lisims LNG and would include a pipeline to transport natural gas from the northeast corner of the province to the coast. The facility itself is estimated to coast $10 billion. The chilled natural gas would be loaded on to ships and exported to Asia..."

BC, like other provinces and the federal government, has no emergency plan for the global warming events that are now hitting the country.

 

As the crisis manifests, it’s time the provincial government gave its climate plan a reboot, writes columnist Seth Klein

British Columbia is having its summer of reckoning with the climate emergency. Like other places before — California, Australia, Honduras, the Philippines — the province in which I reside is now experiencing a shift in the popular zeitgeist. With a jolt to our collective consciousness, most of us now understand the emergency is well and truly upon us.

First it was the extreme heat event that shattered temperature records, killing about 500 people in less than a week (over a third as many as died in B.C. from COVID since the start of the pandemic), and cooking to death as many as a billion coastal sea creatures. This has been followed by hundreds of wildfires, forcing the evacuation of thousands from their homes and, most dramatically, burning the entire town of Lytton to the ground. Already the province has spent over $95 million fighting the fires, and it’s only mid-July. It’s been an unsettling summer, as we emerge from one crisis and stumble into the next — out of the frying pan and into the fire. And no, this is not the new normal. It is but a taste of things to come. ...

We need our governments to approach the climate emergency with the same ambition and urgency with which they confronted the pandemic. Only they aren’t. Not federally (as I’ve written previously), and not here in B.C., the focus of this column. We meet this moment unprepared, without a genuine and robust climate emergency plan, and with a political leadership that seems unwilling or unable to “get it” on climate.

CleanBC, the province’s official climate plan, introduced in late 2018, is frequently touted as the strongest such plan in Canada. And relatively speaking, it likely is. But that’s not saying much. What the plan is decidedly not is an actual climate emergency plan.

Marker 1: Spend what it takes to win The lofty commitments of CleanBC are not yet reflected in the B.C. budget, where one must always see if fine words are backed up with real dollars. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, has said governments should be spending two per cent of their GDP on climate-mitigation efforts, which in B.C., translates to about $5 billion per year. But total climate spending by the B.C. government amounts to about $1.1 billion a year ($800 million of which isn’t actual climate spending, but rather, represents the carbon tax credit for lower-income households, offsetting the cost of the carbon tax). So the province isn’t spending a little less than it should, it’s underspending by at least a five-fold order of magnitude. ...

Marker 2: Create new economic institutions to get the job done Again, nope. While past NDP governments in the 1970s and ’90s created new Crown corporations to meet strategic needs (public auto insurance, BC Housing, the Agricultural Land Reserve, Columbia Basin Trust, etc.), this NDP government has created no new public enterprises to meet the climate emergency (although last week it announced a new partnership with, wait for it, Shell Canada to build a so-called Centre for Clean Energy and Innovation). The province should establish a new generation of public entities to mass produce and deploy the items we need to electrify our communities — heat pumps, solar arrays, wind farms, electric buses, etc. — and end our reliance on fossil fuels. BC Hydro, with visionary leadership, could be driving much of this....

Marker 3: Move from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures Here, for the record, is a chart of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions over the last 20 years (up to 2019, the last year for which we have data).

The chart is a deeply disturbing indictment of our failed approach to climate policy. To put this in the language we’ve all come to know in the pandemic, B.C. governments have failed “to bend the curve.” But why? Because almost every climate policy to date is voluntary. ...

Marker 4: Tell the truth In an emergency, we need leaders to be forthright about the severity of the crisis, and rally us to the task at hand. That’s what we’ve all witnessed during the pandemic, with daily briefings on the state of the emergency. But try searching the CleanBC plan for the words “climate emergency” or “climate crisis.” You will seek in vain. Nothing about the plan or how the government talks about it communicates urgency.

Most significantly, the B.C. government continues to propagate a deadly falsehood, namely that we can take meaningful climate action while continuing to double-down on the production of fossil fuels, specifically in B.C.’s case, fracked gas and LNG. That’s the opposite of telling the truth.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/07/19/opinion/bc-climate-emergency...

Despite all global warming crises occurring globally, including across Canada, just 59% of Canadians in a Leger poll agreed that they saw it as due to human actions such as fossil fuels and just 45% believed the federal government should be doing more. With numbers like that we are in deep trouble when it comes to dealing with the multiple crises being created by global warming. 

CAUSE OF THE HEAT WAVE (1/2)CTC693. Is the unprecedented heat wave gripping western North America the result of:

Base: All respondents (n=1,518)

59%                                                                                            41%

Human actions such as burning fossil fuels      Natural phenomena such as ocean currents and the jet stream

Climate breakdown is obliterating heat records, killing people, killing crops, and just burned another Canadian town to ash. Western Europe and Uganda are suffering cataclysmic flooding. Drought is causing famine in Madagascar. All while we are still well below supposedly “safe” levels of overheating. Surely this is a massive wake-up call for the public, and all that’s needed now ispolitical will for governments to act much more urgently? ...

Pollsters asked Canadians across the country what caused the recent heat wave. The folks at Leger wanted to know whether people thought “the unprecedented heat wave gripping western North America” was the result of climate change or natural causes?

Fifty-nine per cent blamed “human actions, such as burning fossil fuels,” while 41 per cent said “natural phenomena, such as ocean currents and the jet stream.”

Fifty-nine per cent is a solid majority, but I think you’ll agree it’s not the five-alarm wake-up call that’s warranted. Nor the kind of public juggernaut that requires politicians to scramble to the front or get crushed underneath.

There’s still a huge gulf between the general public’s understanding and the scientists who determined the heat wave was virtually impossible without humans driving climate change.

Those polling results come from just one question from just one pollster, but they track other findings. The usual patterns emerge when you dig into the results: Quebecers were most likely to attribute the heat wave to human actions, while Albertans were the most dubious. Just 39 per cent of Albertans blamed fossil fuel burning.

Young people understand the situation much better than older generations. Almost three-quarters of Canadians aged 18 to 34 lined up with the scientists.

If all Canadians were as clued-in as younger generations, politicians would be acting with a lot more urgency. But a very large segment of the population is still coming to terms with the severity of climate change.

That’s why you find polls from earlier this year where just 45 per cent of Canadians thought the feds need to be doing more to tackle climate change. And 71 per cent that rated its performance on climate as “acceptable” or “good.” At the provincial level, we still have provincial governments that are actively hostile to climate action, even ones, like the Ford government in Ontario, where the fossil fuel industry doesn’t dominate politics and public debate.

https://2g2ckk18vixp3neolz4b6605-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uplo...

The Floods in Europe and the Bankruptcy of Capitalism

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/19/floo-j19.html

"...The flood disaster exposes in numerous ways the bankruptcy of capitalism and its political representatives. First, it is the direct product of the climate crisis produced by the capitalist profit system, which is leading to ever more extreme weather events. The consequences of climate change fuel events like the current flood destruction and ultimately threaten the very survival of the planet and all humanity. These consequences have been understood for a long time..."

NDPP wrote:

Smoky Skies Stretch Across Canada as Wildfires Burn (thread)

https://twitter.com/i/events/1417109018175320069

"Smoke from nearly 800 active wildfires has been transported all over Canada this week, making its way as far east as Newfoundland..."

Smoke from the western fires raging from Baja California to BC are also reaching Greenland (see photo of Greenland smoke in the first url below) and the East Coast of the US and is leaving the thick haze covering Toronto in the picture below, with air quality alerts being issued in a number of places. 

Satellite images show that smoke has traveled thousands of miles from fires burning in the Pacific Northwest and California to reach the skies of Greenland. It’s expected to keep moving east, and impacts from the West’s raging wildfire season may soon be felt across the pond.

https://gizmodo.com/smoke-plume-from-western-wildfires-stretches-2-600-m...

The sun rises above the CN Tower through a thick haze caused by smoke from forest fires burning in western Canada moving through the upper atmosphere July 19, 2021, in Toronto.

Satellite images show that smoke has traveled thousands of miles from fires burning in the Pacific Northwest and California to reach the skies of Greenland. It’s expected to keep moving east, and impacts from the West’s raging wildfire season may soon be felt across the pond.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/western-wildfire-smoke-creates-fier...

BC Public Safety Minister has just issued a provincial state of emergency due to the wildfires that comes into effect at midnight due to worsening wind and weather conditions that are expected to last several more weeks. He said the resources to deal with conditions are stretched thin. He noted that all evacuation spaces available in Kamloops are now occupied. 

A new evacuation order has been issued for the Osoyoos First Nation in the southern Okanagan and parts of Oliver.

ETA: There are 6,000 people already evacuated in BC, 30,000  on evacuation alert. The federal government is sending 350 soldiers to shut down hot spots for fires that are under control but not out. 

Smoke billows out of a mountainous region just north of Osoyoos on Monday, July 19, 2021, as a 300 hectare forest fire burns. (Twitter/@craig_mc_b)

A provincial state of emergency has been declared in B.C. as wildfires continue to grow, forcing hundreds from their homes and putting thousands more on evacuation alert. 

The Nk'Mip Creek fire continues to burn on Osoyoos Indian Band land between the towns of Oliver and Osoyoos, about 40 kilometres south of Penticton. The BC Wildfire Service had previously referred to the fire as the Inkaneep Creek wildfire, but changed the name on Tuesday.

As of 10 a.m. PT, the fire was estimated to cover 11 square kilometres — almost three times the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park and an increase from seven square kilometres on Monday night. ...

Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate properties Monday after the wildfire exploded in size. ...

The wildfire quickly grew from 0.03 square kilometres to more than three over the course of a few hours Monday afternoon. It was seven square kilometres as of 9 p.m. PT.

Evacuations happened so frantically that officials haven't been able to confirm exactly how many people are out of their homes. ...

The first evacuation order, covering almost 200 properties, was issued by the Osoyoos Indian Band on Monday evening.  Chief Clarence Louie with the Osoyoos Indian Band said the Oliver Fire Department did an "outstanding job" to save houses closest to the fire. Members of the band who evacuated are staying in hotels in the Oliver-Osoyoos area for the time being, he said. Some have elected to stay behind.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/osoyoos-wildfire-july-20...

The following article from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) shows the link between global warming and the exponentially increasing number of wildfires. 

In June and early July 2019, a heat wave in Alaska broke temperature records, as seen in this July 8 air temperature map (left). The corresponding image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on the Aqua satellite on the right shows smoke from lightening-triggered wildfires. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

 

Since 1880, the world has warmed by 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.09 degrees Celsius), with the five warmest years on record occurring in the last five years. Since the 1980s, the wildfire season has lengthened across a quarter of the world's vegetated surface, and in some places like California, fire has become nearly a year-round risk. The year 2018 was California's worst wildfire season on record, on the heels of a devasting 2017 fire season. In 2019, wildfires have already burned 2.5 million acres in Alaska in an extreme fire season driven by high temperatures, which have also led to massive fires in Siberia. ...

Combined with data collected and analyzed by scientists and forest managers on the ground, researchers at NASA, other U.S. agencies and universities are beginning to draw into focus the interplay between fires, climate and humans.

"Our ability to track fires in a concerted way over the last 20 years with satellite data has captured large-scale trends, such as increased fire activity, consistent with a warming climate in places like the western U.S., Canada and other parts of Northern Hemisphere forests where fuels are abundant," said Doug Morton, chief of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Where warming and drying climate has increased the risk of fires, we’ve seen an increase in burning." ...

Even before a fire starts, they set the stage, said Jim Randerson, an Earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine who studies fires both in the field and with satellite data.

He and his colleagues studied the abundance of lightning strikes in the 2015 Alaskan fire season that burned a record 5.1 million acres. Lightning strikes are the main natural cause of fires. The researchers found an unusually high number of lightning strikes occurred, generated by the warmer temperatures that cause the atmosphere to create more convective systems — thunderstorms — which ultimately contributed to more burned area that year. ...

A warming world also has another consequence that may be contributing to fire conditions persisting over multiple days where they otherwise might not have in the past: higher nighttime temperatures.

"Warmer nighttime temperature allow fires to burn through the night and burn more intensely, and that allows fires to spread over multiple days where previously, cooler nighttime temperatures might have weakened or extinguished the fire after only one day," Morton said.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2912/satellite-data-record-shows-climate-c...

The vidco at the url below discusses the wildfire situation in BC and why Canada as a whole will be one of the most affected nations in the world with regards to wildfires. Scientists therefore emphasize new strategies to deal with the effects of climate change because "We are a flammable country built to burn". 

According to CBC News Network, in BC 4,300 properties are under evaction orders. Already 3,400 sq km have burnt in BC (three times the usual amount for this time of the year), which is 60% of the size of PEI (5660 sq km), and we aren't even in the worst part of the wildfire season yet.  In Northwestern Ontario and Manitoba 5,000 people, nearly all indigenous, are under evacuation orders and seven communities in Manitoba have lost their power due to the wildfires. 

• 

  Nk’Mip Creek fire at the RCMP perimeter at approximately 5 p.m. on Monday, July 19, 2021. (Kyle Murray photo)

The Nk'Mip Creek wildfire burning in British Columbia's wine country has forced hundreds of residents and vacationers to flee to safety. Paul Johnson reports from Osoyoos, B.C. on the struggle to get the blaze under control and how people are coping. Meanwhile, wildfires continue to rage in Manitoba and Ontario, serving as a graphic reminder of the consequences of climate change. Scientists warn things are likely to get worse.

Eric Sorensen looks at the risks and costs Canada will face if immediate climate action isn't taken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GUtVBv3tU

Part of the reason climate change has not been central to people lives until what is the greatest crisis of the 21st century blew up this summer is media coverage For example, Media Matters for America found in a study that the NBC, CBS and ABC morning shows spent a total of 267 minutes on climate change in the entire year of 2020. They spent 212 minutes in one week covering Jeff Bezos' suborbital flight and ohing and awing over the 'success' of the world's richest man. Canadian media have not done much better in this regard.

Of course, now that there is 'disaster porn' related to global warming, the media are all in on widespread disaster coverage, if not so much on detailing where global warming is taking us. 

Firefighters battle a blaze in Sylmar, California, in 2019. Overall, the acreage burned by wildfires in the continental United States declined in 2019 compared to prior years.DAVID SWANSON/AP

 

Jeff Bezos and his phallic symbol. 

On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos visited the edge of space. Upon returning, he said a bunch of inane things, from wanting to send all polluting industry off-planet to thanking “every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.”

It was a cringey and painful reminder that what we witnessed was not some grand human endeavor but a joyride that was basically the equivalent of “area man takes Tesla out for a spin” at a billionaire scale. And yet, the TV media lapped it up and dutifully vomited it back out, even as the world literally burned. 

An analysis by Media Matters found that the NBC, ABC, and CBS morning shows devoted 212 minutes to Bezos’ little jaunt. In comparison, those same shows spent 267 minutes covering climate all of last year. 

“The corporate TV news business model relies on capturing and holding viewers’ attention through entertainment and outrage,” Evlondo Cooper, senior researcher for Media Matters for America’s climate and energy program, wrote in an email. “This is a big problem as the news that should be driving daily coverage, such as climate change and its impacts, is often deemphasized or ignored as a result. The heavy coverage of Bezos’ vanity space flight launch is a clear illustration of this trend.”

https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-got-as-much-morning-show-coverage-in-a-da...

There is a growing evidence of a link between wildfire smoke, which has greatly increased with climate change and an increased risk of getting Covid. 

Plumes of smoke rise off the Warm Fire, which burned in the Boise National Forest in July 2020. A new study suggests a causal link between wildfire smoke and a rise in COVID-19 cases.

Cases of COVID-19 rose sharply last year in Reno, Nevada, when heavy layer of wildfire smoke settled over the city, according to scientists at the Desert Research Institute, and they and other scientists are postulating that there is a link between air pollution and increased susceptibility to the new coronavirus.

“Our results showed a substantial increase in the COVID-19 positivity rate in Reno during a time when we were affected by heavy wildfire smoke from California wildfires,” said Daniel Kiser, a co-lead author of the study published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. “This is important to be aware of as we are already confronting heavy wildfire smoke ... with COVID-19 cases again rising in Nevada and other parts of the western U.S.”

Kiser, an assistant research scientist of data science at the institute, said he became interested in studying the impact of the microscopic particulate matter from wildfires after reading a Canadian scientist’s article on the dual impact of confronting both issues at the same time. 

In the preface to her work, senior scientist Sarah Henderson of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, wrote: “As we enter the wildfire season in the northern hemisphere, the potential for a dangerous interaction between SARS-CoV-2 and smoke pollution should be recognized and acknowledged. This is challenging because the public health threat of COVID-19 is immediate and clear, whereas the public health threat of wildfire smoke seems distant and uncertain in comparison. ...

To analyze the relationship between this fine wildfire ash and COVID-19 positivity rates, Kiser and his team collected data from both the Washoe County Health District and the region’s big hospital system, Renown Health. 

He said they discovered that the PM 2.5 was responsible for a 17.7 percent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases that occurred during a period of prolonged smoke that took place between Aug. 16, 2020, and Oct. 10, 2020. 

Washoe County’s 450,000 residents, many of whom live in Reno, experienced 43 days of elevated PM 2.5 during that period, researchers said, compared with 26 days for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kent Pinkerton, an expert on air pollution on the faculty at the University of California, Davis, said there’s concern among physicians and scientists about the impact of climate change on cardiopulmonary health, a topic he’s currently addressing in an article he’s submitting to a medical journal.

“Hotter temperatures, climate change, wildfires, air pollution, all seem to have some association with a greater risk of COVID-19 cases,” Pinkerton said. “If you’re susceptible to air pollution, such as particulate matter, it could be that you just have a situation where you’ll be also much more susceptible to viral particles that might be in the air that you’re breathing. ...

No one has yet found the mechanism that increases the risk, Kiser and Pinkerton said, but there have been some hypotheses. Could the new coronavirus be hitching rides on the PM 2.5 and managing to remain virulent as it is breathed into people’s lungs? Certainly, PM 2.5 has been found in the smallest air sacs of people’s lungs. 

Kiser’s team cites a study out of Northern Italy where researchers found the new coronavirus on particulate matter, and Pinkerton noted that the pathogen has been detected in water supplies and in sewage.  “We know that dust from the Mongolian desert, that comes across the Pacific Ocean, can carry at least biological material, whether it be viral or bacterial,” Pinkerton said. “What people have argued about is that the dust can be a carrier for microorganisms.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article252822713.html

Climatologists warn that "drought, heat and drier fuels is causing larger areas to be burned in British Columbia" as well as many other places due to climate change. 

Smoke particles from wildfires burning in the area enhances the colour of the sunset near Logan Lake, B.C., on Thursday, July 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Kira Hoffman, a post-doctoral researcher with the University of British Columbia's faculty of forestry, said climate change is expected to create longer wildfire seasons because of more drought, which leads to drier trees and grasses.

All of this leads to longer fire seasons and more area burned even though there are fewer blazes, she said.

B.C. Wildfire Service information officer Karley Desrosiers said the area burned is "certainly more'' this year compared with previous years. The province has seen 4,090 square kilometres scorched so far this year, which is about four times the five- and 10-year averages, she said Sunday in an interview.The area burned in 2018 was 13,000 square kilometres compared with 12,000 square kilometres the previous year. ...

There are now 58 evacuation orders in place, affecting about 4,400 properties. Another nearly 17,500 properties are on evacuation alert, meaning residents have been told to be ready to leave on short notice. Desrosiers said the heat wave in late June and early July added to the increase in wildfires by drying out forest fuels. ...

Hoffman said vegetation in forests dried out much earlier this year due to a lack of rainfall and "record setting temperatures'' that added to the increase in wildfires.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/climate-change-impacts-o...

Like the US, Trudeau continues to subsidize the fossil fuel industry, by buying and building the Trans Mountain pipeline when the subsidies are not enough to keep the oil industry making humungus profits, at the same time he proclaims he is working to transform our economy away from these gigantic carbon dioxide emitters. As David Suzuki says "The only necessary conversations about the climate crisis now are about solutions. Because industry and governments have been yammering about a gradual transition for decades while doing as little as possible to transition at all, we've missed the opportunity for 'gradual.' "

Tar sands in Fort McMurray.

An investigation by Greenpeace project Unearthed has drawn the curtain back on this duplicity. Investigators posing as recruitment consultants contacted two senior Exxon lobbyists who revealed the company's ongoing campaign against efforts to address the climate emergency.

During a May Zoom call, Keith McCoy, a government affairs director in Exxon's Washington, D.C., office, admitted the company's public support for carbon pricing was little more than a talking point.

"Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we're for a carbon tax," he said.

Dan Easley, who left Exxon in January after working as chief White House lobbyist during the previous U.S. administration, talked about the company's wins under Trump, including a corporate tax rate cut, which was "probably worth billions to Exxon."

Under our current system, money is more valued than life. We share a planet, fuelled by the sun, that provides everything we need to live and live well. But we invented a system based on profit and endless growth, one that encourages rapid exploitation of nature, avaricious accumulation and rampant consumerism. ...

There's money to be made, the bulk of it concentrated in the offshore accounts of a few.

This summer, "heat domes" spread across western North America, coinciding with record low tides to wipe out billions of hardy intertidal plants and animals such as clams and mussels. June heat records broke worldwide, from northern Europe to India, Pakistan and Libya. Devastating European floods shocked even the climate scientists who have been predicting them. Parts of Tokyo were drenched by the heaviest rainfall since measurements began. Last year, another global heat record was broken. If June's record-breaking temperatures are any indication, this year will be among the top 10 hottest, with even hotter years looming.

What the hell are we doing? Why are we letting industry get away with disrupting the climate past the point of survivability? Why are we letting governments subsidize and promote oil, gas and coal with tax and royalty breaks, pipeline purchases and nonsensical "war rooms" and inquiries? Why do we put up with major media outlets and industry continuing to spread dangerous climate misinformation when the science couldn't be clearer? Why do we listen to deniers at all?

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2021/07/climate-changing-r...

Climate tipping points are difficult to predict. In Canada and beyond, they might have already arrived.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/climate-change-tipping-points-extreme-we...

"Recent extreme weather suggests the climate is no longer changing in a gradual, predictable way..."

iyraste1313 wrote:

There is a climate change consensus that climate change is made primarily through the use of fossil fuels..... There is no such consensus..

Back again with the same old nonsense! I will quickly answer with the evidence to this lie and others you have made in the past, such as climate change is due to airplane vapour trails, and then move on as I don't want to waste any more time on this because based on previous experience you will remain in a state of denial no matter how much evidence is put forward that fossil fuels, by overwhelming consensus, is the principal cause of climate change. Yes there are several other causes, such as deforestation and agriculture, but fossil fuels are by far the biggest cause of global warming. 

The evidence is clear: the main cause of climate change is burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal. When burnt, fossil fuels release carbon dioxide into the air, causing the planet to heat up. ...

 Since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, the global temperature has increased at a much faster rate. By burning fossil fuels and changing how we use the land, human activity has quickly become the leading cause of changes to our climate. ...

 Since the Industrial Revolution, we've been adding more and more greenhouse gases into the air, trapping even more heat. Instead of keeping Earth at a warm, stable temperature, the greenhouse effect is heating the planet at a much faster rate. We call this the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' and it's the main cause of climate change.

During the 20th and 21st century, the level of carbon dioxide rose by 40%. We produce greenhouse gases in lots of different ways:

• Burning fossil fuels – Fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal contain carbon dioxide that has been 'locked away' in the ground for thousands of years. When we take these out of the land and burn them, we release the stored carbon dioxide into the air.
• Deforestation – Forests remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Cutting them down means that carbon dioxide builds up quicker since there are no trees to absorb it. Not only that, trees release the carbon they stored when we burn them.
• Agriculture – Planting crops and rearing animals releases many different types of greenhouse gases into the air. For example, animals produce methane, which is 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The nitrous oxide used for fertilisers is ten times worse and is nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide!
• Cement – Producing cement is another contributor to climate change, causing 2% of our entire carbon dioxide emissions.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/causes-of-climate-ch...

There's a new type of carbon tax being proposed - a border carbon tax aimed at preventing heavy fossil fuel using companies simply shifting offshore to places where there are no or low carbon taxes. 

‘Border carbon adjustments,’ essentially carbon tariffs on imports, are becoming a hot topic in Canada and globally. Photo of the Vancouver port via Shutterstock.

Here’s a problem with carbon taxes, one often cited by industry. Introduce a high price on emissions, critics say, and the heavily polluting industries pack up and move to countries where there’s less regulation. Canada ends up importing their products — and indirectly supporting higher emissions. ...

Enter the concept of border carbon adjustment. It’s a simple enough solution on paper: levy duties on imported products to ensure they effectively pay the same price for carbon emissions as Canadian producers do. Essentially, it’s a carbon tariff. ...

Canada doesn’t have a federal carbon tax, but it did introduce a benchmark for carbon pricing and a carbon tax on fuel in 2019. Each province and territory can create its own carbon pricing regime, as long as the amount charged exceeds the national benchmark of $40 per tonne in 2021. ...

Canada’s approach lets provinces create their own carbon pricing systems, but carbon tariffs — affecting international trade — would have to come from the federal government.

Cosbey’s report outlines two potential border carbon adjustment systems: one that would work with Canada’s current carbon-pricing system, and one that would work with a hypothetical national carbon tax. Both would impose duties or tariffs to cover the carbon emissions created in producing the imported products. But only a tax-based system would be able to offer carbon tax rebates on exported products, which would help Canadian producers.

Cosbey says the report examines both options because Canada will have to switch from the current system to a national carbon tax if it’s serious about its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Under the current carbon pricing system, certain industries have a set allowable amount of emissions they can emit before they have to start paying the carbon tax. 

“You can’t continue to give free allowances to current industries the way we do now under the pricing system — it just doesn’t give them enough incentive to make investments in low-carbon technology,” he says. “One way or another, they’re going to have to face a full carbon tax.” 

A border carbon adjustment levy is a needed add-on to strong and meaningful domestic climate action, Cosbey says.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/07/23/Europe-Is-Planning-Border-Carbon-Tax/