Climate change general thread 3

And Canadians?

Americans Are Migrating Toward Climate Disaster, Not Away From It

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/census-bureau-2020-data-climate-change-mi...

And on and on it goes.

High winds pose challenge for firefighters battling blazes: BC Wildfire Service

The Canadian Press

AUGUST 15, 2021 12:08 PM

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Monte Lake residents listen during an impromptu community meeting with B.C. MLA Ellis Ross after numerous homes in the community were destroyed by the White Rock Lake wildfire, east of Kamloops, B.C., Saturday, Aug. 14, 2021. The BC Wildfire Service says it is watching wind conditions in several parts of the province, which fuelled some of the larger blazes overnight. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

VANCOUVER — The BC Wildfire Service says it is watching wind conditions in several parts of the province which fuelled some of the larger blazes overnight.

Fire information officer Erika Berg called the gusty winds a challenge, saying they were fanning the flames of blazes in the southern and Interior regions.

https://www.timescolonist.com/high-winds-pose-challenge-for-firefighters...

5 Causes of Global Warming

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https://sciencing.com/5-causes-global-warming-8232444.html

Causes of Global Warming

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1SQJL_enCA949CA949&sxsrf=ALeKk02Gmjo...

Strong winds creating havoc to firefighting efforts in BC's interior.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-wildfires-aug-15-1.61...

Keith Baldrey (@keithbaldrey) Tweeted:
This is huge! https://twitter.com/keithbaldrey/status/1427133279233208323?s=20

Global warming causing these forest fires have drastically changed the situation in BC. No longer would I consider purchasing any property in BC's Interior, nor for that matter do I want to make any plans to travel there for the indefinite future.

Included in Industrial Activity perhaps

Drought forces first water cuts on the Colorado River. They're just the beginning.

A two-decade-long megadrought along the river is set to push the Western seven states and parts of Mexico that rely on its flows into a formal shortage declaration.

A boat navigates the waters on Lake Powell on June 24, 2021 in Page, Ariz. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By ANNIE SNIDER

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/megadrought-colorado-river-505190

But I have my constitutional rights. These idiots sound as moronic as those who refuse vaccinations. Whether it is a pandemic or a forest fire it is an emergency. These clowns who don't care who they jeopardize need to pay attention and do what they are told by government officials

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/firefighters-evacuees-st...

Rain falls on Greenland's normally snowy summit for the first time on record

Warm weather, rain led to massive ice melt of 872,000 square kilometres

Emily Chung · CBC News · Posted: Aug 20, 2021 12:31 PM ET | Last Updated: 23 minutes ago

Areas of Greenland are seen from the air on Thursday, May 20, 2021. Greenland saw an unprecedented weather event this week, when rain fell on its normally snowy summit for the first time on record. (Saul Loeb/Pool/The Associated Press)

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For the first time on record, rain has been recorded on the summit of Greenland — a location where precipitation has previously always fallen as snow or ice.

"There is no previous report of rainfall at this location (72.58°N 38.46°W), which reaches 3,215 metres in elevation," reported the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center of the Aug. 14 event.

The rain began at 5 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) that morning, and was photographed by Alicia Bradley, the science technician at the National Science Foundation Summit Station, an hour later.

She and Zoe Courville, a polar engineer and snow scientist, were credited with the observation.

Temperatures peaked at 0.48 C at 8:40 a.m. local time.

It's only the fourth time the temperature has been recorded above freezing at that location. But in the previous instances in 1995, 2012 and 2019, there was no rain. Before that, the last record of above-freezing temperatures, based on ice cores, was in the 1880s.

The rain was accompanied by a massive ice melt of 872,000 square kilometres on Aug. 14.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/greenland-summit-rain-1.6147508

Are we past the point of no return?

https://rabble.ca/news/2021/08/climate-are-we-past-point-no-return

Too bad there is so much denial about inequality as we are never going to adequately address global warming without addressing the obscene gaps between the rich and the poor

https://monitormag.ca/articles/climate-crisis-and-extreme-wealth-inequal...

Climate-altering negligence is endangering our children

by David Suzuki on September 9th, 2021 at 5:19 PM

• Child at climate-change demonstration outside the state capital in Juneau, Alaska, in 2020.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/GILLFOTO

Most people try to keep their children and grandchildren safe and wouldn’t knowingly put them at risk. Maybe that’s why some ignore or deny the climate crisis. It’s easier than admitting that, by our actions, we’re condemning those we love to an increasingly uncertain future.

A new UNICEF report and “Children’s Climate Risk Index” show that almost half the world’s children—one billion—live in countries where they face “extremely high risk” from “climate and environmental hazards, shocks and stresses.”

This, the report says, “is creating a water crisis, a health crisis, an education crisis, a protection crisis and a participation crisis. It is threatening children’s very survival. In all these ways, it is infringing on children’s rights—as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

https://www.straight.com/news/david-suzuki-climate-altering-negligence-i...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/14/four-in-10-young-peo...

https://www.fossilfuelfreefuture.org/

Fossil-fuel industry disinformation about the climate under scrutiny in U.S. corridors of power but not in Canada

A U.S. probe has come in the wake of an oil-industry lobbyist inadvertently blurting out some of the tactics that have been used

https://www.straight.com/news/fossil-fuel-industry-disinformation-about-...

Bewilderment

https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/09/22/Books-Empathy-Machines-Richard-Pow...

Did Gregor Robertson's promise to make Vancouver the "greenest city in the world" just come true?

by Martin Dunphy on September 23rd, 2021 at 10:42 PM

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• Former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson promised to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020.STEPHEN HUI

In 2008, mayoral hopeful Gregor Robertson campaigned on a promise to make Vancouver "the greenest city in the world" by 2020.

Robertson won that election, and soon after he launched the Greenest City Action Plan, one that he said would result in the fulfillment of that promise.

He left office in 2018 after three terms, admitting that he probably hadn't reached that goal, but a giant British waste and recycling company has just bestowed that honour on the city the former juice executive governed for a decade.

Business Waste Ltd., a waste management, collection, and recycling company that serves the entire United Kingdom, has crowned Vancouver as the "greenest city in the world".

https://www.straight.com/news/did-gregor-robertsons-promise-to-make-vanc...

We need a neighbourhood block watch system where in times of emergency, every person, who is a senior, or who has a disability, needs to be checked on by block watch community volunteers, and reported to government officials if they are thought to be in jeopardy. I remember hearing about ice storms in Quebec where seniors, etc., were brought to warming centres, and they could stay overnite for extended periods of time, because of the power failures in the middle of winter.

https://www.straight.com/news/human-rights-watch-calls-heat-dome-foresee...

The energy crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for climate

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/08/business/energy-crisis-climate-fossil-fue...

Climate Crisis: A Prescription from 200 Medical Journals

‘Only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our trajectory.’

“Fundamental and equitable changes” also mean yielding power and wealth to those now powerless and poor. As the editors observe, “The consequences of the environmental crisis fall disproportionately on those countries and communities that have contributed least to the problem and are least able to mitigate the harms.... As with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are globally as strong as our weakest member.” We’ve all seen the rich nations’ rush to vaccinate themselves while leaving little or nothing for poorer nations, showing how little they value the “weakest-member” argument.

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“Equity must be at the centre of the global response,” the editors write, and then make the prescription even more radical: “Wealthier countries will have to cut emissions more quickly, making reductions by 2030 beyond those currently proposed and reaching net-zero emissions before 2050. Similar targets and emergency action are needed for biodiversity loss and the wider destruction of the natural world.” When whole economies run on inequality and on reducing biodiversity, and targets are set in the safely distant future, such suggestions are unlikely to be accepted.

More challenging yet, the statement rejects the idea of piecemeal market solutions like adopting cleaner technologies: “Governments must intervene to support the redesign of transport systems, cities, production and distribution of food, markets for financial investments, health systems and much more.

“But such investments will produce huge positive health and economic outcomes. These include high quality jobs, reduced air pollution, increased physical activity, and improved housing and diet. Better air quality alone would realize health benefits that easily offset the global costs of emission reductions.”

The editors are raising these points just before two crucial international conferences. The Kunming Convention on Biological Diversity will open virtually on Oct. 11. From Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, Glasgow will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties — COP26.

Normally such conferences are mere talk shops, giving governments a chance to sign on to watered-down goals that they have no intention of meeting. But if those governments’ top health officials can give their political masters an earful based on the editors’ statement (backed up with the latest COVID case counts and mortality rates), they might exert some useful pressure for change.

Still, much of the effective pressure is in the other direction. Populist and authoritarian governments, while shouting about “freedom” and “personal responsibility,” have done most of the recent interventions, and not in the interests of democracy, climate change or global health.

From Hungary and Belarus to India and Sri Lanka to Brazil and Texas, such governments have used the pandemic as a pretext to seize more power and thwart sensible public-health measures like vaccinations and masks (except when useful as pandemic theatre). Their support for emissions reduction is the same as that for free and fair elections: essentially zero.

To Save Ourselves, We’ll Need This Very Different Economy

READ MORE 

Still, it is too easy, and lazy, to blame reactionary governments, or “the corporations” or “capitalism” or “greedy politicians” as reasons to do nothing but sit back and feel superior. If keeping global temperature below 1.5 C were easy, it would have been done a generation ago. The journal editors have at least recognized today’s governments as the only likely agents of change, and offered them an urgent diagnosis of what ails their countries.

But for rulers and beneficiaries of the current system, the prescribed cure would put them out of power and out of business. They’d sacrifice the lives and health of their own people, even their own children, rather than lose power.

The suicidal stubbornness of modern governments is no excuse for inaction. The journal editors have made a persuasive case for “urgent, society-wide changes.” It is our job to make those changes. This is a struggle for life or death. 

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/09/07/Climate-Crisis-Prescription-From-...

Canadians should not say too much however, as we are up to our yinyang in coal exports, and you just have to go to the docks to see for yourself both in North Vancouver and Delta.

China’s plan to build more coal-fired plants deals blow to UK’s Cop26 ambitions

Renewed commitment to coal could scupper Britain’s aim to secure global phase-out pact at climate summit

Engineers operating at the coal dock in Tianjin port, China. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Rob Davies

@ByRobDavies

Tue 12 Oct 2021 19.32 BST​

China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions, in a significant blow to the UK’s ambitions for securing a global agreement on phasing out coal at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply, after swathes of the country were plunged into darkness by rolling blackouts that hit factories and homes.

While China has published plans to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, the statement hinted that the energy crisis had led the Communist party to rethink the timing of this ambition, with a new “phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”.

China has previously set out plans to be carbon neutral by 2060, with emissions peaking by 2030, a goal analysts say would involve shutting 600 coal-fired power plants. President Xi Jinping has also pledged to stop building coal plants abroad.

What is Cop26 and why does it matter? The complete guide

“Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built and and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced,” the statement said.

“Given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs, and continue to phase out outdated coal plants in an orderly fashion. Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/12/china-coal-fired-pla...

Let's get going Canada - what are you waiting for!

How to Get from SUVs to ZEVs

The climate crisis requires a shift to electric vehicles. Here’s how the federal government can make it happen.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/10/14/How-To-Get-From-SUVs-To-ZEVs/

Four people arrrested on opening day of Extinction Rebellion Vancouver's October uprising | Georgia Straight Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly

• Extinction Rebellion activists have been blocking traffic in Vancouver  at various times for the past two years.MILES KIER

A group of Vancouver climate activists succeeded in their goal of tying up traffic for a while in the downtown core.

Today (October 16), four members of the grassroots group Extinction Rebellion Vancouver were taken into custody for sitting in the intersection of West Georgia and Burrard streets.