IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK
PART 1
“Parade of Storms,” “Atmospheric Rivers,” “Swarms of Tornadoes“: These are headlining in all of 2021, terms that have never been used before. Just what is a “PARADE OF STORMS”? There is nothing technical about the phrase, only that a storm does not come in one after another, not a day apart anyway. A typhoon, a hurricane, or a cyclone ( all the same, except the ocean source ) are predictable weather systems at certain times of the year caused by warm moist air generated by warm ocean waters. They all bring a lot of rain and winds over 100 km per hour.
They are no longer as predictable as in the pre “Climate Change” days. Instead, they are more destructive, occur outside the usual time frame, and reach new landfalls. More destructive on account of higher levels of precipitation, fiercer winds, and “heat domes” in the “off” season. The apparent downfall is for everybody to see and feel. Flooding and landslides are becoming all too common. But it all does not end there, which I will detail later.
THE PHILIPPINES IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES
Some years ago, while spending the Dec-Jan holidays in the Philippines, something hit me unexpectedly. It was warm and raining.
I kept thinking about it. Why was it raining? Why was it warm? There was a stretch of balmy weather. It did not feel like Christmas. Wow, I was saying I no longer have to wear a jacket. As I recall, when we were growing up, this time of the year was the only chance to show off a (faux) leather jacket. But it was so warm; this time, there was no chance of that but mostly a feeling of disappointment because there was no cozy feel of the holiday season.
Those early years saw rain and typhoons coming at a predictable time of the year. July and August. The so-called “wet” season starts slowly in mid-May then trails off by September. Rice planting and harvests came at the scheduled time, with fruits and vegetables having their expected timetable.
I miss the percussive sound of raindrops hitting the corrugated metal roof. One of those understated joys of boyhood, that of deep, “snug as a bug in a rug,” sleep while the rain pours. None of that anymore; you might wake up neck-deep in flood water!
Raincoats for men and umbrellas for women were the fashion of a typical August month. Boys with 2″ x 8″ planks charging a nickel to cross the flooded streets of Quiapo and Espana. A rainy day meant an outdoor shower and catching tilapia in overflowing ditches and mudfish (dalag ) in shallow wells. The percussive sound of raindrops hitting a corrugated iron roof is one of those understated joys of boyhood-a deep, cozy sleep on a rainy night. I imagine this is no longer the case if there is a constant threat of flooding.
But then, slowly at first, the metal roofing began rusting. Acid rain, the culprit, no longer allowed us to shower in the rain. Today, there is flooding in places that never did before, and the fetid waters hang longer. The summer heat has become more oppressive than ever before. Typhoons are of higher category, occurring later in the year ( typhoon Rai/Odette occurred in mid-December this year, killing over 100 ), more landslides in the interior, and rising sea levels threaten coastal regions and salinitizing groundwater.
As it turned out, the Philippines is second only after Japan in the ten most at-risk countries affected by climate change.
CANADA IS NINTH IN THE 10 MOST AT RISK COUNTRIES DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE.
Nothing can underscore this more than B.C’s lower mainland events in 2021. This region saw forest fire in the summer, drought in the spring, and flooding in the fall. The flooding and landslides in Abbotsford and Merritt and the forest fire that gutted the entire town of Lyton are testaments to severe climate events right into our doorsteps. In addition, the so-called “atmospheric rivers” dumped 300 mm of rain most days in a week, breaking the dykes along the Frazer River, resulting in catastrophic flooding of Sumas Prairie and landslides cutting off Coquihalla highway connecting the lower mainland to the rest of B.C. The initial estimate of damage was in the order of 450 M ( easily 1 B, when all is said and done ), not including the loss of farm output and the uninsured properties in the Frazer Valley.
In the east, a never-before-seen rainfall in Cape Breton in N.S. and Port-Aux-Basques in S.W. NL tore the main TCH, isolating valleys and towns. In my recent hunting trip to Newfoundland in mid-Sept. ( 2021), I ran smack amid Hurricane Larry ( a tropical cyclone in N.L.). In the old days, these storms would have petered out at the coast of Maine. Now it is regularly making landfall into Nova Scotia and to Newfoundland. What is going on?
Imagine if your whole culture is changed “overnight.” How do you adapt to something that overwhelms you before you get the chance to adjust to it? The Inuits of the Nunavut Territory, whose culture shares that of the Polar bear, are at the forefront of a significant cultural shift. Snowmobiles and tents from Canadian Tire may have replaced the Kayaks and the Igloos, but these are just implements. The lifestyle revolves around ten months of winter; hunting and gathering are part of their DNA.
When the frozen lakes stay solid for half of what they used to be, it affects the traditional food supply, but most importantly, their psyche. Yes, they don’t get hungry, food can be sourced from the nearest Northern, but it’s more than just-food. Obtaining it, trapping, and hunting is as important as the food itself. The skills that have been passed on through generations are suddenly idle. There are not enough snow and ice to get the snowmobiles and the komatic to get to the hunting grounds. The seals and the caribou are not where they used to be. The polar bears are hungrier. Fewer ice floes, the platform these bears use to get to the seals, are disappearing earlier than usual. Polar Bears will be extinct by 2100 at the current rate of global warming.
The Arctic warming has also affected the physical landscape of the North. The melting permafrost that has supported houses and buildings no longer provides the foundation that keeps these structures stable. The recent contamination of drinking water in Iqaluit may have been due to the instability of the permafrost.
South of the treeline, in the northern reaches of the provinces, the physical consequences of climate warming have impacted traditional practices of obtaining firewood for heating, ice fishing, trapping, and hunting. Even inter-school sports activities are curtailed or canceled when ice roads are no longer feasible. Outdoor rinks for hockey and winter golf on the frozen lake highly depend on ice conditions.
Having lived in fly-in Reserves of Northern On. and Manitoba, ice roads are essential features of these northern communities. Building supplies, fuel, furniture, and appliances are dependent on this lifeline. Before the 70’s and ’80s, you could count on several feet of ice from January to early March for the 18 wheelers to deliver the goods. No longer. Ice roads are not thick enough to support the load in all of the three months.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
In the U.S., one in hundred-year events occurs in a sickening regularity. Katrina, as it turned out, was not an aberration. There have been many more Katrinas. People are now beginning to get used to a new pattern.
Forest fires are earlier and more widespread, resulting from dryer conditions ( which causes more fires ) due to the lack of precipitation on the west coast and now even into the northwest. More storms and heavy rainfall to the east do the opposite, causing severe flooding. In addition, the midwest is experiencing more massive tornadoes and much later than the usual spring twisters. These thunderstorms are now tracking much farther ( now over 250kms. ) than the shorter ones of the pre-climate change years. The latest ones that devastated Kentucky were from a mass of 36 tornadoes tracked in 6 states and killed over 80 people. We can expect to see more of them move north into Canada.
I can’t even pick errant golf balls in the rough anymore. Lyme disease and West Nile virus are here now in Ontario. The carrier tick and mosquitoes could be lurking in the tall grass!
In addition, global warming, which is the trigger of what we see too much today, has slowly changed the “living arrangement” of plants and animals from lower to higher latitudes.
Some ten or so years ago, on a hot summer day on the golf course, nobody took a second thought of retrieving a lost ball in the tall grass on the edge of the fairway. Today, it is a fair warning, especially if you wear shorts, not to bother with lost balls in the rough. Why? The black-legged ticks carrying Lyme disease ( a bacterial infection ) have now spread in Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia.
For years, Dengue, which used to be in Brazil ( the Philippines and SE Asia ), has moved to Florida and some recorded cases in New York. Think about it, Dengue in New York! Killer African Bees have also taken to higher latitudes from their original habitats in Africa and South America.
GLOBAL WARMING, THE CULPRIT.
Since the publication of “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, we have become more aware of how carbon emissions have raised the Earth’s temperature to the degree that causes global warming. The so-called “Greenhouse Effect” is just that, a situation where the accumulation of Carbon Dioxide and other gases and pollutants acts like a glass roof of a greenhouse in the upper atmosphere. This barrier traps the heat inside the atmospheric dome instead of freely dissipating into space.
The science of global warming has been around since the 1950s. The debate has been whether it is a natural, cyclical earthly phenomenon or a human-created problem arising from our activities. There is less and less resistance to the latter, especially in the last decade. When the western countries started experiencing a marked increase of everything negative due to global warming, it became a global issue. The rise in temperature, precipitation, and wind patterns is no longer deniable, resulting in more forest fires, drought, and flooding.
More heat equals more evaporation equals more precipitation; if only we could spread rain and snow evenly, we would not have so much problem. But it is what it is. Our profligate ways caused all that.
The very survival of some countries, affected by the rise of sea level, is on the line. The melting of the glaciers and ice sheets threatens many island nations in the Pacific. For example, with an annual sea-level rise of 1.2 cm., Kiribati may be underwater by the end of the century. In varying degrees, the Maldives, Fiji Islands, and the Solomon Islands will also be in a disappearing trajectory.
Other countries may not be as threatened, but many will experience hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. This past summer, the “heat dome” in B.C. killed 600 people; 362 died in 48 hours. In addition, the Canadian and U.S. Northwest are experiencing new weather patterns that have left people unprepared to deal with the new “normal.”
THE PACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE HAS QUICKENED
The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of a process that put more greenhouse gasses in the upper atmosphere. In the 1800s, with a population of a little over a billion and industrial activity concentrated in the U.S. and Western Europe, humanity easily weathered the use of coal in power plants, transportation, and other power-driven applications. Deforestation and farming, also sources of greenhouse gasses, served a small population. The agricultural revolution in other parts of the world was essentially “carbon neutral.”
The pace of global warming has escalated because China, with its 1.3 billion citizens, is now trying to live like Americans. More cars, more coal for power generation, more consumer goods, more, more, more..that’s the way we live in the west!
With the oil industry in high gear by the mid-1900s, the slow but incremental increase of carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels starts to make waves. Post-WWII, the pace of industrial expansion and cheap fuel conspired to create the appetite for more. The world population then was 2.5 billion. Nobody was talking about renewable energy sources. Power generation from cheap coal was the norm. Cars, the size, and heft of an armoured personnel carrier was the king of the road. Everybody wants to live like Americans.
The average global temperature has not increased all that much from the late 1800s into the early 1900’s. But since the mid-’70s, there has been a global increase of 0.5 degrees in the next 25 years. Now in 2021, another degree rise is anticipated.
What caused this seeming leap in global warming? China and India. China, in particular, with 1.3 billion people, is now living like Americans! India’s 1 billion is rapidly catching up. They are not very happy being told to stop using coal, drive less, switch to renewable energy sources. They are arguing that it’s their turn to catch up with the west with the same ( polluting) things that got the west to where they are today. Africa’s greenhouse gasses contribute less than 3%, yet they bear the brunt of all the ills that climate change brings: erratic rainfall, more sandstorms, poor harvests, and wildlife extinction. But now, they are also being told to make significant changes to hold global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Valde Iniquum!
In part II of “Climate Crisis,” I will explore how the human species benefited from climatic changes, the collateral hardship wrought by climate change, and current and future mitigation to keep global warming below 2 degrees.