Extreme Weather: Do You Think...????

Climate change models - you know - the models  discussed  in articles published in peer reviewed journals by those folks with Phds - predict climate change will produce more extreme weather events more often.   Gee - 2012 sure has produced  wild  weather in my neck of the woods.

Just over 74 millimetres of rain fell on the city last month, more than twice what the city would normally get during its rainy season (35.2 millimetres is the average)

http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/161372365.html

Apparently this has been true everywhere.  A ten minute search of the Internet produced the following.

At least six people died and 18 were missing after unprecedented rains hit the Japanese island of Kyushu.....Kyushu sees abundant rain throughout the year and July is the wettest month, but the island only expects to receive around 340mm of rain in the entire month. On Wednesday night, some parts of the island received that in just 4 hours.

http://www.aljazeera.com/weather/2012/07/201271210952942333.html

A week of 100 degree temperatures with scant rainfall has put all of Iowa in at least “abnormally dry,” conditions, and some part of eastern Iowa into the “severe drought category.

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/07/12/drought-widens-in-iowa/

Picture of Siberia  from: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78515

According to the environmental group Greenpeace,   more land in Russia has burned this year than in 2010,   a year that intense wildfires affected western Russia and produced rare pyrocumulus 'fire clouds'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2012/jul/05/satellite-eye-on-earth-in-pictures#/?picture=392609564&index=7

Russia's president moved quickly to address anger over the deaths of at least 171 people in severe flooding in the Black Sea region ....Torrential rains dropped up to a third of a metre of water in less than 24 hours, which the state meteorological service said was five times the monthly average. (!!!!! )

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Black+flood+toll+hits/6910021/story.html


Do you think climate change is starting to bite?   Watch the video below - I'm not the only one who thinks so.  Climate change denial must be getting harder and harder - now that even EXXON's CEO  has given it up.

Smack Stephen Harper

http://smackstephenharper.com/

I found the link to above site at the Georgia Straight. 

I'm a  little uncomfortable with it - or a lot uncomfortable with the fact that visting it and hitting the Right Honorable Stephen Harper is satisfying.  Ummm - violence begets violence..... Martin Luther King and Gandhi didn't advocate it as a method of changing the world.

And - jeepers!   And bless my buttons! :: swearing completely out of control:: Have we really come to this?  Is our only way of expressing  dissatisfaction playing video games?   And how effective is this?  Come to think of it, how effective has any method of opposition been? 

Americans say Canadians live in an elected dictatorship.  I rather think Americans are  right......

After all ,we're  not rioting in the streeets.  Or  joining the Occupy movement.  Or marching by the millions to demand enviromentally sustainable policies  - real action on climate change  -  real democracy.    We did it to protest the invasion of Iraq in 2003 - why aren't we upset now? 

Could it be we  Canadians don't care ?   Or are most of us so snuggled in ermine privilege that we literally don't see the problems?

Now I'm very uncomfortable.

350 eARTh Art 2010

 

If ordinary people can take action, why can't politicians?

 The fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves , and storms of summer 2012 are what global warming looks like.  The photo below is of the view from my house:  the smoke isn't from a local fire.  It has drifted from the Colorado wildfires - 1300 kilometers away.  Our actions affect everyone and everything - what we do and say matters.

If ordinary people can take action, why can't politicians?

Write your MP and your MLA and let them know you'd like to see action on climate change.

Ms Wente versus Local Food

Margaret Wente emphatically states in today's Globe and Mail that eating local is plain wrong and silly.

And that’s what’s wrong with locavorism. It’s the most wasteful, inefficient way to feed the human race you can possibly imagine. It’s also bad for the environment
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/take-the-romance-out-of-farming-and-ditch-locavorism/article4396371/

She also says:

Modern food systems have done wonders for our standard of living and have liberated humankind from the chains of rural serfdom. They have increased, not decreased, food security.

So are the folks promoting local food really such  complete idiots?  According to Margaret Wente, they are.  Perhaps she has erred - been too hasty - read one book and not done other research - or just plain wrong.
I plump for just plain wrong - Margaret Wente that, is. The modern food systems which she extols,  according to the UN, did not lead to food security for everyone.  Nor are they safer for the environment.

"The increase in prices underlying the 2007-2008 food crisis and the new food price spikes in 2011 have exposed the presence of serious threats to the sustainability of the global food system and its capacity to provide adequate and affordable access to food. Meeting the challenge of expanding food production to feed the world population over the coming decades requires a major transformation in agriculture. The so-called green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s helped boost agricultural productivity worldwide, but did not conduce to a sustainable management of natural resources, nor to food security for many of the world’s poor.  "http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter3.pdf

Worse, our huge farms are not as productive as small holdings.  (Yes, I was astonished when I read this too!)

Vandana Shiva, an agriculture and food activist, points to reams of studies .....showing that the most poductive form of agriculture is not our modern, tractor - seviced, big field monocultures, but multilple crop manual labor intensive smallholdings. ( page 170, Good News for A Change: How Everyday People Are Healing the Planet, David Suzuki and Holly Dressel.)

Industrial agriculture  - the kind of food growing that Ms. Wente lauds - is heavily subsidized.     And torments animals.  (Just watch Food Inc. if you doubt me on the animal cruelty. )
 This sytem also degrades our soils - and contributes to climate change.

Professor Michael Bomford, a research scientist at Kentucky State University and a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, is concerned about how our dependence on oil to feed ourselves is leading to soil depletion and degradation, as well as increasing [food]prices....
Carbon stored in soil allows the soil to hold nutrients and water, and losing soil contributes to climate change. Bomford is worried about other contributing factors to climate change borne from the use of chemical fertilizers.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

And that serfdom Ms. Wente frets about?  Seemingly, people are anxious to take it up.  From her own column:

Today the countryside around our place is thronged with a brand-new generation of farmers – eager young idealists who have fled back to the land. Every weekend they show up at the little farmers’ market with their colourful bouquets of organic carrots and their tender non-commodified artisanal greens. 

Organic local food is a good thing! It tastes better than food shippled thousands of miles, is better for the environment, and puts money into the local economy.  Ms. Wente is wrong.

Oil and British Columbia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNN7h2teaCA
Not from the world of black humour:
"Enbridge Inc. faces a record $3.7-million US penalty for a 2010 Michigan oil spill that leaked more than 20,000 barrels of crude into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. The U.S. pipeline regulator, in issuing the civil fine Monday, said its investigation uncovered two dozen violations related to the July 25 rupture on Enbridge's Line 6B near Marshall.  The fine is the largest ever proposed by the U.S. Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration."
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/energy-resources/Enbridge+with+fine+2010+Michigan+spill/6874631/story.html

Does this "record" fine matter to Enbridge?  In terms of money  -  well.....maybe.  And maybe not. In August 2011, a Calgary newspaper reported that:
"Enbridge, which is also one of Canada’s largest natural gas distributors, said Friday it earned $259 million or 35 cents a share, up from $138 million or 19 cents a share a year earlier. Revenues soared to just under $5 billion from $3.5 billion in the same period last year."
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1034999--enbridge-s-profits-rise-as-revenues-soar

Therefore, that "record" fine works out to 1.43 % on a quarter's profits.    What may be making excutives at Enbrridge cringe is the bad publicity resulting from the fine just as they are hoping to get approval for the Northern Gateway pipline  through British Columbia.  For example: 

"The evidence includes testimony from a senior Enbridge employee who suggests the energy company is ....  years away from achieving "world-class" safety standards." http://www.vancouversun.com/Enbridge+control+room+confusion+spurred+2010+spill+probe+alleges/6886497/story.html

Do we really want this pipleline through BC?  Do we really huge oil tankers on BC's coast?  If you don't,  please let your MP and your MLA know that you oppose oil tankers navigating BC's coastlines.

And please consider donating to the Dogwood Initiative at:
http://dogwoodinitiative.org/no-tankers/learn-more

300 Years of Fossil Fuels

From the Post Carbon Institute via YouTube.

http://www.postcarbon.org/

What are You afraid of, Mr. Harper?

From Franke James website at
http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?cat=370