The Climate Change Discussion Thread
I was shocked to find we didn't have a climate change discussion thread in the Canada section yet. As anthropogenic global climate change is beginning to affect Canadian urban areas, I feel like it is a topic of concern for most of us here.
Some disturbing new information about climate change in Southwestern Alberta and Calgary's abilities to keep the region adequately... moist? in the future was released today. While Calgary appears (temperature-wise) to be one of the cities least affected by climate change over the next 50 years, we are to be severely impacted by the disappearance of glaciers and extreme weather events as the primary clash zone between Pacific and Arctic systems. https://postmediacalgaryherald2.file...l&w=691&zoom=2 https://postmediacalgaryherald2.file...l&w=691&zoom=2 Calgary could reach daily water licence limit by 2036 Calgary could reach the provincial limit on daily water withdrawals from the Bow and Elbow rivers within less than 20 years, thanks to population growth and climate change, the city said Monday. MEGHAN POTKINS | CALGARY HERALD | May 14, 2019 Quote:
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Great thread. I’ll certainly participate in this. Yes, climate change is happening, but this unfortunately reads like the now all too common fearmongering. It’s hard to tell from the piece whether the writer twisted what the scientist said, to create fear and drive clicks, or whether it was the scientist himself. People are making a career out of this now. There’s quite a bit here to respond to but I’ll pick a couple of points and maybe come back for more.
- “The reason the river is declining slowly is the loss of the glacier ice and snow pack at high elevation.” This statement doesn’t make sense. I just looked at this link quickly but it looks ok. https://albertawater.com/nexus/conve...ow-river-basin You can see from the graph that glaciers account for about 1% of the river flow, and that’s when they’re melting back. Think about the mountains in the winter. They are covered in meters and meters of snow. That and the rain that falls in the watershed produce essentially all the water in the bow. The tip of each glacier that melts back each year produces about 1%. River flow actually increases by this amount when glaciers are melting. If there’s been a loss of snowpack then that’s another matter, but there would have to be some other reason for that. That would have nothing to do with the glaciers. And he has not given any here. - “the interim impact of climate change in Calgary will likely involve intermittent periods of severe flooding” I have seen no evidence for this, and he has presented none here. Yes, we had a big flood in 2013, but we had two bigger floods in the late 1800s. Big floods just happen from time to time. When you build a house on a floodplain you should be aware that that floodplain is there because there was a flood, and most likely it took more than one to create it. And where there was one flood there will likely be another. For this to be convincing he would have to make some argument for why climate change would produce more floods here, and he has not done so. There is so much just straight fearmongering going on these days that you should reject all fear without facts. If someone has a real point to make they will present the facts to convince you. |
Here is Doug Ford's BS attack ad on the Carbon Tax. He has no plan. This is all just meant to help get Sheer(is that his name?) elected in the fall.
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"Calgary won't have enough water for its projected population by 2076" is nonsense.
Out of curiosity, I went and took Ireland's population growth during their boom (~1750 to ~1820) and I just realized we have a HUGE problem - there are 150+ million Irish nowadays in 2019 populating that little green island, and there's no way to feed all of these people! |
Since we have two climate change threads going, can this one be merged into the original?
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What? Try 6,572,728 (2016) The U.K and Northern Ireland combined amount to 71,891,524 (2019) |
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(You probably could've figured my point from my original post, but if not then it should be more clear now) |
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We started with those plastic six pack holder things and drinking straws but it's not enough. We will need to find at least 5,000 more Swedish girls to protest at Davos and identify many more small consumer items to ban. I suggest banning oversized plastic hipster eyeglass frames, and making people use more reasonable-sized ones (instead of LITERALLY DESTROYING THE PLANET WITH THEIR STUPID FASHION CHOICES). If we all make at least 500 tweets per day *we* *can* *do* *this*. |
LOL:dunno:
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Fun fact: Ireland has still not yet reached it's pre-1840s population high of 7 million. |
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Ireland had ~3 million in 1780 and close to 8 million in the 1820s, surely ~35 million (same as Canada) in 2019 is a very very very conservative projection...? |
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Another point to consider is that the vast majority (78%) of water entitlement in the Bow basin is to agriculture. See page 9 of: https://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$Department/deptdocs.nsf/all/irr13053/$FILE/ssrb2010.pdf. Agriculture accounts for 78% of water use in the Bow basin. Maybe Alberta should consider additional water storage in conjunction with flood protection when looking at new dam and diversion projects. The Springbank project would do nothing for storage. No storage has been added upstream of Calgary since the Bearspaw Dam in 1954. |
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Nobody has a crystal ball but my prediction for Calgary is "regression to the mean". (This is a tangent but I can't help but notice how Statistics Canada's CMA population growth ranking in the link I posted doesn't match up very well with SSP Canada triumphalism levels. For example last year, Edmonton growth was faster than Calgary and Ottawa faster than Toronto. Vancouver has fallen down between St. Catherine's and Moncton.) |
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While over the long-term, a matter of decades, global oil demand will eventually decline, however, with LNG plants being built around the globe, including LNG Canada's $40 billion plant in Kitimat, among others, natural gas will supply the world for much of its energy needs for the long-term, far beyond oil. While Calgary is well known for oil companies headquarters, the same producers of oil produce natural gas, which will continue to support Calgary's economy for a long time, especially with global natural gas demand rising to hopefully replace coal fired power plants around the globe. Natural gas is a clean burning fossil fuel (marginally more ghg intensive compared to many hydro powerplants), that would significantly decrease the worlds ghg's if all coal fired power plant were converted to NG. This is good news for BC's economy as well. |
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In Shanghai, the problem with climate change will not be too little water, but too much. Shanghai is already one of the world's most flood prone cities, and with rising water levels due to melting polar ice, as well as increased typhoon activity due to atmospheric and ocean warming, it's only going to get worse. Shanghai is more fortunate than many other cities in its situation as it is able to afford to build coastal defences (they've built over 500km of flood walls in recent years) and institute other anti-flooding measures that other poorer coastal cities (example Dhaka, Bangladesh) cannot afford.
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The latest from here...
It's not your imagination. N.L.'s weather is getting weirder Quote:
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Alternatively, Calgary is a hell hole and no one could possibly want to live here if it weren't for us all being up to our knees in tar to fund our jacked up trucks and McMansions. Maybe that is the future, but the City of Calgary's job is to plan for infrastructure, so it's prudent to make sure we have planned adequate capacity for what they see as a realistic scenario. |
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