View Single Post
  #2  
Old Posted May 14, 2019, 5:20 PM
Eau Claire Eau Claire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2019
Posts: 181
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.
Reply With Quote