Another Warm Year

According to this BBC report, 2007 is the seventh-warmest year on record, and the second-warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.
The eleven warmest years ever have all occurred within the last thirteen years.

The Top Ten:
1998 - 0.52C (above the 1961-1990 average)
2005 - 0.48C
2003 - 0.46C
2002 - 0.46C
2004 - 0.43C
2006 - 0.42C
2007 (provisional) - 0.41C
2001 - 0.40C
1997 - 0.36C
1995 - 0.28C

It's Official: The Weather Sucks

The members of our unofficial kayaking group and I have found ourselves thinking that the weather this year has been worse for kayaking than last year. We all recall a great spring for paddling in 2006, with nary a cloudy day.
We have had some great weather this year. A week ago today was the warmest day ever recorded in Victoria, but on the other hand our planned paddle only three days previous to that was cancelled due to rainy weather. And on the gripping hand, most of the good days have seemed to have come during the week, while the weekend weather has turned bad. And weekday paddles don't work for all of us -- some of us have to work for a living.
So with our planned trip to Discovery Island this Saturday possibly threatened because of a forecast of heavy rain, I decided to check the facts. I consulted our past kayak blog entries to see if our memories are valid. In terms of weather, was last year a better paddling year?


I returned to paddling on April 8 this year after recovering from my accident, so I compared the paddles from April 8 to July 18 in both years. As it turns out, in each year there were 20 paddles documented in the blog during this period.
The Results:

2006 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
55% - cloudy
5% - cloudy and rainy
10% - foggy
25% - sunny
5% - cancelled due to bad weather

2007 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
45% - cloudy
15% - cloudy and rainy
25% - sunny
15% - cancelled due to bad weather

The proportions of bad weather to sunny weather seems to be about the same; one paddle in four was under sunny skies. But even though there's been the same proportion of unsunny weather this spring, the weather would seem to be have been a little worse as we've cancelled more trips this year and gone out on more rainy days.
So the perception that this year's weather is worse seems to be accurate. Adding to this is the fact that we did have an amazing Spring last year. Out of 13 pre-April 8 trips in 2006, seven were on cloudy days and six were on sunny days, a ratio of nearly 50-50. This year is a little harder to judge as pre-April 8 trips are not as well documented in the blog. However, the three that we have photographic evidence for shows one sunny paddle, one cloudy paddle and one snowy paddle. A small sample size to be sure, but it leans towards to another checkmark in the 2007 Bad Weather column.
Further adding to the perception would be the miserable Fall last year. Prior to my accident in late November, all three of our planned November paddles were wiped out by bad weather, and November, December and January were marked by an incredible series of nearly two dozen fierce and destructive windstorms in the area, which resulted in many cancelled paddles. All this makes it seem like it has been a long time without a good run of sunny paddles.
What does this all mean, apart from the fact that I wasted an evening hunched over my keyboard with a Diet Coke figuring this out? Well not much, except that sunny paddles don't come along every day. They come along only one in every four paddling days apparently, so enjoy them when you get them.

Hottest. Day. Ever.

While it should be noted that one warm day does not necessarily constitute a global warming trend, last night was the warmest night ever recorded in Victoria (19.6 degrees Celsius), and today, at 36.3 degrees Celsius, was the warmest day ever recorded in Victoria.
The warmest day ever.
Ever.
Mind you, the forecast for Sunday is cool and showers....

Quote of the Day

"It's true that we've had higher CO₂ levels before. But, then, of course we also had dinosaurs."
-- a NOAA scientist

It Gets Worse

According to this CBC story, NASA scientists are finding that the Antarctic ice shields are melting much faster than previously thought.

The 2005 melt was extensive enough to create a layer of ice when the water refroze, but was not long enough for the water to flow to the sea ... if enough water from melted snow is created, it could slip through the cracks of the continent's ice sheets and potentially affect their movement.

What this means is that areas like the Ross ice shelf is in more danger of breaking free and sliding into the ocean, and when that happens, the Pacific basin will face a tsunami that will make the 2005 Boxing Day Tsunami look like a splash in a kiddie pool.
But it gets worse.
It seems that the Antarctic Ocean carbon sink, thought to account for 15% of the world's carbon sinks, has already reached its upper limit in its ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

"Ever since observations started in 1981, we see that the sinks have not increased [in their absorption of CO2]," Corinne LeQuere told the BBC's Science in Action programme.
"They have remained the same as they were 24 years ago even though the emissions have risen by 40%."

We may have vastly underestimated the speed at which our environment is falling apart. We're in trouble, and we're not catching any breaks.

Found: The Loch Ness Monster

Finally, a creature has been found at the bottom of Loch Ness.
It turns out that the Loch Ness monster is a toad??!??

Arctic Ice is Melting Three Times Faster Than Thought

According to this CNN story, Arctic ice is melting three times faster than previously believed.
We're screwed.

Colbert is The Man

The Devil and Kyoto

Let's start with the good news, what little there is, and give the devil his due: at least Harper and the Tories have done something on carbon emissions.
Mind you, it's very little and probably far too late, but at least it's something.
The bad news is that our Kyoto commitments will be not be met, in violation of international law, and there is no guarantee that the Tories' targets will result in emissions being reduced anyway.
By using intensity targets instead of hard caps, it will possible for industries to increase their emissions, yet still meet the Tories emission reduction targets. How's that for having it both ways?
And the ultimate kicker is that industries that can prove that they have no way of reducing their emissions, cement factories for instance, don't have to. That makes a lot of sense. I can prove that my industrial waste emissions, which are killing people and the planet, cannot be reduced in any way, therefore I should be allowed to continue to kill people and the planet with impunity. WTF???
The Tories worry that too much emission reduction will damage the economy. I wonder how much the economy will suffer when ocean levels rise in a couple of decades and Canada has a million former-residents of Vancouver as refugees. Of course, that sort of long-term thinking never enters the thoughts of most politicians.
The ultimate irony is that the Kyoto targets are only a start. They are only a small fraction of what needs to be done. Meeting Kyoto is only the beginning: the real hard cuts are yet to come.
If you hear any politician say that we can continue on our merry way and all we need to do change a few light bulbs and drive a little less and everything will be fine, he is woefully ill-informed. Or he is lying.
Vast societal changes are coming. But the politicians, like the rest of us, have their heads in the sand.

Staying on Message

So I'm surfing for news, and surf on over to CNN.com.
I bookmarked the International edition of CNN over the domestic American version because its jingoism and utter disregard for any story that questioned the Bush regime during the run up to the Iraq made me sick, and its choice to wallow in the most trivial of non-stories (Jon-Benet as one example) has not improved over time.
But the International edition does have the occasional story of interest, and today was one of those days.
Here's the front page:

Al Gore is testifying in Congress and using the phrase "global planetary emergency"! Wow, that's big news. Maybe, finally, the Washington politcos will finally wake up. Maybe, finally, the major American media will stop following the Bush line and take climate change seriously.
Maybe, finally, the proven fact of human-caused climate change will get some serious face-time on American media.
Let's see what the domesttic version of CNN has as their front page:

Shades of Jon-Benet. Okay, well, um, at least the front page mentions Gore testifying to Congress.
I think.
Somewhere.
Doesn't it?
There is an article entitled "Sceptics Frosty at Warming Warning." Wonder what we get if we click on that?

Wait a minute. This isn't anything like the International edition headline. What's going on here? Isn't the news the news? Isn't the truth the truth (even if inconvenient)?
How can the same news organization present the same set of facts with one slant for one market, and another slant for a different market?
They can't, of course. They have to stay on message. A single message.
And when I returned to the CNN International home page....

Climate Change Unstoppable

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations issued a their latest report today, conclding that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. [See here, here, and here.]
The report, using their strongest language yet on the issue, said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries," no matter how much humans control their pollution. "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report.
The report finds that sea levels will rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100, and it also concluded that seas would continue to rise, and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come (by comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century).
The report also finds a new wrinkle in the climate change story: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.

The President of the United States said, “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
Oh, sorry. That wasn't the current President speaking.
It was President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1965.

Living in his own private reality bubble, the current President, "President" Bush, is rejecting mandatory carbon caps, but likes the idea of giant space mirrors.

Harper and Kyoto

According to this CBC report, a leaked 2002 letter from current Prime Minister Stephen Harper (then leader of the now-dead Canadian Alliance party) to party supporters called the Kyoto Accord a "socialist scheme" designed to suck money out of rich countries.
Other choice Harper quotes from the letter include:

"We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership ... I'm talking about the 'battle of Kyoto' — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord.
"Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.
"We will do everything we can to stop him there, but [Prime Minister Chrétien] might get it passed with the help of the socialists in the NDP and the separatists in the BQ [Bloc Québécois]."

Harper also says that the accord is based on "tentative and contradictory scientific evidence" and it focuses on carbon dioxide, which is "essential to life."

There is the old notion that most politicians are generally 20 years - a whole generation - behind the general public in discovering the important issues of the day. Who'd've thought that Stephen Harper was a Neanderthal? (Okay, hands down - that was a rhetorical question, dammit!)
With leadership like this, it's a wonder we're not already dead.

Wild Westcoast Winter Weather

Here's a recap of this winter's wacky westcoast weather (as tabulated by the Victoria Times-Colonist):

NOV. 6
A subtropical jet stream known as the Pineapple Express brings warm, moist air from the south Pacific Ocean to the West Coast, setting rainfall records. Its impact is worsened by the remnants of Typhoon Cimaron, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines in eight years. The storm floods hundreds of homes, closes roads and overloads the region's storm sewer system.
- The amount of rainfall received at Victoria airport: 38.8 mm
- The previous record for Nov. 6 set in 1975: 20.1 mm
- The amount of rain recorded at the Sooke Reservoir over 24 hours: 181.4 mm
- The high temperature for the day at Victoria airport: 17.1 C
- The previous record high for the day set in 1958: 15 C

NOV. 10
A vicious windstorm lashes every coastal area from the Alaska Panhandle to Vancouver, Victoria and the Gulf Islands. The brunt of the storm hits the capital region about 3 a.m., uprooting trees, knocking out power, and forcing the cancellation of flights and ferries.
- The reported speed of winds in the Strait of Georgia: 70 km/h to 80 km/h
- The record speed of winds at the airport: 50 km/h gusting to 70 km/h

NOV. 15
One of the worst rain and windstorms in recent memory slams into Vancouver Island, cutting power to thousands, closing highways, swelling rivers, and virtually sealing off the Island from the mainland. Port Alberni bears the brunt of the storm, with Highway 4 closed in both directions, cutting the town off from Tofino and Nanaimo. In Vancouver, the heavy rainfall triggers dozens of landslides that muddies the city's reservoirs and triggers the widest water warning in Canadian history.
- The amount of rain that fell in Port Alberni over 24 hours: 130 mm
- The speed of maximum gusts at Port Alberni: 105 km/h
- The amount of rainfall recorded at the Victoria airport: 40.1 mm
- The previous record for rainfall at the Victoria airport set in 1998: 35.2 mm
- The depth of mud covering Highway 19 north of Sayward junction: 50 metres
- The number of Island homes without power at storm's height: 50,000
- The number of homes without power across the province: 210,000

NOV. 19
For the fourth time in less than two weeks, a Pacific storm drenches coastal B.C. Victoria escapes the brunt of the blow, as the storm goes island hopping instead. B.C. Ferries shuts down service for several hours between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay until the winds begin to subside around noon.
- The speed of gusting winds at Saturna Island: 111 km/h
- The speed of gusting winds at Gonzales: 80 km/h
- The speed of winds at Victoria International Airport: 31 to 52 km/h

NOV. 25-29
A series of snowstorms sweep across southwest B.C. with record snowfalls and icy temperatures. In what is becoming a tired refrain, the storm that hits the Island downs more trees, knocks out power to thousands, and generally leaves Islanders reeling. B.C. Hydro says the storm caused more damage than the famed Blizzard of '96. Snow and ice contribute to as many as four deaths on Vancouver Island, and cause extensive damage.
- The amount of snow that fell at Victoria International Airport on Nov. 27: 15.6 cm
- The old record for snowfall on Nov. 27 set in 1985: 10.2 cm
- The amount of snow that fell at Victoria airport on Nov. 29: 7.3 cm
- The previous record snowfall set in 2005: 5.2 cm
- The number of homes on Vancouver Island left without power at one point: 44,000
- Number of B.C. Hydro crews working in the Greater Victoria: 30
- Number of B.C. Hydro crews usually working in the Greater Victoria: 12

DEC. 11
Bang! High winds hammer B.C. again, blowing down trees, killing power, and halting ferry sailings. On the lower Island, a tugboat crew pulls two people from the Inner Harbour after their small boat flips, and the wind severely damages the 120-foot tent and particle-board sets of the Bethlehem Walk in Central Saanich.
- Number of B.C. Hydro customers without power on the Island
and Lower Mainland: 190,000
- The speed of gusting winds at Victoria airport: 70 km/h
- The speed of gusting winds on Discovery Island off Oak Bay: 102 km/h
- The number of homes in Greater Victoria without power: 4,000
- The number of homes in Cowichan Valley without power: 14,000

DEC. 13
Bang! Bang! For the second time in three days, hurricane-force winds buffet the Island. More trees fall, more homes cut off from power grid. Gusting winds upend an unoccupied Cessna 150 at the Victoria airport and blow it 30 metres.
- The number of B.C. Hydro customers without power on the Island: 70,000
- The top speed of gusting winds at the Victoria airport: 94 km/h
- The spans of electrical line down between Bamfield and Port Alberni alone: 172
- Estimated minimum number of B.C. Hydro crews needed to repair Bamfield line: 25

DEC. 15
Bang! Bang! Bang! The third storm in five days, and one of the most powerful in history roars across the province. The winds shatter records, and destroy trees from Stanley Park in Vancouver to the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Race Rocks records hurricane-force winds, and weather experts compare the storm's power to Typhoon Freda in 1962. Sooke and West Shore are particularly hard hit as fallen trees and power lines blocked roads, crushed cars and damaged houses.
- The speed of maximum gusts at Race Rocks off the southwest tip of Vancouver Island: 158 km/h
- The top speed of wind gusts at Victoria airport: 78 km/h
- The record for wind gusts at the airport set in 1967 and 1972: 109 km/h
- The number of people without power in Greater Victoria: 25,000
- The number of people without power on the rest of the Island: 10,000
- The total number of people across the province without power: 250,000

DEC. 20-21
Victoria and southern Vancouver Island dodge the impact of another windstorm; it strikes hardest in the north, knocking out power in Courtenay, Campbell River, and Port Hardy.
- Speed of gusting winds in Port Hardy: 83 km/h
- Speed of gusting winds in Campbell River: 75 km/h
- Number of B.C. Hydro customers without power: 20,000
- Number of days Bamfield had been without power before this storm hit: 9

JAN. 1-2
The Pineapple Express whips across the Island again, flooding roads and homes with record amounts of rainfall. Tofino is hardest hit, but the Sooke River also crests, putting nearby campsites underwater.
- The amount of rain at Ucluelet on Jan. 1: 181.3 mm
- The previous record at Ucluelet for Jan. 1, 2003: 75.8 mm
- The amount of rain at Victoria airport on Jan. 2: 46.5 mm
- The previous record at Victoria airport set in 1953: 45.2 mm
- The amount of rain recorded at Tofino over 30 hours: 270 mm

JAN. 7
Heavy rain again causes flooding problems in Greater Victoria. Thousands of people wake up to flooded basements and yards, and municipalities field hundeds of calls for pumps and sandbags. At the Home Depot on Shelbourne Street, people line up before the store opens to get the last few wet-dry vacuums the store has left.
- The total rain at Victoria airport: 34.6 mm
- The previous record set in 1953: 33.3 mm
- The total amount of rain that has fallen in capital region so far in January: 149 mm
- The rainfall average for all of January for the capital region: 115.2 mm
- The record monthly rainfall for January set in 1953: 358.9 mm

JAN. 10
In what is now a familiar pattern, snow follows rain into beleaguered Victoria, coating streets and slowing the morning commute to a standstill. The icy conditions lead to countless fender benders and jack-knifed semi trucks, including one that blocked traffic at the bottom of the Malahat near Goldstream Park where motorists trying to get into or out of Greater Victoria were left waiting for hours.
- Amount of snow recorded at Victoria airport: 12.2 cm
- Record for snow at Victoria airport set in 1980: 14.6 cm
- Number of car accidents in Parksville area alone in one afternoon: 22

But hey, no signs of climate change here! Just ask our Prime Minister!

Winter Storm Number 14...? 15...? 16...?

The insane weather of this winter continues. After another crazy windstorm yesterday, we awoke to snow this morning. And another windstorm is due tomorrow.
It has been nuts!

Is Victoria Sinking?

The Sierra Club thinks so. Here's how they envision climate change affecting the coast around Victoria.

The Coming Train Wreck

With Rummy gone and Bush on the ropes, with Democrats running Congress again, everything should be fine now, right?
Robert Jenson doesn't think so.

Here’s the unavoidable reality: Our train is on an unsustainable course in cultural, political, economic, and ecological terms. In a predatory corporate capitalist economy in an imperial state—a system that values the concentration of wealth and power, and devalues people—certain things are inevitable:

-- Our deepest values concerning justice and solidarity will be undermined by the anti-human values of capitalism and empire.
-- Truly democratic politics, in which ordinary people have a meaningful role, will be subverted by the concentration of wealth.
-- An increasingly fragile economy mired in self-indulgent deficit and debt, with an artificially inflated currency, will start to collapse when our military and political power are unable to keep the rest of the world in line.
-- The ability of a finite planet to sustain life as we know it will diminish dramatically in a system based on fantasies of unlimited growth marked by the glorification of domination.
The train moves forward, as the vast majority of Democrats and virtually all Republicans avoid these realities. Where can such a train take us? Pick your metaphor.

-- It could be that the train tracks end at a cliff, or
-- it might be that the train is heading for a brick wall, or
-- perhaps the train will derail along the way, or
-- maybe the tracks will simply end abruptly and the train will run into the ground.
If we don’t take radical action relatively soon, every ending we can imagine is likely to be brutal and violent, deadly not only for most of the world’s population but also for the non-human world. This isn’t irrational apocalypticism but a rational approach to the evidence in front of us. No one can predict how this will play out, but it will most certainly play out ugly unless we change the trajectory.

We're in Trouble. No Fish.

I remember a former BC Environment Minister saying that "there will be trees in the forest as long as there are fish in the sea."
Soon, we'll have neither. According to this story, fish stocks in the oceans will be gone - that's GONE!! - by 2050 unless we radically rethink how we live on this planet.

Kissing Kyoto Goodbye

"It's a path which is indeed, globally, quite suicidal. I just look to my grandchildren and their children and say, 'Jesus, the world is going to be a different place, and it's going to be a much less secure place, and much less comfortable place and there's going to be a whole pile of dead people.'"
-- Former Environment Minister David Anderson

Canada is first out of Kyoto, in deed if not in word, with the Conservative government's so-called Clean Air Act which was introduced last week. Prime Minister Harper, saying this country is showing leadership by sending our boys and girls off to die to honour our NATO commitments, doesn't seem able to show leadership by living up to our international environmental commitments. The true north, strong and free, and the biggest per capita polluters on the planet.
While some might argue that the government's slow pace to bring in hard caps is better than nothing, it's really worse than nothing. For starters, Harper is planning three years of consultation with industry before producing any new regulations at all. Hard emissions caps will be introduced until 2025. This lengthy period of inaction is explained away by the old excuse of not wanting to harm the economy.
This is madness. There will be no economy by the mid-21st century without immediate action on climate control now.
How hard is to say to industry , "2006 is the limit. Next year, you cannot pollute anymore than you did this year. And the year after, you're going to start bringing that down."

What others are saying:

CTV

CNN

CBC

Garth Turner

Green Party

Environmental Defence

Sierra Club

earthtimes

Feeding Our Cars

In this article, Gwynne Dyer points out something that I wasn't aware of:

For the sixth time in the past seven years, the human race will grow less food than it eats this year. We closed the gap by eating into food stocks accumulated in better times, but there is no doubt that the situation is getting serious. The world's food stocks have shrunk by half since 1999, from a reserve big enough to feed the entire world for 116 days then to a predicted low of only 57 days by the end of this year.
That is well below the official safety level, and there is no sign that the downward trend is going to reverse. If it doesn't, then at some point not too far down the road we reach the point of absolute food shortages, and rationing by price kicks in. In other words, grain prices soar, and the poorest start to starve.

So another crisis is looming in a century already full of crises. While Islamic fundamentalism takes on Western fascism, while we go to war to fight for cheap oil to burn away in our SUVs (and slowly poison ourselves in the process), while we approach massive environmental and economic upheaval, we are running out of food. And where is it going? Dyer further notes:

In the United States, a "corn rush" has been unleashed by government subsidies for ethanol, and so many ethanol plants are planned or already in existence in Iowa that they could absorb the state's entire crop of corn (maize, mealies). In effect, food is being turned into fuel -- and the amount of ethanol needed to fill a big four-wheel-drive SUV just once uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year.

So not only are we killing ourselves and our planet to support our energy-rich western lifestyle, now we're literally starving people to do it.
And the conseqeunces? Dyer notes in this article the baffling non-response of the world's politicians and citizens to the climate change crisis, noting that:

...global civilisation falls into violent chaos as huge numbers of people start to starve. Even two degrees hotter will reduce agricultural output in the main food-producing regions of the world by about a quarter.
Much hotter, and it will be much worse, so we may end up negotiating (or more likely, fighting) over which billion of us starve first. Intelligent human beings, faced with that prospect, would act at once, or so you would think -- especially because the actions required are not really all that painful, provided that they start right away.

We need our governments to put the same effort, if not more, into the right battles as they are into fighting the wrong ones. If we don't spend a greater effort fighting climate change and hunger than terrorism, then fighting the wrong battle will have been truly a monumental waste.

Even in Winter, the Arctic Ice is Melting

Scientist are very worried because it appears that Arctic ice is melting even in the winter:

Ice core borings in Antarctica have produced a record of historic carbon dioxide concentrations over the last 600,000 years. The borings show that the levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, are at their highest ever because of the burning of fossil fuels, Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
Serreze said he was surprised to see a new lake, or polynya, the size of Maryland, opening up in the sea ice north of the Beaufort Sea.
In 20 years of looking at sea ice, he has never seen anything like it.
"If you asked me five years ago if it was human activity (causing global warming) versus natural variability, I was a fence-sitter,'' Serreze said.
"The magnitude of the changes is starting to rise above the noise of natural variability. There is a continuing trend. What we see in the Arctic is part of a much larger picture. We hate to say, 'We told you so.' But we told you so.''