A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
It is three in the morning of August 8th, almost three weeks ago to the night when violent torrents of rain flooded basements in Niagara, Ontario communities like Niagara Falls, St. Catharines and mine in Thorold.
And I can’t sleep. Call it shell shock or my case of post traumatic stress disorder or whatever you want, but when you turn on the weather channel and are told that there is a possibility of more “severe weather” coming our way, there is no way I can sleep. I am up, moving whatever survived from the July flood to higher ground and watching for a backup of waste water in the drains in my basement.
You may wonder if I am not being a little too worried, but when you also hear reports of at least three tornadoes this Wednesday, August 7th in regions east of Lake Huron and north of Lake Ontario, and when you have the skies flashing with lightning as I write this, I would suggest that you can’t be too complacent about the possibilities for more damage to the homestead these days.
I posted a commentary hear about a month or two ago saying that I have just about lost all my patience for climate change deniers and one reader responded with the infantile Chicken Little line – “The sky is falling.”
I’ve always found it interesting how these climate change deniers hardly ever confront the science around the issue, and instead resort to mocking language or badmouthing individuals like David Suzuki and Al Gore – often accusing these two voices for the need for humankind to do something about our emissions of carbon pollutants to the atmosphere of doing it for money when either one of them could make so much more money if they sold out and became mouthpieces for the petrochemical industry.
As far back as the first Earth Day in 1970, scientists warned of the potential for fossil related pollutants spewing from our cars, trucks and other machinery chocking the atmosphere to a point where the climate may be altered in ways that made for damaging weather. But collectively, we refused to heed the warning and continued on with business as usual.
The deniers argue that there have always been cases of violent weather and there have. Some of you may be old enough to remember Hurricane Hazel ravaging its way through this region of the country in the 1950s and the Blizzard of 77, but this intensity of storm was relatively far and few between. These days, you can hardly turn on the news without one or more reports of devastating weather damage somewhere. The term “severe weather” has now become part of the lexicon.
So here we are, and as sure as I am joining thousands of others to repair the damage from the latest flood in my basement, I do so with a feeling that this will now be more of a routine, like racking the leaves on my lawn every fall.
I also do so with a resolve that we collectively have to finally come to terms with the lifestyle issues that contribute to weather conditions that threaten to ravage our communities, environmentally and economically. As U.S. President Barack Obama said of climate change deniers in a signature speech he delivered earlier this summer, we can’t afford to waste any more time engaging in debates with “the flat earth society.”
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your thoughts on this post below. Please remember that NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last names with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
Thank you for your article. It’s time we move on to preparing for climate impacts likely for Niagara including storm surges and high winds. Oct 11/13 Association for Curriculum Education Resources and Climate Action Niagara are hosting an event to bring multiple organizations together to develop community mapping that we can then use to prioritize planting and restoration projects. Please call 289-434-0474 to register or volunteer.
It’s unfortunate that conventional media continues to provide what they consider fair coverage, it reduces their capacity to be relevant.
A brief footnote from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – Jane Hanlon touches on a good point when she mentions mentions what the conventional or mainstream/corporate media regard as fair coverage around any debate over the role human activities play in climate change.
The corporate media typically covers a story on climate change by featuring one scientist who says our activities play a role in climate change and one scientist who insists that our activities do not. They pass this off as “balanced coverage” and it is not. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of climatologists and scientists with related expertese around the world have gone on record at one international forum after another saying they are convinced that emissions of carbon and other pollutants to the atmosphere from transport and other human activities are contributing significantly to alterations to the atmosphere that fuel violent shifts in weather.
On the other hand, there are a handful of scientists paid directly or indirectly by the petrochemical industry that continue to keep this notion afloat that human activities have nothing to do with it. Just as in decades gone by when some scientists in the pocket of the tobacco industry continued to argue that smoking has nothing to do with lung cancer, these scientists are employed to buy their corporate clients some time to go on with business as usual by spreading doubt.
Insofar as the corporate media is concerned, it is aiding and abetting the petrochemical industry by continuing to give the public the impression that scientists are evenly split on this issue. They are not.
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While I personally believe that mankind has accelerated the extent to which carbon related emissions have changed our climate, you have to ask yourself the following question: Have we been here before – Answer
Yes – Example A: Cold Lake Alberta is home to some of the largest pre-historic finds of dinosaur remains. As we all know dinosaurs don’t do well in places like current day Cold Lake Alberta.
Example B: glacial human and animal remains finds – As a result of receding glacial fields remains of animals and humans have been found indicating that these glacial fields have previously experienced periods of retraction. Otherwise how could these remains have become entrapped in ice that has existed for thousands of years.
I am not saying we shouldn’t be doing everything we can to curb our emissions. However, one has to wonder whether the impact will be as material as everyone thinks. Consider the amount of solids, sulphur and carbon-dioxide that spew out every time a volcano erupts. Consider the emissions each time a forest fire spanning 1000’s of sq kilometers erupts. Google the footage and coverage and you will get an idea of what I am talking about. Take the oil sands and multiply by a thousand.
(I AM NOT A FAN OF FRACKING AND THE OIL SANDS).
On a related not, I don’t understand why efforts to eradicate the pine beetle have not been successful. The carbon emissions this little bug is responsible for exasperates any efforts we make to reduce our emissions given the impact the huge forest fires they are responsible for have on the greenhouse gas problem.
The earth is dynamic, not static. It is always changing and moving through cycles. There was a time when the ice fields were a lot smaller than they are today. There will be a time when they return to that size and then possibly return to their ice age coverage (great for future skiiers).
On a political note, you can thank Mr. Harper for nixing the passage of legislation that would contribute to a reduced emissions strategy. You can thank former Premier McSquinty for poorly designed and executed “green” initiatives that have made many taxpayers enemies of anything green.
The fact that we have trade deals with countries that are destroying their forests also disturbs me. We should be using trade as a tool to curb the destruction of the earths air filters.
So with respect to dealing with the related challenges of climate change because it is here to stay…. they called High River High River for a reason. Anyone living next to lakes, rivers and oceans really need to think this through. Living on flood plains is just plain silly. I personally have sumps that are battery backed up and have a generator for those extended power outages.
Just sayin……
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“There is overwhelming evidence that our climate is warming due to pollution from human activities. That’s the conclusion reached by 97 percent of top climate scientists and every major National Academy of Science in the world. When we burn dirty fossil fuels like oil and coal, and when we cut down forests that store carbon, we pollute our atmosphere and warm our planet. This is not controversial: It’s a reality we’ve understood for decades. And we’re starting to feel the effects now. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since the year 2000. Extreme weather events like heat waves, heavy rains and drought are becoming more common and more severe. Coastal communities all over the world are preparing for the impacts of sea level rise. The debate over the basic science of climate change is over. So let’s move on to a much more productive discussion on what we can do about it.” (Source: “Reality Drop”)
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Have we been here before – Answer: No. And hence the propagandistic etymology for calling *anthropogenic climate CHAOS & POISONING*, “climate change.” Change is good, right? ‘Human dinosaurs’…the reason God has death, otherwise, what in the world would interrupt history as inherited by gerontocracy? Yay, the reduction of emissions has been undermined, yay again, ..”thank you” right-wing fascist in charge of Eh-hole petrol state, ..who’s your daddy? Next subject: “mind change,” and those who can’t do it. http://www.bvcsm.com/ http://web.mit.edu/gjordan/www/creation/slides/_DSC2393.JPG http://urchinmovement.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/creation-museum-1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ham http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/24/oh_canada
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Hi Greg Middleton,
Not being an Ontarian, I think the Green Energy Act, though a modest success by North American standards, might have benefitted if its architect, George Smitherman, had stayed on to guide the ship once it sailed. Instead, he jumped ship to run in Toronto’s mayor’s race against Rob Ford. If Smitherman had won in that race, life in Toronto might have been kinda boring these past couple of years…
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Thanks, Doug Draper for kicking off this conversation. I live in Calgary and we, too, had a bit of a climate wake-up call from flooding a few weeks ago.
I’m passionate about climate change and a big fan of carbon taxes, personally, but who cares? I’m just a balding guy in Calgary, with no letters behind my name.
So I started a project last fall, surveying Canadian opinions on climate change. There’s an anonymous 2 minute survey with five questions, six if you include your postal code, and these feed into six word clouds on the main page. The larger a word, the more often it has been used in the survey. Click on any cloud to activate it, then click again to zoom in and roam around the smaller, less-used responses. About 325 surveys completed so far.
http://www.carbonconversations.ca
There is also a gathering of links to great articles, to climate hawk and climate skeptic organizations, a collection of provocative quotes from some surprising sources, and a link to “Like” the Facebook page.
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With regards to Doug’s comments…… I agree coverage of local issues are less than satisfactory and wish the media would spend more time scrutinizing politicians on all levels and the boneheaded decisions they make on an ongoing basis.
Wish it weren’t necessary,,,,, but just sayin…..
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Any one interested in this subject matter might find this link interesting. It is a balanced and technical argument for BOTH sides of this discussion.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
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