Climate Change & Toronto

[W. K. Lis]

A river ran through it

From Link.

 

[Johnny Au]

The Seige of Prince Edward Island.

See link.

All those Kindred Spirits (i.e. Green Gables fans) should purchase land in Prince Edward Island (even if it's one square inch) to prevent erosion.

 

[Admiral Beez]

All those Kindred Spirits (i.e. Green Gables fans) should purchase land in Prince Edward Island (even if it's one square inch) to prevent erosion.

How does land title transfer help to prevent erosion?

 

[Johnny Au]

How does land title transfer help to prevent erosion?

It would help pay for infrastructure to reduce erosion.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Something to think about...

We are leaving the Age of Pisces (Jesus) and entering the Age of Aquarius...

Does the Age of Aquarius Bring Global Warming and Floods?

See link.

The fear is here. It is permeating society. Global warming is coming. Will global warming destroy society? And if it will, is it a coincidence that the predictions of mass coastal flooding coincides with humanity moving into the Age of Aquarius? Perhaps this has happened before – perhaps humanity is just living a cycle that it has lived for 10,000’s of years. Maybe there is a correlation between the Age of Aquarius and global warming.

From Pisces (Jesus) to Aquarius

The Earth revolves around the sun. But the sun does not sit still. Our Milky Way galaxy moves. And as it moves across space-time, we see different constellations in the sky. Certain constellation positions have been used as a reference point of time throughout human history. Just as current civilization uses the death & resurrection of Jesus Christ as a time reference, ancient civilization looked to the stars.

Each age lasts around 2,100 years, give or take. Currently, we are living in the Age of Pisces. One could theorize that the death & resurrection of Jesus, being roughly 2000 years ago, actually symbolized the beginning of our current age: Pisces. Jesus was the sacrificial lamb. Pisces came after Aries, whose zodiac sign is a ram (lamb). While the ram brought turbulence, the end of the ram came with Pisces. Pisces symbolizes selflessness, love & generosity. And the sign for Pisces is a fish. Ever see the Jesus fish bumper stickers?

It’s now been roughly 2000+ years since the stories of the death & resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just in time for a transition to Aquarius.

Aquarius and Global Warming Brings The Flood

Aquarius is the 12th and final age in the zodiac. The end of the zodiac’s long cycle. And we are moving into this final age as we speak. It’s been a little over 2000 years since the last changing of the ages.

Many religions & mythologies speak of global floods wiping out mankind. Some might say we are living in the end times. Perhaps we are. Perhaps we are moving into the Age of Aquarius, which brings the flood to destroy mankind & restart the zodiac.

Current global warming predictions are quite scary. Of course, global warming includes rises in water & atmospheric temperature. But what this brings is more rain & melting snow – which brings higher sea levels, which in turn, brings flooding. Current predictions have a 5-10% increase in precipitation across the globe. With melting snow and glaciers, sea levels are expected to rise by a further 20 inches by 2100.

Doesn’t sound like a lot? Consider that global warming is already severely affecting Venice, France with some predicting Venice vanishing by 2100. And in the United States, many major city coasts, from Maine, to Texas & California, will be flooded by 2100 according to current predictions.

It seems that the floods are coming & that the Age of Aquarius may be bring them. But what will come after Aquarius?...

 

[W. K. Lis]

BC town beats Canadian all-time temperature record for third time in three days​

From link.

It just keeps getting hotter! For the third day in a row, Lytton, British Columbia, has set a new record for the hottest temperature ever in Canada.

The BC community recorded the highest temperatures the country has ever seen, surpassing its previous record of 47.9°C on Monday and 46.6°C on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s temperatures reached a new high of 49.6°C, according to Environment Canada.

90% of BC town destroyed one day after breaking Canadian temperature record​

From link.

Lytton, BC, has a population of around 250 people, and is roughly a three hour drive to Vancouver. After the heat wave brought temperatures to Lytton that broke heat records across the country, wildfires have ravaged it to the point where it may never be the same.

Edith Loring Kuhanga is a school administrator at the Stein Valley Nlakapamux School which resides in Lytton, BC.

In an emotional message she put out publicly on Facebook, she fears Lytton is gone forever.

“Our poor little town of Lytton is gone. And the fire moved so quickly across the bridge and up the Lillooet Highway where several of our reserves and the school is located.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1410476227056615425

It was just yesterday that Lytton broke the Canadian temperature record for the third time in three days.

“The fire started at the end of my street and quickly spread,” said Kuhanga.

She was asked by a council member if she could go to the school and set up a muster station.

“I had my suitcase packed as I was going to Victoria on Thursday night so I quickly grabbed it, my pillow and my computer case. I ran out the door and there was a huge explosion and the fire really started going crazy!”

“I headed up to the school to set up a muster station and getting water for everyone! A few people showed up and helped me. Then a couple of us went in and started making salmon sandwiches for everyone. Then we were told we had to leave as the fire went under the bridge and up the alpine! ”

The band office that Kuhanga reports to, has also reportedly been destroyed by the fire.

“One of our Grade 3 students saw me crying and came over and said, It’s going to be ok Edith! Yes it will be – Creator please watch over our community members who are suffering and over our firefighters who are risking their lives! Now I hear that Siska and Nicomen are on evacuation alert – our entire canyon is going up in flames!

According to an MP based in the Fraser Valley, the town is almost entirely destroyed.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Canadian Conservative party votes not to recognize climate crisis as real​

From link. Dated March 31, 2021.

• Delegates vote 54%-46% against policy change request
• Leader O’Toole has sought ambitious climate change agenda

Canada’s main opposition Conservative party members have voted down a proposal to recognize the climate crisis as real, in a blow to their new leader’s efforts to embrace environmentally friendly policies before a likely federal election this year.

The rejected motion included the willingness to act against climate risks and to make highly polluting businesses take more responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On Friday, the Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, urged party members to rally around an ambitious climate agenda, in order to avoid a defeat at the hands of Liberals.

He asked members to be open to new ideas if they were serious about toppling the Liberals in the next election, even if that went against the party’s conventional thinking.

He did not want Conservative candidates to be branded as “climate change deniers”, he said.

On Saturday, Conservative delegates rejected the policy shift by 54% to 46%.

Climate change was a polarizing issue in the last election campaign. While Justin Trudeau stresses that the environment is a priority, Canada has failed to meet any of its climate pledges amid resistance from politicians who say the targets threaten the oil industry.

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases on a per capita basis. The prime minister’s Liberal supporters rank it among their top concerns.

Joe Biden’s aggressive climate policies are expected to galvanize Canada to march in step with Washington’s tough measures to avoid being disadvantaged.

 

[afransen]

To be fair, this is a weather event. It might be made more frequent by climate change but muddling the two ideas doesn't help convince skeptics.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price​

From link.

Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.

But, even more strikingly, the nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the American public.

The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil fuel industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US history”. And now for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart a path toward public accountability that climate activists say has the potential to rival big tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the real dangers of smoking.

“We are at an inflection point,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.

“Things have to get worse for the oil companies,” he added. “Even if they’ve got a pretty good chance of winning the litigation in places, the discovery of pretty clearcut wrong doing – that they knew their product was bad and they were lying to the public – really weakens the industry’s ability to resist legislation and settlements.”

For decades, the country’s leading oil and gas companies have understood the science of climate change and the dangers posed by fossil fuels. Year after year, top executives heard it from their own scientists whose warnings were explicit and often dire.

In 1979, an Exxon study said that burning fossil fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades.

“The potential problem is great and urgent,” it concluded.

But instead of heeding the evidence of the research they were funding, major oil firms worked together to bury the findings and manufacture a counter narrative to undermine the growing scientific consensus around climate science. The fossil fuel industry’s campaign to create uncertainty paid off for decades by muddying public understanding of the growing dangers from global heating and stalling political action.

The urgency of the crisis is not in doubt. A draft United Nations report, leaked last week, warns that the consequences of the climate crisis, including rising seas, intense heat and ecosystem collapse, will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if fossil fuel emissions are curbed.

To investigate the lengths of the oil and gas industry’s deceptions – and the disastrous consequences for communities across the country – the Guardian is launching a year-long series tracking the unprecedented efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry to account.

The legal process is expected to take years. Cities in California filed the first lawsuits back in 2017, and they have been tied down by disputes over jurisdiction, with the oil companies fighting with limited success to get them moved from state to federal courts where they think the law is more favorable.

But climate activists see opportunities long before verdicts are rendered in the US. The legal process is expected to add to already damning revelations of the energy giants’ closely held secrets. If history is a guide, those developments could in turn alter public opinion in favor of regulations that the oil and gas companies spent years fighting off.

A string of other recent victories for climate activists already points to a shift in the industry’s power.

Last month, a Dutch court ordered Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of the decade. The same day, in Houston, an activist hedge fund forced three new directors on to the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil, to address climate issues. Investors at Chevron also voted to cut emissions from the petroleum products it sells.

Earlier this month, developers of the Keystone XL pipeline cancelled the project after more than a decade of unrelenting opposition over environmental concerns. And although a federal court last year threw out a lawsuit brought by 21 young Americans who say the US government violated their constitutional rights by exacerbating climate change, the Biden administration recently agreed to settlement talks in a symbolic gesture aimed to appease younger voters.

For all that, American lawyers say the legal reasoning behind foreign court judgments are unlikely to carry much weight in the US and domestic law is largely untested. In 2018, a federal court knocked back New York City’s initial attempt to force big oil to cover the costs of the climate crisis by saying that its global nature requires a political, not legal, remedy.

Other regional lawsuits are inching their way through the courts. From Charleston, South Carolina, to Boulder, Colorado, and Maui, Hawaii, communities are seeking to force the industry to use its huge profits to pay for the damage and to oblige energy companies to treat the climate crisis for what it is – a global emergency.

Municipalities such as Imperial Beach, California – the poorest city in San Diego county with a budget less than Exxon chief executive’s annual pay – faces rising waters on three sides without the necessary funding to build protective barriers. They claim oil companies created a “public nuisance” by fuelling the climate crisis. They seek to recover the cost of repairing the damage and constructing defences.

The public nuisance claim, also pursued by Honolulu, San Francisco and Rhode Island, follows a legal strategy with a record of success in other types of litigation. In 2019, Oklahoma’s attorney general won compensation of nearly half a billion dollars against the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson over its false marketing of powerful prescription painkillers on the grounds it created a public nuisance by contributing to the opioid epidemic in the state.

Other climate lawsuits, including one filed in Minnesota, allege the oil firms’ campaigns of deception and denial about the climate crisis amount to fraud. Minnesota is suing Exxon, Koch Industries and an industry trade group for breaches of state law for deceptive trade practices, false advertising and consumer fraud over what the lawsuit characterises as distortions and lies about climate science.

The midwestern state, which has seen temperatures rise faster than the US and global averages, said scorching temperatures and “mega-rains” have devastated farming and flooded people out of their homes, with low-income and minority families most at risk.

Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, claims in his lawsuit that for years Exxon orchestrated a campaign to bury the evidence of environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels “with disturbing success”.

“Defendants spent millions on advertising and public relations because they understood that an accurate understanding of climate change would affect their ability to continue to earn profits by conducting business as usual,” Ellison said in his lawsuit.

Farber said cases rooted in claims that the petroleum industry lied have the most promising chance of success.

“To the extent the plaintiffs can point to misconduct, like telling everybody there’s no such thing as climate change when your scientists have told you the opposite, that might give the courts a greater feeling of comfort that they’re not trying to take over the US energy system,” he said....

 

[Northern Light]

Apparently @AlexBozikovic is now moonlighting as the Globe and Mail's climate change reporter............

The heat is on – and it’s here to stay

Temperatures are only expected to keep rising, and silence on the issue shows we’re not ready

www.theglobeandmail.com

FWIW, its a good column, in so far as it rightly notes Toronto is likely to see more extremely warm days, much more often in years ahead; and that many residents, particularly those in older apartments are very vulnerable to this in that they often lack air conditioning.

I would love to Alex do a follow up though on more specific actions that the City ought to be taking; and try to put a cost number on them too whether that cost is on the City or is one imposed by the City on landlords or others.

I have a few thoughts:

1) One of the worst sources of heat in this City is surface parking lots. We need a by-law requiring that that surface parking must be shaded by trees. I think a reasonable requirement would be that a parking lot should be designed to support no less than 70% shade (100% being ideal) on June solstice. The highest priority should be surface lots beside apartment buildings. In order to achieve this, we first have to waive any requirement on landlords in respect of the amount of parking.
Second, we need to mandate the change I describe when ever a lot under goes reconstruction. Third, we need to put a hard limit on meeting the requirement (so as not to excuse those who defer paving work), say by 2035.
Finally, we need to consider incentives. The City could rebate the cost 50% of the cost of de-paving a parking spot and adding a tree, off of the landlord's tax bill.

2) Extend the logic of the above to removing parking pads in front of homes.

3) In the case of commercial parking lots, apply a stormwater tax that is reduced by meeting permeability and shading requirements.

4) Raise the cost of permit parking to full market rates over 3-5 years; use the associated reduction in uptake to narrow roads, particularly wider collector roads by adding back a tree-lined boulevard.

5) A maximum temperature by-law does need to be imposed on landlord's in the medium term. However, there are inter-related options that can be looked at in the nearer term. Many older buildings have dated and sometimes dangerous electrical. One thing that makes it dangerous is that most apartments were built for 60-amp service which means air conditioners very fully tax and sometimes overheat wires, especially w/portables or older units where compressors are failing. Mandating that all apartments have a minimum of 100amp electrical service on a modern, circuit-breaker panel would at least allow those who can afford a/c to install it safely.

Mandates around a/c are going to be problematic in that its a very expensive retrofit into buildings that don't have central air. It requires one of, installing central air, installing direct-vent air conditioners in each unit or an alternative cooling system.

I'm fine with a conventional mandate, but I'd love to see some exploration of whether radiator pipes can be effectively used to deliver cold in the summer similar to heat-exchange systems. My understanding is that due to reduced temperature differential such a system would be much less effective at cooling than heating. But if it was good enough to lower a temperature from 30+ to say 24.........it may not be comfortable, but it would still be a drastic improvement.

****

Pavement being a huge source of heat, we all have to address highways, none moreso than the 401.

We have to look at alternative pavements that absorb less heat for a start; but we also need to consider ways to shade the pavement, and do so cost-effectively and practically. Lining the highway with shade trees isn't the most practical choice for a host of reasons.

While 'decked' sections with parks over the top could work, that certainly won't the norm along the entire highway.

We need other means to address these issues as well.

 

[W. K. Lis]

...
We have to look at alternative pavements that absorb less heat for a start; but we also need to consider ways to shade the pavement, and do so cost-effectively and practically. Lining the highway with shade trees isn't the most practical choice for a host of reasons.
...

They remove trees for the "safety" of speeders. The presence of trees tend to slow speeders down.

 

[vic]

Apparently @AlexBozikovic is now moonlighting as the Globe and Mail's climate change reporter............

The heat is on – and it’s here to stay

Temperatures are only expected to keep rising, and silence on the issue shows we’re not ready

www.theglobeandmail.com

I'm fine with a conventional mandate, but I'd love to see some exploration of whether radiator pipes can be effectively used to deliver cold in the summer similar to heat-exchange systems. My understanding is that due to reduced temperature differential such a system would be much less effective at cooling than heating. But if it was good enough to lower a temperature from 30+ to say 24.........it may not be comfortable, but it would still be a drastic improvement.

You'd have to deal with water condensation on the radiators, and probably on the pipes too.

Actually.... Ever been to the High Level Pumping Station on Poplar Plains? Went their during a really hot Doors Open day a few years ago. The cooling provided just by all the huge water pipes going through there was amazing

 

[Northern Light]

A series of climate-change related initiatives passed at the most recent council meeting.

David Rider of the Star has a report: https://www.thestar.com/news/city_h...icies-we-asked-experts-how-they-stack-up.html

There are some aspirational things (non-binding/unfunded), and some which may or may not get through politically like a stormwater tax.

To me, the key one was that Toronto's Green Standard for new development will raise its requirements in order to achieve a 25% reduction in carbon beginning in spring of 2022, only 9 months away.
Nice to see a concrete action go somewhere.
I have hope for some of the others too; but its wait and see on whether anything meaningful comes out of them.,

 

[W. K. Lis]

A series of climate-change related initiatives passed at the most recent council meeting.

David Rider of the Star has a report: https://www.thestar.com/news/city_h...icies-we-asked-experts-how-they-stack-up.html

There are some aspirational things (non-binding/unfunded), and some which may or may not get through politically like a stormwater tax.

To me, the key one was that Toronto's Green Standard for new development will raise its requirements in order to achieve a 25% reduction in carbon beginning in spring of 2022, only 9 months away.
Nice to see a concrete action go somewhere.
I have hope for some of the others too; but its wait and see on whether anything meaningful comes out of them.,

Would like to see the voting results by Councillors.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I’d like to limit government‘s role in telling property owners what they can do on their own land. It’s not the parked car that’s causing heat and runway off issues, but the lack of permeable surface. My neighbour across the street cemented over her entire front lawn, not for a car as she doesn’t own one, but because she wanted a no maintain surface.

I‘m fine with the city telling or enticing people to change their front yards to permeable, non-reflective surfaces, but if a property owner isn’t causing undo harm to others I’m not going full HOA telling people what to do on their own property. So, keep your legal, city permit issued parking pad (if it’s not issued a permit that‘s another story), just let the water pass through to the trees and not into the sewers.

See permeable options page 16 https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2017/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-104838.pdf