Climate shifts

Business leaders call for climate change action

The leaders of a group of major Canadian corporations have called for urgent action on climate change, a major reversal of the business community's position on the Kyoto protocol. In a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin, the heads of Alcan, Bombardier, Shell Canada, Falconbridge, Home Depot Canada and Desjardins Group, among others, said Canada needs a 50-year strategy to deal with the fallout from climate change. The letter, obtained by the Canadian Press, calls for a plan that goes well beyond the 2008-2012 timetable laid out in the Kyoto protocol. "As corporate leaders representing a broad cross-section of the Canadian economy, we believe that all governments, corporations, consumers and citizens have responsibilities under the Kyoto protocol," the letter says. "The world must act urgently to stabilize the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and minimize the global impacts of climate change." The executives said they accept the consensus view of a UN panel that climate change elevates the risk to human health and the environment. "We note that Canada is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," they said.
(CBC 051117)

Drought threat looms over Prairies' bounty

The Canadian Prairies are one of the world's breadbaskets, but their bountiful harvests could be at risk because of water shortages caused by global warming, a new research report warns. The report, in the latest issue of the journal Nature, predicts an “increase in the frequency and severity of droughts” on the Prairies and says that Alberta and Saskatchewan may be forced to squabble over the dwindling water supplies in rivers they share. The finding comes as a potential long-term worry for Prairie farmers, who have only just begun recovering from an extensive drought that began in 1998 and ended this past year. Although climate models predict Canada will have a longer growing season because of global warming, the report suggests that water may not be available to sustain crops that depend on rivers that are fed from the snow pack in the mountainous areas of the West. Such rivers include the Oldman and the Red Deer, and both branches of the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca, have additional water from the melting of glaciers. The report says higher temperatures will cause more precipitation to fall as rain in winter, and consequently there will be diminished snow pack to melt earlier in the spring. This, in turn, means more water will flow into the ocean unused before the growing season starts. That will leave plants vulnerable to summers with low soil moisture levels.

One of Canada's leading water experts, University of Alberta Professor David Schindler, believes the West is at an even great risk than the report suggests. He said the effects of global warming on precipitation could be accompanied by extreme droughts, returning the region to the kind of dust-bowl conditions that prevailed during the 1930s. Prof. Schindler said new research in Canada on such phenomena as the size of the annual growth in tree rings indicates that the Prairies were historically far drier than they have been during the recent period of European settlement. Indeed, these records suggest it has been abnormally wet during the past 100 years. He said droughts lasting decades appear to have been common in the past, as were sustained low rainfall periods lasting centuries. He also worries that once glaciers in the Rockies melt, there will be a major reduction in stream flow in some rivers.
(Globe and Mail 051117)

Thank Gob people are starting to speak out about this. This will be far and away the most disruptive event of the 21st century, and from the looks of it, it is inevitable.