“the #HeatDome was a foreshock of the world to come, with impacts both immediate and long-lasting. Yet it occurred in a world that has only warmed, on average, about 1.2 degrees since 1850. We’re now racing to 1.5 degrees and are likely to cross that threshold by the mid-2030s.” #ClimateCrisishttps://mastodon.social/@ryanschultz/110906759659640682
“#NovaScotiaPower is spending millions to install more resilient #ElectricalPoles, after several years of increasingly powerful storms and hurricanes. In its last application to the provincial government to increase power rates on consumers, it cited #ClimateChange as a reason.”
“The cost of upgrading the #dikes that protect the low-lying #IsthmusOfChignecto and prevent Nova Scotia from becoming a defacto island: $300 million. The bill for #Richmond—the fourth-largest city in metropolitan #Vancouver, which includes the #VancouverInternationalAirport—to raise its own dikes against rising seas: $1 billion.”
“It doesn’t take a lot of auditing to see how the bill will get so steep, so fast. The total cost of the 2016 #FortMcMurray fire: $9 billion. The all-in price tag of B.C.’s 2021 #HeatDome, #wildfires, #floods and #landslide, all linked to warming: up to $17 billion. Cleanup and repair after #HurricaneFiona, which bulldozed #AtlanticCanada last year: $3 billion.”
“Accounting for increased health costs, supply-chain problems, falling crop yields, reduced exports and more, it estimated that the #costs of #ClimateChange will knock more than five per cent from the national #GDP by 2095, compared to what it would be in a world with a stable #climate. ..At that point, the #AnnualCost of dealing with disaster after disaster, and the hits to health, productivity and more will add up to $100 billion annually.”
“#ClimateMigration will be one of the defining forces of the 21st century—but record numbers of #Canadians will be #displaced on the home front by #disasters both sudden (fire, flood, storms) and slow (drought, coastal erosion, sea-level rise). A permanent class of the #InternallyDisplaced will require care, shelter and other resources “
“A widely publicized study published last year by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona analyzed satellite images taken between 1985 and 2019. They show that large parts of the #BorealForest have “browned” (i.e., died) in the south and greened with trees and shrubs in the north. If this shift, long hypothesized as a future outcome of #warming, is already underway, the effects will be profound, transforming natural habitats, animal migration and human settlements.”
“John Pomeroy, #Canada Research Chair in #WaterResources and #ClimateChange at the #UniversityOfSaskatchewan, says faster-than-expected melting in the past few years makes it likely that all the #glaciers of the #Rockies—including the famed #ColumbiaIcefield, upon which a thriving tourism industry depends—will all be gone by the end of the century, save for a few remnants. That means reduced flows to rivers that millions of people depend on”
“Within a few decades, #Canadians in every part of the country will be faced with an inescapably altered #geography. #SeaLevels will rise up to half a metre on the #EastCoast by 2060 and approach a full metre by century’s end. Levels on the #WestCoast will rise more slowly, but the more urbanized coastline around #Vancouver and lower-lying communities will require massive upgrades to the #dikes keeping them dry.
“in #Canada, some 30,000 #children who were in utero during B.C.’s 2017 #wildfire season were later studied by #PublicHealth scientists. Those whose mothers lived in areas with the worst #smoke exposure were likelier to be born smaller and #preterm; they were also sicker, developing #croup, #laryngitis and #bronchitis at higher rates than other children.”
“A study of #wildfire seasons conducted by scientists working with #HealthCanada and other federal departments estimated up to 240 deaths from short-term exposure, and up to 2,500 #PrematureDeaths in the long run, from fire events in 2017 alone. In parts of #BC hardest hit by that year’s wildfires, the smoke was estimated to reduce average #LifeExpectancy by a full year.”
“In 2005, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first coined the term #solastalgia to describe the feeling of being homesick while still at home. It’s that feeling of loss and melancholia that kicks in as your home #environment changes before your eyes, and it will come to define the deep emotional and psychological distress that more #Canadians will confront as global warming drives their #climate past recognition.”
“While the planet has warmed 1.2 degrees since the 19th century, when humans first started burning #FossilFuels at an industrial scale, Canada has warmed at twice that rate, and the Arctic at four times. ..An Earth that’s two degrees hotter translates to a #Canada at least four degrees hotter, on average. .“A hot, dry summer ..in the Canadian context that means forest fires, that means #CropFailures, that means urban #droughts .”