Public Square and New Park Design in Toronto

[ksun]

I don't know if a little warming would be that bad for Toronto. The last forecast I saw for the extreme scenario towards the end of the century was an average temperature increase from baseline for Toronto of 5 degrees Celsius, winter and summer, which would put us exactly where Philadelphia is today. While Philly summers do have a couple of hot months, the rest of the year their climate is way more pleasant than ours, and they aren't exactly dying like flies during heat waves. We would of course have to retrofit our drainage/sewage infrastructure over the next seventy years to deal with increased extremes of precipitation, but that stuff has a finite life and we'd have to retrofit it anyway. I stress I'm not denying the reality of climate change, or its likely negative impact on parts of the world. But it seems like it would be a net positive for Toronto. Of course, that does imply more planting to deal with summer extremes.

There is no need to be shy about this. Rising temperature will do far more good to Toronto (maybe not the world) than harm. That's for sure.
Being 5 degrees warmer will make a huge positive difference. Imagine no lingering snow in late March and trees turn green by mid April, imagine spending a lot less on snow removal and fewer snow related accidents! Imagine cherry blossoms peak in April not May. Imagine people able to be outdoors a month earlier. How scary that will be!

Toronto's "summer heat" -- as someone who lived outside Canada before, I can only say that's laughable.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Toronto's "summer heat" -- as someone who lived outside Canada before, I can only say that's laughable.

Yeah, I concur.

It is much the same as how people from Ottawa/Montreal/Winnipeg laugh at our winters. Our summers are nice and mild generally, only sometimes a little bit humid. Global Warming even helps with that, making our summers dryer than typical.

 

[howl]

There is no need to be shy about this. Rising temperature will do far more good to Toronto (maybe not the world) than harm. That's for sure.
Being 5 degrees warmer will make a huge positive difference. Imagine no lingering snow in late March and trees turn green by mid April, imagine spending a lot less on snow removal and fewer snow related accidents! Imagine cherry blossoms peak in April not May. Imagine people able to be outdoors a month earlier. How scary that will be!

Toronto's "summer heat" -- as someone who lived outside Canada before, I can only say that's laughable.

From a human-centric point-of-view it may (or may not) be "better" to be 5 degrees warmer, but every other living creature, including the trees and plants it will be a disaster. Many species won't be able to adapt quickly enough to survive, and once one link in the ecosystem disappears the whole system is put into severe stress. Expect decades of dying trees, insect infestations and species extinctions before we evolve a new ecosystem dominated by southern species.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

From a human-centric point-of-view it may (or may not) be "better" to be 5 degrees warmer, but every other living creature, including the trees and plants it will be a disaster. Many species won't be able to adapt quickly enough to survive, and once one link in the ecosystem disappears the whole system is put into severe stress. Expect decades of dying trees, insect infestations and species extinctions before we evolve a new ecosystem dominated by southern species.

You are not wrong, but it is not as if Toronto is a micro-climate where species are extant only in Toronto . Most plants and animals in our ecosystem live in a range that extends to the north and to the south of us.

 

[Johnny Au]

We should not expect palm trees to grow along University Avenue in our lifetimes without the use of planters or having to move them indoors during the winter.

 

[howl]

You are not wrong, but it is not as if Toronto is a micro-climate where species are extant only in Toronto . Most plants and animals in our ecosystem live in a range that extends to the north and to the south of us.

The problem isn't the change itself. Given enough time ecoregions can migrate assuming the geography is conducive. The problem is the rate of change. For slower growing plants like large hardwood trees the northern boundary of the species might only be able to migrate a few kilometres per decade while faster spreading tree species from the south may out compete them, leading to the extinction of the slower spreading species . This will create a lot of stress in the entire ecosystem creating opportunities for some plant and animal species and disaster for others. Save for historic extinction level events the climate generally changes very slowly, over thousands of years, allowing ecoregions to migrate slowly. From this point-of-view anthropomorphic climate change can be considered an extinction level event.

In the local context, Toronto is on the border between the Lake Simcoe-Rideau Ecoregion and the Carolinian Ecoregion. We would expect the both ecoregions to expand northward, however geography does not allow that. The Lake Simcoe-Rideau Ecoregion can't spread onto the shield and therefore it can't move north. It will be squeezed out of existence. Southern Ontario will become like the eastern USA and while the current central Ontario broadleaf ecology will disappear. A new ecology for the southern part of shield will need to evolve which will put cottage country under a lot of stress too.