The Climate Change Thread

[Johnny Au]

Andrew Scheer Is The Only Major Leader Not Planning To Attend A Climate Protest Friday

See link.

What about Doug Ford?

Scheer, Ford, and Alberta Premier Jason Kenny are all climate change denialists.

They would be happy to live on Venus.

 

[Northern Light]

A study is out looking at how many trees can and should be planted, and where in order to combat climate change.

For First Time Ever, Scientists Identify How Many Trees to Plant and Where to Plant Them to Stop Climate Crisis

Researchers have identified exactly where we can plant a certain amount of trees in order to stop the climate crisis in its tracks.

www.goodnewsnetwork.org

Canada's share, 78,000,000 hectares worth which would equate to roughly 195 Billion trees at 2,500 per hectare or 1 per 4m2

The promise of 2 Billion now seems rather inadequate......

 

[W. K. Lis]

Mayor John Tory enlists landlords in emissions plan as Toronto declares ‘climate emergency’

From link.

Public, commercial and institutional landlords are pledging to join the City of Toronto’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts, Mayor John Tory says, but their reduction targets are yet to be determined.

Tory made the announcement Wednesday before the start of the October city council meeting where council unanimously declared a “climate emergency” with new aggressive targets for Toronto to become carbon neutral, where emission reductions and offsets equal or exceed production.

The mayor said he expects the landlords, controlling a total of 300 million square feet of space, who accepted his invitation to join a “Green Will Initiative,” will see different targets set for different types of properties, starting with 2025 and then every five years.


Each landlord will benchmark their current emissions and then devise plans to reduce them, largely through retrofits to make buildings more energy efficient, and to ensure the reductions continue and increase.

Noting property owners stand to save money in energy costs, Tory added that Ontario and federal governments also need to step up with financial help, possibly including incentives to get emissions reduced, Tory said.


Among those joining the city in the initiative are developers Cadillac Fairview and Oxford Properties, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto, Toronto District School Board and Toronto Catholic District School Board, Toronto Community Housing and University Health Network.

City council voted 25-0 to declare a climate emergency, making official the city’s determination to combat global warming.

The proposal from right-leaning Mayor John Tory and left-leaning Coun. Mike Layton, with input from local environmentalists, accelerates the city’s previous target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent below 1990 city levels by 2050.

Toronto is now committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. City staff will late next year give council options to try to reach that goal a decade earlier, by 2040. Those options could include significant city financial commitments to reduction efforts.

“We’re not meeting the urgency of the global crisis,” said Layton (Ward 11 University-Rosedale), noting warnings from international scientists, “and yet governments don’t take the actions necessary.”

He conceded Toronto’s climate emergency motion is “vague on specifics” but said it needs to be that way until council decides on funding mechanisms. The motion is informed by experts, activists and “youths rising up as part of this global movement,” he added.

Over to you Doug...

From link.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

What will Toronto’s climate be like in the future?

Visualization tool predicts North American urban climates in 2080

thevarsity.ca

If Toronto’s climate in 2080 is likely to be best approximated by the climate in Secaucus today, that hardly seems like a slow-motion catastrophe for us. Of course, we may choose to severely limit our CO2 emissions for reasons other than our own interest, like the good of vulnerable people in the third world, or generally protecting the environment from anthropogenic change. And we should certainly mitigate the negative impacts of the coming change by rebuilding infrastructure like sewers that we’d have to rebuild anyway over the rest of the century. But the climate forecast for Toronto itself doesn’t seem to justify the very expensive transformation of our economy and society activists are calling for, or the hysterical rhetoric that seems to be the new normal.

It is reasonable enough to argue that here in Toronto and possibly nation-wide in Canada that we stand to gain overall from climate change, strictly speaking in terms of the environment.

But we do not live in isolation. The political and social upheaval around the world will impact us one way or another.

I don't particularly want my future tax dollars to be spent on humanitarian aid relocating Florida's 20 million inhabitants once it is underwater, if it can be avoided. You could call that statement callous, but Floridians could have chosen to not settle en masse in localities like Cape Coral.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

It is reasonable enough to argue that here in Toronto and possibly nation-wide in Canada that we stand to gain overall from climate change, strictly speaking in terms of the environment.

But we do not live in isolation. The political and social upheaval around the world will impact us one way or another.

I don't particularly want my future tax dollars to be spent on humanitarian aid relocating Florida's 20 million inhabitants once it is underwater, if it can be avoided. You could call that statement callous, but Floridians could have chosen to not settle en masse in localities like Cape Coral.

I am not so much so concerned about giving humanitarian aid - but about the highly armed powder keg that is the US should things go south, pardon the pun - nevermind how the US itself will react to the even more volatile neighbours.

AoD

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I am not so much so concerned about giving humanitarian aid - but about the highly armed powder keg that is the US should things go south, pardon the pun.

AoD

Florida is just one example. Another is what happens when large parts of the USA run out of water? Our national sovereignty ends the moment the United States begins pumping water out of the Great Lakes basin to sustain California.

There are many ways that climate change can and will impact Toronto that may not be obvious and direct.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Florida is just one example. Another is what happens when large parts of the USA run out of water? Our national sovereignty ends the moment the United States begins pumping water out of the Great Lakes basin to sustain California.

There are many ways that climate change can and will impact Toronto that may not be obvious and direct.

Though it is probably cheaper to desalinate than to build the infrastructure that will allow water to be withdrawn from the Great Lakes area en masse and shipped to CA (and if there is one place that like high-tech solutions, it's CA). I'd worry more about the Great Plains agricultural belt instead - with its' dependence on the Ogallala Aquifer.

As the keeper of shared water resources, we do have a certain responsibility to offer it for humanitarian reasons, but not without limits.

AoD

 

[W. K. Lis]

Though it is probably cheaper to desalinate than to build the infrastructure that will allow water to be withdrawn from the Great Lakes area en masse and shipped to CA (and if there is one place that like high-tech solutions, it's CA). I'd worry more about the Great Plains agricultural belt instead - with its' dependence on the Ogallala Aquifer.

As the keeper of shared water resources, we do have a certain responsibility to offer it for humanitarian reasons, but not without limits.

AoD

Sure about that?
Artist Demonstrates What California Cities Would Look Like Beneath 25 Feet of Water
See link.

and link.

 

[Johnny Au]

Florida is just one example. Another is what happens when large parts of the USA run out of water? Our national sovereignty ends the moment the United States begins pumping water out of the Great Lakes basin to sustain California.

There are many ways that climate change can and will impact Toronto that may not be obvious and direct.

The United States is already pumping water out of the Great Lakes: the Chicago Sanitary Canal! It drains into the Mississippi River system.

 

[BurlOak]

The United States is already pumping water out of the Great Lakes: the Chicago Sanitary Canal! It drains into the Mississippi River system.

Back during WWII, a river was diverted from it's natural course to James Bay, to instead go to Lake Nipigon and the Great Lakes System.
Then, it was to create power for the war effort. Now it would be to supply water.

 

[AlbertC]

Extinction Rebellion: fresh protests to 'shut down' Westminster

Environmental activists plan to blockade roads in the centre of government for two weeks

Damien Gayle
Sun 6 Oct 2019 17.43 BST Last modified on Sun 6 Oct 2019 18.07 BST

Environmental activists from around Britain are set to swoop on Westminster on Monday morning in an attempt to “shut down” the heart of government with two weeks of disruptive protests.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) said its members are planning to blockade “every single road” into the central London district and plan to maintain the protests for at least 14 days, or until their demands are met.

Extinction Rebellion: fresh protests to 'shut down' Westminster

Environmental activists plan to blockade roads in the centre of government for two weeks

www.theguardian.com

 

[jje1000]

Anyone who doesn't take China or India (or most of Southeast Asia for that matter) seriously as part of the equation should be ignored, IMO. Yes, it also involves Western efforts in changing manners of consumption as well- no more outsourcing our pollution and then sitting on our laurels.

Chinese cargo vessels produce most plastic garbage floating in Atlantic ocean, study finds
Asia has surpassed South America as one of the largest producers of ocean plastic waste, according to researchers
Devika Desai October 2, 2019 12:23 PM EDT

Chinese merchant ships might be the leading cause of the plastic garbage accumulating in the the Atlantic ocean, according to a study published this week.

Researchers from Canada and South Africa who travelled to Inaccessible Island, which sits in the South Atlantic Ocean, found that 73 percent of the plastic bottles that had washed ashore appear to come from Asia, with most made in China.

Furthermore, 90 percent of the bottles that travelled from Asia were date-stamped within the last two years — ruling out the possibility that they could have travelled from land via ocean currents, which would take between three to five years.

“My initial thought was that it was going to be fishing fleets,” Ryan told BBC. “Fishing boats tend to be a little bit more Wild West than the merchant fleets as a rule, but the fact that it’s primarily Chinese doesn’t really fit with that because the predominant fishing fleets in the South Atlantic are Taiwanese and Japanese,” he added.

Researchers found that while the number of Asian fishing vessels in the South Atlantic have remained stable, the number of cargo vessels — namely, Chinese — had increased since the 1980s, which narrowed down merchant vessels as the primary source.

Chinese cargo vessels produce most plastic garbage floating in Atlantic ocean, study finds

Asia has surpassed South America as one of the largest producers of ocean plastic waste, according to researchers

nationalpost.com

 

[AlbertC]

Extinction Rebellion activists set up Berlin climate camp ahead of protests

05.10.2019

Extinction Rebellion climate activists have begun building a camp outside Chancellor Angela Merkel's office. During two weeks of international climate protests, they plan to block major roads in the German capital.

Extinction Rebellion activists set up Berlin climate camp ahead of protests | DW | 05.10.2019

Extinction Rebellion climate activists have begun building a camp outside Chancellor Angela Merkel's office. During two weeks of international climate protests, they plan to block major roads in the German capital.

www.dw.com

 

[jje1000]

Thousands of ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

Experts say this could have a devastating effect on wildlife

• Wil Crisp
• Sunday 29 September 2019 11:47

Global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with “cheat devices” that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air, The Independent can reveal.

More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil.

This means the vessels meet standards demanded by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) that kick in on 1 January.

However, the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions.

The ships that have been quickest to adopt the devices are the larger vessels, such as bulk carriers, container ships and oil tankers, which have the biggest engines and have historically been the worst polluters.

For every ton of fuel burned, ships using open-loop scrubbers emit approximately 45 tons of warm, acidic, contaminated washwater containing carcinogens including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organisation that provides scientific analysis to environmental regulators.

Bryan Comer, a senior researcher at ICCT, said the use of scrubbers by cruise ships is a particular concern.

The ICCT has estimated that cruise ships with scrubbers will consume around 4 million tons of heavy fuel oil in 2020 and will discharge 180 million tons of contaminated scrubber washwater overboard.

“About half of the world’s roughly 500 cruise ships have or will soon have scrubbers installed,” said Mr Comer. “Cruise ships operate in some of the most beautiful and pristine areas on the planet, making this all the more concerning.”

Scrubbers generally cost between £1.6m and £8.1m depending on the vessel – and the adoption of this technology has cost billions of dollars over recent years, according to Mr Comer.

“If you are conservative and say that ships are spending about $3m (£2.4m) per ship to instal scrubbers, at 4,000 ships that’s $12bn (£9.7bn) dollars of investment in a technology that enables ships to use the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel – heavy fuel oil.

“Worse, scrubbers increase fuel consumption by about 2 per cent, increasing carbon dioxide emissions."

Thousands of ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

Experts say this could have a devastating effect on wildlife

www.independent.co.uk

 

[AlbertC]

Extinction Rebellion: Arrests at Sydney and Amsterdam protests

Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion activists have been arrested as protests take place across the globe.

Thirty people were charged with committing offences in Sydney after hundreds blocked a road, while more than 100 were arrested in Amsterdam.

Protests have taken place in countries including the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Austria, France and New Zealand.

Protests by climate change activists are expected in some 60 cities over the next two weeks.

The group is also causing disruption in London, where more than 270 people were arrested on Monday.

Extinction Rebellion: Arrests at Sydney and Amsterdam protests

Hundreds of activists have been arrested as climate change protests start across the world.

www.bbc.com