Adding Juice to La Niña

Climate Change Makes Climate Systems More Extreme

The flow of surface waters in the South Pacific ocean has a profound effect on the world’s weather.  The system known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can both warm the planet with El Niño, or cool the planet with La Niña.  2011 was a double-La Niña year.

Of course, climate on a local scale is not necessarily in lock-step with everything happening everywhere on the planet.  While La Niña years are cooler on a global scale, they are also consistent with hotter, drier summers in the American southwest, for instance.  Of course, the heatwave that struck the USA last year led to the second-warmest summer for the country as a whole, and the hottest summers ever recorded in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana.

The La Niña system is consistent with heavy rainfall in places like Colombia.  But the rains in 2011 were catastrophically heavy, killing 425 across Colombia, causing billions of dollars in damages, with at least 3 million people affected by floods and mudslides.

La Niña also brought drought and famine to East Africa, adding to the affects of a long-term drying trend in the region.

In Zimbabwe, they experienced the heaviest January rainfall in three decades.  The second wettest summer in the Australian record brought record-breaking rain to New South Wales and Victoria and widespread flooding in Queensland.  The extent of the flooding in Queensland was almost the size of France and Germany combined.

What happened in 2011 was La Niña-plus.  Globally, it was the warmest La Niña-year on record.  Climate change has already raised the level of water vapour in the atmosphere by 4% which means that there is more rain to fall out of it when it does fall.  When La Niña drops rain on Colombia and Australia, it drops a lot of rain.  And, with the planet already warmed by climate change, with earlier springs and drier soils, that means when La Niña brings heat to Texas it is adding to what is already there.

The result is starvation in Africa, floods in Australia and Colombia, fires and agricultural failures in Texas.

Systems like El Niño or La Niña have always been around to influence the climate.  According to a recent study, however, La Niña-related heatwaves in Texas are now 20 times more likely to occur than 50 years ago.

La Niña doesn’t really mean quite what it used to mean and the difference is not in our favour.  Chaos seldom is.  Unfortunately, because of the ongoing influence of changes in atmospheric composition, the addition of carbon dioxide from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, the chaos is likely to ramp up for the foreseeable future.

Climate change is already a fact of life.  That’s obvious.

It’s also obvious that we need to act before the chaos that climate change brings is beyond the capacity of our civilization to cope with.

Looking around, looking at merely the last three or four years, that critical point–beyond which effective action is impossible–doesn’t seem very far off.  Not far off at all. 

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See Global Warming Punched Up Some 2011 Weather Extremes

NOAA State of the Climate in 2011 – highlights

Heat Wave USA 2011

Reposted from Father Theo's Blog http://fathertheo.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/adding-juice-to-la-nina/

Free Riders and Wildfires

My local Skytrain station has been undergoing construction for some time now.  Last year they closed down one entrance for several months to rebuild the stairs.  This year they tore down the stairs to build a turnstile and accompanying bureaucratic paraphernalia – to fight against free riders.

It’s already been calculated that the money they save from stopping free riders will never recoup the cost of building the turnstiles.  So the government is spending our money in order to, um, lose money.

Free riders bother some people’s minds so much that spending useless money fighting it appears logical to them.

Honestly, it has never been the free riders on the buses that bother me; it’s the free riders in the cars.  We all pay taxes to build the roads, just like we all pay taxes to build the transit system.  But cars ride free while pedestrians have to pay.

The real free riders.

If we are going to have free riders, honestly, I’d rather it be pedestrians.  They are not sending 11 tons of pollution into the atmosphere every year like your average commuter car.

Which the owners also insist on dumping for free.

Why should I pay to pollute? the free riders ask.

Well, because there are real costs sending carbon dioxide into the biosphere, actually, that somebody eventually is going to have to pay.  And logically it should be those who incurred those costs.

What kinds of costs?  Well, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, not your usual bunch of eco-radicals, financed a study into the affects of climate change on wildfires in British Columbia.  The study found that over the next forty years, the number of wildfires may increase more than 50%. British Columbia is already suffering an increased burn because of earlier springs and hotter weather brought on by climate change, averaging 2000 fires a year from 2000 to 2010.

An extra 1000 fires a year in British Columbia on top of our already disastrous 2000 is an extra cost, a major one, but only one among many, that future generations will have to pay..

That’s why, as far as I’m concerned, pedestrians should ride free.  Pedestrians aren’t messing with my grandchildren’s (or children’s) future.

Cars are.

But I’m not saying put tolls on the streets.  Equality is fine for now.  I just say, if cars ride free, then pedestrians should too.

With free transit, people will get out of their cars anyway without anybody forcing or inconveniencing them.

We’ll all win from that.

And it will really put a dent in the free rider problem.  The free riders on the streets and highways, that is.

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See Climate change to bring more severe wildfires to BC – report: Vancouver Sun

Reposted from Father Theo’s Blog The Free Rider Problem

Because spills occur: No Enbridge

We don't want the Northern Gateway pipeline to pass through British Columbia because, frankly, it is not in our civilization's interest to take any of this oil out of the ground at all.  We already have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and too much damage has already been done.  However, there are other reasons to oppose Enbridge and the Gateway project that even climate change deniers can understand.

When they build pipelines, they have spills.  Spills look like the picture on the right.  And most don't occur conveniently by a road so they are easy to deal with.

Some occur by rivers.  For instance, this one here near Red Deer, Alberta:   http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120608/bc_alberta_pipeline_spill_120608/20120608?hub=BritishColumbiaHome&utm_source=ctvbc.ca

They intend to build the Northern Gateway pipeline through some of the wildest, most remote--and pristine--wilderness on the planet.  Hazards include avalanches in the Rockies and the Coast Range, floods over literally hundreds of streams, wildfires, storms, and that's before we get to the coast and load it all up on gigantic tankers and send them through narrow channels out to Hecate Strait, one of the most treacherous bodies of water on the planet.

It's not a good idea.

The number of permanent jobs the pipeline will create in British Columbia is less than 60.  The number of streams that will be endangered by the pipeline is reportedly more than 200.  That's just bad math.

People want #publictransit. Let's get going.

University of B.C. students support TransLink's Moving Forward Plan for funding: "Unfortunately, while environmentally conscious university students stand at bus stops each day, the government of British Columbia is ignoring their good intentions, by failing to fund an adequate system of rapid transit in the Lower Mainland."

'via Blog this'

Canadian startup builds a social network for bus riders - The Globe and Mail

Canadian startup builds a social network for bus riders - The Globe and Mail: "Starting Thursday in Vancouver, This Is Our Stop aims to create another type of niche social network: a social network for bus stops."

'via Blog this'

$27Million dollars to collect fares

Metro Vancouver’s transit police costs increase 110 per cent in five years: report: "Martin Crilly noted in an efficiency review of the transit authority that it cost $27.1 million last year to run the Transit police — a 111-per-cent increase since 2006, which is partly because of additional officers assigned to the Canada Line."

'via Blog this'

Bike unfriendly Vancouver BC

Here's a photo of the latest work the City of Vancouver has done to improve life for cyclists

Yes, they filled in a gap in a cement curb that previously allowed cyclists to ride through a park and avoid the many large, toxic trucks in the surrounding area.

This is a park (Strathcona) that has a bicycle rack in the middle of it but no bicycle access, unless you stop and lift your bike up over the curb, not an easy feat for older or younger folks or those of us who carry heavy loads.

Over a decade ago, I formally requested that the curbs be cut to allow cyclists to more easily use this safer route.  It could link up the Adanac bikeway with National Avenue that runs past the Via train station to the Main Street Spytrain Station.  There's a new artificial turf park on the road (with uncovered bike racks) and the City's engineering yard (with over a kilometre of free car parking: hmm, why weren't meters put here?).

When I made my request, I was told it would take 7 years.  That's how long the queue was then for requested curb cuts, for both bicycles and wheelchairs and strollers and scooters, etc.

Well, it took longer than 7 years but they finally got to it.  Only they filled it up instead of cutting it out.  Thanks.

And while we're on the topic of making it easier to cycle in Vancouver, the by-law fining people who tie up pets outside of businesses is another case in point.

Only car drivers can legally access businesses with a pet in tow.  Pedestrians, Cyclists, Bus Riders and the rest of the non-motorized population are criminalized if we bring our pets with us.

Oh, is that it?  No, no, no.  I could fill up your hard drive with issues that criminalize or threaten my life as a cyclist every single day.  Buttons that don't change lights (why did they spend $60,000 of our money for each of these?), painted lines that don't stop cars from killing cyclists, green (bike route) signs and 30 km/h signs that most drivers don't even notice (and don't enforce safe driving on those that do), yada, yada, yada.

If you'd care to, send a word of thanks in to your local councillor or mayor for making it easier and safer to travel in the city without killing other people or the planet.  

Business is not usual, for the planet and for humans.

Frankly, Vision's Vancouver is not the one for me, thank you.


dave olsen bike@resist.ca