News   Apr 03, 2020
From the Editor: A Message to Our Readers
 9.1K     3 
News   Apr 02, 2020
Topping Off March 2020: What's Hot on SkyriseEdmonton
 10K     0 
News   Apr 02, 2020
News Roundup for April 2, 2020
 3.3K     0 

Climate Change effects on urban life

That’s what they’ve been saying for the last 50 years, still waiting for all this devastation
 
J_gordo said:
That’s what they’ve been saying for the last 50 years, still waiting for all this devastation
Click to expand...
The problem is that the "devastation" is incremental versus overnight doom. Receding glaciers and ice sheets have had the most noticeable impacts over the last 50 years. There will come a time when our population won't be sustainable based on the availability of water, which will necessitate changes in behaviour. That will be challenging for Alberta society, given our ability to adapt to other changes. If you want specific examples of where there have already been impacts on large populations, look at Cape Town, South Africa, and the water usage changes they had to undergo.

Anyways, I'm happy that our construction season is longer overall, but I also acknowledge the cause behind it. The two things don't have to be mutually exclusive - you can acknowledge that the planet is indeed undergoing climate changes that have beneficial impacts in some parts of the world while having detrimental impacts in others.
 
It's wild to hear people say we haven't seen climate-related devastation two years after a record-breaking fire season across Canada, one year after a third of Jasper burned, and just days after the most intense landfalling Atlantic hurricane on record hit multiple Caribbean nations.
 
J_gordo said:
That’s what they’ve been saying for the last 50 years, still waiting for all this devastation
Click to expand...
Dude, real world is not a Hollywood movie where everything goes to shit overnight. But we are seeing several effects of climate change happening.
Longer and more intense storm seasons, more and more high precipitation events and rain related disasters in tropical areas.
More extreme climate fluctuations in the regions further south or north of the globe, with armer summers and winters that can be either much colder than expected or much warmer than expected, but that have consistently deviated from the historical medians. Add to that the increasingly shorter winters, the rapidly receding glaciers. Dude, I've been in Canada for around 10 years at this point, and in that span it has been noticeable how winters are getting shorter, less snowy and subject to more extreme variations in the weather patterns.
The amount of issues with crop yield, especially in countries that do not have the money to spend on artificially making them successful, is rising every year and it will come to a point in which even rich countries will not be able to sustain them artificially, due to the extreme costs and logistical hurdles to do so.
Denying climate change because you don't like how climate action impacts your way of life does not make it happening any less true.
 
It’s a construction forum so I’ll spare my rebuttals for sake of staying on topic
 
constance_chlore said:
It's wild to hear people say we haven't seen climate-related devastation two years after a record-breaking fire season across Canada, one year after a third of Jasper burned, and just days after the most intense landfalling Atlantic hurricane on record hit multiple Caribbean nations.
Click to expand...
Not just Jasper, but lets not forget here in Alberta also Fort McMurray, Slave Lake and the big Calgary flood. Also nearby fires in the NWT, central BC, floods in the lower mainland and I could go on.

There has been a lot of extreme weather events in the last decade or so.
 
Since this has become subject of some controversy on this forum, I think it's interesting to have a thread to discuss it.
 
inclusion said:
The problem is that the "devastation" is incremental versus overnight doom. Receding glaciers and ice sheets have had the most noticeable impacts over the last 50 years. There will come a time when our population won't be sustainable based on the availability of water, which will necessitate changes in behaviour. That will be challenging for Alberta society, given our ability to adapt to other changes. If you want specific examples of where there have already been impacts on large populations, look at Cape Town, South Africa, and the water usage changes they had to undergo.

Anyways, I'm happy that our construction season is longer overall, but I also acknowledge the cause behind it. The two things don't have to be mutually exclusive - you can acknowledge that the planet is indeed undergoing climate changes that have beneficial impacts in some parts of the world while having detrimental impacts in others.
Click to expand...
It's the old frog in boiling water situation, alas.
 
Keep in mind that although the earth has been hotter historically, the issue here is the rate of change; plants and animals alike don't have time to adapt. The largest mass extinction in the planet's history occurred when the earth warmed up by around 10 degrees C over a period of 50,000 years. That works out to an average one degree increase every 5,000 years. 90% of all marine life and 70% of terrestrial life was wiped out. In modern times, we've already warmed up by 1.5 degrees in less than 200 years. The youtuber Climate Town, who has a master's in climate science, says that this current rate of warming is around 50 times worse than the rate of warming over those 50,000 years. I'm not smart enough to verify his math, but I do know this: if 10 degrees over 50,000 years was too fast for almost all life on earth to adapt to, then we're really ni for it now. Even if we have the hubris to think we can isolate ourselves from the direct impacts through modern tech and engineering, we can't say the same for the ecosystems we depend upon for our survival.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top