[All] FW: Calgary's Manhattan moment. A fine article on climate change and the Alberta floods and droughts.

Tue Jun 25 17:45:41 EDT 2013

And then starting a campaign to make Naheed Nenshi our next Prime Minister! 

Susan K

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Subject: [All] FW: Calgary's Manhattan moment. A fine article on climate
change and the Alberta floods and droughts.

This is about the best I've seen about the Alberta floods.  Well worth a
read.  Maybe the good citizens of Calgary could take out a class action suit
against John Baird for having wrecked the Kyoto agreement and Stephen Harper
for his government's inaction on climate change. 

- Greg

Calgary's Manhattan moment 

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/06/24/calgarys_manhattan_mome
nt.html

This article originally appeared on  <http://thetyee.ca/> The Tyee.

"The frequency with which Canada experiences events such as heavy rainfall
of a given intensity (known as the return period), is projected to increase
such that an event that occurred on average once every 50 years will be
likely to occur about once every 35 years by 2050." -- Telling the Weather
Story, Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2012

My city, a vibrant place that often transcends the province's narcissistic
oil culture, has had a Manhattan moment.

We thought we were big and powerful and beyond humbling just like New York.
But as every true cowboy knows, Mother Nature invariably has the last word.

And so Calgarians are now living a chronicle foretold by climate scientists.

Many once worked at federal agencies that the nation's federal government
ruthlessly axed in an ideological assault on science and reason.

My friends and neighbours have also experienced another extreme weather
event that Insurance Bureau of Canada reported a year ago, "will likely
result in continued flood risk throughout Alberta."

Alberta, always a geography of maximum weather, is now climate change
central in Canada due to exponential growth in human communities and all in
the path of increasing floods, droughts, fires and hail storms.

Only a decade ago bad weather was racking up $100 million worth of damages
every year. Today unpredictable events create half a billion dollars in
disasters almost every year.

Yet most Albertans still can't believe the scale of the multi-billion-dollar
disaster that has dampened Calgary and environs - affluence tends to dull
the senses.

Tragedy, too, breeds its own strange brew of incongruities.

In Calgary a citizen can still down a cappuccino on 17th Ave. while watching
fire trucks laden with yellow Zodiacs race to flooded homes just blocks
away.

So here's what happened in the semi-arid Bow River basin (four per cent of
Alberta) - an occurrence largely predicted by climate scientists and water
experts: an "extreme" weather event fell upon us like some Texas belly
washer, and left tens of thousands homeless. Damage will total in the
billions.

The speed and scale of the event "stunned" Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a
climate change skeptic, and it mortified Premier Alison Redford, whose
deficit-plagued government hasn't budgeted for disasters, let alone the
future. (One 2011 report described Alberta's reticence on the issue this
way: "Leadership on climate change adaptation from senior levels in all
departments is weak.")

The Great Flood, which punched a giant hole in the TransCanada Highway in
Canmore, swelled rivers and undermined infrastructure built for, well, a
more stable and reliable climate. The flood also exposed some market-driven
deceptions about geography and basic hydrology.

It seems that flood plains will fill with water in oil-rich Alberta, a truth
most might find evident but one the province's one-party government has
tried to conceal from the public for years.

A 2006 Provincial Flood Mitigation Report even recommended that the province
forbid the selling of flood plains to developers. But the one-party state
deep-sixed the report for five years and did not make it public until 2012.

The freak storm washed away landmarks, towns, homes, memories, roads,
pipelines, wells and bridges. It broke precipitation and stream flow
records.

First came scattered rainfall, which saturated the ground in the foothills.
Then the skies greyed like a man sick with cancer. The air, redolent of
water, hung with a heavy menace.

When the skies opened they delivered buckets of rain that seemed oddly
tropical in their intensity.

Along the foothills 80 to 340 millimetres of water fell in a 24-hour period.
Calgary alone broke a record and received 45 mm in a day.

Alberta's sprawling cities suddenly rediscovered that mountain water moves
downhill as fast as torrents ripped through Canmore and Bragg Creek first.

And then the Bow and Elbow rivers swelled, spilling their banks with three
times more water than the so-called landmark flood of 2005. (Climate change
seems to be all about scoring Olympic records in global weather.)

Many citizens including myself gathered at an off-leash dog park above the
Elbow River to gawk and stare at rising waters on Friday morning in Calgary.

It was a remarkable day because the force and volume of water in the city's
rivers brought much of Calgary's oil economy to a standstill.

Due to road closures and flooding, curious cyclists took to the streets in
record numbers too.

Save for the odd reconnaissance helicopter and emergency vehicle sirens, the
city seemingly lost its vehicular bustle and grew quiet. The sound of
flowing water became, for a day at least, Calgary's loudest radio station.

The suspension bridge by Sandy Beach crumpled and collapsed in a muddy
torrent.

The onlookers photographed the chocolate water of the Elbow with their
phones like tourists as it whooshed its way into city neighborhoods
inundating thousands of homes and the Stampede grounds.

Meanwhile the Bow River took on the shape of the Mississippi and shut down
the downtown core of the city. Canada's oil capital could be without power
for days if not weeks.

As I watched with a mixture of sadness and horror (the energy of Mother
Nature is unlike any mechanical energy) I recalled a long list of dry
climate change reports and emotionless forecasts for Alberta.

In 2005 the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative promised warming
temperatures, melting glaciers, variable rainfall, changes in stream flows,
accelerated evaporation and more extreme events.

In 2006 climate scientist Dave Sauchyn told a Banff audience that "droughts
of longer duration and greater frequency, as well as unusual wet periods and
flooding" would be the new forecast. Meanwhile researchers documented a
26-day shift in the onset of spring in Alberta over the past century.

Five years later the Bow River Council concluded that "Our rapidly growing
population demands much of the land and water. Our climate is changing and
the future of our water supplies is uncertain."

In 2010 the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, an
agency that the Harper government killed last year because it didn't like
its messages on climate change, reported that changing precipitation
patterns were "the most common gradual, long-term risk from a changing
climate identified by Canadian companies."

In particular oil and gas firms "with operations in Alberta expressed the
highest level of concern. A number of them described potential water
shortages due to decreased precipitation and runoff as the most significant
risk from physical impacts of climate change that they are likely to face."

In 2011 the NREE published more inconvenient truths in a document called
Paying the Price. It concluded that the annual cost of flooding in Canada
due to climate change could total $17 billion a year by 2050.

It added that "economic and population growth, coupled with anticipated
effects of climate change, will impact Canada's freshwater systems and
create new pressures on the long-term sustainability of our water
resources."

Moreover rising temperatures will "affect precipitation patterns and
evaporation rates, as well as the frequency, intensity and duration of
extreme weather and climate events like droughts, heat waves and storms."

The redundancy of the reports is startling. A 2011 document on climate
change's impact on the Bow River warned that events could be "far more
severe than modern water management has previously experienced."

And then came the kicker. In 2012 the Insurance Bureau of Canada produced a
report by Gordon McBean, an expert on catastrophes. It bluntly warned that
Alberta "will be greatly affected by drought and water scarcity under
changing climate conditions, and can expect potential increases in hail,
storm and wildfire events." Spring rainfall could increase by 10 to 15 per
cent in southern Alberta too.

In addition to changing rainfall patterns, "Retreating glaciers and stream
flows may create difficulty in providing potable water to Alberta's rapidly
increasing population, and water scarcity may constrain Alberta's economic
development."

And the list of warnings and chronicles foretold goes on and on like the Bow
River itself.

After Hurricane Sandy pulverized Manhattan last year, New Yorkers realized
that they lived at sea level and were extremely vulnerable to climate
change. They also learned that placing electrical stations and emergency
equipment in basements of buildings or at street level wasn't smart
thinking.

The city's state of emergency convinced the governor of New York, Andrew
Cuomo, that "anyone who says there hasn't been a dramatic change in weather
patterns is in denial."

According to a recent Nature commentary by energy analyst Chris Nedler, a
Google search now turns up more than one million hits "that mention both
'Hurricane Sandy' and 'renewable energy.' "

Calgarians, who are as hardy and distinct as New Yorkers, might react in a
similar way after the Great Flood of 2013. They may even reassess their
government's carbon-laden pipeline fantasies as well as the pace and scale
of the tar sands.

If nothing else the city's often arrogant elites have been reminded that the
province's Chinese-style economic growth is vulnerable to extreme events. A
crowded and overdeveloped province of four million is nowhere near as
resilient as a province of one million. (By some estimates the province's
untamed growth could make Alberta a net water and food importer by 2050.)

Albertans have also learned that climate change delivers two extremes: more
water when you don't need it, and not enough water when you do. The
geographically challenged have also become learned, once again, that water
travels downhill and even inundates flood plains.

So climate change is not a mirage. Nor is it weird science or tomorrow's
news. It is now part of the flow of daily life.

Moreover there is a steep price to pay for inaction on the destabilizing
pollution emitted by our proliferating energy slaves.

Water scientist David Schindler, who has warned repeatedly about the extreme
droughts and water scarcity that climate change is bringing to the prairies,
summed up the whole messy situation in an email to The Tyee and BBC.

"Costs (from the flooding) will be in the billions, and human error is a
good reason why, but for the most part it is due to underestimating and
ignoring natural flow patterns, rather than the usual watershed
modifications," wrote Schindler.

"Could the wacky weather be part of what is predicted due to climate
warming? Very possibly, but of course it is impossible to say so with any
certainty."

In any case Calgary has had its Manhattan moment.

 <http://thetyee.ca/Bios/Andrew_Nikiforuk/> Andrew Nikiforuk is a multiple
National Magazine Award-winning journalist who has been writing about the
oil and gas industry for nearly 20 years.

Lauren Eric Swenarchuk, Ph.D.
Apt 914, 580 Christie Street
Toronto. Ontario M6G 3E3
Canada
Ph: 416-658-7747
email: l.swenarchuk at utoronto.ca

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