Greetings Everyone, We just had our fourth devastating storm on Vancouver Island in the last few weeks. The first, a vicious snow, brought power outages to tens of thousands, including folks on the smaller gulf islands, and then rendered Vancouver (city) and several other spots without any clean water due to flooding contamination. Next we had three never experienced in anyone's lifetime wind storms that toppled huge trees across the above mentioned regions, Vancouver's Stanley Park being hard hit. The fir and cedar trees here are not well rooted, nor do they tend to get watered in summer's heat. As someone whose sailboats were twice wiped out on the west side of Vancouver Island pointed out: despite the devastation, almost no one died. These were hurricane force winds. I returned with the suggestion that perhaps the very trees at risk buffered the blows that could have been deadly. (I hope people, especially in the country, will consider building brick or stone homes now, with fireplaces and hand pumps for water, rather than perpetuating the crappy particle board vinyl clad death traps they slap together in weeks which tend to depend on electric water pump and electric heat.)
This morning I heard about the great fog of Britain, then read this bit, below, from the Guardian about migrating sea creatures who are responding to rising ocean temperatures. If you link up for the rest of this article, you can also access the one on Vostock's ice core samples taken in 2004. EPICA scientists extracted samples 420,000 years old which helped to firmly establish the relationship between high concentrations of CO2 and high temperatures. This study, though I've read differing other reports on the concentrations, claims that pre-industrail levels of CO2 were 280 ppm, and current ones are 370 ppm. The concentration/rate at which CO2 has built up in the previous century, compared with all previous years, is what is considered the most convincing argument for CO2 reduction. It is also the strongest indicator of our current greenhouse gas effect. Unlike the serious symptoms or threats of rising temperatures, diminishing ice caps, wild weather, drought and such, reduction of CO2 is something we can consciously pursue. Here in Victoria there are no carbon emissions controls for vehicles because the winds carry bad air off in seconds. Much like the irresponsible attitude to sewage: the ocean is presumed to carry it away. But recently, after decades of costly studies and much bad publicity, the City of Victoria finally caved, and then the provincial government stepped in immediately afterwards to make like heroes, forcing a definite action course by Spring of '07, and finally offering financial assistance. BTW the City of Victoria consists of only 130,000 or so of the alleged 750,000 who live in the greater Victoria region. Saanich, for example, far more populated, has a treatment plant. But, it was shocking to learn that such a popular city never even tried until it was embarrassed, then ultimately forced into it. Recently much press coverage was given to projections of rising ocean levels expected by the end of this century, and how much could be lost to possible meters of warmer water in our region. Rising waters mean rising sewage, so Victoria had better act fast to situate a treatment facility on safe ground. People just keep flocking here, but there are only a few main arteries of transportation, mostly along coastal areas. Makes you wonder, apart from fast turnover, why anyone would invest in low lying coastal land. Natalia Kuzmyn ********************************************************* WARMING SEAS DRIVING WATER CREATURES NORTH ALOK JHA, GUARDIAN,UK - Climate change has forced seashore creatures around Britain to relocate, with warming seas pushing many species of barnacles, snails and limpets north in search of cooler areas of coast, according to a new study. . . By comparing their new data with 1950s records from the same areas, researchers found that some marine species adapted to cold water were migrating away from warming seas, and were moving faster than their terrestrial counterparts. They include toothed and flat topshells, acorn barnacles, China limpets and small periwinkles. . . Increased global temperatures have also confused birds this winter: robins, thrushes and ducks that would normally fly south from Scandinavia have only been turning up in Britain in December - long after snow usually drives them south. According to ornithologists, Bewick's swans, which usually arrive in Britain from Siberia in October, seemed to have stopped for longer than usual in countries such as Estonia or the Netherlands because of plentiful food there. . . Sea surface temperatures around Britain have increased in line with global warming, in some places by more than the global average: the western English Channel has seen a 1C rise since 1990, bigger than any changes since records began. There have been similar changes in the eastern Channel. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1975720,00.html _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
