Canada’s economy is making a comeback. Fiscal stimulus announced late last year in the US is positively affecting Canadian exports.
Things must be good economically speaking. The Bank of Canada is thinking about interest rates hikes. Some banks raised mortgage rates just this morning.
Should we feel relief?
I admit, many Canadians will. However, as economic benchmarks grow more positive, factors affecting our lives in a negative fashion grow as well.
Carbon emissions rise, global warming’s grip tightens, the many consequences of climate change become more severe.
According the global temperature charts from NASA, 2010 posted the warmest average temperature of any year since 1880. With global manufacturing running on all cylinders, in Canada and elsewhere, another record year is in the making. (Of course, it’s chilly outside today, so we likely won’t feel negative effects for a few more months).
[Nasa global average chart: Link to NASA]
Thanks to the Alberta tar sands and lack of meaningful oversight related to carbon emissions there, Canada will contribute more than its fair share, per capita, to rising temperatures in the world. And with 60% or more of tar sand crude going to the US, our country will contribute significantly to the refueling of the fossil-fuel based economy and higher emissions to the south.
Not a pretty picture by any stretch as we watch Canada’s manufacturing sector celebrate better growth.
Perhaps the best purchase one can make to support the best future is no purchase at all.
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Reduce spending. Pay down debt. Save money for tough times ahead.
Please click here for more Climate Change Concerns.
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2 comments:
"According the global temperature charts from NASA, 2010 posted the warmest average temperature of any year since 1880."
Surely you jest. You don't really take that graph seriously. What were they using for thermometers back in 1880? Back in 1900? Back in 1930? A tube of mercury and a bent nail, surely you don’t believe that those temperature readings were even remotely accurate from those things. And surely you don’t believe that they were global in scope. Back in 1880, there were only a few colleges in the world recording temperature, hardly global. Global temperature readings truly began with satellites in 1979. So in reality the global graph only goes back 35 years, not 130. That graph is neither accurate not global, and you know it. I think you are trying to fool your readers. Cheers.
I'm sure I'm not fooling anyone. Excellent, scientific information is available for all to read.
For example, please click on link to NASA provided in post; then on first graph on right side of new page; the following is listed.
Heading: Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change
"Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with the base period 1951-1980. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates."
"Our traditional analysis using only meteorological station data is a line plot of global annual-mean surface air temperature change, with the base period 1951-1980, derived from the meteorological station network."
There's more, of course, for the willing reader.
As one might expect, the writers don’t provide information re whether a bent nail was used to hang their thermometers, but they likely had their choice between the Fahrenheit scale (introduced in 1724) and the Celsius scale (invented by Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius, 1701-1744). The Kelvin scale came later, 1848 along with the "Second Law of Thermodynamics", the dynamical theory of heat and boxes of very straight nails.
Concerning the global meteorological station network:
The International Meteorological Organization was the first organization formed (1873) with the purpose of exchanging weather information among the countries of the world. It was born from the realization that weather systems move across country boundaries and knowledge of pressure, temperature, precipitations, etc... upstream and downstream is needed in order to correctly do weather forecasting.
How many of your colleges took part by the 1800s, I’m not sure.
There's so much well-informed information from around the world re climate change that I'm sure I'm not fooling anyone.
Cheers.
Gord Harrison
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