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Canada weather: Heatwave hits record 46.6C as US north-west also frazzles
- mabub24 5y agoThere's the heat, but then there's also the humidity which is just oppressive. It's exhausting.
- christophilus 5y agoWelcome to South Carolina.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoWelcome to South Carolina in Vancouver.
- bserge 5y agoSince it seems relevant, what do you think about painting roofs and walls white en masse to reduce the usage of A/C?
- Retric 5y agoIt’s not always a net energy saver. You need to compare how much you want heating vs cooling around the year.
- bserge 5y agoRight, but in view of the ever increasing temperatures it seems like a good idea. I've done that to my old workshop, just literally painted the roof white. Dropped ~10 degC during summer, no change in winter. Seems to me that light roofs would help more during summer when there are lots of sunny days than dark roofs during winter when it's mostly cloudy. None of this is counting infrared/UV, but reducing visible radiation is still much better than nothing.
- pacbard 5y agoFrom a quick google scholar search, it seems that there is a trade-off between heating/cooling costs between summer and winter: > The results indicate that the energy savings ratios of the rooms with the sedum-tray garden roof and with the white roof were 25.0% and 20.5%, respectively, as compared with the black-roofed room, in the summer; by contrast, the energy savings ratios were −9.9% and −2.7%, respectively, in the winter. It seems that covering the building with a green garden is better than painting the roof white, but the heating costs were higher in the winter for both designs. I guess that changing the roof could work in climates where the winter is not too cold. On a side note, I wonder if it would be better to work on better insulation (both roof and sidings) rather than re-roofing a house. Note: I am not a civil engineer so I have no clue if the paper is good or not. [1]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2017.09.091 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2017.09.091
- icegreentea2 5y agoDepending on your climate, once you get sufficiently cold, many of your buildings will accumulate their own layer of white stuff (snow) anyways in the winter. This study was conducted in Chongqing which basically doesn't have snow. I suspect that the effect of this is highly location specific, both in terms of climate, as well as average insulation.
- thehappypm 5y agoI wouldn't really say this is true. Snow pooling up on roofs is a bad thing -- that's a lot of moisture and weight. Homes in snowy places have sloped roofs to avoid it. When I bought my house in Massachusetts, the previous homeowner even gave me a tool to push snow off the roof, if needed.
- icegreentea2 5y agoYou're right, you definitely don't want giant snow piles on your roof of your house, and yes, sloped roofs will help you avoid giant snow piles. But you still often end up with some covering. Not 100%, but I think high enough to meaningfully affect the cost-benefit calculations. Not to mention large commercial buildings with flat roots.
- arboghast 5y agoIt has been a requirement in Montreal for all new roofing for a few years now. Either green (vegetated) or light (with a solar reflection material). So most people have white elastomer roofs installed. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe it’s the only Canadian city with that requirement.
- xattt 5y agoWhere do solar panels fit into this if you have complete coverage of your roof?
- krylon 5y agoHas this had a measurable impact? (honest question, I like the idea very much.)
- arboghast 5y agoSo when I moved to Montreal in 2016 I bought a 2 floors condo built before the new law was passed (2005 I believe). Above the second floor it had gravel roof I think, I’m not sure what it was but it was very hot in the summer (not so much on the first floor). After replacing it with elastomer, temperature definitely went down a little bit on the thermostat but I personally don’t feel much of a difference. This could be because, in the morning, the sun is facing the large windows which warms the inside even more. Anecdotal, of course. Regardless, roof had to be changed. But the AC is definitely ON when it’s 25C and above regardless of the roof type.
- ipaddr 5y agoWouldn't this be a net negative with more heating days than cooling days to worry about?
- mgbmtl 5y agoMontreal has more days where heat is a problem (ex: for elderly people), than when cold is a problem. There are a lot of efforts put into reducing heat zones, from too much asphalt, not enough trees, etc. (I once ran for borough council :-) Since 2010, most Quebec building standards have also been updated pretty massively. I don't have references, but where I live, we had 1" insulation in the walls, and now the minimum requirement for new buildings is 1.5". Doors and windows tech have improved a lot too in the past 10-15 years. Overall, as I went through upgrades, our heating bills went down pretty significantly, but AC usage keeps going up.
- BelenusMordred 5y agoAn incredibly simple and effective measure that I've personally seen people rail against in tropical regions because it's ugly.
- bbarnett 5y agoBlack radiates heat faster than white too...
- onethought 5y agoNow there’s another similarity between Australia and Canada!
- cglace 5y agoAnd Atlanta has been uncharacteristically mild this year. Rarely a day above 90. Strange times.
- bbarnett 5y agoNo? From article: That was set in two towns in Saskatchewan - Yellow Grass and Midale - back in July 1937 at a balmy 45C (113F) Weather moves in cycles longer than human lives. You cannot rely upon personal experience, to know of local weather is truely unusual. We are like mayflies, not realizing that winter ever exists, or even times longer than a day.
- refurb 5y agoYup weather cycles are longer than human memory it seems. We go from "winters are so warm" to "wow, winters are so much colder now than before". Recency bias. You judge everything by what happened most recently.
- matwood 5y agoThe whole southeast has been mild this year (and had a lot of rain). Many evenings have felt fall-like in June. Understanding how climate change impacts weather is still very complex.
- coldcode 5y agoGet used to it. There are places in the world where it's that temperature at night plus high humidity and no one has air conditioning. Eventually people might only be able to live in Antarctica excepting of course it will have melted done to the actual ground.
- krylon 5y agoI really hope it's not too late to prevent that, but if we wanted to colonize Antarctica, we'd pretty much have to get rid of the ice anyway so we can grow plants there and access the natural resources laying underground. Otherwise, we'd be stuck eating krill and penguins, and I don't know how I'd feel about that. Vegetarians surely would not like that.
- Scarblac 5y agoIf you remove the ice, you get bare rock. There won't be good soil there for a very very long time.
- ithkuil 5y agoEven if Antarctica becomes temperate and eventually pleasant to live on, climate change doesn't change the number of sunlight hours you get in the winter
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoInteresting that your reading is “get used to it you lazy, weak Canadians” and not “a country that is seldom in the news except when you want to make a joke about the cold is now in the news because of the heat”. It makes for a striking argument to illustrate global warming and climate change.
- revscat 5y agoUnfortunately it will change nothing, at least nothing significant enough to prevent destruction. Those who profit monetarily or politically from global warming will continue to ignore it, or ridicule those who do not.
- rocknor 5y ago> Yet China and India continue to build new coal-fired power stations. And the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US - won't give a date to phase them out. The rich don't want to give up coal because they have gotten too comfortable with their overconsumption lifestyle, and the poor can't afford to not use coal because life in poverty is worse than life with climate change consequences. Now is the time to invest big in renewable energy research and encourage our children to participate in it, otherwise we are screwed.
- minikites 5y agoThis is one of the reasons it's such a big problem that the US government is a gerontocracy. Old people don't care about climate change because it won't affect them.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Old people don't care about climate change because it won't affect them. Old people discovered climate change and tried to warn us.
- minikites 5y agoAnd now they're doing everything they can to stop any progress: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/climate/feinstein-sunrise-green-new-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/climate/feinstein-sunrise... Conservatives in government don't believe in climate change and liberals in government say they believe in it right up until they actually have to do anything. The common pattern is that they're all in their 60s, 70s, and 80s and will be dead before the most dire consequences arrive.
- chrisseaton 5y agoIf they don't care what will happen after they die and they're already successful people... why would they be working at all? Surely they'll be at home burning through all their money and not worrying about anything?
- minikites 5y agoClimate change is only going to make weather more erratic and our political systems won't be able to cope with the necessity of changing national borders as climate change shifts what areas are arable and inhabitable. I'm not very optimistic about the future.
- jnmandal 5y ago> the necessity of changing national borders Is there any reason to maintain nations with changed borders? I feel it's more likely we would abolish or abandon most existing states and form refugee societies in the habitable regions
- thehappypm 5y agoThis seems really unlikely. It seems more likely that walls will go up and the good-weather nations will get very defensive. Bad-weather nations will either descend into chaos or adapt--some nations like the UAE and Singapore thrive under extreme heat, with sufficient technology and political stability.
- walrus01 5y agoTrends in atmospheric co2 as measured at the peak of Mauna Loa, Hawaii: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ long term co2: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... And yet, we still have actual supposedly rational people being paid to say "global warming is a myth" or "we are just in another cycle of ice ages". It boggles the mind.
- User23 5y agoThat chart switched from ice core to volcano data in 1958 which is why there is the sudden huge shift. Also, an active volcano is an interesting place to do CO2 observations given that volcanoes may well be the largest natural CO2 emitters on the planet. In any event I virtually never see any intelligent discussion of the subject, just cherry-picked data followed by disparaging anyone who might merely express doubt, let alone disagreement. That may well be effective for establishing partial consensus, but it’s not a particularly good way to increase knowledge and understanding. Edit: Responses like child’s being a case in point. Anyone that opens with “So…” and follows up with a straw man or even a complete non sequitur such as in this case is not contributing to the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity. Edit: As for CO2 sensors mine has been sitting in the mid 300s for the decade I’ve had it.
- walrus01 5y agoSo your theory is that the hundreds of climatologists who've peer-reviewed co2 sensor data/papers based on information from mauna loa have all wilfully disregarded the existence of the volcano and its gases? That's interesting.
- unlikelymordant 5y agoYou can buy a co2 sensor right now, go outside and measure very similar readings. Is that cherry picking too?
- Gravityloss 5y agoA lot of things to fact check your arguments. But CO2 measurements done in multiple places agree to a rising trend. Where did you get your information from?
- nickpp 5y agoI am so angry about this. We had the solution for climate change. We had it for dozens of years now. It's called nuclear. It has its downsides, but they are significantly smaller than downsides of fossil. Even with a few more meltdowns here and there it'd have done much less damage. And if we'd have used it by now we'd have learned to control it better and safer. But we didn't use it. And there is just one guilty party for that: the green activists. They opposed Nuclear rabidly while never proposing any practical solution instead. We should talk about this. We should point our collective fingers at them. Because today, the same luddite, anti-tech activists are busy delaying evolution and progress in other areas as well. Their dream of an egalitarian, resource-constrained, pseudo-agrarian society is a nightmare of stagnation and regress. They must be confronted and stopped. If it's not already too late... It's a war, a culture war. A war between dreams and nightmares, a war between tradition and innovation, a war between progress and stagnation, a war for the future. And it's our only hope.
- dale_glass 5y agoNuclear is dead. Back when it was new, it still had something to offer, but today it's a complete dead end, for practical and economical reasons. It's not getting built because it's hard to make money from it anymore. If it was a solid money making proposition you'd see lots of resources being thrown into overcoming any activist resistance, and shoring up any concerns. Compare this with oil. Ecologically awful, but it makes lots and lots of money and as a result it's not having the same issues.
- nickpp 5y agoIsn't oil subsidized while nuclear covered in red tape and regulations? It should be the other way around: tax carbon and subsidize nuclear.
- dale_glass 5y agoWhich red tape and regulations? You're not seriously asking people not to keep a good eye on nuclear powerplants, are you? Because accidents are not a good thing. And yeah, I get they don't kill that many people, but evacuating a large amount of people and cleaning up is an enormous expense. Which is part of the problem really. You can build a really solid powerplant, which will cost $$. Or you can let people do it on the cheap, and deal with the consequences when it leaks, which will cost $$$.
- II2II 5y agoThe article points out that we cannot attribute this event to climate change. Fair point. It also points out that these heat waves are more likely given climate change. Fair point. Unfortunately, there is no depth to the article. What would I like to see? First, describe what caused the heatwave. Second, describe how much more likely these heatwaves are with climate change. Third, describe how climate change will impact the severity of these heatwaves. Even though climate models are different from weather models, I am guessing they provide enough information to provide estimates. These estimates would provide people with more concrete examples of what we can expect if we don't alter our behaviour.
- criddell 5y agoThat won't fit in an article. If you go longer form, then you are basically asking for the slide show that Al Gore was presenting 20 years ago and was later turned into An Inconvenient Truth.
- II2II 5y agoMy expectations may be unrealistic in terms of the amount of research, but I think it can be done in an article that is not much longer than the one published. I think it's fair to assume that climate change is a thing, so further proof is not required. I think the public needs more context with respect to how it could end up affecting their lives, and a weather event like this one appears to be an ideal opportunity to present that.
- blondie9x 5y agoTo some seeing records such as these fall is heartbreaking. It’s agonizing and vexing when you wonder what can you do to help slow down climate change? The reality is we aren’t doing nearly enough to slow it down and the Earth is gradually destabilizing. We see insane cold snaps such as those that impacted Texas this winter, and at the opposite end of the spectrum heat waves unlike anything humans have ever experienced before. The worst part is these will continue to get worse year after year while greenhouse gas emissions rise. Imagine the record high temperatures falling this week and year. In 5 years or 10 years they might even distant memories as we continue to see records broken and the planet become less livable. The worst part of this is Earth is all there is for us. There is no where else to go. We are this tightly interconnected ecosystem where all beings are completely bound to one another. Our home is surrounded by darkness for millions of miles. There is no option B. There won’t be, that’s just the way it is. Mars won’t be option B. Don’t kid yourself. If we don’t right the course on greenhouse gas emissions with urgent changes to limit emissions now, then we will have lost the habitability of Earth. I can envision us having to live inside year round without being able to go outside. Does this feel so much like a remote possibility now? It seems year over year temperate days become more elusive. Fires. Droughts. Extreme weather events. Floods. The destruction and extinction of entire ecosystems hangs in the balance of our climate. The crazy thing is we can stop this. But only with urgent individual and society actions and sacrifices now.
- DrSiemer 5y agoButterflies. I miss the fields full of multicolored butterflies I used to play in as a kid. High grass used to be green in the summer, now most of it is dead and yellow. Driving an entire day for vacation and finding just a few dead bugs on the flat places that used to be caked with their corpses. Actually cold winters and fresh snow that stays on the ground. Ice skating for miles and miles during the day and huddling by the fire at night. All gone, except for a few snippets here and there, barely enough to scratch the surface of the nostalgia. My kids will never know these things. My dad once drove his car over the frozen river near our hometown. I've never even seen ice on it. Hey, what can you say, we were overdue.
- thehappypm 5y agoWhere do you live?
- DrSiemer 5y agoThe Netherlands. You'd think that a country that has most of it's important urban areas literally below sea-level would be a little more concerned about the changes to our climate. But nah, most of us still ignore it. A Dutch expression [1] is "Na mij de zondvloed". It roughly translates to "The (biblical) flooding will come after I'm dead". Unfortunately this is a common attitude here. [1] From the French "Après moi, le déluge" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
- bobbean 5y agoBut it'll be over soon, you wait.
- moneywoes 5y agoHottest day today send help
- henearkr 5y agoNow. We need to build a collective fund to buy out all fossil fuels, and to put them in an unusable form (e.g. by mixing them with other fluids or with sand). It's similar to what is done with biochar after it is produced: the biochar is ground to powder and mixed with compost before being sold to farms.
- adelHBN 5y agoIn our podcast, we had professor of climate law (he is JD/PhD) talk to us about climate change. One of the irrefutable signs of climate change is that our weather is getting hotter... more record-setting years than the past. Yet, this alarming evidence doesn't concern most conservatives, who simply refuse to accept the science. Aren't they afraid of what's going to happen to us humans?
- refurb 5y agoI thought we went from global warming (hotter) to climate change (not hotter everywhere). And based on what I’ve read, we’re WAY past fixing this problem. Even if CO2 emissions went to zero tomorrow, the earth will continue to warm and make vast swathes uninhabitable.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago> Even if CO2 emissions went to zero tomorrow, the earth will continue to warm and make vast swathes uninhabitable. This is really not true: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/would-gw-stop-with-greenhouse-gases/ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/would-gw-s... > Even if all emissions were to stop today, the Earth’s average surface temperature would climb another 0.6 degrees or so over the next several decades before temperatures stopped rising. Limiting additional temperature increase to 0.6C would be a huge win. We are a WAY past not having to adapt to major changes in climate. We're certainly not way past preventing the most catastrophic outcomes. Unfortunately, there's absolutely zero evidence that we'll actually do anything meaningful about our CO2 emissions, so IMO we're most definitely screwed. I think it's infinitely more likely that a nation like China will unilaterally engage in geoengineering (e.g. depositing particulates in the troposphere) than we are to actually collectively curb our CO2 emissions.
- numair 5y agoPeople will say “but what about the third world???” and feel very comfortable with their position in a socially conscious first-world country. Yeah, well, where do you think those poor people in the third world are getting the money for their evil coal power plants? Countries like Japan and Australia.[1][2] We have to reform our investment laws and hold first-world multinationals and governments accountable. They’re the ones funding all of this trash. 1: http://www.nocoaljapan.org http://www.nocoaljapan.org 2: https://reneweconomy.com.au/palaszczuks-secret-royalties-deal-amounts-to-270m-loan-to-adani-tai-says-56538/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/palaszczuks-secret-royalties-dea...
- sbehlasp 5y agoIt is not one country to be blamed, we all have to reduce and cut the Carbon footprints before it is too late. I am not scientist but Nuclear plants though are better option but it still poses threat to environment extraction of resources leads to threat and then we have seen fukushima nuclear disaster after Chernobyl disaster which was classified level 7 on scale [Read : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...] and disposal of radioactive materials. There is a recent article i came across which shows how testing nuclear bomb, even after decades posing a serious threat [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/nuclear-fallout-showing-us-honey-decades-after-bomb-tests https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/nuclear-fallout-show...] So i agree totally agree that now is the time and we have to be quick investing, installing renewable energy and encourage our coming generation to participate in it, otherwise we are screwed. Also, i would really encourage everyone to save and conserve energy. Doing our small bit makes a big difference