Category Archives: Environmental Apocalypse

Nature always bats last

Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse, New Attitude to Nature

 

 

It first dawned on me that climate change was here and now when I read an article bby Oliver MIlman  in the Guardian Weekly this summer about the Hoover Dam. I had visited the dam a couple of years ago when Chris and I drove to Las Vegas to pick up her sister who had flown in from Winnipeg. The dam was an awesome sight. But like many others I was struck by the white “bathtub ring” of the reservoir that showed graphically how the level in the reservoir had been dropping for decades.

 

The article in the Guardian had a very similar photo of the reservoir but the water level had dropped even more. That was hard to believe. It was also hard to swallow.  After living there for 3 months each year for about half a dozen years I have fallen in love with the American southwest. It is a place of awesome beauty and fascination. I consider it my second home.

 

The Guardian described the situation at Lake Mead this way: “The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.”  The reservoir created by the dam is the largest reservoir in North America. It is an amazing sight. Yet the level of water in the reservoir has plummeted to historic lows. This could cause many places in the southwest including my beloved Arizona to face some steep cuts in their water supplies and they don’t have a lot of alternative sources of water. They have already used a lot of ingenuity to get at water and the supply is limited. Someone once said the wars of the 21st century will be founded on water issues like the wars of the 20th century had their basis in oil.

 

First, we must all admit that it really does not make sense that the American southwest being as dry as it, is home to such huge cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. That was only possible because of the huge efforts made by Americans to tame the desert.  They wanted to control nature. Matin Heidegger, by way of Friedrich Nietzsche referred to this idea as the will to power, and there are few better examples of it than this region. Those imbued with will-to-power in this sense want to tame nature. As Oliver Milman said,

“Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.”

 

The dam is a demonstration of engineering at its finest (or if you like its most brutal). As Milman said, “The engineering might of Hoover dam undoubtably reshaped America’s story, harnessing a raucous river to help carve huge cities and vast fields of crops into unforgiving terrain.”

 The Hoover dam is huge (though much smaller than the 3 Gorges Dam we saw in China). It is as high as a 60-story building and is 45ft thick at the top and 660ft at the bottom. It was built during the extremes of the Great Depression and was a source of national pride when it was done. It was an engineering marvel.

 But that was then; this is now. Now nature seems to be fighting back. And like they say, “Nature always bats last.”  Thanks in part to climate change, also man made, the region is in the midst of a historic drought. As a result, the dam may no longer make sense, even though it is so badly needed. As Milman said, “We bent nature to suit our own needs,” said Brad Udall, a climate and water expert at Colorado State University. “And now nature is going to bend us.”

We must learn to stop fighting nature and instead learn to work with nature. Climate change is proving that we need a new attitude to nature. And we need it quickly.

Climate Emergency Today

Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse

 

2021 has been astonishing for many reasons, not just Covid-19.  In fact, Covid-19 might not be the most astonishing thing to have happened this year. We have been experiencing what scientists have been warning us about for at least 3 decades, probably more. Climate change is here, it is bad, and it is real—very real.

 

There was a glaring example of what the new world, after climate change, will look like and it happened in one of the most unlikely spots namely coastal British Columbia the place that is famous for mild weather far from the extremes.  That was before climate change. Now it is famous for extreme weather. How is that possible? How? Climate change of course.

This summer the tiny town of Lytton B.C.  experienced the hottest temperature in Canada’s history—49.6ºC. Not only that, it shattered the previous record for that area by 7 ºC and  it shattered the Canadian record by 5ºC.  In fact, it defied all computer modelling of how the world might change as emissions rose. It was beyond the most extreme that has been considered possible by scientists.

 

Much of this was the consequence of something I had never heard of before—a heat dome. A heat dome works like this: hot air is blown in from the ocean and meets existing warm conditions on the land and then the hot air tries to rise, as it usually does, but is trapped and compressed by the atmospheric high pressure above it. The heat that is trapped then intensifies with the “dome” where it diverts the jet stream.   When the heat dome diverts the jet stream to the north that prevents cooler air from coming south and replacing the warm air.

 

The young climate activist from Sweden Greta Thunberg has been the best spokesman for what is going on. She has described this as an “emergency”. Many people say they agree with her; it is an emergency, but they are not acting that way.

This past year during the Covid-19 pandemic I had an emergency moment. I thought I had Covid-19.  I had a very high fever that did not go away. After waiting awhile I decided to take a brief nap to see if it would go away. It didn’t; it got worse.  Chris drove me to the hospital emergency room. Frankly, I was convinced without doubt that I had Covid-19. Extreme fever was, I had been told, the best sign of Covid-19. When I got to the hospital, I explained to the staff that I thought I had Covid-19. They took seriously what I said.

There was no more waiting in the Emergency Room I was whisked into the emergency ward, I was stripped of my clothes and dignity, forced to change into hospital clothes and was immediately subjected to all kinds of tests, including a test for Covid-19. The hospital team immediately went to work without  delay.

I thought I might die. That thought entered my mind. Later I l my physician said “your fever was so high old men like you do not usually survive such high temperatures as you had.” The staff jumped to the pump and saved my life. I was very grateful.  I may be an old man, but I wanted to live a little longer.

It turned out I did not have Covid-19, but I had pneumonia which at such high temperatures is also very dangerous. It was an emergency and the staff acted like it was an emergency. I was very grateful that the staff treated it like an emergency and did not mouth platitudes.

Greta Thunberg has said we are in a climate emergency. I have not heard any trustworthy person say she is wrong. Yet no one has jumped into action to save the planet in any comparable sense. Why is that? Does no one care? Is it that people don’t really think it is an emergency. By and large it is business as usual with minor adjustments such as changing lightbulbs. By our inaction we are guaranteeing disaster, not for the planet, it will survive, but for much of life on the planet, including human life. It will be disastrous.

Bill Maher, in his own inimical style said it well: “We are in a Thelma and Louise moment, holding hands and driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon.”

Climate change is here. Does any one believe business as usual makes sense?

 

Heat is Here

Capitalism, Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse

 

Many people don’t realize this but it’s true.  In Manitoba when it comes to extreme weather, more people die from heat than cold! To me that is unbelievable. And with rising global warming things are bad now but will soon get worse.

As Mia Rabson reported in the Winnipeg Free Press,

“A new report examining the health impacts of climate change says more Canadians than ever are facing serious health risks from heat waves and wildfires, prompting warnings from doctors that we need to do more to adapt to the reality of a warmer planet.”

 

There is little doubt that this problem is created by human activity and not natural conditions.  This was made clear by a report in Lancet Countdown led by Marina Romanello, a biochemist at London’s Institute for Global Health. As Rabson reported,

“In Canada, the authors note, the heat dome that descended on British Columbia and parts of the Prairies in June and July “would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.”

 

Romanello also said, “This year we saw people suffering intense heat waves, deadly floods and wildfires. These are grim warnings that for every day that we delay our response to climate change, the situation gets more critical.” That heat wave in B.C. last several weeks and recorded a temperature of 49.6 C, the highest temperature ever seen in Canada. And that is was in B.C. where we only expect mild temperatures.

In other words, the apocalypse is here. Don’t wait for it because it will only get worse. If we are smart, we will halt it here and now, but we can’t make things better. A lot of climate change is already locked in.

According to the Lancet article that heat wave of which we had a milder version in Manitoba caused the death of 570 people in Canada. Think about that 570 deaths in Canada, a northern country!  According to that report,

“Across Canada, the risk of death from extreme heat for Canada’s seniors rose more than 50 per cent in the last four years, compared with the years 2000 to 2004. Exposures to wildfires grew almost 20 per cent in that time, but not uniformly, with Indigenous Peoples at much higher risk.”

 

Inevitably, First Nations people get the short end of the stick. Rabson reported that “First Nations people living on a reserve are 33 times more likely to be forced to evacuate due to a forest fire than people living off reserve, the Lancet report said.”

That is not just because so many indigenous people live in forests. Many of them live in cities.

The report also said that around the world 20% of the world’s land surface suffered extreme drought in 2020 when the annual drought’s never exceeded that once between 1950 and 1999.

Who still thinks I am alarmist when I say the environmental apocalypse is here and now? As Dr. Courtney Howard an emergency physician in Yellowknife and past president of, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said this year the focus was more heavily on the need for adapting to the fact that “climate change isn’t just real, it’s already hurting us”.

The authors of that report made another very interesting observation:

“The authors are also highly critical of the federal government for allowing itself to be heavily influenced by lobbying from the oil and gas industry. They said in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, fossil fuel industries and associations met with federal officials 1,224 times, an average of 4.5 meetings every day.

Comparatively, they say environment groups met with federal officials 303 times.

“Energy transition policy must be developed without such excessive industry pressure,” the report said.”

This is another example of what I have called predatory capitalism. That is something I intend to say more about in future blog posts. When creatures are weak and suffering the predators circle.

Extreme Weather is here to Stay

Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse

 

One of the consequences of climate change according to the scientists is extreme weather. If we have it more often will it still be extreme?

The summer of 2021 was extreme by many standards. One of them was clearly extreme weather. For example, in Canada the record hottest temperature was experienced in British Columbia of all places. And the record was broken by 5ºC.  B.C. had a day where the high temperature reached 46.9 which was 5ºC above the previous Canadian high. Climate models did not even consider such a high temperature. It was literally off the charts for B.C. Scientists have said that such extreme temperatures would be “virtually  impossible” It was caused by what the scientists have called a  “heat dome.”

Europe experienced the year of the deluge. As a result, western Germany and Belgium experienced floods caused by a near stationary low pressure system. As a result 160 people as a result of flooding. In the town of Bad Neuenahr one of the worst hit areas, 98 of the those people died including 12 that died in a home for the disabled. In addition thousands  were rendered homeless as a result of the devastation. The river Erft poured into a gravel quarry triggering a landslide that collapsed houses nearby. The quarry had been expanded in 2015 and in order to get the permit  the owner was required to build a 1.2 km protective wall to prevent the pit from filling with water in he event of a flood. Unfortunately the wall was ineffective to hold off the deluge when the water overflowed higher up the river gushing through a local town. As the Guardian reported, “But the kind of extreme weather events the world is seeing with increasing frequency come with unpredictable consequences.”

In fact, you expand that thought. Climate change is coming with unpredictable consequences. We are conducting a global experiment with our civilization and do not know what the consequences will be. We just know they will be extreme. Extreme weather events bring extreme consequences. We are doing what people have never done before.

The rainfall in nearby Cologne reached 155 mm which was an astonish 60 mm above the previous record.

Records are being broken everywhere. Many of these records are ones we don’t want to break. As the Guardian reported,

“First, more records are being broken more often;  the world’s seven hottest years in recorded history have all come since 2014. Second, scientists can use statistical analysis and computer models to calculate how much more likely particular weather events become as a result of the extra stress people have put on the climate system.  For example, human emissions made the deadly “heat dome” in North America last month at least 150 times more likely and the prolonged heatwave in Siberia last year more than 600 times more probable.”

 

While I am concentrating on what has already happened—the apocalypse now—such numbers are disturbing. The weather event on the west coast killed an estimated 1 billion marine creatures. The recent spike at Lytton increased the Canadian record for highest temperature in Canada by 5 degrees. Now such events are more than 150 times more likely.  A killing heat wave in Siberia, of all places, is now 600 times more likely.

This has made many people there wonder what the actual costs of climate change will turn out to be. No one knows of course, but the costs will be massive. As the Guardian said, “There is no scientific consensus, but experts are increasingly concerned the world could be in for a bumpier ride than previously thought.”

Once more of these extreme weather events have already happened, there will be more. We will pay more.  Soon extreme weather won’t be extreme anymore.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t like bump rides and don’t need them any bumpier.

 

Don’t Worry about the future; Worry About Now

Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse

 

I am worried about the future Not my future so much. Frankly, at 72, how many years do I have left? How many good years? Even less. I worry about the future of my grandchildren. I have 4 of them between the ages of 2 and 15. Their future is frightening.

But the present is already bad enough.  British Columbia, long thought of as a province with mild climate, this past year  produced a high of 49.6ºc this year. It now holds the record for the hottest day in Canada. That record was 5ºC above the previous high! During that heat wave an estimated 1 billion marine animals died in the waters off the west coast. This has already happened. It is not in the far distant future.

This year Madagascar had the worst drought in 40 years leaving a million people facing food shortages.  The climate writer David Wallace said this meant it was a “permanent emergency.” That is where we are now.

Yet where is our political will now?  As the Guardian said, “So far, binding commitments to make the cuts in carbon emissions need to avoid temperature rises above 2C are notable by their absence.” The countries of the world are about to meet in Scotland. Will they do any better? I doubt it. I hope I’m wrong.

The Guardian talked about “threats” because it is likely that the computer models are underestimating those threats.  It also warned about “nightmarish possibilities.”

What about nightmarish realities that are already with us?

 

Covid-19 and Air Pollution

Environmental Apocalypse, Epidemics/Pandemics, Pollution

As I mentioned earlier, in the past couple of years of the pandemic, air pollution has killed a lot more people than Covid-19.  Yet one is treated like an emergency while the other is more or less ignored. I think that is a big mistake.

Air pollution no doubt contributed to the effects of Covid-19.  How could it not?  Covid-19 usually effects the respiratory system. So does air pollution.  As Beth Gardner reported in the National Geographic,

“When Covid-19 began tearing around the globe, Francesca Dominici suspected air pollution was increasing the death toll. It was the logical conclusion of everything scientists knew about dirty air and everything they were learning about the novel coronavirus. People in polluted places are more likely to have chronic illnesses, and such patients are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. What’s more, air pollution can weaken the immune system and inflame the airways, leaving the body less able to fight off a respiratory virus.”

 

Dominici is a professor of biostatistics at Harvard and she has created a data platform that aligns information on the death of millions of Americans with a day-by-day summary of the air those people who died were breathing. What a great idea! But the results of her investigation were disturbing. Her data goes back for 20 years.

How she got the data is an interesting story in itself, but I will leave you to read the article in the Geographic. She was collecting the information for years before any one had ever heard of Covid-19.

First of all, she and her researchers noticed that even in places where air quality standards were met, pollution was linked to higher death rates. This meant the air quality  standards were too lax! The air that will meet the standard won’t be safe enough. Of course, death is not the only result of bad air.  Other health conditions are also concerning if you care at all about quality of life. I know I do.

The research team discovered that a host of ailments that required hospitalizations had gone up wherever there was air pollution. Her research showed that things like kidney failure and septicemia also went up where air quality was poor. They learned that air quality with particulate matter, even very small matter, had a big effect.

For example, as Beth Gardner explained her findings,

“added to a mountain of evidence demonstrating the dangers of PM2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, about a 30th the width of a human hair. Some of those particles—of soot, for example—can cross into the bloodstream. Scientists have found them, including even tinier “ultrafine” particles, in the heart, brain, and placenta.”

 

The researchers found there was a very close connection between Covid-19 deaths and poor air quality. As she said,

“the places where decades of exposure to bad air had primed people’s bodies to be susceptible to the coronavirus. Worldwide, the team reported in December, particle pollution accounted for 15 percent of COVID-19 deaths. In badly polluted countries in East Asia, it was 27 percent.”

 

This surprised many ordinary people, but most scientists were not so surprised. Dominici said, “It made perfect sense.” She already knew what much of the public doesn’t—that dirty air ends far more lives, and with far greater regularity, than the novel coronavirus.”

Its time we started to realize that. This is also an environmental problem is not something in our future; it is with us here and now.

A Pandemic in Slow Motion

Environment, Environmental Apocalypse, Pollution

 

We are all familiar with the Covid-19  pandemic. The world economy shut down to deal with it. Who ever thought that was possible?  Why was it possible? Only because the world realized this was an emergency and as a result the world took emergency measures.

There are actually bigger problems out there. One is climate change; another is bad air quality. There are others too. They require emergency measures as well.

Beth Gardner wrote an informative article on air pollution in National Geographic.  Not exactly a left wing rag. The National Geographic called “air pollution… a pandemic in slow motion.” People just don’t realize how dangerous it is and because it is stealthy, except in some very large cities like Beijing, Mumbai, Los Angeles and Phoenix, we seldom take notice of it.  I know I did pay attention when I lived in Phoenix. It bothered me to see that constant haze in the atmosphere when I drove into the city from the suburbs where we lived for 3 months.

As leader writers for her article said, “Dirty air is a plague on our health, causing 7 million deaths and many more preventable illnesses worldwide each year.” But the solutions are clear.” So far, in over a year of the Covid-19 pandemic which I do not want to make light of, nearly 5 million people have died world-wide.  And, of course, we hope the disease is nearing the time in which it will be controlled because of vaccines. Dirty air is really a big problem, we just don’t realize it yet.  We will.

We could tackle dirty air  too and actually it would cost us a lot less money than fighting Covid-19.

We seem better at tackling fast moving pandemics than the slow ones.

 

Climate Change Here and Now

Climate change, Environmental Apocalypse

 

When it comes to climate change, many of us fear what the future will bring. And we should fear that. But this is what we are already seeing!

Western Canada and United States already experienced the incredible this summer. The heat wave and the fires it caused were astounding. As the Guardian said,

“Heat and fires it caused killed hundreds of people, and are estimated to have killed a billion sea creatures. Daily temperature records were smashed by more than 5C in some places. In Lytton British Columbia the heat reached 49.6C. The wildfires that consumed the town produced their own thunderstorms.”

The west coast of Canada, an area famous for mild temperature experienced Canada’s highest temperature ever as a result of what scientists have called a heat dome. That happened when a ridge of high pressure acted like the lid of a hot pot with boiling water that prevented hot air to escape. Such events have been extremely rare in the past.  But as the Guardian claimed, “an initial study shows human activity made this heat dome…150 times more likely.” This is where we are—here and now. This is not our dire future. We are in our dire future.

The World Weather Attribution Group of scientists use computer models to assess global trends of climate change and heating temperatures and extreme weather events.  They warned that temperature increases of 5ºC like B.C. experienced this year “exceeded their worst-case scenarios.”

As the Guardian said, “Scientists did not hide their alarm that a usually cool part of the Pacific northwest had been turned into a furnace.”

A climatologist Nick Bond said, “it blows my mind.” Mine too.

Welcome to apocalypse now.

A stealth Enemy: Air Quality

Climate change, Environment, Environmental Apocalypse, Epidemics/Pandemics, Health, Pollution

 

In early 2020 the world changed–we experienced Covid-19. This was something new an international pandemic that hit home to everyone except the most obtuse virus deniers, religious fanatics, anti-science cranks, and conservatives and their fellow travelers.

Covid-19 was big. It changed the world. In many respects the world changed including massive economic slow-downs or even lockdowns. For more than a year we were required to wear masks in most social settings. Many of us were not able to work. An international Marshall plan was established to work on vaccines. Millions of people died while millions of people denied the reality of their illness or the efficacy of the vaccines created to stem the tide. Yes, the world was different.

In the midst of this pandemic and the international response it was difficult to see anything else. As a result, we missed some pretty important things. For example, few paid attention to air quality. That was a mistake.

Rebecca Solnit was the first to draw my attention to this disturbing fact. As she reported in The Guardian,

“While Covid ravaged across the world, air pollution killed about three times as many people. We must fight the climate crisis with the same urgency with which we confronted coronavirus.”

  

I was shocked to read that. It couldn’t be true. Could it?

After all at the time she wrote, 2.8 million people had died as a result of Covid-19 and it captured our entire attention. Whether we believed it or not, clearly covid-19 was the issue. Since then of course, millions more have died, and we are nowhere need done with this pandemic.

What most of us did not know is that during the first 15 months of the pandemic that Solnit was writing about “3 times as many people died from air pollution.”

While Covid ravaged across the world, air pollution killed about three times as many people. We must fight the climate crisis with the same urgency with which we confronted coronavirus.

 

According to a recent scientific study, 8.7 million people per year die of the effects of air pollution. And part of the problem is that most of us are unaware of this disturbing fact. Air pollution is a largely invisible enemy unless you visit some place like Phoenix Arizona as I did for nearly 10 years in a row. You can see it there. Air pollution usually arrives by stealth. As a result, unlike Covid-19 the world has not rallied to defeat it. There have been no lockdowns or mask requirements because of air pollution. Largely this stealth attack has gone unnoticed and unquestioned.  We have normalized the havoc by treating it as what Solnit called “moral background noise.” Instead Covid-19 gets all the attention. Solnit says we should treat air pollution like an emergency, like we have done with Covid-19. She does not say attention to Covid-19 was misplaced.

The first thing we must realize is that there is more than one serious consequence to burning fossil fuels.  We must also recognize that  climate change is not the only serious effect of our determination to burn fossil fuels. Climate change is a serious problem, perhaps the most serious in the world right now, notwithstanding Covid-19, but so is air quality.  The problem is that burning fossils fuels is to deep a part of the status quo that we don’t really see it. We are blind to it and have come to believe there is no reasonable alternative.

As Solnit said,

“We are designed to respond with alarm to something that just happened, that breaches norms, but not to things that have been going on for decades or centuries. The first task of most human rights and environmental movements is to make the invisible visible and to make what has long been accepted unacceptable. This has of course been done to some extent, with coal-burning power plants and with fracking in some places, but not with the overall causes of climate chaos.”

 

We cannot let this stealth bomber slip under the radar.  Climate change creates similar problems as until we experience dramatic effects as when wild fires consume British Columbia and California forests, or ice bergs break off continents, birds disappear, or in my case, beautiful flowers come earlier in spring, we often fail to take note of the serious changes. It is also difficult to notice when some of the richest and most predatory corporations in the world pay huge sums of money to pundits for hire to confuse the science and persuade these problems are not real.

We must be alert to these problems and the consequences they foist on us. We must dissent from the normal. We must resist the fake reality that predatory capitalist firms try to impose upon us.  As Solnit said,

“According to CNBC, at the outset of the pandemic, “New Delhi recorded a 60% fall of PM2.5 from 2019 levels, Seoul registered a 54% drop, while the fall in China’s Wuhan came in at 44%.” Returning to normal means drowning out the birds and blurring out the mountains and accepting 8.7 million air pollution deaths a year. Those deaths have been normalized; they need to be denormalized.”

Solnit also reminded us that,

 

“A lot of attention was paid to whatever actions might have caused Covid-19 to cross from animals to humans, but the actions that take fossil fuel out of the ground to produce that pollution that kills 8.7 million annually, along with acidifying oceans and climate chaos, should be considered far more outrageous a transgression against public health and safety.”

 

One of the excuses these corporations have tried to get us to believe is that we can’t afford to change. One thing Covid-19 has showed us is that we can afford to spend the money that it takes to fight off disaster. Hugely impactful changes require huge responses. We can do it. We must. We must not tolerate a “normal” that costs the lives of 8.7 million people every year (in addition to all the other horrific effects of fossil fuel consumption.

Rebecca Solnit left us with some hope in her important essay:

“My hope for a post-pandemic world is that the old excuses for doing nothing about climate – that it is impossible to change the status quo and too expensive to do so – have been stripped away. In response to the pandemic, we in the US have spent trillions of dollars and changed how we live and work. We need the will to do the same for the climate crisis… With a drawdown on carbon emissions and a move toward cleaner power, we could have a world with more birdsong and views of mountains and fewer pollution deaths. But first we have to recognize both the problem and the possibilities.”

 

We need to get serious about climate change and air pollution and stop ignoring the problem or paying lip service to them as we have been doing in Canada. It is time for change. It is time to realize that this is not a future problem—this is happening now. This is apocalypse now.

Welcome to the apocalypse: Doom is Here

Climate change, Environment, Environmental Apocalypse

 

For a number of years now we have been hearing, seeing, and reading predictions of doom. There have been so many such predictions that many people have stopped listening, watching, or examining such claims. People have doom fatigue.

I know a good friend of mine who said to me, quite a few years, “We are fucked.”  Sorry for the bad word. He used it so I feel I must tell you the truth. Frankly, I always thought he was exaggerating. Now I know he was telling the truth.

In fact, now I would go one big step farther than that. Doom is here. It is not something my grandchildren will have to worry about. I will have to worry about it. and I am an old man who will die soon as I was once told.

That has never been clearer than it is in this year 2021. The apocalypse is here.  What convinced me of that was the incredible weather this year. In particular, the off the charts heat wave in British Columbia convinced me of that. British Columbia is of course the last place we expect heat waves. British Columbia is famous for mild weather. Mild winters and mild summers. Perfect climate in other words. Well not this year. In fact, not in the last few years.

It is for that that reason that Sir David King the former U.K chief scientific advisor said, “Nowhere is safe…who would have predicted a temperature of 48/49C in British Columbia?”  The answer is obvious–no one would have predicted that.

In fact, I heard a climate scientist say that those temperatures did not appear on any of the climate models, not even the most extreme. It was not only unexpected, it was basically incomprehensible.

Welcome to apocalypse now. You don’t need to wait for it; it’s here. We are doomed. I want to explore this topic in future posts.