The weather in western Canada and United States has been more than freakish.  According to Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service talked  about the unusual weather event in western North America in the summer of 2021:

“There was a clear human fingerprint on this “very freakish” event. Without emissions from cars, farms, and industry, he said, record temperatures in the western North Americas would be expected only once in tens of thousands of years. As Buontempo said,

In the present climate, getting an extremely hot June is likely to occur twice in three decades. However, an analysis from many computer models suggests that by the end of the century these extreme temperatures are more likely than not. Human influence is estimated to have increased the likelihood of a new record several thousand times.

Temperatures of 50C plus were once outliers even in the Middle East, but parts of Pakistan, India, Australia, the US and Canada are now regularly approaching or passing that mark.”

 

I have to admit that seeing Canada on this list still jars me. Who thinks of Canada having temperatures around 50C? No one I would suggest. No one now except scientists who have to change their projections. Or those who have lived through these events.

The fact is, as Levi Pulkinnen reported for the Guardian,

“In the temperate Pacific North West, a reckoning for the climate crisis has arrived decades before many people thought it was due.”

I come from Manitoba—a cold province.  We are the land of -40ºC, but a couple of summers ago I learned something that stunned me. That is that more people in Manitoba die of extreme heat than extreme cold. How can that be? A couple of summers ago Steinbach Manitoba hit 37C. This year similar temperatures were approached in spring! But to put Manitoba in the same category as Pakistan, India, Australia, and even the US seems crazy.

For some time now many people have thought that the western part of North America, except perhaps for California might escape the worst effects of climate change. But after temperatures in Canada of nearly 50C the sky is the limit. As Pulkinnen said,

“the region with its affluence, abundant resources, and usually mellow weather, seemingly better positioned than much of the world to cope with a hotter, more erratic climate. The deadly heatwave came as surprise.”

And then a couple of  summers ago  British Columbia was forced to report hundreds of “sudden and unexpected deaths.” Is that what the new normal will be all about—sudden and unexpected deaths?”

This year Manitoba has suffered nightmarish wild fires.

Is that what apocalypse now is all about?