Global Warming in Canada
Mountain Pine Beetle Invasion in Canada Poses Global Warming Threat - 4/27/08
A festering problem Lloyd reported on last year -- the invasion of British Columbia's forests by voracious mountain pine beetles -- has taken a drastic turn for the worse, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Werner Kurz of Natural Resources Canada found that the beetles are turning large tracts of forests into carbon sources -- rather than sinks -- aggravating the onset of global warming.
Kurz and his colleagues modeled the carbon budget for 374,000 square kilometers of pine forest, estimating that close to 270 megatonnes of carbon would disappear from the area between 2000 and 2020 -- much of it lost as carbon dioxide emitted by dying trees.
The impact of the pine beetles' blight was determined to be worse than that of the 2003 forest fires: causing a pine forest -- considered a slight carbon sink in their model, when untouched -- to release 50% more carbon than when effected by a fire.
While most previous models had only considered forests' beneficial effects on the climate, Kurz cautioned that the negative impacts -- their ability to also release massive amounts of carbon dioxide -- also needed to be taken into account.
Reforestation efforts in the last 2 decades have not been able to keep pace with the beetles' destruction, and the impact of logging risks making a bad situation worse.
Canada Breaks Global Warming Law - 9/20/07
The Government of Canada is once again facing a legal challenge for failing to take action on global warming - this time for refusing to respect a federal law that requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Late yesterday an Application for Judicial Review was filed with the Federal Court seeking to force the Government to comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
Filed by eminent Canadian lawyer Chris Paliare and Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal) on behalf of Friends of the Earth Canada, the application alleges that the federal Minister of the Environment is ignoring the rule of law by failing to comply with the Act, passed by Parliament in June 2007.
Under the legislation, the government was legally required to publish, within 60 days, a plan to comply with the country's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The Harper government responded in late August with a plan that the applicants allege plainly fails to meet the requirements of the Act.
"Canadians have made it clear they want action on climate change - in fact, our domestic law requires it," says Ecojustice lawyer Albert Koehl. "Most Canadians don't care what the current government can't do - or what the previous government didn't do; they just want the government to act now to reduce emissions and to live up to our obligations."
In May 2007, on behalf of Friends of the Earth, Ecojustice launched a lawsuit against the federal government alleging that it had contravened the Canadian Environmental Protection Act by not meeting its international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.
Global Warming Hits Canada's Remotest Arctic Lands - 4/19/06
Even in one of the remotest, coldest and most inhospitable parts of Canada's High Arctic, you cannot escape the signs of global warming. Polar bears hang around on land longer than they used to, waiting for ice to freeze. The eternal night which blankets the region for three months is less dark, thanks to warmer air reflecting more sunlight from the south. Animal species that the local Inuit aboriginal population had never heard of are now appearing.
"Last year someone saw a mosquito," said a bemused Paul Attagootak, a hunter living in the hamlet of Resolute Bay some 2,100 miles northwest of Ottawa and 555 miles north of the Arctic Circle. "Things getting warmer is not good for the animals, which are our food. We still eat them. We worry about them," he told Reuters as temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit (minus 18 degrees Celsius) well above the seasonal average.
In recent years there have been drastic signs of climate change in the southern part of Canada's Arctic, where melting ice in Hudson Bay threatens the survival of local polar bears.
Buildings in the port town of Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean, close to Canada's northern border with Alaska are crumbling into the sea as the permafrost dissolves. Remote aboriginal communities are in distress because winter ice roads, needed to truck in supplies, are turning to water.
Experts say the Arctic is warming more quickly than the rest of the planet because as the dark ground and seas are exposed by the sun's rays, they absorb heat faster than reflective snow and ice.
