https://globalnews.ca/news/6600989/alberta-buried-climate-report/
[Conveniently, this report got lost for about six months within the
Alberta government and was miraculously found right after a couple of
major fossil fuel project approval decisions - which could well have
been impacted by the report - were made. It could be the current
government's pro-Fortress Fossil Fuel allegiances or just sheer massive
incompetence. It's hard to be sure when the signature piece they have
managed so far is the 'media war room'.
The report is available for download at:
https://open.alberta.ca/publications/albertas-climate-future-final-report-2019
Either the 1-page summary - which notes that
"Changes in the number of days per year experiencing extreme high and
low temperatures are projected to increase exponentially, rather than
linearly, as global mean temperature increases. For many locations, the
number of days per year above 30°C, for example, could double per degree
of global warming."
or the full report (50 pages).
I will take a while to analyze their text on Changes in Growing Season,
as they appear to ignore weather instability as a factor, and simply
assume hotter average temperatures will automatically lead to earlier
last frosts in the spring and later first frosts in the autumn. So far,
this is not being borne out by experience in the area where I live.
Take note of this quote from the article below:
“Investors are very, very clear. Global capital flows are increasingly
sending us signals that we cannot ignore and weather events are more
frequent and more severe,” said [former Environment Minister Shannon]
Phillips.
video and links in online article]
Alberta government took six months to release alarming climate report
By Mike De Souza and Heather Yourex-West
Posted February 26, 2020
Alberta will warm faster than the rest of the planet because of human
activity, causing a range of profound impacts on the province’s economy,
infrastructure and public health, says a new report, prepared by climate
scientists and published on a provincial government website.
“Projected changes will profoundly impact Alberta’s natural environment,
and have the potential to affect the province’s agriculture,
infrastructure, and natural resources, as well as the health and welfare
of its inhabitants,” said the report, co-authored by Canadian climate
scientist Katharine Hayhoe and postdoctoral research fellow Anne Stoner
from Texas Tech University.
The projections from the report, entitled Alberta’s Climate Future, are
similar to projections for other parts of Canada that are warming faster
than the rest of the world.
Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government released the
report more than six months after it received the final draft, leading
some critics, such as former NDP environment minister Shannon Phillips
who had commissioned the report, to suggest her successor tried to bury it.
The government’s Environment and Parks Department also refused at least
two freedom of information requests for the report — including one
request from Global News in December — before posting it online. In
addition, the Alberta Federation of Labour, which filed the other
freedom of information request for the report, noted that someone in
government backdated the entry of the report into a provincial “open
government” portal to Sept. 1, 2019, making it more difficult to find on
the website.
But a government spokesman said it hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.
The two scientists said in their report that their conclusions about
Alberta are consistent with the projections of other scientific research
about impacts throughout north-central North America in response to
human-induced climate change. The report also said that the government
could use the list of anticipated changes “to quantify the impacts of a
warming planet on both human and natural systems, and to inform
long-term planning, education, and outreach.”
The release of the report comes at a time when oil-rich Alberta
continues to argue with the federal government over the best approach to
stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and prevent
dangerous changes to the climate. Conservative governments in Alberta,
Ontario and Saskatchewan have been contesting the centrepiece of Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policy in a court battle over whether
the federal government can impose a fee on heat-trapping carbon
emissions in provinces that fail to meet national standards to reduce
pollution.
Courts in two provinces have sided with the federal Liberal government,
while an Alberta court rejected Trudeau’s approach, setting the stage
for a final battle at the Supreme Court of Canada.
The report is also coming to light days after Teck Resources announced
it was pulling out of a major oilsands project for a variety of reasons,
including uncertainty surrounding resource development and government’s
climate change policies.
Alberta has tens of thousands of jobs that are powered by the oil and
gas companies, which are one of the planet’s largest sources of
climate-warming pollution.
The new research by Hayhoe and Stoner says that for each degree of
global mean temperature increase, Alberta could expect:
A 2 C increase in average winter and a 1.5 C increase in average
summer temperature.
An increase of about 3 C in the temperature of the coldest day of
the year and an increase of about 2 C in the temperature of the warmest
day of the year.
A two-week lengthening of the frost-free season, and between a two-
to four-week lengthening of the growing season, with greater changes for
more southern locations.
A five to 10 per cent increase in precipitation between September
and April, with between five to 10 per cent more falling as rain
compared to snow.
A 50 per cent increase in the number of very wet days (more than
25mm in 24 hours) and a 20 per cent increase the amount of precipitation
on the wettest day of the year.
Proportional decreases in heating degree-days and increases in
growing degree-days and other cumulative heating indices.
Hayhoe said there is some uncertainty surrounding projections due to the
natural variability of the climate, but that the biggest uncertainty
revolves around what action humans decide to take to tackle the issue.
“We are the ones who are driving this change for the first time in the
history of the planet,” she said in an interview from Lubbock, Texas.
“It isn’t volcanoes. It isn’t natural cycles. It isn’t the sun. It is
us. And our energy choices will determine our future. So the further and
further we go out into the future, the more we see decade by decade, the
2050s, the 2070s, 2100, the more we see the influence of the choices
that we make today.”
Hayhoe added that the climate report also shows exactly how Alberta’s
choices today will affect its future.
“If we wait until we see those impacts, it’s going to be too late to
make the choice,” she said. “Just like if we are being loaded onto the
ambulance, being taken to the hospital for a heart attack, it’s too late
to say, ‘oh, I’ll join a gym and I’ll eat healthy.’ We have to make
those decisions earlier in the same way.”
Phillips, now in opposition, said she commissioned the report because
she felt that the province had more work to do to prepare for what was
coming.
“I think it is fair to say, when I reflect back on those four years in
government, that there were fundamental blind spots in government and
within the public service around infrastructure planning,” she told
Global News in an interview at her office at the provincial legislature
in Edmonton. “And I think that’s not something that you’re going to fix
over four years. In the end, it’s because climate change is new, because
there’s so much to think of, because there are so many different factors
that go into planning and modelling.”
Phillips also noted that she was unable to get a copy of the report,
prior to Alberta’s April 2019 election, even though her department had
received a draft version.
“I asked for this report to be prepared, and it was supposed to be
delivered to me and it never was. And now we see just a sort of comedy
of errors in terms of its release,” said Phillips, who represents a
Lethbridge riding in the Alberta legislature. “It certainly seems that
people don’t want to talk about this within the Government of Alberta.”
Phillips said that the government can no longer afford to ignore these
issues after insurance companies paid record payouts following major
weather-related events such as the Fort McMurray wildfires of 2016 and
southern Alberta floods of 2013.
“Investors are very, very clear. Global capital flows are increasingly
sending us signals that we cannot ignore and weather events are more
frequent and more severe,” said Phillips.
Hayhoe, the report’s co-author, confirmed that she sent the original
draft report to the government at the beginning of 2019, and then a
final version in August. But she acknowledged that she was late in
sending background data requested by the government, which may have
prompted it to delay its release.
However, the government went ahead and published the report, before she
was able to deliver the data, she added.
When asked about the comments by Phillips and McGowan accusing the
government of trying to bury the report, the office of Environment
Minister Jason Nixon responded by saying that it was common practice to
release research of this nature through the provincial Open Data website.
“Our government takes climate change seriously, which is why we are
taking action to reduce emissions,” said Nixon’s press secretary Jess
Sinclair. “Our approach to emissions reduction is one that favours
working with our large emitters and investing in technology and innovation.”
Sinclair added that the government’s Technology, Innovation and
Emissions Reduction program would reduce emissions by an estimated 57
million tonnes by 2030 and that the federal government had also accepted
that provincial methane regulations meet federal standards “cementing
Alberta’s status as one of the most environmentally responsible
jurisdictions in North America.”
The Alberta government is also spending $30 million in spending on a war
room that is supposed to promote the oil and gas industry, as well as
$2.5 million on a public inquiry to investigate environmentalists that
Premier Kenney has accused of spreading lies about the province.
Gill McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said his
research director requested the report through freedom of information
legislation in August, but Alberta Environment and Parks responded in
August, saying it was refusing to provide a copy since it expected to
publish it, at that time, within 90 days.
The provincial Environment Ministry provided a similar response to
Global News in January.
“As a province, we should be preparing for change. But instead, we have
a government that’s playing games like this, burying reports, doing as
little as possible … as opposed to making robust plans for change.”
McGowan added that he was concerned that the government hasn’t
understood the economic implications of the report. In October, Alberta
Finance Minister Travis Toews told a lunchtime business crowd at a
Calgary Chamber of Commerce event that the province could only diversify
its revenue streams outside of fossil fuels after balancing its books.
McGowan said this approach could affect hundreds of thousands of people
who could lose their jobs and their retirement savings.
“There is an economic freight train bearing down on us, with the words,
‘climate transition’ emblazoned on the side,” McGowan said.
“If they take money from the public sector, from the public purse and
use it to prop up of oil and gas projects that have been rejected by
global investors, that’s money that’s being taken away from education,
health care, infrastructure, all those things that are already being
underfunded. This is a recipe, from our perspective in the labour
movement, for economic disaster.”
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