Back in November, El Niño reached a fever pitch, vaulting into the ranks of the strongest events on record and wreaking havoc on weather patterns around the world.
The Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition has paid for eye-catching billboards near Parliament Hill suggesting Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus image will be forever tainted if his government approves a project they say would be a climate disaster. Peter O'Neil / PNG
OTTAWA — The Trudeau government, under growing pressure to approve a showcase B.C. liquefied natural gas project, says it will base its decision on science and public consultation — and not politics.
Arctic sea ice reached a record winter low this year — the latest mark in a season that has left scientists gape-mouthed in amazement.
"I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said an email from Mark Serreze, director of the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center. "The heat was relentless."
Serreze's group declared Monday that the maximum extent of sea ice before it begins its spring melt was 20,000 square kilometres less this winter than it has ever been since satellite monitoring began. The record had been set only last year.
[Webpage editor's note: This scientific paper has great significance for the plans in BC to create a large fracking/LNG industry. The implication that the increase in methane emissions in the US may be partly due to oil and gas development is another reason to reject claims that BC LNG would reduce world-wide emissions by replacing coal in Asia.]
Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong.
Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.
An artistic rendering of Pacific NorthWest LNG’s proposed LNG export terminal on Lelu Island.
“The project would result in 5.28 million tonnes of CO2 per year … a marked increase of greenhouse gas emissions both at the provincial (8.5 per cent increase) and national (0.75 per cent increase) level,”
When Premier Christy Clark dismissed opponents of resource developments in B.C. as the “forces of no,” she singled out for specific criticism those aligned against the proposed LNG facility at Lelu Island, near Prince Rupert.
Energy use per person was on track to rise sixfold by 2050 across the world, according to researchers from Queensland and Griffith universities Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The world is on track to reach dangerous levels of global warming much sooner than expected, according to new Australian research that highlights the alarming implications of rising energy demand.
More than 100 Canadian and U.S. scientists have concluded a federal environmental assessment of the $12-billion Pacific NorthWest LNG terminal is "scientifically flawed" and represents an "insufficient base for a decision."
