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22
Dec
2021
Sunday December 5, 2021
After two weeks of reporting on B.C.’s floods, evacuations, washouts, and landslides, the CBC’s David Common was asked for his personal reaction to what he had seen.
He paused to think. I could see him collecting his thoughts, to avoid rambling or repeating what he had already said.
Water, he said. The sheer power of something that most of us take for granted.
Indeed, most of us do take water for granted. We think of water as benign. Friendly. Necessary.
This last few weeks, water has gone out of control.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: water, BC, McLuhan, floods
17
Jul
2017
Fires are always good fodder for news stories.
They’re vastly more visual than meetings where dark-suited dignitaries sit in stone circles. Stonehenge shows more animation.
The nature worshippers who created Stonehenge might, in fact, have more understanding of the causes of this summer’s fires than we do.
Amid the smoke (and mirrors), a few still small voices have whispered the words, “climate change.” The gradual warming of the Pacific Ocean affects air flow patterns over the continent. As a result, summers get hotter, or wetter. Winters get colder, or milder. Which sounds confusing, even contradictory. Which is precisely what’s happening. As the air flow loops look more and more like a snake with constipation, weather becomes unpredictable.
The only sure thing is that whatever comes, it will be more extreme than expected.
Tags: Forest fires, BC, Suzanne Simard