Flooding and climate change

It is hard to get away from the conclusion that the massive floods in Canada and India are partly the result of man-made climate change. The Earth’s weather goes through natural cycles, with freak storms, heat waves and droughts, but these recent disasters indicate that there really could be truth in the claims by scientists that man’s activities – primarily pumping billions of tones of CO2 into the atmosphere – are really upsetting normal weather patterns.

Over the last few days, torrential mountain rains in Alberta have led to serious flooding across the prairies, and left Calgary in muddy floodwaters. According to officials, speaking to CNN, the floods look set to surpass one that struck in 1995, the largest on record. In this latest disaster, at least two people died. As of June 20, workers were unable to fix a ruptured gas pipeline leaking foul-smelling gas.

In northern India, Flash floods and landslides unleashed by early monsoon rains have killed at least 575 people, with tens of thousands of people still missing and entire villages destroyed, according to the Guardian newspaper. More heavy rain is forecast.

Tourists and pilgrims have been caught up in the disaster in Uttarakhand, a holy place for Hindus, where tens of thousands had been visiting ahead of the expected arrival of the rainy season. Many people have been stranded for five days in what the Indian government has called a “national disaster”.

The newspaper said the flooding, which began almost a week ago with the heaviest rainfall this area has seen in 60 years, has worsened steadily with houses and blocks of flats on the banks of the Ganges, India’s longest river, toppling into the torrent and being swept away with cars, trucks and even bridges.
According to Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki, writing in the Huffington Post, it is accepted knowledge that burning fossil fuels and pumping carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causes the Earth’s average surface temperatures to rise. That warming leads to climate change, which generates increased extreme weather-related events. Those events, according to the World Meteorological Organisation’s “Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2012,” include “major heat waves and extreme high temperatures, drought and wildfires, extreme precipitation and floods, snow and extreme cold, and tropical cyclones.”

As Suzuki points out, water is intricately linked to the rising temperature. For every one degree increase in temperature, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water increases seven per cent. Massive amounts of water from melting ice sheets are being liberated while evaporation increases from oceans that cover 70 per cent of Earth’s surface. Meanwhile greater turbulence and instability of the atmosphere and jet stream dump heavier loads of water and increase the frequency of extreme events like tornadoes and hurricanes.

Suzuki says that despite what we know about climate change, and despite the fact that less than one per cent of climate scientists dispute the prevailing research behind human-caused warming, we still see news outlets, industry and others trying to convince us that it’s not happening or that it’s not a big deal. And we see governments refusing to act in any meaningful way. In light of that, it’s shocking, after so many years of denial that human-induced climate change is real, to hear some pundits now calling for adaptation rather than demanding a massive program to slow climate change.

“Can we say the recent flooding and extreme weather in Southern Alberta and B.C. were caused by global warming?” asks Suzuki. “Maybe not, but we can say we should expect more of the same – and worse if we don’t do something to get our emissions under control. As many scientists warn, climate change isn’t coming; it’s here. We may be able to adapt to and cope with some of its current effects, but it will become increasingly difficult if we continue to ignore the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, through conservation and switching to cleaner energy.”