Tag Archives: Climate Change
Hot Enough For You?
August was the first time in more than ten years that the temperature in Ottawa didn’t once hit 30 degrees Celsius. Now, a week into September, we have already set heat records for the month. As I am typing this the humidex, the measurement of what it feels like as opposed to the actual temperature, […]
Country on Fire
Canada is burning. There are hundreds of wildfires burning today, many of them out of control. There have been more than 5,000 so far this summer. Thousands have had to flee their homes. The smoke has drifted as far south as New York City. In this record fire season many people are concerned about climate […]
Climate Uncertainty
Ottawa’s famed Rideau Canal skateway didn’t open to skaters this winter, for the first time since it was established in 1971. It was too warm A couple of thousand kilometres to the west, the city of Winnipeg didn’t have a day in March where the temperatures rose above freezing. Coldest it has been since 1889. […]
Monday’s Random Thought
Looking at the news and thinking. Two weeks after Hurricane Fiona swept through, electric power has not been restored in some parts of Atlantic Canada. In my hometown of Ottawa, a derecho storm in May saw power out for a similar period for some people. In my part of town it was only a little […]
Heat? What Heat?
As North America and Europe are sweltering with record temperatures and an increased number of forest fires, I’ve been thinking about the next ice age. The one that didn’t happen. Back in the early 1970s climate scientists were concerned that volatile weather patterns were a harbinger of another ice age like the one that froze […]
No April Fool’s Joke
The price of gas went up at the pumps today. I’m not sure by how much, because I haven’t been out yet. News reports earlier suggested the hike would be 11 cents a litre (44 cents an American gallon). Certainly the war in Ukraine has been the cause of some of the recent hikes in […]
Sometimes You Are Wrong
So am I. I was an early adopter of cloth bags for my groceries. I felt virtuous in refusing plastic. I was doing my small part to protect our environment. Turns out I shoudl have stuck with plastic if I wanted to help the environment. That doesn’t make sense to me, but who am I […]
First Hand Experience
Four years ago I wrote a post I called “Climate Change For Dummies,” my thoughts on environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio’s hysterical reaction to living through a Chinook, a climate phenomenon I only knew from books. This week though I was in Calgary, Alberta, and more or less experienced a Chinook. I say more or less […]
Emergency Preparedness
The boy cried wolf. Everyone got excited. Then there was no wolf. Many people know that fable and the message it brings. And you can immediately see how it applies to the present-day climate change debate. But there’s more to it than that. I saw a news headline a couple of weeks back that 11,000 […]
Capitalism and Climate Change
They came out by the thousands, the tens of thousands and the hundreds of thousands. What happens next? Nothing. Friday they rallied in cities across the globe calling in leaders to do more to address the issue of climate change. Many teenagers took, or were given, the day off school to let their voices be […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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