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Here’s your weekly roundup of local and international climate change news for the week of July 24 to July 30, 2023.
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It has been another week of drought and wildfires in B.C. And, in a controversial move, Fortis B.C. asked the Metro Vancouver board to reject calls for an accelerated move away from natural gas and to instead stick with existing timelines. Meantime, experts are warning that a warming climate is linked to a rise in a dangerous fungal infection and tick-borne illness.
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Here’s all the latest news concerning the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the steps leaders are taking to address these issues.
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In climate news this week:
• Experts have linked a rise in the fungal infection Candida auris and tick-borne illness to a warming climate• Fortis B.C. has asked Metro Vancouver to reject recommendations for a quicker move away from fossil fuels• B.C. officials say brief rainy spell won’t affect drought conditions
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned for decades that wildfires, drought, severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and more intense because of the climate emergency.
The panel has issued a “code red” for humanity and last year it said the window to stop global warming from exceeding 1.5 C was closing. In April 2022, it released a report with solutions for how to drive down greenhouse gas emissions, mainly by transitioning away from fossil fuels.
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There is a scientific consensus on climate change (NASA reports that 97 per cent of climate scientists agree that the climate is warming and that human activity is the cause.) Several studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that greenhouse gas emissions are the primary cause of global warming.
Check back here every Saturday for a roundup of the latest climate and environmental stories. You can also get up to date B.C.-focused news delivered to your inbox by 7 a.m. by subscribing to our newsletter here.
Climate change quick facts:
(Source: United Nations IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, UNEP, Nasa, climatedata.ca)
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LATEST CLIMATE NEWS
Fortis B.C. asks Metro Vancouver to reject recommendations for a quicker move away from fossil fuels
Fortis B.C. is asking the Metro Vancouver board to reject calls for an accelerated move away from natural gas and to instead stick with existing timelines.
On Friday, the board’s climate committee will ask for support from the full Metro board to go to the province with recommendations advocated by the City of Richmond and endorsed by Metro staff in early July.
These would include asking the province for legislation to quicken a transition away from natural gas and also renewable natural gas, which is produced from organic waste from farms, landfills and water treatment plants. Both are products that Fortis B.C. sells.
In a recent letter to Metro chairman George Harvie obtained by Postmedia News, Fortis B.C. vice-president Doug Slater highlights one recommendation from Richmond. That recommendation is ban the use of renewable natural gas and hydrogen fuels made from natural gas in new buildings, in order to meet greenhouse-gas limits and move more quickly to using electricity.
Read the full story here.
—Joanne Lee-Young
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’You’ve got to move fast’: Science learns to quickly link extreme weather and climate
As firefighters and other first responders battle an unprecedented summer of fires, floods, tornadoes and heat waves around the country, a group of Canadian scientists are asking why they’re happening in the first place.
“May and June were record hot months in Canada and we’ve got the record wildfire season as well,” said Nathan Gillett of Environment and Climate Change Canada. “Yes, it has been busy.”
Gillett heads the rapid extreme event attribution project, a new federal program that uses the growing field of attribution science to promptly establish to what extent — if any — a specific flood in British Columbia or wildfire in Quebec is due to climate change.
“The idea is to be able to make rapid extreme event attribution days or weeks after the extreme events occur,” he said.
Read the full story here.
—The Canadian Press
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B.C. ranchers struggle as drought sends hay prices soaring
B.C. rancher Suzanne Fradette had just got off the phone with a hay broker who had grim news as a drought sends feed prices soaring: “It’s bad out there.”
“We’ve got a fairly small herd, like 140 head, but we are thinking it’s going to be about $100,000 this year for hay,” said Fradette.
That’s a 30-per-cent jump compared with recent years, and a painful price for a relatively small ranch.
Fradette runs the Back Valley Ranch with partner Jerry Steves in the area between Savona and Cache Creek, about 350 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.
Fradette said they are just “keeping their heads above water,” getting by one day at a time. Feeding their herd costs about $700 a day.
Read the full story here.
—The Canadian Press
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Brief rainy spell won’t end drought or wildfire risk, B.C. officials warn
If you think a day or two of rain means the wildfire risk has dissipated, think again.
“Despite scattered showers throughout much of the province on Monday, people are urged to be prepared and continue to follow all regional fire prohibitions and local water restrictions due to extreme wildfire risks and the ongoing drought,” the B.C. Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness said in a news release Monday.
Most of the province is still at Drought Level 4 or 5, the highest level, even after the recent rain, and water conservation remains important. The wildfire danger rating in much of the south half of the province is high to extreme, along with some parts of northeast B.C.
Several wildfires in the Kamloops Fire Centre continued to grow, with the Ross Moore Lake fire south of Kamloops now estimated at 26 square kilometres. An evacuation order in the Casper Creek area was expanded to those in Seton Portage and the Tsal’alh First Nation.
Read the full story here.
—Joseph Ruttle
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Expedition to Antarctica finds microplastics in all ocean samples
An international team of scientists, including researchers from B.C., have discovered disturbing levels of microplastics in one of Earth’s most remote ocean regions.
During a two-week expedition to the Antarctic earlier this year, the researchers found microplastics — tiny plastic particles less than five millimetres in length — in every water sample collected, said Chloé Dubois, co-founder of the Vancouver-based Ocean Legacy Foundation, one of 120 members of the Antarctic Climate Expedition 2023.
“No matter where we are in the world, plastics are entering into the ocean and it’s the same kind of plastics that we’re finding all over the planet,” she said Thursday.
Using surface sample trawls, researchers measured plastic pollution in the water around icebergs on both sides of the peninsula. They took nine samples from the most habitat-diverse areas in the Antarctic, said Dubois.
Samples were then analyzed using microscopy at the University of B.C. in partnership with Ocean Diagnostics. Dubois said Thursday that they had found 375 pieces of plastic in all nine samples, including a clothing tag that said “Made in U.S.A.”
Read the full story here.
—Tiffany Crawford
Correlation between wildfires, flooding in Nova Scotia
The fingerprints of climate change are all over the supercharged weather witnessed this year in Nova Scotia — and the rest of the country — from raging wildfires to devastating flooding.
A series of punishing thunderstorms dumped up to 250 millimetres of rain on Nova Scotia this weekend, killing at least two people and damaging infrastructure across the province. About two months ago, nearly 250 square kilometres of land was scorched by record wildfires. The province is also experiencing summer temperatures that are warmer than usual.
There is a correlation between rising temperatures, wildfires and heavier rainfall, said Kent Moore, an atmospheric physics professor at the University of Toronto.
Rising temperatures lead to drier conditions, increasing the risk of wildfires, he said, but the warmer weather also augments the atmosphere’s ability to hold moisture, leading to heavier downpours that can cause flooding.
Read the full story here.
—The Canadian Press
Asia-Pacific needs disaster warning systems to counter rising climate change risks, report says
Countries in the Asia-Pacific region need to drastically increase their investments in disaster warning systems and other tools to counter rising risks from climate change, a United Nations report said Tuesday.
The report by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP, says nearly $145 billion is needed to set up systems to minimize deaths and damage from floods, earthquakes, drought and other disasters.
Artificial intelligence, satellites, remote sensing and other technologies would help with forecasting, notifying the public during emergencies and providing other services, but telecommunications systems must be fortified to ensure that vulnerable communities get the information, the report states.
Most countries have failed to spend even 10% of what is needed, according to the commission’s review, which was released to mark the U.N.’s Disaster Resilience Week.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
Dangerous fungus is becoming more prevalent. Scientists believe climate change could be to blame
In 2016, hospitals in New York state identified a rare and dangerous fungal infection never before found in the United States. Research laboratories quickly mobilized to review historical specimens and found the fungus had been present in the country since at least 2013.
In the years since, New York City has emerged as ground zero for Candida auris infections. And until 2021, the state recorded the most confirmed cases in the country year after year, even as the illness has spread to other places, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data analyzed by The Associated Press.
Candida auris is a globally emerging public health threat that can cause severe illness, including bloodstream, wound and respiratory infections. Its mortality rate has been estimated at 30% to 60%, and it’s a particular risk in healthcare settings for people already with serious medical problems.
Last year, the most cases were found in Nevada and California, but the fungus was identified clinically in patients in 29 states. New York state remains a major hotspot.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
Cases of tick-borne illnesses are on the rise. Some experts believe climate change is the cause
In 2022, doctors recorded the first confirmed case of tick-borne encephalitis virus acquired in the United Kingdom.
It began with a bike ride.
A 50-year-old man was mountain biking in the North Yorkshire Moors, a national park in England known for its vast expanses of woodland and purple heather. At some point on his ride, at least one black-legged tick burrowed into his skin. Five days later, the mountain biker developed symptoms commonly associated with a viral infection — fatigue, muscle pain, fever.
At first, he seemed to be on the mend, but about a week later, he started to lose coordination. An MRI scan revealed he had developed encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. He had been infected with tick-borne encephalitis, or TBE, a potentially deadly disease that experts say is spreading into new regions due in large part to global warming.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
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A glance at carbon numbers:
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