Costs of Climate Change - Deaths

 I supposed the ultimate cost of any catastrophe would be the deaths the catastrophe causes.  Climate change has been identified as a cause of a significant number of deaths globally.

The World Health Organization has estimated that close to 500,000 deaths globally can be attributed to heat.  And we all know that climate change is making things hotter.  In Europe, the number has been estimated to be around 175,000 heat-related deaths, as described here:

Heat in European region kills 175,000 a year, WHO estimates

Mostly what the heat does is make various chronic conditions worse.  Conditions like cardio-and-cerebro-vascular diseases (strokes and such).  Diabetes-related conditions as well.  Of course, many of these chronic conditions are more common in the elderly.  However, as we saw during the pandemic, some people see the elderly as expendable, especially when it comes to taking any kind of proactive measures like masking, vaccinating or, in the case of climate change, actively working to reduce greenhouse gases.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an analysis looking into the various ways climate change was impacting people.  It can be seen here:

Climate Impacts on Human Health

Basically, the report looks at things like temperature, vector-borne diseases, food safety and nutrition, mental health concerns and air quality impacts.

Air quality, of course is affected in a number of ways.  With increasing temperatures, ground level ozone is expected to increase.  More forest fires, already happening because of more hot and dry conditions, causes increases in particulate matter in the air.  These all have quite negative effects on health.

Food and nutrition will be affected, as shown in the following picture (a larger image can be found on the link above):

The Climate Atlas of Canada also has an article dealing with Climate change and Health.  The article considers many of the same issues and includes a number of actions that can be taken to mitigate the effects of those issues.

Once again, it's clear that inaction on climate change is going to be costly, particularly in terms of human health.

Danielle Smith - Meet Jasper Alberta

On July 24, 2024, a forest fire swept through Jasper, Alberta.  Preliminary reports say that over 30% of the structures in that town have been destroyed.  Insured losses are estimated to be in excess of $700 Million.

As the fire advanced on the town, it was described as being "a wall of fire 100 m high".  It must be difficult to be a climate change denier and have to go online to claim that this is just a normal fire season.

One story about how the fire engulfed Jasper appeared here, complete with video footage.

Jasper wildfire: Here’s how quickly flames engulfed a town

A number of factors likely contributed to the intensity of this fire.  Weeks of higher than average temperatures.  Months of less than average rainfall.  Decades of fire suppression and a buildup of fuel in the forest.  Climate change driven wild by more and more burning of fossil fuels.

A few of them are explained in this article:  A history of cuts to Alberta's firefighting budget, explained.

Two different government administrations were responsible for cuts to Alberta's firefighting capabilities.  The current UCP government continued those cuts.

Alberta’s UCP Government Has Cut Tens of Millions of Dollars From Wildfire Preparedness Programs

Danielle Smith performed well for the cameras.  Expressions of sadness, perhaps a few (fake) tears.  But it was all for the cameras. Danielle has gaslighted for oil and gas. She's pimped for oil and gas. She's defended oil and gas. She denied human-caused climate change. She is one of the politicians who is partly responsible for this mess.

Danielle, of course, has identified what or who is to blame.  Arsonists.

A climate connection to Alberta wildfires? Smith says most in province caused by humans

Danielle should resign and let someone else be Premier.  Preferably someone with a better grip on reality.

Costs of Climate Change - Tourism

 Human-caused climate change is simply a fact.  We've known about it since the late 1800s, Exxon scientists knew about it over 50 years ago, and data continues to pour in confirming what we've known all along.  Burning fossil fuels, releasing giga-tonnes of CO2, is changing the climate in ways we haven't seen in all of human history and at a rate that is unprecedented in the Earth's history.

We know that we need to change energy sources.  We need to adapt for greater changes in climate still to come.  None of this will be cheap.  However, doing nothing is not an option because not doing anything will cost even more.  As this series tries to make clear, we are already paying for the effects of climate change, and one casualty of climate change is tourism.

A recent article from the BBC was titled "Will extreme weather change when (and where) you go on holiday?"

This summer has seen what was referred to as "a slew of heat-related deaths" in the Mediterranean.  And tourists are taking note.  Cancellations, booking at different times of the year and even heading for cooler destinations (think Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway....). 

And it's not just heat.  There have been other natural disasters, such as fires, hurricanes and floods.  Remember, it was only last summer when temperature infernos and a lack of rain triggered massive fires in Spain, Italy and Greece.  

Wildfires: 2023 among the worst in the EU in this century  These fires produced an estimated 20 megatonnes of CO2 emissions, "nearly a third of the CO2 emissions from international aviation in the EU in one year."

Closer to home, forest fires have disrupted travel more and more each year recently.

The recent massive fire that burned 30-40% of Jasper closed major highways, throttling commercial truck traffic and essentially closing down certain businesses in the area, as this article makes clear. 

Business craters for open tourist spots outside Jasper National Park.  Highway 16 has been closed since July 24 and only recently opened for short periods to allow commercial truck traffic through.  The Icefields Parkway has also been closed, one of the major routes to and from Jasper.  Campers in Jasper who had to flee as the fire approached have still not been able to retrieve their camping equipment, RVs and such.  It's unknown when that will happen.  Now that so much of Jasper has burned, one wonders how long it will be until many tourists return to the Park.

An article in the Vernon Morning Star from September 19th, 2023, suggested that Climate change cost B.C. tourism ‘$100s of millions, never to be recovered’.  A fire on Vancouver Island in June 2023, forced a 2.5 week closure of Highway 4.  A survey of businesses affected indicated a loss of $44 million.  What is also means is that potential tourists might avoid BC in the future, especially since smoke-filled summers, road closures and forest fires makes travel in this province less appealing.

And it's not just summer fires and heat waves.  Climate change is resulting in less snow in winter, so tourism for skiing is suffering.  On a personal level, snow levels were so bad last winter where I live that I didn't do a single day of alpine touring skiing all winter, choosing instead to spend my time at a few nearby cross country ski locations.

It's also worth mentioning that tourism isn't just a victim of climate change.  According to one source, tourism is responsible for 8% of the world's carbon emissions.

Globally, tourism is a $7.7 trillion business and contributes 7.6% to the global economy.  This and other effects were mentioned in Climate change, global warming posing serious challenges to global tourism.

And this is just a start.  It's going to get worse.

Costs of Climate Change - Denial

 It's a VERY common refrain from the Climate Change Denial camp

"The climate has changed before.  It's always changing."

"How could CO2 cause climate change when it makes up less than 0.04% of the atmosphere?"

Both statements are true, up to a point.  It's what comes after that point that's the problem.

Both statements are addressed and debunked in this one article:

Opinion: Yes, there was global warming in prehistoric times. But nothing in millions of years compares with what we see today 

It's like this, briefly.

First, CO2 concentrations are higher now than they've been in the past 4 million years.  That encompasses the whole of human history and definitely the history of modern civilization.

That said, it's not the concentration of CO2 specifically OR the precise temperature that is the problem.  It's the RATE at which both CO2 and temperature are changing.

Yes, there have been warm periods in the Earth's past.  Those changes happed over thousands of years and amounted to around 0.1 degree F per century.  That's 10 times slower than the rate of change we're experiencing now.

What we're seeing now looks like this:

That rapid rate of change is what's giving us conditions like those shown in this data.  Where the past 12 months are the warmest they've ever been, historically.  A rate of change that's more like a whole degree in a decade (remember - 10 times faster than anything the Earth has experienced before).

The infrastructure on which 8 billion people depend - our cities, our agriculture, and pretty much everything else - was built around a climate that was stable for thousands of years.  Infrastructure can be adapted to changing conditions IF those changes happen slowly.  

They're not.

Democracy Under Attack in the USA

The grand jury indictment referred to in the following article came out in 2018.  And yet, here we are, in July 2024, with the prospects of Trump becoming President once again.

By: Heather Cox Richardson

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, appointed to the Department of Justice by Donald Trump, announced that a grand jury had returned an indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 US election. A grand jury is comprised of regular Americans, and it only indicts when a supermajority believes that the evidence proves a case. So Rosenstein was telling the nation, and the Republican Party, and the president, that the Department of Justice has evidence, admissible in court, that will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, under Vladmir Putin, the Russian military hacked the 2016 election in favor of Trump. This is an attack on our sovereignty as real as any bombing campaign. Indeed, one of the aliases the Russians used was "Ward DeClaur," which sounds an awful lot like "War Declared."

Today, Trump stood in front of cameras and sided with Putin.

The American president sided with an enemy power over our own government. This has never happened before; indeed, our system was deliberately set up to make sure it could not happen. But it has.

Also today, a Russian national, Maria Butina, was charged in federal court with acting as a foreign agent, forging ties to the Republican Party through the NRA. Butina had testified voluntarily before the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election, which produced a bipartisan report unanimously agreeing that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, but GOP House investigators refused Democrats' requests to call Butina to testify. We know that the NRA gave $30 million to Trump's campaign, and that a great deal of that money was Russian. We also know that the NRA heavily supported GOP candidates, and that, apparently, some of them were talking with Russian agents. It is not a stretch to believe that Russian money influenced the election down the ticket as well as at the top. It seems we are approaching an explanation of why GOP leaders have been so defensive about the Russia investigation, and so weirdly quiet as Trump has run roughshod over the nation.

We are at the moment when we must face that the president and the leaders of the Republican Party are tools of a foreign power.

To what end are they acting?

They are deliberately destroying democracy in favor of oligarchy. This is why their interests align with those of the oligarchical Russia, rather than with us, and why Trump is trying to destroy our alliances with other democratic nations.

Since WWII, America has tried to curb the abuses of capitalism while still preserving that system. The government regulated businesses to keep them from brutalizing workers, cheating consumers, and polluting the air and water. It provided a basic social safety net for the elderly and the needy. And it provided infrastructure-- roads, bridges, schools and hospitals-- to make sure everyone had equal access to opportunity. Above all, it demanded equality before the law. Since 1933, this government represented what the American people wanted.

Trump and the GOP have deliberately worked to destroy this system (most recently by rewriting the numbers so they can declare that we have no need for a social safety net because there are so few Americans living in poverty). They believe that government interference in the accumulation of wealth hampers the ability of rich men to advance the economy, and therefore society. They must not be held to the laws; they must be permitted to do what they think is best. This was the same ideology as that held by the Robber Barons at the end of the nineteenth century and the leaders from the 1920s: to make the country great, you had to give businessmen free rein to act in their best interest. Now that ideology is international. If only Trump can smash our alliances with other democracies-- as he is working so hard to do-- he can help Russia launch an oligarchy that can rule the world.

If we permit this to happen, we will all be expendable, depending on whether or not we are useful to our rulers. You can bet your life on it. Literally.

In the 1890s and the 1920s, Americans took back their democracy. Today, we are at an even more dramatic crisis, with a president who is siding with a foreign enemy and a ruling political party that is compliant, at best. This is the moment when we must call out treason, and speak up to defend democracy, our birthright, from enemy oligarchs, both abroad and- heartbreakingly- at home.

Costs of Climate Change - Storms - Preparedness Part 1

 On Tuesday, July 16th, a major rain storm event flooded Toronto.

2nd major flooding in 11 years a sign Toronto is not adapting quickly enough, say climate experts

Tuesday's extreme rain is very reminiscent of 2013 flood with similar consequences

Eleven years and 8 days ago, another flood devastated the city, with 126 mm or rain falling in 90 minutes.  For those of you who haven't converted, that's about 5 inches of rain.  In an hour and a half.

This time, just under 100 mm of rain fell in just a few hours.  Clearly people weren't ready, despite heavy rain warnings in all the forecasts.  The question is whether the city itself was ready.  

Earlier wet weather had saturated the ground so it was unable to absorb much extra and drainage systems were overwhelmed.

Following the 2013 flood, talk abounded about how Toronto needed to better adapt, as climate change was likely to make these heavy rain events more frequent and more severe. And while it's too early to attribute Tuesday's rainfall to climate change, by all appearances, the city still seems unprepared for a major rainfall event.

"As temperatures continue to rise, you're going to have more moisture in the system. So with more moisture and energy, you're going to have bigger storms, larger precipitation events, with more water coming down over shorter periods of time," she said, "so storms are going to come down with even greater force.

So, not only are we not doing anything much about the root cause of climate change (fossil fuel emissions, we're not doing much about preparing our homes, roads and cities for the changes that are clearly coming. 

To prepare costs money and we don't seem to have the sense of urgency needed to put the drive and dollars behind preparation.

Interview with Toronto's Mayor.

Toronto's Mayor noted that the number of severe storms is expected to double in the next 15 year, but also noted that the city is $26 billion and 10 years behind in infrastructure work.

Costs of Climate Change - Diseases - Part 1 Ticks

 Anaplasmosis (caused by a bacterium), babesiosis (caused by a parasite), and the Powassan virus.  Ever heard of them?  Neither had I.  These diseases, however, are spreading (slowly) in Canada in recent years, carried by ticks who can also carry the better-known Lyme disease virus.

Most of these diseases are quite rare, but they are becoming more common in Canada, mainly because the ticks that carry the viruses are seeing their range increase further north as our climate warms.

Not much is known about how widespread these diseases are, partly because most provinces aren't keeping track, so data is hard to find.  However, back in 2009, Canada's first case of Anaplasmosis showed up in Alberta.  Last year, Ontario had 30 confirmed or suspected cases of this disease.  A research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was quoted as saying there are now "hundreds and hundreds" of Anaplasmosis cases in Canada each year.

Anaplasmosis isn't always a trivial disease, although initial symptoms often seem like a case of the flu (sound familiar??).  In June of 2024, an Ottawa woman died from an infection from the Powassan virus after spending 3 years in hospital, so it's not trivial either.

More of the story can be read here:  

Tick-spread illnesses are on the rise in Canada. Are surveillance, awareness efforts keeping up?

The BC Center for Disease Control (BCCDC) has a list that includes:

• Anaplasmosis
• Babesiosis
• Lyme disease
• Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
• Tick-borne Relapsing Fever
• Tick Paralysis
• Tularemia

Changes in the climate are helping ticks spread into new territories and also helps the pathogens survive better.

This web page from the Climate Atlas of Canada shows the increasing spread of ticks and Lyme disease.

    Lime Disease under Climate change

Of course, they don't cover this information.  You'll have to get that elsewhere.