Browsing the world of climate change adapation web sites, we find ACT, the Adaptation to Climate Change Team. It is a policy planning initiative from Simon Fraser University designed to develop timely options for sustainable adaptation to climate change impacts.
ACT is a five-year series of six-month sessions on top-of-mind climate change issues that brings leading experts from around the world together with industry, community and government decision-makers to explore the risks and generate recommendations for sustainable adaptation. (From the program page.)
Their most recent conference and policy recommendations concerned adaptation to extreme weather events. Conference information is here. And here are direct links to the conference recommendations and background report.
ACT also has a blog. In the last few months, the blog has been more about mitigation, perhaps because of the media attention on Copenhagen. However, they promise more in 2010 on energy and water security.
The blog has commentary and citations on agriculture, extreme events, fishing, health, population displacement, water, and more.
I was 10 years old my first day of skiing and it was on Rainbow Mountain, a rinky-dink little outfit about 4km north of Whistler, site of the 2010 Olympics.
It was a horrible place. After bumping along in the yellow school bus for a good hour and a half they’d dump us in the parking lot and have us line up in the rain and cold to get our skis. The skis were the really old kind, little more than wooden slats with screwed-on metal edges – and the bindings!
This was 1970 and the tail-end of the era of cable bindings, the kind that wound around your heel and didn’t release when you took a dive. If you fell the wrong way, what did release was more likely to be a joint or leg bone. The boots were leather lace-ups and freezing cold from the sweatsocks of the rental the day before, the poles bamboo with baskets of leather and a metal ring.
The lifts were even worse. No chairlifts here, just a thin metal cable with D-Bars every few feet. Those things either send you flying to the ground or pull your arms out of their sockets if you don’t do it right, and the cable shreds your gloves to rat shit if you do.
Because Rainbow was at the same level as the bottom of Whistler – around 820 metres – it was subject to constantly changing temperatures and a variety of weather. Our second time out we must have arrived after a week of rain followed by night-time freezing, because the snow was bullet-proof. We didn’t ski so much as slip sideways in an awkward snowplow- if we managed to get up on our feet at all.
Lunchtime was spent in an overcrowded little diner that reeked of charred burger and old grease. Smeared french fries were ground into the wet concrete floor as shrieking, unruly kids spilled them under the hard metal tables. I was miserably wet and cold, unable to even peer out the fogged-up windows. The ride back was spent just wishing we’d finally get home.
We were supposed to go once a week for three weeks but after two sessions of this so-called fun, exhilarating sport I told my teacher and school principal Mr. Cope you couldn’t drag me up there a third time. I held off telling my parents for a couple of days, but when I did, they managed to convince me to give it just one more try.
Mr. Cope, who had a knack for humiliating kids in front of others, seized the opportunity once he heard my change of heart.
To peals of laughter in front of 150 kids lined up to go back into school after recess, he brayed:
What’s this Ian, you want to go skiing now? I thought you said you didn’t want to go! Make up your mind! You’re worse than an old woman!
Canadian rock star and photographer Bryan Adams will receive the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award at the 2010 Juno Awards. He is being recognized for his fundraising concerts and campaigns. His campaigns have often brought focus to his photography skills; he has published two portrait books with proceeds going to breast cancer research.
In contrast to his squeaky clean image, his photographs often err a bit on the naughty side. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Vogue to Playboy, along with exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum and London’s Saatchi Gallery. His most high-profile job was photographing Queen Elizabeth II. The resulting portrait was widely distributed in the form of a Canadian postage stamp.
All that, and he’s written some beautiful songs as well. Bryan Adams is a Canadian treasure. There’s a great article detailing why that can be found here. Congratulations Bryan!
stephwereley
Last night, for the first time in my life, I held a hockey stick.
No, I’m not joking. And I’m not exaggerating. I’m completely serious.
What kind of 22-year-old, born-and-raised Canadian has never held a hockey stick in her life, let alone hit a puck with the thing?
Oh, right. A 22-year-old, born-and-raised Canadian that has always professed to disliking the sport profusely and who has always been disgruntled that, somehow, the definition of Canada is, well, hockey.
I’m still disgruntled that the definition of Canada is hockey. That’s a stupid way to define a country and a people. I stand by my earlier statements that you are still a perfectly good Canadian even if you don’t like hockey. But, you know what? I retract the statement that I dislike the sport profusely. In fact, I’ll even say there’s something incredibly exhilerating about the whole thing. I think it’s the sounds, actually. Skates on ice, sticks on ice, the voices of the players, the puck ricocheting off the garbage can next to the outdoor rink, the solid plunk of the puck against a stick.
Throughout the city I live in, there are small outdoor rinks, lit, thankfully. Last night, M, his roommates and myself loaded skates and hockey equipment into one of their cars and went to one, hidden away down a dead-end road at the end of a slightly obscure path. There was another small group of three there, experienced players, or at least more so than myself. The guys had their skates on in a matter of minutes. My own skates, being the wrong colour and style (white, not black, with laces all the way up and the pretty look of dancing on ice — that’s right. I handled a puck with a hockey stick in figure skates) took about 15 minutes to get into. It doesn’t help that they haven’t been worn in nearly two years and were stiff and unmanageable. And then, I sat feeling intimidated. The six people on the ice whipped around spraying a thin shimmer into the air. The six pucks flew from one side to the other as they practiced passing and shooting. I could see no where I belonged with my shiny, white, rusty skates and my potential to land flat on my butt the moment I stepped out onto the ice. Making a fool of myself in front of M and his roommates, all whom I know well and trust, was one thing; making a fool of myself in front of these strangers was quite another.
But I couldn’t sit on the sidelines either. Weighing my options I realized I would be far more of a fool if I sat like an idiot on the bench for the next half hour until the three strangers left.
It was like walking when I first stepped out. My skates had been stored improperly the last time I used them and rust had built up on the blades. But it got better, and with each turn around the rink, I gained a little confidence on my blades. Finally, I was ready to hold the stick. It didn’t help that the guys kept trying to hit my feet with pucks in what I guess they thought was encouragement.
I’m lucky to have met M and his roommates. They’re patient. Willing to let me fail, perhaps, as long as I keep trying. They gave me a few basics and then kept shooting pucks at me. And I kept, clumsily, shooting back. Half an hour later, M said I was better. And, I’ll admit, I could tell. It doesn’t take long for the stick to feel more comfortable in your hands. It doesn’t take long for your feet to adjust to gliding instead of walking. The hardest part is putting those two things together.
By the end of the winter, I hope I’ll be better. I hope at least to have an understanding of what it is about the sport that has so captivated the people who play. I think I’m on my way to that.
(However, the hour it took to warm up afterwards hindered that just a touch.)
Sulfur dioxide is one of the by-products of volcanic eruptions…all eruptions send it into the atmosphere. Small eruptions release a little, big eruptions a lot. Sulfur dioxide acts like a “radiation mirror”, reflecting the sun’s energy back into space. Really big volcanic eruptions can cause enough solar power to be reflected to actually cool the earth and alter weather patterns. Mt. Krakatoa’s eruption in August of 1883 did just that, and it affected the weather for several years.
And as we already know, weather is unstable enough. David Laskin writes, “Constantly and futilely, the earth’s atmosphere seeks to achieve equilibrium. Weather is the turbulent means to this perfect, hopeless end. Contrasting temperatures try to balance out to one uniform temperature, pressure differences strive for resolution, winds blow in a vain attempt to finally calm down global tensions. All of this is enormously complicated by the ceaseless rotation of the planet. Weather is the steam the atmosphere lets off as it heaves itself again and again into a more comfortable position. Weather keeps happening because the equilibrium of the atmosphere keeps getting messed up.”
As Christmas of 1887 gave way to the New Year, a large pocket of super-cooled air formed over Alberta, Canada, caused by a combination of factors. Winters in northern Canada feature only a couple hours of sunlight, and much of that can’t be absorbed by the snow-covered surface. Add in high pressure, very light winds, and the possibility that Krakatoa’s residue was still in play, and the region that saw average temperatures of -15°F was now an even more frigid -35°F.
At first, it’s hard to see how this is really news-worthy. After all, it’s Canada, it’s winter, it’s cold. You kind of expect it…our weather south of the border hasn’t been, for the last 2 weeks, all that much warmer. But things changed on January 10, 1888.
It was then that the jet stream dove down from the Yukon and ran into the Canadian Rockies. The currents slid down the mountains, warming as they did, and collided with the super cold air mass that had stagnated there. The drop in air pressure created a powerful low that, propelled by high pressure behind it, began sliding to the south.
In the meantime, many hundreds of miles to the south, a wave of warm, moist air was surging northward from Oklahoma, which would dramatically warm the upper Midwest, and provide welcome relief from the unseasonably cold weather.
Both air masses, the cold from the north and the warm from the south, were impressively powerful on their own. But when the warm air collided with the cold, it would create a storm of awesome power. Stay tuned…
Recommended Reading: The Children’s Blizzard – A “glue” book. Once it’s in your hands, it gets stuck until the last page is finished.
BSKcafe