Even the National Post is Sounding the Alarm.

By now we all know how quickly and severely the Arctic is warming. Nobody's arguing that any more. What we don't know, as yet, is how that's going to impact the majority of us down here by the 49th parallel and below.

David Barberr, a lead author of a new report released by the Arctic Council, tells the National Post that we're in for an unbelievably costly and damaging experience.

“Most people don’t understand how bad it is.”

The report completed for the Arctic Council, the group of eight countries that ring the North Pole, was released last week. It represents the work of 90 scientists from around the world and summarizes the most recent research from 2010 to 2016.

“Cumulative global impacts related to Arctic change are expected to be large,” the document said. “Adaptation costs and economic opportunities are estimated in the tens of trillions of U.S. dollars.”

How much? Trillions? TENS of trillions? That's some serious dinero.

The report concludes the Arctic continues to warm at twice the pace of mid-latitudes and is likely to see warming of up to five degrees Celsius as early as 2040.

By then, the report says, summer sea ice is likely to be a thing of the past. Glaciers and ice caps will continue to melt and contribute to continually rising seas.

...

Climate change in the Arctic is well underway and can’t be stopped. But the report says if nations meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Paris agreement, changes in the Arctic will stabilize to a new normal some time around 2040.

“We should have started 20 years ago,” Barber said. “We didn’t get our act together and we’re still dicking around trying to figure out how to price carbon.

“These things are costing us. And they’re costing the stability of our planet.”

And it's not just NatPo that may be experiencing a climate change epiphany. Even the Sunday Times is catching on. Now there's even talk of a popular "tipping point" in which the public is coming to accept the powerful scientific consensus on man-made climate change and the urgency for taking effective action. Are you paying attention, you lousy petro-pimps?

But wait, there's more. This time it's Britain's Mirror moaning on about how climate change could cost the UK 75 billion quid a year by 2050. What's next, the Daily Mail? Who am I kidding? Nah, forget the Mail.

Focus on What Really Matters Most

Our government has many priorities. The prime minister has said that he wants to be known, first and foremost, as a free trader. He's all about increasing trade, maximizing growth in GDP.

Mr. Trudeau also says he wants real action on climate change. So far that's been stalled on vague statements about carbon pricing that have triggered strong push back from the fossil provinces - especially Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The prime minister is now expected to appease the petro-provinces by approving at least one pipeline to the Pacific, in all probability the Kinder Morgan project that will see an armada of heavily laden supertankers navigating through Vancouver's Coal Harbour and on through the province's southern coastal waters.

This government still has no means, no technical solution to a major dilbit spill in these challenging waters. Once the diluent separates out the remaining bitumen sludge sinks to the bottom at depths that are essentially unreachable. Perhaps hoping to cover its tracks in such a disastrous event, the Environment Minister has approved the chemical nightmare, Corexit, as an oil dispersant even though it merely causes spilled oil to sink, not disperse, which would help deliver its content of toxins, heavy metals, acids and carcinogens to the seabed that anchors the chain of marine life on the coast.

Trudeau knows there's no way to clean up a dilbit spill and yet he's ignoring that troubling fact - and the long term wellbeing of coastal British Columbians - to accede to his political imperative and appease the petro-province premiers.

Is that what really matters most to Canadians? Is exporting the costliest, highest-carbon synthetic petroleum what is best for us and our grandkids? Of course not. It is, however, what the prime minister's handlers see as most politically opportune. Liberal fortunes trump (and I use that word advisedly) the wellbeing of Canadians hands down.

Yet we hear nothing from this government, nary a word, about the "climate emergency" now spreading across the Arctic. The Stockholm Environment Institute, in conjunction with the Arctic Council and other scientific groups, today released a blunt warning in the form of the Arctic Resilience Report which concluded that we're at risk of triggering 19 "tipping points" that could greatly accelerate the onset of runaway global warming not merely in the Arctic but across the globe.

The tipping points are addressed in Chapter 3 beginning at page 64 of the 240-page report. Among other things it notes that all Arctic nations are vulnerable to at least 10 of the 19 identified tipping points while Canada, Russia and the US are exposed to 18.

Regime shifts in the Arctic encompass a broad range of dynamics that typically occur on a time scale of decades to centuries, and a spatial scale from local and landscape dynamics, to subcontinental ones, with consequences that may be felt globally. The rest of this section summarizes the most established regime shifts reviewed in the academic literature. Most (12 out of 16) are difficult to reverse or irreversible on a 100-year time scale. The evidence supporting the existence of these regime shifts comes primarily from contemporary observations, paleo-records and models (13 regime shifts); experimentation has only been possible on six. In fact, the scales at which these regime shifts dynamics occur, both in space and time, make experimentation a rare option. Hence, identifying the mechanism underlying some Arctic regime shifts is a challenging task that relies heavily on modelling and the synthesis of studies of long-term changes in the ecology, hydrology, geology and climate of the Arctic. Most of regime shifts identified occur in marine and polar systems; the others occur in tundra, temperate and boreal forests, and freshwater lakes and rivers.

The report itemizes each of the tipping points with an explanation of the individual regime, the consequences that flow from it and what, if anything, can still be done by way of response. The discussion explains that these regime changes are not linear, it's not a steady state progression, but are subject to abrupt and fairly dramatic change. It also shows how many of the 19 tipping points can combine to create a synergy that can evolve into a cascade effect.

It's a well written, balanced paper that's within the comprehension levels of non-science types like yours truly. It's a pretty easy read for a research report.

The Arctic Resilience Report is ultimately a warning that we don't have the luxury of time to respond to the irreversible changes now underway. Catastrophic runaway global warming could be a matter of years away. We must come to appreciate the speed of the changes underway, how we suddenly became confronted with 19 tipping points. Government institutions, it notes, are moribund and, as currently organized, incapable of keeping up with the pace of change. 

If there was ever a time to go on something akin to a war footing, this is it. This is what matters most to the future of our country, not bloody bitumen pipelines, not half-assed proposals about carbon pricing. It's time for Mr. Trudeau to focus on what really matters most to Canada, not what's best for his political fortunes.

Words Best Left Unspoken

Ever notice how a word or phrase can abruptly disappear from our language almost without anyone noticing much less wondering why?

I wonder whatever happened to "tipping points"? Where did that term go? Why did it fall off the radar?

Just a few years ago, back when we thought tipping points were decades off in the future, we read about them a lot. We were told we had to keep manmade global warming increases to this limit or that if we didn't want to awake the Sleeping Giant of nature and trigger runaway global warming.

What we were doing was bad enough. It wasn't going to be easy getting by in a climate that was 2 degrees Celsius hotter. That kind of man made warming would be awful but it was at least survivable, not like what awaited us from far greater warming resulting from natural feedback loops triggered should we cross these invisible, unknowable lines called "tipping points."

I suppose tipping points are a bit like a blind man parallel parking. That's why we had to be very, very conservative. This was no time to be pushing our luck, testing limits.

The fact is there are signs, very obvious signs, that we've already crossed some major tipping points. Nature is now running with the ball and has a clear path to the end zone.

The most obvious of these is the Arctic sea ice. Just a few years ago the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was warning that, if we didn't mend our GHG emission ways, the Arctic could be ice free by the end of this century, 2100.  End of the century. That gave us food for thought - tomorrow, maybe. Update: now we're looking at an ice free Arctic Ocean this year, probably, if not then next year for sure.  Why did the IPCC get it so incredibly wrong? Easy, they were working on man made warming. What we're seeing today is nature's doing. We've crossed a major tipping point. Best we stop using that word, eh?

How about a new term, "Arctic amplification"? What it means is that the loss of reflective Arctic sea ice warms the ocean and the atmosphere which warms and energizes the Polar Jet Stream which accelerates the melting of the entire Greenland ice sheet and creates these things called Rossby Waves that brings polar air deep into southern latitudes and warmer southern air high into the Arctic that increases the polar melt and on and on and on.

Think of it as a progression: tipping point, change, knock-on effect, knock-on effect, knock-on effect, more change, knock-on effect, knock-on effect... you get the picture. It's called a "feedback loop" or a positive feedback loop to be exact. Positive in that it accelerates the process of change.

You can't see the Polar Jet Stream that's playing such an important role in this but you can see its handiwork, from space no less.



Yes, the Arctic is greening which is a good thing in some ways. Nice to see plants growing and migrating but nobody can be sure how this rapid ecological change will play out.

One downside is that our northern, Boreal Forest is browning, dying out. The changes underway will cause changes to precipitation, energy and carbon cycles across the far north.

Pentagon Exploits Tensions Over Ukraine, Pushes for Multi-Purpose Sensor Chain Across Canada's Arctic

Arrest that Man, He's From Russia!

They sure know how to pick their opportunities.

At the very moment NATO leaders are in Wales fretting over what to do with Vlad Putin and the future of Ukraine, America's brass are floating the idea of establishing a "multi-purpose sensor chain" across the vast Canadian Arctic.

Exactly what they have in mind isn't immediately clear but would entail sensors that could detect and track aircraft, ships and even cruise missiles as well as a missile attack from North Korea.  It's not the same as stationing missile interceptor batteries on Canadian soil but it would certainly integrate with America's missile defence system.

NORAD commander, US general Charles Jacoby, put it this way:  "If Canada decided not to belong to missile defence, then I'm sure that they would continue to play all of their robust roles that they play in missile warning and in other NORAD missions.  And if they did decide (to join), I'm sure we'd take great advantage of the capabilities and commitment that Canada brings to every mission."


After that one, you just might want to take a wet-nap to your butt cheek.