Nuclear cost to double in Ontario

Proposed Ontario SMR

From Renew Economy

The main power utility in the Canadian province of Ontario has put in a request to nearly double the price of payments its receives for nuclear power, in order to cover the cost of maintenance, upgrades and new projects.

Ontario Power Generation has asked the local regulator – the Ontario Energy Board – to increase the payments for nuclear power to $C207 a megawatt hour ($A222/MWh) [$US150/MWh] from January, 2027, nearly double what it received ($C111.61/MWh) in 2025.

Nuclear accounts for more than half of the generation in Ontario, which is often held up by nuclear advocates as a shining light for Australia to follow, but it faces massive expenses in coming years as it refurbishes its aging nuclear fleet, and embarks on a program to build four small modular reactors.

The first of these SMRS are expected to be delivered in the early 2030s, and the total cost is currently put at more than $C21 billion. But more money, nearly $C27 billion, is to be spent on refurbishing four existing reactors at Pickering, and yet more on other nuclear upkeep costs.

The huge investment in nuclear is raising concerns among environmental groups and also major energy users, which include steel makers and car companies such as Ford and Toyota.

The Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario, says its members are facing “skyrocketing” electricity prices, including a 165 per cent rise in the next three years.

AMPCO president Brad Duguid blames the rising cost of nuclear, and also the heavy price of gas generation which is being used to fill the gap caused by the refurbishment of the old nuclear plants, some of which are scheduled to be offline for three years.

“Over the next seven to 10 years, we’re seeing significant increases in the market energy rates to make up that difference,” he told the Globe and Mail.

“We’re talking about increases in the range of 165 per cent for the market rate over the next three years alone. That’s untenable. That’s an absolute threat to the competitiveness of our industrial sector and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports.”

Retail customers are also suffering. Residential power prices jumped 29 per cent in October, although they were partially offset by an increase in government rebates.

The cost of those rebates – which are used by the government in Ontario, as they are in nuclear dependent France, to hide the true cost of nuclear – have jumped to $C8.5 billion a year. Other costs are incorporated in general government debt, critics note.

“This application really confirms that these projects are among the most expensive ways to meet our need for electricity,” said the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, which supports renewables and opposes the nuclear expansion.

“We could expand solar, wind and storage at a fraction of the cost and avoid seeing our power bills go through the roof.

“The Premier’s buddies in the nuclear and gas industries may like his plan for an old school electricity system built around eye-wateringly expensive mega projects. But the people of Ontario are now in for some serious sticker shock.

See also First SMR in a G7 country 

First SMR in a G7 country

Construction of its first SMR (Small Modular Reactor) has started in Canada.    I've talked about SMRs  before, but have been sceptical.    But I've also said that high latitudes will probably need nuclear power, because solar is so variable from summer to winter. 

The electricity from this SMR is forecast to have an LCOE (levelised cost of electricity) of about US$108 per MWh, and completion is expected by 2030.  Nuclear power stations tend to come in late and over budget, so we'll see whether this one is any different.  If it is on time and under budget, there will be many more built.  Even in countries in lower latitudes, adding another power source to the grid will make the grid more stable and easier to manage.

From CBC

Premier Doug Ford's government has given Ontario Power Generation the green light to start construction on Canada's first small modular reactor, a new nuclear energy technology to be built next door to the Darlington power plant. 

The small modular reactor (SMR) would provide 300 megawatts of power, enough electricity to supply about 300,000 homes, according to briefing documents from Ontario's Ministry of Energy and Mines. 

It would be the first of four such reactors that OPG aims to build on the site, at a total project cost of $20.9 billion, in an effort to meet what's forecast to be a steep rise in demand for electricity in the province.

The estimated construction cost of the initial reactor is $7.7 billion, which includes $1.6 billion of infrastructure to be shared across the project.

"Ontario needs more power, I think we understand this problem today. When you turn the lights on in your living room you may not think about where that power comes from," said Stephen Lecce, Ontario's minister of energy and mines, on Thursday.

"But ensuring that we have reliable, affordable energy is essential to the economic sovereignty of our province and country," he continued.

Lecce made the announcement near the Darlington nuclear generating station. Preparation work has already begun at the project site, immediately east of the existing nuclear plant along the Lake Ontario shoreline. 

The province's electricity system operator recently estimated that demand for power across Ontario is set to increase 75 per cent by 2050.

"As it stands today, we just don't have the supply to meet that demand," Lecce said.

In a briefing, ministry officials told reporters that roughly 80 per cent of the SMR project spending will go to Ontario companies, another 15 per cent to European and Asian firms, and just five per cent to companies in the U.S., primarily for GE Hitachi's design and development of the power plant model, called the BWRX-300. 

Ontario would become the first place in the world to build the BWRX-300, which is a smaller version of GE Hitachi's existing boiling water reactor technology.

The officials say the Canadian companies involved in the project will have the potential to export components to other countries that decide to build this type of SMR. 

The timeline is to finish construction of the first reactor by the end of 2029, and connect it to the grid in 2030.  

The average lifetime cost of electricity generated by the SMRs is estimated to be 14.9 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh)[C$149/MWh, US$108/MWh], according to an analysis by the Independent Electricity System Operator, the provincial agency that oversees the provincial grid. 

According to that analysis, providing a similar level of base power as the SMRs by building wind and solar power with battery energy storage would cost in the range of 13.5 to 18.4 cents per kWh. However, that alternative would require additional transmission, use up far more land and potentially face constraints in finding acceptable sites. 

A concept image of a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR), the nuclear technology Ontario Power Generation is using for its new project adjacent to the existing Darlington nuclear plant. (GE-Hitachi)

 

US orange juice prices plummet

 Canada's retaliatory tariffs and Canadians' boycotts are hitting orange juice prices hard.

Just to spite him

 By Guy Venables

Canada has a far superior health system to the USA's

 Trump just tells lies.

Signal to noise

 GDP data, which are designed to measure the whole economy as accurately as possible, have a couple of flaws, inherent in their coverage and calculation.  Because they cover so many sectors, they are subject to revision, sometimes going back several years.  It is true that "Flash" estimates are often available shortly after the quarter's end, but these are subject to even bigger revisions as fuller data become available.

Business and consumer surveys are usually available within a few days of the month's end, and only the most recent month is revised.   The most prominent of the monthly surveys are the PMIs (Purchasing Managers' Indices), such as S&P Global's PMI surveys, the ISM (Institute of Supply Management) surveys in the USA, business confidence surveys (such as the ZEW surveys in Germany/Euro Area) and so on.  Now, PMI surveys for most economies only go back for 12 or so years.  But one can make very good estimates of what the PMIs would have been if the surveys had been done before that, using business confidence time series.

But then you encounter other problems.  Quite often, business confidence surveys are very "spiky", i.e., they fluctuate a lot from month to month.  In technical terms, their signal-to-noise ratio is low.  Actually, this also applies to PMI time series, but to a lesser extent.  What I do is use an algorithm created years ago by the US Bureau of the Census, which reduces spikes up or down.  If this isn't enough, I fit a moving average, using my own judgement about whether it should be 3,5 or 7 months long.

Look at the example of the Ivey business confidence surveys in Canada, in the succession of charts below:

Well, frankly, as it stands, this chart is more or less useless.  The month-to-month fluctuations make the trend hard to discern.  What about this one, where I've fitted a 7-month centred linear moving average?

That's a lot better.  You can see the 2001 and 2009 recessions and the covid crash, for example. 

How does this smoothed version of the Ivey business confidence data compare with the headline PMI data?  (I have extreme-adjusted the PMI series to reduce the covid crash spike)  Mostly they move broadly in sync, but sometimes, they move in different directions.

[Chart updated 9/6/2024 to remove incorrect data in 2011]

Since we have no way of knowing which is the better guide to the economy until after all the official data have been released in several months' time, we should prolly use an average of the two series.  Which is what the chart below shows, comparing it with GDP, expressed as a percentage of trend.  I've also fitted an additional layer of smoothing to the PMI/IVEY composite, a 3x15 centred moving average.

What can we read from this chart?  First, the PMI/IVEY composite isn't a bad guide to GDP, provided we smooth the Ivey series first.  And, in my experience, the same is broadly true of PMIs and business confidence indicators in other countries, though smoothing is not always necessary.  Because of the covid spike, extreme-adjustment is almost always essential, as the spike makes scaling charts tricky.  Second, this composite leads the overall economy, by several months at the peaks, less at the troughs.  Third, it is still falling, though more slowly, suggesting that the Canadian economy will continue to slow. (You can see that already, relative to trend, Canadian GDP is decelerating)

Extracting a "signal" from the "noise" of randomly fluctuating time series is a problem in economics, and indeed in many disciplines.  Think of how people struggle to understand that even if global temperatures fall for 5 years, because of, say, La Niña, the underlying trend is still upwards.   Or, if you lose half a kilo this week, you have to look at it in the perspective of the gain of 5 kilos you made over the last year!

Canada wildfires

 From Open Mind

Generally, I’ve stopped reacting to climate deniers’ idiotic claims, like the garbage firehose that is the “WattsUpWithThat” blog. Truly, I have better things to do. But this one is so ridiculous, it’s hard to pass up.

Here’s the theme: P. Gosselin claims that all the talk about the severity of Canada’s wildfire this year is hype. He titles his post “Canada Forest Fires Trend Has Gone Down Since 2000, Data Defy Alarmist Claims.” He supports his claim by showing this graph (of the NUMBER of wildfires in Canada each year since 2000):

It’s actually a common tactic of climate deniers, to make a false claim (i.e. tell a lie) and support it with a graph which doesn’t really address the point. Here’s the graph that does address the point (from the same data source), the AREA burned in Canada each year since 2000:

It seems that this year Canada hasn’t had many more fires than previously, but the ones it has had …

So … why do I bother to mention this? Because this is where republican politicians get their scientific beliefs.

Climate denial: the republican party way.

This is not normal

 From a tweet by David Ho

Pacific Northwest heatwave shatters records

From Axios

A stifling heat wave enveloping the Pacific Northwest and western Canada is expected to expand this week, threatening more temperature records.

The weather map looks "strongly reminiscent" of late June 2021, which produced a deadly excessive heat event in the Pacific Northwest, experts say.However, there are some key exceptions, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a climate video briefing Monday.
Swain adds that this time, the center of the heat dome — an area of unusually strong high pressure aloft — is located over southwestern Canada, instead of over the northwestern U.S.

This heatwave is occurring during mid-May rather than late-June, which makes the background temperatures cooler and the records lower.That's fortunate for the affected regions, since temperatures have been about 20 to 30°F above average for this time of year, and will continue to be about 15°F to 25°F this week.

Still, the heat wave has already broken numerous daily and monthly high temperature records in Oregon and Washington, and this heat is forecast to spread east across the Great Basin this week, the National Weather Service (NWS) noted Tuesday in a forecast discussion.On Sunday, Hoquiam, Washington hit a monthly record high at 91°F, while Quillayute's 92°F tied its monthly record.
On Monday, Seattle had a fourth day in a row with a record high, per the NWS.

Some of the Canadian records have been especially noteworthy. For example, based on preliminary data, the small town of Arviat, Nunavut, which sits along the western edge of chilly Hudson Bay, recorded its all-time May high temperature record on May 13, when the temperature climbed to 21.2°C (70.2°F).This was about 7°C (12.6°F) above the previous May record, an unusually large margin for a monthly record.

Numerous records have been broken in British Columbia, where the heat is likely to continue through midweek.

A monthly record was set in Lytton on Sunday, where the temperature climbed to 35.9°C (96.6°F). Normally cool Tofino, located on a Peninsula on Vancouver Island, also set a monthly high Sunday, at 28.3°C (83°F).

In Canada, the heat has exacerbated the already above average start to the wildfire season, with large blazes burning out of control in multiple provinces. About 90 wildfires were burning in Alberta alone as of Sunday.  Other wildfires are burning out of control in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
Some Canadian oil production has been curtailed due to the fires in Alberta, and smoke has moved south of the border, prompting air quality alerts in Minnesota.

Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Axios that it is unusual to have another significant, record-breaking heat event so soon, in virtually the same region, as the June 2021 event.

"I realize that the two events are completely independent, but it is still a surprise," he said via email.

He cited published research showing that human-caused climate change has made the high temperatures during this and many other heat waves at least 3°F to 5°F hotter.

A slew of other studies show climate change is causing heat waves to be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting.

A climate attribution study on the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave found that it would have been "virtually impossible" to have occurred without climate change.

 

What's that you say?  There is no such thing as global warming?

Heat and Fires scorch northern Canada

 From SciTech Daily

In early July 2022, a combination of dry weather, lightning, and unusual heat fueled hundreds of wildland fires in northern Canada. 136 fires were burning in The Yukon and 65 in the Northwest Territories on July 6, according to the Canadian government.

The image above was captured on July 6, 2022, by the  Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Thick plumes of dense smoke billowed from several of the largest fires, sometimes sending smoke streaming north toward the Beaufort Sea and Canadian Arctic. In addition, Environment Canada has posted heat and air quality warnings for several communities in the Northwest Territories.

The second image (below), from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, is a closer view of fires burning near Great Bear Lake, a lake in the boreal forest of Canada. At least 96 fires have been reported in the Northwest Territories this year, and 131,380 hectares (507 square miles, 1,313 square kilometers) have burned. Fires in The Yukon have charred another 62,336 hectares (241 square miles, 623 square kilometers).

Many parts of The Yukon and Northwest Territories have experienced record-breaking temperatures in recent weeks. The extreme heat dries out vegetation and makes it easier for fires to ignite and burn.

Research also indicates that hot weather has made thunderstorms and lightning more likely in this region. In a research study published in 2017, scientists found connections between temperatures, lightning strikes, fire size, and burned area since 1975. “We expect an increasing number of thunderstorms, and hence fires, across the high latitudes in the coming decades as a result of climate change,” said study co-author Brendan Rogers of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Despite notable fire activity in northern Canada, Alaska, and the U.S. Southwest, overall emissions from global fire activity have been low in recent months, according to data shared by Mark Parrington, an atmospheric scientist with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Parrington tracks fires for the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) using a satellite-based data record that began in 2003. CAMS estimates near-real-time wildfire emissions using its Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), which aggregates observations of fires made by NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.

Quebec becomes first jurisdiction to ban oil and gas exploration

 From The Energy Mix

In what campaigners are calling a world first, Quebec’s National Assembly voted Tuesday afternoon to ban new oil and gas exploration and shut down existing drill sites within three years, even as the promoters behind the failed Énergie Saguenay liquefied natural gas (LNG) project try to revive it as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“By becoming the first state to ban oil and gas development on its territory, Quebec is paving the way for other states around the world and encouraging them to do the same,” Montreal-based Équiterre said in a release.

“However, it is important that the political will that made this law possible be translated into greenhouse gas reductions in the province, since Quebec and Canada have done too little to reduce their GHGs over the past 30 years.”

“The search for oil and gas is over, but we still have to deal with the legacy of these companies,” added Environnement Vert Plus spokesperson Pascal Bergeron. “Although the oil and gas industry did not flourish in Quebec, it left behind nearly 1,000 wells that will have to be repaired, plugged, decontaminated, and monitored in perpetuity. We now expect as much enthusiasm in the completion of these operations as in the adoption of Bill 21.”

Bill 21—whose numbering on Quebec’s legislative calendar leaves it open to confusion with an older, deeply controversial law on religious freedoms—will require fossil operators to shut down existing exploration wells within three years, or 12 months if the sites are at risk of leaking, Le Devoir reports. The bill follows Quebec’s announcement during last year’s COP 26 climate summit that it would join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), part of a list of a dozen jurisdictions that did not include Canada, the United States, or the United Kingdom.

Quebec’s legislation commits the government to cover 75% of the shutdown and remediation costs for the 62 sites across the province and compensate fossils for any exploration permits they received after October 2015. That made for a less complete win than climate and energy campaigners were aiming for and prompted the opposition Québec Solidaire to vote against the bill.

Quebec National Assembly

B.C. tops Quebec and California as EV capital of North America

 From an article in the Times Colonist, a newspaper published in Victoria, British Columbia.

Just some excerpts:

British Columbians are opting to ditch their gasoline-powered cars for electric vehicles at a higher rate than anywhere in North America, according to a new report from the province. 

Electric and other zero-emission vehicles — such as plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell electric vehicles — made up 13 per cent of all new light-duty vehicle sales in B.C. last year, according to the 2021 Zero-Emission Vehicle Update released Friday. 

Mark Zacharias, a special adviser for the Simon Fraser University-based research group Clean Energy Canada, says that’s nearly double the sales seen in California and Quebec, North America’s second and third hottest jurisdictions for electric vehicle sales.  

In sheer volume of sales, California accounted for nearly half of all electric vehicle sales in the United States, whereas together, Quebec and B.C. made up 80 per cent of sales in Canada.

In B.C., the number of registered electric vehicles climbed to 80,000 from just under 56,000 a year earlier, a nearly 44 per cent increase in one year. [At that growth rate, sales will double every 2 years.] 

Zacharias says the numbers aren’t surprising. 

“In all instances and in all categories, electric vehicles are cheaper over a lifetime,” he said. 

The average EV owner in B.C. saves between $1,800 and $2,500 per year by ditching their gas-powered car, and even more over the long-term due to lower maintenance costs, according to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation. 

Consider an analysis released earlier this week from Clean Energy Canada, which found a 2022 gas[petrol]-powered Toyota Corolla is 54 per cent more expensive over its lifetime compared to an electric Chevy Bolt. 

At just over $21,000 new, the Corolla is a little less than half the price of a new Bolt. But with half the cost of maintenance and only $8 to fully charge the Bolt in B.C., owners of the electric vehicle would save nearly $30,000 over the lifetime of the car, found the study.

Choose the electric Chevy over the gas-powered Toyota, and an owner driving 20,000 kilometres per year would also cut their annual carbon footprint by 3.3 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

In another example, Clean Energy Canada found the electric Hyundai Kona, Canada’s second best-selling EV in 2021, is $15,000 cheaper to own over the lifetime of the vehicle than the gas-powered Kona. 

“If gas prices were to average $2, as we’ve seen in parts of Canada this past month, the electric Kona is $24,000 cheaper to own than the gas-powered Kona,” the report concluded.

[...]

Zacharias says manufacturing costs are coming down so fast that the sticker price of a new EV and gas-powered vehicle are expected to hit parity sometime between 2025 and 2030. 

Batteries are by far the most expensive part of an electric vehicle, and to bring their cost down means making them more efficient. Once batteries can put out a kilowatt-hour of energy for $100, electric vehicles will almost certainly hit parity, according to Bloomberg.

As University of British Columbia energy economics professor Werner Antweiler puts it: “The moment electric cars are cheaper than gasoline cars, it’s a no-brainer. We’re getting to that point.” 

But Zacharias says there have been some delays in those predictions.

Last year, average battery prices fell to $132/kWh, down from $140/kWh in 2020, according to BloombergNEF’s annual battery price survey. That represents a six per cent drop, and though substantial, is less than the nine per cent decline from the year before. 

The Bloomberg report says that is largely a result of supply chain shocks on raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel, key components used in electric vehicle batteries. 

[...]

[T]he number of Canadians considering an electric vehicle has reached a strong majority. 

As part of the Clean Energy Canada report this week, Abacus conducted a poll of Canadians asking how they felt about owning an electric car: 19 per cent said they loved the idea, 31 per said they were interested and 29 per cent said they are open to it.

Together, nearly 80 per cent said they would consider buying an electric vehicle as their next car.

[Read more here]



Since y'all know what EVs look like, here's a picture of Victoria, B C.

Victoria, British Columbia ―  Inner Harbour

Vaccination rates by country

 Herd immunity probably requires at least 70% of the population be vaccinated.  Only one country has reached that, though others are close.  It's instructive to look at the difference between Canadian ans US levels.  In Canada, all parties support vaccination.  In the USA, the Republicans and their QAnon allies maintain that Covid is fake, the vaccines dangerous, and that it's all part of a communist plot.  Demented.

North America has hottest June on record

In a La Niña year, too.

From The Guardian 

North America endured the hottest June on record last month, according to satellite data that shows temperature peaks lasting longer as well as rising higher. The heat dome above western Canada and the north-west United States generated headlines around the world as daily temperature records were shattered across British Columbia, Washington and Portland.

The new data reveals this was part of a broader trend that built up over several weeks and a far wider area, which is underpinned by human-driven climate disruption.

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also revealed that June temperatures in North America were 1.2C higher than the average from 1991 to 2020, which is more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.

This is the 12th consecutive year of above-average June temperatures in the region, and the greatest increase recorded until now.

At the start of the month, the record-breaking heatwave conditions were centred over the south-west of the US. They then moved over the north-west of the US and south-west Canada, causing more than 500 heat-related deaths and creating tinder for wildfires. The town of Lytton in British Columbia broke Canada’s heat record three days in a row. The latest hydrological bulletin shows many of the affected regions had unusually dry soil.

Northern Europe and Siberia also experienced an unusually hot June. Temperature records were broken in Moscow and Helsinki. The world as a whole was also warmer than average for this time of year. This would not normally be expected in the same year as a La Niña phenomenon, which is generally associated with a cooling effect.

The hottest place on Earth is in .... Canada????

 From The Guardian

On Sunday, the small mountain town of Lytton, British Columbia, became one of the hottest places in the world. Then, on Monday, Lytton got even hotter – 47.9C (118F) – hotter than it’s ever been in Las Vegas, 1,300 miles to the south. And by Tuesday, 49.6C (121F).

Lytton is at 50 deg N latitude – about the same as London. This part of the world should never get this hot. Seattle’s new all-time record of 108F, also set Monday, is hotter than it’s ever been in Miami. In Portland, the new record of 116F would beat the warmest day ever recorded in Houston by nearly 10 degrees.

This heat wave was a perfect storm long in the making. After centuries of fossil fuel burning and decades of warnings from scientists, it’s time to say it: we are in a climate emergency.

It’s the mountains of the Pacific coast that have had an essential and unique role in making this particular heat wave possible. Climate change is not just warming the surface of the planet, it’s warming Earth’s entire troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere where all our weather occurs. That’s particularly true in mountainous areas, where temperatures are rising even faster than elsewhere. When snow and ice recedes or even disappears from mountains, the bare soil beneath can warm unimpeded. A 2015 study found that mountainous areas above 2,000 meters (6,500ft) are warming about 75% faster than places at lower elevations.

Warmer mountains along with the mega-drought now plaguing western North America – the most widespread severe drought on record – contributed to a high pressure “heat dome” that has been self-reinforcing this week to create truly extreme conditions along the Pacific coast. Dry, descending air rushing down the mountain slopes offshore towards the ocean created a literal pressure cooker, sending temperatures soaring to never-before-seen values.

Downstream of Lytton, flood warnings are now in effect for the river valleys as sudden snow and ice melt has created a torrent of rushing water. For the time being, Canada’s glaciers are melting so fast they’re flooding out homes under clear skies.

While the temperatures have fallen in Seattle and Portland, this heat wave continues to rage for folks in eastern Washington. Farmworkers in the Yakima Valley will be dealing with temperatures over 100F (38C) until at least Monday – six more days. In parts of Pakistan and along the shores of the Persian Gulf, heat waves are already hitting temperatures that are too hot for even healthy people to survive outdoors.

“It’s warmer in parts of western Canada than in Dubai,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada in an interview with CTV. “I mean, it’s just not something that seems Canadian.”

The most shocking part is that all this is happening with just two degrees Fahrenheit of global warming in the 150 years since we started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. On our current path, we’re heading for another three to five degrees of warming in half that time.

Tuesday will likely be the hottest day in Canada’s history for a third day in a row – there’s an outside chance of reaching 50C (122F) in Lytton.

We are in a climate emergency. We can’t wait for other people, we’ve got to do this ourselves. We were born at just the right moment to help change everything.

Lytton, British Columbia

Update:  3 days later, Lytton has been completely destroyed by a bushfire.  In Canada.  Process that.

Canadian economy slides 9% in one month

This number will give you some idea of just how deep the global recession will be.

From The Guardian:

Canada’s statistics agency has said the country’s economy suffered a decline of nearly 9% in March – the worst figure ever recorded – as the country battles the coronavirus, Leyland Cecco in Toronto reports.

In a “flash estimate” of the country’s GDP figures released Wednesday morning, Statistics Canada said it hoped to capture the scale and depth of disruption resulting from a lockdown of the nation’s economy. The agency said:

"Even though the basis of calculation is different, in a relative sense, this would be the largest one-month decline in GDP, since the series started in 1961. Overall for the quarter, this flash estimate of GDP leads to an approximate decline of 2.6% for the first quarter of 2020."

While the agency says its March numbers are calculated differently than normal GDP figures, the data nonetheless capture the scope of economic contraction.

The hardest hit sectors have been travel and tourism related, alongside retail, restaurants and entertainment. The health sector, food distribution, online retailing and streaming services all experienced growth.

In recent days, as many as six million Canadians have applied for government aid measures to blunt the effects of the recession. Most Canadians who have lost their jobs are eligible for government assistances totalling $2,000 CAD (1,400 USD) every month for four months.

Source: Bloomberg

Per capita emissions

A really nice chart from Wikipedia. (Click to enlarge)

It's clever, because the area of each square shows the total emissions for each country/region.  China has the biggest square, the US the next biggest and India third, but their per capita emissions are very different.  One of climate emission reduction policies is for each country to cut emissions to the global average.  That will of course cause the global average to decline, which means each "over-emitting country" would have to cut emissions again, which would be a good thing.

To get to the current average per capita emissions, the US, Canada, & Australia would have to cut emissions by 2/3rds, and most of Europe by half.  Europe is on track to reach that goal.  The US, Canada and Australia are not.

Source: Wikipedia.
Note how Taiwan is called 'Chinese Tapei' on this chart.  It remains 'Taiwan' to me.  

Record 20C+ north of the Arctic circle

Alert, Nunavit, Canada, according to Google Maps.  Click image to enlarge.
The map makes it easier to see why if Alert has temperatures of 20 C, Greenland's ice is melting.

The planet’s most northerly human settlement is in the midst of an “unprecedented” heatwave as parts of the Arctic endure one of their hottest summers on record.

Canada’s weather agency confirmed on Tuesday that temperatures in Alert, Nunavut, peaked at 21C at the weekend – far exceeding the July average for the area of around 5C.

Overnight temperatures on Sunday remained above 15C; again, well in excess of nighttime lows that usually hover around freezing in a settlement that lies less than 900km from the North Pole.

The previous temperature record for the town, of 20C, was set in 1956.

In a further alarm bell for the region, the mercury climbed above 20C for a second day on Monday – the first time Alert’s climate station has recorded two consecutive days of 20C-plus temperatures in its history.

Alert is the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world – with a population numbering less than 100 – and is far to the north of the Arctic Circle.

David Phillips, Environment Canada’s chief climatologist, said the weather in the far north of Canada was “quite spectacular” and “unprecedented”.

He told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “It’s nothing that you would have ever seen.” 

Armel Castellan, a meteorologist at the Canadian environment ministry, told AFP the extreme weather was “quite phenomenal”.

“It’s an absolute record, we’ve never seen that before,” he said.

Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at the Weather Network, said: “This is in fact the first time a temperature warmer than 20C has been measured north of 80° on the planet.”

Alert’s heatwave comes as nearby [it's not actually 'nearby', although it is adjacent to the Arctic] Alaska saw its own record temperatures earlier this month.

Anchorage, the state’s largest city, sweltered in 32C on 4 July – shattering the seasonal high of around 24C.

Other local records were set across southern Alaska and came after five weeks of above-average temperatures in the outlying US state.

Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska, said at the time that exceptionally warm weather events would only become more frequent because of the loss of sea ice and warming in the Arctic Ocean.

“These kinds of extreme weather events become much more likely in a warming world,” he said.

“Surface temperatures are above normal everywhere around Alaska. The entire Gulf of Alaska, in the Bering Sea, in the Chukchi Sea south of the ice edge, exceptionally warm waters, warmest on record, and of course record-low sea ice extent for this time of year off the north and northwest coasts of the state.”

[Read more here]

Canada warming twice as fast as the world

Observed changes (°C) in annual temperature across Canada between 1948 and 2016, based on linear trends
(Source)

Hot on the heels of yet another Ozzie record heat statistic, we get an official report that Canada is warming twice as fast as the rate for the globe as a whole:

Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, a landmark government report has found, warning that drastic action is the only way to avoid catastrophic outcomes.

“The science is clear – Canada’s climate is warming more rapidly than the global average, and this level of warming effectively cannot be changed,” Nancy Hamzawi, assistant deputy minister for science and technology at Environment and Climate Change Canada, told reporters on Monday.

The report, released late on Monday by Environment and Climate Change Canada, paints a grim picture of Canada’s future, in which deadly heatwaves and heavy rainstorms become a common occurrence. Forty-three government scientists and academics authored the peer-reviewed report.

While global temperatures have increased 0.8C since 1948, Canada has seen an increase of 1.7C – more than double the global average.

And in the Arctic, the warming is happening at a much faster rate of 2.3C, the report says.

Under a scenario in which global emissions are dramatically reduced, average temperatures will rise only 3C across the country by 2100, including the Arctic region.

But if countries – including Canada – fail to act aggressively, increases of 7-9 degrees are likely, and the Arctic faces the prospect of 11 degrees of warming.

Under the report’s worst-case scenario, the risk of deadly heatwaves increases tenfold bring with it droughts and forest fires. Western Canada has already grappled with two years of record forest fire seasons. The risk of major rain events also doubles, meaning cities will be inundated with catastrophic urban flooding.

Access to critical sources of fresh water will also be constrained, due in large part to reduced winter snowfall, which in turn becomes a source of clean water when the snowpack melts.

[Read more here]

We are in a race against time.