The atmospheric river weather system that lashed British Columbia’s coast on the day of the provincial election, Oct. 19, 2024, surpassed records in North Vancouver, Victoria, Squamish, Vancouver, West Vancouver, White Rock, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope, Nakusp and the Agassiz and Pitt Meadows areas.
For example, West Vancouver saw 134.6 millimetres of rain, smashing the Oct. 19 record of 34.8 millimetres set in 1970. In North Vancouver, where I live, the storm dumped an astounding 344 mm of rain – more than double than from the November 2021 storm that washed out the three major access highways to Metro Vancouver.
This is climate change right at our doors – in this case on Panorama Drive in Deep Cove where many friends live.
Yes, we have always had major climate events, but this is different. It is well understood that individual climate events (wildfires, floods, droughts, windstorms) cannot be specifically labelled “caused by climate change.” This reality (seen in rebuttals such as “we have always had storms”) is a well-used pushback from those denying the destructiveness of climate change. While it is a fact that regions of the world have always experienced extreme events, it is different now. The events are made worse by climate change.
• Hurricanes over increasingly warmer oceans, are becoming more intense, causing greater rainfall and have a greater coastal flood risk due to higher storm surge caused by rising seas.
• Forest fires are increasing in intensity, frequency, and size. Moreover, the fires are occurring at higher altitudes and in more northerly regions – even Siberia – thus threatening carbon rich tundra.
• Heat domes are more frequent, lasting longer and causing more fatalities.
• Rain events – such as the one we experienced in North Vancouver – are much more extreme and often hitting land that has been dried out from droughts and thus unable to absorb the extra water.
Yes, there have been major events, but we have never seen entire towns and communities such as Jasper, Fort McMurry, Lytton, Yellowknife, Lahaina, etc., burning to the ground and/or requiring complete evacuation. In 2023 in Canada, 250,000 people were on the move due to fires. In 2022, one-third of Pakistan, a breadbasket nation, was flooded. Hurricane Helene laid waste to six states in southeastern United States. Its sheer wind force and deadly floods left behind a path of destruction stretching more than 500 miles from Florida to the Southern Appalachians, super-charged by ocean water that was much warmer than normal.
So – to repeat, the world has always experienced major events, but climate change is making them much more devastating. The science is clear on this. Human activity (the burning of fossil fuels) is the cause of this crisis. This clear fact becomes highly inconvenient to those with vested interests in business as usual. Trillions of dollars of assets will have to be left in the ground as the world moves away from energy based on fossil fuels. The industry response to this inconvenient truth has been massive investments for misinformation and disinformation campaigns designed to undermine the science. Unfortunately, this investment has had success with many voters still believing that the science is not certain. But it is certain.
The degree of scientific certainty about the impact of greenhouse gases is now comparable to the level of agreement on evolution, plate tectonics, germ theory and the impacts of cigarette smoking. The consensus is almost 100 per cent. The NASA website lists dozens of scientific organizations and peer-reviewed studies that hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action.
This is not a trivial list and covers almost all relevant science organizations around the world. We can no longer afford to hide behind a defence of ignorance, and that fact becomes all the clearer when the impacts are felt so close to home.
Longtime North Vancouver resident Allan Maynard is an environmental scientist with more than 45 years of experience. He now hosts a science knowledge website devoted to providing information about environmental matters of concern.
