Unprecedented Flooding in Calgary

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Worst flood in living memory.

 

I chose the BBC feed because it was more dispassionate.  For the rave visit www.cbc.ca

[Cpt Johnny 57]

My mom was telling me about it. I searched online and found scenes comparable to what had happened in Central Europe barely three weeks ago. I was there and the Danube was completely swollen, inundating large tracts of road and pavement. Let's pray for these people to tide over this crisis.

[Snugies 91]

don't worry it is okay. I'm up on a hill anyway, lol suckers that want to live by the river, and don't worry the people on the river are all quite wealthy anyway. So far no looting or dead animals/people in the water so looks good. But I wonder if this has something to do with global warming. I've lived here all my life and don't remember so much rain. I wonder if global warming is causing more evaporation off the pacific ocean or something. Cause we are getting more rain and our rain comes in from the northwest off wind coming off the north pacific. Plus northern Alberta I think is a large CO2 emitter.  

[Cpt Johnny 57]

don't worry it is okay. I'm up on a hill anyway, lol suckers that want to live by the river, and don't worry the people on the river are all quite wealthy anyway. So far no looting or dead animals/people in the water so looks good. But I wonder if this has something to do with global warming. I've lived here all my life and don't remember so much rain. I wonder if global warming is causing more evaporation off the pacific ocean or something. Cause we are getting more rain and our rain comes in from the northwest off wind coming off the north pacific. Plus northern Alberta I think is a large CO2 emitter.  

I disagree with you on the last point, the rest can't be proven to be untrue.

 

Where I live, the elevation is quite low and prone to sea level rise as well.

 

The largest greenhouse gas emitters nowadays are the two population (and therefore industrial) behemoths in Asia.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, about the oil sands producers and their CO₂ emissions:  One could say:  as ye sew, so shall ye reap.

 

But, and its a big but, CO₂ is not the only cause of the current warming trend.  We are at the mid-cycle between ice ages and the earth is warming up because of variations in the orbit are putting the planet closer to the sun.  This seems to happen every 12,000 years or so.  This is probably the number one cause of the current warming trend.

 

Tropical fossils have been found in the Arctic, and I don't think they got there only by tectonic plate migration.  The current behaviour of the Arctic climate is causing the ice sheets to melt, and the area to warm up.  Same seems to be true in the Antarctic, but there they don't have billions of tons of permafrost in danger of thawing.  What's in the permafrost?  Billions of tons of dead animals and plants that have rotted and then been frozen along with most of the emitted methane (CH₄).  If all that methane is released, the CO₂ that's around won't amount to a fart in a windstorm compared to the greenhouse effect of methane.  It appears at the moment to be inevitable.

 

The politicians are acting in the usual manner.  They'd always rather stop something than do something constructive about a problem.  Well, boys, I think King Canute was drowned when he tried to forbid the tides to come in, and you will be on the same beach if you don't get your behinds moving on surviving in a much warmer world.  It is time to forget all the band-aids like playing in the coal piles (Mr. Obama), and get off the dime to figure out what will happen to areas like the southern US, when they become too hot to live in.

 

Where will all these displaced people go?  We have a lot of land in Canada, but much of it is muskeg, which is a precursor of permafrost that has already thawed.  It is a swamp of the worst kind.  Besides, we now have a closed border thanks to the knee-jerk reactions after 9/11 and coming here is much more difficult. 

 

The invasion scenario has been run many times both by our Defence Staff and the Pentagon.  It doesn't work.  Read the history of the War of 1812, and remember that beavers bite and some frogs are poisonous.  Besides, you really don't want to take on the entire Commonwealth of Nations.  Oh, and if you should happen to arrive here, the mosquitoes and the black flies will make you wish you hadn't come.  Meanwhile, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to invest in land in Southern Chile and Argentina as well as Alaska and the Mackenzie River delta.  I hear that there is good summer fishing in Inuvik.

 

Oh, and a great area of northern Russia is also permafrost.  Fun eh?

[Snugies 91]

first if the U.S. wanted to invade Canada again since 1812 I don't think we would have a chance this time around, even if the British defended us you can't stop U.S. With all the guns in Montana I think they alone could invade Canada. In 1812 Canada actually wasn't really a country and was being defended by the British as a continuation to the American Revolution to stop Canada from being annexed by the Revolution, and the U.S. was bankrupt at that time. 

 

Number 2 I don't think a warmer planet necessarily means inhospitable living conditions in the south. During dinosaur times the earth was much warmer and I think was covered by more jungle. The only problem with a warmer and wetter planet is insects the size of busses which has actually happened in the planets history.

 

Number 3 Co2 emissions I don't like Co2 emission mainly because I've been to 2 cities both with large mass transit usage. This was London, England and Seoul, Korea. London's busses ran on gasoline and emitted thick black exhaust which I had trouble breathing. In Seoul the buses run on Nat gas and emit little to no exhaust and I didn't even notice a difference in air quality between Seoul of 25millions and Calgary 1million which has very good air.

 

I think you have a conservative viewpoint and Canada does live off our oil exports, but i do think certain areas don't need to use oil and oil can be conserved for more important uses than big vehicles for personal consumption and planes when we could use other forms of transit.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Not so conservative as cynical.  Might does not always win.  The problem with a volkerwandrung from south to north in North America is that the early birds would get the good land.  Everyone else would get the muskeg.

 

Now, I've always held that the United States would be welcomed back into the Commonwealth.  We have several members that are republics.  Once our banking system kicked in there and the dislocations ended, I think we might make a rather formidable people together.  Of course this is entirely a rationalization, because you can take a Texan out of Texas but you can never take Texas out of a Texan and this applies pretty much to all the states.  Losing the US federal government probably wouldn't bother the states very much as long as someone looked after foreign policy on a collective basis.  It would be, if anything, a collective alliance rather than an anschluss.

 

If global warming continues as it did before the last freeze up, Florida will be underwater, as will a lot of the coastal areas, and there might be a return of the Salton Sea.

 

There was an interesting volume circulating a few years back called "The Nine Nations of North America" which divided the continent up on a resource basis.  It was a fascinating read.  But we are wandering off topic.

 

---

 

Calgary seems to have survived where some of the other cities both up and downstream are not all doing as well.  Calgary had zero fatalities, lucky.

 

Interestingly enough the commission on the last flood reported last year after having its report sit in a drawer for years.  Nothing was done or even started on the recommendations.  One of them was to stop selling flood-plain crown land. 

 

Would you knowingly purchase a house in a flood plain if it flooded regularly?  Flood insurance for land-based flooding costs the earth, and if you live in such a place you'd be lucky to get it at all even at an exorbitant premium.

 

I think it is time that all the prairie cities started taking notes from Winnipeg.

[Snugies 91]

Yes I think the U.S. is more likely to break up before they ever invade Canada, even Canada may break up with Quebec, and then what would separate English Canada from the U.S.? ...not much. we like hockey they like nascar. Even if our culture is under threat I do think Canada wants an NFL team. As far as flooding is concerned on the prairies the valley of the river in Edmonton is actually quite deep. downtown Edmonton sits considerably above their river, were as in Calgary our downtown is a few feet above the usual flow of the river. Saskatoon I think is same as Edmonton and Regina I don't know but might be too dry there for flooding. Calgary just sites on the edge of the prairie. The prairie begins just to the south and east of the city. The foothills to the west that then immediately give way to the Rockies our Rockies in Canada I believe a lot higher and less spread out than the Rockies in the U.S. and to the north you don't start hitting boreal forest until Red Deer which is halfway between Calgary and Edmonton.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Calgary Stampede Opens Today

 

Through hell and high water, a Canadian accomplishment of major proportions.  The show must go on.

 

Congratulations to the courage and determination of the citizens of Calgary.  Commiserations, also, for those still trying to recover from all that slime and sewage.  So far, it is lucky they haven't got a cholera epidemic.

[Cpt Johnny 57]

So far, it is lucky they haven't got a cholera epidemic.

I'll be really surprised if it happened in today's Canada.

 

Btw, do you all have cholera vaccines there? We don't have it here, even though there was a minor outbreak back in 2004.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

About cholera vaccines:  Don't know if the Health Canada labs in Winnipeg have it, but they should.  If not, I wonder if they could get it from the U.S. CDC?  One article I read today said that a vicious strain of e-coli had been detected in the flood water.