All posts by Ray Grigg

Environment

The Quadra Project: The Climate Olympics

Whether or not we acknowledge it or not, we are all participants in the Climate Olympics. And we’re not doing so well because we’re not trying hard enough. We have the capabilities, but we lack the effort and the focus.

The original purpose of the Olympic games, founded in Greece some 2,800 years ago, was to pay homage to humanity, and thereby to celebrate and honour the remarkable capabilities and achievements of a being that the Greeks believed to be the embodiment of nature’s perfection. The motto brought forward from those idealistic days of self-congratulations was “Swifter. Higher. Stronger.”

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Environment

The Quadra Project: The PFAS Folly

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All too often our ingenuity seems to outwit our wisdom. A case in point is the discovery and production of PFAS chemicals. Its first iteration was created in 1938 by Roy J. Plunkett, the accidental result of some scientific tinkering while searching for a better refrigerant gas. He had inadvertently discovered an artificial compound that was “impervious to heat and chemical degradation and also extremely slippery”, as well as being water and oil repellent (Graham Lawton in New Scientist “Everyday Toxins”, May 11, 2024). We know this substance as the commercial product called Teflon, now produced at more than 200,000 tonnes per year.

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project: Temperature

Several years ago the editors of The Guardian Weekly, an independent British news magazine noted for its objective credibility, decided that the global warming subject was serious enough to warrant special coverage—not to understate the seriousness of the situation, their preference has been to call it “global heating”. They have not disappointed. In their May 17, 2024, edition they reported on a survey they undertook to sample the opinion of hundreds of climate scientists about their personal assessment of our situation. Their assessment is sobering.

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Cost of Climate Change, Fire

Quadra Project: Home Sweet Home

We are just beginning to register the full implications of climate change, and if we take a moment to think about them, they are sobering. A feature in The Economist (April 13, 2024) is particularly disquieting because of its assessment of the risk to our homes, the largest single investment that we have and the place where we go for peace, privacy and security.

But take note of the frequency and severity of miscellaneous weather events that are threatening, damaging or destroying homes. Storms, floods, wildfires and coastal erosion are just a sample of the catastrophes that can impact where we live. By The Economist’s estimate, “About a tenth of the world’s residential property by value is under threat, …and by one estimate, climate change and the fight against it could wipe out 9% of the value of the world’s housing by 2050—which amounts to $25 trillion.” As The Economist points out, “Property is the world’s most important asset class, accounting for an estimated two-thirds of global wealth. Homes are at the heart of many of the world’s most important financial markets… .” A wholesale threat to them threatens the entire financial system.

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project: Sea Level Rise

When we think of sea level rise, we probably have a fairly simple explanation for what happens. The glaciers and polar icecaps melt, the resulting water flows into the world’s oceans and they rise accordingly. But, in actuality, the process is far more complicated than that. Consider Antarctica as an example—usually neglected because of its remoteness and the incorrect assumption until recently about its relative stability.

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