In February 2022, our planet was 1.19°C warmer than the pre-industrial temperature of 13.7°C calculated from the collected global records in the 1880s. The Industrial Revolution technically began about 100 years earlier, but no extensive measurements exist to verify the combined surface temperature of both land and water during those years. Between 1920 and 1940, the global temperature rose 0.1°C per decade, 0.2°C during the 1980s, and 0.61°C per decade since 2000. This ascending trajectory corresponds to a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from about 280 parts per million to about 420 ppm, and ends the 10,000 years of relative climate stability that has allowed human civilization to flourish.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: Taking our temperatureTag Archives: Climate Change
Canada’s largest oil and gas companies’ sky-high net earnings renew calls for windfall tax
By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Sky-high net earnings for Canada’s four biggest oil companies have renewed calls for a windfall tax that Ottawa shows no sign of adopting.
“The gas lobby is clearly very powerful and holds a lot of sway in Canada,” Environmental Defence’s programs director Keith Brooks told Canada’s National Observer, adding the industry is impeding effective climate action and creating deep inequality among Canadians.
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Reflections on the extraordinary power of slow water
National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The advance of the climate crisis, marked by its extremes — droughts or deluges, fires or floods — makes abundantly clear the human habit of trying to contain and control water isn’t working.
For her new book, Water Always Wins, National Geographic Explorer Erica Gies criss-crossed the globe, witnessing some of the unanticipated results of modern society’s preference for engineered solutions.
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Mark Vonesch 5: Issues that divide us
Mark Vonesch hopes to bring a new kind of politics to Cortes Island if he is elected Regional Director on October 15, 2022.
“One of the biggest things I want to do with this campaign is bring people together who think differently than each other,” he explained. “What I can do is initiate conversations and get people talking about them.”
He then went on to outline the same issues that our current Director has been wrestling with: housing, climate change, ecosystem protection, economic development, land use planning, parks and recreation, and truth and reconciliation.
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The Quadra Project: Passenger or Crew
The famous Canadian media guru, Marshall McLuhan, when commenting on Buckminster Fuller’s seminal 1969 book, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, said, “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth—everyone is crew.” Like so many of his insightful comments, McLuhan managed to encapsulate a complex and comprehensive understanding in a few simple words.
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