Armageddon theory: Vancouver
Professor1942
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
So far as weather goes, Vancouver in the past month could easily be
mistaken for Twillingate - an outcome, I should think, equally
pleasing to both those glorious conurbations. A couple of December
snowfalls, even a kindly blizzard or two, is nothing new or strange
for the grand jewel of Newfoundland's northeast coast. But below zero
temperatures and snowfall after snowfall blanketing the great pathways
of Stanley Park, shrouding the busy streets of downtown Vancouver, is,
as we say back home, "something else altogether."
I remember my first visit to Vancouver. It was in February, and I'd
come straight from Newfoundland. My initial thought was that the Air
Canada flight had taken a seriously wrong turn in Halifax. I was sure
I was in Florida. Mere benign ignorance on my part. I have since
learned, what thousands upon thousands of Canadians already knew, that
if you want to escape the more marrow-freezing rigours of the Canadian
winter, there is no need to go south. Fly west, young man. Vancouver -
Honolulu without the itchy skirts.
In any given winter, by the time the conscientious citizen of Barrie,
say, is negotiating a loan to buy his second snowblower and going for
a more powerful model (the first having expired from overuse), the
typical Vancouverite is prancing around in a T-shirt and slathering
himself in sunscreen lotion. (Unless it's raining. Sometimes, it rains
there.)
Not this year. Vancouver, and the West Coast in general, is in the
grip of what the wonderful ode to Newfoundland has so rightly
described as "winter's stern command." It's a frightful consideration,
I know, but if you go to the West Coast this season, there'll be no
escaping the impression you're still in Canada.
By the way, it's the same or worse on the Prairies: minus 40 in
Saskatoon the other day, minus 50 with the wind chill. That's cold.
And it's the same or worse all over, even in places unaccustomed to
snow and cold. Hell has frozen over.
Now I introduce this spotty survey not in any spirit of contention or
with intent to counter what so many people hilariously refer to as the
"science" of global warming. One season's weather is not a guide to
another, an insight captured more poetically by the proverb "one
swallow does not make a spring." I am, most certainly, not going to
make the error of our global warming hierophants who leap with
troubling eagerness on any "extreme weather event" and pilot it with
ferocity to the conclusion that we are all doomed. They are
rhetoricians of less scruple than I.
Nor will I take the data of Vancouver's snow-clearing budget this
winter to plot a graph for food shortages in, say, Marrakesh in 2040
or the fate of some beloved Pacific atoll 50 years from now. I leave
these type of gymnastic projections to less tethered minds. And lest
you think I'm crowding only one side of the canvas, may I call
attention to a headline that recently appeared on that bulletin of
enlightenment, The Huffington Post, and which was shared with another
unimpeachable source and slave to the scientific method,
treehugger.com - World War IV: Will Global Warming Cause It?
Or to another story that ran in a legion of newspapers this week that
"warned" of "massive and simultaneous crop failures" and a "perpetual
food crisis" that climate researchers are "confident will become a
global phenomenon between 2080 and 2100." This apocalyptic scenario
will be entirely due to "unprecedented heat." Tell me about it.
Perpetual? I haven't seen that word, outside of a prayer book, for 30
years. And as to being "confident" of what's going to be going on in
this busy world in 2080 or 2100, well, let's not call that science.
Let's call it hubris on steroids. Has the global warming movement
given up all pretense of rigour entirely? Because they're now not only
telling us what the weather will be like 30 or 50 years from now,
they've tied their fanciful projections and ever more intricate
modelling to lining up the causes for World War IV. They're giving us
the causes for events that haven't happened yet. I think Newton would
have frowned on that approach.
I tie it all to Vancouver. So much of what the alarmists promised was
supposed to be happening now isn't happening. So many events are
running counter to their near-term projections, they've decided to go
all Armageddon with their long-term ones, projections for a future
that none of us will be around to check. So here's the test: The
colder it gets in Vancouver, the hotter the dubious scenarios for the
globe a hundred years from now will be.
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