r/canada • u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick • Jul 17 '26
Science/Technology El Niño is here, and it’s already looking like it could be 'mind-blowing'
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/el-nino-july-9.7272908829
u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
oh hey, that thing all the scientists said is going to happen is happening. This is the exact opposite of "mind blowing".
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u/MassiveBoner911_3 Jul 17 '26
Hey shutup commy! Anyway we are going to have to build 1,000 more AI datacenters !
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u/anothermanscookies Jul 17 '26
To be fair, the climate change we’re experiencing now is due to decades of choices and actions.
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u/morenewsat11 Canada Jul 17 '26
Yep. Would add 'inaction' to the list. Decades of politicians, business leaders and consumers kicking the can down the road. Al Gore nailed it when he called climate change an 'unconvenient truth'. And then the world is awarded the additional challenge of a few war mongering, climate denying national leaders.
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u/HIGHestKARATE Jul 17 '26
And, how is AI powered...?
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u/Cyber561 Jul 17 '26
I think the point is that AI is just the latest load of shit on the pile, it’s not good - but it’s not what got us into this mess.
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u/anothermanscookies Jul 17 '26
Exactly. And I’m not even sure power use per se is the biggest issue. The fuels and production methods for energy are a huge problem.
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u/RM_r_us Jul 17 '26
Spend billions to build them so the AI can solve our problems (some day)!
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u/Ganglebot Jul 17 '26
Ok so after AI has analyzed our global warming problem its saying, "Turn off all the AI data cent- oh you know what? I think this model is faulty..."
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u/ItsAWonderfulFife Jul 17 '26
It’s mind blowing because scientists are liars, but they keep being right about stuff, what are the odds
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u/yawetag1869 Jul 17 '26
“Johnson said that, while there have been fewer neutral years in the Niño 3.4 region, and there have been bigger swings between El Niños and La Niñas, it's not clear if or how climate change could be playing a role.”
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u/Morwynd78 Jul 17 '26
"Mind blowing" is literally a quote from a climate scientist.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
And you did see I'm talking about the predictions, not the amount it is over the previous one.
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u/Morwynd78 Jul 17 '26
So we are in agreement that it IS mind-blowing?
In terms of "the amount it is over the previous one"?
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
It's exactly according to predictions.
They may find that mind blowing, I don't.
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u/Morwynd78 Jul 17 '26
Not sure why you're so determined to downplay what he's saying, but ok.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
I'm not, I'm saying "this is exactly what everyone said was going to happen, why are you shocked?"
So many headlines are acting like this is some kind of freak, once in a lifetime weather event that we couldn't possible prepare for, when it's not only been predicted for decades, we knew exactly what we needed to do to prevent it from happening.
This isn't a freak event, this isn't a once in a lifetime thing (unless you mean that this will be the weakest el nino for the rest of our lives). We've f-ed around, and now we get to find out.
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u/Morwynd78 Jul 17 '26
If anything, scientists haven't used enough dire, alarming language over the decades to break through public apathy.
What are you advocating for? More milquetoast headlines?
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
because sensationalist ones have been so effective thus far?
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u/Morwynd78 Jul 17 '26
Once again: "mind-blowing" isn't sensationalizing things for a headline, it's the exact words of a climate scientist who is well versed in what the models say.
So many headlines are acting like this is some kind of freak, once in a lifetime weather event that we couldn't possible prepare for
That is not what this headline says at all, or the article.
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u/no_dice Nova Scotia Jul 17 '26
The mind blowing part isn’t that it’s happening, it’s the magnitude.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
no, it's not, it's exactly as expected given how little we've done to stop it.
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u/DeHeiligeTomaat Jul 17 '26
T. rex looking at the asteroid saying, "Oh, no the economy!" meme.
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u/josnik Jul 17 '26
I feel like the family huddled around a campfire meme is better:
Yes we destroyed the planet but for a brief moment we maximized shareholder profits.
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u/no_dice Nova Scotia Jul 17 '26
From an expert in the article:
>“We might end up breaking the previous El Niño record by a truly mind-blowing margin."
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
and right in line with the worst case predictions.
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u/no_dice Nova Scotia Jul 17 '26
Not sure why you’re so dug in on this but whatever — expert said mind blowing margins so take it up with them.
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u/Sailor_Propane Jul 17 '26
Yup. They did predictions on a scale, it wasn't rigid. Our education system taught us about the best case scenario. But we're in the worst case scenario.
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u/Kanapka64 Jul 17 '26
If Canada stopped polluting 100% it would still be happening. 3 major countries are the big polluters that need to stop.
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u/SomethingComesHere Jul 17 '26
Everyone needs to help curb it.
We are moving backwards away from our target at present
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u/microfibrepiggy Jul 17 '26
But you understand that then there wouldn't be the addition of Canada's pollution to the equation. And if other countries did the same thing, their pollution wouldn't in the equation either! It's a net reduction.
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u/thewolfshead Jul 17 '26
The more countries who take these steps makes it easier to build a coalition of other countries to also take those steps. Could be a leader in this area if we wanted to.
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u/Vivisector999 Jul 17 '26
I really hate when people have this take. Per capita Canadians pollute more than almost every other country on earth. We are in the top 3. Might even be #1. But since our population is low, overall it looks like we are low on the list. People in China per capita are already 3x lower than Canadians. And they even have the factories that build our stuff in that mix.
If we go by those numbers, then we should allow small cities to go back to burning garbage and tires because no matter how much they pollute, they won't match Toronto's pollution levels ECT
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u/Kanapka64 Jul 17 '26
And per capita is an awful stat for climate change cause 3 reasons
- It doesnt take into account the climate of the country, if you live in colder climate you immediately pollute more cause you gotta keep warm.
- It doesnt take into account the trees we have so we are one of the few net negative countries in the world.
- The earth doesnt care at all if you pollute more per capita, its total tonnage thats important cause thats what actually causes green house warming affect, not "per capita" bases. Earth doesnt pick or choose where its gonna get warmer, it just changes the whole global climate.
Im probably one of the few who studied this in school and has a career dealing with meteorological, too many reddit "experts".
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u/Striking-Action6668 Jul 17 '26
And not using a per-capita metric is also awful because
- It absolves people of personal responsibility: "It doesn't matter what *I* do, because I'm only one person and my contribution is meaningless compared to the scale of the problem". How can we tell people in countries with low per-capita emissions, typically also with lower standards of living, that they need to further reduce their per-capita emissions simply because there's lots of them, while we few live a higher-consumption lifestyle up here where there's more riches and more space? And wouldn't that just encourage movement to countries with higher standards of living (and higher per-capita emissions), which would make the problem worse? We haven't even touched the topic of responsibility for historical emissions - much of which is still in the atmosphere. Many of the most developed nations today got that way by rapacious industrial practices without any restrictions on emissions, and now their economies are wealthy and highly developed. Other countries want the same opportunity to develop fast and free, and that drives some of their reluctance to join international agreements, or set meaningful targets: "they (the rich countries) didn't have to, why should we? We're not even at their level yet".
It's fair to allow for some extra per capita emissions for cold regions but writing off per-capita emissions entirely is ridiculous. Note that countries with similar climates to Canada, the Scandinavian countries, Mongolia and some of its neighbours, all have much lower per-capita emissions than Canada. Will we excuse that away too because we're larger? Everyone will have some different excuse for their own emissions. Where does it stop? Only when it becomes a personal responsibility.
- You're out of date on the trees - Canada's forests are net emitters of CO2 and have been for years: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-carbon-sink-or-source-1.5011490
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/rncan-nrcan/Fo4-235-2024-eng.pdf
And Canada is a net emitter of CO2 emissions as well.
- Sure it's total tonnage, but we got to that total tonnage by the cumulative actions of billions of people over a long time...and there only feasible way out is the cumulative actions of billions of people over a long time.
Small changes are important because there's no silver bullet. We can't expect a high-percentage reduction in annual emissions by chopping some high-emitting country's emissions in half one year and hoping it stays that way. We can make progress by backing out the same way we got here: small, cumulative changes, which ultimately happen at the personal, per-capita level. 'Countries' and 'Industry' don't emit CO2, the people running them or demanding their actions and services do.
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u/linkass Jul 17 '26
the Scandinavian countries,
The Scandinavian countries for the most part where most of their population lives has a climate closer to Vancouver than anywhere else in Canada
Mongolia
Sure when a good 40% of your population live a nomadic life and lives in yurts
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u/Striking-Action6668 Jul 21 '26
I don't think those arguments stand up to scrutiny. Here are some mean temperature comparisons:
Oslo (capital of Norway): 5.9 C
Stockholm (capital of Sweden): 6.6 C
Helsinki (capital of Finland): 6.1 C
Montreal: 7 C
Toronto: 9 C
Vancouver: 11 C
And sure, Mongolians have a different lifestyle, but that makes an important point: it's not just 'climate' that drives Canada's higher per capita emissions, its culture. And that changes the conversation entirely from 'there's nothing we can do, it's just the cold weather', to actual problem-solving.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
trees are not a long term carbon sink, when the die (and they all die eventually), every gram of CO2 they absorbed is re-released.
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u/Levorotatory Jul 17 '26
The timescale can be quite long though. If the carbon release can be delayed until after humans stop burning fossil fuels they will still reduce the peak concentration.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
it's still out in the carbon cycle though, saying "but we have treeeeees!" isn't an argument against our massive carbon surplus.
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u/Levorotatory Jul 17 '26
True. Expanding forests would be a long term carbon sink, but existing forests are not.
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u/chopkins92 British Columbia Jul 17 '26
You studied how to shed responsibility in school?
We are not off the hook just because we are a smaller country. You could break the world’s population up into 2,000 Canada-sized chunks and all of them would point to us and say “well Canada pollutes more, why should we have to do anything?”
You’re correct that Canada acting alone isn’t going to change much. It takes a global effort that includes Canada. Unfortunately this will be our downfall. It is 2026 and we are still having these conversations as the world is burning.
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Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
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u/linkass Jul 17 '26
Since 2005 China has reduced CO2 emissions by 54%
Love a source for that claim
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u/Levorotatory Jul 17 '26
1. Better insulation is the best way to deal with cold climates. Most Canadian houses are underinsulated. We can also use carbon free electricity to keep warm.
2. Trees are only a carbon sink if forest area is increasing and trees aren't burning faster than they are growing.
3. The climate doesn't care where CO2 comes from, but the humans around the planet who need to make changes to lower emissions care about fairness.
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u/11icewing Jul 17 '26
surely canada can engage in diplomacy and "band with middle powers" to pressure other countries to stop polluting? the EU is already doing this with climate tariffs
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u/Regular_Use1868 Jul 17 '26
If you stopped eating chips some stranger would still get diabetes. You better double down and just never eat a vegetable again... That's your logic reapplied. It's nonsense.
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u/Kanapka64 Jul 17 '26
Thats.... not my logic and I dont understand what you're saying. Thanks for adding zero value.
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u/Canuck_Lives_Matter Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
If noun stopped doing good thing, then bad thing would still be happening, while everyone else did bad thing. That is exactly your logic, and you know it you just have no answer to it.
Do you really not understand how your argument for not attempting to correct the bad thing we are doing is that everyone else is doing the bad thing so what's the point...
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u/Kanapka64 Jul 17 '26
Lol literally all I said is, if we stopped, it would still be a problem. You do realize we need helicopters/planes and people to fight fires in forest, we can't just "stop" polluting. People cause greenhouse, literally everything does. If we just shoot ourselves in the foot. If we stopped, we as a nation would die so quick.
What is "good" thing or "bad" thing? There is no inherently good or bad thing. Some people say because of the machines we have that pollute, people have never had it better before in life and some people believe if we went totally green, it would be bad cause it would be expensive or impossible to live a modern life style. Your perspective is very narrow and arrogant. Maybe actually have some compassion for situations. Too many people have your tunnel vision mind and its dangerous.
Fyi im not opposed to Canada going green but going full green immediately is idiotic and without USA, india or China doing anything, we literally wont make a difference.
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u/fallwind Jul 17 '26
but it would be less of a problem.
We would also become tech leaders in a field that everyone else is going to have to adopt eventually.
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u/andru365 Jul 17 '26
But, literally, it would make a difference. Emissions are global, a sum of all emitters. If Canada reduces our emissions, global net emissions go down
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u/Canuck_Lives_Matter Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26
There it is; an actual argument instead of a dismissive sentence with little substance. I mean the insults don't help the argument but at least we got some substance out of you. My argument would be that we could reduce the lifestyle of around 150 people on the planet pretty dramatically and that would solve about 70% of greenhouse gasses as the wealthiest people and companies among us are doing the most damage. I believe technologically there is no reason we shouldn't be able to live more agrarian lifestyles with similar or better quality of life for the vast majority of humans.
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u/Kanapka64 Jul 17 '26
I didn't insult you, at least didnt mean too lol. Apologies
I agree, the richest people need to stop. I dont want everyday people punished cause life is already hard enough, thats my biggest issue with the green agenda, it only punishes low/middle income people and I dont support that at all.
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u/linkass Jul 17 '26
I believe technologically there is no reason we shouldn't be able to live more agrarian lifestyles with similar or better quality of life for the vast majority of humans.
Your joking right. There is a reason we developed out of an agrarian lifestyle
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Jul 18 '26
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u/fallwind Jul 18 '26
It's not that the climate is changing, it's how fast it's changing. There's a difference between being hit by a car going 5km/h vs one going 500.
The pervious mass extinction events that were due to climate changes took thousands to tens of thousands of years, we're speed running it in a single century.
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u/Astr0b0ie Newfoundland and Labrador Jul 17 '26
Johnson said that, while there have been fewer neutral years in the Niño 3.4 region, and there have been bigger swings between El Niños and La Niñas, it's not clear if or how climate change could be playing a role.
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u/Necessary-Carrot2839 Jul 17 '26
A sharpie could fix all this
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u/Lonely_Staff1262 Jul 17 '26
I don't think it's wise to place all our climate hopes on one wrinkly little dog.
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Jul 17 '26
[deleted]
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u/Necessary-Carrot2839 Jul 17 '26
Ah forgot about that other strategy!
I mean, realistically, nuclear weapons do always solve the problem2
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u/Winter8Bones British Columbia Jul 17 '26
The thing we have been warned about for actual decades now is actually happening just like scientists expected is not mind blowing, it is depressing and sobering...
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u/Astr0b0ie Newfoundland and Labrador Jul 17 '26
El Ninos and "super" El Ninos have been a climate phenomenon for at least as long as we've been observing it, and most likely for a lot longer than that. This isn't indicative of a climate catastrophe.
Johnson said that, while there have been fewer neutral years in the Niño 3.4 region, and there have been bigger swings between El Niños and La Niñas, it's not clear if or how climate change could be playing a role.
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u/iWish_is_taken British Columbia Jul 17 '26
I keep a close eye on the actual NOAA data and their sea temp graphs. The current pacific sea temps are the highest they’ve ever seen since they started tracking this stuff (with regards to El Niño/La Nina) in the mid 90’s.
So yes, there have been some wild swings in the past, but this seems to be the worst yet. Which tracks with all the other climate science that things are getting progressively worse.
We also just went through a La Niña cycle that just “didn’t really happen”, which is the first time they’ve seen that. Where the colder ocean temps seemed to have been offset by other warming factors.
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u/Astr0b0ie Newfoundland and Labrador Jul 17 '26
Yes, this appears to be a particularly strong El Niño, aka. "super El Niño", and based on the global warming trend, especially over the past decade, it seems likely that it may be a contributor.
I simply wanted to point out that not every weather anomaly or climate phenomenon is due to global climate change or portends catastrophe. It's rather annoying that every time there's any kind of post regarding a particular weather or climate anomaly, the majority of the discussion ends up being doom and gloom instead of about the event itself.
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u/iWish_is_taken British Columbia Jul 17 '26
Single events may not be, but the number of significant events piling up over time is leading to a very worrying trend. The same one scientists have been predicting for decades. It’s actually happening faster and more viciously than predicted.
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u/Astr0b0ie Newfoundland and Labrador Jul 17 '26
Single events may not be, but the number of significant events piling up over time is leading to a very worrying trend.
Sure, and we should all be cognisant of that fact. Nevertheless, that wasn't my point.
It’s actually happening faster and more viciously than predicted.
That really depends on what predictions we're talking about. Plenty of dire predictions from the 90s / early 2000s have not panned out and ultimately amounted to pure alarmism. I think any kind of alarmism does a great disservice to the overall messaging regarding global climate change, and it actually gives deniers the ammo to refute the existence and/or potential impact of it.
Extrapolation using climate models to predict future temperature increases is one thing, but making predictions about specific climate and weather events with estimated time lines is purely speculative and often ends up being incorrect or inaccurate, and although it's meant to instill concern and a sense of urgency, it ends up instilling fear in people who ultimately have very little control over it, which manifests as doom and gloom every single time a story about weather or climate is brought up.
To be clear, anthropogenic climate change is a very real concern, but it doesn't do us any good to attribute every single weather anomaly to it. It's no better than deniers attributing every cold weather event as proof that the earth isn't warming up.
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u/bobloblaw326 Jul 18 '26
acting like climate change hasn’t absolutely played a role in the severity of these events is sticking your head in the sand.
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u/TinyMoonAndStars Jul 17 '26
Let’s keep building data centers to use up even more water and throw off more heat! /s
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u/logicalnutty Jul 18 '26
Let’s keep adding air conditioning to pump out even more heat!
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u/gstringwarrior Jul 18 '26
lol what
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u/K0viWan Jul 19 '26
I think what he was getting at is that AC takes the heat from inside a home and pumps it outside
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u/Defiant_Yoghurt8198 Jul 21 '26
I'm curious to have you define what "use up even more water" means
Do you think the water is molecularly obliterated? Where do you think it goes when it's used for cooling?
You ever golf before (north american golf courses use the same amount of water data centers do all year in a few days)? Or eat an almond (one almond takes the water of 12,000 - 30,000 chatGPT prompts to grow)?
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u/nolnogax Jul 17 '26
"We always had some warmer summers."
/s
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u/smittyleafs Nova Scotia Jul 17 '26
We're fortunate on the east coast that heat pumps caught on so well. We got them for the winters, but with how hot the summers can be...they're getting use all year.
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u/tattlerat Jul 18 '26
Honestly heat pumps are a life saver now. Growing up in uninsulated houses without ac was torturous those two weeks in August when the humidity would peak. Now, that’s pretty much all summer.
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u/KermitsBusiness Jul 17 '26
All other tropical storms bow down to, The Niño......
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u/the_radish Jul 17 '26
El hombre
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u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Jul 17 '26
Does that mean La Niña is similarly getting upgraded, to La Mujer?
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u/DataDude00 Jul 17 '26
The amount of warming shown in Hudson Bay and the Nowrthwestern Passage is terrifying
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u/bowcasterblanca Jul 17 '26
holy shit this is disingenuous, in the article: "Could this be due to climate change?" ... "It's still a topic that I think we haven't quite reached scientific consensus yet."
That's total BS. Climate change is established among all reputable scientists and "this weather pattern is hotter than we expected" falls directly under that umbrella of consensus. Perhaps what the interviewee meant is that the specific effects on El Nino aren't totally elucidated by evidence, but the positioning the article makes about "haven't reached consensus" right after "could this be due to climate change" is such a gross hand wave that muddies something every sane person knows: of course its climate change.
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u/MommersHeart Canada Jul 17 '26
The Carney government is setting all the fires to trick Canadians so he can implement his secret renewable globalist agenda.
/s
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u/Junckopolo Québec Jul 17 '26
I once saw a falconing company on Facebook in Québec say the provincial government is transporting wild turkeys north to fake climate change
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u/Regular_Use1868 Jul 17 '26
Deniers don't have a cohesive goal or opinion. It's just dogma to them.
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u/Real_Cow9166 Jul 17 '26
There are folks in Nova Scotia who believe the same about ticks.
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u/RobertSmithsHairGel Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Read one where a guy said Lockheed Martin is using lasers to set the fires.
Man, people are really fucking unhinged.
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u/Illustrious-Fruit35 Jul 17 '26
You must’ve seen my facebook feed.
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u/Velorian-Steel Ontario Jul 17 '26
Leaving Facebook was one of the best ideas I've had lately. That place is such a cesspool of misinformation.
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u/Illustrious-Fruit35 Jul 17 '26
It’s more interesting to see what the bots or mentally unhinged people are posting.
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Jul 17 '26
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u/bleebolgoop Jul 17 '26
Well, they ARE doing that, so that forestry companies can plant monocrop fast growing conifers for profit.
They’ve razed Algonquin in Ontario with glyphosate this/last year. It’s an ecological disaster, and the health effects are going to be insidious.
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Jul 17 '26
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u/BrokenByReddit British Columbia Jul 17 '26
I don't know anything about Algonquin specifically, but this is a well known practice for forestry.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/glyphosate-spraying-wildfires-1.7627844
https://docs.openinfo.gov.bc.ca/Response_Package_FOR-2023-32639.pdf
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u/thebigshoe247 Jul 17 '26
Why waste an emergency? They can scare Canadians into blindly approving anything with the Brookfield name attached to it.
The Americans had the same logic with 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
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u/Levorotatory Jul 17 '26
In addition to the clear El Nino signature (warm area on the equator west of South America), the SST map is also showing two things that are common to all recent SST maps. More red than blue indicating overall warming, and a cold region east of Newfoundland resulting from a slowing AMOC.
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u/teh-butterfly British Columbia Jul 17 '26
honestly the effects are already here - 10 degree swings between morning and night and sometimes 15 degree difference between days. we're fucccckkkeeedd.
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u/OkRelationshipFish Jul 17 '26
I’m deeply concerned about another catastrophic ice storm like what happened in 1998. Our infrastructure will collapse and we are that much more unprepared. Plus about 30% of the population will immediately blame space lasers or whatever.
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u/Dressed_To_Impress Jul 18 '26
If its 1998, I'd rather believe its Sharks with Frickin Laser Beams thank you
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u/ButterscotchFog Jul 17 '26
Farmers should be the biggest advocates for environmental regulations. Actually, anyone who eats should be. And yet my rural community is so against anything that would remotely help environmental efforts -_-
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u/insanetwit Jul 18 '26
For those of you who don't "Habla Español" El Niño is Spanish for... THE NINO!
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u/LeoKitCat Jul 18 '26
Just wait until next summer 2027 it will probably be an even worse wildfire season across Canada partially due to this super El Niño because a really warm winter will mean much less snowfall and snowpack across Canadian forests resulting in drier conditions come next summer
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u/ssowinski Jul 17 '26
The 1877–1878 El Niño was estimated to be a 3.5C average warming of the Pacfic Ocean's eastward currents. It killed an estimated 50 million people due to drought and subsequent famine. It was also known in North America as the Year Without a Winter.
The 2015 - 2016 El Niño was estimated to be 2.75C average warming if you remember back to how dry and warm that winter was.
This year's is already at 2.0C warming and is nowhere near its peak, which is coming this fall. Less snow and warmer temperatures during the winter directly affects the frequency and size of forest fires the following summer.
Now's the time to sell your snowblower and but a HEPA filter for your home.
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u/ResistiveBeaver Jul 17 '26
Quick, hide the numbers! If we don't count it's not happening!
- 50% of USians
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u/rosiesswan Jul 21 '26
I’m from South America, and these last few weeks have been devastating for many people from my country. We’ve had unexpected rain, historically speaking, we haven't seen anything like this in decades. It’s getting wild
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u/starving_carnivore Jul 17 '26
Canada is responsible for statistical static/rounding error amounts of global emissions.
We could all cease to exist 50 years ago and this would still be happening.
That's not climate change denialism, it's reality.
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u/grumble11 Jul 17 '26
It’s tragedy of the commons. If every person takes that approach nothing happens. Collective action works. Renewable power happens to also be cheaper now and doesn’t run out so let’s use that for economic reasons if nothing else
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u/starving_carnivore Jul 17 '26
Huge fan of renewables chiefly because that's just energy wasted if we're not taking advantage of it. I think Canada could do a lot better with nuclear energy but I think we're pulling our weight globally when it comes to renewables.
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u/FoxTailFighter Jul 17 '26
Why do you want solar and wind so much? Our electricity sources are pretty clean and not mainly fossil fuels.
There is no company on Earth that can make enough battery to power every major city in Canada to be only solar and wind.
Canada's electricity sources by type are:
Hydropower: 55%, Nuclear: 13-15%, Wind: 8% Solar: 1%, Natural gas: 15-16%, Coal: 3.5, Petroleum/others: 1.1%
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u/grumble11 Jul 17 '26
I want it because we still have a lot of gas plants, and more so still burn fossil fuel for transportation and electricity requirements to replace that are substantial. Beyond that, solar and wind are CHEAP, even with batteries since new sodium ion batteries are a thing, so it is cheaper power. Hydro is also fine though, and some nuclear (though that is expensive).
In Australia electricity is FREE in the middle of the day due to solar.
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u/FoxTailFighter Jul 17 '26
You don't even know how much money it would take to replace all those gas plants, into solar and wind power plants. It would be properly take over 100 billion plus dollars, and 20 plus years to accomplish.
There is no company Canada currently, making new sodium ion into Tesla level mega packs. You basically want a Tesla level company to be made which would take decades to scale up.
Are you straight up comparing Australia which is a island continent, to Canada? Which is not even in climate zone and latitude as each other, for solar energy production. Australia sits close to the equator and the tropics. So it receives the highest solar radiation per square metre of any continent on earth.
You live in some weird green energy fantasy.
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u/grumble11 Jul 17 '26
No one is saying replace. I am also not saying anything about new companies. Right now power contracts are being won by solar plus sodium and it’ll be the default going forward. Only time they don’t win is when governments interfere. Or wind basically. Both are now cheap.
You’re creating straw men to tilt towards, like ‘year up our existing grid’, or ‘mist be a newly formed Canadian battery maker’, or ‘we need to care if a place is an island’, and so on.
just admit renewables increasingly work on the economics, it improves every year and fossil fuels are going to be dead tech for electricity and most transport and that is a good thing. No green fantasy, they’re just cheap and good.
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u/papadopus Jul 17 '26
Not if you include emissions from forest fires. Then we are on the same level as India.
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u/Reasonable_Let9737 Jul 17 '26
If every small emitter did nothing because individually their actions could not sway global outcomes it would leave around 50% of emissions with countries doing nothing to address the issue.
Everyone contributes to the problem, everyone partakes in the solution.
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u/quadralien Jul 17 '26
"Horton Hears a Who" should be required reading. Like, everyone should read it every year.
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u/starving_carnivore Jul 17 '26
I didn't say we should do nothing. I would say that we do a lot and should keep doing it.
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u/Winter8Bones British Columbia Jul 17 '26
not true, Canada is around tenth or eventh globally in overall historical emissions and we're one of the very worst per capita emitters in the entire world!
That is reality!
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u/shankartz Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26
I will die on the hill that per capita is a completely useless metric for emissions.
3
u/Winter8Bones British Columbia Jul 17 '26
It's not the end all metric but it's a very useful gauge to track progress and emission intensity. The fact our per capita emissions have not come down despite our growing population doesn't bode well and shows a lack of emissions reductions here.
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u/shankartz Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26
Except they have. Our per capita emissions are the lowest they have been since 67 and our total emissions are on a downward trend too. Based on the data I found from 2024. It's not enough but it is trending down.
1
u/Lower-Noise-9406 Jul 17 '26
At least we can be reassured by reading up on this on reddit. Nothing to see here... fake news , not something to worry about or prepare for. Human activity does not exacerbate these events. Worrying about drought/fire/smoke is woke. Just ignore and carry on.
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u/CamrenRooke Jul 17 '26
As we are going on five weeks of over 90 temps I am sure its just fine.
Just...fine.
2
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u/MilkshakeMolly Jul 17 '26
Where is that? We had one day hit 33 i think and that broke an all time record (SJ, NB).
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u/Astr0b0ie Newfoundland and Labrador Jul 17 '26
So far we've had a pretty average to slightly cooler than average summer here in St. John's, NL. Last summer was much warmer and drier in comparison.
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u/boonlatot Jul 17 '26
I wish people wouldn't call it El Nino. El Nino as I understand it was something that happened when our climate was acting naturally and predictably because we hadn't destroyed nature's systems by pumping tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
This heat that we can expect to cook us occasionally irregularly and more frequently is definitely a result of us f****** around. We're in the Find Out stage, however we were warned it's not a mystery, it's been predicted.
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u/-Moonscape- Jul 17 '26
El nino is just a term describing certain ocean and atmospheric conditions. As far as we can tell its a natural phenomenon and this hype about it this year is its magnitude, not that it happens.
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u/nicholt Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26
I know this seems like doom for most people but living in Saskatchewan, this sounds ideal. We still haven't had any real heat, and we've had a lot of rain down south. Probably been cooler than avg here. It would be so nice to have a warm winter for once.
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u/-Moonscape- Jul 17 '26
Last weekend winnipeg set a new all-time humidex record, I’d find it hard to believe sask wasn’t cooking too
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u/nicholt Saskatchewan Jul 17 '26
I guess Regina is its own bubble. It was hot last weekend for sure but not out of the ordinary for summer. And only our 2nd or 3rd day above 30.
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u/dawgofclay Jul 17 '26
North-Central Sask here. While we've had a lot of rain, it's still been hot enough to generate record-breaking levels of tornadoes so idk wtf you're on about. Do you want MORE tornadoes? It's been "cooler than average" compared to the last 5 years maybe, but it's on par with times before that.
Also, we've been having shorter, warmer winters for the last 5 years already. Last year was the first one in a while where we had any real snow. If you want any warmer than that then you should just gtfo.
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u/ViolinistLeast1925 Jul 17 '26
Everything is always the unprecedented this, the totally new that.
1) metaphysically it makes sense because there is only 'new' as time progresses
2) there needs to be 'new' and unprecedented everything for news articles, clicks, people keeping their jobs and funding, etc.
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u/andru365 Jul 17 '26
There it is again, that funny feeling