The kids are back in school, which is a good thing. Excellent education without COVID-19 infections is the hope of all.

Canada has good education systems with teachers dedicated to giving students the best education available. However, curriculums established to guide teachers on what to teach are outdated and do not address what our children must learn to face the future.

Their future will be challenging, to put it mildly. Realistically, their future could be catastrophic.

Today’s children, and tomorrow’s, face a future of more COVID-like viruses, devastating changes brought by global warming, and massive political upheaval. They will encounter crises that will test the limits of human capabilities and require the dynamic leadership not seen today in many countries, Canada included.

Most serious is climate change that can bring diseases and people migrations, which can worsen current political instability. And, anyone questioning why we should worry about political instability close to home should look to the United States where talk of civil war has moved out of the shadows and into everyday conversations.

Presumably we are teaching our children about global warming, its causes and the impacts on our weather, and therefore our lives. But is our education system providing a thorough understanding of biodiversity and its critical importance to future life?

A United Nations study has reported that one million animal and plant species face extinction over the next few decades because of climate change, habit loss and other human activities. Loss of species lowers biodiversity, which leads to changes in landscapes and creates conditions for new diseases to attack animals, including humans.

There is probably no better lesson on the importance of biodiversity than the story of the Yellowstone National Park grey wolves. Wolves were exterminated in the park because humans hated them and refused to acknowledge their important role in nature.

The Yellowstone wolves fed on elk which flourished without them. Growing elk populations destroyed river bank willow stands, which beaver need to survive. Fewer beaver changed the river systems.

Wolves were reintroduced the park to balance elk populations. The threat of wolves kept the elk on the move, leaving them less time to browse riverbank willows. Willow stands recovered, beaver populations grew and nature’s balance was restored.

A full story of the Yellowstone wolves can be found at: https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm 

Today’s children need new mindsets, knowledge and skills that will help then find solutions to the problems they will face. They will be charged with finding how humanity can occupy the planet’s spaces without dominating and degrading them.

To achieve that they will need to learn how to live differently, ensuring that biodiversity does not continue to be degraded. Without strong levels of biodiversity there is no future.

They also will need to learn life changes required for the future. So much of life today is focussed on the individual and individual things such as money and status. The future will demand more collective thought and collective action.

Individual actions always will be important for creating change but the issues looming for the future demand dedicated collective action – people working together on critical common goals.

They also will require strong leadership focussed on collective goals and free of political thinking. 

Collective thinking and collective action, directed by strong, unbiased leadership, have helped to find solutions to other serious human problems. 

In the 1950s smoke from burning coal was destroying life in London. The air was made cleaner by finding alternatives to burning coal.

In the 1970s, smog was destroying life in Los Angeles. The invention of catalytic converters for automobiles helped to clear the smog problem.

Today’s children can live in a safer future world if they are taught the importance of how all lives are critical to nature’s balance. Even small, seemingly useless lives.

One life no longer aiding nature’s balance is the ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird is believed to be the inspiration for Woody Woodpecker, the iconic cartoon character with the famous Heh-Heh-Heh-HEH laugh.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was declared extinct in September of last year, a victim of industrial logging. 

Woody Woodpecker gone from our world forever. And that’s no laughing matter.

The storms of a globally warming summer have passed and hopefully we can settle into a more relaxed autumn of stable weather patterns, blue skies and gentle breezes.

It’s been a crazy weather year. It was an early spring with little runoff, then a long dry spell that could have qualified as a drought. Garden soil was powder dry and there was much anxiety about forest fires. 

Then came the rain, 16 days of it in June In Haliburton County, another 16 in July and an almost daily shower in August. Interspersed in the rain were days of high heat and suffocating humidity.

We got off easy. Other parts of the world, the United States in particular, suffered unprecedented damaging events caused by extreme weather - wildfires, storms that caused massive flooding and winds that tore apart communities.

Damaging weather events no longer are few and far between. In 2020 in the U.S. there were 22 billion dollar extreme weather events. 

From 1980 to 2020 the annual average of extreme weather events totalled 7.1. The average for the past five years (2016-2020) was 16.2 extreme weather events per year. 

A Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations shows that almost one-third of Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster just in the past three months. And, almost 400 Americans have died in hurricanes, floods, heat waves and wildfires just since June.

Weather analysts say this is only the beginning of changing weather patterns and extreme weather events as global warming intensifies.

Canada has not been as severely affected, yet. However, global warming is heating the north and bringing new risks. Black-legged ticks, which carry serious Lyme disease, have been reported just north of Orillia and are continuing their northward march as our climate becomes warmer.

In 2009 only 144 cases of Lyme disease were reported across Canada. In 2019, the number of confirmed and suspected cases totalled 2,636.

A warming climate also is making new homes for a variety of mosquitoes. The Asian tiger mosquito is believed to be established now in the Windsor area. That mosquito is known to carry chikungunya and dengue and other viruses that we have never had to worry about before.

Some research indicates that climate change will bring the risk of malaria to millions of people, including Canadians, who seldom had to be concerned about it.

“The one thing we do know is slowly the distribution of mosquitoes is changing,” Robbin Lindsay, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told Global News two years ago. “And we do see events and we see species here that we haven’t seen before.”

At the same time, the environmental magazine Yale Environment 360 reported that by 2050 climate change will expose one-half of the world’s population to disease spreading mosquitoes.

Climate change brings warmer weather that brings earlier springs that allow mosquito eggs to mature faster. It also brings more flooding which means more water in which the bugs can multiply.

Many experts say, however, that the main focus now should not be mosquitoes, but controlling global warming itself. Slowing climate change will slow mosquito population growth, and transmission of the viruses they carry.

Some people are finding advantages in our warming climate. Some companies are considering introducing afternoon siestas into their workplaces because climate change is increasing summer temperatures.

The National Trust, a British charity, is giving workers and volunteers Mediterranean-type working hours in southern England because of increasingly hot summers.

“It’s fair to say that as we experience more extreme temperatures, we will be looking to offer Mediterranean working hours, especially in the east which is likely to experience more frequent higher temperatures to ensure the health and safety of our staff and volunteers,” said a spokesman for the charity.

Mediterranean hours already are being offered at one National Trust property south of London, where the afternoon temperature went above 40 Celsius for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, more mosquito-borne disease and more Mediterranean working hours are serious signs that we all have to get together, believe that climate change is seriously real and do our part to help control it.  

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I Scooped the Washington Press Corps

You read it here first!

Through fantastic reporting, I have obtained Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration speech. Obviously I can’t reveal how I got it, except to say that brilliant reporting was involved.

So while the entire world waits with eyeballs glued to televisions you, dear readers, have the speech now. Here it is:

My Fellow Americans. And, of course, your lovely ladies as well.

Happy 2017 to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Sad! Very sad!

Welcome to you fans who have come from all corners to witness this historic day. Great people out there. Like Vlad Putin, in the second row, He’s a great guy and his girlfriend Alina Kabaeva has great legs.

Vlad is a leader. You know, unlike what we have in this country.

One thing, though. He is not as good looking as me.  I mean do I look like a president? How handsome am I, right? How handsome? You betcha!

           

I think it’s important that I say something never said here before: Many scores and years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Well, they got that wrong! Nobody is created equal. You have to know the right people and work the dollars to get that way.

I’m going to work at making a lot more people more equal. Nobody can do it better than me.

I have a great temperament for getting that done. My temperament is very good, very calm. Everything I’ve done virtually has been a tremendous success. In fact everything I have done actually has been tremendous.

I’m going to help the poor, because they need a lot of help. I mean if they have been poor for so many generations, how smart can they be? Basically they are morons and they need help.

I’m also going to do foreign affairs. Foreign affairs, without the help of the State Department. The level of stupidity there is incredible. I'm telling you, I used to use the word incompetent. Now I just call them stupid.

I’ll be consulting myself a lot. Speaking with myself – No. 1 – because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.

I’ve already seen how our free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people.

There has been a bunch of snivelling about having too many rich men, and too few women, in my administration.

I want to make clear that I cherish women. I want to help women. I’m going to be able to do things for women that no one else could do. They are going to love it.

(Pause as the President summons an aide to bring him a pair of ear muffs).

That feels better. I didn’t want my ears to get frostbitten on my first day as president.

You know all this global warming talk was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Now any and all weather events are used by the global warming hoaxsters to justify higher taxes to save our planet!

And of course there’s the carbon footprint thing and the hole in the ozone thing. They say, don't use hair spray, it's bad for the ozone. I want to use hair spray. I’ve got a fantastic head of hair and I want to keep it in place. What’s more important, my hair or the ozone?

Hey, it really is getting cold outside. I see Hillary sitting out there in Row 236 and can hear her teeth chattering. She’ll warm up when we get her locked up.

So that’s about it. I want to cut this short because it really is getting cold. Half the country is in a deep freeze. It’s a major freeze. Weeks ahead of normal.

Our planet is freezing. Record low temps, and our scientists are stuck in ice.

Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!

Catch ya on Twitter!

Email: shaman@vianet.ca

Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

2016: The Year of Living Differently?

That was nice. The last two months of the year filled with optimism, generated mostly by a new federal government. Lots of cooing and gushing about positive change.

And a cheery - albeit mild and snowless - Christmas season. I can still hear the echoes of Frank Sinatra crooning “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” the tune that assures us that from now on our troubles will be out of sight.

Not quite. When we woke up New Year’s Day the world’s worries remained, looming tall and threatening. The largest is global warming, which should be obvious considering our scary December weather.

The Paris climate change summit last month left many people feeling more relaxed about the global warming threat. The summit of 196 countries agreed to slow the rate of global warming, although there were few specifics on how that might be done.

We have to be hopeful that the Paris agreement will set us on a path to saving  our deteriorating planet. The odds are against us, however.

To begin with, the world relies on coal and oil for roughly two-thirds of its energy needs.  There no longer is much doubt that continued uncontrolled use of both has the potential to make the earth uninhabitable.

World coal consumption declined in 2015, however many economic forecasters believe coal use will increase in coming years. Coal is abundant and far cheaper to produce power than oil or natural gas. 

In 2013, the World Resources Institute estimated that 1,200 new coal-fired power plants were being planned throughout the world. The majority were in China and India, countries where economic growth is booming and demanding more power sources.

Coal is the key fuel in these two countries, and in many developing nations, and its use is expected to increase worldwide until at least 2020.

Also, the number of motor vehicles in the world surpassed one billion in 2010. Their number today is estimated at 1.2 billion and expected to double to 2.5 billion by 2050. Ninety-eight per cent of them burn gasoline or diesel.

With 2.5 billion vehicles, average fuel efficiency will have to double just to keep carbon emissions at today’s level. However, scientists suggest that we will need to cut average carbon emissions by 80 per cent to stabilize the impacts of global warming.

Coal and oil use are not the only threats to the world environment. The greatest threat is ourselves and our production-based lifestyle.

The Christmas season just passed is an example. The U.S. energy department estimates that decorative seasonal lights consume 6.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity every year in that country. That is more than the total annual national electrical consumption of many developing countries.

This is one small example of the runaway consumerism and overproduction that our society needs to rethink. We need to talk about how we can live more simply with less.

We have made impressive advances in trying to control our pollution. Recycling, composting, solar and wind energy, automotive pollution controls are examples. But these are controls that slow, but not stop, our environmental degradation.

What we need is a change in attitude. An attitude that helps us understand that our planet does not exist only for us. It exists for everything. Everything in the world is connected and has a purpose, and everything deserves our respect.

I see lack of respect whenever I take a walk along Highway 35. The shoulders and ditches are strewn with beer and pop cans, water bottles, paper coffee cups, juice boxes, cigarettes packs and a variety of plastic containers.

On my walks I usually find one piece of garbage every 20 steps. All this is crap tossed from vehicle windows. It’s hard to imagine how we will stop global warming when people still throw garbage from carbon-emitting vehicles that are growing at an alarming rate.

Now there is talk of populating a new planet. That I guess goes with the thinking that when you fill one garbage dump you simply find another.

I like living here and don’t want to move. So instead of booking a seat on the first populating mission to Mars, I’ll try lessening my individual impacts on the world.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Autumn Leaves and Climate Change

The autumn colours are late this year, but few people are lamenting the delay, especially considering that an extended summer is the cause.

Our unusually  warm and sunny fall has some observers concerned, however, about future fall colours. Some brows are being knitted into knots fretting about global warming and how it might change the annual spectacle of colour.

Research is beginning to show that global warming is causing trees to change colours later in the season. A 23-year observation by Harvard University in Massachusetts concludes that the autumn colour peak arrives there on average three to five days later than in the past.

The later peak correlates with a 1.1-degree Celsius rise in average temperatures in the U.S. northeast.

"Should that pattern continue, by the middle of the century we'd be at well over a week later" for fall colour, says John O’Keefe, an ecologist at Harvard Forest.

Another researcher, Howard Neufeld of Appalachian State University, has written that global warming will move the best autumn leaf displays farther north and upward in elevation.

He adds: “The fall foliage displays that our grandchildren will see at the end of this century will not be the ones we see today.”

Warmer autumns, while delaying the turning of the leaves, might have other effects on trees, such as inability to cope with higher temperatures and invasive species.

The changing leaves provide a huge tourism business in Ontario, and points east. Some estimates put the annual value of fall leaf tourism at $25 billion in the U.S. Northeast. There don’t appear to be any Canadian figures, however, the leaf peeping industry is big here, especially in our own Haliburton County.

What causes leaves to change colour is always a topic for debate. Some people argue that frost makes the leaves change, while others say that it is lots of autumn sunshine.

Daylight and temperatures are two main factors affecting when leaves give up their summer green for brilliant displays of red, orange, yellow, and persimmon.

Think of each leaf as a restaurant. Each has a head chef named Chlorophyll who takes in daylight energy and mixes it with carbon dioxide and water to produce sugars and starches to feed the customer - the tree.

As autumn approaches there is less daylight and temperatures usually are lower so the restaurant begins to shut down. Chlorophyll, which coloured the restaurant’s green for the summer, stops cooking and goes on vacation, taking its colour scheme with it. Without their green, the leaf restaurants are left with wild colours ranging from gold to red to brown.

Chlorophyll has been working longer this year because daylight with sunshine has been abundant, and temperatures above normal. Almost every day this September day and night temperatures have been above average in Haliburton County.

This year’s leaf transformation in this part of the country is one of the latest in several decades. September 27 (Sunday past) is the average date for peak colour in Algonquin Park. Over the past 40 years the fall colour has peaked as early as September 15 and as late of Oct. 9. Last year the peak was judged at Sept. 24.

Ontario Travel reported Sunday that the Algonquin colour change had reached fifty per cent. The Minden area was listed at 10 per cent. Algonquin usually colours up earlier because it is at higher elevation and therefore cooler temperatures.

The guessing is that we will see the colours peak sometime next week, possibly later.

The brilliance of the peak display will be decided by a complicated combination of temperature, light and water supply. For instance lower night temperatures just above freezing help bring out the reds in the maples. Early frost, however, can weaken the reds. The warm September that we have been experiencing likely will  dull the colour intensity.

How long the display lasts depends again on the weather. Wind and heavy rain knock leaves down.

As to what climate change might do to future fall foliage, there’s no use sweating that now. Kick back and enjoy whatever nature is offering at the moment.