Canada has 563 lakes larger than 100 square kilometres. Great Bear and Great Slave together are as big as Lakes Huron or Michigan (all roughly 59000 km^2. Only Superior is bigger (82,100 km^2). 18% of global freshwater is in the Great Lakes alone.
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Oh my!
Yes, a new USDA plant hardiness zone map published in 2012 shows notable zone boundary shifts from the previous one published in 1990. Furthermore, the IPCC has extensively studied these changes, most recently in the Working Group II report on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, part of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on climate change. Much of the impact of climate change depends on the latitudes one looks at. Lower and mid-latitudes have suffered reduced agricultural productivity over the past 50 years due to factors like heat stress and other forms of extreme weather, and water availability. Higher latitudes regions like Canada have benefited from expanded agricultural areas and/or longer growing seasons, but in addition to risks of extreme weather events, climate change has also altered what the IPCC refers to as phenology, meaning the disruption of seasonal events like flowering and insect emergence, potentially causing plant-pollinator and pest mismatches. So again, while warming is nominally beneficial to agriculture at higher latitudes, global warming comes with a cost that may limit the duration of the benefits and potentially even wipe them out completely.
The various Great Lakes agreements are a great example of bilateral cooperation between Canada and the United States, which otherwise sometimes get huffy on matters like trade. There is, for instance, the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972), and there are tons of lesser agreements in the diplomatic form of an “exchange of notes”. There are also two agreements between two Canadian provinces and eight US states, the Great Lakes Charter (1985) and the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement (2005).
As for being nice, we have to be, because youse guys got the nukes.
Aww, you know we’d never point them at you guys.
Obviously an urban legend.
Canadians are polite enough that they would have changed the course of the lighthouse and apologized for the inconvenience.
Good column, Cecil. This is thoroughly the best new column yet in almost every way. Interesting, slightly snarky, presents information visually instead of a link dump, factual rather than opinion- or philosophy-based.
With regards to other posters who say that Canada would not be able to utilize marginal lands for agriculture even given greater warmth and a lack of drought, one of the advantages of so much space is that it doesn’t need to be used efficiently. It could be converted to grazing lands. According to some sources I’ve seen, growing ruminants by grazing releases even more methane than factory-style farming, but I am not 100% sure that these claims were not just industry puff pieces. Plus, if there is a worldwide food shortage, it may be necessary to graze ruminants to avoid starvation if the land is marginal.
Grazing would be bad for the local ecosystem though beyond just the grasses, since it would disrupt the other large mammals that currently roam on its land (i.e. there would be pressure to get rid of predators and wild grazers.)
Not quite, the implied philosophy is that little or noting to control climate change will be done. Also, not mentioned, are the current opinions from the right wing (From Canada and in the USA) regarding how unwelcome of climate refugees they (and their immediate descendants) will remain; Thing is that, besides rejecting that human emissions are the reason, the right will have to accept a lot, and I mean a lot of refugees. Point here that James Burke is more likely to be right about what will happen to the climate refugees:
After the Warming James Burke (1989)
In essence, after the warming, a lot of memorials about the many that will die thanks to the prevalent xenophobia will be made to remember another dark chapter of human history.
(The early projections in that show are off by many decades, but then again, that show was from 1989! With more data and research, the PLOS report in the OP points at the end of the century as a very likely time to see the coming climate refugee crises then if nothing is done.
And by nothing, I also mean: that if very little is done to control emissions, that then, also to prevent deaths it means that: we really, really, do have to control the many intolerant that are in the US and Canada.)
I enjoyed this column. Four more columns like this would help. Given the threadbare state of the Canadian army we could really use the bonus of five more.
A Canadian fifth column?
It lumps in Alaska because it’s meant to show a single aggregate change for each country. Regionally, however, both countries undoubtedly have areas that will buck the overall trend of change.
Which means it would suck for Canada. Upper end estimates of the badness of climate change could be expected to correspond to mass famine and war on a truly record-setting scale. Nowhere is safe under such conditions.
True, but our mighty Arctic defences will… ah, I don’t have to tell you about our mighty Arctic defences.
Yeah, Canada has a disgraceful military, but that’s a temporary thing. That changes with politics and this column is about the REALLY important stuff, the long term stuff.
Histporically, Canada has been protected by geographic isolation and agreeable relations with the only neighbour. In a world where a panicky country can incinerate your whole country in thirty minutes, we aren’t separate from the problems. If two BILLION people have to relocate, that’s World War III.
The Great Slave Lake’s name is not related to slaves or slavery. It’s named after the Slavey people of northern Canada.
IIRC Lake Winnipeg is almost as big as Lake Erie and bigger than Lake Ontario.
It’s super shallow though.
I’m not sure it is temporary sadly. I mean maybe not in an extreme long-term but things are dire in the CF right now. They’re struggling with recruiting, and senior NCOs are leaving or retiring. What was once a backlog for training has become an absolute quagmire of a backlog for training. It is entirely possible that some new recruits may go through a large part of their initial terms of service without being fully trained. The recent pay “raise” has not helped matters. The CF is looking at a couple of decades of darkness for sure, and it isn’t something that money can necessarily fix. The lack of trainers is a ticking time bomb because you cannot just promote some guy with no experience into the role. Well, you can, but then you end up with worst training.
I’ve thought this very same thing. Only time will tell but, if they start building a wall and sending us bills, we’ll have our answer. LOL