Can You Say "Climate Change?"

-
by Larry Powell
A sodden farm field near Neepawa, Manitoba.
Another "severe weather event," this one a doozy, has just blown through my neck of the woods. Deluges of rain over a huge area of the Canadian prairies, driven by strong winds, have brought flooding, property damage and washed-out roads to scores of communities in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It left power outages, dangling live wires, trees on top of cars, evacuations (including at least one hospital and one care home), flooded basements (including my brother's in Regina) and human misery, galore. Ditches and roads turned into rivers and farm fields into rice paddies. They were all part of a package deal included in slow-moving electrical storms that lasted for an agonizing three days or so, from west of Regina through to eastern Manitoba.

 The storms were made all the worse due to the extremely wet spring which preceded them. Already sodden ground left few places for the water to go.
Waters of the Whitemud River touch the bridge at Neepawa. 
A friend who lives near the southwestern Manitoba town of Virden, John Fefchak writes, "We are fine where we live, but the town of Virden, it's a disaster. In all my years (and there's been quite a few), I have never been witness to such flooding. There was huge flooding in 1969, and guess, where they allowed the most recent housing development. It's called 'Seventh Heaven,' right in the same place. Too bad people don't pay attention or heed warnings.  Mother Nature will smack you every time! All those residents were evacuated yesterday!"

John adds, "Our little prairie creek, (the one the province allows arsenic into) is now a raging, white rapids river, spilling into the swollen Assiniboine about 3 miles downstream. 

"Just for the record, we have had 4.6 inches of rain in the past 2 days, and for the month of June…..nearly 11 inches. Our yearly average has been 14 inches. Our car dealership, Mainline Motors, is flooded out."
More crop spraying is being done from the air because fields are too wet 
for ground applicators. I spotted this crop-duster just west 
of Neepawa this morning. (P in P photos.)
And it all happened, yet again, without anyone bothering to utter the dreaded phrase, "climate change." The closest I saw was on TV when a meteorologist (no not a climate scientist, but one who tells you what the weather will be tomorrow), was asked if this was part of the broader "trend" (which I took to mean "climate change). She answered, predictably, "You can't definitely connect any single incident to....the....trend."

 How in hell can humanity be expected to do something about this defining environmental crisis of our time when we can't even utter the words?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conservative MP Absent From a Child Poverty Forum in Southwestern Manitoba.

-
Image
Are hungry kids a priority for the Harper government? by Larry Powell The forum (for the riding of Dauphin - Swan River - Neepawa) was sponsored by the Mission and Services Committee of the Neepawa United Church. It drew about 80 people to the church on Wednesday. But only four of the five candidates (see below) took part in the debate -  Ray  Piché  (Liberal),   Kate Storey (Green Party),  Inky Mark (Ind.) and  Laverne Lewycky (NDP) . The 5th candidate, the sitting Conservative MP for the area, Robert Sopuck (represented by the empty chair on the right), did not attend. His office manager in Neepawa, Christine Waddell, said he was in Inglis, a small community in the western part of the riding for the evening. She did not elaborate. But she did explain that a campaign worker was mistaken when he told forum organizers earlier that Mr. Sopuck would, in fact be there. Piché , the Liberal candidate, said the MP's absence showed “disrespect” for the rest of the candidates
Read more

A Candidate's Forum on Child Poverty Touches a Nerve in Manitoba.

-
Image
by Larry Powell Planet In Peril has sorted through some of the confusion surrounding the absence of Robert Sopuck (above), the Conservative Member of Parliament for Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa,  from a candidates' forum on child poverty in Neepawa on Wednesday.  About a month ago, his office told forum organizers that he would be attending.  But his office manager in Neepawa, Christine Waddell, later announced he could not attend due to "scheduling conflicts." She said the night of the event, he was in Inglis, a small town in the western part of his riding.  This morning, however, Sopuck himself told PinP he had actually been in Roblin, a larger town just north of Inglis. A newspaper ad indicated it was a "meet and greet" affair. But that was in the morning in Roblin, a town within a 3-hour drive of Neepawa. So it's still not clear what the event in Inglis was which took priority over a candidate's forum. The MP bristled at my suggestion th
Read more

The Bio of Larry Powell - publisher of this blog.

-
Image
Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan. He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of  Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Powell joined an international team of writers providing articles for the Swiss-based online journal, Focusing on Wildlife - celebrating  the biodiversity of Planet Earth. In June, 2014, he was a panelist at a world conference in          Winnipeg entitled Holding
Read more