I wrote this letter a couple of years ago about a road construction project past my door. I realize it was a "minority" if not an "oddball" position to be taking. Now that our world is descending, and not so slowly anymore, into a kind of Hell on earth, with wildfire smoke insinuating iself in your lungs and mine, how oddball do I seem now?
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If ever there was an example of just how numb we are to the planetary crisis we are now in, it’s surely playing out in plain sight right here, right now, in Shoal Lake. As many of my neighbours will already know, big dump trucks have been lumbering by on the street in front of our homes for about a week now. Beginning before dawn, they sometimes approach a steady stream that lasts all day until about dusk.
The mine supplying the raw product has been expanding for years along the banks of the Birdtail River. I’ve been out there a few times over the past few years. I’ve captured dramatic shots of the copious dust it kicks up when in full operational mode (visit PlanetInPeril.ca) and heard the clamour of the machines echoing up and down an otherwise peaceful valley. Prevailing westerlies carry the dust right over (and no doubt into) the river water. Such sediment has long been proven to be bad news for fish and other aquatic life.
This seems to matter not, however. Neither does the fact that internal combustion engines are big contributors of greenhouse gases and climate change (which the experts predict will be in “runaway mode,” or beyond our ability to turn around, in about a decade).
This book should be required reading for anyone who is concerned about the way hogs are raised in Manitoba. And that goes double for those who may still actually believe there's nothing to be concerned about.
Manitoba author Bill Massey (above) grew up in a troubled family with an abusive father. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, he emerged with a heightened sense of what was fair and what was not. His toughness and perseverance would serve him well in the face of the challenges which lay ahead - ones he could not have possibly imagined.
Bill and his wife Dorothy have, for years, raised chickens and a few hogs on their little farm near Grosse Isle, northwest of Winnipeg. Both have also been teachers, he, a principal and an advocate for abused children.
In 2004, their lives would change, and not for the better. A nearby hog barn, operated by a Hutterite colony, announced it planned to expand. Right away, Bill smelled trouble ahead. And he was right. In the years since, that operation has proven to be an intrusive neighbour which is still leaving a legacy of stink and pollution.
Bill soon emerged as a leader in a community trying to do something about the excesses of the hog factory. But he and his allies were to learn a bitter lesson - that neither governments, nor politicians nor bureaucrats were on their side. Their job was to serve the interests of the colony and make its operation a commercial success. Period.
One telling paragraph in Bill's book confirms as much. Former government bureaucrats had told him, privately, their job was to help producers (in this case the colony) find their way around government regulations.
It became difficult to impossible for Bill's group to even find out how many hogs were being housed in the facility at any one time. They were confronted with a confusing array of rules that either shifted depending on who they asked, or were ignored when convenient to the colony. For example, there were no penalties if they incorrectly filled out manure management plans which are supposed to include herd numbers.
Bill's years-long fight cost him friends both within and outside of the colony. Yet, he carries on, to this day, after being let down by successive governments, both of NDP & Conservative persuasion. Even the Manitoba ombudsman, supposedly the last defence for this province's citizens against over-reach by government or industry, failed to support them.
Bill meticulously documents the series of events which occurred in his campaign over about 17 years, intertwining it with the reality that was his own, turbulent childhood.
It's a fascinating read.
To buy this book, just click here and scroll down.
The Sparks fire during an historic heatwave in BC, Canada. A BC Wildfire Service photo June 20-21.
The world's largest study of global climate related mortality found deaths related to hot temperatures increased in all regions from 2000 to 2019, indicating that global warming due to climate change will make this mortality figure worse in the future. The international research team looked at mortality and temperature data across the world. Story here.
Bill Massey - author of, "Of Pork & Potatoes - a memoir"
Massey made the presentation, below, to a Conditional Use Hearing at the RM of Westlake-Gladstone Municipality on July 8th 2021.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this hearing. My name is Bill Massey and I have led a group called the Concerned Citizens of Grosse Isle in our struggle with a hog barn in our community. I have written a book called Of Pork & Potatoes that chronicles the events of the past 15 years in our community. I’ve been asked to speak by members of your municipality and I’m hoping my remarks will be helpful.
I want to begin by describing the issue of odour that our community experienced. People have been unable to enjoy their properties or care for their yards because of the smell. Some of them had even confined themselves to their homes. Others had disconnected fresh air intakes on air conditioning units to attempt to minimize the odor. People without air conditioning and with young children are particularly hard hit. We realized what we were up against on one very cold day putting up Christmas lights on the outside of the house, the light southwest wind carrying the smell from the barn. It was extreme, to say the least, and felt acidic in your nose and throat. We were driven indoors and had to wait until the wind shifted the next day before we could finish putting up our lights.
When it comes to smell you will be told by the provincial government that it’s your responsibility and yours alone. People will come to you and expect you to do something about this problem. Those people are your friends, neighbours and constituents. The government will be of no help to you because unfortunately they have given up their role as a regulator of the industry and are simply an enabler. It got to the extent with our committee that the provincial government actually urged the municipal government to ignore their own bylaws and allow the producer to have more hogs in their operation than was permitted under the Planning Act. You can imagine the difficulty that that created for a council facing a number of angry people demanding answers. When I confronted the provincial government on this behavior they backed down somewhat but that was no help to the council and for our group, the damage was done. You can read the exchange of letters between our group and the provincial government on this matter on my blog, billmassey.ca.
I just heard a news item in the media that stated that morale among staff in Conservation was very low and the government was having trouble filling positions. That does not surprise me in the least. It is common knowledge that former conservation officers have suggested that their role in the department was to help the producer find their way around the regulations. There have been a number of conservation people who have gone over to the hog industry and the pork council over the years, the former head of the Pork Council being one of them. I would seriously question the validity of the technical review and get an outside opinion if I were you. Just recently at Landmark Manitoba, the technical review gave the green light to a development ½ mile outside the community! Landmark is a town as big or bigger than Gladstone. How can that be valid in anyone’s mind?
I want to talk about the social costs of a development like the one you are considering. This developer is not from the community. They have no allegiance to the people who live there. Its one thing when the producer is a local person and has relationships with the people living around the barn, but when that is not part of the process, it becomes much more difficult for the community to deal with this problem. These corporations usually offer minimum wage and local people usually won’t work in these unhealthy situations. We know of situations in the province where workers are brought in from third world countries to work in these barns. I feel these people, because of their circumstances, are being taken advantage of and that does not sit well with me or anyone concerned about human rights.
In our community there were people who supported the idea of a hog barn and there were those of us against it. This causes serious conflicts among local people. This has been a problem in most communities where hog barns have been built. It got to a point in one community, where children of people opposed to the barn were being bullied at school. Some people were forced to sell out because they could not stand to live in the shadow of the barn. When it comes to selling, we know that if you’re anywhere close to a hog barn your property values may fall as much as 50%.
I grew up on a small farm near Kelwood, Manitoba in a friendly and helpful community. As neighbours we looked out for each other and tried to help out where we could. I do the same today and that is one of the reasons why I took on the leadership of my group to try to maintain that care and concern for my neighbours. We’re used to that attitude and we’re not used to a corporate factory farm entity that comes into our community and creates all of this conflict and unhappiness. This is a foreign consortium proposing this development. The profits will go to another country while we’re left with the conflict, the pollution and the smell.
This government passed changes to the planning act called Bill 19. In that bill they gave a government appointed body, the Municipal Board, the power to overturn municipal decisions. This is an assault on Democracy in this province. Don’t let that influence you in saying no to this development. This government and any who follow need to understand that we do not want this industry as it’s structured now, in our communities. Do the right thing and turn down this application.
During the last days of June 2021, Pacific northwest areas of the
U.S. and Canada experienced temperatures never previously observed,
with records broken in many places by several degrees Celsius.
Multiple cities in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and the
western provinces of Canada recorded temperatures far above 40ºC (104
ºF), including setting a new all-time Canadian temperature record of
49.6ºC in the village of Lytton. Shortly after setting the record,
Lytton was largely destroyed in a wildfire [1,2].
The exceptionally high temperatures led to spikes in sudden deaths, and
sharp increases in hospital visits for heat-related illnesses and
emergency calls [3,4,5].
Heatwaves are one of the deadliest natural hazards and this heatwave
affected a population unaccustomed and unprepared for such extreme
temperatures, for instance with most homes lacking air-conditioning [6].
Currently available mortality estimates of at least several hundred
additional deaths are almost certainly an underestimate. The full extent
of the impact of this exceptional heat on population health will not be
known for several months.
Scientists from the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, France,
Germany and Switzerland collaborated to assess to what extent
human-induced climate change made this heatwave hotter and more likely.
Using published peer-reviewed methods,
we analysed how human-induced climate change affected the maximum
temperatures in the region where most people have been affected by the
heat (45–52 ºN, 119–123 ºW) including the cities of Seattle, Portland,
and Vancouver (with well over 9 million people in their combined
metropolitan areas).
Figure
1: Station data anomalies of the 2021 event relative to the mean of the
highest daily maximum temperature of the year in the time series. Note
that some stations do not have data up to the peak of the heatwave yet
and hence underestimate the event. Negative values certainly do not
include the heatwave and have therefore been deleted. The black box
shows the study region. Source: GHCN-D downloaded 4 July 2021.
Main findings
Based on observations and modeling, the occurrence of
a heatwave with maximum daily temperatures (TXx) as observed in the
area 45–52 ºN, 119–123 ºW, was virtually impossible without human-caused
climate change.
The observed temperatures were so extreme that they
lie far outside the range of historically observed temperatures. This
makes it hard to quantify with confidence how rare the event was. In the
most realistic statistical analysis the event is estimated to be about a
1 in 1000 year event in today’s climate.
There are two possible sources of this extreme jump
in peak temperatures. The first is that this is a very low probability
event, even in the current climate which already includes about 1.2°C of
global warming — the statistical equivalent of really bad luck, albeit
aggravated by climate change. The second option is that nonlinear
interactions in the climate have substantially increased the probability
of such extreme heat, much beyond the gradual increase in heat extremes
that has been observed up to now. We need to investigate the second
possibility further, although we note the climate models do not show it.
All numbers below assume that the heatwave was a very low probability
event that was not caused by new nonlinearities.
With this assumption and combining the results from
the analysis of climate models and weather observations, an event,
defined as daily maximum temperatures (TXx) in the heatwave region, as
rare as 1 in a 1000 years would have been at least 150 times rarer
without human-induced climate change.
Also, this heatwave was about 2°C hotter than it
would have been if it had occurred at the beginning of the industrial
revolution (when global mean temperatures were 1.2°C cooler than today).
Looking into the future, in a world with 2°C of
global warming (0.8°C warmer than today which at current emission levels
would be reached as early as the 2040s), this event would have been
another degree hotter. An event like this – currently estimated to occur
only once every 1000 years, would occur roughly every 5 to 10 years in
that future world with 2°C of global warming.
In summary, an event such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave is
still rare or extremely rare in today’s climate, yet would be virtually
impossible without human-caused climate change. As warming continues, it
will become a lot less rare.
Our results provide a strong warning: our rapidly warming climate is
bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences
for health, well-being, and livelihoods. Adaptation and mitigation are
urgently needed to prepare societies for a very different future.
Adaptation measures need to be much more ambitious and take account of
the rising risk of heatwaves around the world, including surprises such
as this unexpected extreme. Deaths from extreme heat can be dramatically
reduced with adequate preparedness action. Heat action plans that
incorporate heatwave early warning systems can strengthen the resilience
of cities and people. In addition, longer-term plans are needed to
modify our built environments to be more adequate for the hotter climate
that we already experience today and the additional warming that we
expect in future. In addition, greenhouse gas mitigation goals should
take into account the increasing risks associated with unprecedented
climate conditions if warming would be allowed to continue
Background information
The heatwave considered in this study is linked to a slow-moving
strong high pressure system, sometimes called Omega-blocking or “heat
dome”, which brings descending and thus warm and dry air, as well clear
skies, further heating the near-surface air. This high pressure system
also reached record levels in terms of its strength, measured as the
“thickness” of the lower part of the atmosphere, the so-called troposphere.
The pressure values observed in the very strong blocking anticyclone
are comparable to those observed in other parts of the world in recent
heatwaves. The “Omega” blocking pattern is typically associated with
heatwaves in this region. While the pressure system was record-breaking
in its values, it was far less unusual compared to climatology than the
associated extreme temperatures. Recent research suggests that climate
change increases the chances for such stagnant high pressure systems in
summer through weakening of the summer jet stream. As of yet, it is
unclear if, and to what extent, such long-term dynamical changes play a
role in this event.
An important feature of this extreme heatwave is that it occurred
following a very dry spring over the Western U.S., so the absence of
evaporative cooling could be an important factor in the exceptional
temperatures observed. However, the northern part of the region impacted
by this heatwave experienced wet anomalies in the weeks and months
preceding the heat. Anticyclonic subsidence, and downslope winds were
also present, and probably acted as additional heating factors. Overall,
it is difficult at this stage to assess the extent to which these
factors either in isolation or combined provide a good explanation of
why the observed temperatures were so much higher than anything ever
recorded in this part of the world. Hence, more research is needed to
understand the processes as well as potential influence of human-caused
climate change on them.
Here we provide a first estimate of the role of climate change on the
extreme temperatures measured in the Pacific Northwest. We analyse the
maximum daily temperatures as these are relevant to the impact of the
event. While the minimum temperatures are also important for health
impacts, we used only one index to keep the assessment straightforward.
In this rapid study, we do not analyse the impact that human-caused
climate change may have on specific aspects leading to the observed
synoptic situation. We ask whether and to what extent human-caused
climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the analysed
event. Specifically we analyse (1) how the likelihood of the yearly
maximum temperature to be as high or higher than observed in June 2021
has changed and (2) how much less severe a heatwave with the same return
period would have been in a world without human-caused climate change.
It is important to highlight that, because the temperature records of
June 2021 were very far outside all historical observations, determining
the likelihood of this event in today’s climate is highly uncertain.
All numbers shown assume that the heatwave was a very low probability
event (about 1 in 1000 years) that was not caused by new nonlinearities.
As in previous analyses,
we only give a lower bound of the estimate of the influence of climate
change on the change in probability of the event as the best estimate
and upper bound are very ill-defined for extreme heat.
Based on this first rapid analysis, we cannot say whether this was a
so-called “freak” event (with a return time on the order of 1 in 1000
years or more) that largely occurred by chance, or whether our changing
climate altered conditions conducive to heatwaves in the Pacific
Northwest, which would imply that “bad luck” played a smaller role and
this type of event would be more frequent in our current climate.
In either case, the future will be characterized by more frequent,
more severe, and longer heatwaves, highlighting the importance of
significantly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the amount
of additional warming.
The latest heat-related death numbers are alarming, yet they are
likely a severe undercount and the real toll will only become clear
after mortality statistics are reviewed for the role of heat in
exacerbating underlying conditions.
Why GMOs aren't bad but will still poison you with glyphosate (Roundup) and how they get past government regulations in Canada and the USA. Also learn what the mega agro corporations are doing to small farmers regarding seed. In a Nutshell's 'Are GMOs Good or Bad? Genetic Engineering & Our Food'.
