00:00:16.000You wouldn't think you would get a forest fire that burns 100 or 200 homes in Halifax, but that actually happened.
00:00:23.780canada has always had extreme weather but at what point does unusual weather turn into normal
00:00:36.320weather well to answer that question and many many others that i have as the average canadian
00:00:41.120sitting here uh dr john clegg joins us now it says you're a canadian quaternary geologist what
00:00:47.640does that mean? It really means that I am most interested in the most recent little bit of
00:00:57.300geologic time. And the Quaternary is the last of the periods of Earth history, and it's characterized
00:01:06.200by some pretty cool things, particularly the growth and decay of the large ice sheets that
00:01:13.360covered parts of the planet over the past two and a half million years also the appearance and
00:01:20.560spread of humans on the planet uh there were kind of early ancestors uh prior to the beginning of
00:01:29.040the quaternary about two and a half million years ago but really they flourished in the quaternary
00:01:35.200and and began to move around and occupy uh basically all the habitable areas of the planet
00:01:43.360So you really have caught up with humanity and geology that from the basically from the time we were, I guess, bipedal to now.
00:01:54.700Yeah. You know, in a sense, geology is a very broad, broad field of study.
00:02:02.340And my interests are applied geological interests.
00:02:07.620So I got, when I started my career, I became quite interested in natural hazards because living in British Columbia, we are exposed to a candy store of natural hazards, earthquakes, landslides, floods, obviously wildfires.
00:02:29.880And I inherently have very broad interests, and this is an opportunity for me to contribute my knowledge and my understanding of how these processes work with the hope that it's going to educate people and also educate legislators who have to spend money to kind of correct or prepare for these various hazards.
00:02:57.200Well, that's, I think, kind of where the conversation picks up with me. And, you know, I said right off the top, I'm your average Canadian asking questions about things that are happening around us. And when you said you, you know, you're in the land of the candy store of hazardous occurrences that Mother Nature delivers to us.
00:03:15.420By the way, just off your resume, he's a professor emeritus at Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University and at the Center for Natural Hazards Research.
00:03:41.000And I guess that interest stems from the fact that we've seen major changes in climate, in particular the plant and animal ecosystems, just in this period that I'm interested in.
00:03:56.620So it gives me context for thinking about where we might be heading in the future.
00:04:02.120Well, that's key to this discussion because, you know, it's interesting is, as you say, in the West, you have this cornucopia of potential events.
00:04:11.820Well, this summer we traveled out West and on a tour of doing podcasts across the country in a matter of three days.
00:04:20.280extreme heat to wildfires to Alberta, where I was met with hail,
00:04:28.740and I mean waterfall-style rain in the prairies.
00:04:35.180Really, and I've lived in Canada my whole life,
00:04:45.960But it kind of begs the question, as you look at this time period
00:04:50.020where humanity's here, where do you see we are with the weather?
00:04:54.860Has it changed so dramatically over that time period?
00:04:59.640And where are we at the moment on that spectrum?
00:05:04.940Yeah, that's a very good question and a critical one
00:05:09.880because it's hard to attribute disasters, climate disasters, to climate change.
00:05:16.860But most scientists, most atmospheric, knowledgeable atmospheric scientists think that we are experiencing more extreme events, at the very least, that are unprecedented.
00:05:29.940So there's a tool that these atmospheric scientists use, it's called attribution, and they would basically look at, you know, the wildfires that have affected Canada and say, well, what's the likelihood that you're going to get, you know, conditions or consequences like that?
00:05:50.000And what most of them come up with by using this tool is that, yeah, these are extreme events.
00:05:56.820So what used to be considered maybe having a return period of a thousand years now has a return period of 100 years or 20 years.
00:06:07.120We have seen in British Columbia, for example, the last, I think, four years since 2022, extremely high fire risk and incidences.
00:06:22.720And I think it was 2023 we had the worst or the greatest loss of forest due to fires in basically the history of the province.
00:06:34.860I do recall a forest fire the size of the country of Jamaica burning in Canada at one point.
00:06:42.100Yeah, in that year, you know, I don't know how the listeners would know British Columbia,
00:06:49.700but we've got Vancouver Island off to the west.
00:06:52.220And the loss of forest is equivalent to the area of Vancouver Island.
00:06:56.660It was a huge swath of forest scattered around through the province that was lost.
00:07:03.800And, you know, this clearly, we should really talk about this.
00:07:08.400This has economic consequences as well as direct human consequences.
00:07:14.640The cost of suppressing wildfires has gone through the roof, not only in British Columbia, but southern Ontario, even Atlantic Canada.
00:07:25.940I remember some years ago, there was kind of a disastrous wildfire in Halifax.
00:07:33.080Now, that to me is almost a conundrum because Halifax has a climate very similar to Vancouver.
00:07:42.060You wouldn't think you would get a forest fire that burns 100 or 200 homes in Halifax, but that actually happened.
00:07:50.980And that's another study that was shown through attribution analysis to be very, very unusual.
00:07:58.920You know, in a natural world, you might get one of those events every 100 years or 500 years.
00:08:05.080It's interesting that you say 100 years, because I think that one of the things I became familiar with in college,
00:08:11.320they made us study meteorology when you got into radio at the time, like we were ever going to be meteorologists.
00:08:17.580But the one thing I do recall is that there was a phrase called the 100-year storm.
00:08:23.040This is 100 years. No storm like this in 100 years.
00:08:27.640And it seems like we could almost dispense with that now.
00:08:31.400The 100 years seems to have collapsed to a much shorter time.
00:08:35.940Yeah, that's a very good point because I remember, too, that that was the metric for trying to explain to people how rare a kind of a disastrous event is.
00:08:48.760And now we know just through the recent events that those 100-year events actually have a shorter return period.
00:08:59.160And I think there's a tendency to not want to put a number on it anymore.
00:09:11.720And it kind of raises the question, how are we going to deal with these amped-up hazards?
00:09:18.760We don't have a very good strategy in this country or even globally of dealing with these extreme events.
00:09:26.820And I think there's a tendency for our political masters not to really want to focus on them because it's outside the limit of their kind of main interest, which is being elected and kind of responding to day-to-day problems that they face.
00:16:21.340Although, you know, once you burn the land
00:16:24.200and you get typical fall rains that we get in Canada,
00:16:28.500you run the risk of initiating these big sediment transfers, what we call debris flows or mud flows,
00:16:36.240that are a consequence of the wildfires we've experienced.
00:16:40.300So there have been instances in British Columbia after a bad fire year, such as 2023, I think it was,
00:16:49.320where there was a lot of damage due to mud flows and debris flows.
00:16:54.800So there's kind of a link or a pattern that develops that's been really well studied and understood in the western U.S. where they have a lot of wildfires.
00:17:09.740And again, it kind of depends upon a lot of different things.
00:17:13.680So wildfires, you know, kind of require climatic conditions that kind of only then require a trigger.
00:17:24.800But, you know, those conditions would be prolonged drought that we've seen in recent years.
00:17:31.420Higher temperatures than normal in British Columbia, our summer temperatures are higher than they have been in the past.
00:17:39.380And what happens often in British Columbia is we get these summer convective storms.
00:17:44.880So you get storms blowing in, winds after drought, lightning, and you've got a perfect setup for a very bad fire.
00:18:34.540Recently, they had a horrible tragedy in that country.
00:18:38.720that was, in my opinion, somewhat weather-related in the sense that it was a glacier that set off a massive tidal of water flow through the country.
00:19:17.080I think that that is a precursor to ignoring the problem.
00:19:21.960And the reason I say that is because really the people that are solving it don't need any friction.
00:19:28.100What they need is, you know, fuel for their fire.
00:19:32.440So what could you say to somebody like me that's like, I guess, internally freaking out or living in a certain amount of denial and have lived long enough in this country to have seen changes that are a little disturbing?
00:19:51.840I get a little, well, a lot discouraged because I kind of feel like, you know, this is a global societal problem.
00:20:01.900that requires concerted action. I think it's important that each of us do the best we can
00:20:08.220to live a lifestyle that is not quite so much part of the problem as some people's lifestyles are.
00:20:17.580But I'm just shocked that there are changes going on that are going to have very serious
00:20:25.580consequences for children and their children, the next generations. And they're kind of emergent
00:20:33.180problems. They're slow onset, which makes it difficult for people to take action to deal with
00:20:38.700them. And occasionally you get something like that Nepal flood, you know, that killed a thousand
00:20:45.100people. And that has a climate link. People will deny that, but there's undoubtedly a link that
00:20:53.580triggered the landslide and the avalanche that caused that disaster. And again, you know,
00:21:01.900climate scientists kind of see this quite clearly, but you have naysayers, you have, you know,
00:21:08.460misinformation floating around out there that kind of give a lot of people, I don't think the majority
00:21:15.020necessarily, but a lot of people comfort that the problem isn't as severe as it really is.
00:21:20.220But there's some, you know, in an emergent sort of risk world, you can put things off, but ultimately you pay the price, you pay the piper the price.
00:21:31.680And in British Columbia, for example, not to change the subject too much from wildfire, but we see in the future that our low lying areas in Vancouver has some of the lowest landmass that's populated in the country is going to be impacted by flooding from the sea because sea level is rising and the sea doesn't care.
00:21:56.800It's going to rise. It's going to cause these problems. It might not be 10 years from now, but shouldn't we worry about what our, you know, future, the future people are going to have this planet are going to face?
00:22:12.520Those problems aren't going to go away. And, you know, people are going to have to deal with them.
00:22:18.780And the solutions, when you get to the point where, say, Richmond is experiencing flooding, are not very pleasant.
00:22:26.680You know, then you talk about really extreme solutions such as moving populations, and that creates social chaos.
00:22:36.340It's interesting that in Canada we have so much land.
00:22:39.820I think sometimes we think we can keep moving inland.
00:22:41.980But when the inland is on fire and the sea levels are rising, that's, I think, where the call to action comes in.
00:24:01.620and we have to be careful where we place people on mountain slopes
00:24:06.500because that's typically where you get landslides.
00:24:10.220The climate thing, that requires big behavioral changes
00:24:16.040that I don't see us making, and I hate to sound pessimistic.
00:24:21.220I would hope that people will kind of see it as an opportunity
00:24:26.800rather than it's locked in and we're all doomed.
00:24:30.260Yeah, but you know what? Let's put another spin on that because now I am kind of bummed. But you're right. I think you and I have a common observation here that humans, the pendulum swings so far when it swings, but when it needs to swing in the direction of humanity, it goes so slow.
00:24:54.600and it's such a push it's such a grind to get that ball into place uh you know i think that
00:25:02.500part of the you know this is just discussion between a couple of guys on this you know
00:25:06.420don't quote me on it but i do think that we have made a mistake in how we communicate this a little
00:25:12.820bit we've created a a mix of fear-mongering and denial fear-mongering and denial and somewhere
00:25:17.960in the middle exists the real problem therefore the real solution and i hope that we get to that
00:25:23.600place hearing you say okay look we don't have to start moving populations okay that's a target
00:25:30.180that's a goal regardless of what the climate does we need to be reacting with that as the goal
00:25:35.480um so what happens with the weather in the future do you think do you think that we can
00:25:41.680reign this back in no pun intended it's a good question because a part of this problem is with
00:25:48.000all due respect for atmospheric scientists, they're still largely using models, ever more
00:25:55.980sophisticated computer models to make forecasts. I wouldn't call them predictions. They make
00:26:02.880forecasts based on the information that they have, the data they have, and the sophistication of the
00:26:11.200model. But, you know, climate is so complex that they find that they don't always factor in things
00:26:18.440that could be important, and that changes their forecast. So people pick up on this. They kind
00:26:25.240of question, well, the final word isn't in, so maybe we just need to wait a little longer and
00:26:32.940kind of have scientists sort of being more competent. But there is a problem, too, that
00:26:41.740most scientists, not all of them, there's some great communicators, but most scientists are kind
00:26:47.700of siloed. You know, they love doing what they do and good for them. And they're doing wonderful
00:26:53.600things, but they're not necessarily good communicators. And so, you know, sort of a
00:27:01.600podcasts like this helps a bit. It gets a good discussion going. And I agree with you that
00:27:07.880we go through pendulum swings and what's to stop us from, you know, kind of bringing that pendulum
00:27:17.020closer to, you know, the midpoint where we're actually seriously implementing green energy
00:27:24.900solutions to the problems, where we're protecting ecosystems, where we're protecting public land,
00:27:31.600it brings to mind some nasty things that are going on south of the border but that could be
00:27:37.420temporary let's not get too uh wrapped up and i'm old enough that i have seen some major changes in
00:27:44.580my life so i don't think necessarily that mega is forever um on the other hand i think you might be
00:27:51.860right about that talk about the pendulum swinging with extreme uh force yeah yeah but you know what
00:28:00.540I can see, I feel that the energy of this is, we have a similar energy on it,
00:29:34.460So if there is kind of any positivity to what I'm saying, it's in the fact we're not standing still.
00:29:42.860I mean, I find that, you know, new technologies are spurring people to make clean energy, wind power, solar power much cheaper.
00:29:54.160It really could. It could, in theory, replace much of the hydrocarbons that we burn.
00:30:00.980So, you know, that's good. And the other thing that I think is really important, and maybe it doesn't work very well in a big city, but communities are important to people getting together.
00:30:12.860whether they've got a problem, a wildfire problem, you know, and they need protection.
00:30:19.180Well, don't wait for the federal government to provide that.
00:30:22.360You look at solutions yourself and start lobbying to get those solutions.
00:30:27.580They're in a better position living in those communities to deal with a problem like that
00:30:33.380than a remote Ottawa-based politician or, you know, kind of an Ontario-based politician.
00:31:11.380I think that engaging those communities to get better representation of themselves before the next problem arrives is really a good idea.
00:31:22.460And I think local politicians are receptive to that, too, particularly in smaller communities, but even maybe big cities.
00:31:30.120They're receptive to dealing with immediate societal problems and, you know, maybe take a baby step before you try to solve all the world's problems.
00:31:40.480It's funny, but one community at a time across the country dealing with these issues.