John Pomeroy warns (Saskatoon Star Phoenix) on June 15th, 2006;
Following is the opinion of the writer, a geography professor at the University of Saskatchewan and director of the centre for hydrology. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change.
Streams, sloughs and wetlands may not be sustainable under climate change, and the slightly milder winters anticipated under global warming may dry out the Prairies. […]
On June 5, the United Nations Environment Programme announced a study that shows the world’s desert and arid regions are at risk of becoming even more parched. Research at the University of Saskatchewan supports this, showing the Canadian Prairies could be drying out due to more moderate winters.
Well, it’s 2019 and what do ya know?
A leading Canadian water security expert says a recent Environment and Climate Change Canada report highlights the need to change how Saskatchewan designs and builds communities and infrastructure. […]
Pomeroy said his research and that of his colleagues shows some of the effects the process has already had on Saskatchewan.
He noted the province now sees 50-per-cent more multi-day rainstorms in the summer months than it did in the 1950s and pointed to the 2014 floods that caused billions of dollars of damage.
He said what stands out in particular about those floods was that they happened in June and July and were caused entirely by some 200 millimetres of rainfall, whereas most flooding has historically come with the spring melt.
“We simply never had flooding of that nature ever reported before since the western settlement of the region, nor is it noted in the traditional knowledge of the Indigenous peoples in the area,” Pomeroy said.
That’s right. He’s the same quack whose dire drought prediction I’ve been mocking for the last ten years.
>nor is it noted in the traditional knowledge of the Indigenous peoples in the area
what kind of idiot says that?
Yah big big Indian BS stories. Ottawa is even calling this Indian Science. From people who could not even invent the wheel, who had dogs and fire and stone tools. And now you can’t get them out of the KFC. Next they will claim they invented KFC it was part of their culture just like Bannock. Ha ha ha ha
“Next they will claim they invented KFC it was part of their culture just like Bannock.”
That might be tricky: the nearest chickens to be had before Europeans arrived were far away in South America.
Details don’t matter, today you make up your own truth, true or not…..
And what did they make Bannock from before the white man brought flour?
Am on the road and don’t have my refs with me, but I believe that the current villain in wetlands conservation and how water run-off/retention has changed is the modern tendency to tile fields and improve drainage. As for “traditional knowledge”, be in Indian or otherwise, memories are short and stories (like fish) grow in the telling; always to the advantage of those doing the telling. We now have a couple of hundred years of written history, a good portion of which is methodical and data. Human nature being what it is (particularly where remembered weather is the subject), every single instance where someone has claimed “never before…” has been debunked. Weather is changeable from year to year and cyclical over spans that often exceed generations. Again, human nature being what it is, the tendency is for people to remember things they way they want them to be (i.e. to their advantage – particularly if there is the prospect of garnering a payout from the taxpayers), not the way they were. Climate change experts being very expert in this, as illustrated here.
Yep – when I grew up, there were beaver dams, sloughs, and muskegs holding back water on much of the land. Now it’s all farmland and when it rains, it runs off.
“…the modern tendency to tile fields and improve drainage.” I agree. I was on rural municipal council for over thirty years and unauthorized drainage was a big problem. Sometimes a neighbour was the recipient of the drained water, but mostly this water ended up in a water run that took it into the river system.
Now, one needs water resource government engineering approval and a permit to drain water, even onto your own land.
So as most laypeople know warmer air has the capacity to hold more moisture/ water vapour.
So how much more water vapour would there be in the atmosphere if the earth got say 1C warmer? Enough to offset a pretty big chunk of the ice Melt?
Water vapour does not melt ice Einstein.
No, but the warm air will hold the water, it won’t go into the oceans.
Ok, so now global warming drops sea levels. Yeah, ok.
No but maybe it has a significant buffering effect.
I suggest that you start screaming about the dangers of global humidity while waving your arms in the air and start advocating for a humidity tax.
so what – don’t be a dick – you know exactly what Davis means. You know how cycles work in nature. More CO2 in the air stimulates plant growth reducing CO2.
Actually plant growth does not reduce CO2 rather it increases the Flux between atmospheric and biological carbon. Most CO2 is absorbed by oceans which are highly alkaline and almost infinitely buffered.
so what, that’s already been claimed by the global warming alarmists. Apparently, the weight of all that extra water is causing the oceans to sink. Where they’re sinking-to, considering the rock underneath is solid and incompressible, they didn’t say – and I’m not a global warming alarmist so I don’t understand it.
I kid you not; this has actually been claimed.
“Water vapour does not melt ice”
On what planet?
Every used steam to thaw a water line?
You are so smart,water vapour,AKA steam does not melt ice…..except on days ending in Y.
Oh so now there is steam melting the glaciers? That’s a new one.
If you’re talking the Thwaites Glacier and its ice cavern, why yes – there almost certainly is steam melting it.
Considering there’re several active volcanoes under that glacier, would you be surprised? – ever seen a picture of Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park? That would do a number on a glacier, if there was one over it.
Jeez Louise! Learn to read and think before you insult someone!
“Enough to offset a pretty big chunk of the ice Melt?”
you “Water vapor does not melt ice Einstein”
SCAR.
More CO2 leads to plant growth…true and desirable.
That plants contribute to a lowering of CO2 by their usage of CO2 is BS.
How is that the Arctic which at one time was what one might call Tropical and housed Trillions of Tropical plants which fed a fairly large population of herivores…yet still have levels of 2000 ppm or higher..?
Splain that to me..??
Steak man
Plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere to grow. If there is no addition of CO2 the CO2 in the atmosphere will go down.
Plants formed coal removing lots of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Within the institutional left, hysteria peddlers never have to be held accountable when their predictions expire unfulfilled. They all get an A for effort and go on to their next narrative which, always reinforces the need for the state to grow and liberty to shrink as it must save us from ourselves.
// So as most laypeople know warmer air has the capacity to hold more moisture/ water vapour. //
Which is why droughts & floods can both be related to climate change.
As in chinooks, drop more on the western slopes, pick up more on the eastern side.
As for Saskatchewan:
https://leaderpost.com/news/saskatchewan/floods-drought-wildfire-and-storms-top-sask-natural-hazards-says-new-report
Saskatchewan Flood and Natural Hazard Risk Assessment
http://www.publications.gov.sk.ca/details.cfm?p=92658 [free download]
This is why the politics of climate change is so damaging to the science of climate change.
In an apolitical field, he would lose stature and credibility for being wrong and failing to acknowledge that he’s wrong.
But he makes the right political noises so he remains untouchable.
What science?
One more time—it’s all a hoax designed to rationalize crushing taxes and as misdirection from the real environmental damage being done by China Inc.
And to stop any further development and in fact even to reverse the development of the last century. It seems they want to turn this all back to grasslands. I doubt they are bright even to even know what the end game is other than to tax, regulate, and reduce the standard of living..
I don’t even think its a living standard. More like an existence standard.
Observation of several marshy areas where I live have shown me that there is a life cycle to a marsh, and that is, that it usually ends up as a fertile field and no longer a marsh. The vegetation grows and dies until it has become soil and fills the area that was once marshland.
I too have lived long enough to have observed this but I will have to live a lot longer or see one hell of a drought before I can cultivate it without getting my tractor stuck.
Ture, but eventually someone will.
I have more environmental concerns about our geniuses in government that wants our population to rise to one hundred million people.
This is what this is really about. UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 30. Trudeau has already signed everyone up for this, https://international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/priorities-priorites/agenda-programme.aspx?lang=eng
Bingo!
Well, whaddya know? Climate … changes. I guess that’s why we have a name for it.
What a tool.
Gee how come all of these ‘experts’ never reference the 1930s?
The mid-90’s were very dry at our cabin. Some fools built closer to the lake. Then the water level rose. Oops. Then high water level control was implemented. All good .
Thanks Kate for drawing attention to this nonsense. You’re shooting fish in a barrel – but sometimes you gotta shoot the fish to make the point.
He’s just another in a long list of eco-parasites.
Interesting discussion of the climate variability during the little ice age.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/04/the-little-ice-age-back-to-the-future/
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/putting-con-consensus-not-only-there-no-97-cent-consensus-among-climate-scientists-many
Moving prediction goal posts 180 degrees to confirm one’s ideologically held hypothesis is proof of wilful negligence imo. There is no science going on. Just story telling. This should be grounds to sue his employer for calculatable damages to businesses harmed by climate policy. At some point these so called scientist policy pushers must be held accountable for their malfeasance.
I repeat my comment of 2014 below.
“The last three photos could have been taken in our area north of Saskatoon. A small lake once again almost covers a road that is closed once again. This road has been built up about three times from the original prairie trail. Until the 1960s it was once the main road from Saskatoon to Prince Albert. Everywhere there are slews with forty year old dead trees around them.
Someone should contact the good professor and take the brainwashed imbecile out of his ivory tower office and take him on a tour of Saskatchewan.”
This level of this lake has finally dropped enough over the last two years that the three times built up road through the lake has been reopened to through traffic. There is still a not visible cultivator under water.
In the late 1950s, my cousins, whose father’s farm adjoined this slough, took me for a power boat ride on this lake. In the early 2000s most of this lake bottom could be cultivated and seeded. Now the cultivator, mistakenly left there during the onset of winter, is hidden in the water.
This lake has been full and dry a number of times since farm settlement and who only knows previous to that. This same scenario could be said of a number of potholes all over our area.
Our son-in-law, who farms west of Spiritwood, SK. has had to stop grain cropping a couple of quarters of land and turn them into hay cropping and pasture because of growing wetlands.
I wonder how much federal grant he receives to peddle the AGW fraud?
ha ha ha you should have consulted a native elder like the professor of bs did, they must be consulted on everything even international trade. and by the way bring money or they will have to be consulted again and again.
The bit about respecting the wisdom of the indigenous folks is hilarious!
The natives have been telling ‘scientists’ that there are more polar bears around than ever. The polar bear ‘scientists’ whose livelihood depends on bears being threatened with extinction tell the wise elders to piss off and shut up.
A few decades ago global polar bear populations were estimated at 5 – 10 thousand. The inconvenient truth is that the current count is 30-40 thousand.
In the last 60 years I can recall many many down pours and two or three day rains in Sask.This prof is an idiot. A big rain was great all the farmers headed for the bar and sometimes that lasted a day or two as well.Good times!!
I grain farmed north of Saskatoon for over forty years and we always welcomed the two or three day slow rains that would leave an inch or two of rain. This generally happens at least once a year, sometimes not at all, and sometimes a couple of times during the summer. It was dry here in the late 1930s and a few yard sites were built where they should not have been and have had a precarious existence ever since. It was also dry here for three years in the early 2000s. In fact, so dry that I had to quite combing when it got dark as I could not see a triple swath of grain…it was so thin.
You’re all just such backward rubes up there on the Sask. prairie! Here in the “highly evolved” State of CA … we have RULES against “bad” stormwater practices.
https://www3.epa.gov/region1/npdes/stormwater/assets/pdfs/AddressingBarrier2LID.pdf
Yes, every single construction project MUST follow LID (Limited Impact Development) rules. These rules essentially require each project to drain ALL intercepted water onto its own property … via “biofiltration” devices and construction. Oh! And if your project involves more than 10,000 sq.ft. of impervious surfaces … then you must file a SWIP (Stormwater Improvement Plan). aka SWPPP
https://www.epa.gov/npdes/developing-stormwater-pollution-prevention-plan-swppp
Most Civil Engineers will provide your SWIP for the low-low price of about $10k.
Piping stormwater into storm drains (getting it away from building foundations) is no longer allowed. All rain that hits your property must stay on your property. Evolved. We are sooooo … evolved. Evolution? … meet Mr. unintended consequences.
WOW…!! Kenji, I knew Kalifornia was FUBAR…but this.??
Unlicensed Progressive insanity running your state…and all this time I thought you were in a Permanent Drought.?
Seems to me the NAZI’s have firm control there…
The problem in our area is not [yet] the amount of rain but the fact that it often comes very quickly.
So the city requires new homes [& most older ones have complied] to have water first empty onto the lot [away from the foundation] so that the storm drains don’t have a sudden surge that causes a backup. It [of course] doesn’t stay on your property.
There is a storm sewer a block away from me. In the past I have dragged the sewer cover back to its opening after it was flipped out during a flash rainstorm.
In newer areas, there are landscape-based low areas which fill up first & drain slowly to avoid several miles worth of water hitting the system all at once.
This from his bio explains it all.
NATO Science Fellow, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 1988 to 1989
University of East Anglia! There is your big clue as to his politics.
The propagandists today have learned from the masters of the craft like certain Goebbels, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
You will find a lot of praise of socialism and damning of capitalism.
The character is credited with this quote “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
And so it is.
History repeating although in somewhat disguised way.
Sadly … it will take another 6M murders, and a world war to bring sanity (and TRUTH) back to the world.
We don’t want to lose Wetlands we can save Wetlands but lets use some Common Sense and not declare Death Valley as a wetland just think that where all our major cities sit was once Wilderness and wetlands and that gose for major City where Eco-Wacko group has its HQ
Agreed! Wetlands are vitally important … however the EPA preventing farmers from touching EVERY vernal pool of water is just Fascist overreach.
“…however the EPA preventing farmers from touching EVERY vernal pool of water is just Fascist overreach.”
Can’t speak for the US, but on this side of the border all the farm organizations sign on to every bit of environmental legislation.
But the farm orgs have been in bed with the governments for the last twenty years, and their memberships tolerate it. Go figure.
“…where all our major cities sit was once Wilderness and wetlands …”
Exactly! I love pointing that out to these virtue-signalling urban hypocrites who claim to not understand my objection to their plans for my land.
“Your home sits on land that used to be forest, wetlands, or prairie. How about YOU set an example, demolish your home, and return your little piece of suburbia to that pre-European paradise you’re dreaming about?”
The effect is real.
I blame Trump.
/sarc
We have gotten good at moving water to drain elsewhere, which means the waterways that water ends up in rapidly fills up and peaks sooner. We need to be able to siphon more water off to wetlands which won’t have major impacts on humans. I have worked with Ducks Unlimited who does a fair bit of this work.
Agreed. Sending water off down the river into Hudson’s Bay is not a good idea if we can retain it in accessible areas.
We have a similar quack professor here in Prince George, who said during a series of cool, wet summers back then, that this was the result of global warming and it was our future. Now he’s saying the past couple of dry summers are the result of global warming and that’s our future.
Give him the King Solomon treatment. Make him decide one way or the other or cut him in half.
Our Kate was on the John Gormley show on 650 radio this morning talking about this fellow.
She needs a hat tip on the top right hand corner.
I was out this morning feeding cows for a buddy. Some new calves since yesterday, cows eating placenta, meadowlarks singing sun is shining. Whata day! Now you guys bring up water issues….
I’ve been around the Quill Lk area in SK for about as long as Kulak was north of toon town. I point out I never lived there.
The Quills have been savaged by landowners with draining projects. They built miles of ditch sending water downstream across neighbours land and on to god knows where. The water filled up the space known as ‘god knows where’ and started to back up. It siphoned back onto the land it came from and brought even more water with it through the very ditches they built to take it away. Thousands of acres that had previously been farmed or was pasture was flooded including villages and private property.
I am as pro ag as anyone but I have little empathy for wetland draining farmers who create a problem and then whine to the government because their land is flooded. They have an ecological disaster of their o9wn making that if any other industry did what they have done people would be marched off to prison.
This stuff didn’t just happen on the ndp watch in SK. The Wall government looked the other way as well. In fact wasn’t it one of Wall’s own cabinet minister who was involved in some nefarious water dealing that led to the departure of Wall himself?
I’m now going back outside to listen to the birds sing…….it lowers blood pressure.
“The Quills have been savaged by landowners with draining projects”
Draining projects are a small part of the reason why the Quill Lakes are overfilling and ruining farmland.
Historically when the Quill Lakes would overfill the excess water would flow south to Long Lake. Ducks Unlimited dams that were built in the dry years are keeping the water trapped in the Quill Lakes basin. The CPR RR bed has been raised so many times that it also forms a dam keeping the water in the Quill Lakes.
In 2014 the Sask Water Security Agency published a map that showed the dams blocking the water, the spill point from the Quill Lakes basin into the Long lake basin, and the level of water needed for the water to breech those dams and start flowing south to Long Lake.
When word got out that water might start flowing from the Quills to Long Lake all hell broke loose. Cabin owners along Long Lake formed a united front against any project that might send Quill Lake water their way. The water that overfills Long Lake flows into the Qu’Appelle river and through the lakes in the Qu’Appelle Valley on into Manitoba. Naturally the Indian bands that control the dams along the Qu’Appelle River Valley became involved with lawyers and injunctions effectively stopping any project dealing with Quill Lakes water.
100 years ago the Quills would overfill, the excess fresh water would flow south and that was the end of the water.
Today that is no longer possible. The Yellowhead Highway has been raised twice, the CPR RR bed countless times and all that infrastructure remains just one snowy winter away from complete inundation and no politician seems willing to do anything about it.
Pomeroy is one of those classic takers. A Prof at U of S, but he lives in Canmore BC? When did not showing up for work become University policy? Even his online CV is fake, if you compare it to Google scholar.
Maybe his Ma and Pa bribed his way into Collitch.