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00:00We see these kinds of extremes like Katrina and Sandy and and the flooding in Calgary and the flooding in Toronto and the ice storm. I think these are often reminders of the fact that hate that nature is is changing the climate is changing and that that part of that responsibility is ours. We're beginning to look at the fact that well if we hadn't done that if we hadn't been paving over driveways and emitting gases like we have then perhaps that rainfall wouldn't have been as large. For example with we know that most of the big heat waves around the world are very much a human component to that they'd be almost two thirds to 75 percent. We see that heavy downpours wouldn't be as heavy if it hadn't been for the kind of superficial or sufficient changes we've made in cities but also to the fact that we've warmed things up. You know you take one simple statistic that we've known for hundreds of years that you when you warm up the world by one degree it causes the atmosphere to hold seven to 12 percent more moisture just the very basic science. And so there is the potential there for more heavy downpours because we have warmed it up. And if we continue to warm it up then more of that downpour will be a result of human human intervention. And to your point of mitigation we saw the big floods Calgary Toronto. We haven't yet responded thoughtfully to how our cities should look if we're going to have increasing rainfall. Exactly. I think that we haven't really come to the grips of saying well OK how where that most Canadians eighty five or almost eighty five percent of us live in cities and we recognize that we've changed our cities you know and even if our climate if we accept well climate hasn't changed we think it has. But let's say we have we know that we have changed you and I I mean society has changed our cities now are more blacktop and cement and and ash fall. I'm not suggesting we go back to wooden sidewalks into parking lots . But the reality is that we are changing our landscape and this changes the way in which the the skies respond and the impacts the effects the fallout of those rainfall events are going to be different now. Doesn't matter how dry trot or Winnipeg or Edmonton is that raindrop becomes a flood drop when it falls on that particular city and it flows into the sewer systems. And so we continue to build our infrastructure as if it was back in the 50s 60s and 70s and not recognizing the fact that what has truly changed is the climate and the way in which the surfaces have responded to those whose downpours. And so I think where we're on and I'm hoping we're learning from the kinds of tragedies we've seen. I sometimes think our wealth cushions us from the realities of the fact that that change is maybe not occurring here as much as it it's elsewhere. But hey I think we've got to come to realize it's not that far off situation anymore. We know it's not just to a different society than that ours that we're being hit and clobbered and punished a lot harder now from from the extremes of climate and I think that we have to come to grips with that. One of the issues I guess is that it's unpredictable. So if we knew we were going to get that kind of down downpour every July in Toronto we would change the way we live. You actually have remarked that on that day it wasn't raining that hard. Not very far away. These micro events. What's the significance of that. Well I think that that's such an interesting point I think that Toronto storm of July the the I mean it was in fact a it was a billion dollars worth of losses the insurance industry the public in City of Toronto were had to raise taxes Fifty one percent just to cover the expense of that. That was a real hit . First of all it wasn't it wasn't forecasted in the morning to happen. There was thought well the atmosphere's a little bit more humid you know and we had that storm could slow down a little bit. And so hey but no warning was issued a storm came off of the Great Lakes and came into Toronto it merged with another storm and it stalled. It just didn't hit and run. I always think the best thing about Canadian weather is just hits and runs it doesn't stand around clobbering. But that one did. And when you look at the amount of rain that fell in Toronto more than Hurricane Hazel and we've design city storm sewers based on the results of Hurricane Hazel we had one hundred and twenty six millimeters of rain at at Pearson in two hours from four thirty six thirty one hundred downtown. We had like four millimetres in Oshawa three millimeters in Oakville . I mean it was a trace of rain in just east of Oshawa. It was like almost as if nature had taken like almost a supercell and just occupied the most urbanized area of Canada and not a lot of grass to soak up and percolate that water and it ran off and you saw the monstrous flood that it that it was. And so I think because of a combination of hey maybe bad luck. A storm that stalled we can't always predict is as you say they're going to what their personality is gonna be. And then on a surface that just couldn't accept it. And the good news maybe we've learned from that. Maybe we've been investing in the fact that the City of Toronto are doing things such as backwater vowels and and providing subsidies for some pumps so that think we've come to grips that this wasn't just a one off. This wasn't just something that was a freak storm that we'll never see for another hundred years. I mean our 100 year storms are occurring every decade and I think we have to come to recognize something the insurance industry is very aware of the economic costs of this. I sometimes think reason for optimism is Lower Manhattan is threatened by climate change and those are the people with the money to invest in the solutions in the short term. Do you see evidence that we're starting to get it that people are starting to make the investments that we need in innovations and litigations and all of the different ways because sometimes it seems like very little is being done . I often say you know the insurance industry has done more for climate change than any other profession in the world because they didn't believe climatologists governments but they would believe in the boardrooms and the government offices they recognize when insurers said you know what. We're now paying out more for water and wind damage than we do for fires and we got going together by fires in the first place. And so their bottom line is recognize that we're seeing that with other other companies too. A lot of the petroleum companies they're seeing that not as the boogey man climate change there are some opportunities to be seen by a by this that we can actually and companies that have embraced it and recognize are not just giving it as sort of store front kind of of treatment. I've actually seen that this is actually much to their advantage their shareholders are engaged in that they they they they reward them for it for that and the consumers are too beginning to wake up to the fact that hey we've got to do things differently. I think that there's a lot of sort of inertia in the sense that the of the warming. I think that even if we stopped all traffic and grounded all planes the future Amanda is still going to be warmer. I mean we've seen all of that CO2 that we've put in the atmosphere we're going to still see that we need to cut down any advances of that and we need to adapt to the kind of changes that we're seeing right now . And I think that in terms of investing in infrastructure I think the thing that people are doing now is saying well OK not just if you build a new neighborhood are there enough schools there or green space but have you considered the climate implications of your development for in the next 20 or 30 years or what effect that climate will have on your development not to end it not to discourage that development but just to get people thinking about it in schools. We're seeing city planners landscape architects are taking courses in climate and recognizes you can plan with climate in mind not just that you hey we have to grin and bear it it's but the fact that these changes are occurring they're probably going to get greater than the less that people are recognizing you can do something about .

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Cities Need to Adapt to Climate Change Now

From the destructive force of Hurricane Sandy, to the fast and furious Toronto flood of 2013, to the raging fires in Alberta this year, weather is turning more extreme due to the world's warming climate. In an interview with Bloomberg TV Canada's Amanda Lang, Environment Canada Senior Climatologist David Phillips says cities need to start preparing their infrastructure for more frequent and heavier downpours, because 100-year storms are now occurring every decade. (Source: Bloomberg)

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