Climate or Weather? Who Cares, It is Changing

Robert Oullette, ReadingToronto: Riverdale Park on New Years Day

We are always told not to confuse climate and weather, but no matter what you call it, it is weird in Canada. Robert Oullette at ReadingToronto says "We quipped yesterday that there is no need to go south this year - southern temperatures have come to us. The image of this glider trying to launch himself from the slopes of Riverdale tells the story of yesterday's weather." Meanwhile, at the Globe and Mail, Roy MacGregor says that this year in Canada, weather was the big story. Storms are hammering British Columbia, almost taking out Vancouvers' Stanley Park. Summer storms "left enough downed trees in their wake to turn the Northwest Passage into an eco-tourism boardwalk." Up on the Canadian Shield, people are canoeing instead of snowmobiling.

And of course, 11,000 football fields worth of ice broke off Ellesmere Island. We learn from another columnist that in a recent survey, " Sixty-three per cent [of Canadians] were "desperately concerned that if we don't take drastic action right now, the world may not last much longer than another couple of generations." Say what? Drastic action? Now? Or we die? " The political climate in Canada, like the UK, is changing as fast as the real climate. 2007 may be the year this show comes to the United States. ::Globe and Mail