Climate Change

While the Bush administration has been busy re-christening global warming as cimate change for political reasons, they might have a point after all. Warming conjures up images of heat, sun and floods. Climate change manifests itself in more ways than that. Take today for example. They shut down the Gardiner Expressway and certain streets in downtown Toronto after baseball sized chunks of ice started flying off buildings. Some quotes from today's Toronto Star:

Experts say this is the first time since 1976 — when the CN Tower was finished — that the structure has seen such an ice buildup.

The cause was a rare confluence of weather factors beginning with the March 1 storm. The accumulations of wet snow and freezing rain (about 6 centimetres of snow and another 13 millimetres of rain) got the ball rolling.

That wouldn't be the first weather-related rare occurrence we've seen in the past couple of years. While Canadians may welcome the general rise in temperatures and look forward to someday spending March-break sunning themselves on the shores of Lake Ontario, we should realize that there may not be a Lake Ontario left by then.