Latest news with #CanadaResearchChair
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
More research needed on wildfire smoke toxicity, scientists say as they warn of pollution 'time bomb'
Wildfire smoke in Manitoba could be even more toxic than usual and more research needs to be done on the pollutants being released into the air, according to scientists. The fires may be releasing pollution stored in the province's soil for millennia, including toxic chemicals from more than a century of resource exploitation in the north, said Colin McCarter, Canada Research Chair of Climate and Environmental Change. Peatlands cover about one-third of the province and the boggy wetland is a critical carbon storehouse and even acts as a natural fire barrier, but climate change is increasingly putting them at risk. As the landscapes dry out and become more susceptible to the flames, a "pollution time bomb" is potentially set to go off, McCarter said. Peatlands are "also regionally really important landscape stores or sinks of toxic metals," he said. "Toxic metals can range from everyday things that we think about [like] copper … [to] lead, arsenic, mercury — all these things that are associated with quite poor human health outcomes." McCarter said peatlands are able to sequester more of these toxic metals than other ecosystems, and that it's easy to find peatland-rich areas in Canada which are near places where there's been historical industrial activity and resource extraction, including Flin Flon. A fire that forced the evacuation of the city about 760 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, in late May was about 347,105 hectares large this week, making it the biggest active wildfire in the province. The community's last mine closed in 2022. Its copper-zinc smelter — which had been operating since the 1920s — shut down in 2010. At one point, the Flin Flon smelter emitted more than 200,000 tonnes of sulfur-dioxide a year. Studies done over the past three decades have found elevated levels of mercury and other trace metals in sediment cores, soil humus, plants and peat. Environment and Climate Change Canada said that while it was operational, the smelter was the largest single source of atmospheric mercury emissions in the country. "I can name probably half a dozen other sites across Canada where you have this kind of … landscape-level pollution from this historical industrial contamination in the boreal, which is a fire ecosystem," McCarter said, mentioning Thompson which is about 15 kilometres southwest of another wildfire. "It's a fire-adapted ecosystem and … normally burns." But McCarter said the level of toxicity of what may be released depends on several factors, including the temperature of the fire, the type of peatland and climate conditions. "Trying to make that link there … from what's in the peatlands to what is the risk is still a very active part of my research," he said. "We're starting to put some of those ideas to experiments, but we're still missing those linkages to really make these predictions about risk." 'We need studies' Michael Schindler is a professor with the University of Manitoba's department of earth sciences, and has previously done research on how pollutants mix with wildfire smoke. "Contaminants at Flin Flon are mainly lead, zinc, mercury," Schindler said, adding that selenium is an issue. The province limited consumption of fish at a nearby lake last year due to elevated selenium levels, which were likely a result of mine wastewater over the past century. Schindler said contaminants that couldn't normally be inhaled get attached to the finer particles in wildfire smoke, allowing them to get into the lungs. The particles "are literally the Trojan horse," he said. The smoke's "health effects are much greater." Many of the metal particles released by a smelter are "pretty locked up," Schindler said. "But some of them are already mobile and those could theoretically … be volatilized and attach, especially mercury which is a really volatile element. Selenium, also." Smoke from Canada's wildfires spread across North America and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean this summer. "It's huge amounts of wildfire smoke and you get those metals coming in … but it will delude over a long distance," Schindler said. The professor said he's more worried about the smoke mixing in with urban pollutants downstream, coming from sources like "literally every diesel engine." The toxic metals theoretically "may affect just the people in Flin Flon, but we need studies," Schindler said. "Is the population around Flin Flon more affected by the wildfire smoke in terms of health issues later on than a community where there has not been mining or smelting? I think people in Manitoba should know about this." Dave Price has lived in Flin Flon since the 1970s. A former geologist, he was among a group of volunteers who worked to rehabilitate land around the city that had been left barren because of increased acidity caused by the smelter's emissions for more than a decade. The project wrapped up in 2016. Price was among the 5,000 residents who were allowed to return to the community last month. "It was a very hot fire as far as I understand it. That is to say, the trees were burned down to the roots and the burning continued into the peat underneath, and the peat underneath did contain these metals," he said.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Canada will no longer cover travel costs of experts it nominates to UN's climate science body
In a sudden and unexplained change from previous decades, the federal government has stopped covering the travel costs of Canadian experts volunteering for the next major global climate science assessment. The decision to end travel funding means that Canadian scientists are now wondering whether they can still participate in the United Nations climate science process, perhaps by using their own money or diverting grant funds that could be going toward research and students. "It's almost insulting to all of the Canadian scientists who have volunteered all those hundreds of hours each year of their personal lives," said Robert McLeman, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its last assessment. Canadian scientists who participate in the IPCC's reports don't get paid for their work, most of which they do remotely through emails and calls. But they do need to travel about four to five times to meet their scientific collaborators, who are other experts from around the world. The leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change speaks during a press conference in Incheon, South Korea, in 2018. They were highlighting how preventing even a degree of warming could make a life-or-death difference for people in the next few decades. (Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press) The government used to cover those travel costs — economy class airfare, food and hotel stays to cities as far away as Singapore or Osaka, Japan — but researchers are now left scrambling to find the money elsewhere. In a statement to CBC, Environment and Climate Change Canada said it is "not able to commit to providing long-term travel funding for academics to participate in IPCC meetings." Scientists left in the lurch Sarah Burch, a professor at the University of Waterloo who studies climate adaptation, urban planning and governance, is a lead author on the IPCC's upcoming report on climate change in cities. In this role, she's had one trip — to a meeting of fellow lead authors in Osaka — that was partially covered by the government. But she's been told no further meetings will be covered. Burch says she will have to tap into her Canada Research Chair funding for what she estimates will be four more trips. "Typically, I would spend that on hiring a graduate student to serve as a research assistant so I could send them to a conference or help them publish papers," Burch said. "So I have to redirect funds away from students … and towards this commitment to the IPCC." Deborah McGregor, a researcher on Indigenous environmental justice at York University in Toronto, is also a part of the upcoming IPCC report on cities, and says she will have to rely on funds through her Canada Excellence Research Chair position. She said that earlier in her career, when she was an assistant professor, she wouldn't have been able to find those funds. "That would be the case for some early-career researchers, or maybe researchers who are more in the social sciences or particularly the humanities. They don't have a lot of research funding to be able to go to four mandatory meetings in person," McGregor said. Former U.S. president George H.W. Bush addresses the U.N.-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. The first major global climate agreement was open for signing there, based on the first scientific assessment on climate change from the IPCC. (Daniel Garcia/AFP via Getty Images) That sentiment is echoed by Patricia Perkins, an ecological economist and professor at York University, who volunteered as a lead author in the previous IPCC assessment, which she said was the first time the agency included social scientists in a big way. She said that academics in the social sciences — such as anthropology, geography and economics — would have a harder time finding travel funding. "What that means is that there's a disciplinary imbalance in who has access to more money, because the bigger your grant, the more likely there could be little bits and dregs around the edges that you can reallocate for a trip that relates to your IPCC work," she said. In its statement to CBC, ECCC said that the government provided about $424,000 of travel funding to support Canadian IPCC authors in the last assessment cycle, which happened partly during the pandemic years and involved a little less travel as a result. The department said that if the usual amount of travel had occurred, estimated costs would be about $680,000 to support Canadian experts at the IPCC. Why is the IPCC important? The IPCC's assessment cycles, which happen about every five years, are considered the gold standard for the world's latest understanding of climate change — what's causing it, how it's affecting countries and people, and how to combat it. The IPCC's first assessment led to the first global treaty on climate change in 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, the IPCC's influential reports have led to many major advances in global climate diplomacy. Most recently, its assessment of how climate change would cause unavoidable damages for developing countries led to a new multi-billion-dollar deal to compensate them. "They're published in all the official UN languages, which makes them a really important resource … in nations where they don't have the advanced research infrastructure that we have here in Canada," McLeman said. "IPCC reporting provides them with current information about climate change risks in their own language and is freely accessible." Activists participate in a demonstration for the loss and damage fund at the 2023 U.N. climate summit in Dubai. IPCC science has highlighted the damages that developing countries will face, leading to a compensation mechanism for them. (Peter Dejong/The Associated Press) But it's a difficult task and a huge personal undertaking for the hundreds of scientists who volunteer for each assessment. McLeman called it "having a second job that you're not being paid for." "You spend hundreds of hours a year doing this work," he said. "On top of my day job, I had to work long into the night, long after my wife and family were asleep, hunched over a laptop, reading through densely worded scientific articles one after another." Burch said that while the work is a huge commitment, the IPCC assessments have been "career-shaping" for her. She's been involved for 15 years, and said that government support for the travel made it possible for her to attend the meetings and build a career in climate research. "Canada is warming at twice the global average rate. We're seeing the effects of floods and fires and all sorts of extreme weather events here," she said. "We want Canadian experts to bring that place-based knowledge, that context and that rich experience into the IPCC."
CBC
12-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Canada will no longer cover travel costs of experts it nominates to UN's climate science body
In a sudden and unexplained change from previous decades, the federal government has stopped covering the travel costs of Canadian experts volunteering for the next major global climate science assessment. The decision to end travel funding means that Canadian scientists are now wondering whether they can still participate in the United Nations climate science process, perhaps by using their own money or diverting grant funds that could be going toward research and students. "It's almost insulting to all of the Canadian scientists who have volunteered all those hundreds of hours each year of their personal lives," said Robert McLeman, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its last assessment. Canadian scientists who participate in the IPCC's reports don't get paid for their work, most of which they do remotely through emails and calls. But they do need to travel about four to five times to meet their scientific collaborators, who are other experts from around the world. The government used to cover those travel costs — economy class airfare, food and hotel stays to cities as far away as Singapore or Osaka, Japan — but researchers are now left scrambling to find the money elsewhere. In a statement to CBC, Environment and Climate Change Canada said it is "not able to commit to providing long-term travel funding for academics to participate in IPCC meetings." Scientists left in the lurch Sarah Burch, a professor at the University of Waterloo who studies climate adaptation, urban planning and governance, is a lead author on the IPCC's upcoming report on climate change in cities. In this role, she's had one trip — to a meeting of fellow lead authors in Osaka — that was partially covered by the government. But she's been told no further meetings will be covered. Burch says she will have to tap into her Canada Research Chair funding for what she estimates will be four more trips. "Typically, I would spend that on hiring a graduate student to serve as a research assistant so I could send them to a conference or help them publish papers," Burch said. "So I have to redirect funds away from students … and towards this commitment to the IPCC." Deborah McGregor, a researcher on Indigenous environmental justice at York University in Toronto, is also a part of the upcoming IPCC report on cities, and says she will have to rely on funds through her Canada Excellence Research Chair position. She said that earlier in her career, when she was an assistant professor, she wouldn't have been able to find those funds. "That would be the case for some early-career researchers, or maybe researchers who are more in the social sciences or particularly the humanities. They don't have a lot of research funding to be able to go to four mandatory meetings in person," McGregor said. That sentiment is echoed by Patricia Perkins, an ecological economist and professor at York University, who volunteered as a lead author in the previous IPCC assessment, which she said was the first time the agency included social scientists in a big way. She said that academics in the social sciences — such as anthropology, geography and economics — would have a harder time finding travel funding. "What that means is that there's a disciplinary imbalance in who has access to more money, because the bigger your grant, the more likely there could be little bits and dregs around the edges that you can reallocate for a trip that relates to your IPCC work," she said. In its statement to CBC, ECCC said that the government provided about $424,000 of travel funding to support Canadian IPCC authors in the last assessment cycle, which happened partly during the pandemic years and involved a little less travel as a result. The department said that if the usual amount of travel had occurred, estimated costs would be about $680,000 to support Canadian experts at the IPCC. Why is the IPCC important? The IPCC's assessment cycles, which happen about every five years, are considered the gold standard for the world's latest understanding of climate change — what's causing it, how it's affecting countries and people, and how to combat it. The IPCC's first assessment led to the first global treaty on climate change in 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, the IPCC's influential reports have led to many major advances in global climate diplomacy. Most recently, its assessment of how climate change would cause unavoidable damages for developing countries led to a new multi-billion-dollar deal to compensate them. "They're published in all the official UN languages, which makes them a really important resource … in nations where they don't have the advanced research infrastructure that we have here in Canada," McLeman said. "IPCC reporting provides them with current information about climate change risks in their own language and is freely accessible." But it's a difficult task and a huge personal undertaking for the hundreds of scientists who volunteer for each assessment. McLeman called it "having a second job that you're not being paid for." "You spend hundreds of hours a year doing this work," he said. "On top of my day job, I had to work long into the night, long after my wife and family were asleep, hunched over a laptop, reading through densely worded scientific articles one after another." Burch said that while the work is a huge commitment, the IPCC assessments have been "career-shaping" for her. She's been involved for 15 years, and said that government support for the travel made it possible for her to attend the meetings and build a career in climate research. "Canada is warming at twice the global average rate. We're seeing the effects of floods and fires and all sorts of extreme weather events here," she said.
