Sucked in, again

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 21.

RE: Is climate change a risk to city’s drinking water? Headline news article by Matthew van Dongen, The Hamilton Spectator, 25 Nov 21.

Yet again, the Arts Majors writing for the Spectator got their biases confirmed by wholly unscientific appeals to “climate change.”  Matthew van Dongen is no chemist, yet he writes, “…chlorine levels below provincial standards – a problem climate change threatens to make worse.”  This is nonsense on stilts.  There is likely some as-yet undetected episodic fault in the chlorinators, and on occasion an insufficient amount of chlorine is added to the water.  But van Dongen gets sucked in, and deflects the blame to climate change and away from the techs running the treatment plant.

Getting reeled in like a trout, van Dongen quotes water director Nick Winters yammering about lake surface water having a temperature of 18.5℃.  Never mind the actual intake is near the bottom of the lake, have they never chlorinated a pool in mid-summer?  Don’t they have data from prior years?  This isn’t a scientific mystery.

Gail Krantzberg, a McMaster University professor of environmental engineering professor – and Great Lakes expert! – is quoted as saying that climate models predict Lake Ontario water temperatures will continue to inch up, and lists another host of disasters Hamilton might experience  I’ll wager Prof Krantzberg gets research grants on basis of hyping climate change.

Here’s another news flash: climate change hasn’t happened yet.  It’s what’s supposed to happen fifty to eighty years from now, when the atmosphere’s average temperature is supposed to be 1.5 to 2.5℃ warmer than it is now.  Water temperature is a different thing, and even if it also experiences a secular increase of 2℃, that’s less than the annual fluctuation of temperature.

Finally, at the end of the piece, van Dongen gives the real reason for chlorine loss offered by city officials, and it is that water temperature is higher, and with usage down, storage time is up, and the higher rate of chlorine loss due to temperature is too great for the amount initially put in.  “We can manage that,” says Winters.  So, why the big hubbub about climate change, except to stoke a narrative?

City officials can’t blame climate change.  They’ve experienced these water temperatures before.  Find the fault, and fix it.  Stop with the crazy handwaving excuses.

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