As far as climate change goes, this report (Facts Book 2013) from the Insurance Bureau of Canada says it all. No tree huggers in this crowd, just business types..

And what do the business types say about extreme weather 45 North..

- extreme weather events that happened once every 40 years now happen about every 6 (SIX!) years

- payouts for extreme weather now exceed those for fire damage in some parts of the country

- payouts for extreme weather have doubled every 5 or 10 years since the 1980s

- the IBC is so impressed with the situation that it is creating a new assessment tool for city planners to help assess risk to municipal infrastructures

- the trend line curve shows an incredible 5 fold increase in "catastrophic losses" payout since 1983, a 30 year period (FIVE-fold increase!)

CHECK OUT: "Major issues: severe weather, catastrophic losses" pages 14 - 16

http://www.ibc.ca/en/Need_More_Info/Facts_Book/documents/IBC-Facts-2013-section1.pdf

internal blog links:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/06/future-climate-wither-our-weather.html 

also check out keyword: "climate change" which has numerous relevant entries relating to climate change and the shameful attempts of the Harper Conservative government to conceal this emerging reality from the public. But Canadians are already starting to find out: rising insurance rates (some folks in flood plains can't get any insurance anymore..)