Tag: AGW

All the Good News that Fits

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Proving that there are two ways to look at any story, it has been interesting to watch the news coming out of this recent report by the International Energy Agency.

The story on the CBC, that bastion of left-wing thought, was positively glowing for the future of oil and gas. The US will be the world’s largest hydrocarbon producer by 2020, and completely energy independent by 2035. The only problem they forsee for Canada is that we will be producing so much oil and gas in Canada in the next decade that we will outstrip our ability to burn it or export it.

Few stories, however, talked about the other half of the IEA report. I pick a few relevant quotes from the Executive summary:

“Taking all new developments and policies into account, the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path. Fossil fuels remain dominant in the global energy mix, supported by subsidies that amounted to $523 billion in 2011, up almost 30% on 2010 and six times more than subsidies to renewables.”

So we are pulling too much carbon out of the ground, too fast, and government policies are specifically designed to mainline this unattainable status quo, not working to fix the inherent problem with this.

What inherent problem? How about these quotes:

“Successive editions of this report have shown that the climate goal of limiting warming to 2 °C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes. No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal. Emissions correspond to a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 °C.”

Now compare this to the most “alarmist” of IPCC predictions, and you can see that the International Energy Agency is predicting something like twice the warming than the average of the IPCC models over the next 4 decades. Yet this part didn’t even make the news.

We can pull more carbon out of the ground that we know what to do with, and we know doing that will cause unintented catastrophe. Its like we have some kind  of Obsessive Compulsive Oil Extraction Disorder.
Note – we don’t have to leave that carbon in the ground forever. The climate change thing isn’t about how much gas, oil and coal we burn, it is about the rate at which we burn it. To avoid catastrophe, we don’t need to stop using hydrocarbons, we need to slow down until the biosphere can catch up, or until we invent some sort of practical and realistic sequestration technology (which the IEA notes we are not actually inventing anywhere near fast enough). If we leave it in the ground, it will always be there. It is already so valuable for everything from plastic to chemicals to medicine that it is frankly baffling that we still waste so much of it on simple combustion – but that’s another whinge.

So we have a choice- we can rush to exploit the Bitumen Sands faster than we can burn and export it, or we can do it slowly, keep as much in the ground as long as possible, and extract more value out of every tonne of carbon extracted.

If we take the fast-and-cheap route, we will run out faster, make less per tonne, and threaten the most expensive infrastructure we have – our coastal cities (see New York and Venice). Not to mention the homes of hundreds of millions of people, and entire marginal ecosystems. Then we will leave the future generation the problem of abandoning those cities or investing massively in energy-intensive plans to save them- after we have already spent all of the easy money and burned off all of their cheap energy.

Try explaining that to your children, who I assume you hope will be alive in 2050, even after you are in the ground. That is why Anthropogenic Global Warming isn’t a science problem or a political problem, it is an ethical problem.

Thinking about Oil Exports

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The Provincial NDP have come out strongly against the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Before anyone accuse them of just following the crowd to see where it is going, then rushing out front to make it look like they were leading all the time, they have also provided a 6-point argument for why they do not support Enbridge.

Most of the points are ones you have heard before from other radical foreign-funded environmentalists like me (full disclosure: I spent two years receiving paycheques from the Illinois State Department of Natural Resources): risk of tanker spills, risk to inland waterways, GHG impacts, etc. One argument, however has always led to interesting discussions with people I talk to whom I consider “environmentalists”.

“The NGP provides few long-term, sustainable economic benefits for B.C., and forgoes value-added economic activity involving upgrading and refining in Canada”

As a reflex, I support this argument. Selling off as much of a finite resource as quickly as possible without first squeezing out as much value from that resource as possible seems like a really bad idea. Perhaps the only worse idea is to sell off a sustainable resource at a rate that makes it unsustainable and at the same time not first squeezing out as much value from that resource. But this argument hides another deeper argument that is harder for many on both sides of the political spectrum to get around.

First, it is interesting to look at the oil numbers. Canada (according to the CIA factbook) produces about 3.3 Million barrels of oil per day (Mbbl/d), but consumes the equivalent of 2.2 Mbbl/d in oil products. Although we export about 2.0 Mbbl/d, we import about 1.2 Mbbl/d.

The numbers look like this (Mbbl/d, all 2011 numbers):
Production:      3.289
Import:              1.192
Export:               2.001
Consumption:  2.151

Canada currently has 15 operating oil refineries, which combined total 1.879 Mbbl/d in daily refining capacity. This does not include “upgrade” refineries in Alberta and Saskatchewan; those turn bitumen into synthetic crude oil (syncrude), which must then go to another refinery to be made into useable product. Exporting syncrude is indistinguishable from exporting crude oil, carbon- and ecological-footprint aside. Three of those refineries are in the Maritimes, 2 in Quebec, 4 in Ontario, 1 in Saskatchewan, 3 in Alberta, and 2 in BC (including the Chevron refinery in Vancouver).

The point is that, even if all the refineries were to run at maximum capacity, we could not begin to refine all of the oil we produce here in Canada, we could not even refine enough to satiate our consumption needs. Hence, we need to import refined product, some of that potentially refined from the 60% of the oil we produce that goes offshore. With all the recent talk of China, most of the oil currently going out of Burrard Inlet is bound for California refineries, and most of those tank farms you see around Burrard Inlet (Shellburn in Burnaby, Ioco in Port Moody, Suncor on the northeast slope of Burnaby Mountain) are just storing oil products imported for the States to supply local demand.

Ideally, based on the NDP argument above, Canada would refine our own oil. We would at the very least build refineries to meet our domestic refined product demand, and potentially build enough that we could export the refined product to gain all the added value instead of the raw syncrude. We don’t do this, because the refineries belong, for the most part, to publicly traded multinational corporations. They will build and operate refineries where it is easiest and cheapest to do so, with lower labour costs, lower tax regimes, and softer environmental laws. What may be (agruably) in our national interest is most defintiely not in their best financial interest.

Canadian Refineries and capacity by ownership:
Imperial Oil (Exxon): 4 refineries totalling 503,000 bbl/d;
Suncor (formerly PetroCanada): 3 refineries totalling 360,000 bbl/d
Irving (a Canadian business): 1 refinery at 300,000 bbl/d;
Valero (Texaco): 1 refinery at 265,000 bbl/d;
Shell (Royal Dutch Shell): 2 refineries totalling 172,000 bbl/d;
Korea National Oil Company: 1 refinery at 115,000 bbl/d;
CCRL (a Sask. co-operative!): 1 refinery at 100,000 bbl/d;
Chevron Corporation: 1 refinery at 52,000 bbl/d;
Husky Energy: 1 refinery at 12,000 bbl/d.

So here is when my environmentalist friends start to get itchy collars: I suggest this scenario (recognizing it is highly unlikely). Let’s assume that the NDP win the next federal election, and just to piss off Alberta after all the efforts their guys have done to piss off the NDP over the previous 5+ years, they bring about Canada National Energy Program 2.0. Part of that program includes an end to raw crude exports, and an end to refined product imports.

The question for envrionmentalists concerned about all this export of raw crude: Would you support increasing refining capacity in Canada? Even if that meant doubling capacity in order to meet the demand from back in 2011? So, my sensible environmentalist friends, I ask you: would you support the building of oil refineries if it meant the end of oil imports for Canada, and the end of raw crude exports?

This might be a good question to ask the NDP.

Michael Mann in Vancouver

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

As part of the AAAS meeting in Vancouver last week, Dr. Michael Mann gave a talk for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. Not this Michael Mann , but this one.

You could Wiki this, but the short Bio is thus: Dr. Mann is a geophysicist and geologist who worked with a team of scientists who used a variety of proxy climate indicators (tree rings, coral growth patterns, ice cores, stalactite layers, etc.) to measure climate over the last 1000+ years. turns out the graph showed a sharp rise in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 100 years. The graph was compelling enough, and the data robust enough, that I was included in the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment report.

Around that time, one of Mann’s co-workers used the expression “hockey stick” to describe the curve on the graph, borrowing the nickname from an older graph of atmospheric Ozone made by other scientists 20 years ago during another global atmospheric debate.

The graph was such a stark image, displaying our current situation in such clear terms, that is simply could not be left unaddressed by those who see Anthropogenic Climate Change as some sort of conspiracy.

Included in those people are several Canadians: Steve McIntyre ( a retired mining engineer) and Ross McKitrick (an economist) tried their hand at Climate Science and wrote a paper in a a fake science journal claiming the graph was the product of flawed science, and the battle for “Mann’s Hockey Stick” was on.
From the beginning of his talk, it is clear Dr. Mann is exactly what you would expect: a science geek, and a reluctant public figure. His speech was not polished or slick, the images not particularly compelling to a non-science audience, but it was an entertaining talk about how one guy doing proxy climate measurements can somehow become an enemy to some, just because he collected a little data on a topic that would become a political football.

In the last 10 years, this PhD Geologist who spends most of his time counting tree rings and teaching Earth Systems Science at Penn State, has had his e-mails stolen and publicized, Has been summoned to congressional hearings, investigated by his State Attorney General, been subject to academic kangaroo courts at his university, and accused of everything from perpetuating the “greatest hoax in the history of science” to outright fraud. Numerous investigations later, no-one has found any evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
But that doesn’t even matter, because one thing none of the people criticizing the “hockey stick” have done is collect any data that refutes it. They have instead spent so much energy and time trying to cast doubt on the veracity of the “hockey stick” that they have failed to acknowledge that there is an entire hockey league of sticks that are the same shape: measured atmospheric anthropogenic CO2, sea level change, ice extent, ocean temperatures, the list goes on.

In the end, Michael Mann is still a reluctant public figure (partly evidenced by his reluctance to take legal action against the people slandering him: he would rather just do science and find solutions). All he can do is keep reporting what he and other people doing the actual science have found. The scientific case is relatively straightforward; the greenhouse effect has been known for two centuries; we know human CO2 numbers are going up, and we know it is anthropogenic; we know earth has warmed more than 1 degree C over the last 100 years,and the trend is up. if you choose to ignore the thermometers, there are literally dozens of other lines of evidence: surface temps, permafrost loss, ocean stratification, and numerous observed biophysical reactions consistent with rapid warming. combine this with a distinct paucity of evidence against the trend, and it is remarkable anyone is still debating this.

The final point was one I have heard a lot recently: this is no longer a scientific debate, it is an ethical one. We need to make the ethical decision of whether we will burden the next generation and the one after with the unforeseen consequences of what we are doing today in the interest of Business as usual”. However, that’s s not a scientific question, it is a philosophical one. Once science has provided the data, what you do with it is not up to the Scientists.

Mann was quick to point out that the issue is not, as some suggest, the “politicization of science” (inherently, science is immune from politics, as its self-regulating mechanism will win out in the end), but the “science-ization” of politics, where a political position or immediate pragmatic need of a political group is mistaken for a scientific fact.

To beat this, we may need more reluctant scientists like Mann to take a more active part in the popular media, and provide the factual information we need to make rational decisions, informed by our ethics.
It’s the best hope we have to get past this strange, anti-science phase we are in right now in North American society.
Which is kind of what I think Neal Stephenson is getting into here:

Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout Review – Part 6 – Fit the last.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

As diligent readers are aware (Hi Mom!), I have been ploughing my way through Dr. Patrick Moore’s dissertation on “Sensible Environmentalism”. What started as a review turned into a lengthy criticism. This is the last fit of a 6-part essay, and it is worth reading it all if you want to learn about how Patrick Moore and his Greenwashing company use misinformation, self-contradiction, and frankly absurd ideas to market everything from coal mining to salmon farming as “Green Industries” You can follow these links:

Although this book is full of ideas with which I disagree, and many ideas that are just flat wrong, I always suspected Dr. Moore at the least came by his ideas honestly, or for the most pragmatic reasons. His debatable ideas on clear-cut logging (the best thing one can do for a forest!) and fish farming (the only way we could possibly save the native salmon!) likely rise form his history working as a logger and a farmer of fish. His call to end government subsidies for wind and solar, while at the same time making the use of ground-source heat pumps mandatory, may have to do with his promotion to Vice President of NextEnergy: “the Canadian leader in designing and marketing geothermal systems for the home!”

Or maybe those are coincidences.

However, in his discussion of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), Dr. Moore not only loses his remaining credibility, but loses any claim to being science-minded, skeptical, sensible, or an environmentalist. Coming from someone with the intelligence, training in science, and access to information that Dr. Moore is alleged to have, his arguments are so poorly thought-out, so anti-science, and so ill-informed, that it can only be the result of a disingenuous and callow disregard for the truth, and for the intelligence of his readers. I am going to waste a lot of words discussing this part of the book, because it is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the current public discourse on AGW.

To get there, we have to first take a step back and talk about Duane Gish. Dr. Gish is a Young-Earth Creationist who met with some small fame holding public debates against scientists on the topic of Evolution. Dr. Gish brought to these his opinion that the Bible is literally true and that the Universe was created in a single 6-day fit about 8,000 years ago, in exactly the order that is written in Genesis. Clearly, this is a preposterous position to debate against a serious scientist with academic expertise in genetics, geology, astronomy, or, for that matter, physics or chemistry. That did not stop Dr. Gish. Paradoxically, audiences would quite often leave the debates feeling Dr. Gish had “won”. This is because he used a rhetorical technique that he wielded with such might and power that it now bears his name.

The Gish Gallop is a debating technique where one uses their allotted time to throw out such a large number of disconnected, unsupported, misrepresented or simply untrue “facts” that the opponent can only hope to refute one or two of them in their rebuttal time. After rebuttal, the Galloper ignores the countering points made by their learned opponent, and just throws out a new random pile of other points, or even the same ones slightly re-phrased, until the opponent is left to throw up their arms in frustration. It is less the shotgun technique than the M61 Vulcan technique.

The point is: for the Galloper, it is not important that you support any of your allegations with truth or data, or even if several of your allegations contradict one another – just keep shooting out stuff and let the poor bastard on the other side try to refute it all. To a general audience, one guy sounds like he has all the facts, the other guy can hardly refute any of them, so guess who wins? The Gish Gallop is well known by Creationist “debaters”, and has been adopted very successfully by people like Lord Monckton when discussing AGW. In skilled hands, it is an effective debating tool. It is also the mark of someone who knows that few of their actual arguments will stand to scrutiny on their own, so in that sense, it is the epitome of being disingenuous.

When I read Dr. Moore’s discussion of AGW, I couldn’t help but see Gish Gallop all over it. He, in turns, argues that it isn’t getting warmer, that warmer is better, that climate scientists lie, that scientists are incompetent, that most scientists don’t believe in AGW, that CO2 cannot cause warming, that the warming caused by CO2 is good for plants, that the ocean is not acidifying, that ocean acidification is good for corals, that human action can’t possibly impact the climate, that human activity might have prevented an ice age, that AGW will lead to more species, that sea level is not rising, that sea level rise is a good thing, that ice is not shrinking, that ice shrinking is a good thing…etc. etc. It is painful to read, mostly because it seems that Dr. Moore forgot that Gish Galloping does not work if those you are debating against have infinite time to refute each point one at a time.

Now I cannot hope to address each of his points here. Even given infinite time and near-infinite bandwidth, my patience to stupidity is not infinite, nor should yours be. So I am going skim the cream off the top of his Gallop, and allow you to find out for yourself if there are any curds below.

Dr. Moore’s discussion of AGW starts by suggesting there is no scientific consensus on AGW. This argument can be summed up into three Logical Fallacies: Argument from Incredulity, Argument from Authority, and Argument from Popularity.

The first argument is basically this:

“The subject of climate change… is perhaps the most complex scientific issue we have ever attempted to resolve. Hundreds, possibly thousands of factors influence the earth’s climate, many in ways we do not fully understand” pg. 330

This is a rather uncompelling argument. I hardly think measuring the basic energy flows of the earth’s atmosphere is all that more complex that, oh, I don’t know, tracking speed-of light particles with half-lives measured in the picoseconds at the Large Hadron Collider or unravelling the 3 billion base pairs in the Human Genome Project. Yeah, complicated, but hardly insurmountable, and with numerous lines of evidence from dozens of different disciplines pointing to the same conclusion, and a well-understood causation train, it is not really that big a scientific leap to conclude that increased CO2 output results in higher atmospheric CO2, which results in a stronger Greenhouse effect.

Argument two sounds like this:

“A comprehensive scientific critique of the IPCC’s findings… was signed by more than 31,000 American scientists and concluded, ‘there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of…greenhouse gasses is causing or will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere’. Clearly there is no overwhelming consensus among scientists on the subject of climate.” Pg 332

The 31,000+ name petition of which he writes is none other than the one generated by the venerable climate research foundation the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. You need to follow that link to see what they are about, seriously, take a look. It is telling that Dr. Moore talks about their work, and provides lots of references to them in this chapter (more on that later), but he clearly recognized that linking to this source would not improve his credibility. This is what I mean by being disingenuous.

I know, that is a bit of an ad hominem (although, ad hominem is actually a valid rebuttal to Argument from Authority), so lets take a closer look at the 31,000 scientists. You can see from the Petition Project Site that, of the 31,000, exactly 39 self-declared as Climate Scientists. This in comparison to the 2,000+ Climate Scientists who took part in the IPCC Working Group that the Petition Project was a response to. Sounds like something close to a consensus there. What of the other 30,961 scientists? A random mix of biologists, geologists, computer scientists, chemists, engineers and medical doctors. Yes, more than 13,000 were trained in medicine or engineering (I know my podiatrist has strong feelings about Climate Change, but does his M.D. really represent authority on the subject?) The only selection criteria for this Petition Project is that you had to get at least a B.Sc. in some physical science field, or medicine, or engineering. To put that in perspective, there are, according to recent counts, at least 10 Million Americans who have received their B.Sc. in an applicable discipline since 1970. So the 31,000 represent about 0.3% of “American Scientists” the way the petition itself defines them. I dunno, 99.7% sounds pretty close to a consensus to me.

As an aside, they seem to put a lot of emphasis on the scientific credibility of TV weather forecasters. I rest my case.

Ultimately, the Petition Project is a marketing exercise, not a scientific survey. It was a voluntary on-line sign-up, with no vetting of actual credentials. Luckily, a scientific analysis has been done, judging the opinions of climate scientists, other scientists, and the general public. It seems the consensus decreases the less people actually know about the climate and about science. Likely the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Which brings us to Argument #3.

This third argument is a general discussion of how the general public doesn’t believe in AGW. He quotes a bunch of public opinion polls indicating the “man on the street” does not believe in AGW. Or even that people don’t believe that other people believe in AGW, like that is relevant to the scientific certainty of the issue:

“ a poll taken by Ipsos Mori found 60 percent of Britons believed ‘many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing the climate change’. Clearly a majority of the British public does not believe there is a scientific certainty on the subject”. Pg 334.

Now, I hate to sound like a weedy academic elitist, but polling public opinion about the opinions of researchers is not really the best way to find scientific truth.

Do I really need to say that to a guy with a PhD?

Again, for perspective only, I can list things that a majority of Americans think, according to polls similar to the ones Dr. Moore cites, and you can decide if these are, therefore, scientific facts:
80% believe in the literal existence of angels;
78% believe Evolution by Natural Selection is false;
60% believe that Noahs Flood actually happened.
So much for the wisdom of the majority.

Soon after this, Dr. Moore’s honesty takes another dive. There is a bit of intellectual dishonesty that people often engage in, on both sides of this discussion: “cherry picking” data. This is a type of scientific fraud where you pick data that supports your theory, but disregard data that does not, without any justification for that dismissal. Aware of this concern, Dr. Moore says:

”I will try not to ‘trick’ the reader by cherry-picking timelines that support a particular bias” pg336

Then, on the bottom of the very same page he engages in this blatant piece of cherry picking:

”Since 1998 there has been no further warming and apparently a slight cooling” pg336

On… the… very… same… page. He also engages in timeline cherry picking in other areas, such as on Page 344, alleging “cooling” between 1940 and 1980 (when there was actually a slight slowing of the continued warming trend), but let’s concentrate on the first cherry pick, as it is very commonly heard in the Anti-AGW noise.

The grain of truth in that pile of bullshit is that 1998 was previously thought to be the year with the highest average temperature ever recorded by surface-based instruments since reliable instrument records began around the turn of the previous century. It is more commonly held now that 2005 and 2010 were both warmer, with the benefit of more robust analysis. The argument about 1998 vs. 2005 vs. 2010 is kind of irrelevant, though, seeing as how the nine of the hottest years recorded have happened in the last 10 years, with 1998 being the one outlier. Plain and simple: the world is getting hotter at a rate unprecedented in our recorded history, or in the proxy record (Tree rings, varves, coral layers, ice cores, etc.). Surface temperature logs are not the only effect that we measure that demonstrates AGW.

The importance of Rate of Change is a topic that Dr. Moore completely ignores. In 15,000 words on AGW, where he often mentions that the temperature has been warmer in the past (ironically putting trust in scientists who make assumptions about the earths temperature millions of years ago, but not trusting them when they suggest that it is warming now…. cognitive dissonance much?), he never mentions that the rate of temperature change is as important as, if not more important than, the actual amount of change.

This is strange, because Dr. Moore spends a bunch of time talking about how easy it will be for the planet’s species (including people) to react to climate change (after denying it exists). The scientific literature has been pretty clear in demonstrating that adaptation to natural epochal shifts in temperature is a normal part of the world’s ecosystems, but it is the century-scale shifts of multiple degrees that will cause most of the negative ecological effects of AGW. There is no way the boreal forests will have time to shift north if the planet’s temperature increases markedly over less than a century, to give a single example.

Dr. Moore even talks about how the planet was warmer 9,000 years ago by almost 3 degrees during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (which he actually lies about, since the HTM was a regional temperature trend driven by the recession of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, not a global trend, and it was only about 1.6 degrees warmer in areas than today.) but not notice that 3 degrees over 9,000 years is a much different thing than 3 degrees over 100 years. I suspect he is being deliberately obtuse here, or he just hasn’t read the science.

Or maybe he figures the researchers who spend their lives studying historic climates don’t know about the HTM, just like he assumes NASA doesn’t know how to locate or read thermometers. This is the basic accusation he makes against NASA and NOAA. On Page 337 he purports that the Urban Heat Island Effect is causing us to observe increasing temperatures due to local effects only (blithely assuming the scientists at GISS and NASA, who I note are able to put a freaking temperature probe into orbit around Jupiter – haven’t thought about this little detail).

Then on Page 345 he accuses NASA of deliberately removing the “colder” thermometers (an accusation of scientific fraud that has no actual data to support it, and nonetheless has been proven false) to lead to a false conclusion about current temperature trends. He is conveniently avoiding mentioning the myriad of other ways we measure the earth’s temperature aside from the surface thermometer record, such as ocean temperature, satellite observations, and dozens of proxy techniques.

With his scientific credibility tied to Ecology, Dr. Moore, should know more about plants than he is letting on. Perhaps this points to his lack of Masters research, and his apparent lack of academic publishing after his PhD (which was a study on mining policy and local tidal effects). So when he states that the measured increase in atmospheric CO2 is good for plants – and uses some ridiculous horticultural greenhouse studies to support his argument – it is hard to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows not what he thinks.

Dr. Moore (taking cues from other climate change deniers) takes the argument to the most ridiculous extreme on Page 352, suggesting that if human society and the industrial revolution hadn’t come along to produce all of this CO2, then plants probably would have died out from lack of CO2 (wait, didn’t he, few pages earlier, argue that most of the CO2 increase was natural? Yikes).

While it is true that in a hydroponic greenhouse system where there is an infinite supply of all nutrients available to plants, CO2 (which is not plant “food”, but is more plant “air”, to correct the allegory) may become a limiting factor in growth. In this case, adding more CO2 may hasten the growth rate of plants in that very specific, tightly controlled environment. Of course, this translates nada to the real world outside of greenhouses or basement pot farms. The reason for this, as Dr. Moore surely knows, was well understood in the 1800s, when Liebig developed his Law of the Minimum.

Like most biological ideas form the 1800s, this makes perfect sense to even the uneducated in the subject today. Plants require a suite of nutrients to grow: CO2, water, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, etc. Liebig demonstrated, using fertilizers, that their growth is limited by one “limiting nutrient”. That nutrient in nature is usually either water or nitrogen (or, more specifically, the ability of soil bacteria to fix nitrogen). This makes sense to animals too, if you are deprived of water and carbohydrates, no amount of oxygen in the world is going to keep you alive for very long. In reality, increasing atmospheric CO2 enough to dramatically raise atmospheric temperatures will have a negligible effect on plant growth rates, and if it did, it would likely dramatically increase demand for nitrogen in the soil – already the limiting factor for most commercial farming. Even this response is likely to be short-lived and have severe negative repercussions. Don’t take my word for it. And certainly don’t take Dr. Moore’s.

Idiotic is the word that comes to mind when Dr. Moore starts talking about sea ice. He ignores all of the data currently available (on the very website he cites!) that demonstrates that Arctic Sea Ice is continuing to decline in mass, not recovering from 2008 levels as he implies on page 359. He takes one graph from the Cryosphere Today, claiming it shows no reduction in sea ice, yet fails to cite this graph from the same page, or this one, or this one from Antarctica. He also falsely claims that

“Our knowledge of the extent of sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic began in 1979, the first year satellites were used to photograph the polar regions on a continual basis” Pg 359

This is stunning ignorance. Sea ice was measured by mariners for hundreds of years prior to 1979, and even longer by Inuit. There are also ice cores (which tell us the age of any single piece of sea ice), and dozens of analysis techniques that can be applied to arctic sediments such as varving of sea-floor sediments around arctic deltas, palynology records, arctic flora and fauna growth patterns, and other techniques to trace back the history if ice on both poles. This is another Argument from Personal Astonishment. I don’t know if you noticed, but we know there was ice over Georgia Straight 15,000 years ago, even when we don’t have satellite photos to prove it!

One has to wonder about his ability to do basic journal research when reading his discussion of ocean acidification. On pages 361-362, after quoting a paper by Orr et al that states “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of -0.075)”, Dr. Moore replies writing:

”One has to wonder how the pH of the ocean was measured to an accuracy of three decimal places in 1751 when the concept of pH was not introduced until 1909”

Well, one does not have to wonder, because one actually cited the actual freaking scientific paper! All one has to do is read the paper one cited. If one does that, though, one finds the paper cited by Dr. Moore contains no such quote! The quote seems to have been lifted from the esteemed scientific journal Wikipedia, as it appears in the introductory paragraph on the Wikipedia entry on “Ocean Acidification” , although with less precise numbers (which further erodes part of Dr. Moore’s original whinge, doesn’t it?)

Clearly, Dr. Moore didn’t even bother to read the papers he mis-quotes, nor did he bother to read the papers that Wikipedia cited as the source of the quote, because that paper from JGR explains that ocean-atmospheric gas exchange can be very accurately determined if you know the chemistry of the ocean and atmosphere, and a bit about temperatures (all of which can be currently measured from proxies, such as sediment cores, carbon and oxygen isotopes, and coral ring growth). Just because pH hadn’t been discovered, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Gravity existed before Newton, you nitwit.

Can we all agree that the days if citing Wikipedia in any discussion about anything other than Wikipedia is irrelevant? It is the internet equivalent of citing the Encyclopaedia Britannica while writing our grade 9 reports on Argentina – the teacher didn’t like it then, and they wouldn’t accept it now. But Dr. Moore cites Wikipedia no less than 12 times during his discussion of AGW.

This crappy citation rigour is, unfortunately, a trend continued during Dr. Moore’s brief Gish Gallop on pages 345-346 to how scientists used to predict a new ice age was coming, providing two excellent references: Spiked Online and something called ZombieBlog. I wonder if their scientists signed the petition.

Yet another argument from Dr. Moores’ personal incredulity is to question if the increases in atmospheric CO2 are actually man made, or just a natural trend; after all, CO2 has been higher in the past.

“Many scientists assume that human emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of this [observed] increase [in atmospheric CO2 since 1958]. Some scientists question this assumption.” Pg 336.

This is such an important point of contention, he raises the question rhetorically a few pages later:

”Is CO2, the main cause of global warming, either natural or human-caused?” pg 338

Except this is not an assumption made by scientists, nor is it a rhetorical question, it is an observable phenomenon. Atmospheric scientists can differentiate CO2 from natural and anthropogenic sources, using carbon isotopes . It is pretty clear from isotope analysis that the observed increases in atmospheric CO2 during the 20th century are dominated by fossil fuel burning. If  “some scientists question this assumption”, they need to come up with some data to support their point. They haven’t.

There are other topics of scientific illiteracy in this book, but at some point they are coming on so fast and so erratically, that response would be futile. Pure Gish Gallop Gold. Dr. Moore’s profound lack of understanding hydrology leads him to opine that glaciers don’t do anyone any good (Pg357). He suggests a warmer world is better because… wait for it… people like warm weather and can freeze to death when it isn’t warm enough (Pg340). Since wetlands are so good for migratory birds, what’s the problem with rising Sea Levels (pg366)? After a while, throwing this terrible book against the wall was causing me repetitive strain disorders.

Speaking of repetitive strain, Dr. Moore also jumps into “Climategate”. The book first makes a passing reference to this alleged scandal early in his discussion of AGW:

“in November 2009…thousands of emails, leaked or hacked from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the U.K. shocked the climate change community. These revelations were quickly dubbed ‘Climategate’” p337

After a paragraph introducing the topic, Dr. Moore Gish Gallops off to talk about the Copenhagen Conference, causation vs. correlation, polar bears, climate changes over time, etc. for 7 pages, before mentioning “Climategate” again in another stand-alone paragraph

“…the revelations of ‘Climategate’ in November 2009 … clearly showed that many of the most influential climate scientists associated with the IPCC have been manipulating data…”pg 344

There is another drive-by mention a page later, where he at least mentions there were inquiries in to the “scandal” (but fails to mention the scientists were exonerated in all inquiries, and many newspapers were forced to retract their stories previously written about the “scandal”. After no less than 22 pages of random garble on a variety of unrelated topics, Dr. Moore once again raises the topic of “Climategate”, in perfect Gish Gallop technique: if you mention it enough, the words will stick, even if you don’t make a convincing case.

It is actually this fourth mention of “Climategate”, 368 pages into his 390 page book, where Dr. Moore cements the case that he was not interested in the truth. He actually repeats the basest accusations of “Climategate”, the ones that forced reputable newspapers and media outlets to retract the story once they were found to be false. He dismisses the three separate independent inquiries in to the scandal that exonerated the scientists as “whitewashes”. He very clearly did not read the “damning” emails in context, nor did he read the results of the inquiries into the scandal. The only newspaper he cites is the Telegraph of UK, the only one not to retract its “Climategate” reporting.

He also accuses the journals Science and Nature as having “a marked bias in support of human-caused climate change”. It is apparent he is talking about the magazines, but he may as well say the same thing about actual nature (which keeps reacting predictably to a warming planet) and actual science (which keeps finding more evidence of AGW).

Sorry, Dr. Moore. No “Sensible Environmentalist” can continue to ignore both science and nature, and maintain their credibility.

My final review? Don’t read this book. It will make you dumber.

With Enbridge, or Against Us?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 7 Comments.

The Environmental Assessment for the Northern Gateway pipeline project has started its public consultation stage. As is typical, the Harper Government has used this potentially-divisive event not to demonstrate leadership, but instead to draw sharp the divisions, and to demonstrate it doesn’t respect due process or the laws of the nation.

It started a few days ago when Steve declared that he was going to make sure radical groups with foreign funding don’t “hijack” the process. Now Steve may have his faults, but using language loosely is not one of them. Every message sent out by the PMO is carefully crafted to frame the discussion. Therefore, his choice to use the language of the War on Terror (“radical”,”foreign”,”hijack”) is designed to intentionally draw anyone who values environmental sustainability over the profits of Multi-national Oil Companies as non-Canadian, and not to be trusted. You are with Enbridge or you are against us.

Then he sent one of his less familiar minions, Joe Oliver, to sign a highly inappropriate and inflammatory “open letter”. The inflammatory part is obvious (read “radical ideological agenda”,”foreign special interest groups”, “radical groups”), but the inappropriate part comes from what he does for a living. As the Minister of Natural Resources and a member of the Conservative Cabinet, he is one of the people who will need to review and eventually approve or reject, this project: a job best done, in my humble opinion, after the data-gathering and the public hearings, and after the Joint Review Panel makes a recommendation. Actually it’s not just my opinion, it is the Law.

Given the nature of the open letter, how could anyone conclude the Joint Review Panel is anything but a sham process, when it is clear that the Federal Government as already made up its mind. You are with them, or you are against Enbridge.

Once again, Elizabeth May is the only one in Parliament standing up and speaking truth to power.

I keep on jumping on and off the Elizabeth May bandwagon, but with this open letter and her frighteningly frank comments coming out of Durban, I can see myself enjoying my current bandwagon seat for quite some time. I know many members of our Loyal Opposition feel the same way on this topic as May, but the realities of a large party system probably limit their ability to speak as clearly and truthfully as She does in response to John Oliver. Why, oh suffering Canadian Media, do we give Kevin O’Leary more air time than Elizabeth May? looking for inspiration in the vacuum left by Jack Layton? Read her blog. I digress…

Since he raised the spectre of “foreign special interest groups”, I might just agree with the concern expressed by Minister Oliver, except that all of those pejorative terms are so poorly defined. What is a “special interest group?”

Looking at the Joint Review Panel documents, one can actually see who is planning to hijack this process.

“Interveners” are interested stakeholders who are able to present written or oral evidence to the Panel, and to ask questions of other Interveners when they are presenting evidence. In essence, if you want to “hijack” the process, being an Intervener is the way to do it.

The Joint Review Panel lists 216 registered Interveners. Of those, 91 are private citizens, almost all from the northwest of British Columbia, or those most directly affected by both the positive and negative impacts of the proposed pipeline. There is really no way to know which of those are “for” and which are “against”, or which are just kind of curious. I suspect this group also includes small business owners who may have a vested interest one way or the other, or even journalists, bloggers, and local politico types who just want to take part in the conversation.

The Interveners list includes one labour union that has already expressed opposition to he project, and two academic institutes associated with Universities, who may be presenting evidence, or may just be interested in collecting data for research purposes.

Twelve of the Interveners are governments: BC, Saskatchewan, and a whole bunch of Municipalities. Except that, as Elizabeth May was quick to point out, the First Nations are also effectively governments, and there are no less than 48 First Nations groups listed as Interveners. I wonder if Minister Oliver suspects these as the source of “Foreign interference”?

If not, that leaves us with two more groups: Non-Profits (34) and Corporations and businesses (28). The first group is pretty diverse, including everyone from the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation and the Douglas Channel Watch (whom I think we can safely say are opposed to the project) to oil-industry funded lobby groups like the Oil Sands Developers Group Association, the In Site Oil Sands Alliance, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whom we can be equally assured are in favour of the project. I will leave it to you to determine which Non-Profits are more likely to be well funded from abroad, and which are more likely to have the local community’s interests in mind.

Which leaves us with 28 Corporations and businesses. I am not going to presume that all of them are in favour of the pipeline, but seeing as they fall into two main categories: Oil Companies, and companies that contract to Oil Companies, I think the vast majority see oil pipelines as a good thing. Since Minister Oliver seemed specifically incensed by the untoward influence of foreign money, I am going to pass on calling out any Canadian companies (hey, they are Canadian, and Corporations are People too… give ‘em the voice!), and instead call attention to a few of the standouts:

ExxonMobil (Irving, Texas, annual revenue $383 Billion), and their subsidiary Imperial Oil, are listed as two separate Interveners.
BritishPetroleum (London, UK, annual revenue $309 Billion);
Total E&P (Courbevois, France, annual revenue $203 Billion);
ConocoPhillips (Houston, Texas, annual revenue $198 Billion);
Sinopec (China, annual revenue $197 Billion) as “SinoCanada Petroleum”;
Koch Industries (Wichita, Kansas, annual revenue $100 Billion) as “Flint Hills Resources”;
Inpex (Tokyo, Japan, annual revenue $16 Billion);
Daewoo International (Seoul, South Korea, annual revenue $13 Billion);
Kinder Morgan (Houston, Texas, annual revenues $12 Billion)
Japex (Tokyo, Japan, annual revenue $2.6 Billion) as “Japan Canada Oil Sands”;

So Severn Cullis-Suzuki and the Fort St. James Sustainability Group are going up against an organized group of foreign-owned companies with $1.4 Trillion (with a ”T”) in combined revenue, and our Prime Minister is more concerned about where the Environmental Groups money is coming from? Surely, this is parody.

As an aside, this morning on the radio business news, I hear Chris Carter stating that the high gasoline prices we are seeing now are only partially caused by high crude prices. The biggest reason for high and fluctuating prices is a chronic lack of refining capacity in North America leading to difficult-to-manage inventories.

This is something to talk about. Why are we spending billions setting up systems to export raw crude, when we could use the money to build the needed refining capacity? This would provide way more jobs, would increase the “value added” we receive from the Bituminous Sands, and could potentially lead to more stable fuel prices for Canadian businesses.

The question is, of course, rhetorical. Lower and more stable fuel prices, producing jobs in a relatively expensive labour market, increasing domestic value form Canada’s natural resources: none of these serve the purposes of the real decision makers in Ottawa, the Multi-national Oil Companies with offices in Calgary.

Carbon Credits revisited

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This looks like good news.

I already went on about the ham-fisted way our Provincial government has forced Cities to become “Carbon neutral”, mostly by using property taxes to purchase carbon offsets and line the pockets of profitable multi-nationals.

But it’s not just eco-terrorist left wing lunatics like me saying this system is messed up. Those socialists in the Vancouver Business Press are also asking questions. In the August 23-30 edition of Business in Vancouver (issue 1139), there is a great piece called “Smoke and Mirrors” about how this system is corrupt at its core. It is well worth the read, only to hear the Surrey School Board, Marc Jaccard (the SFU scientist who shared the IPCC’s Nobel Prize for characterizing Climate change risk), John Cummins, and the BC School Trustees all agreeing with left-wing eco-terrorists like me.

Alas, if that is the system we have, how can we make it work for us? Here is where Jane Sterk of the BC Green party hits the nail right on the head. She suggests TransLink can fill its ongoing “funding gap” by selling carbon credits to the Pacific Carbon Trust. This is brilliant.

As Sterk suggests in the press release, every one of the 210 Million + transit riders per year , every person riding a bus, riding a SkyTrain, riding the West Coast Express, or riding the Sea Bus is producing less CO2e per km than a person in a car. TransLink provides the service that allows that carbon reduction. TransLink already has stats around transit use, all they need to do is get an energy economist to provide the number of Tonnes of carbon reduction per annum, and TransLink can negotiate a fat check from the PCT. Instead of our municipal and school tax dollars going to Encana, or Lafarge, they go back to us in the form of improved transportation service.

But let’s not stop there What about AirCare? According to
a recent study, one of the side benefits of the AirCare inspection program is a reduction in GHG emissions, as much as 1.1% of the total emissions of the Lower Mainland. This works out to enough offsets to run the entire AirCare program, saving drivers money. Or the money can go right back into TransLink general revenue.

Of course, the better alternative would just be to fund transit appropriately, without having to resort to ridiculous paper-shuffling exercises like the Pacific Carbon Trust. If we took the Province’s carbon tax and specifically earmarked it for carbon-reduction initiatives (like the Evergreen Line), then we wouldn’t need to go the long way around.

The Reported Death of AGW

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I don’t know if you have heard. It is all over the internets. Climate change is dead. Over. Kaput. Finito. History.

Some may suggest, in contrast to the Twain quote, that reports of the death of Anthropogenic Global Warming may be greatly exaggerated, but it seems pretty official this time, as it is being reported by no greater authority than Rex Murphy.

This is really no surprise. Since Rex returned to serious drinking a few years ago, he has been leading the charge of climate change deniers in the mainstream Canadian Media. We all expect knee-biters like Ezra Levant to be in the denier camp, but when Rex the Verbose declares climate change a hoax, there must be something to it.

However, if one reads his piece beyond the headline and first paragraph, and delves into the content (admittedly not the strength of the National Post on-line audience) you notice he doesn’t make a single point about AGW or about the science of the climate, doesn’t mention the ever-expanding pile of scientific data measuring the direct and indirect impacts of human-caused warming of the planet. Instead, the article is yet another silly attack on Al Gore, who according to the Right End of the Internets, has recently come publicly “unhinged” and become a raving lunatic.

All because of this recording.

Maybe I am unhinged, because when I hear this recording, it sounds completely rational to me. He sounds significantly more hinged than pretty much any other politician in the United States on this issue; Democrat, Republican, or otherwise.

Yes, he uses the word bullshit repeatedly, but he uses it completely in context. When someone says volcanoes put out more CO2 than humans, that is bullshit. Demonstrated bullshit that was proven to be false decades ago, as any intelligent person can prove to themselves with a little math in few minutes. When deniers say it is sunspots causing the recently observed changes, that is demonstrably, clearly, and unambiguously bullshit. Same with saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or that climate it isn’t warming, or whatever old debunked bullshit they are recycling this week. Al Gore is not a scientist, is not a climate expert, but he is an accomplished politician, and politicians do recognize one thing better than most: Bullshit. This guy worked with Bill Clinton and lost an election to Carl Rove, I would say he is a world expert on the topic of political bullshit.

What I hear here is not a person “unhinged”, I hear a guy speaking truthfully, and somewhat exasperated that seemingly intelligent people like Rex Murphy fail to acknowledge the emperor’s nudity.

Much like Al, I just don’t see where Rex is on this issue. I am a firm believer in Hanlon’s Razor, but the other side of that razor says if you cannot find the incompetence, your only resort is to assume malice. I don’t think Rex is incompetent. But I also don’t believe that he can write a 900-word piece declaring the death of AGW without once mentioning that the planet isn’t warming or that the scientists were wrong. Instead, he writes a lot of vague phrases about how the public relations battle has been lost. Or, alternately, Rex and the people on his side of this issue have won the PR battle. They successfully piled on the bullshit so high that they won a PR battle over the truth.

And this is why Al and I are using words like Bullshit in otherwise polite company. What else can we do, when reality has lost a public relations battle?

Who really wins when reality loses a popularity contest?

I can’t help but feel Many years from now we will look back at this moment and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Only 35 years after the world agreed to end of all atmospheric nuclear testing, only 25 years after the Montreal Protocol saved the ozone layer, how can a small number of PR hacks funded by a few of the largest corporations on earth, publicly deny reality, and get the majority of people to agree?

This may be all fine and dandy for Rex. The worst impacts of climate change, the negative feedback of the stupid decisions we make now, will only be felt after Rex’s cirrhotic liver has failed and his pickled corpse is stinking up the churchyard on Carbonear.

But wasn’t journalism supposed to be about facts?

Cities and Carbon credits.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

We all agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and that Canada is one of the worlds worst offenders per capita (If not, perhaps you should review a bit of this and come back later). The question is what are we going to do about it?

Carbon Offsets are one of those ideas that might sort of work, much like a carbon tax, but their success and usefulness depends on very careful legislation. The problem is, in our hyper-policial world where logic and science rarely come into play during he drafting of legislation, they can seriously go wrong. I present to you as evidence, the Pacific Carbon Trust.

Some of you may know about the Climate Action Charter. This makes all local governments who “voluntarily sign” the charter, to be “carbon neutral” by 2012. Of course, it isn’t really voluntary, as these communities are offered a 100% rebate of the carbon taxes they pay if they fulfill this commitment. There is some strange calculus between reducing the carbon they use to the point where the savings in the taxes offset the extra carbon offsets you need to buy to get back to “carbon neutral”, but I leave that for the accountants.

The end result or this coercion is that Cities do often-good sometimes-questionable actions to reduce their carbon use. Retrofitting City buildings to be more energy efficient, introducing anti-idle policies and investing in a more efficient fleet of vehicles to line up around the token guy with the shovel, creating District Energy Utilities where the City’s ice rink takes all the waste heat it creates making ice and uses it to heat the water in adjacent swimming pool. You can also throw in building compact, transportation-efficient cities. These are all reasonable measures that should save taxpayers money in the long run and reduce the need to oxidize hydrocarbons. These are good things.

(Notably, one of any City’s largest green house gas producing activities is the generation and disposal of solid waste, and that is exempt from the Charter. I could go on…)

Recognizing that Cities can’t just stop burning fuel tomorrow, there is en expectation that Cities will use carbon offsets. This idea being that organizations that make money producing carbon dioxide can be provided economic incentives to not produce so much carbon dioxide, and sell that non-production of carbon dioxide to someone who cannot help but produce carbon dioxide. So for every tonne of carbon dioxide that a City produces, it will pay $25 to someone else to not produce a tonne of carbon dioxide. Alternately, they could just pay the $25 in carbon tax to the Provincial coffers.

I have had discussions with Municipal Energy Managers and GHG-reduction experts who are convinced this is a good idea for all kinds of traditional economics reasons. It is, they argue, the same as carbon tax, in that is puts a “cost” upon the production of pollution that can be used to directly reduce pollution. There are also some significant GHG Experts who think it is a terrible idea.

However, much like our completely misguided and ineffective carbon tax (another topic), the way the offset market is managed in BC is both unproductive and ethically compromised. You see, our local governments must purchase their carbon offsets from an entity known as the Pacific Carbon Trust. This is a Provincial Crown Corporation that operates under the direction of Kevin Falcon. Guilt by association is never a good idea, but considering Falcon’s greatest accomplishment up to this point is the ramming through of the largest climate crime of the last decade in this province, well, we know GHG reduction is not really a priority of his.

That said, we can measure the Pacific Carbon Trust for what it does, without worrying about the Falcon taint. After all, it is a public reporting company, and every person who pays property or school taxes in the Province is going to be buying carbon credits from the PCT, so let’s see where it is a going.

The PCT’s two largest offset purchases so far are from TimberWest (about $7.5 Million) and EnCana ($2 Million).

Timberwest is getting paid off by choosing not to log less than 8% of their 300,000 Ha of forest on Vancouver Island. The fact this area has not been logged up to here is pretty compelling evidence that it was not economical to log, either due to access issues, riparian protection laws, or political sensitivity. Reading the project summary is a twisted journey into justification. You see, they are anticipating a future “acceleration” in logging, after the current pine-beetle-harvest-glut of lumber passes, and they are committing to not accelerating in the future quite so much: a hypothetical agreement to reduce by 8% their future hypothetical logging based on hypothetical future market conditions. For this, our Cities and Schools have shipped them $7,500,000, so far.

I say “so far” because according to the report, TimberWest figures it will be offsetting up to half a million tonnes of carbon a year for perpetuity. That means taxpayers will be throwing up to $12,000,000 a year to Timberwest not to log trees they admit are not economical to log due to the glut of lumber on the market, presumably until the market forces them to “accelerate”, at which time they will probably find it more profitable to cut the trees that perpetuate the offset myth.

Now TimberWest is an interesting organization. It is mostly the investment wing of a bunch of public service and private pension funds (which means, ironically, that I am probably benefiting directly from this scheme, having a public service pension, but as a minor fouth-tier “shareholder”, have no say whateoever in its operations). However other “we promise not to log (this week)” deals with the PCT have been signed across the province.

The EnCana deal is even uglier. EnCana is one of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies, and is one of the largest natural gas companies in North America. They produce about $6 Billion in revenue per year, and are currently building the largest office tower in Western Canada. The BC government gave then $2 Million for a program where they capture residual gas from their drilling operations and use it instead of just flaring it off. The end result? That gas ends up in a pipeline, and is sold by EnCana.

In a rational world, the Province would pass a simple piece of legislation that says gas drillers cannot flare gas at their drill sites, but instead need to capture it. That gas is a provincial resource, we can pass any law we want about how it is managed, including insisting that if you are going to pull it out of the ground, you are going to sell it, not let it flare. Clearly, the technology to do this exists. Instead, we are paying a large profitable multi-national company to put gas in a pipe and sell it on the open market. We are paying them with your property taxes. And let us not forget, this gas is not being sequestered, every bit of that gas is still going to get burned and go into the atmosphere, it is just going to be sold to generate profit before being burned instead of being immediately flared.

So, what is my point? I am one of those people who think that the largest, most profitable companies in Canada do not need handouts from our municipal taxpayers and school boards. Therefore, I think the City/School board should take every measure to reduce their GHG emissions. Then they should fairly account their residual carbon, and pay the carbon tax to the provincial government. I would rather my tax dollars go to fund government services than line the pockets of profitable companies like EnCana. I guess that makes me a raving socialist.

Geology and Climate Denial

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 12 Comments.

In one of my earlier lives, I was a geologist.

Once a geologist, you sort of always are a geologist. It gets in your brain. I am going down the Grand Canyon next week with a friend who happens to be a Professor of Earth Sciences, and we plan to spend a lot of time cracking rocks and talking stratigraphy. I have already downloaded geologic sections and taken prep notes on the major units, their interpreted settings and anticipated trace fossil assemblages. I do this stuff for fun. However, in an earlier life, I actually did geology for a living, not as a hobby.

 As a geologist, I was member of the Geological Association of Canada, attended several of their meetings, and even presented at one of them (and had my presentation topic expanded into a paper in a special volume of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences published by the GAC).
 As a sedimentology student, I also read a whole lot of Andrew Miall. His “Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis” is in every sedimentologist’s bookcase, along with a raft of his papers on fluvial sedimentology (the deposits left by rivers). I cited that book and two other Miall papers in my Masters thesis, relying on his descriptions of alluvial fan deposits to interpret some of the facies in my field area, his description of bi-modal clast distributions resulting from traction flows, and his interpretations of peripheral foreland basin deposit sequences. He is a giant on the subject of the geology of terrestrial sedimentary basins, and a petroleum geologist of significance world-wide, not just in Canada.
 So it is remarkably disappointing to read about this year’ Annual GAC meeting, and to see the symposium entitled “Earth Climate: past, present, and future”, chaired by none other than Andrew Miall.
 The subject itself is topical, interesting, and well within the scope of geology (Geologists are the most qualified to interpret historical climate indicators, working with paleontologists, palynologists, isotope geochemists, and other fields that fit loosely under the big tent of Geology- the study of the solid earth.) The problem arrives in the outline for the symposium . Every line of it makes me cringe: 

“The scientific debate about climate change is far from over.”

Lifting this language right from the Climate Denier playbook, it is clear from the opening line the approach that will be taken below. This line pre-supposes that there is a single debate about Climate Change, and by that supposition, the two positions are: A) humans are definitely causing unprecedented changes in the earth’s climate by their burning of carbon-based fossil fuels and the nations of the word need to take immediate and drastic action to reduce atmospheric CO2 or face significant social, environmental and economic consequences; and B) wrong. 

“Some of the projections of climate change and its consequences contained in the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been called into question.”

Ugh. Yes they have. Admittedly, the 2007 report put out by the IPCC got a few things wrong, or failed to fully support a few of the statements within. And there has been a lot of science done since 2007, some of which matches the IPCC projections, some of it that suggests the IPCC projections were pessimistic, and the majority suggesting the IPCC projections underestimated the scale of the problem. But the IPCC report is a single document in a sea of research, and of all the documents, it is the most politically tainted. Why single this one out for discussion in a scientific meeting in 2011?

“This symposium will address some of these issues and present a geological perspective on the scientific debate. “

Good, Geology has lots to say about historic climate conditions. Sounds like an important topic to discuss.

“For example, what is the relative importance of water vapour versus carbon dioxide as a medium of heat retention in the atmosphere?”

Huh!?! H2O vs. CO2 in the atmosphere? How is that a geologic topic? This is simple chemistry and physics, we know H2O is a larger greenhouse gas than CO2, no geology required. The only reason this topic is being brought up is because it is a favourite amongst climate deniers, even after it has been thoroughly debunked. This topic has no relation whatsoever to the “climate debate”, it is a red herring. 

“How important have variations in solar output and in sunspot levels been in determining energy input to the Earth’s atmosphere?”

Huh!?! Is this even a debate? More solar output means more input to the Earth’s atmosphere, the relationship is linear. This is not a debate (and not really a geology topic either, although some geologic methods allow estimation of historic solar output directly or by proxy). Another red herring. Of course, this is not in any way relevant to the current observed warming, but they digress. 

“Is the current global temperature regime now warmer than the Medieval Warm Period or the Holocene Hypsithermal?”

OK, This is an excellent topic for geologic investigation. We should be able to use our multiple lines of geologic evidence (although these events are so recent, it is more pedology than geology) to determine the straight-forward answer to this question. I’m not sure what the relevance is… oh, wait, here it comes….

“This is a significant question, given that many damaging ecological, faunal and weather changes have been predicted based on such warming. Yet Earth and its assemblage of life forms clearly survived these and even earlier exceptionally warm periods.”

Here is where the real intellectual dishonesty comes in. Yep, the Earth survived climate change in the past. Actually, at the end of the Maastrichtian, it survived a pretty big climate disruption. Of course nothing larger than a chicken survived, all the planet’s apex predators were killed, the dominant form of sea life was made extinct, along with 90% of vertebrate species, but hey, the earth and life went on. That said, I don’t think any of us want to experience that type of event in our lifetime.

As for the events he actually cited, the MWP was probably (and I say probably, as there is actually some debate in the mainstream scientific community on this) not warmer than today globally. It was certainly as warm as today in Northern Europe, and certainly cooler than today in regions of the tropical south Pacific, but the global temperature average is not as well established. It is also important to know that start and end of the MWP in northern Europe were gradual events, taking centuries for any change to become apparent, and they nonetheless cause huge disruptions to society, to food supplies, and to the natural environment. The current measured warming is happening at a rate 50-100x that rate. How will we adapt this time? 

“Is it possible that other causes, such as the density and ubiquity of the human presence on Earth, rather than climate change, may be the cause of the observed deterioration in many environmental indicators?”

Huh? Is this a geologic topic? Is this really what a bunch of mineral and petroleum geologists should be studying? And what the hell is implied by the question? That overpopulation and resource use are problems we need to worry about, instead of worrying about climate change? How about we worry about both, and recognize they are both the same freaking problem!

Ok, so Miall wrote a provocative abstract to attract an audience to his symposium. You don’t get to be an eminent Petroleum geologist with out a few sales skills. Luckily, the GAC provides abstracts on-line , so we can look through the actual presentations and pick out the real science here. Should be fun, and I will more in future posts.

But as a satart, let’s look at hte Keynote: Oh, oh. It started bad. I see the Keynote is noted Australian climate denier (and mining geologist) Ian Plimer . Looking at Plimer’s Abstract does not instill confidence. Check out how in the last paragraph, instead of summarizing findngs and speculating on implications, as one is wont to do in a scientific abstract, he uses it to pile up non-sequitor climate denier catch phrases…

“Humans have adapted to live on ice, in mountains, in the desert, in the tropics and at sea level and can adapt to future changes. During interglacials, humans have created wealth; populations grow; glaciation is heralded by famine, starvation, disease, depopulation. Humans, although not the dominant biomass of Earth, have changed the surface of the planet. Pollution kills, CO2 is plant food, H2O vapour is the main greenhouse gas. Climate models throw no new light on climate processes”

 In order, that paragraph can be summarized as:

  • Climate change isn’t a problem, we’ll adapt! (debatable) 
  • Global warming is good! (ridiculous) 
  • People have impacted the planet in many ways! (non-sequitor)
  • Pollution is bad! (generally true, but irrelevant)
  • CO2 is good, so it can’t be pollution! (does the same go for zinc?)
  • Water vapour is the problem! (demonstrably not true)
  • Climate models don’t work! (bullshit. how does he feel about mineral deposit models?

He actually pre-emptively Gish Gallops. Loads on the BS so thick, it would take more than a 40 minute keynote to address how wrong his thinking is.

I will opine more as I get time to go through the other abstracts, but I want to leave with an paraphrased quote I once heard from a paleoclimatologist I know:

“AGW is founded in Physics, all was can don in geology is test it. Unfortunately, every time geology and physics have disagreed in the past, it was always the physics that had it right”

John Baird is an evil little man.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
Last month when Jim Prentice resigned as Minister of Environment, my initial reaction was “good”, followed quickly be “aw, shit.” Because despite Jim Prentice’s troubles with the portfolio, he might have been the best the Harper Conservatives had to offer in that role.
Harper’s previous picks for Minister of Environment were Rona Ambrose and John Baird. Ambrose is, of course, the dim-witted Ayn Rand-quoting Calgary ideologue who once suggested a Federal Child Care plan would violate Canadian women’s rights and that the spotted owl population was not threatened just because their total population was reduced to 17 individuals. Rona’s main asset appears to be that Sarah Palin – Christine O’Donnell kinda-puffy former cheerleader vibe that is so damn attractive to puffy white male conservative voters. An asset that puffy white Harper is quick to exploit by assuring she is in the near background whenever you see him speaking in the house.
Here: see if you can play a game of “Find Rona”: 

After Ambrose’s embarrassing run as Minister of Environment became too embarrassing, even for Harper, The PM propped Baird into the role, despite the obvious handicap of Baird’s disfigured hand, which prevents him from ever bending his index fingers:

When Baird was eventually replaced by one of the reasonable voices in Harper’s cabinet, one of the few Progressive Conservatives who had not been driven out or dragged down by the PMO, there was room for cautious optimism. And a few good things did manage to get done under Prentice. He made progress on water quality on first Nations reserves, made some useful changes of the CEAA, and even managed to kill the proposal to replace Fish Lake with a tailings pond.

Unfortunately, his failure to secure funding for the CFCAS will be part of his legacy, and was probably part of the reason he found greener pastures in the Private Sector. Anyone with a conscience cannot continue to serve in that portfolio under this Prime Minister, which brings us to John Baird…

Here is the notice I got today from John Baird, as part of his regular press missives. It is a stunning example of cognitive dissonance. In it, he has three points to make:

“We are committed to working with our partners in preventing and preparing for marine environmental emergencies.”

This in the day that the person responsible for evaluating the Government’s preparedness for maritime oil spills blasted the Ministry for being woefully unprepared, This is not some Eco-terrorist suggesting that the government has it’s head in the sand, or even the opposition passing a private members bill to protect the coast from being devastated by Alberta’s economic interests, it is the guy the government hired to perform an audit of the very practice he is commenting upon. This is, in effect, John Baird’s employee. For once, pointing a finger at HIM.

What else does John say:

“We are proud of the concrete and measurable action we are taking to implement a strong and comprehensive approach to protect Canada’s waters. This past year alone, Environment Canada has spent more than $140 million on water related programs and science.”

This sounds impressive, but is one quarter of what the US government is spending on water monitoring and protection in the Great Lakes alone, and orders of magnitude less than the subsidies being given to Tar Sands industries that are turning most of Northen Alberta water into emulsion. A fact he might be concerned about if only a single doller of that sampling money was spent measuring for potential Tar Sands impacts on the Athabaska River. But he don’t want to go there.

Finally, the mud in the eye to the few still reading:

“The Government of Canada is also taking action to help Canadians adapt to a changing climate and we are working towards developing a Government-wide adaptation framework.”

So Baird has decided to stop denying climate change, and has decided to think about adapting to it. Mr Baird is sunning his not-unsubstantial buns in Cancun right now, at the UN climate conference. And he is there with, apparently, a purpose.
And that is his power, with a stright face (and ever straighter finger), John Baird, overseer of environmental responsibility in a Country that has made the least progress (actually, the most negative progress) of any nation since Kyoto, the country that in the last 10 years has gone from a world leader in reductions to a global pariah, is going to show up at Cancun and slam his shoe on his desk. I can’t help but see Baird’s approach to this conference as eerily similar to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rants to the UN. Both are separated from reality, both show a complete lack of self-awareness, and both completely lack in credibility. These are desperate, distracting rants being delivered by persons who the sane people in the debate have stopped listening to years ago. But he is now Stephen Harper’s closest ally in the house. And even worse, he is Canada’s representive on a world stage.

I ascribe to Hanlon’s Razor: I try not to assume malice when incompetence will suffice. But I think Baird is too smart to be so utterly hopeless. I am left to interpret only evil.