Tag: Energy

He’s a Fletcher, but he’s no Fletch

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I loved Fletch – the books and the movies. The books were darker and more cynical than the Chevy Chase vehicle, but I thought Chevy did his best work in the first Fletch. So please accept that my fandom may colour comparison of the investigative reporting skills of the fictional Irwin M. Fletcher with the hackneyed opinion making of BC’s own Tom Fletcher.

The columnist for Black Newspapers is predictably right-of-centre and comes from a free-enterprise-uber-alles all-government-are-clowns viewpoint. No problem with that, people have opinions, and I don’t expect everyone to agree (look at some of the crap I write – if you don’t disagree with me sometimes you just aren’t thinking!), but I’m a local blogger, he is a regionally syndicated Professional Journalist.

His recent column in the print version of the NewsLeader (and syndicated Province-wide) shows that he isn’t a very good one. I wanted to go through line-by-line and talk about the hundred types of wrong in this column (“Robert Redford!?”), but it just got too deep and too boring, even for me. So this long post is a few thousand words short of where it should be. You get what you pay for.

In this column, the estimable Mr. Fletcher attempts to fix some of the “ignorance” he has seen and heard in discussions questioning merits of Oil Pipelines. These misconceptions are being “exploited by some opponents”, and he wants to set the record straight.

Fact checking is an important part of the profession of Journalism, so we should thank him for his efforts.

Except that he gets pretty much everything from that point forward wrong. Not just the facts, but the part about being a professional Journalist.

Again, I don’t want to go through this line-by-line, but let’s take the major premise of the first half of his column – oil pollution ain’t so bad – and do a little fact-checking.

“A global study by the Smithsonian Institution in 1995 calculated the amount of oil making its way into oceans this way: Big tanker spills accounted for 37 million gallons a year, about five per cent of the total marine oil pollution identified.

“By far the largest source was oil runoff from land into drains, from oil changes, municipal and industrial wastes and other sources: 363 million gallons. Bilge cleaning and other routine ship maintenance added 137 million gallons, four times the tanker spill average.

“Air pollution from vehicles and industry deposited hydrocarbon particles equal to another 97 million gallons; natural seeps added 62 million gallons; offshore drilling discharges accounted for 15 million gallons.”

It’s nice that Fletcher gave us a reference, a global study by the Smithsonian Institution published in 1995 should be easy to find. It also tells us where he might have got the information from. Presuming Tom gets his “information” from the Internets, he might have picked it up from here or here. Or, even more likely, he got it directly from his buddies inside the BC Government.

Notably, that’s not where the actual data came from. The citation the BC Government provides does not link to any Global Study, as no such study was performed by the Smithsonian. Or anyone else in 1995 for that matter. The numbers come from a 1995 travelling science exhibit put together by the Smithsonian to teach about Ocean Ecology.

I’m not sure how many oil-industry spin cycles this dataset went through before Tom pulled it out and hung it on the line (and, problematically, neither does Tom), but hey, he’s a Professional Journalist – and it would have required a few more Google clicks to look for the original Smithsonian display text, and follow their citation

“National Research Council (2002) Oil in the Sea: Inputs, Fates and Effects. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, May.”

Now we are getting somewhere. The National Research Council is a public research body, so the source of the data is available on-line, and we can assess the quality of the data (you know, Tom, like real reporters do). We find that there is no actual report that fits the above citation perfectly. There is a 2003 report by the NRC called “Oil in the Sea III: Inputs Fates and Effects”, which is pretty close:

“Oil in the Sea III: Inputs Fates and Effects, 2003”

It would be hard for a 1995 travelling science show to cite a 2003 paper, even with the Smithsonian’s money, so we need to go back to the older report “Oil in the Sea: Inputs Fates and Effects” done in 1985, which is also available here:

“Oil in the Sea: Inputs Fates and Effects” 1985

You can read the whole thing (it is interesting!) but maybe for the purposes of this post, just skip to the table on page 82, which lists estimates of Global input of hydrocarbons into the oceans. This looks good.

Also notice the text around the report about the meanings of each of the inputs, you really need to spend a few minutes putting this study into context. Then look at the similar table in the 2003 report I linked to above (the table is on page 69) – and note the long discussion about how far off the 1985 estimates were, and for what reasons. I put together this handy table so you can compare the numbers Tom chose to hinge his entire argument on, with actual data from which he allegedly got his numbers.

“Fletcher” are the numbers Tom regurgitated uncritically
“1985” are the best estimates from the 1983 report, converted from million tonnes to kilotonnes.
“2003” are the “best estimates” for global inputs from that report.

It doesn’t matter that the figures are in different units (Millions of Gallons versus kilotonnes), because his argument hinges on comparisons of oil spills with other inputs, so I decided not to do the conversions so I won’t be accused of misquoting the tables or cookingthe books. You can still compare the three sets of numbers on piecharts:

You can see there are three very different datasets. Which do you have the most faith in? The most recent study that built on the older study while acknowledging the flaws, or the random numbers presented by well-meaning science educators in 1995 from an flawed at-that-time 10-year old study? Which set of numbers did Tom run with? If you were a Professional Journalist, which would you use in order to address “misconceptions” that are creeping in to the Pipeline debate?

You may ask “So what? Who cares if his data is shit?”

I would say that even if it weren’t built on crappy data – his argument is flawed! The data is almost 30 years old, so the “oil runoff from land into drains” in the 1985 report included industrial waste runoff – primarily from petrochemical industries – and other waste streams from operations that are clearly not done by “you and me”. These are coming from things like oil terminals and refineries similar to the one his boss wants to build. I’m not sure how making statements like “Bilge cleaning and other routine ship maintenance added 137 million gallons, four times the tanker spill average” is supposed to endear us to having a tanker terminal on BC’s Northwest coast – why worry about a spill if bilge cleaning will cause more oil pollution!?!

This is also built on the premise that a little bit of oil spilled into a thousand small streams will have the same impact as millions of litres of oil spilled into one estuary. This is simply false. The impact of a single spill event can be catastrophic, and the minuscule amount of hydrocarbons in street run-off is less than optimal, but is generally metabolized and dissipated on the ocean before it can have harmful effects on the ecosystem.

I’m not minimizing the problem – Municipal runoff is generally bad stuff with trace levels of metals and hydrocarbons – but through significant changes since that 1985 report (oil and oil filter recycling programs, oil-water separator systems in storm drains, AirCare and similar emissions testing programs that remove unburned hydrocarbons from exhaust, standardization of dry-clean-up methods in the automotive repair industry, Laws regulating the handling and disposal of dry-cleaning solvents, etc. etc.) the situation in 2012 is way better than it was. I digress.

Admittedly, this is not an Investigative Journalism piece- it is an opinion column. So maybe I expect too much of a Professional Journalist writing an opinion piece to spend 5 minutes on Google to see if his data is correct (because that is how long it took me to collect the data above and demonstrate that his data is crap).

I fear somewhat that it is the data being used in a technical memorandum prepared by the BC Government, but that’s an entire other blog post.

I am going to give Fletcher the benefit of Hanlons Razor, and assume he is an incompetent and lazy journalist, and not intentionally using crappy data because it better makes the point of his “opinion”. Incompetent or lying, it hardly makes a difference, I’m not sure why Fletcher’s opinion is something anyone would find worth reading.

PS: By the way, “Cambridge Energy Research Associates” is not associated with Cambridge: the university or any of the universities based in Cambridge, Mass. It is the “energy market consulting” wing of the publicly traded industry publishing corporation “Information Handling Services”, or “IHS Inc”. It doesn’t take long on their website to see who butters their toast. And the study to which he refers “Oil Sands, Greenhouse Gases, and European Supply: Getting the Numbers Right” does not actually agree with the numbers Tom provides in his column. Those numbers are actually from page 6 of a recent Shell Oil pamphlet talking about how great Bitumen Sands are, which in turn cites the CERA… Yep, he did it again.

Hanlon’s Razor is looking pretty dull these days.

Apparently, Pipelines have two ends.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We are still a full human gestation from a Provincial Election, but the campaign season is in full swing. The BCLiberals are dropping hints of more landmines they are going to leave for the NDP to deal with next year, the cracks are starting to show in the spackle that is the BC Conservative Party, and the NDP seem to have decided it is time to stop watching Premier McSparkles(tm) bail water onto her own sinking ship, and are starting to speak up on specific topics.

At least the BCliberals are getting over their six months of mock outrage that Adrian Dix had not provided a campaign platform for them to critique, fully a year before the election. It wasn’t fair, they whinged, for him to criticize us and not give us anything with which to criticize him back. This seems a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Opposition, as there’s no compelling reason for the NDP to offer a platform if they are not the Government, have no power to implement their mandate, and are not even going to the voters asking to be made Government. If the Premier wants to see the NDP platform, then she is free to drop the writ.

However, sometimes the opposition has to strike when the iron is hot, and the iron is very, very hot around the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline right now. The Federal Conservatives keep bouncing between unabashed support and calling for careful scientific review (while concurrently laying off the very scientists who would do that review), the Premier of Alberta sees any pipeline anywhere as her Constitutional Right, and the Premier of BC is rattling something she must think are sabres: trying to look tough, pragmatic and “leaderish” around the issue.

It was a good time, apparently, for Adrian Dix to make his alternate viewpoint on the Pipeline clear.

So John Rustad (who?) responded with vigour. According to Google, the pipeline runs through his backyard, and he is one of the few BCLiberal MLAs who has confirmed he will return to contest his seat in May, so I guess he is a logical voice for the Government on this issue, I just wish his criticism contained more logic. You can read his statement here, and it is an incredible pile of wrong. Either Rustad is unfamiliar with the BC Environmental Assessment Act that he is talking about, or he is purposely misleading people about what it means. Hanlon’s Razor suggests the former, so let’s stick to that.

The BC Environmental Assessment process is not a “unilateral” hearing, nor would the Premier’s expressed opinion about the project mean the project could be “killed” by applying a Provincial Process. In contrast, since the recent Federal omnibus budget bill C-38, the Federal Environmental Assessment process is much less informed by science, as the Prime Minister’s Office or the Minister of Raping and Pillaging can now override any recommendation coming out of the review; including the recommendation of the specific Ministry running the scientific review or the scientists providing the data. The BC EA process does not include any such provision. Simply put, the BC EA process is now the much less political, more science-based process cmpared to the “sham process” (to borrow Rustad’s words) the Federal Government has created.

Here, let me pick one of his paragraphs apart:

“By prejudging the project and the federal environmental review process, the NDP have sent a dangerous message to investors. The NDP are, in essence, saying future resource development should be determined by popular opinion – not scientific review. This begs the question, what other resource projects would they try to halt prior to diligent review processes?”

It is clear that the Federal Government (who are running the current EA) have pre-judged the process; is Mr. Rustad assuming the Feds can run a fair, scientific process despite the bias they have already expressed, the specific language in new Federal EA Act that provides political override of the scientific conclusion of the EA process, and the ongoing gutting of the very scientific jobs that would provide the understanding of the environmental impacts – yet (breath) – the Province under Dix can’t, where there is no legislated ability to subvert the Provincial process? Read the BC EA legislation, does that look like the aforementioned “public opinion” poll? Not at all.

Aren’t the Federal Government and the Government of Alberta saying that all resource development should be approved, regardless of the present or future environmental impacts? what does that say to resource industries hoping to set up shop in BC? Come, pollute our streams, as long as we get a few jobs or royalties as crumbs, not need to assess the cost-benefit!

Finally, could someone in the BC Liberals communication department, the people writing these speeches for Rustad and other announcements, look up what the expression “begging the question” means? Or is it being used ironically here, as he is rather begging the question (in the logical fallacy sense)…

If Rustad had bothered to read Adrian Dix’s actual statement, he might have taken the hint and actually read (or had his communications staff read) the cited parts of the BC Environmental Assessment Act and the changed Canadian Envrionmental Assessment Act before he commented on it. The “new” Federal Act is no longer independent, science-based, or accountable, and therefore no longer in the same spirit as the Federal Act that was part of the 2010 Environmental Assessment Equivalency Agreement (which brought he two acts into harmony). If BC wants to have a legitimate Environmental Assessment of the Enbridge pipeline, it will have to hold its own.

The approach outline by Dix is clear, and completely within the spirit and the letter of the Act while representing BCs interests before the interests of Enbridge, unlike the silly approach proffered so far by the BC Government. Rustad trots out BC’s strange “five minimum requirements” approach for any proposed “heavy oil” projects in BC (that term poorly defined, but clearly not including liquified natural gas or refined oil products) to receive “potential” provincial support, although not outright approval. If the remarkable glut of weasel words in the preamble is not enough to reassure you, just review what those 5 conditions are, the 5-headed hydra of Premier McSparkles’(tm) “principled” position:

1. Successful completion of the environmental review process. This “condition” is actually required by Federal Law, and no-one is expecting the pipeline to go forward without this approval – which raises (but doesn’t beg) the question of just what the hell the Premier thought we have been talking about for the last 2 years!?

2. World-leading marine oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems for B.C.’s coastline and ocean to manage and mitigate the risks and costs of heavy oil pipelines and shipments; A completely nonsensical and unmeasurable requirement. What does “World-Leading” mean? Does every aspect need to be better than everyone else’s? Or just a cumulative? Does she require an insurance scheme and on-board navigation systems more comprehensive than International Law? Would any tanker company agree to that? Why? Who will measure, if it was even measurable?

3. World-leading practices for land oil spill prevention, response and recovery systems to manage and mitigate the risks and costs of heavy oil pipelines; Again, completely unmeasurable. A standard that is not measurable is not standard at all (see the recent Auditor General’s report on the BC Environmental Assessment Office, and assuring conditions are attainable and measurable with rational metrics). Perhaps we can have a spill-response Olympics, to prove our systems are better than those in Azerbaijan and Zaire…

4. Legal requirements regarding Aboriginal and treaty rights are addressed, and First Nations are provided with the opportunities, information and resources necessary to participate in and benefit from a heavy-oil project; OH, Ok, we are making compliance with the CONSTITUTION a condition of approval? Wow, that’s bold. Why again is no-one taking this person seriously?

5. British Columbia receives a fair share of the fiscal and economic benefits of a proposed heavy oil project that reflects the level, degree and nature of the risk borne by the province, the environment and taxpayers. Translate: show me the money. Here is the heart of the “principled stand”. Act tough, hold out for more cash, a mob-style security shakedown.

The BCLiberal approach to the Enbridge Pipeline has been confused, self-contradictory, tone-deaf, a day late and a dollar short. It has lacked in both vision and in understanding of law, from Provincial and Federal EA statutes to the Constitution Act of 1982. It has been an embarrassment for the Premier, and she has, in turn, has been and embarrassment to the Province.In contrast, Adrian Dix has make a clear, definitive statement, citing the specific existing legislation he would invoke, and how he would invoke it. The BC Liberal response is to have some junior MLA ridicule him, avoiding any points of fact, or any specific flaw in his statement, just suggesting he might be “scary” to Enbridge.

Suddenly, the NDP are looking like a Government, the BCLiberals are looking like a desperate opposition.

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.

On Pipelines, Parks, and Rhetoric

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I could start this post apologizing for not writing more recently, but things are pretty crazy busy and… well.. most of my recent posts have been of the “haven’t written much lately” genre, so just read one of those if you come here for lame excuses.

I did stay up last night to see Stephen Harper talk to Peter Mansbridge. The take-away quote for me came when the Prime Minister suggested :

“But just because certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America, I don’t think that’s part of what our review process is all about.”

First off, for those interested in the he art of rhetoric, this is a textbook example of a “Strawman Fallacy”. This is when you re-phrase your opponent’s argument using a deliberately extreme caricature of it. You then argue not against your opponent’s actual position, but against the extreme caricature of your own creation. The name comes from the idea of building up an effigy of your opponent, but make it of straw so that it is easy for you to defeat.

Like most logically fallacies, it is pulled out when you cannot refute your opponents’ actual position. Really, the only way it works is if his opponent falls for it, and tries to defend the Strawman position without realizing that it is an exaggerated version of their position.

So, just to prove it is a crappy Strawman, I’m going to do exactly that.

The Northern Gateway Pipeline has benefits to BC, no doubt. According to the Astroturf organization the Northern Gateway Alliance , these benefits can be counted as 3000 short-term jobs, 500 long-term jobs, and $1.2Billion in tax revenue over 30 years (that is $40Million a year). That is pretty impressive.

However, compare that to the benefits Alberta receives from its National Parks. According to the Albera government, just Alberta’s Rocky Mountain National parks provide almost 20,000 fulltime jobs (40x that of the Northern Gateway), $1.14 Billion in annual revenue, and $398 Million in government revenue every year (more than 10x the Northern Gateway).

I’m with Steve! It’s a no-brainer. Lets us stop the Northern Gateway Pipeline and open the Northern Gateway National Park. Have you seen that part of the Province? it is spectacular! One Peter Jackson movie, and we’re in gravy!

Even if it only sees 10% of the visitors of Banff, we will still be way ahead economically, and we don’t have to worry about the long-term environmental impacts, the oil tankers, the GHG emissions, or anything. Best thing is that this is sustainable in the long run, and it wouldn’t require us slowing down on Bituminous Sands extraction at all, as there are already plenty of places to ship the stuff. Or maybe we can start refining it domestically and see some value added, but I am digressing here…

OF course, I am being facetious (a little bit), but really, this just puts the lie to the biggest logical fallacy that is made by Stephen Harper here, and by his entire “you are with us, or you are radicals” crowd: the false dichotomy they create between environmental protection and economic development. I’m not just saying that both can exist simultaneously, I’m saying that they had better exist simultaneously.

Otherwise, what future do we have?

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.

Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout Review – Part 5. On the topic of B.S.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.
As previously noted, Dr. Patrick “Sensible Environmentalist” Moore is a big fan of the Alberta Bituminous Sands. I call them that, because as Dr. Moore points out in his book, “Tar Sands” is a misnomer, as they don’t actually contain “tar” in the technical sense of the word. If we follow his footnote reference (I kid you not, Wikipedia is the actual reference he uses), we discover that they don’t contain oil either, in the technical sense of the word, so “Oil Sands” is an equal misnomer. Therefore I will call them what they are: Bituminous Sands, or B.S. for short. 
You see, “tar” is a highly viscous liquid hydrocarbon mixture originally extracted from coal, but more typically now extracted from petroleum. “Oil” is a less viscous liquid hydrocarbon mixture originally extracted from whales, and now more commonly extracted from petroleum. Since we are in a definition mood, bitumen is a naturally-occurring amalgam of numerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, with high sulfur content and relatively high concentrations of various metals (such as chromium, lead, nickel, mercury) and some non-metals (such as arsenic and selenium), in reduced (and therefore more bioavailable and toxic) states due to the anoxic conditions in the bitumen, but maybe that is too much detail. Dr. Moore’s fandom of B.S. is no secret, but in his book, he really lays out his best argument for B.S. development. Even in a book full of muddled thinking and logical fallacies, this argument may stand above all for it’s sheer absurdity:

“To put things in perspective, consider when a gas station spills oil or gasoline from a leaky underground tank. The site is declared “toxic real estate ” and must be cleaned up, often at the cost of millions of dollars. The oil sands [sic] in Albetra are a massive area of toxic soils, and the companies that operate in the oil sands [sic] are removing oil [sic] from the soil, on a very grand scale, making a profit selling the oil [sic] as a transportation fuel” Page 256

Now, I am no expert. I only took post-graduate courses in sedimentology from SFU and Petroleum Geology from the University of Illinois, and spend a few years working in the remediation of hydrocarbon-impacted soils and groundwater throughout BC, so by all means defer to Dr. Moore’s Ph.D in Ecology when it comes to these matters, but I contend B.S. extraction has almost exactly nothing to do with the remediation of fuels and oils spilled from underground fuel tanks.

The reason we clean up after fuel tanks spill or leak into the ground is because automobile fuels (gasoline and diesel) contain a variety of monocyclic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, along with a variety of halogenated hydrocarbon compounds. Many of these compounds are soluable in water (meaning they enter groundwater and flow towards drinking water sources or fisheries habitat) and/or volatile (meaning they evaporate at common surface temperatures, and can therefore move through the soil into basements, buildings, or confined spaces). These are generally bad things, because many of these substances are either carcinogenic or toxic to people, plants, or animals. They also cause reactions in soil and groundwater than can result in the reduction of metals found in the soil, ruining groundwater quality, or potentially increasing the toxicity of the metals in groundwater. Add to this waste oils and antifreeze, octane boosters, anti-microbial preservatives, fuel system solvents that “keep your engine running clean!”, and your average gas station has a lot of nasty things that can accumulate in the soil and groundwater. 
It is important to note that the gasoline (and, to a lesser extent, diesel) you put in your car is not a natural substance that is extracted from B.S. like one might extract moonshine from a pile of sopping grain mash. Instead, the B.S. is subject to chemical washes, solvents, thermal and/or catalytic cracking and distillation. Various substances are then added to stabilize the resultant fuel, to stop it from freezing, pre-ignition, gelling, separating, or rotting when exposed to oxygen and/or water. Very few of these things would you want collecting as vapor in you basement, or entering your drinking water supply, or corroding the water or gas pipes in your front yard. Therefore, it is often a good idea to “clean up” after a leaky gasoline tank. More than a good idea, if you are in an urban area and/or the leak migrates to your neighbours property, it is the Law.
Even then, Dr. Moore might be interested to learn that, increasingly, the most logical and efficient way to deal with gas station contaminated sites is not to physically clean them up, but to use a “risk-based” approach. Here, all or some of the actual contamination is left in the ground, because the Investigator has determined that the contamination is stable, and there is no practical pathway to human or ecological harm. If (for example) the hydrocarbons are 15 metres down below relatively impermeable soils, are slow moving, and are 2 km from the nearest surface water or drinking water source, then they may not constitute a risk to anyone or anything if left in the ground to naturally decompose. Sometimes systems are installed to pump air down to the contaminants, to hasten that natural decomposition, and in pretty much every case, the person responsible for the contamination has to monitor it to make sure this “no risk” condition doesn’t change. The point is that it is safer to just leave that stuff down there than to dig it up, truck it around, and find a facility to either treat or dispose of it. 
Which brings us to B.S. extraction.
Contrary to popular belief, most of the B.S. is not sitting there on the ground waiting to be scooped up. If it was, then it is unlikely that there would be much to extract, as natural processes such as rainwater dilution and organic and non-organic decomposition would have caused it all to go away over the millions of years since the bitumen migrated into the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments in which it is trapped from the Paleozoic rocks which are it’s original source. The reason it is preserved in that younger “host rock” is that there is an overlying “cap” of impermeable sediments covering it. Except for a few small, local “seeps” where the bitumen actually comes to the surface, you either have to dig for it, or process it in the ground with heat or steam, and pump it to the surface. 
Since this impermeable surface cap is generally more than 50m thick, and since there is, therefore, no reasonable pathway to human health impacts or ecological health impacts if the B.S. we’re left where it was, most competent Contaminated Sites Professionals, when presented with an Athabaskan Bituminous Sands type scenario, would recommend leaving the contaminated soils in place, a limited annual monitoring program, and perhaps minor risk-mitigation measures such as burying the “seeps” under impermeable caps, or trap-and-treat at the seeps, and restricting the extraction of impacted groundwater as a drinking water source. It would be the most responsible, cost-effective, and lowest-impact approach.
Compare this to what is happening today at the B.S. This safely-tucked-away bitumen is being either scooped up (after removing and setting aside the protective overlying cap) and then treated with solvents and/or having hot water run through it, and is being sifted and sorted in extremely energy-intensive ways. The sand is then returned to the hole, but it is not “clean”. At a contaminated site, the sand used to fill an excavation must be tested to not itself contain contamination. As the extraction methods used at the B.S. are far from perfect, there is no way the sand byproduct would meet Contmainated Sites Regulations standards. 
The other wastes – mostly water, fine sediments, and residual solvents – are dumped into vast open-air settling ponds, where volatiles evaporate off, heavy metals collect on the sediments, and leakage into the surrounding ecosystem is a certainty. There is currently no long-range plan to manage these ponds.
Alternately, “in-situ” methods are used when the B.S. is too deep to economically dig out – if the protective impermeable cap keeping the B.S. from harming people and the environment is too thick to feasibly strip off. In this case, solvents, steam, hot water or even hot oil are pumped down to liquefy and volatalize the B.S., then pressure used to pump them through the ground to extraction wells. The same settling ponds for waste water and sediments are used, but this adds the bonus of mucking up the groundwater systems for large areas around the extraction zones. 
You can argue B.S. extraction is better or worse than conventional oil extraction, or risky deep sea drilling, but you cannot truthfully argue that it is the same thing as cleaning up a contaminated gas station site. 
I wish this terrible argument was anomaly in this book, but it isn’t. Dr. Moore’s Confession is so chock-full of bad thinking, logical fallacy, post-hoc rationalization, and straight-up bullshit, that it is hard to read without verbally responding to it while reading. My better half has asked me to stop reading it in her presence as my guffaws and invocations disturb our quiet time together. The best feature I have found about this book so far I that it is soft-covered and printed on pulpy paper, so it causes very little damage to anything more valuable than it when tossed in rage across the room.

Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout Part 4: Moore and Nukes

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I opened up my analogue version of the Walrus and on page 28, there is “Patrick Moore, Ph.D, Environmentalist and Greenpeace Co-Founder” staring back at me from a glossy full-page ad extolling the environmental responsibility of the Alberta tar sands. His most recent shill for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers got me thinking it has been a while since I picked up his book. My seemingly endless review continues.

After much of the history and basic philosophy is dispatched, Moore’s book becomes a rather disjointed discussion of various environmental topics, and his “sensible environmentalist” approach to these issues.

His discussion of Energy starts with a rather nonsensical statement:

Motion requires energy, so without energy, time would stand still. (pg. 204)

Which reminds me of the Calvin & Hobbes comic where Calvin thought time had stopped, but it turned out his watch battery had died, but I digress.

His rather lengthy dismissal of most sustainable energy sources can be summarized into a few points: they are untested, unreliable and would require huge government subsidies to compete with what we have.

In many ways these very expensive technologies [wind and solar energy] are destroying wealth as they drain public and private investment away from more affordable and reliable energy-generating systems. (pg. 221)

I’m not sure how putting money into sustainable infrastructure constitutes “destroying wealth”, in fact I’m not even sure what “destroying wealth” means. He mixes this with even sillier arguments: solar panels are made of aluminum, and that takes energy to produce! How sustainable is that?

This is mostly preamble to his long argument about the wonders of Nuclear Power. Before I get too deep into it, I need to point out that I am not a reflexively “anti-nuclear” environmentalist. I think nuclear energy probably has a role in responsible energy policy, if it can be done safely with appropriate accounting for its waste streams. Those are, admittedly, very big “if”s.

I remember my first experiences writing reports and proposals in my life as a Consultant working for a major engineering firm. After interpreting some data, I wrote something along the lines of “the source of pollutant X cannot be determined”. My boss chuckled when reviewing it, and said “in Engineering, we never tell the client something cannot be done. It can always be done. We just need to outline for them the costs related to doing it, and they can decide if it should be done.” I asked what we do if the request really is impossible, and he remarked something along the lines of “impossible just means the technology isn’t there yet. So we budget the cost of developing the required technology”. I came to learn this is how engineers think. Bless them, the sorry bastards they are.

But along those lines, I do believe nuclear energy can be made safe (it is already way safer than getting energy from oil or coal), it is a question of costs and developing the appropriate technology. At this point, we have to decide whether that is a good investment in our money, or if the alternatives make more sense for our investment dollars.

However, this is where Dr. Moore’s argument falls apart. There hasn’t been a new nuclear plant built in the United States in decades, but it isn’t due to no-nukes fear mongering or radiation risks or a lack of political desire as Dr. Moore suggests, but due to something much more banal: economics.

Simply put, Nuclear Plants are too expensive to buildand too expensive to maintain. Currently, there is no business model to produce nuclear power capacity. Without significant government subsidies, like the ones Moore decries for truly sustainable energy alternatives like wind, geothermal and solar, there would be no nuclear industry at all. The people holding nuclear plants back are not environmentalists, they are accountants.

You wouldn’t know this from reading Moore’s book. On page 217, he decries Germany for subsidizing solar energy production to the order of $3 Billion, then, 33 pages later and seemingly unaware of the irony, Moore is extolling President Obama for providing more than $50 Billion in subsidies to Nuclear power industries. I guess you can’t “destroy wealth” by nuking it.

This pales in comparison to his silly arguments around radiation risk. I have written extensively on the poor understanding in the popular media of radiation risk, mostly around the unfounded local concern about impacts of Fukushima. Moore did not have the benefit of writing after Fukushima, but his argument around radiation risk is so Homer Simpsonian in it’s idiocy (and remember, I basically agree with him on Nuclear energy), all I can do is quote it verbatim from page 240:

…fire can be used to Burn down a City and kill Thousands of people. Should we ban fire for cooking and heating? Car bombs are made with fertilizer, diesel oil, and a car. Should we ban those three rather useful things? Guns can be used for hunting and for defending one’s country or for committing genocide?

Unfortunately, his argument for salmon farming is no more nuanced.

Sievert and Becquerel, Oh Dear!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

So the Georgia Straight sort of tries to clarify things in this article, and not surprisingly, fail miserably.

The article starts out pointing out how confusing all the data is, then does nothing but muddify the fuzzification (as Dr. Foth used to say) by throwing out more random numbers and units lacking context, and never once mentioning what the units mean. They complain that Environment Canada’s data is confusing, but do nothing to provide more clarity. The impression they leave is that Health Canada, by releasing the radiation data from Fukushima, is actually involved in a conspiracy to cover it up.

I already talked about Becquerel, so you should realize that the exposure listed in the following quote is one millionth of the exposure you receive from your own bones:

” The level of iodine-131 in Sidney, B.C., rose to a high of 3.63 milliBecquerel per cubic metre in the air on March 20. That’s over 300 times higher than the background level of 0.01 milliBecquerel per cubic metre or less.”

Oh, and that “background” value? There is no natural background value for Iodine 131, it is not a naturally occurring element in any quantity (it is a product of uranium fission), and has a short half-life (8 days) in real-world terms, so any of it that is created naturally goes away really quick. What they are falsely calling “background” is actually the Method Detection Limit (“MDL”), or the smallest concentration that can be detected using the equipment available. Note that Cesium-137, later in the article, has the same “background” concentration.

It is interesting to note that the acceptable level of Radon in your home is 200 Becquerel per cubic metre. So your daily exposure in your home, where you breathe 8 hours a day 365 a year is not significant health concern at 50,000 times the level of that one-day spike in Sidney.

But what about Sievert? According to the article:

“It’s a shell game. MicroSieverts are quite a distance removed from the raw data. They’re blending in stuff from nature to make the data look innocuous,”

. This is one of the most ignorant anti-science statements I have read in printed media in a long time. Sieverts confuse this poor idiot, so he assumes someone is pulling the wool over his eyes. We are not too sure who, and what their nefarious plan is, but this writer is finding conspiracy every time someone uses a term he does not understand. Instead of trying to understand it, he assumes the worst. That is the difference between skepticism and cynicism.

It really isn’t that complicated, and if he did a little research, he would discover that the calculation of “effective dose” does the exact opposite of what he says: it combines together the cumulative impacts onto a single unit, allowing us to compare radiation apples to radiation oranges.

Not all radioactive substances are the same. When they decompose, they release various different types of radiation and/or particles. So in that sense, a counting of Becquerel (like I have been doing for the last two posts) tells us about the amount of atom decay, but does not tell us about the harm each decay may cause.

When an atom of Potassium-40 in your bones decays, it (most often) releases an electron at very high energy (<1.3meV), and a neutrino. The neutrino is harmless (or at least it is drowned out by the 60+ billion of them that pass through every square centimetre of your body every second you are alive on earth) but the electron at that energy level is called a beta particle, and is a form of ionizing radiation that can cause cellular damage. When Iodine-137 decays, it does a little two-step decay that results in a beta particle followed very shortly by a gamma ray. Uranium-238, in contrast, releases an entire helium nucleus, otherwise known as an alpha particle. Each of these particles pack a different “punch”, a they carry different abilities to interact with other materials.

The unit “Grey” is used to convert the varying doses delivered by a unit of each of these types of radiation into one convertible unit. It is a little more complicated than this, but essentially, because an alpha particle is bigger and interacts more strongly with other materials, it packs 20x the “dose” of a gamma ray or a beta particle (which pack about equal doses). So one unit of alpha radiation packs the punch of 20 units of gamma or 20 units of beta. It also stands to reason that these three types of radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) are differently harmful to health. Alpha particles are big and heavy, so they cannot penetrate your skin very far (only a few micrometres), and actually can only travel a few metres through the air before being absorbed by the atmosphere. Therefore, direct exposure to alpha radiation tends to cause things like radiation burns. Beta particles are smaller, with more energy, and can travel through the air pretty freely, but only penetrate several centimetres into your skin, causing deeper damage. Gamma rays can pass through most materials (although lead does diffuse them quite a bit) and since they can pass right through your body, tend to cause systemic “radiation sickness” if you are exposed to a lot of them.

To further complicate matters, some tissues in your body (especially your bone marrow and lymph nodes) are more severely impacted by radiation than other tissues (like the skin or the liver). A single Grey of exposure will impact your lymph nodes more than your skin, so factors that account for these differences need to also be calculated if we want to understand the health effects of radiation. As the ultimate impact on your body are cumulative from all of the tissues affected, these tissue-specific factors are added together, and the sum value used to calculate the “effective dose” a person receives from any given amount (Grey) of radiation.

Since we are comparing three different types of radiation and dozens of different tissues, the unit must be standardized. The “effective dose” is measured in the Si unit “Sievert”, which is defined as the amount of radiation that has the equivalent biological impact as one joule of gamma rays adsorbed by one kilogram of tissue. You can look at this data table to put that number into perspective. The average North American is exposed to about 3 milliSievert (mSv) every day from natural sources (or 0.003 Sv), and can receive from 0.004 to 0.83 mSv from a medical or dental x-ray.

A microSievert is 0.001 milliSievert. So the radiation “spikes” mentioned in the Georgia Straight article, from 0.43 to 0.48 microSievert, or 0.23 to 0.25 microSievert, or even 0.36 to 0.96 microSievert, are much less than a thousandth of our daily exposure from things like the uranium in our granite countertops to the radium adsorbed in our rain to the potassium in our bananas (and notably, not the radio waves from our cell phones). And less than a hundredth of the exposure we would receive from a single dental x-ray.

The article does sum up with one of those great meaningless quotes: “There is no safe level of radiation.” I would suggest anyone in BC concerned about their increased exposure to radiation caused by Fukushima should probably eat one less banana this year, and you will more than offset any impacts

Becquerels and Sieverts, Oh My!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

For some reason, the Georgia Straight keeps writing articles about the radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear plant causing us harm here in British Columbia, and the massive conspiracy involving several governments and hundreds of scientists, working to cover it up.

My cynicism makes me suspect the large number of Georgia Straight advertisers selling bogus “Cleansing” and “detoxifying” services may be influencing their editorial decisions. But what is the source of my skepticism? Perhaps it is their dishonest use of technical terms, without explaining what the terms mean.

Look at this story from last week’s edition. There are many scary statistics there: 0.69 Becquerel per Litre (Bq/l) of radiation in Vancouver rainwater, 8.18 Bq/l as an average in Calgary, 13 Bq/l as a spike in Burnaby! But no-where does it put that number into context. I guess it is expected anyone will think any Becquerel in our water is a Becquerel too much!

Part of the problem with radiation is that the science and the numbers are pretty technical and are often really big or really small, so we have a hard time wrapping out minds around them in a physical sense. It is the job of “journalist” to translate this information to the public, not to fear monger by throwing out terns you know your audience doesn’t understand. So let’s talk about Becquerels.

“Becquerel” is the “metric” measure, and it is easy to visualise: 1 Bq is one atom of radioactive material decaying (and therefore releasing one “unit” of radioactivity) per second. That is the smallest possible amount of radiation per second, so we usually think in terms of millions or billions of Bq, which sometimes makes the number cumbersome. The more common unit is the Curie (Ci), which is equal to 37 billion Bq (37,000,000,000Bq = 1 Ci).

So that is the technical meaning, but what do the numbers really mean in the real world? A good way to look at them is to think about the element potassium (K). The world is full of potassium, it is the “K” in NPK, the Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium ratings for fertilizers. However, a small proportion of it (about 0.012%) is a naturally radioactive isotope Potassium 40. You can’t easily separate the two without advanced lab equipment, so it is randomly mixed in with normal potassium and in all chemical terms, acts exactly like “normal” potassium. So of the ~150 grams of potassium in your bones, teeth, and cellular nuclei, about 0.018 grams is Potassium 40. Atoms are really small, so that that 0.018 grams of Potassium 40 represents about 280 quintillion atoms, that is 280,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

Radioactive atoms. In your bones. These are not “toxins” that you can cleanse yourself of, unless you cleanse yourself of all the potassium in your body, which would be very, very bad for your continued existence.

Potassium 40 has a half-life of about a billion years. So over a billion years, about half of those 280 quintillion atoms will decay, releasing a single unit of radiation each. 140 quintillion decays over 1 billion years equals about 4,400 decays per second. So the normal radiation level of a healthy human body from potassium alone is about 4,400Bq. Every second of your adult life you are exposed to 4,400 Bq of radiation from your own cells.

Notably, your body also contains about 13kg of Carbon, about 1partp er trillion of which is Carbon 14, resulting in another 3,700 Bq of exposure. You also get much smaller doses from the iodine, radium, and other trace radioactive substances in your body.

We also take in and excrete radioactive nuclides all day, and they exist (naturally) in our food, especially things like bananas that have lots of minerals (and are therefore good for you!). Banana contain enough potassium to provide about 130Bq per kilogram, and enough carbon for another 100bq.

It stands to reason that 1 kg of drinking water containing 1Bq or radiation is not going to change our environmental exposure to radiation. It is, in effect, much lower than our “Background” exposure.

This story draws some alarm over vanishingly small measurements of airborne radiation:

“The level of iodine-131 in Sidney, B.C., rose to a high of 3.63 millibecquerels per cubic metre in the air on March 20. That’s over 300 times higher than the background level of 0.01 millibecquerels per cubic metre or less.”

This also benefits from a bit of math. 3.6 mBq is 0.0036 Bq, per cubic metre of air. The average person breathes about 11,000L of air a day. That means a person breathing at Sidney would be exposed to 0.04 Bq of radiation per day. That is less than one ten-thousandth of the radiation you are exposed to from your own bones.

Now ask yourself, why does the Georgia Strait reporter never, in his multiple articles on the Fukushima incident, mention what a Becquerel is?

I would be remit to mention that Bequerel are not the entire story. The number you want to calculate when analysing environmental exposure to radiation is the Sievert: which is a measure of dose exposure. That is a relatively complicated measure to take, as it involves the medium delivering the radiation, and the media receiving it. I have already gone on way too long here, so Will not get into that in this post.

Now compare this to . this story in the Georgia Straight which jumps from Becquerel to Sieverts without putting either number in context.

But which is worse? The “Main Stream Media” have reported nothing, so people have no access to better information. Why can’t our media educate and inform?