Here is a good link to some facts about oil sands operations and their real impact on the environment.  Please read.  And avoid the over-hyped nonsense about the oil sands bringing doom to our world…

Recently, I’ve stumbled onto a few bad science columns and articles in major science publications, Discover and Scientific American.

To start, Lawrence Krauss, a respectable physicist, starts delving into ocean chemistry and climate when he brings forth the notion that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will decrease the pH of the ocean, making it acidic and preventing the formation of calcium carbonate shells in shelled animals and coral reefs.  The problem is, that isn’t good science.  That is taking a simple concept (i.e. dissolving CO2 in water makes carbonic acid) and applying it to the very large and very complex chemical system that is the ocean.  It has been shown that increasing acid species (like CO2) in the ocean cannot drive the pH very far because the CO2 in the water will react with minerals in the sea floor, forming salts – in fact, on page 17 of the same issue of Scientific American is a short article on storing CO2 by reacting it with the basalt underlying the ocean…   Ian Plimer has explained the ocean chemistry issue very clearly previously, showing the Dr. Krauss is misleading the public in his column.  Further, recent studies have shown that increasing CO2 in the oceans actually increases shell development in some species…  A good question for Dr. Krauss would be “How did the oceans stay alkaline during the Jurassic-Cretaceous period when atmospheric CO2 levels were 5 times the current value?”

In Discover, they have interviews with Judith Curry and Michael Mann about the impact and importance of ClimateGate.  Judith Curry makes a very eye-opening statement to a question:

Q. Are you saying that the scientific community, through the IPCC, is asking the world to restructure its entire mode of producing and consuming energy and yet hasn’t done a scientific uncertainty analysis?

A. Yes.

Egads – why the hell should we act if we don’t know whether the uncertainty overwhelms the supposed effect?

Michael Mann tells us:

We’ve reached a point now … where we’ve got climate scientists, who understand the physics of climate and how that translates to uncertainties, working hand in hand with economists who will run the projected impacts through a cost-benefit analysis.  The way it plays out is that the small probability of extremely bad things happening incurs huge potential costs, and you want to hedge against those potential catastrophic costs.  So when you taken uncertainty into account, it actually leads to the decision that we should taken action more quickly.

Of course, Dr. Mann makes us rely on faith that (1) climate scientists really do understand the climate, and (2) that economists are hard scientists who can accurately predict the future.  Considering how well economists and their ilk did over the past 5 years, I would have to question that one…

And I won’t waste my time with Jeffrey Sachs monologue, which sounds like a desperate plea to act while at the same time avoiding any comment on the fact that the science is clearly unsettled.

I don’t know who funded this science, but it was described in the latest issue of Discover magazine:

The first published national study of injuries related to table saws reports that these devices account for about 31,500 injuries per year, 97% percent of the victims are male and most injuries are due to “contact with the blade of the saw”

Really – you don’t say….

OK, given that the evidence is now out on climate change, I am very disappointed that the Government of Canada insists on going along with the charade of Copenhagen by committing us, in a non-binding way, to a reduction of 17% in CO2 emissions from 2005 levels by 2020…

Let’s work out how much that is going to cost…  Since we didn’t reduce emissions from 2005 through 2009 (they went up, even with the reductions from economic contraction), we have to cut deeper now.  That means that to meet the goal, reductions must be of 1.75% every year starting in 2010.   The total reduction in emissions will need to be 744 Million tonnes.  From studies I’ve been involved with indicate carbon capture and storage will cost between $40 – 100 per tonne.  So this will cost at a minimum $30 Billion (today, inflation will drive this up).  The government’s own study in 2007 said that the price of CO2 (carbon tax or credit value) needed to change behaviour sufficiently to reduce emissions would be $195/tonne.  That pushes up the cost over the next 10 years to $145 Billion.  That’s $14.5 billion per year that will be REMOVED from the economy.  And that excludes any knock-on effects that reduce economic growth because investors would rather spend their money in countries that don’t waste money on things like this.  Or impose such regulations.   And it excludes the knock-on effects of the blackouts we are going to have because we can’t build enough nuclear plants in 10 years to counter-act the shutdown of all the coal-fired power plants we will have to shutdown to meet the goal.  An wind and solar aren’t going to replace the coal-fired because they aren’t reliable enough (wind) or don’t work well in the darkness that is a Canadian winter (solar).

Do you want to pay $15 Billion a year to make us “look kinda ok” on the world stage?  Or should we say no and stop chasing this non-existent problem?

I am fascinated by this news story from Toronto.

A group representing dozens of lawn care companies trying to bring charges against Ontario’s environment minister and senior bureaucrats over the province’s controversial pesticide ban is now calling for charges against 23 activists.

Group spokesman Jeffrey Lowes of MREP Communications said Wednesday that information has been laid for criminal charges against 23 individuals….

…The activists worked with the Ontario government to ban pesticides using alleged false and misleading information to undermine the industry, Lowes said.

The documents filed on Tuesday allege the activists knowingly presented false and misleading information about the health and environmental risks associated with pesticide products, knowingly misled the public, lawn care industry and government officials, and impeded access to Health Canada approved pesticide products through fraudulent means.

Hmmm.  I wonder if this has been happening in Calgary too?  I’ve written on this subject previously (here and here) – and while Calgary’s city council avoided such a ban (here), there are still forces at work trying to change that.

So, some climate scientists have published a study showing that the feared feedback loop whereby rising CO2 levels would raise temperatures which would raise CO2 levels, ad infinitum, is not as pronounced as previously believed or modeled.

It is interesting though that the scientists are very quick to discount their own research:

The authors warn, though, that their research will not reduce projections of future temperature rises.

Further, they say their concern about man-made climate change remains high.

Huh?  Why would that be?  Let’s look at another statement they make:

The report’s lead author, David Frank from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, told BBC News that many of the calculations for the IPCC assessment report did not include an integrated carbon cycle.

He said that if the results his paper were widely accepted, the overall effect on climate projections would be neutral.

“It might lead to a downward mean revision of those (climate) models which already include the carbon cycle, but an upward revision in those which do not include the carbon cycle.

“That’ll probably even itself out to signify no real change in the temperature projections overall,” he said.

Wait – so you are telling me that the climate models used by the IPCC don’t consider the carbon cycle?  But since we know there is a carbon cycle, isn’t ignoring it questionable?  Based on what Frank is saying, including the carbon cycle decreases the warming…  Unless of course you wanted to amplify the warming effect for reasons other than scientific inquiry…

Since the models should incorporate the carbon cycle, it should have a downward revision of projected temperatures. But that wouldn’t get you more research money from the IPCC supporting governments now would it?

And the same reason is likely behind their “concern” remaining high…  Concern for their grant money, not the climate itself.

The “uncertainty” behind global warming science that got its real start with the ClimateGate emails is getting legs as more and more “questionable” things start to pop up.  Here is the latest:

Glaciergate

The IPCC and it’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, are starting to take real heat, particularly in India and the UK for promoting the completely speculative idea that the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 (90% probability).  This was a complete failure to follow their own rules of only using peer-reviewed literature, since they got this from an interview with one of Pachauri’s TERI scientists, Hasnain, in New Scientist, via the World Wildlife Fund.  TERI is now facing serious questions for claiming as recently as 15 January 2010 in a request for funding that the Himalayan glaciers will soon be gone…  Even the lead author on the IPCC AR4 section is now distancing himself from this

Amazongate?

Similar to the aforementioned problem with Himalayan glaciers, it also appears that the IPCC relied on WWF and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as the primary source for their claim that the Amazon rainforest would dry up and disappear…

IPCC using non-peer reviewed primary sources?

The IPCC AR4 report draws heavily on publications by the World Wildlife Fund, which is most definitely NOT peer-reviewed science.

Cherry-picking weather stations…

The NASA GISS group that puts together the GHCN temperature measurement database appears to have been cherry-picking which weather stations they use, discarding those at high altitude or latitude.  This includes: using four stations for all of California, all of which are located near the beach; 35 stations in Canada, instead of the 600 that were used in the 1970s, and no stations in Bolivia on the odd basis that the Bolivians were late every month in submitting the data (couldn’t you go back an insert the missing data???).  The result is that temperatures far from the few weather stations are being interpolated from the limited dataset in use.  A NASA staffer is quoted as saying:

Schmidt also said a smaller sampling of weather stations in the Canadian Arctic wouldn’t have a significant impact on the data. He said any long-term temperature changes recorded at the high Arctic station at Eureka, would likely be “representative” of changes elsewhere in the region, even in a sub-Arctic city like Yellowknife.

“Temperature anomalies don’t vary that much from one (nearby) station to another,” he said. “You don’t need thousands of stations across Canada to know what the monthly anomalies are.”

This is like saying that temperature measurements in Edmonton, Alberta are a good guidance for Houston, Texas…  And why does Bolivia always seem so warm in the NASA databases…

Or just adjusting the data…

The NASA GISS group also appears to have scrambled around trying to cover up a change in how they handled data post 2000, by altering the previous data in the same way and then denying that it changes their results…  McIntyre has more on this one.

No basis for linking global warming and natural disasters:

The IPCC claimed in it’s 2007 AR4 document that “the world has suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s” and “One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”

The problem is that the “one study” wasn’t yet published, nor peer-reviewed, and when it was finally published in 2008, it contained this caveat:

We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.

Interesting.  So there isn’t any science behind this either.  h/t to Jonathon Leake at the Times.

It is also interesting that this same paper was the source for much of the doom and gloom in the Stern Report.   Interesting too that the UK government has been “editing” the Stern Report very recently to try to make some of the “false claims” disappear.  Too bad their math doesn’t add up.

I hope that the government in Ottawa is reading all of this…

OK, so I’ve crunched the numbers on the non-agreement made at Copenhagen, using data from the IEA on emissions.

In 2006, CO₂ emissions from the world were about 28.4 billion tonnes, of which about 51.5% were from the “developed world”.  This compares to about 21 billion tonnes in 1990, when 66% were from developed countries.

So the non-treaty drafted Copenhagen indicates a goal of reducing global emissions to 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, with developed nations cutting 80% by that date.  Meeting this goal requires:

• Developed nations must reduce emissions at a rate of just about 4% a year, every year, until 2050.
• Developing nations must reduce emissions at a rate of just about 1.5% a year, every year, until 2050.

Delay in reducing emissions immediately will result in much larger cuts being required later.   For instance, if business as usual continues until just 2015, then the cuts would need to be 4.8% and 2.7% a year from then on.  It’s like compounding interest.  Time is the big factor.

When the developing nations spoke at Copenhagen (through the G77), they spoke of reducing emissions intensity.  China, India, others all spoke of reducing the emissions per unit of GDP, not gross reductions.  But the math doesn’t support them.  Even if the developed world cut emissions by 100%, the developing world will overtake global 1990 emissions by 2050 with only 1% growth in gross emissions.   And since we know that China, India and Brazil have emissions rising at rates well above 1%, this seems unlikely.

This is why China killed any agreement at Copenhagen and will do so at Mexico City in 2010.  They will refuse to reduce emissions at all, because of the negative impact on their economy.  Why?  Because reduced economic growth in China will result in political problems.

It is interesting to me that the dream of the socialist left (be they red or green) is being derailed by the largest communist nation – in the name of capitalism!

Jim Harris, former Green Party leaders and columnist in the Financial Post, actually makes some good points in today’s column.

He is correct that most thermal power plants have efficiencies in the 33% range, rejecting two-thirds of the energy in the fuel as waste heat.  Newer plants, like Capital Power’s Genesee 3 near Edmonton which raise supercritical steam have efficiencies higher than this, approaching 50%.   Combined cycle power plants using natural gas can reach efficiencies nearing 60%.  But some of the fuel energy must leave the plant as waste heat.  The second law of thermodynamics demands it.

What Jim is proposing is that we utilize this waste heat (simply put, this is energy available at temperatures below 150°C).  One option would be to route hot water (or some other fluid) from the power plant around our cities to heat homes.  This is done in some parts of the world, and would be an option in some places in Canada.  The power plants at Pickering, Darlington and Nanticoke are in the middle of urban areas.  But the coal fired power plants at Wabamun, AB are 50 kilometres from Edmonton.  And Bruce is nearly 200 km from Toronto.   Pumping hot water great distances is going to cost a lot of money, which consumers will have to pay for.  So this won’t be free.  And the raw materials to build these distribution networks are going to consume a lot of resources…  Running 6-8″ hot water lines to every house is a lot more metal than the 1″ natural gas lines or 1/4″ copper wires…  But show me how much it is going to cost me, the consumer, and I will consider it.

Jim Harris gives some credit to industries that are already doing this.  But he should give credit to the industry that has perhaps done this on the largest scale – the oil sands.  TransAlta’s Poplar Creek cogeneration plant at Suncor uses the waste heat from power generation to heat the water needed for oil sands extraction.  This displaces the burning of other fuel to heat this water.  They can claim an energy efficiency of over 90% for this reason, and on a 356 MW power plant.  So Jim – how come you didn’t point to that one?

Jim also makes some good points about a Smart Grid for power distribution.  The technology exists to do this today.  I want it.  I also want my power consumption charged based on an instantaneous power price so that consumers will have an incentive to reduce power consumption at peak hours.   And so that if I put a solar panel on my roof I can get credit back from the power company when I’m not using the power.  Of course, I will have to pay for this technology – but smart technology just keeps getting cheaper.  So let’s do this now!

In recent days, there have been statements made in Copenhagen and in the press regarding the so-called Climate Debt.  It has been said that the developed world (i.e. Europe, the US, Canada and Japan) owe a debt to the developing world for having emitted the majority of the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.  The developing world wants “reparations” for this to help them “green” their economies, plus they expect the developing world to make far deeper and more rapid cuts in emissions, as we are to blame for the climate crisis.

Now, as readers of my blog know, I am no believer in AGW.  But let us look at this question of who owes who what for a minute…

First of all, the developed world is essentially those nations and peoples who underwent the transition from tribalism and theocracy to enlightened rationalism.  Using reason and the power of human imagination and inventiveness, western civilization drove the industrial revolution, the agricultural revolution and the technological revolution of the last 250 years.

No other culture or society did this.  Without the advances made by the “enlightened” peoples of the west (including Japan in the last 100 years), the world would never have had a population as large as it is.  The world now grows enough food for nearly 6 billion people.  Never before have so many people had so much to eat.   Fritz Haber, the chemist who figured out how to synthesize ammonia and thus give us fertilizer, could only have arisen in an enlightened, rationalist society.  The tribal societies of Africa, the feudal society of China (until Deng Xiaopeng) and the theocracy of the Islamic nations would never have given rise to Dr. Haber.  Because they couldn’t allow someone to think for themselves and try something that hadn’t been done before without the authorization of the chieftains, emperors or mullahs.  And rarely does an autocrat see opportunity in change.

On another front, Newcomen and Watt developed and improved the steam engine in 18th century Britain because they were free to do so and had the rule of law to protect their inventions.  And they didn’t need permission to try.  This led to numerous advancements, through the internal combustion engines of Otto and Diesel, Parson’s steam turbine and beyond.

The development of the natural sciences in the modern era is almost entirely a western phenomenon.  Be it chemistry (Haber) or Physics (Einstein), the advances that allow the modern world to exist were developed because of freedom and reason.  And capitalism allowed these ideas to be turned into technology for the masses.  The advances of Einstein, Edison, Marconi, and others gave us electrical power, lights, radio, television, satellite communications and more!

The computers, mobiles phones, radios, television, electrical power, cars and trucks, large scale shipping, air travel, satellite communication, fertilizer, modern agricultural tools, water treatment, modern medicine, antibiotics and all technologies invented in the last 250 years and used around the world exist only because of western civilization and are products of the Enlightenment.

The world owes the west a great big thank you for the advances of the last two centuries.  If they would prefer the world Malthus forsaw, give back the technology.  But don’t ask me for money – we’ve given you more than enough instead.