The great cap-and-trade swindle

It was really only a matter of time before Kyoto morphed into an excuse for protectionism.

The closer the United States gets to adopting a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions, the more frightening it gets.

Not because the plan now under debate in the U. S. Congress would complicate the lives of energy producers, or impose new costs on consumers. Those drawbacks might be bearable if the system was truly designed to reduce emissions, and if the expense was reasonable. The alarm results from increasing evidence that emissions have become a secondary concern of a plan whose main purpose is to serve the partisan interests of the Democratic Party.

[...]

The Democrats' evident determination to use global warming to mask a transfer of wealth from one part of the country to another mirrors the ill-starred Green Shift proposed by former Liberal leader Stephane Dion, which began as a means of fighting emissions and ended up as an anti-poverty program financed by Alberta for the benefit of more Liberal-friendly parts of the country.

Barack Obama has his work cut out for him if he truly wants to avoid being called the Depression President.

Chinese carbon subsidies

While the developed countries propose and implement costly measures to reduce carbon emissions, China's seemingly insatiable appetite for carbon gets subsidized:

Soaring oil prices have not slowed China's consumption of oil as statistics show that China's apparent consumption of crude oil and refined oil products both hit record highs in the first quarter of the year.

According to statistics released Tuesday by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association (CPCIA), China's apparent consumption of oil products composed of gasoline, diesel and kerosene rose by 16.5 percent year on year to 52.73 million tonnes in the first three months, and crude oil, rose by 8 percent to 91.8 million tonnes.

[...]

State ceilings on prices of domestic oil products was the major reason contributing to China's surging oil consumption in the first quarter [emphasis added].

In the service of the oil industry

The standard criticism of Conservative climate change policy is that Harper would never do anything that would hurt the Alberta oil industry. Hope this shuts them up:

Oil sands face tough environmental rules

Mar 10, 2008 04:41 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA–The federal government is laying out new rules that would force new oil-sands plants to capture and store carbon and would ban the building of dirty, coal-fired power plants.

The bans would be effective as of 2012.

Hybrid cars: green snake oil

Prius owners, still think you're saving the planet now?

In a recent journal article, French researchers suggest that:

the misinformed craze for hybrid vehicles especially in the USA, and increasingly in Japan and Europe, and potentially in China, could represent a red light for more innovative technologies, such as viable fuel-cell cars that can use sustainably sourced fuels, such as hydrogen.

[...]

"There is a general convergence of strategies towards promoting hybrid vehicles as the mid-term solution to very low-emission and high-mileage vehicles," the researchers assert, "this is largely due to Toyota’s strategy of learning the technology, while building up its own ‘quasi-standard’, thanks to its high-quality and reliability reputation and its high market share on the North American market." They add that, "Such a convergence is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communication campaigns than on pure rationale scientific arguments and may result in the need for any manufacturer operating in the USA to have a hybrid electric vehicle in its model range in order to survive."

Patrick Moore: Thinking nuclear

I saw Patrick Moore speak a number of years ago. At the time, I was very impressed with his practical perspective on key environmental issues. However, his conversion from a hardcore, old-style environmentalist to someone willing to work with business to achieve real environmental progress has been hard for many of his former colleagues to accept, which is probably as good a recommendation he can get.

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from a from a recent interview with CNET:

As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake. We were totally focused on the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. Nuclear testing was what Greenpeace started on and we were peaceniks, and I think it's fair to say that the antinuclear-energy movement to some extent was formed out of the peace movement.

[...]

How people manage to perceive that nuclear is dangerous when no one has ever been hurt by it is hard for me to understand, but there it is. It's a scared thing and it's like many of the campaigns today that are based on scaring people about something invisible. In this case, radiation. In agriculture, it's invisible pesticide residues. In climate, it's invisible carbon dioxide. In genetic engineering, it's invisible genes. Actually, a majority of the what are being called environmental campaigns these days are basically scare campaigns based on people not being able to see what it is that they are supposed to be afraid of. You can make up all kinds of stories about things people can't see.

No need to make winter tires mandatory in Ontario

Anyone who has ever driven in the snow knows that winter tires are a good idea. All-season radials just don't cut it in the snowy regions of the country, particularly if they have some mileage on them.

When I lived in Montreal, I had snow tires. Montreal gets a lot of snow. It was stupid not to put winter tires on your car. Hence, Quebec's recent move to make winter tires mandatory is largely redundant. Most people use them. Those that don't get into more accidents.

In published reports, the head of a Quebec task force on road safety, Jean-Marie de Koninck, pointed to statistics showing snow tires help save lives.

"There's about 10% of the people right now that don't have winter tires on and they're involved in 38% of the accidents on the road in the winter," de Koninck said before Christmas.

The simple solution is for insurers to charge lower premiums to drivers who put snow tires on their cars than to drivers who do not. Quebec's system of no-fault insurance is probably behind its move to preempt a market solution to the problem since the driver who is responsible for an accident does not bear the full cost of the damage he causes. As a result, his future insurance premiums will reflect only the damage done to his own car.

Which brings us to Dalton McGuinty.

Ontario may follow the lead of its provincial neighbour and make winter snow tires madatory for winter driving.

[...]

Premier Dalton McGuinty has said he will consider making it a law in Ontario and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino has already said he is behind the idea.

Have you seen car insurance premiums in this province? Get into one at-fault accident and your premiums will skyrocket. What better incentive is there to put snow tires on your car than that? That is, if you really need them at all.

Here in Toronto, we don't get a lot of snow. What we do get tends to melt quickly, aided by prodigious amounts of salt.

Do the math. If you only drive in southern Ontario and avoid driving the two or three times a season when we might get a meaningful amount of snow, it makes little economic sense to spend hundreds of dollars on snow tires. Moreover, cars with snow tires are considerably less fuel efficient. If you drive on snow-free roads the rest of the time, you will be burning extra gas.

That doesn't sound like the environmentally correct thing to do. And if the climate change lobby is to be believed, it will only hasten the rise in average temperatures in Ontario.

With winter in Ontario supposedly on the endangered list, why would McGuinty even consider making winter tires mandatory in Ontario? One can only conclude that if Dalton does go ahead with this, he doesn't believe his own hype about global warming.

Global warming – bring it on

David Warren offers his observations on the benefits of global warming:

As I’ve written before, the solar cycle appears to be reaching the end of its manic phase, and we should not be surprised by the onset of rather crisp global cooling over the coming decades. But even supposing the warming trend were to continue geometrically, in obedience to doomsday rhetoric, why on earth would a Canadian Conservative be alarmed?

For IF this were true, it would be Canada's lucky day. We should be gloating! The world will be starving, while we are farming the Hudson Bay lowlands. The world will be parched, while we are guzzling the fresh glacial run-off. Bring on the sun!

Moreover, a quick atlas check persuades me that there is a fairly close demographic relation, both in Canada and USA, between height above sea level and the propensity to vote gliberal (i.e. Liberal and NDP, or Democrat). Such that, a sea level rise of just 50 feet would give us a Conservative majority up here, and put the Republicans back in charge of Congress down there, while guaranteeing that neither Hillary nor Chelsea Clinton ever becomes President. (The submergence of Prince Edward Island alone would cost our Liberals four seats.)

Anyone for some beach-front property on James Bay?

Kyoto and only Kyoto

I should know better than to try to engage Liberals in an honest debate about climate change, particularly young Liberals. The ultimate futility of debating with Stéphane Dion's young kool-aid drinkers is amply demonstrated in the exchange below on YouTube.

BalancedApproach (1 week ago) marked as spam

Ha ha ha! A tax credit on life preservers! Typical idiotic conservative thinking. Genius! The Young Liberals really hit the nail on the head. What a sharp crew. Awesome commercial. Well done.

comfyfur (4 days ago) marked as spam

Ha ha ha! One tonne challenge! Spend a bundle on advertising and wait for people to voluntarily cut carbon emissions. Absolutely brilliant. Only problem is our GHG emissions went up 27%. The Liberals were never serious about climate change. In contrast, CPC policies might actually work. Will we hit Kyoto? Not a chance. It was never possible. But now, at least, we are putting in place policies that will lead to real cuts in GHG emissions in the coming years. The Liberals should be embarrassed.

BalancedApproach (4 days ago) marked as spam

Nice try. The reality is that the Liberal plans on the environment were very progressive, but were put in place in 2005. So while they were very progressive, the tories cut them before they were able to do much.
As for the tories, they have little place suggesting others should be embarassed. After all, this is the party led by a man who called Kyoto a socialist scam and who has continually denied the existence of climate change. He might as well deny that the sky is blue.

comfyfur (2 days ago) marked as spam

Progressive? WTF? Liberal climate change policies were all rhetoric. Moreover, Chretien sabotaged Kyoto by agreeing to hugely unrealistic targets given Canada's population growth, climate, large land mass and resource-based economy. Add to that the fact that they wasted a dozen years consulting to defer any substantive action. It is really not surprising that industry did nothing while waiting for the government to get its act together.

BalancedApproach (2 days ago) marked as spam

Nice try, comfyfur. There's just a little something standing in your way: the facts. Look up Kyoto sometime before you trot out unresearched Conservative rhetoric. The Kyoto protocol was ratified by Canada on December 17, 2002 and came into force in February 2005. So the Liberals couldn't have wasted 12 years as you claim. Heck, the protocol wasn't even in effect for 12 months before the Conservatives took office! Sorry to expose your argument using the dirty trick that is Historical fact.

comfyfur (2 days ago) marked as spam

BA, hardly a dirty trick. For someone purportedly "balanced," you seem to have chosen sides. The Liberals had loads of time to show their cards on climate change. They were talking of it well before Kyoto was signed. Negotiations began in 1997. Since that time, all we got was rhetoric and snoozefest consultations. I sat through enough of them. The important thing is that we now appear serious about taking action. It is the right thing to do, whatever your political stripe.

BalancedApproach (2 days ago) marked as spam

I am glad that you agree that my exposing your partisan lie for what it is using historical fact is not a dirty trick. My saying it was of course meant tongue-in-cheek. That said, the fact remains that the protocol was not signed until 2002 and didn't come into force until 2005. The Tories took power 11 months later and have yet to do anything. I agree it's time to something. Now tell Harper that.

comfyfur (2 days ago) marked as spam

Ah yes. Don't debate ideas. Call people liars, or bullies. With a bit of googling I found a Sierra Club report card on Liberal climate change policy. Here are the Liberals' grades:

1993 Grade: D,
1994 Grade: C+,
1995 Grade: D+,
1996 Grade: D-,
1997 Grade: F.

Climate change is not Kyoto. The Liberals have been pretending to deal with the issue for a long time.

BalancedApproach (2 days ago) marked as spam

What is about Conservatives that whenever they get called out on their inaction and their lies, the only thing they can say for themselves is "But the Liberals did/didn't do this!!!!". Guess what, the Cons are in government now and they have been for the majority of time Kyoto has been in place. Either do something substantive (which they haven't yet) or get out of office for someone who will (Dion).

comfyfur (2 days ago) marked as spam

It all comes down to following Kyoto, no matter that that is unattainable. There is no other course of action. Dion says he will do it nonetheless. All aboard Dion's green train. He will deliver us unto Kyoto.

Sorry.

The issue is a lot more complex than that.

BalancedApproach (1 day ago) marked as spam

The simple fact of the matter is that Kyoto is not unattainable. That's a fairy tale the Conservatives under the disgraceful "leadership" of Stepher "Der Fuhrer" Harper have been spinning. Sorry buddy, but that dog won't hunt. The facts and the science is against Harper, just as it was against him when he tried to deny climate change. It's time he stopped dragging his feet. Dion and his Liberals are willing to do the job. If Harper won't do it, he needs to step aside for some real leadership.

comfyfur (1 day ago) marked as spam

You are absolutely right BA. Technically, Kyoto is not unattainable. But no politician in his right mind would attempt it. At this point, you'd have to shut half the economy down to achieve it.

Now, if Chretien had committed to only an 8% increase in emissions, rather than a 6% reduction, to reflect Canada's unique circumstances, we might have had a chance. However, the folly of his commitment totally paralyzed the government. The Liberals didn't do the job. Is anyone really surprised?

BalancedApproach (22 hours ago) marked as spam

More Conservative fear mongering followed by blaming the Liberals. Once again, the fact remains, Harper is in government now. Either he puts up and does something or he shuts up and lets a real leader like Dion do the job. Green economics can be insanely profitable, especially if we get in the game early. As ususal Harper isn't interested in losing his big oil, cowtown base. Canada includes 9 other provinces and 3 territories though. Time he learned that.

comfyfur (12 hours ago) marked as spam

You simply cannot reduce the amount of heating oil you use by half overnight unless you are willing to freeze. Similarly, to improve your gas mileage, or to switch to a public transit alternative, requires you to invest in new, more efficient equipment. That takes time.

Unfortunately, we have lost precious time, under both the Liberals AND the Conservatives. Now, at least, it looks like most people are on side with the need to do something.

BalancedApproach (10 hours ago) marked as spam

The potential solutions to the problem are more various and more involved than simply reducing heating oil and improving gas mileage. It is through making use of this varied response that we can indeed reach Kyoto. While time may have been lost in the past, it is the Conservatives that continue waste time now and deny that Kyoto can be met at all. We cannot as a nation accept this defeatist attitude. Either they get on it or they let the Liberals do it. It just makes sense.

comfyfur (6 hours ago) marked as spam

Reducing GHG emissions is about changing the way we do everything: heating and cooling our homes, how we get to work, the food we eat, the products we consume.

For much of what we do, we have been locked in by previous choices. To evolve to a less-profligate, GHG lifestyle means reorganizing how we live and eventually replacing most of what we have now. You cannot snap your fingers or pass a law to change things overnight. You know that. Dion knows that. So get real.

BalancedApproach (5 hours ago) marked as spam

More basless attacks on Kyoto instead of action. Typical Tory. Kyoto has never been about trying to change over night. Nice try, though. It's about incremental, but meaningful change and looking toward green technologies. Closing your eyes won't make the problem go away. It's time to act. Stop blaming the Liberals. Stop dragging your feet. Stop saying it can't be done. Just DO it!

comfyfur (59 minutes ago) marked as spam

I give up BA. There is no need to attack Kyoto. It is already dead. But I do question how you have framed your argument about climate change to be Kyoto and only Kyoto. That is not moving anything forward. It is pointless rhetoric.

We missed the target. To hit it now (i.e., cut average GHG emissions by 2008-12 by more than 30%) is virtually impossible. It is simply delusional to think we could achieve that. We would not be any further ahead if the Liberals had stayed in power.

Good thing we have Kyoto

In recent years, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide—one of the most important greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—have been increasing at a rate of about 0.5 percent annually. Because anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions of carbon dioxide result primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy, energy use has emerged at the center of the climate change debate. World carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase steadily in the IEO2007 reference case, from 26.9 billion metric tons in 2004 to 33.9 billion metric tons in 2015 and 42.9 billion metric tons in 2030, an increase of 59 percent over the projection period [emphasis added].

From 2003 to 2004, carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries grew by almost 10 percent, largely because of a 17-percent increase in coal use in non-OECD Asia, while emissions from the OECD countries grew by less than 2 percent. The result of the large increase in non-OECD emissions was that 2004 marked the first time in history that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries exceeded those from the OECD countries—although by only about 8 million metric tons (Figure 7). Further, because the projected average annual increase in emissions from 2004 to 2030 in the non-OECD countries (2.6 percent) is more than three times the increase projected for the OECD countries (0.8 percent), carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries in 2030, at 26.2 billion metric tons, are projected to exceed those from the OECD countries by 57 percent.

From the U.S. EIA International Energy Outlook.

What to do about high oil prices

With those greedy oil companies gouging us at the pumps again, what are poor consumers to do?

While there is always the temptation to let the politicians "solve" the problem (after all, they did such a good job with the gun registry), perhaps we could fix things ourselves.

I don't know, maybe we could try:

1. driving less;
2. switching to smaller, fuel-efficient cars;
   
3. riding a bicycle;
4. taking public transit; and
   
5. moving closer to work.

If none of these ideas help, then let's just put all our pension savings into oil stocks.

Free offsets for your carbon-profligate lifestyle

Feeling guilty about your carbon-profligate lifestyle?

Thought not.

But if you do, there is no need to buy carbon offsets from yourself like Al Gore. Now you can get your carbon offsets for free at Free Carbon Offsets.

From their FAQ:

We at FreeCarbonOffsets.com feel strongly that carbon offsets should be available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. We will take the steps to see that the offsets that you acquire through us are properly channeled. We can do it because we care.

Q: What exactly will you do for my carbon offsets?

A: There are several steps we will take to do our part to help the environment, based on your level of participation:

• 1-100 offsets: We will try our hardest to turn off the water for an extra ten seconds while we brush our teeth.
  
  
• 101-1000 offsets: We will think about possibly using one less square of toilet paper every time we use the rest room. So you don't have to!
  
  
• 1001-10000 offsets: At this level, we will think about not going out to lunch for one day. Gas savings, plus savings on one less burger made that day!
  
  
• 10000+ offsets: Premium offsets. We will consider not taking a shower for a whole week!
  

h/t: Versus The Mob

The truth which upsets governments

Al Gore is sticking it to the man. At least that is what they teach our kids in school. With An Inconvenient Truth on the grade 7 science curriculum, I suppose a question on my daughter's science test like this is to be expected:

Dans « An Inconvenient Truth » quelle est la vérité qui dérange les gouvernements de la Terre ? / What is the truth which upsets the planet's governments in "An Inconvenient Truth" (my translation from the original French)?

Feeding it back to them, my daughter got full marks by answering:

Que c’est notre faute que la terre est pollué assez (trop de CO2) pour réchauffé notre habitat et causé des changements qui vont finir en catastrophe si ont n’agit pas. / That it is our fault the planet is polluted enough (too much CO2) to heat up our environment and cause changes which are going to end in catastrophe if we do not act (again my translation).

Her cynicism amazes me. (The last couple of evenings she actually asked me to put on Al Gore's movie to help her sleep.) Of course, she is only telling her teachers what they want to hear.

I could not imagine myself at her age responding in a similar fashion. But then, I don't recall my teachers attempting to manipulate my views like that when I was in elementary school. That is not to say they did not attempt to inculcate shared societal values in their students, but nothing so overtly political as Al Gore's "truth". Teachers once knew where to draw the line.

While I applaud my daughter for her ability to resist and adapt (thanks, in part, to the Al Gore vaccine), it concerns me that we are effectively conditioning our children to discount anything and everything that is said by anyone in a position of authority, whether their teachers or their parents. Is it any wonder we find ourselves in a relativist morass when our kid's values and beliefs are considered fair game to be manipulated and shaped to fit some teacher's agenda?

Everything is spin. Even science. Al Gore knows it. Our kids do too.

Vaccine for An Inconvenient Truth

I was a little concerned when I learned my 13-year old daughter recently viewed Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in her grade 7 science class. It seems the film was presented as fact, without a hint of doubt about its content. Somehow I'm not surprised.

Fortunately, my daughter had been vaccinated against the Goracle plague that is sweeping the country, having previously watched the Manbearpig episode of South Park.



I asked her what she thought about what Al Gore was saying about global warming. She replied, "I think he's exaggerating Dad."

Smart kid.

Saved by technology?

Claims that technology may provide the solution to climate change is subject to considerable ridicule. Yet without technology, the prospects of significantly reducing greenhouse gases and not killing the economy at the same time are remote. Fortunately, scientists and entrepreneurs are ignoring the naysayers and working to develop new and existing technologies to reduce the carbon imprint of our lifestyles.

For example, LEDs hold considerable promise in reducing future energy consumption:

Light-emitting diodes will become economically attractive as replacements for conventional lightbulbs in about two years, a shift that could pave the way for massive electricity conservation, according to a researcher.

Right now, consumers and businesses can buy a light-emitting diode, or LED, that provides about the same level of illumination as an energy-hogging conventional 60-watt lightbulb, Steven DenBaars, a professor of material science at the University of California Santa Barbara, said at the SEMI NanoForum, taking place here this week. A principal advantage of the LED: It lasts about 100,000 hours, far longer than the conventional filament bulb.

Unfortunately, the LEDs that can perform this task cost about $60, he said. (Prices vary on the Internet.) But prices have been declining by 50 percent a year, so two years from now the same LED should cost around $20.

"At $20 the payback in energy occurs in about a year," DenBaars said. The rapid return on investment will occur in places such as stores and warehouses, where the light is on through much of the day. A year after that, LEDs will be even more economical for more places as costs continue to decline.

Approximately 22 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States goes toward lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy

To make matters worse, traditional lightbulbs are incredibly inefficient. Only about 5 percent of the energy that goes into them turns into light. The majority gets dissipated as heat.

If 25 percent of the lightbulbs in the U.S. were converted to LEDs putting out 150 lumens per watt (higher than the commercial standard now), the U.S. as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs, cumulatively, by 2025, said DenBaars, and it would alleviate the need to build 133 new coal-burning power stations.

In a similar vein, Amory Lovins has argued that by lightweighting our automobiles and switching to biofuels to run them, we could cut our oil consumption for automobile transportation to zero by 2040.

Closer to home, residential and commercial developers are working with firms such as Clean Energy Developments to tap growing consumer demand for clean energy systems. Technologies such as geothermal exchange can reduce a property's heating and cooling costs to a small fraction of traditional methods.

Taken singly, the impact of any of these methods alone is minimal. But cumulatively, it adds up.

Many promising technologies such as carbon sequestration in oil and gas, afforestation, and biomass-based energy are also being pursued. Our cause is certainly not hopeless, whether it is to reduce carbon or to wean ourselves from Middle-East oil. Ten years from now, we may even consider Kyoto to have been excessively unambitious. It won't happen overnight, but given sufficient time, the problems are not insurmountable. Scepticism about human ingenuity is understandable, but we may yet be saved by technology.