Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[stealthylizard]

French Affair

So what steps have you taken to reduce your carbon footprint?  Stop driving yet, turn off the heat year round, got rid of your lighting, and rely on sunlight only?  I could go on and on here. 

Will you suffer the loss of a job due to government environmental legislation? 
My current job is in the oilfield, it is what I have done off and on since I was 18.  Are you ready to support a bill that lays off 2/3's of the work force in Alberta?  That is not an exaggeration of the employment consequences.  Directly or indirectly, most jobs in the recent years are tied to the booming economy of Alberta, which is mostly because of the rising oil prices, and the success of the Tar Sands.  I have not been spoon fed any messages from oil corporations.  The subject has not ever been brought up as a part of our daily safety meetings.

I do believe that climate change is happening, but is it all man, or is cyclical forces playing a large part?  I do not believe the "experts" 100%, nor do I believe the deniers at the same rate. 

David Suzuki and Al Gore make the matters worse while telling us to change, and not changing themselves.  As much as I dislike Bush, even he has done more in his personal home to reduce his greenhouse gas emissions.

 

[a_majoor]

Relax everyone; the grown ups in Ottawa are moving away from Kyoto and environmental absolutism and are joining (perhaps formally later) the Americans and some asian nations in voluntary reduction.

It worked quite well for the United States; our GHG emissions rose almost 30% after we signed Kyoto while theirs rose by about 16% in the same period without (gasp) Kyoto. The invisible hand works against pollution and GHG too!

 

[a78jumper]

If you thought that the distribution of $$$$ by the UN in the Iraq "Oil for Food" programs was rife with graft and corruption (made the Federal Fiberals Quebec Ad campaigns look like small change) watch and wait when we start send carbon credits aka cash to all these third world nations largely controlled by criminals and strongmen.

 

[Kirkhill]

Further to a_majoor's last:

If you needed proof that the Liberals have backed a losing horse on this one here's a recent editorial from the Globe and Mail.  "Toronto" doesn't want Kyoto under the current circumstances.

They reinforce the Tories and Don Drummond and undercut Dion and the Liberals.

Those Kyoto costs
From Thursday's Globe and Mail

April 19, 2007 at 5:42 PM EST

Even before Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions in 1998, pessimists warned that its ambitious reduction targets were unattainable. Nine years later, with emissions still rising, it is clear that any attempt to reach those targets now would jeopardize the nation's economic survival. TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond notes, in a look at opposition-backed legislation to force adherence to those targets, that the only emissions reduction of comparable scope took place as a side effect of Russia's economic collapse in the 1990s.

"The economic costs are not acceptable," he says in an analysis for the federal Environment Department obtained by The Globe and Mail's Steven Chase. "This is not an anti-environment statement or a reflection of any belief that economic concerns trump the environment. The environment will also be a loser if rash policies are implemented because the course will be abandoned long before the environmental objectives are achieved."

That unnerving conclusion completely undermines the opposition's bid to force Ottawa to slash emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels during the period from 2008 to 2012. Mr. Drummond says the shock from that attempt would be massive, because it would require a one-third reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions for each of the next five years. Worse, it is too late to meet those targets through a sophisticated blend of emissions trading and price increases for certain fuels.

It is difficult to believe that the opposition parties, which have pushed legislation through the House of Commons to force adherence, understand what they are doing. In amendments to another bill, they have endorsed a carbon tax of $20 a tonne for excess emissions. But if the government acceded to the opposition parties' demand, Mr. Drummond says, the only way to fulfill the targets would be through a carbon tax of roughly $195 a tonne. Industries would falter. Competitiveness would plummet. Exports would dwindle.

The opposition MPs, led by the Liberals, have let crass politics trump their policy judgment. The federal government cannot and should not take such drastic action to meet Kyoto goals.

None of this lets Ottawa off the hook. Global warming is real. The Tories have a duty to produce a substantive package of market-based policies that would foster real reductions, albeit at a slower pace. But the federal government cannot destroy Canada to save it.

 

[FrenchAffair]

So what steps have you taken to reduce your carbon footprint?  Stop driving yet, turn off the heat year round, got rid of your lighting, and rely on sunlight only?  I could go on and on here.

I own a hybrid car (Lexus GS), but most of the time around the city I take the bus or bike majority of the time, most of the heating in my house comes from electricity and most of the electricity that supplies my house comes from nuclear plants. Very eco-friendly.

All the appliances in my house use reduced power and or water, I use as little non-degradable materials as possible, we installed low-flow toilets and shower heads, don’t use the dryer any more and do everything we can practically to lower our effect on the environment. It has been this way for the vast majority of my life.

I’m not a hypocrite, I do the best I can to do as little harm to our environment as I can practically.

My current job is in the oilfield, it is what I have done off and on since I was 18.  Are you ready to support a bill that lays off 2/3's of the work force in Alberta?

Hopefully in 20 years we won’t have to rely on fossil fuels anymore anyways.

That is not an exaggeration of the employment consequences.  Directly or indirectly, most jobs in the recent years are tied to the booming economy of Alberta, which is mostly because of the rising oil prices, and the success of the Tar Sands.

So we shouldn’t enact moral policies towards the environment because of the economical implication? Obviously we can not do it all at once, but we need to scale it back and no matter what the current success Alberta is having currently will not last.

Would you have opposed the abolishment of slavery because of the negative impact on the economy? The south survived so will we.

 

[armyvern]

I’m not a hypocrite, I do the best I can to do as little harm to our environment as I can practically.

Oh of course you're not. You're only a twenty year old who has shown a distinct pattern since joining this site of choosing one "hot topic" to choose to post endlessly in until you think you've impressed your own ethical and moral ideals onto others. That's certainly not hypocritical.

Hopefully in 20 years we won’t have to rely on fossil fuels anymore anyways.

So we shouldn’t enact moral policies towards the environment because of the economical implication? Obviously we can not do it all at once, but we need to scale it back and no matter what the current success Alberta is having currently will not last.

Would you have opposed the abolishment of slavery because of the negative impact on the economy? The south survived so will we.

Such easy words to slip from one's mouth when it's not your own livelihood being discussed. That's pretty hypocritical. Don't turn this into a heart tug-fest with your emotional input exampling slavery. Apples & oranges. One involved the systemic abuse and enslavement of people, and one is nothing of the sort.

No thanks, FrenchAffair. I get the distinct impression from your posts and your history on this forum that no one will ever live up to the mighty high ethical & moral pedestal you've got yourself sitting on.

I'll place you on ignore now; I'm not about to compete with perfection. Get over yourself.

 

[FrenchAffair]

Such easy words to slip from one's mouth when it's not your own livelihood being discussed. That's pretty hypocritical. Don't turn this into a heart tug-fest with your emotional input exampling slavery. Apples & oranges. One involved the systemic abuse and enslavement of people, and one is nothing of the sort.

The current trends of global warming will cause far more human destruction than slavery did if the current conditions are maintains and the scientific models vastly agreed upon by the majority of the scientific community is correct.

How ever obviously the two are very different situations, but the fact of the point I was making does not need them to be comparable situations. Both are wrong and we can not (could not) justify doing nothing about it simply because doing something to change it would cause economic decline in certain areas of our economy.

Oh of course you're not. You're only a twenty year old who has shown a distinct pattern since joining this site of choosing one "hot topic" to choose to post endlessly in until you think you've impressed your own ethical and moral ideals onto others. That's certainly not hypocritical.

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it." - Joseph Joubert

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Well I guess if someone is really committed to denying the sky is blue no one can change their mind. No different with this argument.

I feel kind of sorry for the people who continue to deny the massive human effect on our environment. Not only are you the people who will do nothing to combat our footprint on this earth and do what they can to ensure that we do not experience the drastic effects of global warming we will face if we continue this path, but I feel sorry most of all that you are the people will suffer the most. The vast majority of the western world is committed to changing our effect on the environment, and those of us who deny it exists and refuse to change their ways will be the ones who will be on the losing end of the social, political and economic changes. 

You are absolutely pathetic....

You've now been given three opportunities to review data sets, and counter the scientific argument that blows a hole through Kyoto and the best you can come up with is try to belittle those that you have neither the resources nor intellectual faculties to debate effectively.

Either reply to the argument made, or go play in traffic.  Those are your only two choices....because trolling is not tolerated here.



Matthew. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

Now that the troll is gone I don’t mind rejoining this debate.

This (ecology, etc) is not my field but I’m not poorly educated and I think I have a reasonable grasp of bits of the issue.

There are, as Don Rumsfeld might say, some things we know:

1. Climate change is occurring. No argument.  It has been occurring, at varying rates, ever since there was a climate;

2. There are three major drivers to climate change –

a. The sun;

b. The earth; and

c. The  atmosphere.

The sun is, far and away, the most important driver over time – the sun’s direct energy received on the planet’s surface (land or water) (insolation) is the main driver of climate.  Equally, the sun’s energy actually creates the ionosphere, the topmost layer of the atmosphere.

The earth was the major driver of climate change for hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of years.  When volcanoes were the norm the gases and debris they spewed out created the atmosphere as we understand it and volcanic residue is still one of the main drivers of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

Mankind obviously has some impact on the atmosphere.  How much is not clear.  Relative to insolation and geophysical effects it is, probably, trivial.

----------

What we have, throughout Europe and America is a new children’s crusade, complete with modern day Stephens and Nicholases who have talked to David Suzuki and Al Gore, demigods, at least, in the ecological pantheon.  Like all children’s crusades this one is all about myth and magic and the triumph of belief over science.

Kyoto is nonsense.  I think I’m repeating myself when I say it was designed, by the EU, to try to trap America and Japan into doing the same sorts of damage to their economies which the European had to do to their own to clean up the socialist mess – the USSR’s policies were totally destructive to the ecology of its former colonies in eastern Europe.  The Europeans knew they had to divert resources to the environment; this would put their economies at a significant competitive disadvantage; they wanted to coerce the rest of the West to join them – to divert their economies towards ecological issue, too.  Canada (Jean Chrétien’s regime) signed Kyoto for base, cynical and dishonest reasons: to fan the flames of anti-Americanism.  The Liberals never believed Kyoto would be ratified by enough countries – they pinned their hopes on Russia because they knew that Canada could not, not without forcing a recession, meet the targets to which they agreed.  It was a disgraceful display of governance by a, generally, ‘bad’ government.

The fact that only the terminally stupid put any faith in Kyoto is neither here nor there.  This is, as I said, a children’s crusade and it will have to run its course until the stupid people leading it are out of the way.  In the meantime we can only hope that there are (barely) enough thinking Canadians to prevent the useful idiots (Dion, Duceppe, Layton, May, Suzuki, et al) from doing serious damage.

 

[vonGarvin]

My 10 year old is continually fed this drivel at school.  She said yesterday that she saw some movie. I asked her if it was "An inconvenient truth" with internet inventor  : Al Gore.  It wasn't. 
Anyway, when I tell her about the "Little Ice Age" and the "medieval warm period", she just looks confused.  I tell her that the climate has been constantly in flux.  I mention to her the farms in Greenland around the 10th Century, and I can tell that this is new information for her.
I tell her that the Sun is the prime factor in our climate.  I also let her know that pollution is not good, but the effects aren't as devestating as one is lead to believe (there's that "b" word again!)

*sigh*.  I may have to home school her to keep her both intelligent and not brainwashed...

 

[eerickso]

Speaking of scientific method........

I use this to explain my position to family and friends-then they look at me funny.

Go to your aquarium and turn the heater off.
If you have one of those CO2 test kits you will note the CO2 level will drop.
Now crank the heater way up and a day or so later the CO2 will pop up
as if by some man-made phenomenon.

That's right - CO2 FOLLOWS temperature, at least in my aquarium.
If you scale the thing up to the size of a tide pool or small lake - It still works.
If you do the same in a terrerrium, it still works.

Right, now try to prove that changing the atmospheric concentration
from 320ppm to 390ppm makes any difference at all.
I don't know how to do that.
Neither does anyone else.

Really? 

http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm

 

[Flip]

The fact that only the terminally stupid put any faith in Kyoto is neither here nor there.  This is, as I said, a children’s crusade and it will have to run its course until the stupid people leading it are out of the way.  In the meantime we can only hope that there are (barely) enough thinking Canadians to prevent the useful idiots (Dion, Duceppe, Layton, May, Suzuki, et al) from doing serious damage.

E.R. - I have to disagree, but only a bit.

These people are probably not stupid, if they were they would have no influence.
There's the danger.
I would characterize them as unwise, misguided, cynical, intellectually corrupt,
or just plain wrong.  Not stupid.

Most people have no real background in things technical.
They are simply not used to puzzling things out for themselves.

I still think of this as a Godless religion.
People love to be awed by and afraid of things they don't understand.
I think inventing false crises is in our nature.

My sister's "significant other" and I had a discussion that lasted about 40
seconds before I heard all about "mother earth".

An invented morality and philosophy was all that was presented.
My rather technical remarks just made peoples eyes glaze over,
or maybe that's just me. ;D

Personally, I found battling the troll amusing.
I wouldn't want do do it every day though.

 

[Flip]

eerickso,

Thanks I stand corrected - as simple experiments, go it's not too bad.
perhaps I'll try it.  If you accept my fish tank comment - I should accept this.

My reference was more in terms of the complex system of earth's atmosphere
and a far smaller difference in CO2 levels.

I still don't think the cause and effect can be proven in the more complex
system.( earth )

 

[eerickso]

Just to be clear, are you talking about a tank with lots of water? Warm water releases C02. So yes, I accept your results.

So with the increase of manmade CO2 and the CO2 released by the earth's water and the CO2 released by melting arctic tundra. We, as citizen of the earth, are conducting not only the world’s largest uncontrolled experiment, but also the world’s most dangerous experiment.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Just to be clear, are you talking about a tank with lots of water? Warm water releases C02. So yes, I accept your results.

So with the increase of manmade CO2 and the CO2 released by the earth's water and the CO2 released by melting arctic tundra. We, as citizen of the earth, are conducting not only the world’s largest uncontrolled experiment, but also the world’s most dangerous experiment.

Oh puppycock.

The earth has warmed and cooled, had dramatically higher and dramatically lower levels of CO2 during earth's history.  Most importantly, CO2 levels were not causal.  They trailed temperature increases by 800 years. 

In respect to your experiment, no one on the anti-Kyoto camp I know is contending that CO2 (and even worse methane) act as insulators.  Our argument is that the percentage of CO2 in our atmosphere is not significant enough to cause either a global warming or cooling trend.  Your experiment with 100% CO2 versus the real world where concentrations are measured in ppm's are not even in the same universe.  Further to that, the anti-Kyoto camp I know, is of the belief that since manmade CO2 only contributes < 5% of total CO2 emissions, than we our ability to affect global emissions including natural sources is limited to say the least.  Lastly, that Canada who produce only 3% of 5% of total emissions (0.15% of global emissions), Canada's impact in the grand scheme of things, even with draconian clawbacks is laughable and if you want to get some progress on the 5% manmade portion, we need to focus on China, India and the United States.

Lastly, please don't believe that those who are against Kyoto are anti-environment, because we're not.  In particular, I would be investing large sums of money ensuring that we eliminate to the best of our ability heavy metals from the air and our water, and I would put punitive import tariffs on countries that contribute to global increases in those heavy metals as they directly impact our citizens.  I also remain baffled that Canadians have come to accept beach closings due to ecoli from poorly treated sewage as the norm. 

Bottom Line:  I'm all for creating an environmental fund worth $1 billion+/annum dedicated to environmental projects from wind power, to municipal sewage system upgrades, to increased industrial audits for emitters of heavy metals and particulates.  What I will not back is sending hundreds of millions of dollars overseas to buy carbon credits based on science that just doesn't work (again, please refer to the surface temperature vs troposphere temperature study I've linked in previous posts) primarily from European countries who've overstated their initial emissions and thusly are selling credits they do not deserve, or to Russia who are one of the worst polluters on the planet.

Kyoto is one giant scam, period, end of sentence, full stop.


Matthew. 

 

[eerickso]

The earth has warmed and cooled, had dramatically higher and dramatically lower levels of CO2 during earth's history.  Most importantly, CO2 levels were not causal.  They trailed temperature increases by 800 years. 

When have C02 concentrations been higher?


Anyways, I don't talk about methane because concentrations are not even close to CO2!!!!
Do you want to talk about water vapour some more?
Take a look at this chart:

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

Because we now have all this lovely C02 in the air, we have an additonal 1.66 W/m^2 that does go back to outer space. How in the name of god is this insignificant??? Multiply this number by the surface area of the earth and you get a number that most people who work in the tars sands would sell their children for!!!

 

[a_majoor]

I found the "everymen" character in Micheal Chriton's "State of Fear" to be the most believable. The "well everyone knows" reaction to every statement "pro" global warming and the denial, confusion or beligerent attitude when confronted with contrary facts and information mirrors what I see whenever that topic comes up.

For more contrary facts and information we also have the "Al Gore vs Arithmetic" thread and "Science Fiction by Nicholas Stern"

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

erickso,

As per my previous frustrations with FrenchAffair, please respond to the study attached which breaks down why your science doesn't work, or go play elsewhere.

It's only 8 pages of which 1 is references to the data sets.

http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/216.pdf

I'll look forward to your explanation of those datasets.


Matthew. 

 

[a_majoor]

A preview of the Kyoto economy from the "London Fog"

http://thelondonfog.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-carbon-markets-work.html#comments

Monday, April 23, 2007
How carbon markets work
According to many politicians lining up behind the idea of greening the economy, cap-and-trade carbon markets are an ideal market-based solution to the problem of carbon emissions and, far from hindering the economy, promise economic opportunity instead by rewarding carbon efficiency with credits to sell as a sort of added value asset to a company's stock. Of course, by themselves markets would never in the first place have come up with the idea of trading something so intrinsically valueless as regulatory room for carbon outputs unless an artificial value had been forced on it through regulated scarcity, so calling it a market-based solution is a bit of corruption of idiom designed to confuse and mislead. Nevertheless, market actors will naturally respond to incentives even if they are artificial and arbitrary in making, and it is this characteristic of markets that political actors hope to steer to a desired effect. One must first suppose, of course, that the politicians who hope to be in charge of the carbon market regime will be somehow more immune to corruption in the allocation of carbon caps than they are in their use of language to promote it.

But it turns out in any case that, as a proposition, economic opportunity itself is of far more interest to politicians as an abstract quality relating to vote potential than it is to businesses acting in the market. Businesses, we find out, are far more interested in financial opportunities instead. So what's the quickest and easiest path to carbon efficiency and realize the financial opportunity of marketable space under an emissions cap? As this post in the National Review shows, the most efficient method is to just stop making things, or stop making things in countries that impose caps and move production to countries that don't.

    Now, in Galicia, a manufacturer announced that last year it earned more from selling credits than ceramics (reminding me of an email I once got in which a French pharma company announced that selling credits was where its future lies, not pharmaceuticals).

    Their statement was couched in terms of thanking the government for generously (that is, "over-") allocating ETS credits to them (for free, as industry lobbyists already demand of Congress), and noted that with the credit price having skyrocketed (before collapsing) they were able to reap a windfall by selling what the government had given them. They lamented that the price collapse, however, indicated this wasn't, er, sustainable.

    Buried in this however was the phrase that, taking that price spike into account, they had decided to "equalibriate" their operations so as to maximize profits with an ideal mix of selling allocations and using them by, well, using electricity to make stuff...which is to say they also went into the business of making nothing, dedicating more of their operations to the task, which is far less labor intensive. That is, they found it more profitable to partially shut down, to idle workers.

Political interventions in the market are designed to promote political objectives — it would be naive to suppose that they are actively calculated with genuine understanding or regard for the market at the same time. Even if an effectively unchecked exercise of control in any aspect of the market did not result in at least some corruption counter-productive to the scheme's intent — an unlikely prospect — its exterior and pre-eminent motives will result in perverse consequences for the market.

Paying people to make nothing is just the cost of doing business in the green economy. It's a sound scheme only as long as the money to pay for it is made from nothing as well. To be sure, there are financial opportunities at least in the green economy, but real economics will trudge on its implacable way without it.

How many companies will decide to cash in on "carbon credits" and how many will simply shut down and move to where they don't have a "carbon cap" (say India or China maybe?) will only be determined by the market.

 

[Kirkhill]

In a related vein - Alcan was given permission to build a dam to generate electricity to smelt aluminum from (I believe) imported bauxite in Kitimat, BC thereby employing people.
Now it can get rid of the cost of importing bauxite, operating a plant and employing people and just sell electricity and make much more money - saving the environment along the way.

Kitimat takes Alcan to court
The district of Kitimat appeared in B.C. Supreme Court recently in an attempt to stop Alcan from selling electricity generated at its Kemano power plant.

Kitimat Mayor Richard Wozney said Alcan has been cutting aluminum production in Kitimat so it can sell more power, while at the same time increasing production in Quebec. Smelting aluminum in Kitimat is extremely profitable but Alcan can make more money selling electricity. As a result, said Wozney, it's breaking its contract with the people of B.C.

http://www.electricityforum.com/news/jan04/kitimat.html

Money and water - both follow the path of least resistance.