Please find below the link to the video documentary you may have heard about from the UK entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Be prepared to have your assumptions about global warming seriously rocked by this documentary. I was told it was just some piece of reactionary propaganda, but guess what? It's a very serious and convincing piece of journalism and a welcome antidote to Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth. This should be mandatory viewing for anyone who cares to voice an opinion on the global warming topic as it debunks a lot of myths and offers a compelling explanation of the role of solar wind, cosmic rays and water vapor in the atmosphere. I was especially struck by the detailed evidence that a rise in CO2 follows (not leads) natural warming trends going back millenia. I was also struck by the "case closed" science that a slightly warmer earth will see fewer, less violent storms, not the opposite claimed by proponents of the anthropgenic warming theory.

I really enjoyed it and hope you do, too. Watch it and make up your own mind!

Here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, it’s pretty big news, isn’t it? Canada’s Conservative federal government has announced a plan to fight climate change. In case you missed our news item about this, I’ve reproduced it at the end of this post (scroll down).

The gist is that, via a number of measures, Canada’s overall greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., consumers and industry) must be reduced by 20 per cent by 2020; the government expects industry alone to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 18 per cent by 2010 and 26 per cent by 2015.

It’s interesting that yet again (ironically) a Conservative government is introducing big environmental programs (remember Brian Mulroney’s Green Plan?), whereas people normally think of the Liberals and NDP as the “greens” (not to mention the national Green Party led by Elizabeth May).

I expect I’ll comment on this in more detail in the next edition of the printed magazine, but I thought I’d share at least one thought right away.

Almost in tandem with this announcement, Ontario has announced phase-out of incandescent light bulbs. To quote from the news item:

“The Ontario government has already announced a phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, to be replaced by compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) by 2012. The government believes replacing all 87 million incandescent bulbs in Ontario households with CFLs will save six million megawatt hours annually -- enough to power 600,000 homes.”

When this was announced, Terence Corcoran (with whom I often agree) wrote an editorial that appeared on the front page of the National Post, panning the whole thing and describing it as yet another example of the nanny state meddling in the economy, no doubt to trigger perverse consequences. (For instance, he stated that people would likely hoard their incandescent bulbs because of the more please amber light, and this would affect prices, and the whole thing is really a subsidy to the Home Depot-style box stores, etc.)

On a certain level I agree with Corcoran on this – there will no doubt be some hoarding and CFLs are more expensive (initially) and so on. But even though I remain skeptical that human activity is directly warming the climate (I think increased energy from the Sun has a lot to do with it), I feel that at some point government has to set the pace for broad societal change. The juggernaut of consumer society and its enormous ecological footprint needs to chart a new course, and ocean liners take a long time to turn around, even when you suddenly turn the wheel hard about.

It’s not that I think we need to live like monks. I’m just powerfully aware of how wasteful we are in terms of energy and consumption of non-renewable fuels. I don’t even need the argument that the Earth is heating up to agree that some bold changes must occur.

The reason Ontario’s fluorescent bulb initiative resonated with me, and is in fact emblematic for me of the whole issue, is due to a couple of trips I’ve made to Europe in recent years. Visits to France, England and Finland made a profound impression on me.

The trips included visits to major cities (e.g., London, Helsinki, Paris) but also smaller cities, towns and villages. I was struck by the consistency between both the cities and villages in regard to energy efficiency and, in general, a more enlightened way of doing things.

Coming from me, this is no small statement. I am not one of those people who automatically thinks everything the Europeans do is automatically better than our way. I know people like that and their comments often make me cringe. But there was just no escaping the fact that the Europeans are already where Canada aims to be in 2020. High fuel prices and dollops of common sense caused Europeans to move ahead with energy conservation and environmental preservation dramatically in the past several decades., and the results are impressive, not just on the macro level, but in many small ways you notice traveling around.

I don’t want to write an epic novel here, so here is a short list of things I noticed in my travels, all of which could be implemented in North America with terrific results. In other words, these are changes we could make that would improve our lives, not cause us to live in some kind of impoverishment.

1. Trains: The train systems in Europe are simply incredible. Both in terms of the train systems connecting major centres, and also the trains that connect smaller rural areas to one another, and the larger centres. You could argue that the population density in Europe makes this kind of thing more viable, but the lack of numerous train routes in Canada is a very sad comment. For instance, I live in Collingwood, Ontario and there’s no train connecting my town to anything. If I want to get to Toronto, I can drive to Barrie and get on the Go Transit system, but guess what? There’s no train there, either. I have to catch a Go bus and then switch to a train down in Bradford. It’s just such a joke. And I really notice this when I want to send one of my young kids to visit their grandparents in the city. They’d have to change so many buses and trains that the lack of security and complexity of it all makes it unthinkable – I end up just driving them to and fro. But if you go to London and visit ANY of the MANY large train stations, you’ll get a glimpse into the (preferable) future and see what a travesty the absence of such infrastructure is in Canada (and the United States).

2. Public transit: As with trains, the quality of public transit is far superior in Europe than here. I was especially struck in Lyon, France, where the ancient city and its beautiful old buildings coexist with a network of uber-modern sleek streetcars and subway trains. These things look very futuristic, yet its not the future to them – it has already arrived. These are not the rattling, noisy buses and streetcars of most Canadian cities. They’re quiet (almost silent) crafts that weave their way between sidewalk and street like enormous strange insects.

3. Bicycles: The fact that most European cities are pedestrian friendly and have bicycle lanes (esp. places like Amsterdam) is not news. But I noticed that some cities have a really innovative concept that I think would work here. When you get off the train, there are public bikes locked to special poles. The bikes are painted a distinctive color. You put a coin or token in a slot in the special pole and unlock the bike, then ride it to your destination. These special bike poles are all over the place, so you just lock it up when you arrive at your destination. It’s incredible that entrepreneurs haven’t established this kind of system in every Canadian city.

4. Density: There’s less urban sprawl in Europe, and it’s no accident. Sprawl is not subsidized there as it is here. Many people live in apartments above shops. They live, work and play in the same areas, whereas in North America many people live in one low-density area, drive to work in another area (downtown in a high-rise or to some non-descript commercial area) and shop in another part of town (often a “shopping centre” that is, in fact, not at the “centre” of anything, but on the edge of town). The saddest example is the so-called “community centre” which is usually an ugly concrete building that’s not in the centre of town, which houses swimming pools and sports halls, but isn’t really a lively centre of urban life. These stand in stark contrast to the lovely open plazas in European cities (think: Italy) with statues and fountains in the middle, and coffee shops and bistros all around the perimeter. What impoverished lives we live here! Here’s a suggestion: if you’re an urban planner, jump on a plane and go to Lyon with a camera and a notebook. Observe everything they’ve done there and copy it over here, please! A practice you’ll notice in European cities is that a lot of dense apartment complexes (with shops on the main floor) are built directly above subway stations. This encourages a close integration of living, shopping and use of public transit – what a contrast to the pathetic empty buses that cruise around suburban neighborhoods here.

5. Hot water: Because many of the homes in Europe were built before the era of hot water heaters and central plumbing, often conveniences like hot water had to be retrofitted. This has led to the practice of installing small electric heaters inside walls that serve individual shower heads and bath faucets. The beauty of this is that rather than pay to keep a huge tank filled with super-hot water (99 per cent of the time sitting unused) the water is heated at the point of use. Doesn’t that make a lot more sense? I think a combination of this kind of system with “smart metering” would boost energy efficiency in most homes.

6. Light bulbs: The thing that struck me most in my trip to Finland was the ubiquity of compact fluorescent bulbs. My host took me all over the country and I walked through many different kinds of buildings. I stayed at a spa resort. I visited commercial buildings, municipal buildings, private homes and apartments, even a golf course. I don’t think I saw an incandescent bulb even once! I never, and I do mean NEVER, walked into an empty room that had lights on. Even in the golf club, when you went downstairs to the change room the lights in the hallway were off, as well as the lights in the change room and washroom. These rooms were equipped with luminous wall switches, and/or motion detectors that turned on the lights when you entered the room. Most appeared to be on timers, so when you left, the lights went out after a little while. It just made so much sense. After a few days of this it was difficult to return to our energy wasting country where lights are on all the time and people are so sloppy in their habits. I kept thinking, “We are just pigs, we really are.” I still think that, at least on the energy waste front.

7. Cars: Not only are automobiles smaller in Europe (for the most part) but they are energy efficient. What you encounter all over the place is diesel. Not smoke-belching diesel, like you see with transport trucks here, but clean diesel. You see a lot of diesel Volkswagens, but also other brands. My host in Finland drove a diesel Jaguar. I don’t recall him ever filling up the tank the entire time I was there. I recall him saying that on a tank of diesel he can drive about 1,000 kilometres on the highway, and 700 to 800 kms in the city. Now here’s the thing that kills me: the same companies that produce these cars in Europe are cross-owned by the Big Three car companies in North America. In other words, they do one thing over there, and another here. I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for the Chryslers and Fords of the world, and their bleeding red ink. Though I would feel for the workers, I wouldn’t care one bit if they went bankrupt tomorrow. Why? Because they should have introduced energy efficient cars to the market decades ago, like the diesel cars you see all over Europe. (It’s difficult to find any at all here.) These companies deserve to be replaced by the smart imports that are eating their lunch. Do yourself a favor and go see (or rent) the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in years – really great!

8. Nuclear power: One of things I like about France is that they understand the benefit of nuclear power and have never succumbed to the fear-mongering about Three Mile Island and so on. In his book “The Revenge of Gaia,” environmentalist James Lovelock makes the most convincing and passionate argument on behalf of nuclear power imaginable. I won’t try to do the same here – just buy the book and read it. I swear you won’t be able to put it down, and you’ll think differently about nuclear power. No, I don’t think we should build them along the economic subsidy-ridden model of Ontario Hydro, but I think a competitive market with private sector involvement to build and operate nukes should be a big part of our energy strategy. I am more and more convinced that we should be building nukes in Alberta to generate power to melt the tar sands, and using the perfectly suited geologic structures underground in Saskatchewan to sequester carbon – but that’s a story for another day.

I could go on and on with this list, but I think I’ve made the point. I don’t think you have to be a global warming proponent to embrace the new direction toward which the federal government’s climate change plan is pointing us. There are many many significant changes our society should be making that will boost our environmental performance and sustainability, and also create more of a sense of community. This is perhaps the greatest benefit; we need to move away from being a society of lonely people driving one person to a car between far-flung low-density locations, and embrace more of a high-density society with people walking, cycling, taking the train and, in general, interacting with one another.

Canada initiates climate change plan

Sensing that Canadians are deeply concerned about a potential global warming threat, and that inaction will cost them at the polls, Canada’s Conservative Stephen Harper government has announced a blueprint to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

The government plans to force industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 18 per cent by 2010 and 26 per cent by 2015.

The price of cars, home appliances, electricity and fuel are expected to rise, but may be offset by technological innovation and the adoption of energy-efficient systems. (The Ontario government has already announced a phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, to be replaced by compact fluorescent bulbs [CFLs] by 2012. The government believes replacing all 87 million incandescent bulbs in Ontario households with CFLs will save six million megawatt hours annually -- enough to power 600,000 homes.)

Environment Minister John Baird concedes the economy will take a hit of up to $8 billion annually in the “worst year” under the plan until 2020. But he claims that cleaner air will result in health-care savings of more than $6 billion annually, by 2015, courtesy of reduced risk of death and respiratory illness.

Industry’s 26 per cent reduction target by 2015 is expected to be met through reduced emissions, contributions to a technology fund, domestic emissions trading and a one-time credit for emissions reduction action between 1992 and 2006.

Highlights of the government plan include:

-- Short-term emission reduction target of 18 per cent for existing industry by 2010, based on 2006 emission levels.

-- A 26 per cent reduction target rate for industry by 2015.

-- Canada’s total emissions, including industry and other sources, reduced by 20 per cent by 2020.

-- Industry can meet targets through reducing emissions, contributing to a technology fund, through domestic emissions trading and one-time credit for emission reduction action between 1992 and 2006.

-- Plan predicts real but “manageable” price increases for cars, home appliances, electricity and fuel.

-- National emission caps by 2012 for air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter.

-- Plan predicts $6.4 billion in annual health benefits by 2015 from reduced risk of death and illness.

-- Mandatory fuel-efficiency standard for the auto industry (yet to be determined) to take effect beginning with 2011 model year.

-- Economy expected to a hit of $8 billion in “worst” year of plan.

For further commentary, see Editor's Blog at left side of the home page at www.hazmatmag.com or www.solidwastemag.com

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year I attended an industry event and chatted with a fellow who works for the federal government in Ottawa. He was very pleased to tell me how he enjoys reading the Toronto Star, tolerates the Globe & Mail and simply can't bring himself to read the National Post. This amused me, because I react to the papers in the opposite order (love the National Post and can't stand the Toronto Star).

I put this person's bias down to his being surrounded by think-alikes in government, who tend to be left-leaning. But I often remind myself that it's important to read things about which you assume you might disagree. This is intellectually rigorous and, besides, you often learn things you would never have discovered, reading material that already fits with your assumptions.

I assume a great many readers who are concerned about environmental issues might have a certain loathing not only for the National Post, but especially for the Financial Post section's editorial page ("Comment") edited by Terence Corcoran and Peter Foster. If you're one of those people, do yourself a huge favor and start reading that page every day -- even if you don't agree with the libertarian philisophy of the editors, because it contains what I consider the most vibrant journalism in Canada.

As a good example, consider the article that I just copied from today's paper about ethanol. Making ethanol from biomass derived from the leftovers of other agriculture (as occurs in Brazil) makes sense, but it makes no sense to grow corn in order to produce it. Fossil fuels are consumed in corn production, negating much of its benefit as "biofuel." As bad, the climate would benefit from many agricultural fields being returned to forest. But the article below goes further and neatly explains the perverse effect of rising corn prices (from ethanol production) not only raising the price of corn as a food, but other crops as well.

This is the sort of article you're missing if you don't read the Comment section of the Financial Post regularly. Enjoy.

Ethanol craze may starve the poor

C. FORD RUNGE AND BENJAMIN SENAUER
Foreign Affairs

Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for bothglobal poverty and food security.

Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn — which contains enoughcalories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for bothprocessed and staple foods around the world.

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. In March, 2007, corn futures rose to the highest level in 10 years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.

With the price of raw materials at such highs, the biofuel craze would place significant stress on other parts of the agricultural sector. In fact, it already does. In the United States, the growth of the biofuel industry has triggered increases not only in the prices of corn, oilseeds and other grains, but also in the prices of seemingly unrelated crops and products. The use of land to grow corn to feed the ethanol maw is reducing the acreage devoted to other crops. Food processors who use crops suchas peas and sweet corn have been forced to pay higher prices to keep their supplies secure — costs that will eventually be passed on to consumers. Rising feed prices are also hitting the livestock and poultry industries. According to Vernon Eidman, a professor emeritus of agribusiness management at the University of Minnesota, higher feed costs have caused returns to fall sharply, especially in the poultry and swine sectors. If returns continue to drop, production will decline, and the prices for chicken, turkey, pork, milk and eggs will rise. A number of Iowa’s pork producers could go out of business in the next few years as they are forced to compete with ethanol plants for corn supplies.

The International Food Policy Research Institute, in Washington, D.C., has produced sobering estimates of the potential global impact of the rising demand for biofuels. Given continued high oil prices, the rapid increase in global biofuel production will pushglobal corn prices up by 20% by 2010 and 41% by 2020. Wheat prices may rise 11% by 2010 and 30% by 2020.

The production of cassava-based ethanol may pose an especially grave threat to the food security of the world’s poor. Cassava, a tropical potato-like tuber also known as manioc, provides one-third of the caloric needs of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and is the primary staple for over 200 million of Africa’s poorest people. In many tropical countries, it is the food people turn to when they cannot afford anything else. It also serves as an important reserve when other crops fail because it can grow in poor soils and dry conditions and can be left in the ground to be harvested as needed.

Thanks to its high-starch content, cassava is also an excellent source of ethanol. As the technology for converting it to fuel improves, many countries — including China, Nigeria, and Thailand — are considering using more of the crop to that end. If peasant farmers in developing countries could become suppliers for the emerging industry, they would benefit from the increased income. But the history of industrial demand for agricultural crops in these countries suggests that large producers will be the main beneficiaries. The likely result of a boom in cassava-based ethanol production is that an increasing number of poor people will struggle even more to feed themselves.

Several studies by economists at the World Bank and elsewhere suggest that caloric consumption among the world’s poor declines by about half of 1% whenever the average prices of all major food staples increase by 1%. When one staple becomes more expensive, people try to replace it with a cheaper one, but if the prices of nearly all staples go up, they are left withno alternative.

The world’s poorest people already spend 50% to 80% of their total household income on food. For the many among them who are landless labourers or rural subsistence farmers, large increases in the prices of staple foods will mean malnutrition and hunger. Some of them will tumble over the edge of subsistence into outright starvation, and many more will die from a multitude of hunger-related diseases.

Excerpted from “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor” by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I posted a news item on our magazine website this week in advance of Earth Day (April 22) in which the Oceana group calls upon people to remember the world's oceans on Earth Day. You can read about the group's campaign at www.Oceana.org

We have an informal rule among the editors in the EcoLog Group, and that is since we are in the business-to-business (B2B) press, we avoid anything to do with the three Fs (fur, fins and feathers). It's not that we don't care about saving whales or baby seals or polar bears, it's just that there are other information venues and groups that focus on that. In my case, I indirectly help out the three Fs by promoting sustainability within modern industrial society, what I call "industrial ecology" (a term I sometimes expand to "municipal/industrial ecology").

But, seeing as this is an Earth Day item, I decided to break my own three Fs rule. If you read my earlier post about Lawrence Solomon's excellent article series The Deniers (about global warming skeptics) you'll gain some insight into why I posted the Oceana item instead of some of the others that always arrive in abundance just before Earth Day.

I'm very happy that concern about climate change has renewed interest in environmental issues, which are now top-of-mind for people, according to recent surveys and even a cursory review of newspaper headlines. You'd have to live in a cave not to notice that people are interested in this subject, and want to know what they can do to help. (Watch for Al Gore to jump into the U.S. presidential race -- he's in third place according to polls, and he isn't even running!)

The trouble not just that I'm concerned that much of the small amount of warming that appears to be underway may be from natural causes, such as increased output from the Sun, which goes through cycles. Rather, the point is we're so busy worrying about a possible warming of the atmosphere that our attention as a society is being drawn away from some hard core conservation issues about which there's far less scientific uncertainty. For me, the top conservation crisis of our time is the degradation of the marine environment, from pollution and especially over-fishing. I have read several articles and seen several TV and film documentaries recently that have raised my awareness about this and it causes me to lose sleep like no other issue.

Unless something drastic is done, within my lifetime I fully expect to witness the wholesale collapse of the earth's aquatic ecosystems (let's call them that, and not just "fisheries" which is so anthropocentric). It's well known that the coral reefs are bleaching. My guess is that it's in part from global warming but also a deadly combination of fishing, pollution and soil runoff from the islands and other terrain that has been deforested in many tropical areas. The reefs are being choked already and then along come fishermen with dynamite! Goodbye reef!

In the deep oceans we have a true "tragedy of the commons" underway. The tragedy of the commons is a term that describes what happens in any area that is a shared resource for which no one has a duty of care, or a property right. With no one really policing the oceans beyond the aribitrary offshore boundaries governments claim (and there's not much in the way of sustainable fishing closer to shore, either), it's actually in the short-term interest of fishermen to catch as many fish as quickly as possible, and thereby beat their competitors. Large factory ships catch and process/freeze the fish out in the ocean, out of sight and out of mind for everyone, including governments. The tragedy of the oceanic commons is illustrated by the terribly destructive techniques employed.

Do you know that an area of the ocean floor roughly the size of the United States is scraped bare every year by the most popular fishing technique, which involves dragging special nets on the bottom? This is a part of the world about which we know practically nothing. We know more about the surface of Mars than we know about our own ocean bottoms. Then there are the huge drift nets, which are often abandoned and simply float in the water for years, even decades, as huge pointless killing machines, entangling and strangling or suffocating hundreds of different species. Then there is long-lining, via which trawlers hook hundreds of marine animals on enormous lines equipped with hooks and shorter lines positioned at regular intervals. These are death machines that kill many many animals of no commercial value to fishermen. The techniqie is popular simply because it's convenient for the fishermen. It reminds me of that popular military T-shirt slogan: "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out!"

Taken together, all these destructive practices amount to nothing less than marine genocide. Observers in an alien spacecraft hovering over the ocean would assume human beings are on a program to destroy all life in the oceans, rather than harvest food in any kind of sustainable manner.

Campaigns to save the whales are well known (and now under threat of being dismantled, also). But no one is protecting the sharks -- the most important "alpha predators" in the seas. Removing the world's sharks (as we are doing rapidly) is akin to removing all the spiders; how long would it be before we'd be knee deep in flies? Killing off the sharks will have the perverse effect of allowing subspecies populations to bloom and then collapse as they decimate their own food supplies. We are well on our way to creating a marine desert, it appears.

Do yourself a favor and go see the new documentary Sharkwater. It's the best film ever made on this topic, I believe. We need to make sure all the policymakers in all the world's countries (especially in Asia) see this movie and take action. Personally, I would like to see Al Gore promote that film and not just his own An Inconvenient Truth. We run the risk of reducing our greenhouse gases, only to one day find our seas are empty.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Readers would be well served to read the excellent article series by Lawrence Solomon in the National Post newspaper on the topic of global warming and climate change. I've taken the liberty of copying the most recent one below. It’s his latest in a series championing the scientists who question the orthodoxy about man-made global warming. It’s an excellent article and discusses the thesis that most of the warming comes from changed output from the Sun.

The other articles in this series (14 so far) can be read here:

http://www.urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?DSP=larry&SubID=163

One of the things that sets these articles apart from others that question orthodoxies about anthropogenic global warming is the author, who is a credible environmentalist who has spent a lifetime promoting wise energy use at Pollution Probe and his more recent Urban Renaissance Institute. I am a big fan of Larry's non-ideological common sense solutions to a wide variety of social and environmental problems, including harnessing the power of markets and individual choice to solve problems, rather than just the government command-and-control programs with which some left-leaning environmentalists are sometimes enamored. A central planner he ain't.

Below, I offer ten points of my own for you to think about, that reflect my own recent thoughts and also some ideas about positive things we should do for the environment, whether or not humans are the cause. Under that I list some facts sent to me from a friend that are worht including in informed discussion about the climate change topic. Below that is the Lawrence Solomon article. Enjoy.

Ten thoughts about climate change:

1. The theory that human generation of greenhouse gases from the consumption of fossil fuels is responsible for most or all of recent warming of the Earth‘s climate is not a “settled science.” Human beings are no doubt having some impact on the climate but it may be much less than is claimed by some groups, including the UN IPCC, which has recently revised its warming projections downwards. There is significant evidence that the bureaucrats at the UN IPCC have manipulated and "spun" scientific findings, especially in the Summary for Policymakers chapter that accompanies their reports. Dissenting reports and statements have been issued by scientists who feel the IPCC has misconstrued their findings, and this is a terrible shame considering the importance of the climate change topic.

2. There is evidence that the Earth’s climate is warming a small amount, but that this is largely from natural causes. The small recent increase in the Earth’s temperature perfectly correlates with warming measured on other planets such as Mars, where probes have measured the same increase on Earth, though of course human beings cannot be responsible for warming on that planet. This lends support to the body of science that believes increased output from the Sun is responsible for most of the warming trend which, in fact, predates the industrial revolution. This is an area where further research is crucial. If society is going to make a massive effort to reduce its CO2 emissions, it had better be based on convincing science and not the sort of selective propaganda one finds in such things as Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth which really dumbed down the science. The danger exists that attention and funds could be diverted from other serious environmental issues, such as the severe degradation of various ecosystems, including those in the ocean. (As just one excellent example, please go see the new documentary Sharkwater which shows the worldwide destruction of sharks which has occurred almost without notice. The consequences of removing these alpha predators from the seas is extremely dire and deserves to be on the front page of every newspaper as much as climate change issues. Turns out that sharks, which predate the dinosaurs, have shaped most life on earth.)

3. This does not, however, mean that human beings should continue to pollute the atmosphere or use non-renewable energy resources wastefully. Just as the environmental activists tell us, there are many opportunities for us to increase energy efficiency and save money in our own households and, as a society, avoid the need to build more power plants (to meet peak energy demand). These steps are worth taking whether or not human fossil fuel burning is heating the planet. We should also preserve oil and gas reserves for future generations – these reserves took hundreds of millions of years to accumulate via the decay of ancient plants and complex geological forces; it’s almost immoral to burn up the easily-accessible stock in only a few generations. Our descendants a few hundred years from now will rightly regard us as wanton and reckless creatures.

4. The issue of climate change is important enough, even for a skeptical person, to be treated seriously. While further research is conducted, we should at least do the relatively easy things, as an insurance policy against an ongoing warming that is already under way. Even if it’s from natural causes, we don’t need to add to the problem by recklessly emitting significantly more carbon into the environment than we need to, and apart from warming there are other legitimate concerns we must consider from the release of carbon into the environment, which includes the potential to increase the acidity of oceans and other effects from interfering with the carbon cycle.

5. The easy things are, naturally, “easy” to think of. For example, consider the retail stores that seek to entice customers inside by leaving their front doors open in the summer, so that cold air-conditioned air flows out to the street. This is an expensive and inexcusable waste. On an individual scale, people can adjust thermostats in the summer and winter so that houses aren’t overly hot in the cold months, nor overly cool in the warm months. People can put on a sweater in the winter or open up their windows in the summer, and save money on their energy bills. A good investment is a thermostat that can be set to adjust vary the output of furnaces and air conditioners at different times of day and night. These are the easy things, and they really add up.

6. Along those lines, people need to use their appliances (dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers, etc.) during non-peak times. Public agencies could do a much better job at educating people as to what the best times are, and should consider hiring summer students to go door to door educating people about such things as how to better insulate their homes, and how to use timers on dishwashers. As an aside, old beer fridges in people’s basements and cottages are enormously energy wasters and should be replaced immediately.

7. But no amount of proselytizing will do as good a job as changing behavior as a price signal. The next step is to equip homes and appliances with so-called “smart meters” which measure the energy consumption of different machines in real time, so that consumers can see immediately what their energy consumption costs them. A nation-wide investment in smart meters could potentially do more to reduce energy consumption than most other ideas. It would best if the private sector is encouraged to do this with government backing, rather than a government led, government implemented progam.

8. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced in Montreal, Canada is in an excellent position to commercialize energy-efficient technology and then sell it around the world. As countries invest in more varied assets in their energy portfolios, nuclear power will no doubt become popular once again, and Canada is a world leader in this technology as well as rich in rare uranium resources. Canada has great strengths in fuel cell technology and hydrogen. In developing the Alberta oil sands, we are also in a terrific position to develop and demonstrate “carbon sequestration.” The fact is, if we melt all the readily available oil in the oil sands (and use natural gas to do so) we will vastly exceed our Kyoto commitments. This seems likely to occur as the United States turns to Canada to reduce its reliance on Middle East oil (read: unstable and hostile governments). Yet it’s proven that Saskatchewan’s geology is made up of precisely the right kind of fractured rock into which we could safely pump and sequester all of the CO2 that will be generated by oil sands development. In fact, Saskatchewan is said to have enough room underground to store all the CO2 produced from burning the world’s entire fossil fuel reserves. Though this would be impractical, we can certainly take care of our own emissions and teach other countries to do the same, where the right geology exists. (Some have argued that the best way for Canada to develop the oil sands is to use nuclear power to melt the tar and then pump the CO2 to Saskatchewan. Something worth evaluating.)

9. Real market pricing and the removal of subsidies would go a long way toward improving our environmental performance. This includes the removal of any subsidies to natural resource extraction and to oil and gas development, and especially subsidies to the agricultural sector that seeks to grow corn, etc. for ethanol production (“renewable fuel”). This has the perverse effect of raising the price of corn and hence many foods (which disproportionately affects the poor) and is also an environmental shell game; it takes about the same amount of fossil fuel to produce a unit of ethanol, thus negating any benefit. Ethanol production makes sense in some circumstances but purpose-grown cron crops are non-economic and environmentally regressive. Also, the climate would benefit more if we planted trees on this land or even just let such lands lie fallow. Trees are an excellent carbon sequestration mechanism, and their cutting down in the past to create vast farm lands has harmed natural systems and, in fact, allowed more and more energy from the sun to penetrate and heat the soil. This leads to excess evaporation and eventual “desertification” of large areas. Canada’s Prairies are in real danger of reverting to the drier state that existed up until the anomaly of the 20th Century.

10. Canada is in an excellent position to promote sound science and common-sense solutions to overcome environmental impacts that are the byproduct of natural resource exploitation and manufacturing. Many technical advancements are ready, or almost ready, for commercialization. Market discipline could remove many of the perverse side-effects of subsidies. There are enough practical actions available to ordinary people and companies to satisfy environmental activists, concerned citizens, and business entrepreneurs alike.

Some interesting facts related to climate change:

1. The famous "hockey stick" diagram that purports to show global temperatures rising has been discredited. Although some people still trot it out at conferences and other gatherings, there was a raging debate on this now infamous curve and it was shown to be the product of manipulation of data toward a preconceived goal. Think what you want about climate change, but don't make use of this icon without doing some research.

This is not a small matter. The "hockey stick" was the centre piece of the 3rd IPCC report. It occupies almost half a page in the Summary for Policymakers, more than half a page in the Technical Summary, and a full page in the main text of the 3rd IPPC Report. In the Synthesis Report it appears three times. Not surprisingly it was reproduced all around the world in media reports, governmental briefings and other official reports.

Countless books have covered this issue, some devoting entire chapters to it. If you do a web search you will find any number of pages citing it. Wikipedia covers it well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Another good composite source will be found at

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/

It provides a lengthy account and is fully referenced. Toward the end that article sums up the position thus:

But, the “hockey stick” was remarkable. And as such, it will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become mainstream thought overnight. The embarrassment that it caused to many scientists working in the field of climatology will not be soon forgotten. Hopefully, new findings to come, as remarkable and enticing as they may first appear, will be greeted with a bit more caution and thorough investigation before they are widely accepted as representing the scientific consensus.

2. Carbon dioxide.

It is sometimes claimed that man-made emissions of about 7 Gigatonnes of carbon are so massive as to disrupt the global carbon balance. However, for proportion, consider this:

There are about 750 GtC of CO2 in the atmosphere

In the oceans it is about 40,000 GtC

The stock of CO2 as carbon in land plants, animals and soils is about 2,000 GtC

Fossil fuel reserves are about 5-10,000 GtC

Plant respiration and decomposition releases and withdraws about 60 GtC annually into the atmosphere

The oceans release and withdraw about 90 GtC

Minor variations in natural release and withdrawal can swamp anything mankind may have contributed

Source: Essex & McKitrick, ‘Taken by Storm: the troubled science, policy and politics of global warming’ at page 210 in the chapter entitled ‘Uncertainty and Nescience’

Now, here's the Lawrence Solomon article I mentioned at the start of this mini-essay:

THE DENIERS — PART XIX

Science, not politics

LAWRENCE SOLOMON

Financial Post (National Post, FP Comment section, FP15, Friday, April 13)

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Of all the scientists who are labelled “deniers” because they don’t support the orthodoxy of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, none comes in for more vilification than Eigil Friis-Christensen. For understandable reasons. Dr. Friis-Christensen questions the very premise that man-made activities explain most of the global warming that we see, and through his work he has convinced much of an entire scientific discipline to explore his line of inquiry. With his 1991 paper in Science, showing a startling correlation between global warming and the activities of the sun, Dr. Friis-Christensen unleashed a wave of related research by solar scientists seeking to learn the mechanisms through which solar activity may influence climate on Earth. Thanks largely to his early efforts, and ongoing efforts, too, a growing proportion of the world’s solar scientists no longer place man at the centre of the climate-change universe.

Dr. Friis-Christensen’s interest in climate change predates the Kyoto Treaty of 1995, it predates the Rio Conference in 1992 that led to Kyoto, it even predates the first report in 1990 of the IPCC, the body spearheading the vast majority of the climate-change research now underway.

“My interest dates back to an extreme solar storm that occurred in August, 1972,” he explains. “I was in Greenland, on my first assignment in my new job as geophysicist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, setting up a chain of magnetometer stations on the west coast.”

Dr. Friis-Christensen remembers lying in his tent and “watching the ink pens of my recorder going so wild that they nearly tore the paper chart apart — we had no digital recording at that time — and I wondered whether such big events could also have an influence in the lower atmosphere, on weather and climate.

“That storm cut off my contact to the outside world for nine days — all radio communication was blacked out — so I had lots of time to reflect on the enormity of the forces at play.”

Dr. Friis-Christensen would soon discover he had a soulmate in his reflections, his mentor and a division head at the institute, Knud Lassen, a pioneer in research into the aurora borealis. They followed developments in the field, even gave lectures on the subject, which was then topical, although not for the reasons we’re familiar with today — in the mid-1970s, climate scientists feared global cooling.

Yet for both scientists, the interest was more a hobby than a formal area of study — until 1989, when Dr. Lassen, 68 years old and nearing retirement, decided to cap his career by pursuing the hunch they had long held. Dr. FriisChristensen needed no persuading to join him on his quest. Two years later, their pathbreaking study was published, though without fanfare. Global cooling had receded from public memory and global warming was not yet a hot topic.

That soon changed, with the growing role of the newly created IPCC.

Upon the IPCC’s creation, with its mandate to investigate the causes of climate change, Dr. Friis-Christensen was hopeful of advances in solving one of the scientific passions of his life. To participate in the IPCC’s quest for answers, he travelled to its January, 1992, meeting in Guangzhou, China, as part of the Danish delegation. By then, he had succeeded Dr. Lassen to become head of the institute’s geophysics division.

But to his astonishment, and despite the recent publication of his Science article, the IPCC refused to consider the sun’s influence on Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The scientists at the IPCC had decided that man-made causes and man-made causes alone deserved their attention. But ignoring the potential role of the sun didn’t make it go away, especially since Dr. Friis-Christensen and other solar scientists refused to abandon their research.

Then the attacks on Dr. Friis-Christensen’s credibility began.

His 1991 study had errors, his detractors stated. His 1995 study only made it worse, others chimed in. He fabricated data, people whispered. A recent article in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper by IPCC partisan George Monbiot well represents the tenor of the attacks:

“A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the ‘agreement’ [between temperatures and solar activity that Friis-Christensen’s 1991 study found] was the result of ‘incorrect handling of the physical data.’ The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen. When this error was exposed, FriisChristensen and his co-author published a new paper, purporting to produce similar results.

“But this too turned out to be an artefact of mistakes — in this case, in their arithmetic.

“So Friis-Christensen and another author developed yet another means of demonstrating that the sun is responsible, claiming to have discovered a remarkable agreement between cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover ... . But, yet again, the method was exposed as faulty. They had been using satellite data which did not in fact measure global cloud cover.

“A paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics shows that, when the right data are used, a correlation is not found.”

How much of this litany in the Guardian demonstrates actual errors by Dr. Friis-Christensen? In truth, none of it. Virtually all of the criticisms of Dr. FriisChristensen, published and republished willy-nilly, stem from a lone advisor to the Danish government’s Ministry of the Energy with scant research credentials — he even admits that the government hired him largely for his communications skill.

There is no arithmetic error in Dr. Friis-Christensen’s studies. Remarkably, his critics attributed someone else’s error to him, and then kept doggedly repeating their assertion. Neither are there errors in methodology, although this charge likewise gets repeated without foundation. Neither should it be surprising that different studies of different aspects of solar behaviour would yield anomalies. It is through such exceptions that science proves the rule.

Do the epithets work? With the uninformed, they work a great deal. With the vast majority of his peers, the attacks more represent irritants, noise that obfuscates the political debate but not what counts — the science. Because of his scientific rigour, Dr. Friis-Christensen has won a citation from the Journal of Geophysical Research of the American Geophysical Union for “Excellence in refereeing” and he is sought after by the world’s leading agencies, who have elevated him to the top ranks of his profession.

He now chairs the Danish Space Consortium, heads a European Space Agency mission advisory group, and is vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy. Many of the world’s most prestigious space-related research institutions — the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, and the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia among them — are now building on the work that Dr. Friis-Christensen set in train.
Bit by bit, they are putting the pieces of the climate puzzle together, slowly learning more and more about the amazingly complex relationships among solar and cosmic forces, on the one hand, and the array of forces on Earth.

Where this slow, methodical brand of solar science will ultimately lead, no one can yet say. Such uncertainty does not characterize the brand of climate science practiced by the IPCC.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)