From the staff of HazMat Management magazine, Merry Christmas everybody and a Happy New Year!

The Winter 2009-2010 edition of the magazine will be in the mail at month's end and should be on your desk in early January. Enjoy!

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Readers know I'm a skeptic about man-made global warming, but in the interest of "balance" I reproduce below one person's opinion of Canada as a thuggish petro-state in view of the recent Copenhagen meeting. This was sent to me by a friend with whom I've made a wager that if in 20 years time the Earth heats up as some expect, or fails to do so (as I believe), the person who got it wrong owes the other person a very expensive dinner. For me, the entry below is unintentionally hilarious.

George Monbiot on Canada and tar sands (30Nov/09)

1. Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling
The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the greatest obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.

It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.

Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.

Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the 1990s I wrote a very long feature article for the "Focus" section of the Globe & Mail newspaper's weekend edition. The piece exposed the controversy over the possibly junk science upon which a lot of global warming policy was being based. I recall that the title was something like "Science Fiction" and it had the memorable opening line, "A funny thing happened on the way to the global warming conference; the Earth failed to heat up!"

I took a lot of flack for that article, but have always stood by it. Not because I'm pig-headed and not because I'm a climate expert. Instead, it was because I did a lot of research for that article, and had amassed great stacks of reading material on the topic for several years before I wrote the article. I knew as I wrote the piece that I knew more than most journalists about what came to be known as "climate change" (when the warming faltered), and my premise was that it was impossible to reliably conclude that global warming was real, from the information available. Instead, my journalistic instincts were aroused by many many instances where it seemed obvious to me that the scientific process had become corrupted and the results of various studies were being used and abused for political purposes, especially by agencies of the United Nations. I knew that if I couldn't draw anything like definitive conclusions, neither could the average reporter, and yet the media was repleat with articles and news stories stating that the theory of man-made global warming was proven beyond reasonable doubt.

That was before Mann's famous "hockey stick" chart (that purported to show a distinct warming trend) was exposed as a fraud.

In an international scandal involving the release of hundreds of internal emails from a scientific research agency, it has recently emerged that some of the top scientists whose data sets have guided international policy making on client have been "cooking the books" and falsifying important historic climate data to create the impression that a much larger climate warming is underway than is the case, in reality. While the people at the centre of the controversy are attempting to explain away their emails and their behaviour (what else could they do?), the fact is that their data is absolutely fundamental to most of the conclusions and policy recommendations flowing from the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Truly, a whole new prolonged exercise in credible scientific inquiry needs to occur, one that will take years. The entire house of cards has come tumbling down.

Talk about "an inconvenient truth!"

I now direct you to two recent articles from Energy Probe's Lawrence Solomon about Climage Gate; he does a much better job than I can explaining why the data fraud is so very devastating, and can't simply be swept under the carpet. How ironic that this whole fiasco has unfolded right before the "important" climate talks in Copenhagen.

Here are the two excellent articles.

Dirty climate data

Lawrence Solomon

5 Dec 2009

Financial Post

The data from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University — headquarters for Climategate — is now discredited. This discredits any findings by other research bodies that relied on the Climategate data.

How much falls from Climategate, whose participants read like a Who’s Who at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Not much, says CRU’s disgraced director, Phil Jones, pointing out that CRU’s data for global temperatures is but one of several datasets, all in general agreement. Besides, many argue, CRU was no linchpin to the science. The IPCC relied on numerous other sources. Throw CRU out, they say, and the IPCC’s conclusions remain unshakable.

In truth, if you throw CRU out, you’ve eviscerated the findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the most recent and most definite opus from the UN. This is the report, received with universal acclaim in 2007, which scarily stated: “The warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

The argument over global warming requires evidence that the globe is warming in dangerous ways. This evidence the IPCC presents forcefully in its third chapter on surface and atmospheric warming, which rests overwhelmingly on the official global temperature record of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, called the HADCRUT3 temperature dataset.

And who produced the HADCRUT3 dataset for the World Meteorological Organization? The Hadley Centre of the UK government’s meteorological office (the HAD of HADCRUT3) and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (the CRU).

With HADCRUT3 in hand, the IPCC’s warming chapter confidently pronounced that “The rate of warming over the last 50 years is almost double that over the last 100 years,” that “2005 was one of the two warmest years on record,” and that “Changes in extremes of temperature are also consistent with warming of the climate.” With HADCRUT3, the co-authors of the IPCC warming chapter could show the temperatures going up, up, up.

Who were the IPCC co-authors who decided to use the HADCRUT3 temperature data? None other than two of the most questionable characters in the Climategate cast: the head of CRU, Phil Jones himself, and his cross-Atlantic correspondent, Kevin Trenberth, a lead author with the IPCC. Trenberth in 2004 also had a starring role in another noteworthy IPCC episode, held in the swirl of an active U.S. hurricane season. Not one to pass up an opportunity to sway the public to the urgency of global warming, Trenberth called a press conference to link global warming with hurricanes even though the IPCC’s own hurricane expert, Christopher Landsea, pleaded with Trenberth not to — the link of hurricanes and global warming had no basis in science.

If any chapter in the IPCC opus is more important than the warming chapter it is chapter nine, which concludes that man is the culprit “based on analyses of widespread temperature increases throughout the climate system and changes in other climate variables.” The source for the temperature data? HADCRUT3.

The centrality of HADCRUT3 data is no coincidence. The two British organizations, Hadley and CRU, have worked hand-in-glove since the Hadley Centre was created in 1989 by Margaret Thatcher. One year earlier, in a major address that established the UK’s early promotion of the global warming issue, Thatcher — a foe of the coal mining union and a fan of nuclear power — had pledged to tackle the greenhouse effect by replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power. She then promoted climate change science with funding and diplomacy, placing her people in senior positions at the nascent IPCC and elsewhere at the United Nations.

Hadley and CRU became major players in every IPCC report, in the World Meteorological Organization, in the IPCC’s iconic hockey-stick graph and in the UK government’s Stern Review that predicted economic calamity. In the minds of many, the Hadley-CRU datasets are the most authoritative source of global temperatures, both because their temperature records date back to 1850 and because they produced the first-ever synthesis of land and marine temperature data — the first truly global temperature record.

Except now we’re told that CRU disposed of the raw data some 20 years ago after it was manufactured into “homogenized” and “value added data.” The manufacturer 20 years ago? Another Climategate star, Tom Wigley, who was then the head of CRU.

But what of Phil Jones’s argument, that the Hadley and CRU datasets are nothing special. “Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others,” he says. “Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves.”

The answer to Phil Jones comes from the Hadley Centre itself, through another fact that speaks for itself. “The datasets are largely based on the same raw data,” the FAQ page at the Hadley Centre website states, in explaining that NASA, the National Climate Data Center and Hadley-CRU all use the same data. The different results these organizations sometimes obtain, it elaborates, stems not from the data but from its absence — where the data is poor or non-existent, the different agencies employ different types of guesswork.

There is no unimpeachable raw data in which we can have confidence. There is a large cast of impeachable characters in the Climategate drama with an evident appetite for cooking the books.

And there are but two honest options for our governments to now employ. They can choose to redo the studies, with data, scientists, and a peer-review process that can be trusted. Or they can recognize that the IPCC process has been politicized from the start, and that the prima facie evidence for dangerous global warming does not meet the threshold required to prolong the scientific sham of the generation.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud

Climategate gang is writing the script for Copenhagen

Lawrence Solomon

7 Dec 2009

Financial Post

The Copenhagen Diagnosis, a year-long study to be unveiled at the Copenhagen climate change meetings that begin today, was designed to dramatize how little time we have left to save the planet from catastrophic climate.

But the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which is billed as an update to the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has a credibility problem. The Climategate gang -- the same crew now discredited by emails that emerged showing a conspiracy to cook the books -- had a dozen of its members in charge of producing the Copenhagen Diagnosis. More credibility problems: The Copenhagen Diagnosis relies on data from the Hadley Centre of the UK meteorological office and the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University -- two bodies that may now need to set aside the data altogether and start over.

The suspect data -- known as HADCRUT -- is a merged dataset comprised of marine temperatures provided by the Hadley Centre and land-based temperatures from the Climate Research Unit. Because the CRU portion of the data is so suspect with so much of the public, the Met Office has announced a three-year year investigation in which it will re-examine 160 years of temperature data. The Met took this step, which makes official the view that the world has been relying on suspect data, over the objections of the UK government, which fears waiting until 2012 before having solid data. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is among the most vocal of global warming advocates, having said that Copenhagen is the last chance to save the world from environmental disaster and characterizing those who disagree as "behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics."

The IPCC, has also announced an investigation into the Climategate scandal, as has East Anglia University and Penn State University, home to another infamous member of Climategate: Michael Mann.

Mann is the author of the hockey stick, the icon of the global warming adherents which purported to show that the Earth warmed rapidly in the 20th century. That graph was later found to be bogus, as hearings into it before the U.S. Congress determined. Yet now Mann is back - he is one of the authors of the Copenhagen Diagnosis -- and so is his hockey-stick graph!

All told, 12 of the 26 Copenhagen Diagnosis authors are implicated in the Climategate scandal, including Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, a much criticized Lead Author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

The prognosis for the Copenhagen Diagnosis is grim.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 02:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just had to share this letter from the UK that a friend forwarded to me. Although it's not from Canada, it could certainly apply to many government situations and policies here. Some of the climate change offset stuff crossed my mind as I read this. Enjoy!

THIS WAS SENT to David Miliband...

NIGEL JOHNSON-HILL, PARKFARM, MILLAND, LIPHOOK GU30 7JT

Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

16 July 2009

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

Yours faithfully,

Nigel Johnson-Hill

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)