Fuelling the future

In the latest issue of Momentum, a new magazine out of the University of Minnesota, I argue that "our cars aren't alone in needing a new diet". Here's the opening:

It’s been a tough couple of years for the public relations staff in the biofuels industry.

The production of biofuels from crops like corn has been blamed for everything from driving up global food prices and deforestation in the Amazon to depleting oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico (not to mention raising the price of tequila).

Even the basic purpose of today’s commercial biofuels production has been called into question.

A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota, published last year in the journal Science, found that if previously undeveloped landscapes are cleared for biofuels production, then those biofuels emit more greenhouse gases than gasoline and diesel. Policymakers and the public are now asking if it’s efficient or ethical to use croplands to feed machines rather than people.

There’s one obvious place to look for an answer. In North America, we have been feeding the majority of our crops to machines for decades. These elaborate, protein-producing devices are best known by their common names: cows, pigs and chickens...

Click here for the full article. Or continue after the jump.


Eating animals is hardly new. Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on meat for a large proportion of their protein intake. But the advent of agriculture and rise in population after the end of the last ice age led humans to settle in villages and shift to a more energy-efficient, grain-based diet. Over time, meat would be reserved for those who could afford the land and workforce required to raise animals.

Diets in the developed world changed again with the discovery of fossil fuels, especially oil. This cheap source of energy allowed us to produce nitrogen fertilizers, transform crop genetics, fuel agricultural machinery and transport agricultural products around the world. Buoyed by high crop yields and newfound agricultural wealth, we began feeding large quantities of grain and oilseeds to our farm animals.

Today, the average American eats as much as 275 pounds of meat each year, up from 197 pounds in the early 1960s.

Feeding the literally billions of cattle, poultry and pigs now requires a large proportion of the world’s—and mainly America’s—croplands. More than two-thirds of the American corn, soybean, sorghum, barley and oats harvest is used to produce animal feed. That’s more than two-thirds of the fuel used to operate machinery, more than two-thirds of the agricultural chemical use and subsequent water pollution, and more than two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions from croplands.

In the coming decades, the demand for both animal feed and transportation fuels is expected to rise sharply as Asia and the developing world become wealthier. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, per capita meat consumption in China has doubled since 1990, and it could double again.

Can our agricultural system meet this increasing demand while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions, tropical deforestation and water pollution? The solution may be switching to more efficient machines.

Like the cars we drive, the animals we eat have wide-ranging efficiencies. Beef cattle are the SUVs of animal agriculture. Renowned energy expert Vaclav Smil calculated that the U.S. agricultural system uses 32 kilograms of feed to produce 1 kilogram of edible beef. Poultry is the fuel-efficient compact of the animal world, with around one-eighth the feed ratio of beef.

The good news is that Americans have been slowly shifting their diets from beef toward more efficient forms of food production. Since the 1970s, per capita beef consumption has decreased 20 percent, while per capita poultry consumption increased by 40 percent. And more and more Americans are forsaking beef or all meat out of health concerns.

A more aggressive move toward poultry, dairy and vegetable-based diets could greatly decrease the land, energy and fertilizer needed to feed the population. In turn, this change would decrease direct greenhouse gas emissions from food cultivation and nutrient pollution to waterways. My own research indicates that reducing beef consumption in American diets would also reduce nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River and shrink the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Changing diets would also free up productive croplands for cultivating second-generation biofuels based on unfertilized grains, oil crops or grasses. This newly available land would help eliminate concerns that diverting productive croplands to biofuels cultivation causes the clearing of native vegetation and the release of stored carbon elsewhere in the world.

In a carbon-constrained world, food efficiency may be just as important as fuel efficiency.

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Levelling the science of sea-level rise

One of my biggest pet peeves with the climate change communication world is widespread use of sea-level rise ‘maps’. There are countless maps and animations out there. Think the simulated flooding of New York in An Inconvenient Truth or, for a local example, the Sierra Club’s post-Greenland map of Vancouver in which my home becomes coveted waterfront property. Anyone with a digital elevation dataset and some GIS skills can draw a map of what land will “disappear” if the sea level rises by 6 m, or 6 km for that matter.

Leave aside for now the uncertainty about future rates of sea-level rise, the usual beef with graphic representations of sea level rise. Spend a few weeks in a coral atoll and you’ll know the real problem with these simplistic graphics. The sea is not actually level. And there’s no scientific reason to think that the rise will be. A part of this issue is tackled in a terrific new paper by Mitrovica et al. in last week’s Science.

The paper estimates the regional variation in sea level rise that would occur from the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Unlike the brute force mapping exercises, Mitrovica et al. consider the actual physics of the ice melt, including gravitational attraction of the ice sheet, migration of shorelines and the effect of all that ice on the Earth’s rotations. For example:

The rapid melting of ice sheets and glaciers leads to a sea-level change that departs dramatically from the assumption of a uniform redistribution of meltwater (4). An ice sheet exerts a gravitational attraction on the nearby ocean and thus draws water toward it. If the ice sheet melts, this attraction will be reduced, and water will migrate away from the ice sheet. The net effect, despite the increase in the total volume of the oceans after a melting event, is that sea level will actually fall within ~2000 km of the collapsing ice sheet and progressively increase as one moves further from this region. Each ice reservoir will produce a distinct geometry, or fingerprint, of sea-level change... Although the physics of fingerprinting has been embraced in studies of past sea-level change, it has been largely ignored in discussions of future projections.

The conclusion which drew media attention (the Globe and Mail) and a bold-ed and italicized post from Joe Romm is that sea-level rise from melting of WAIS will be higher along will the coastlines of North America, including cities like Washington, DC, New York, and Vancouver.

The media coverage is not wrong, but misses the point. The paper demonstrates how melting of an ice sheet leads to uneven sea level rise, using WAIS as an example. In reality, if all of WAIS were to melt, so presumably would some or all of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the East Antarctica Ice Sheet and the mountain glaciers. The melting of all that other ice would also influence the geography of sea level rise. The take home message of the paper is not we need to start sandbagging along English Bay beaches here in Vancouver. The message is that the scientific community – and I assume by extension the environmental community – needs to remember that the oceans’ rise will not be level. The concluding sentences of the paper:

Any robust assessment of the sea-level hazard associated with the loss of major ice reservoirs must, of course, account for other potential sources of meltwater, namely Greenland, the East Antarctic, and mountain glaciers. Nevertheless, future projections should avoid simple, eustatic estimates and be based on a suitably complete sea-level theory.

Amen to that.

[You can give thanks for this post to my father, who notified me of the Mitrovica et al. press coverage, and who many of you know through the macro-economic advice he periodically delivers in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and on the CBC. Forget my deranged comments on economics – he is the one they really should be calling to fix the federal budget.]

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Cuts to research funding

From occasional commenter crf:

"could you comment on the way the Genome Canada story is taking hold in the press, about Genome Canada, as reported in the Globe, being "The only agency that regularly finances large-scale science in Canada" (Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail Jan 29, 2009)"

I wish I could explain this bizarre episode. The government cuts all funding to Genome Canada, the agency which helped make Canada a leader in genetics research, and exactly the type of organization capable of creating the "shovel-ready" projects that everyone says are required to stimulate the economy [the US Senate just made a similar dubious decision, cutting funding for NSF, NOAA, etc. from the stimulus package].

The Canadian media did a nice job of picking up on the story. But the editors and reporters repeatedly make what should be an obviously wrong statement that Genome Canada was "the only agency that regularly finances large-scale science". Er, NSERC anyone?

Let me be clear: the mistake is not the important issue here -- the important issue is the government decision. It is a sad sign of how "truthiness" is infecting reporting in the internet age. Say something enough times and it becomes true in people's minds. Maybe that works? You could argue that a similar dynamic explains why the same thoroughly debunked arguments against the science of climate change (it's the sun! co2 lags temperature! the hockey stick is broken! mars is warming too!) keep re-appearing.

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Auditor General questions Canada's climate policy

Say what you will about the Canadian system of government, but it excels at producing investigations, inquiries and audits. For example, Canada's auditor general regularly issues reports on whether government policies are achieving the proposed results.

The following are excerpts from a report just released by Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the auditor charged with evaluated federal policies to control air (pollution and greenhouse gas) emissions. They reveal a depressing lack of effort and commitment even to the weak emissions reductions policies of the current government.

1.35 In its March 2007 Budget, the federal government announced a transfer of $1.519 billion to provincial and territorial governments under the Clean Air and Climate Change Trust Fund. The Trust Fund is an element of Turning the Corner, a government initiative described by Environment Canada as "Canada's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution." Both the 2007 Budget and Turning the Corner state that the Trust Fund will yield real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants. No expected reductions from the Trust Fund were quantified in these documents.

1.39 Analysis supporting Environment Canada's expected greenhouse gas emission reductions is weak. There are problems in how the 80 megatonnes of expected reductions against the Trust Fund for the years 2008 to 2012 were derived. The Department conducted almost no analysis to support that figure, and did not perform key types of analysis. The little analysis it did undertake is based on flawed assumptions—for example, that all provinces and territories face identical opportunities, challenges, and economic conditions for achieving emission reductions. Since the basis for the estimate is flawed, we cannot determine what a reasonable range of expected results should have been.

1.40 Environment Canada cannot monitor or verify the Trust Fund results. In our December 2008 Auditor General's Report, Chapter 1, A Study of Federal Transfers to the Provinces and Territories, we note that the provinces and territories frequently have no legal obligation to spend sums transferred to them through a trust fund for the purpose announced by the federal government. Provinces and territories also frequently have no legal obligation to report to the federal government on how the money was spent and what was achieved. Environment Canada has acknowledged that the provincial and territorial governments are accountable only to their own constituencies for expenditures and results under the Trust Fund, not to the federal government. The Department has not developed and implemented even a voluntary system for monitoring greenhouse gas emission reductions under the Trust Fund. Nevertheless, Environment Canada made a claim of expected results in 2007 and repeated it in 2008, knowing that the nature of the Trust Fund makes it very unlikely that the Department can report real, measurable, and verifiable results.

1.59 Estimates by Environment Canada indicate that the Public Transit Tax Credit will lead to negligible reductions in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Equally questionable is the impact of the Clean Air and Climate Change Trust Fund, which transfers over $1.519 billion to the provinces and territories to help them lower greenhouse gas emissions. Environment Canada has estimated that the initiative will lead to emission reductions totalling 80 megatonnes from 2008 to 2012. However, it has arrived at that figure on the basis of flawed analyses. The government has stated that it does not intend to monitor whether targets are achieved because it does not have access to the necessary information and cannot control what the recipient governments do with the funding. Environment Canada made a claim of expected results in 2007 and repeated it in 2008, knowing that the nature of the Trust Fund makes it very unlikely that the Department can report real, measurable, and verifiable results.

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Skepticism about corals and rising CO2

The recent spate of "skeptical" climate change reporting and posting - which I personally feel is largely weather and opportunity-based - have included some serious misinterpretations and misrepresentations of coral reef science. For example, Climate Shifts tells the story of an amusing report from the "Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change".

The latest screed comes from Watts up with that goes after the threat of rising CO2:

This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era - nearly 500 million years ago - when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today.

What follows is a graph of temperature and CO2 over the past several hundred million years which I'll let the geologist argue over.

Now like the author of that post, I'm not one of the world's experts on reef development. So, instead, let me defer to one. This is a quote from the beginning of Charlie Veron's Corals of the World (page 33-34), the three volume tome found on the shelf of pretty much every reef scientist out there:

By the Middle Ordovician, complex algae and invertebrate reef communities had become widespread and reef biota had diversified... Reef development reached a peak in the Devonian Period and even after all this time, what remains today of those reefs are sometimes of awesome size... Corals were seldom the dominant organisms of Devonian reefs although rugose corals are often abundant in them and have a wide variety of growth-forms. Tabulate corals, which were a less varied group, mostly occupied protected or inter-reef environments.

There were reefs during those earlier era. Read on:

Unlike the Scleractinia (ed - the order of stony corals found today), both these groups of corals made excellent fossils becauase their skeletons were made of calcite, a far more stable form of calcium carbonate that the aragonite skeltons of Scleractinia.

Yes, corals evolved over time. Today's coral species date back in the tens not the many hundreds of millions of years. The type of calcium carbonate (aragonite) today's corals secrete is more sensitive to changes in the CO2 or carbonate concentration, no doubt in part because those corals have persisted through a period in which CO2 was lower than today.

Any reef experts wish to comment?

Update: A reader reminded me of this recent article by Veron in the journal Coral Reefs. The author hypothesizes that high CO2 /acidification may have caused some of the major marine extinction events in the geological past. It also addresses the very question of whether corals could have persisted in a high CO2 world in the past:

Two possibilities present themselves: (1) Reefs may not have proliferated at all
during CO2 highs; they may just appear to have survived because they were able to resume growth when levels fell. (2) The high apparent CO2 levels of ancient times may be
an artefact of a lack of data and measuring method.

Veron also again addresses the fact that today's corals are different:

Reef proliferation in the distant past during periods when atmospheric CO2 may have been high could mean that the reef builders and consolidators were better adapted to these conditions and could exploit the enhanced calcification and photosynthesis promoted by warmer sea surface temperatures without adverse effects. Many organisms in the ancient oceans would have been more tolerant to acidification through their dependence on calcitic skeletons rather than aragonite or high-magnesium calcite. There may have been other aspects of coral biology that allowed ancient corals to tolerate water chemistries that are lethal to today’s Scleractinia. If so, it would be more than interesting to know what those physiological mechanisms were.

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More on the stimulus plans

The conversation on the lack of "green" funding in the US and Canadian stimulus plans (stimuli?) continues at the Energy Collective, where Maribo is cross-posted.

Geoff Styles:

We want our stimulus dollars to boost the flagging economy as effectively as possible, without making other problems worse in the future--beyond the unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of larger deficits. Targeted tax credits for efficient cars and appliances make more sense in this context than stuffing $500 into the pockets of every American, who might prudently save it or use it to pay down debt. Those are worthy outcomes in the long run, but not what an urgent fiscal stimulus is intended to accomplish.

Rod Adams:

Why do all the jobs that people talk about have to come with a shovel? From my point of view, we could provide some terrific near term employment by filling some of those currently underused science and engineering buildings with experienced engineers and scientists who have created space vehicles, terrific concept cars, or automated factory equipment, but whose jobs were outsourced or cut in short sighted budgetary decisions. In those same classrooms we could pay small stipends to very bright, numerically competent students who got seduced by the bright lights of Wall Street to create phantom financial instruments so that they can be retrained into valuable human capital for the green transformation that we recognize needs to occur.

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Monaco Declaration on Ocean Acidification

A group of the world's experts on ocean chemistry and marine ecosystems are calling for immediate action on CO2 emissions to avoid further damage to the oceans (link to pdf). The
"Monaco Declaration" is the outcome of the second "The Ocean in a High-CO2 World" international symposium.

Here's their take-home message:

Ocean acidification can be controlled only by limiting future atmospheric CO2 levels. So-called geo-engineering strategies that would not aim to restrict future atmospheric CO2 concentrations would not reduce ocean acidification. Mitigation strategies that aim to transfer CO2 to the ocean, for example by direct deepsea disposal of CO2 or by fertilising the ocean to stimulate biological productivity, would enhance ocean acidification in some areas while reducing it in others.

Climate-change negotiations focused on stabilizing greenhouse gases must consider not only the total radiation balance; they must also consider atmospheric CO2 as a pollutant, an acid gas whose release to the atmosphere must be curtailed in order to limit ocean acidification. Hence, limits (stabilization targets) for atmospheric CO2 defined based on ocean acidification may differ from those based on surface temperature increases and climate change. Despite a seemingly bleak outlook, there remains hope.

We have a choice, and there is still time to act if serious and sustained actions are initiated without further delay. First and foremost, policymakers need to realize that ocean acidification is not a peripheral issue. It is the other CO2 problem that must be grappled with alongside climate change. Reining in this double threat, caused by our dependence on fossil fuels, is the challenge of the century.

Solving this problem will require a monumental worldwide effort. All countries must contribute, and developed countries must lead by example and by engineering new technologies to help solve the problem. Promoting these technologies will be rewarded economically, and prevention of severe environmental degradation will be far less costly for all nations than would be trying to live with the consequences of the present approach where CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase, year after year.

Fortunately, partial remedies already on the table, if implemented together, could solve most of the problem. We must start to act now because it will take years to change the energy infrastructure and to overcome the atmosphere’s accumulation of excess CO2, which takes time to invade the ocean.

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Placing blame for heat waves

This headline appears in today's Globe and Mail:

Australian blames climate change for heat wave

Ugh. Southeastern Australia is in the midst of a punishing heat wave. Temperatures in Sydney and Melbourne peaking over 40 degrees Celsius for six straight days. Naturally, scientists, politicians and the media are drawing a link to climate change.

The "Australian" in question is their government's climate change minister. Before people trash her as an alarmist, who blames everything on climate change, read what she actually said. This is the quote from the original Reuters. piece:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the heat wave, which started on Wednesday, was the sort of weather scientists had been warning about.

“Eleven of the hottest years in history have been in the last 12, and we also note, particularly in the southern part of Australia, we're seeing less rainfall,” Ms. Wong told reporters.

“All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”

It is a reasonable statement. You cannot blame any one heatwave, one tropical storm, one coral bleaching episode, one weather event of any kind, or for that matter, the weather in any one year, on a long-term trend. Just as you cannot use one weather event or one year to disprove the existence of a long-term trend -- although statistically-challenged skeptics of climate change continue to try. But you can say that Australia is expected to experience more frequent and more severe heat waves like this one.

The flaw in climate reporting is often the headlines, not the actual reporting.

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The problem with the US stimulus plan

In the NY Times online, my colleague Michael Oppenheimer argues that the US Stimulus Plan is "cementing in the wrong infrastructure". I made a similar argument about yesterday's Canadian budget. Full text of Oppenheimer's comments after the jump.

On energy and environment, the stimulus plan needs to fulfill long-term goals, as well as provide a short-term rescue. If the rescue package cements in the existing world, the necessary transition to a “green” economy will be far more difficult to achieve later.

The trade-off between building new highways and expanding or even just maintaining mass transit capacity is an obvious example. Both are “shovel-ready” but one supports the emergence of a green economy while the other just ossifies the existing patterns, which are a big part of our economic and international problems in the first place.

Similarly, only a complete overhaul of our electricity grid will make renewable energy a reality. Here we have a classic chicken-and-egg problem: without the new sources of energy, there’s less need for the modernized grid but without the new grid to distribute it, many entrepreneurs will think twice about investing in solar or wind power. It’s the government’s job to jump start the process.

A related issue is the scientific research that underpins both environmental understanding and economic progress. Our capacity to observe Earth with satellites in space is shriveling, even as the Earth is warming and ice sheets are melting. Interest among American students in physical science and engineering is practically on life-support. Yet the stimulus focuses mostly on the worthy goals of protecting jobs for teachers and renovating existing buildings. There should be equal concern for building the physical infrastructure needed to introduce new teaching approaches so that science education is not an afterthought.

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Lost opportunities

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" is the feel-good mantra of the times. There is some sense to that argument. The economic crisis does provide an opportunity to invest in renewable energy, public transit, retrofitting homes, construction of more efficient buildings, manufacture of more efficient cars, a smart electricity grid, the list goes on. There are countless ways to make a few glasses of lemonade out of this economic lemon.

Far too few of those measures are found in the new budget announced today by Canada's Conservative government (you can read the entire document here).

The biggest item is the "Green Infrastructure Fund":

Targeted investments in green infrastructure can improve the quality of the environment and will lead to a more sustainable economy over the longer term. Green infrastructure includes infrastructure that supports a focus on the creation of sustainable energy. Sustainable energy infrastructure, such as modern energy transmission lines, will contribute to improved air quality and lower carbon emissions. Budget 2009 provides $1 billion over five years for a Green Infrastructure Fund. Funding will be allocated based on merit to support green infrastructure projects on a cost-shared basis

Nice idea. The problem: the fund amounts to less than 4% of the proposed infrastructure spending. If the other 96%, or just a fraction of it, goes to carbon-intensive building and road construction, we're quite likely to counteract all the benefits of the "green" investments.

Now it's possible that "green" projects may pop up in the other infrastructure spending. There's $407 million to upgrade VIArail service in the Quebec City - Windsor corridor, which depending on the upgrades, could be a net energy and emissions saver. There are also three projects - Summerside Wind Energy in PEI, Union Station upgrades in Toronto, and the Evergreen transit line here in Vancouver - listed among the "priority projects" that may recieve infrastructure funding. Then again, it is not clear whether the money would come from the general infrastructure fund or not.

The "green" budget item that has received the most media attention is the funding for a home retrofitting program:

Providing an additional $300 million over two years to the ecoENERGY Retrofit program to support an estimated 200,000 additional home retrofits.

Again, a nice idea. And again, don't be swayed by the numbers. It is 5% of the funds to "stimulate housing".

It is clear from the text of the budget suggests the government are not terribly interested in, or do not see, the opportunity to seriously invest in a case of green lemonade. Case in point, the three items under the heading "A more sustainable environment":

• A new Clean Energy Fund that supports clean energy research development and demonstration projects, including carbon capture and storage.
• Improving the Government's annual reporting on key environmental indicators such as clean air, clean water and greenhouse gas emissions with $10 million in 2009–10.
• Strengthening Canada's nuclear advantage with $351 million to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited for its operations, including the development of the Advanced CANDU Reactor, and to maintain safe and reliable operations at the Chalk River Laboratories.

I've been unable to find details on the first item. One can surmise from the short summary that the majority of the money will go towards carbon sequestration research in the tar sands. The second is a tiny investment - remember, this budget is in the tens of billions of dollars. And the third, well, regardless of your feeling about nuclear power as a solution to climate change, it is a sad comment on our country when the nuclear investment is the dominant component of "a more sustainable environment".

Nowhere here do you see real money for wind power development, solar power, a better electric grid, large expansion of public transit, helping the automakers build more efficient cars, all investments that would create jobs, that would stimulate research and innovation, and that would prepare Canadians for the future.

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Reality comes to Washington

"Year after year, decade after decade, we've chosen delay over decisive action. Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special interests have overshadowed common sense. Rhetoric has not led to the hard work needed to achieve results and our leaders raise their voices each time there's a spike on gas prices, only to grow quiet when the price falls at the pump."

- US President Obama, in a speech announcing new fuel efficiency standards

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Obama pushes the automakers

After years of debate, change comes with the stroke of a pen:

WASHINGTON — President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday

The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.

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The new battle over the tar sands

[My apologies - a bug left a bunch of jargon at the bottom of the original post] It is reasonable to argue that the continued fumbling of climate policy in Canada can all be traced back to oil. It may finally come to a head this year.

Canada is a unique country. And no, not because it is that rare place where people apologize if you carelessly bump into them, although it is fair to say that Canadians do utter the phrase "I'm sorry" more often than any other people. Canada's unique because it is the only developed country that is both a large energy consumer and a large energy producer. The Canadian economy is largely based on resource extraction -- gas, mining, forestry, and the big kahuna, oil.

The history is well known: The oil-producing province of Alberta opposed signing Kyoto. For years, the leaders of Alberta and the news media regularly attacked climate science and climate policy. The Alberta-based opposition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, represented federally by the Reform-cum-Alliance-cum-Conservative Party, was one of the major factors hindering the ability of the former Liberal governments to implement of any policy to meet the Kyoto targets. When the Conservatives took over the government, they effectively suspended any serious federal effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, oil extraction from the Alberta tar sands has become such a large part of the Canadian economy that even those public figures who by all rights oppose the developments for environmental and climatic reasons are unwilling to go on the offensive for fear of losing public support out west. Case in point new Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's pragmatic stance on the issue.

Canada has gone from being the toast of the world for ratifying Kyoto despite US opposition to the scrooge, actively lobbying the new US government to weaken its climate policy. Nervous that the Obama Admistration will regulate carbon-intensity of fuels -- effectively outlawing oil from the tar sands -- the Canadian government is doubling down. The new idea is that the US and Canada should harmonize their climate policies, and that those policies should make an exception for oil from the tar sands. Why? The pitch is that Canada is the secret to solving US energy woes: a large, friendly source of oil.

Will Canada be able to use oil as leverage? Rob Silver of the Globe and Mail is not so sure:

... when people talk about "Canada" or the "Canadian Prime Minister" using our oil resources as negotiating leverage with the U.S. administration, I'm not sure what legal basis the Prime Minister could possibly have to trade off additional or reduced oil development for, say, arctic sovereignty concessions. It's not the Prime Minister's oil to negotiate with. The Prime Minister is little more than lobbyist in chief - and that presumes that the PM and the oil companies' interests are aligned. This makes Canada different from almost every OPEC oil country, where the head of state and the oil production company are one and the same, and thus negotiating oil for other concessions is fully within the leader's power.

Regardless, Silver rightly concludes that even if Canada has leverage, Canadians might not want to use it:

The question our leaders need to ask, however, is whether we want to use whatever leverage we may have with the U.S. to fight against Obama's climate change plans. That seems to be where these suggestions are heading, and I both question the efficacy those efforts are likely to have and whether that puts us on the right side of history.

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Analysis of increase in "skeptical" climate stories

There has been an uptick in media attention paid to the rantings of climate change "skeptics" and the faux notion of "global cooling".

And not only in the usual places like the Calgary Herald and Fox News. There have the been segments on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, nicely deconstructed by Real Climate and Open Mind; the supposedly ironic sensibilities of Rex Murphy in the Globe and Mail and on CBC-Radio; a wildly errant story on the Huffington Post; a statistically-challenged meditation on sea ice in Daily Tech; and, last but by no means least, the drive-by mocking of Margaret Wente's year-end Globe and Mail column, which included by far the most erroneous claim that I've seen in some time: "Australia's magnificent coral reefs, once thought to have been devastated by the impact of global warming, have bounced back remarkably".

Is this recent spate of stories the sign of a long-term trend towards increased media coverage of climate change skepticism? Let's look at the data. Below I've plotted the fraction of media stories about climate change that can be classified as "skeptical" (i.e. questioning the role of human activities).

As you can see, there has been a trend since the 1970s towards increased positive coverage of the scientific evidence for a human contribution to climate change. Superimposed on this trend is year-to-year variability in the news coverage, caused by the chaotic and multi-factorial nature of the media. So if comparing a single year to the previous year, rather than considering the long-term trend, can result in an erroneous conclusion.

For example, if you draw a line from 1998, a low for skeptical reporting, to 2008, it may appear that skeptical reporting has been increasing and the world is trending towards an all Glenn Beck, all-the-time news media. In reality, this decade has featured less skeptical reporting in recorded history (records go back to the 1870s, but are less reliable before the 1930s due to limited coverage in some regions). The long-term trend suggest 2008 was an aberration, likely due to the La Nina conditions in the Pacific.

So everyone, keep fighting those mistakes in the media. But rest easy. The silliness won't last.

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Protection in the tropics, conquest in the Arctic?

Apparently we were quibbling about sea ice trends, the fading Bush Administration was preparing for a fight over the spoils left by our disappearing cryosphere. According to the CBC News, the new "Arctic policy" is "forthright about U.S. intentions to protect its security and remain a major player in the Arctic without regard to Canadian or other international sensitivities."

That breeze you felt was the passing good will from the creation of the three new marine national monuments.

You can read the full policy on the White House website. There are some nice bits on encouraging conservation of the marine environment, working with indigenous peoples, scientific cooperation and working with existing international policies on the Arctic. Then again, there are these choice selections:

4. The United States exercises authority in accordance with lawful claims of United States sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction in the Arctic region, including sovereignty within the territorial sea, sovereign rights and jurisdiction within the United States exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, and appropriate control in the United States contiguous zone.

Seems reasonable. Grant each country has rights to its territorial seas.

5. Freedom of the seas is a top national priority. The Northwest Passage is a strait used for international navigation, and the Northern Sea Route includes straits used for international navigation; the regime of transit passage applies to passage through those straits. Preserving the rights and duties relating to navigation and overflight in the Arctic region supports our ability to exercise these rights throughout the world, including through strategic straits.

Umm. Isn't most of the Northwest Passage within Canadian territorial seas? [feel free to correct me here]

The Senate should act favorably on U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea promptly, to protect and advance U.S. interests, including with respect to the Arctic.

Fair, logical. It's about time it signed the Law of the Sea.

Joining will serve the national security interests of the United States, including the maritime mobility of our Armed Forces worldwide. It will secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain. Accession will promote U.S. interests in the environmental health of the oceans. And it will give the United States a seat at the table when the rights that are vital to our interests are debated and interpreted.

Ah, right.

In carrying out this policy as it relates to international governance, the Secretary of State, in coordination with heads of other relevant executive departments and agencies, shall:

1. Continue to cooperate with other countries on Arctic issues through the United Nations (U.N.) and its specialized agencies, as well as through treaties such as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change,
   

I'm not sure other countries can take much more US cooperation on the UNFCCC. But this document isn't really about governance and climate change, is it?

Energy development in the Arctic region will play an important role in meeting growing global energy demand as the area is thought to contain a substantial portion of the world's undiscovered energy resources. The United States seeks to ensure that energy development throughout the Arctic occurs in an environmentally sound manner, taking into account the interests of indigenous and local communities, as well as open and transparent market principles. The United States seeks to balance access to, and development of, energy and other natural resources with the protection of the Arctic environment by ensuring that continental shelf resources are managed in a responsible manner and by continuing to work closely with other Arctic nations.

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327 days until Copenhagen

The UN Climate Conference for negotiating a post-Kyoto agreement opens in Copenhagen on December 7th.

What is your Prime Minister doing?

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Bush protects remote Pacific Islands

Maribo began last year with an "elevator figure" describing the threat that climate change poses to the world's coral reefs. This year, we'll begin with some good news.

In a decision that has drawn widespread applause from scientists and conservationists, and had a lot of reporters scrambling for an atlas, the outgoing US President used a century-old antiquities law to create three huge marine protected areas or "national monuments" out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Two of the monuments protect the Marianas Trench, offshore of the Northern Marianas Islands, and Rose Atoll, an isolated atoll north of American Samoa. The third, grouped together as the "Pacific Remote Islands", includes the water around seven "islands": Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Island

These places are probably only be known to WWII buffs, marine scientists or members of the military -- they are almost all either off limits to non-military personnel (e.g. Johnston), uninhabited (Rose), or uninhabitable (landless Kingman). But these islands, especially the Pacific Remote Islands, are exciting to scientists.

Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll were the subjects of an extensive biological survey co-ordinated by colleagues at Scripps and National Geographic a couple years ago. Kingman is generally considered "pristine"; the survey found an "inverted" food web, dominated by large predators like sharks, thanks to the lack of human pressure and also to favourable currents.

While Kingman and Palmyra have more of the fanfare, I'd bet that Howland, Baker and Jarvis could prove to be just as important. They lie closer to the equator, in an area more directly affected by the El Nino / Southern Oscillation. Thanks to tempermental El Nino, the surface waters in the area can be highly variable, at least by equatorial standards. The reefs may - that is may, not will - help us better understand if and how corals can acclimate or adapt to heat stress (not that this is mentioned in the lengthy White House press release).

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What a change

Watch Obama's new science adviser John Holdren speak about climate change.

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Attack of the skeptics XXIII: Inhofe won't quit

It appears that the ranks of Inhofe 400 club has now swelled to 650. The U.S. Senator's expanded list of experts skeptical of the consensus view on the human role in climate change contains few people who have been educated about climate science, have conducted any research about climate science, or have any truly relevant experience.

Of course, life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once, a quote from Thomas Huxley that bears repeating every time this horror show franchise coughs up another lame effort. So, here's an excerpt from my previous critique:

The real deception, here, is the way the members of the 400 club claim expertise on climate change. Here are three of the most common tricks:

1. “An IPCC expert reviewer”: The claim of many a 400 Clubber. It means absolutely nothing. The IPCC reports are public documents. As Tim Lambert pointed out, anyone who asks to see them and considers submitting a comment can call themselves an expert reviewer. Even if you were actually asked to review a section, it still means nothing. On request, I reviewed the corals and climate sections of WGII. That doesn’t mean I can claim the authors had any respect for my review, nor could I claim any responsibility whatsoever for the final report.

2. “Weather expert”. I'm reluctant to pick on this. But the fact is, weather-people or meteorological experts are not climate scientists nor do they have experience with climate models. They have a grounding in basic atmospheric physics similar to many climate scientists but they operate at massively different scales in time and space. This is not a comment on the value of their work, or their expertise, just a reminder that it is different. As a climate person, I know a fair bit about meteorology, but you wouldn’t want me doing your weekend forecast. Vice versa.

3. “Peer-reviewed” scientist: Being a “peer-reviewed” scientist doesn’t make you an expert in every branch of science. I am a peer-reviewed scientist. I regularly publish articles on climate change, biogeochemistry and corals in peer-reviewed journals. You would not turn to me for expertise on protein structures, HIV vaccines, environmental toxicology, mammalian genetics, galaxy formation, nor to build a bridge, design an interplanetary craft or remove your kidney. Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist in Imhofe’s 400 Club, is no doubt a very brilliant man. One thing he is not, however, is an expert on climate science, something rather evident from reading his quotes on the subject.

A bonus category:

4. Recently converted from a believer to a skeptic: Inhofe's list contains many of these supposed converts. A scientist that has been legitimately researching climate change would never call themselves a "believer". This is about evidence. Choosing to reject the human role in climate change is not terribly meaningful if the person had little knowledge about the evidence from the beginning.

Most of all, the compilation of this list reflects a complete misunderstanding of the IPCC process (explained here at Worldchanging). The IPCC's scientific consensus is not restricted to the roughly 2000 members of the IPCC itself. Those members are representatives of the community from around the world. They spent years compiling reviews that summarize all peer-reviewed research on climate change. The members of the IPCC are the spokespeople for the greater community of climate experts. A paltry list of 400 or 650 people, the vast majority of whom have no specific expertise on the science of climate change, is not terribly meaningful.

Americans should be offended that this drivel is perpetuated by a sitting U.S. senator and housed on a U.S. government website. Those are your tax dollars being wasted.

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Supressing Canadian science

From the Globe and Mail:

Canadian scientist Don MacIver resigned yesterday as chair of the working group organizing the next World Climate Congress after the federal government revoked his permission to speak at an event in Poznan, Poland, where United Nations climate-change negotiations are being held.

One of Canada's leading climate-change experts, Gordon McBean, called this an indication of the Conservative government's policy of ignoring the real effects of greenhouse-gas emissions and supporting the development of heavily polluting fossil fuels, especially the Alberta oil sands.

"Unfortunately, the weight of the tar sands lobby is such that the federal government is not capable at this point to show the leadership that we need," Dr. McBean said. "In Environment Canada there are a lot of outstanding people. But I'm not sure that as a department it is functioning in a way that is conducive to providing the kind of leadership that we need."

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