Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141205175039.htm
Chemicals released during natural gas extraction may harm reproduction, development
Date: December 5, 2014
Source: University of Missouri-Columbia
Summary: Unconventional oil and gas operations combine directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from rock. Discussions have centered on potential air and water pollution from chemicals and how they affect the more than 15 million Americans living within one mile of UOG operations. Now, a researcher has conducted the largest review of research centered on fracking byproducts and their effects on human reproductive and developmental health.

Journal Reference:
Ellen Webb, Sheila Bushkin-Bedient, Amanda Cheng, Christopher D. Kassotis, Victoria Balise, Susan C. Nagel. Developmental and reproductive effects of chemicals associated with unconventional oil and natural gas operations. Reviews on Environmental Health, 2014; 29 (4) DOI: 10.1515/reveh-2014-0057 http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2014-0057
 
It is not my job to find out how these funds are being spent, that is your job to refute this article as this is the group you think is correct.
At this point this is pretty damning.
So, no plans by the U.N. to solve this, but send us money, really?





Ban urged developed nations to “meet and exceed” a goal set in 2009 of mobilising at least $100bn a year, in public and private finance, by 2020 to help developing nations.

Ban Ki-moon didn’t explain, in the Guardian article, how giving him and his bureaucrats more money would help prevent global warming. Presumably the donors, once parted with their money, wouldn’t be able to afford as much gas for their cars, which might reduce their carbon footprint. However, given that UN eco-warriors seem to spend a lot of their time flying between climate conferences, their enlarged carbon footprints might more than compensate for the poverty constricted carbon footprints of the taxpayers who are paying their



GLG said:
Again you have no idea what you are talking about. Why don't you find out for yourself what and how these funds are administered. Is this too much to ask of you? Think for yourself or let other think for you. Is that what you want?

And you trust a website called "Tony's house of Pizza and climate change" Typical......
Click to expand...
 
Extreme Weather at Its Worst: The Heat and Drought of AD 1540

Paper Reviewed
Wetter, O., Pfister, C., Werner, J.P., Zorita, E., Wagner, S., Seneviratne, S.I., Herget, J., Grunewald, U., Luterbacher, J., Alcoforado, M.-J., Barriendos, M., Bieber, U., Brazdil, R., Burmeister, K.H., Camenisch, C., Contino, A., Dobrovolny, P., Glaser, R., Himmelsbach, I., Kiss, A., Kotyza, O., Labbe, T., Limanowka, D., Litzenburger, L., Nordl, O., Pribyl, K., Retso, D., Riemann, D., Rohr, C., Siegfried, W., Soderberg, J. and Spring, J.-L. 2014. The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 - a worst case. Climatic Change 125: 349-363.

In conjunction with climate-alarmist claims of recent, current and predicted global warming, Wetter et al. (2014) say "it is predicted that heat waves in the future will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting," citing Meehl and Tebaldi (2004), Seneviratne et al. (2012) and Collins et al. (2013). However, they also note that "Wetter and Pfister (2013) demonstrated from a long series of grape harvest dates (AD 1444-2011) that April-July temperatures in 1540 both in France and Switzerland were likely significantly warmer than in 2003." And to provide further evidence for the validity of this conclusion, they go on in this - their newest study - to "confirm these findings in a larger, European context."

More specifically, as they describe it, the 32 researchers "address the intensity, persistence and impact of the 1540 drought using more than 300 documentary sources of weather reports, originating from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, that collectively represent an area of 2 to 3 million km2." And what did this massive undertaking produce for them?

Wetter et al. say that (1) the annual number of days with precipitation in AD 1540 was "81% below the twentieth-century average and even 40% below the driest year since 1864," that (2) "precipitation amount in Switzerland remained significantly below 100-year minimum levels in 1540 throughout the spring (MAM), summer (JJA) and autumn (SON)," that (3) "no similar event is documented within the instrumental period since 1864," that (4) "in Poland the drought likewise persisted over three seasons," that (5) in contrast to recent droughts, "the 1540 drought was significantly more persistent and extreme in any single month except January, thus resulting in a severe annual number of days with precipitation deficit," and that (6) there was a "discharge deficit of about 90% for the rivers Rhine and Elbe," along with (7) "the complete desiccation of smaller watercourses."

And so we see there was nothing particularly unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the 2003 heat waves and droughts of Western Europe and those of Russia in 2010, when there was way more CO2 in Earth's atmosphere than there was back in 1540.

References
Collins, M., Knutti, R., Arblaster, J.M., Dufresne, J.L.,Fichelet, T., Friedlingstein, P., Gao, X., Gutowski, W.J., Johns, T., Krinner, G., Shongwe, M., Tebaldi, C., Weaver, A.J. and Wehner, M. 2013. Long-term climate change: Projections, commitments and irreversibility. In: Stocker, T.F., Qin, D., Plattner, G.-K., Tignor, M., Allen, S.K., Boschung, J., Nauels, A., Xia, Y., Bex, V. and Midgley, P.M. (Eds.). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Meehl, G.A. and Tebaldi, C. 2004. More intense, more frequent, and longer lasting heat waves in the 21st Century. Science 305: 994-997.

Seneviratne, S.I., Nicholls, D., Easterling, C.M., Goodess, S., Kanae, J., Kossin, Y., Luo, J., Marengo, K., McInnes, M., Rahimi, M., Reichstein, A., Sorteberg, , Vera, C. and Zhang, X. 2012. Changes in climate extremes and their impacts on the natural physical environment. In: Field, C.B., Barros, V., Stocker, T.F., Qin, D., Dokken, D.J., Ebi, K.L., Mastrandrea, M.D., Mach, K.J., Plattner, G.K., Allen, S.K., Tignor, M. and Midgley, P.M. (Eds.). A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pp. 109-230.

Wetter, O. and Pfister, C. 2013. An underestimated record breaking event - why summer 1540 was likely warmer than 2003. Climate of the Past 9: 41-56.

Posted 10 December 2014
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OldBlackDog said:
It is not my job to find out how these funds are being spent, that is your job to refute this article as this is the group you think is correct.
At this point this is pretty damning. So, no plans by the U.N. to solve this, but send us money, really?
Click to expand...
OBD: you do realize the costs required to offset out carbon emissions is a pittance compared to the externalized costs of global warming and climate change? One can even "make money" off of alternative energy development. Maybe you want to rephrase your initial emotional outburst?
 
OldBlackDog said:
It is not my job to find out how these funds are being spent, that is your job to refute this article as this is the group you think is correct.
At this point this is pretty damning.
So, no plans by the U.N. to solve this, but send us money, really?
Click to expand...
Typical response from you OBD "it's not my job" When I worked in the oil patch we would have run you off with those words. I'm sure its the same thing 30 years later. You are claiming the UN and IPCC are some how in control of this money and countries are sending that money to them. Where is your proof. "not my job" yea right .... My kid has a name for people like you...... and it is not pretty.
 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141209120400.htm
Abandoned wells can be 'super-emitters' of greenhouse gas
Date: December 9, 2014
Source: Princeton University, Engineering School
Summary: Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown, and possibly substantial, source of the greenhouse gas methane to Earth's atmosphere. After testing a sample of abandoned oil and natural gas wells in northwestern Pennsylvania, the researchers found that many of the old wells leaked substantial quantities of methane. Because there are many abandoned wells nationwide, the researchers believe the overall contribution of leaking wells could be significant.

Journal Reference:
Mary Kang, Cynthia M. Kanno, Matthew C. Reid, Xin Zhang, Denise L. Mauzerall, Michael A. Celia, Yuheng Chen, Tullis C. Onstott. Direct measurements of methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014; 201408315 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1408315111 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1408315111
 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141208074545.htm
Early warning signals of abrupt climate change
Date: December 8, 2014
Source: University of Exeter
Summary: A new study has found early warning signals of a reorganization of the Atlantic ocean's circulation which could have a profound impact on the global climate system.

A new study by researchers at the University of Exeter has found early warning signals of a reorganisation of the Atlantic ocean's circulation which could have a profound impact on the global climate system.

The research, published today in the journal Nature Communications, used a simulation from a highly complex model to analyse the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), an important component of the Earth's climate system.

It showed that early warning signals are present up to 250 years before it collapses, suggesting that scientists could monitor the real world overturning circulation for the same signals.

The AMOC is like a conveyor belt in the ocean, driven by the salinity and temperature of the water. The system transports heat energy from the tropics and Southern Hemisphere to the North Atlantic, where it is transferred to the atmosphere.

Experiments suggest that if the AMOC is 'switched off' by extra freshwater entering the North Atlantic, surface air temperature in the North Atlantic region would cool by around 1-3°C, with enhanced cooling of up to 8°C in the worst affected regions.

The collapse would also encourage drought in the Sahel -- the area just south of the Sahara desert -- and dynamic changes in sea level of up to 80cm along the coasts of Europe and North America.

"We found that natural fluctuations in the circulation were getting longer-lived as the collapse was approached, a phenomenon known as critical slowing down," said lead author Chris Boulton.

"We don't know how close we are to a collapse of the circulation, but a real world early warning could help us prevent it, or at least prepare for the consequences" adds co-author Professor Tim Lenton.

The study is the most realistic simulation of the climate system in which this type of early warning signal has been tested.

"The best early warning signals in the model world are in places where major efforts are going into monitoring the circulation in the real world -- so these efforts could have unexpected added value' adds Professor Lenton.

Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Exeter. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference: Chris A. Boulton, Lesley C. Allison, Timothy M. Lenton. Early warning signals of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation collapse in a fully coupled climate model. Nature Communications, 2014; 5: 5752 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6752 http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141208/ncomms6752/pdf/ncomms6752.pdf
 
Building on the best: keeping Canada's climate promise
December 2014
Building on the best: keeping Canada's climate promise cover
Download PDF http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/downloads/KeepingCanadasClimatePromise-Report.pdf
View news release http://www.davidsuzuki.org/media/news/2014/12/report-finds-climate-solutions-exist-in-canada/
This report identifies Canada's top climate change policy solutions and assesses how effective they have been in meeting our emissions commitments. It shows that adopting best in-country solutions from provincial leaders under a unifying national approach would make serious headway in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis concludes that if Canada had adopted best-in-country clean energy policies in 2008, it could be within reach (about six per cent) of meeting its international emissions target for 2020.
Progress on Canadian Climate Policy (PDF), supplementary technical report from Navius Research http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publicat...ssonCanadianClimatePolicy-TechnicalReport.pdf
 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...as-emissions-report/article22017313/?page=all
B.C. carbon tax an effective model for national climate change approach: report
MARK HUME
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Dec. 10 2014, 8:00 AM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Dec. 10 2014, 10:55 AM EST

Canada could come close to hitting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission targets by nationally adopting strategies British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec already have in place, a new study has found.

The report comes as world leaders convene in Lima at a United Nations climate-change conference and follows the release Monday of an Environment Canada update that confirms Canada is far behind targets set by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009.

Canada’s goal is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels, but Environment Canada projects the country will only get half way to that goal under current practices.

However, the David Suzuki Foundation report, released Wednesday, states that by using provincial strategies that have been shown to work, Canada could come within 5.6 per cent of meeting its emission targets.

“The main finding is that if we had a unified approach to climate change, we would be within reach of meeting our target and upholding our climate-change commitment to the world,” said Ian Bruce, science and policy manager for the foundation.

Mr. Bruce said the study is the first to analyze what would happen if several key provincial climate-change strategies were applied nationally.

Mr. Bruce said B.C.’s carbon tax, Quebec’s cap on emissions and Ontario’s elimination of coal-fired power plants have all been effective in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions provincially without harming the economy.

“The report addresses some of the myths out there that it’s too difficult for a northern country like Canada to take action,” he said. “These are not radical new ideas in this report. They are proven solutions that work and they are being implemented right in our own back yard.”

Mr. Bruce said, over all, Canada continues to fall behind on its greenhouse-gas emission targets, however, because there is no national climate-change strategy.

“As far as how progress is being made right now in Canada, it has been a piecemeal approach,” he said. “I would say the main obstacle to Canada in meeting its target is a lack of leadership at the national level by the federal government.”

The Environment Canada report states the federal government “is focused on a pragmatic approach to addressing climate change that will reduce emissions while continuing to create jobs and encourage the growth of the economy.”

Mr. Bruce said if Canada wants to start making significant progress in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the country should adopt the successful provincial policies now.

“We have made-in-Canada solutions that are proven to work,” he said. “For example, adopting best-in-Canada policies on renewable energy, staged phase-out of coal power and pricing carbon pollution in Saskatchewan and Alberta would be three times more effective in reducing carbon pollution than current policies.”

In an interview from Peru, where she is attending the UN’s COP20 climate-change conference, B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak said British Columbia and other provinces are leading by example and she hopes Ottawa takes note.

Ms. Polak said B.C.’s carbon tax has been a popular topic at the conference, and she was pleased to be able to tell delegates that B.C. is on target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 33-per-cent below 2007 levels by 2020.

“It’s great to have B.C.’s climate leadership recognized so publicly on the international stage,” she said. “Just [Monday], World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said B.C.’s carbon tax is, and I’m quoting here, ‘one of the most powerful examples of carbon pricing.’”

In 2008, B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax.

Ms. Polak said there is “recognition globally that carbon pricing is necessary to reduce GHG emissions and that B.C.’s broad-based, revenue-neutral carbon tax is a successful model other jurisdictions could follow.”
 
Matt Ridley: Beware The Corruption Of Science

Date: 08/12/14 Matt Ridley, The Times
Environmental researchers are increasingly looking for evidence that fits their ideology, rather than seeking the truth.

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.

This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly “independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy.

Second example: last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that.

In any case, the year is not over, so why the announcement now? Oh yes, there’s a political climate summit in Lima this week. The scientists of WMO allowed themselves to be used politically. Not that they were reluctant. To squeeze and cajole the data until they just crossed the line, the WMO “reanalysed” a merger of five data sets. Maybe that was legitimate but, given how the institutions that gather temperature data have twice this year been caught red-handed making poorly justified adjustments to “homogenise” and “in-fill” thermometer records in such a way as to cool down old records and warm up new ones, I have my doubts.

In one case, in Rutherglen, a town in Victoria, a recorded cooling trend of minus 0.35C became a reported warming trend of plus 1.73C after “homogenisation” by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. It claimed the adjustment was necessary because the thermometer had moved between two fields, but could provide no evidence for this, or for why it necessitated such a drastic adjustment.

Most of the people in charge of collating temperature data are vocal in their views on climate policy, which hardly reassures the rest of us that they leave those prejudices at the laboratory door. Imagine if bankers were in charge of measuring inflation.

Third example: the Royal Society used to be the gold standard of scientific objectivity. Yet this month it issued a report on resilience to extreme weather that, in its 100-plus pages, could find room for not a single graph to show recent trends in extreme weather. That is because no such graph shows an upward trend in global frequency of droughts, storms or floods. The report did find room for a graph showing the rising cost of damage by extreme weather, which is a function of the increased value of insured property, not a measure of weather.

The Royal Society report also carefully omitted what is perhaps the most telling of all statistics about extreme weather: the plummeting death toll. The global probability of being killed by a drought, flood or storm is down by 98 per cent since the 1920s and has never been lower — not because weather is less dangerous but because of improvements in transport, trade, infrastructure, aid and communication.

The Royal Society’s decision to cherry-pick its way past such data would be less worrying if its president, Sir Paul Nurse, had not gone on the record as highly partisan on the subject of climate science. He called for those who disagree with him to be “crushed and buried”, hardly the language of Galileo.

Three months ago Sir Paul said: “We need to be aware of those who mix up science, based on evidence and rationality, with politics and ideology, where opinion, rhetoric and tradition hold more sway. We need to be aware of political or ideological lobbyists who do not respect science, cherry-picking data or argument, to support their predetermined positions.”

If he wishes to be consistent, he will therefore condemn the behaviour of the scientists over neonicotinoids and the WMO over temperature records, and chastise his colleagues’ report, for these are prime examples of his point.

I am not hopeful. When a similar scandal blew up in 2009 over the hiding of inconvenient data that appeared to discredit the validity of proxies for past global temperatures based on tree rings (part of “Climategate”), the scientific establishment closed ranks and tried to pretend it did not matter. Last week a further instalment of that story came to light, showing that yet more inconvenient data (which discredit bristlecone pine tree rings as temperature proxies) had emerged.

Full op-ed
 

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Glad to see you made your money off the oil patch.
Would not have been such a good life without it,would it?

The rest of your rant , well you know.



GLG said:
Typical response from you OBD "it's not my job" When I worked in the oil patch we would have run you off with those words. I'm sure its the same thing 30 years later. You are claiming the UN and IPCC are some how in control of this money and countries are sending that money to them. Where is your proof. "not my job" yea right .... My kid has a name for people like you...... and it is not pretty.
Click to expand...
 
OldBlackDog said:
Three months ago Sir Paul said: “We need to be aware of those who mix up science, based on evidence and rationality, with politics and ideology, where opinion, rhetoric and tradition hold more sway. We need to be aware of political or ideological lobbyists who do not respect science, cherry-picking data or argument, to support their predetermined positions.”
Click to expand...

You should take this advice to heart OBD cause your on the road to an Epic Fail.

I like your new sig (climategate). How did that work out for your team? LOL .... Gave up on the Einstein quotes?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OldBlackDog said:
Glad to see you made your money off the oil patch.
Would not have been such a good life without it,would it?

The rest of your rant , well you know.
Click to expand...

Yup it taught me to think for myself and how to make money the old fashioned way... by earning it. You should have tried it. It would have done you good.
 
Super that you like my new sig.
Guess you missed what it means?
Here is the article. http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html


GLG said:
You should take this advice to heart OBD cause your on the road to an Epic Fail.

I like your new sig (climategate). How did that work out for your team? LOL .... Gave up on the Einstein quotes?
Click to expand...
 
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.


Second example: last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that.

Third example: the Royal Society used to be the gold standard of scientific objectivity. Yet this month it issued a report on resilience to extreme weather that, in its 100-plus pages, could find room for not a single graph to show recent trends in extreme weather. That is because no such graph shows an upward trend in global frequency of droughts, storms or floods. The report did find room for a graph showing the rising cost of damage by extreme weather, which is a function of the increased value of insured property, not a measure of weather.

The Royal Society report also carefully omitted what is perhaps the most telling of all statistics about extreme weather: the plummeting death toll. The global probability of being killed by a drought, flood or storm is down by 98 per cent since the 1920s and has never been lower — not because weather is less dangerous but because of improvements in transport, trade, infrastructure, aid and communication.

The Royal Society’s decision to cherry-pick its way past such data would be less worrying if its president, Sir Paul Nurse, had not gone on the record as highly partisan on the subject of climate science. He called for those who disagree with him to be “crushed and buried”, hardly the language of Galileo.

Three months ago Sir Paul said: “We need to be aware of those who mix up science, based on evidence and rationality, with politics and ideology, where opinion, rhetoric and tradition hold more sway. We need to be aware of political or ideological lobbyists who do not respect science, cherry-picking data or argument, to support their predetermined positions.”

If he wishes to be consistent, he will therefore condemn the behaviour of the scientists over neonicotinoids and the WMO over temperature records, and chastise his colleagues’ report, for these are prime examples of his point
 
Where is the plan?
Really, send us money and we might come up with something.


agentaqua said:
OBD: you do realize the costs required to offset out carbon emissions is a pittance compared to the externalized costs of global warming and climate change? One can even "make money" off of alternative energy development. Maybe you want to rephrase your initial emotional outburst?
Click to expand...
 
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