Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[OldBlackDog]

Climate talks extended as negotiators fail to break logjam

The climate talks at Lima were on the brink of collapse on Saturday after two attempts to push through watered-down proposals were rejected by the developing countries, forcing the head of negotiations to summon the delegates for an extra day of work. The two-week long negotiations were supposed to have ended on Friday evening with a decision on the kind of climate actions that countries could take in order to claim them as their ‘contribution’ to the global fight against climate change. These ‘contributions’, the magnitude of which was to be determined by the country itself—and hence called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or the INDCs—are to become the backbone of a new international legal architecture on climate change that is supposed to be finalised at next year’s climate talks in Paris.

In Lima, the countries were also to suggest the other features of this international legal architecture, so that they had a one-year time period to negotiate on these and come to an agreement during the Paris conference. The architecture, if agreed in Paris, would come into effect in 2020.

But deep divisions in the positions of the developed and developing countries blocked any progress on Friday and, by evening, countries had abandoned the formal processes to huddle in small informal groups and bilateral meetings in a desperate bid to forge an agreement. The talks went into extra-time till the early hours of Saturday morning. But a new draft decision text, introduced at 2.30 in the morning, widened the rift further and gave rise to much distrust as a number of countries accused the head of negotiations of attempting to push unacceptable proposals down their neck as a fait accompli.

As country after country got up to say they had not been consulted in preparing the draft text and protested against the half-hour time given to them to study the text and make amendments, the head of negotiations was left with no option but to close the proceedings for the day and ask delegates to reconvene on Saturday morning.
Venezuela’s representative said the way countries were being asked to approve the text at the last minute, he was reminded of Copenhagen. At the
2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, an agreement was thrust on the countries at the last minute, leading to much heartburn.

 

[Foxsea]

So, satellites are ok to use??
Yet, they say there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING IN 18 yrs plus???
So what are you talking about??

The satellite data is collected from a number of satellites orbiting & providing daily coverage of some 80% of the Earth's surface. Each day the orbits shift and 100% coverage is achieved every 3-4 days. The microwave sensors on the satellites do not directly measure temperature, but rather radiation given off by oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. The intensity of this radiation is directly proportional to the temperature of the air and is therefore used to calculate global temperatures.

At least three groups keep track of the tropospheric temperature using satellites and they all now show warming in the troposphere that is consistent with the surface temperature record. This information is consistent with the historical record of troposphere temperatures obtained from weather balloons. Furthermore data also shows now that the stratosphere is cooling as predicted by the physics. All three groups measuring temperatures of the troposphere show a warming trend. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program produced a study in April 2006 on this topic. Lead authors included John Christy of UAH and Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

Scott Church has written an extraordinarily detailed and thorough (137 page) article titled Climate Change & Tropospheric Temperature Trends that goes into all the technical nitty gritty of satellite and radiosonde data.

 

[OldBlackDog]

So, you will tell us how this works?

At least three groups keep track of the tropospheric temperature using satellites and they all now show warming in the troposphere that is consistent with the surface temperature record!

So where are the surface temperatures taken from?
Are they taken from the whole world?
Do they work on the north and south poles?
What physiclal history is there?

The satellite data is collected from a number of satellites orbiting & providing daily coverage of some 80% of the Earth's surface. Each day the orbits shift and 100% coverage is achieved every 3-4 days. The microwave sensors on the satellites do not directly measure temperature, but rather radiation given off by oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. The intensity of this radiation is directly proportional to the temperature of the air and is therefore used to calculate global temperatures.

At least three groups keep track of the tropospheric temperature using satellites and they all now show warming in the troposphere that is consistent with the surface temperature record. This information is consistent with the historical record of troposphere temperatures obtained from weather balloons. Furthermore data also shows now that the stratosphere is cooling as predicted by the physics. All three groups measuring temperatures of the troposphere show a warming trend. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program produced a study in April 2006 on this topic. Lead authors included John Christy of UAH and Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

Scott Church has written an extraordinarily detailed and thorough (137 page) article titled Climate Change & Tropospheric Temperature Trends that goes into all the technical nitty gritty of satellite and radiosonde data.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Thought you would appreciate this.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Some more information.

 

[OldBlackDog]

This scientist solved the mystery of belly button lint


Look in your belly button at the end of the day, and you might find a loosely packed tuft of soft lint. For many people, belly button lint is a normal fact of life.

it all has to do with stomach hair

But take a second to consider it and it might seem more mysterious. Where does the lint come from? Why do some people get it, but other people don't? And how the heck does it form, day after day?

These questions have probably puzzled people since shirts were invented hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Luckily, as New Scientist has reported, exactly one scientist has taken the time to study this topic in detail, and he believes he has the answers. It all has to do with stomach hair.

How belly button lint forms

Georg Steinhauser of the Vienna University of Technology is primarily an atomic chemist. However, in 2009, he published the results of four years of research on belly button lint (or as the Brits charmingly call it, "navel fluff") in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

By studying a total of 503 pieces of lint from his own belly button — and asking friends about their navel fluff production patterns — he came to a simple conclusion. Stomach hair is responsible for producing belly button lint.

"The scaly structure of hair firstly enhances the abrasion of minuscule fibers from the shirt and secondly directs the lint into one direction — the navel — where it accumulates," he wrote. "The hairs’ scales act like a kind of 'barbed hooks.'"


Human hair, shown under a microscope, shows the tiny scales that act as barbs, pulling fibers out of a shirt. (Journal of Nutrition)

Steinhauser first arrived at this hypothesis by finding that of his friends, it was mostly people that had stomach hair who also typically found belly button lint. He proved it by shaving his own stomach, and seeing that he didn't produce any belly button lint until his hair grew back.

He also confirmed the seemingly obvious fact that lint originates from shirt fibers in two ways: by seeing that it always matched the color of the shirt he was wearing, and by chemically analyzing the lint and finding that it was mostly made of cellulose (the material that makes up cotton). It also contained some nitrogen and sulfur, likely from sweat and skin cells.

Finally, Steinhauser made one more interesting finding. By weighing every single one of his navel lint balls and noting the condition of the shirt he was wearing each day, he found that new shirts produce way more belly button lint than old ones, probably because they have more loose fibers to give off.

As you can see, the vast majority of his lint balls weighed less than three milligrams. However, a few brand-new shirts produced relatively huge lint balls, as heavy as six or seven milligrams.

This means, Steinhauser calculated, that "Assuming that an average T-shirt (180 g) can be worn up to 100 days a year, such a shirt could suffer a weight loss of up to 182 mg (0.1 percent) per year just by fibers that are lost into the navel."

 

[Foxsea]

Thought you would appreciate this.

It's trends that matter when monitoring Climate Change. Trends only appear by looking at all the data, globally, and taking into account other variables -- like the effects of the El Nino ocean current or sunspot activity -- not by cherry-picking single points.

There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on surface air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Oceans for instance -- due to their immense size and heat storing capability (called 'thermal mass') -- tend to give a much more 'steady' indication of the warming that is happening. Records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon (Figure 1). More than 90% of global warming heat goes into warming the oceans, while less than 3% goes into increasing the surface air temperature.



Figure 1: Land, atmosphere, and ice heating (red), 0-700 meter ocean heat content (OHC) increase (light blue), 700-2,000 meter OHC increase (dark blue). From Nuccitelli et al. (2012).

Even if we focus exclusively on global surface temperatures, Cowtan & Way (2013) shows that when we account for temperatures across the entire globe (including the Arctic, which is the part of the planet warming fastest), the global surface warming trend for 1997–2012 is approximately 0.11 to 0.12°C per decade.

 

[Foxsea]

Thought you would appreciate this.

I see your chart and raise another:

 

[Foxsea]

California just had its worst drought in over 1200 years

Dana Nuccitelli
Monday 8 December 2014 14.00 GMT


A new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Griffin & Anchukaitis concludes that the 2012–2014 drought in California was its most intense in at least 1,200 years. The study used drought reconstructions from tree-ring cores, from the North American Drought Atlas (NADA) and from cores Griffin & Anchukaitis collected from blue oak trees in southern and central California. Blue oak tree ring widths are particularly sensitive to moisture changes. According to Griffin, The study compared today’s drought conditions in California to those reconstructed over the past 1,200 years using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), an estimate of available soil moisture. The data showed that California is experiencing its most intense drought in over a millennium, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years … In terms of cumulative severity, it is the worst drought on record (-14.55 cumulative PDSI), more extreme than longer (4- to 9-year) droughts. What’s interesting is that the blue oak data showed that while precipitation levels in California have been low over the past 3 years, the levels haven’t been unprecedented.

But at the same time as California has been getting little rain, it’s also experienced record hot temperatures. It’s the heat that’s pushed the drought into unprecedented territory. Griffin & Anchukaitis concluded temperature could have exacerbated the 2014 drought by approximately 36% … These observations from the paleoclimate record suggest that high temperatures have combined with the low but not yet exceptional precipitation deficits to create the worst short-term drought of the last millennium for the state of California … Future severe droughts are expected to be in part driven by anthropogenic influences and temperatures outside the range of the last millennium.

Another new paper also published in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists at the University of California, Irvine likewise recognizes the extreme and unprecedented nature of California’s current drought, and focuses on the risks that these events pose in the present and future. Despite the well-recognized interdependence between temperature and precipitation … little attention has been paid to risk analysis of concurrent extreme droughts and heatwaves … We argue that the global warming and the associated increase in extreme temperatures substantially increase the chance of concurrent droughts and heatwaves.

As the authors note, at issue is the fact that humans are causing temperatures to rise. Thus although droughts will always happen naturally, as studies have shown, they’ll become more intense in a warmer world. The combination of dry, hot weather will create bigger risks for Californians. Climate scientist Michael Mann nicely summarized the ways that humans may have contributed to the current California drought,

In fact, there are at least three different mechanisms that are potentially relevant to the connection between the 2013/2014 California drought and human-caused climate change.
There is (1) the impact of climate change on the pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) off the west coast. One recent study suggests that climate change favors an SST pattern in the North Pacific that increases the incidence of the atmospheric circulation pattern responsible for the current drought.

Then there is (2) the marked decrease in Arctic Sea Ice due to global warming. Studies going back more than a decade show that reduced Arctic sea ice may also favor such an atmospheric circulation pattern. More recent work by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers provides independent support for that mechanism.

Finally, there is (3) the effect of global warming on soil moisture. All other things being equal, warming of soils leads to greater rates of evaporation and drying. This mechanism leads to worsened drought even if rainfall patterns are unchanged.

A high pressure ridge sitting of California’s coast for several years has been a primary factor contributing to the low levels of precipitation. The ridge has pushed storms north of California, leaving the state dry. A study led by Noah Diffenbaugh at Stanford used modeling and statistics to find that these sorts of persistent high-pressure ridges are more likely to sit off California’s coast in the presence of high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Another paper published this year by Simon Wang and colleagues similarly concluded that human-caused global warming is changing conditions in the Pacific Ocean that make these high-pressure ridges off the coast stronger, thus intensifying droughts in California.

In short, it appears that humans are contributing to the strength of high pressure ridges off California’s coast, which will tend to reduce the amount of precipitation in the state. High temperatures exacerbate these dry conditions by increasing evaporation, soil dryness, and water demand. According to Griffin & Anchukaitis, the record heat intensified the drought by about 36%, leading to exceptional drought conditions unprecedented in the past 1,200 years.

The drought alone is anticipated to cost California over $2 billion this year. On top of that, heat and drought also create conditions ripe for wildfires; another major problem for California. As expected, California also saw an intense wildfire season in 2014, blowing well through its firefighting budget. Now that the state is finally seeing some significant rainfall in December, those wildfires created conditions conducive to flooding and mudslides.

As a major agricultural producer, this extreme weather in California impacts the entire country and world. However, it’s also giving us a glimpse at the risks we all face if we fail to curb global warming. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and other types of extreme weather are becoming more intense due to human-caused global warming. The longer we wait to cut carbon pollution and slow global warming, the more extreme our weather and its impacts will become.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...just-had-its-worst-drought-in-over-1200-years

 

[Foxsea]

Making Sense of Climate Science Denial - a course for OBD

This course examines the science of climate science denial.

We will look at the most common climate myths from “global warming stopped in 1998” to “global warming is caused by the sun” to “climate impacts are nothing to worry about.”

We’ll find out what lessons are to be learnt from past climate change as well as better understand how climate models predict future climate impacts. You’ll learn both the science of climate change and the techniques used to distort the science.

With every myth we debunk, you’ll learn the critical thinking needed to identify the fallacies associated with the myth. Finally, armed with all this knowledge, you’ll learn the psychology of misinformation. This will equip you to effectively respond to climate misinformation and debunk myths.

Prerequisite: basic high school science

 

[agentaqua]

http://commonsensecanadian.ca/latest-harper-omnibus-bill-guts-regulations-coal-lng-ports/
Latest Harper Omnibus bill guts regulations for coal, LNG ports
Posted December
Neptune coal terminal (Image: Dan Pierce/Wilderness Committee)
By Andrew Gage and Anna Johnston – republished with permission from the West Coast Environmental Law Association.

On October 23, 2014, the federal government introduced Bill C-43, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures (also called the “Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2”). Buried in Division 16 of the 475 page omnibus bill are proposed changes to the Canada Marine Act that, if adopted, would pose a serious threat to legal protection from environmental threats and public oversight of activities that occur in ports.

The proposed amendments raise a number of concerns for British Columbians, especially as they relate to controversial shipping industries like coal and LNG – indeed one of the most troubling amendments could be viewed as a direct challenge to a lawsuit filed by Voters Taking Action on Climate Change against the environmental assessment of the controversial Fraser Surrey Coal Docks. For detailed information, see our legal backgrounder Bill C-43: A threat to environmental safety and democracy, but two of the most concerning changes are:
•Allowing the federal Cabinet to exempt port lands from key requirements of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 and Species At Risk Act that regulate “federal lands” by turning those lands over to port authorities.
•Giving Cabinet extensive powers to write new laws for ports, and to delegate law-making powers for ports to any person, without many checks and balances.

Exempting “federal lands” from federal environmental laws

Some federal environmental statutes create special environmental requirements for activities taking place on “federal lands.” Examples include:
•Canadian Environmental Assessment 2012- the requirement to consider the environmental impacts of projects – even where they would not otherwise require an environmental assessment;
•Species At Risk Act– The requirement to protect land-based endangered and threatened species and their habitat on federal lands.

Bill C-43 gives the federal government the ability to get around these legal protections by converting federal lands into port lands. Specifically, Cabinet would gain the ability to sell its lands in a port to the port authority. Once it does so, even though the port authority is supposed to act as an agent of the federal government, those lands will no longer be considered “federal lands.”

And, presto, as if by magic those nasty environmental protections disappear.

A controversial coal port proposed for Surrey, BC gives a tangible example of what this might mean. As we write in the backgrounder:


…Fraser Surrey Docks LP’s proposed Direct Transfer Coal Facility in Surrey, BC was required to undergo a federal environmental assessment by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority because the project occurs on federal lands under Port Authority supervision. The Port Authority’s approval of the facility has been challenged in court by a group of citizen and non-profit applicants represented by Ecojustice and Beverly Hobby (with funding from West Coast) for failing to follow the requirements of CEAA 2012. If the Bill C-43 changes to the Canada Marine Act come into effect and the federal government were to sell the property on which it is located to the Port Authority, it would be possible for controversial projects like this one to bypass reviews under CEAA 2012 altogether.

Trust us, we’re law-makers

The second thing that Bill C-43 does is to turn over exceptionally wide law-making powers to Cabinet, including giving it the ability to turn broad powers over to port authorities, provinces or even industry. While Cabinet often has the power to make regulations under a statute, these powers are exceptionally broad, and include powers to:
•hand over regulatory, administrative or even judicial (court) control of industrial activities in ports to any person, including a province, port authority or even industry itself;
•powers to incorporate industry or other documents in the regulations without necessarily making those documents publicly available;
•create rules for the retention or destruction of documents.

The Bill provides few explicit constraints over how these powers could be used, and the government hasn’t given any real indication as to its plans, but:

Powers that can be delegated include responsibility for making laws and policies regarding specified industrial activities in ports, administering activities under those instruments, and hearing disputes that occur regarding port activities. For example, Cabinet could in principle allow an industry association to write the rules regarding the assessment and permitting processes for LNG facilities and coal storage, and the shipping of both. It could then incorporate those rules into federal law without public notice or opportunity to comment.

The Bill even purports to allow Cabinet to take oversight of the new rules away from the courts by creating a tribunal to hear any disputes regarding those activities in ports, including challenges by the public. It could appoint industry representatives as the tribunal’s members and authorize port authorities to write the rules governing port activities and for hearing disputes (including who would have standing to bring a challenge).

Canadians understand the value of checks and balances and transparency in laws. These amendments do away with both.

Secret amendments

What are these amendments doing in a budget bill? This is the latest of a series of amendments to environmental laws that have been hidden in voluminous budget bills and debated by the House Finance Committee (instead of environmental committee). This is not the way democracy is supposed to work, and now is the time to say no.

Andrew Gage and Anna Johnston are staff counsel at the West Coast Environmental Law Association. They are calling on concerned citizens to write to Finance Minister Joe Oliver about this proposed omnibus budget bill.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/stephen-harpers-crazy-timeline-oil-and-gas-regulation

Dec 10, 2014 by PressProgress

Stephen Harper's "crazy" timeline on oil and gas regulation

Eight years of unfulfilled promises made by five environment ministers -- and Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself. All gone in one "crazy" moment.

On Tuesday, Harper said it's "crazy" to consider regulating the oil and gas sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- backtracking on the government's stated position since 2006. His comments were a dominant theme during Question Period today.

With so many empty Conservative words to work with, we created a "crazy" timeline of the Harper government's contradictions and broken promises on oil and gas regulation:

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.policynote.ca/now-is-exactly-the-right-time-to-regulate-oil-and-gas/

Now is exactly the right time to regulate oil and gas

December 11th, 2014 · Seth Klein · No Comments · Climate change


Earlier this week, Prime Minister Harper declared that, given oil prices plummeting to $60-70 a barrel, now would be a “crazy” time to introduce regulations on the oil and gas sector.

This comes after promising nine years ago that the federal government would bring in new GHG regulations on the oil and gas sector (but failing to do so), and after committing at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 that Canada would reduce its GHG emissions by 17% by 2020, a target that Environment Canada now says the government has no plan to meet.

In fact, with the price of oil so low, now would be a terrific time to introduce new carbon reduction measures.

For example, it’s an ideal time to introduce a federal carbon tax. When BC introduced its carbon tax, oil was at $150 (ouch!). But with oil at $65, consumers are well placed to handle the introduction of a carbon tax (provided of course that we also introduce an offsetting carbon tax credit for low and modest income households, as modeled in this CCPA report by Marc Lee).

Indeed, from a climate perspective, the downside of low oil prices is that consumers may be less inclined to change their behaviors and burn less gas, and a carbon tax, provided it was high enough, could mitigate that.

The timing would also be ideal for governments who are panicked about what the drop in oil prices means for reduced public revenues (as oil royalties are linked to price, and a reduction in production activity reduces other tax revenues as well). Because a carbon tax is linked to the consumption of oil, which is unlikely to slow given the low price, a carbon tax could help buttress government revenues.

Most importantly though, the drop in oil prices represents a welcome moment to rethink the path we are on. It’s a reminder that linking our economic fate to volatile commodity prices is always a roller-coaster (didn’t Albertans learn that lesson decades ago?). Sound economic management ought to be about moving us away from such dependence, and certainly isn’t about panicking and rolling over on climate commitments when the oil bubble starts to burst. We’ve been given a chance – a pause in the gold rush – to move away from mindless fossil fuel expansion. That’s not crazy – that’s good sense.

Now is precisely when we should be capturing what income we can from this sector (via a carbon tax and/or other taxes and royalties), and using those revenues to expedite the transition towards a new low-carbon economy; using those revenues to fund green jobs and green infrastructure. And those taxation options should be complemented by other regulatory measures to cap carbon emissions within a defined carbon budget, to further accelerate the transition.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/enough-with-pipelines-refine-it/article21957470/
GORDON GIBSON
Enough with pipelines. Refine it
Gordon Gibson
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Dec. 05 2014, 3:00 AM EST
Last updated Friday, Dec. 05 2014, 3:00 AM EST
ggibson@bc-home.com

Oil prices are down, but they will be back up, as always. Meanwhile, new supply comes on stream from existing construction. So the great Canadian issue remains new oil pipelines from Alberta. For supporters, these long-term projects will generate untold billions of dollars every year, including tax revenue to pay for all the health and education and other good things. For opponents, the pipelines will facilitate the very destruction of the planet through carbon release, or at a minimum foul our streams and oceans.

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This is surely of national consequence. So it is passing strange that the debate is being led by premiers and even mayors. After all, the Constitution gives Ottawa exclusive jurisdiction in this area, including the Northern Gateway, Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines. And the government with the power stands mute.

Yes, the National Energy Board is holding hearings, but that process is getting minimal respect from opponents on three grounds.

First, that it is an alleged rubber stamp. I don’t believe that, though. The technical and route environment and aboriginal investigations are thorough.

The second, correct observation is that the process is not considering the supposedly most important matter of all, namely the carbon consequences of extracting oil from what opponents call the “tar sands.” But the NEB does not have jurisdiction here – the matter of carbon emissions is a wriggling monster squarely in the lap of Ottawa, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

Finally, that for some opponents, the only legitimate answer is “no.” Minds are made up, and closed. Indeed, if you truly believe that planetary ecological collapse is imminent, it is your duty to lie down in front of the bulldozers.

But most people are neither oil men nor hard enviros. They understand that much of our prosperity and many of our social services are paid for by petroleum production. They also want a sustainable environment. It’s a matter of balance.

This majority in the middle cries out for leadership. The leadership of those opposing these projects is strong and skillful. You might think that the oil industry would be leading the pro-pipeline charge, but Big Oil – the major U.S. companies – quite like the current situation. Canadian oil has no Canadian pipes to get it to the ocean, and so we have to sell it south at a significant discount.

For neutral leadership then, that really leaves governments, academics (who are all over the place) and the news media, which as a whole is more interested in writing about protests than in deep analysis.

Local governments bend to local protests, but this is a national issue. Where is Ottawa? Scared and silent, with an election on its way. Mr. Harper has not spent one ounce of political capital on this file. If things remain that way, my guess is that Gateway and Kinder are toast in our time, and Energy East is a gamble.

There is a win-win-win response to all of this, if any national political party has the savvy to step up. The public opposition is really against pipelines to export bitumen and the response is simple: Refine the bitumen in Canada.

The politics are simple. Most Canadians think adding value in our own country to our own resources is a good thing. And it would add a lot – a lot – of jobs and taxes. Tick.

Refining bitumen onshore eliminates the widespread worry about tankers carrying the heavy substance running aground and fouling the seas. Refined products (such as gasoline and diesel) evaporate if spilled. Tick.

Some such refining capacity already exists in Quebec (using foreign oil), a plus for Energy East. More could be built in New Brunswick. Well-developed plans exist for a 150,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Sarnia, by the Bowman Centre. Labour groups have funded a study that says a new refinery in Alberta would be economic. In B.C., David Black’s huge plan for 500,000 bpd at Kitimat is well advanced and there are two other new proposals.

The markets and the business plans are there, as are the technology and the feedstock. The remaining piece is the finance. In each case, proponents say, all that’s required is a government guarantee of some of the debt. Equity financing looks feasible.

This could be a problem-solver and a nation-builder. And no new oil is added to the planet – just a displacement of foreign oil. Earth to Ottawa.

 

[OldBlackDog]

UN members agree deal at Lima climate talks

14 December 2014 Last updated at 10:31 ET
A dried up irrigation reservoir in the Yala national park in Sri Lanka - 11 September 2014Developing countries have accused wealthier nations of failing to take responsibility for climate change
United Nations members have reached an agreement on how countries should tackle climate change.

Delegates have approved a framework for setting national pledges to be submitted to a summit next year.

Differences over the draft text caused the two-week talks in Lima, Peru, to overrun by two days.

Environmental groups said the deal was an ineffectual compromise, but the EU said it was a step towards achieving a global climate deal next year in Paris.

The talks proved difficult because of divisions between rich and poor countries over how to spread the burden of pledges to cut carbon emissions.

'Not perfect'
Peru's environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who chaired the summit, told reporters: "As a text it's not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties."

Miguel Arias Canete, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, said the EU had wanted a more ambitious outcome but he still believed that "we are on track to agree a global deal" at a summit in Paris, France, next year.

The agreement was adopted hours after a previous draft was rejected by developing countries, who accused rich nations of shirking their responsibilities to fight global warming and pay for its impacts.

Analysis: Matt McGrath, BBC News, Lima
Peruvian environment minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal shakes hands with his colleagues after sealing an agreement in Lima - 13 December 2014
There was a good deal of optimism at the start of these talks as the recent emissions agreement between the US and China was seen as an historic breakthrough. But that good spirit seemed to evaporate in two weeks of intense wrangling between rich and poor here in Lima.

It ended in a compromise that some participants believe keeps the world on track to reach a new global treaty by the end of next year.

None of the 194 countries attending the talks walked away with everything they wanted, but everybody got something.

As well as pledges and finance, the agreement points towards a new classification of nations. Rather than just being divided into rich and poor, the text attempts to reflects the more complex world of today, where the bulk of emissions originate in developing countries.

While progress in Lima was limited, and many decisions were simply postponed, the fact that 194 nations assented to this document means there is still momentum for a deal in Paris. Much tougher tests lie ahead.

A delegate rests during a break at the UN climate change talks in Lima - 13 December 2014The talks, which began on 1 December, had been due to end on Friday but ran over into the weekend
The final draft is said to have alleviated those concerns with by saying countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities".

"We've got what we wanted," Indian environment minister Prakash Javedekar told reporters, saying the document preserved the notion that richer nations had to lead the way in making cuts in emissions.

It also restored a promise to poorer countries that a "loss and damage" scheme would be established to help them cope with the financial implications of rising temperatures.

However, it weakened language on national pledges, saying countries "may" instead of "shall" include quantifiable information showing how they intend to meet their emissions targets.

The agreed document calls for:

An "ambitious agreement" in 2015 that reflects "differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" of each nation
Developed countries to provide financial support to "vulnerable" developing nations
National pledges to be submitted by the first quarter of 2015 by those states "ready to do so"
Countries to set targets that go beyond their "current undertaking"
The UN climate change body to report back on the national pledges in November 2015
Environmental groups were scathing in their response to the document, saying the proposals were nowhere need drastic enough.

Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for the environmental group WWF, said: "The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it's very weak indeed."

Jagoda Munic, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International, said fears the talks would fail to deliver "a fair and ambitious outcome" had been proven "tragically accurate".

 

[OldBlackDog]

In the era before Argo (2003), measurements of ocean temperature were made from ships by putting a thermometer in a bucket of water drawn up from the surface or in the inlet valves of the engines, or by diving darts (XBTs) that could dive down to 800m with a thermometer, transmitting the data back to the ship along thin wires. The uncertainties in the temperature measurements made by the XBTs falling through the ocean were huge, because the XBTs fell too quickly to come into thermal equilibrium with the water around them. Also, there is a very strong temperature gradient in the surface layer of the ocean to below the thermocline , so the depth attributed to each temperature data point is arrived at from an assumed rate of descent of the instrument. Any deviation from the assumed rate of descent will put the instrument (and temperature) at the wrong depth, making the calculated temperature still more uncertain. Measurements from thermometers in buckets of water variously obtained are obviously hugely imprecise.

The geographic distribution of the sampling was sparse and very uneven, because the samples were taken along commercial shipping routes, somewhat irregularly. Most shipping lanes are in the northern hemisphere, but most of the world’s oceans are in the southern hemisphere — much of the southern ocean is hundreds or thousands of kilometers from where samples were taken. The oceans are really big, yet the presence of currents and layers at different temperatures means temperatures can be quite different in waters just a few hundred meters apart.

Obviously the errors are so huge compared to the expected/modeled increases (less than a tenth of a degree C per decade) that pre-Argo data is useless. One wonders at the morals of people

It's trends that matter when monitoring Climate Change. Trends only appear by looking at all the data, globally, and taking into account other variables -- like the effects of the El Nino ocean current or sunspot activity -- not by cherry-picking single points.

There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on surface air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Oceans for instance -- due to their immense size and heat storing capability (called 'thermal mass') -- tend to give a much more 'steady' indication of the warming that is happening. Records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon (Figure 1). More than 90% of global warming heat goes into warming the oceans, while less than 3% goes into increasing the surface air temperature.

View attachment 14968

Figure 1: Land, atmosphere, and ice heating (red), 0-700 meter ocean heat content (OHC) increase (light blue), 700-2,000 meter OHC increase (dark blue). From Nuccitelli et al. (2012).

Even if we focus exclusively on global surface temperatures, Cowtan & Way (2013) shows that when we account for temperatures across the entire globe (including the Arctic, which is the part of the planet warming fastest), the global surface warming trend for 1997–2012 is approximately 0.11 to 0.12°C per decade.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Some more information.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Satellite-Derived Assessments of Trends and Patterns of Drought

Paper Reviewed
Damberg, L. and AghaKouchak, A. 2014. Global trends and patterns of drought from space. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 117: 441-448.

Damberg and AghaKouchak (2014) note that "numerous studies argue that the Earth's climate is changing rapidly, especially during the second half of the twentieth century," citing Trenberth (2001) as a prime example of this point of view, as well as Trenberth (1999) as an example of this viewpoint as it applies to the planet's hydrologic cycle. Not convinced of the extreme nature of these contentions, however, they decided to analyze "changes in areas under droughts over the past three decades." However, they say that "unlike most previous global-scale studies that have been based on climate models," their study was "based on satellite gauge-adjusted precipitation observations." So what did the two U.S. researchers thereby learn?

As they write near the end of their paper, "several areas, such as the southwestern United States, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico region, parts of the Amazon, the Horn of Africa, northern India, and parts of the Mediterranean region, are among areas showing significant drying trends over the past three decades." On the other hand, they say that "central Africa, Thailand, Taiwan, Central America, northern Australia, and parts of eastern Europe show a wetting trend during the same time span." And, last of all, they report that a Mann-Kendall test of the satellite data reveal that "the area of global land under drought conditions does not show a significant trend over the past three decades."

In further commenting on what they learned, Damberg and AghaKouchak state that the results of their satellite-based study "disagree with several model-based studies (e.g., Dai, 2012) that indicate droughts have been increasing over land." However, as they state in the concluding paragraph of their paper, their findings concur with those of several observation-based studies, such as those of Sheffield et al. (2012).

References
Dai, A. 2012. Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models. Nature Climate Change 2: 52-58.

Sheffield, J., Wood, E. and Roderick, M. 2012. Little change in global drought over the past 60 years. Nature 491: 435-438.

Trenberth, K. 1999. Conceptual framework for changes of extremes of the hydrological cycle with climate change. Climatic Change 42: 327-339.

Trenberth, K. 2001. Climate variability and global warming. Science 293: 48-49

Dana Nuccitelli
Monday 8 December 2014 14.00 GMT


A new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Griffin & Anchukaitis concludes that the 2012–2014 drought in California was its most intense in at least 1,200 years. The study used drought reconstructions from tree-ring cores, from the North American Drought Atlas (NADA) and from cores Griffin & Anchukaitis collected from blue oak trees in southern and central California. Blue oak tree ring widths are particularly sensitive to moisture changes. According to Griffin, The study compared today’s drought conditions in California to those reconstructed over the past 1,200 years using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), an estimate of available soil moisture. The data showed that California is experiencing its most intense drought in over a millennium, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years … In terms of cumulative severity, it is the worst drought on record (-14.55 cumulative PDSI), more extreme than longer (4- to 9-year) droughts. What’s interesting is that the blue oak data showed that while precipitation levels in California have been low over the past 3 years, the levels haven’t been unprecedented.

But at the same time as California has been getting little rain, it’s also experienced record hot temperatures. It’s the heat that’s pushed the drought into unprecedented territory. Griffin & Anchukaitis concluded temperature could have exacerbated the 2014 drought by approximately 36% … These observations from the paleoclimate record suggest that high temperatures have combined with the low but not yet exceptional precipitation deficits to create the worst short-term drought of the last millennium for the state of California … Future severe droughts are expected to be in part driven by anthropogenic influences and temperatures outside the range of the last millennium.

Another new paper also published in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists at the University of California, Irvine likewise recognizes the extreme and unprecedented nature of California’s current drought, and focuses on the risks that these events pose in the present and future. Despite the well-recognized interdependence between temperature and precipitation … little attention has been paid to risk analysis of concurrent extreme droughts and heatwaves … We argue that the global warming and the associated increase in extreme temperatures substantially increase the chance of concurrent droughts and heatwaves.

As the authors note, at issue is the fact that humans are causing temperatures to rise. Thus although droughts will always happen naturally, as studies have shown, they’ll become more intense in a warmer world. The combination of dry, hot weather will create bigger risks for Californians. Climate scientist Michael Mann nicely summarized the ways that humans may have contributed to the current California drought,

In fact, there are at least three different mechanisms that are potentially relevant to the connection between the 2013/2014 California drought and human-caused climate change.
There is (1) the impact of climate change on the pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) off the west coast. One recent study suggests that climate change favors an SST pattern in the North Pacific that increases the incidence of the atmospheric circulation pattern responsible for the current drought.

Then there is (2) the marked decrease in Arctic Sea Ice due to global warming. Studies going back more than a decade show that reduced Arctic sea ice may also favor such an atmospheric circulation pattern. More recent work by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers provides independent support for that mechanism.

Finally, there is (3) the effect of global warming on soil moisture. All other things being equal, warming of soils leads to greater rates of evaporation and drying. This mechanism leads to worsened drought even if rainfall patterns are unchanged.

A high pressure ridge sitting of California’s coast for several years has been a primary factor contributing to the low levels of precipitation. The ridge has pushed storms north of California, leaving the state dry. A study led by Noah Diffenbaugh at Stanford used modeling and statistics to find that these sorts of persistent high-pressure ridges are more likely to sit off California’s coast in the presence of high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Another paper published this year by Simon Wang and colleagues similarly concluded that human-caused global warming is changing conditions in the Pacific Ocean that make these high-pressure ridges off the coast stronger, thus intensifying droughts in California.

In short, it appears that humans are contributing to the strength of high pressure ridges off California’s coast, which will tend to reduce the amount of precipitation in the state. High temperatures exacerbate these dry conditions by increasing evaporation, soil dryness, and water demand. According to Griffin & Anchukaitis, the record heat intensified the drought by about 36%, leading to exceptional drought conditions unprecedented in the past 1,200 years.

The drought alone is anticipated to cost California over $2 billion this year. On top of that, heat and drought also create conditions ripe for wildfires; another major problem for California. As expected, California also saw an intense wildfire season in 2014, blowing well through its firefighting budget. Now that the state is finally seeing some significant rainfall in December, those wildfires created conditions conducive to flooding and mudslides.

As a major agricultural producer, this extreme weather in California impacts the entire country and world. However, it’s also giving us a glimpse at the risks we all face if we fail to curb global warming. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and other types of extreme weather are becoming more intense due to human-caused global warming. The longer we wait to cut carbon pollution and slow global warming, the more extreme our weather and its impacts will become.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...just-had-its-worst-drought-in-over-1200-years

 

[Dave H]

Some more information.

From this site.

http://sciencespeak.com/about.html

Awesome places you find as sources for your trolling efforts.

Think I'll start a blog too.

They seem to be all the rage nowadays and some people will believe absolutely anything if it agrees with their ideological position.

Humans are an interesting species eh what?


Take care.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Climate attacks and smears
Because they lack the crucial evidence, they rely on attacks and smears.

Rocket Scientist
In this article in the Australian newspaper David wrote “I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.” Ever since, a main warmist response to David’s critiques of the carbon dioxide theory is that he claimed to be a rocket scientist but isn’t (example), rather than to argue with the data or the logic.

He said that once, in order to identify himself to the political hierarchy in Canberra as that guy who wrote a world-leading intellectual product in carbon accounting for the Australian Greenhouse Office. No, David never worked on rockets. Yes, David does work at that level. “Rocket scientist” is widely used in the US to mean anyone capable of doing rocket science, and applies to most hard technical PhDs at the handful of top institutions (see David’s background). Or at least that is what it meant in common parlance in the US in the 1980s. As it happens, after Stanford David interviewed at JPL (NASA) in Pasadena, but decided on a Silicon Valley job instead.

Naturally we would urge you to look at the contents of what is said, not on who says it. The latter leads to authoritarianism and corruption, is profoundly unscientific, and goes against the Enlightenment (see this introduction).

(Hmmm, that didn’t sound too bad. I’ll advertise “Rocket scientist for hire” on the home page. Ha. - David)

Attack Sites
Did you know the warmers keep attack sites of smears on scientists, to be used by their minions whenever a critic appears in public? The leading one is DeSmogBlog, associated with David Suzuki. David and Joanne are proud to be on DeSmog; what skeptic wouldn’t be?

Apparently there are people who think this sort of behaviour is ok.

Money
Our climate work is funded mainly out of family savings, with some help from donations by readers of Joanne’s blog.

There are no conflicts of interest to declare. In particular we have no investments in fossil fuels, shorts on renewables, or any investments in the energy sector. There are no government grants or salaries to declare. (Unlike many supporters of the carbon dioxide theory we are not funded by its prime beneficiary, Big-Government.) We have received modest donations, occasional speaking fees, and fees for writing articles, but no other income from climate activities.

Ironically, the savings that made our work possible came from modeling income earned from the Australian Greenhouse Office and the Department of Climate Change.

We are accused of being variously funded by Big-Oil, Big-Energy, Big-Coal, Gina Rinehart, Ron Manners, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), or the Galileo Movement. We have never received any money from any of these sources.

If the people who accuse us of these things are so careless with the truth and are prepared to make things up, what else are they making up?

Assorted Smears
If you oppose the politically-correct mob in public, they call you names.

Usually they start with variations on “stupid” and “crazy”, and work their way up to “racist”. Global warming is one of their most important projects. (The Greens in particular have invested very heavily in the idea. Where would the Greens be if it turned out global warming was mainly caused by the Sun?) So we’ve been called all sorts of stuff. It goes without saying that it is without foundation—it’s just because they want to shut us up and discredit us.

Sometimes publishers are misled into believing these and other lies about us. AIMN graciously apologized after such an incident, which contained a wide range of smears.

© Science Speak 2014

From this site.

http://sciencespeak.com/about.html

Awesome places you find as sources for your trolling efforts.

Think I'll start a blog too.

They seem to be all the rage nowadays and some people will believe absolutely anything if it agrees with their ideological position.

Humans are an interesting species eh what?


Take care.