Up, Down, Appendices, Too good to pass up.
'Tensile' from Latin tendere, to stretch; 'attenuate' from tenuare, to make thin (it looked like they might've had the same root).Reverdy: "There is no love, only proofs of love." Nonsense of course, we know no more of love than we know of God - but ... interesting nonsense nonetheless.
Eu defendo a natureza do Brasil. Diga não ao novo Código Florestal! Vetá-lo Dilma!
[An outbreak of red goats in Kingston NY, not far from Woodstock, not much farther from Bethel.]
These turned up while digging around after the Código Florestal: a picture taken by a visitor in Vila do Pesqueiro on Ilha de Marajó, near Belém; and another by a visitor in some other place. Somehow one gets from the left to the right (in the Western world) on each line. Is there any such a thing as the whole story? The straight goods? A clear vision? Resurrection?
[The Kingston Times reports that it was done by Maggie Salesman & Geddes Paulsen - and is spreading.]
When I say, "It's too late, we're cooked," she replies, "I don't believe that - it's so discouraging," and I say, "Discouraging or not doesn't change it. Anyway, I'm not discouraged, or not so often, not like, all the time. Isn't it better to face things straight?"
My parents faced things straight (and with good humour too). I didn't know them well enough to be able to say why with certainty - but I think it had something to do with their essentially rural & out-of-doors upbringings and some collection of essentially straight experiences they had in early life - possibly that they each survived what were in those days (and probably still are) very serious illnesses.
Later on she says, "Oh, have you given up on God too?" and I reply, "What's to give up on?" But, that's just flip; so I try to say that even big-name atheists like Richard Dawkins don't actually claim to know, they just make their guesses at the other end of the spectrum. I don't know either (fer gawd sake!).
It's the theists, or some of them, who claim to know - when they very obviously don't. It's the theists who call for Inquisitions & Crusades & Fatwas & Jihads (?) Isn't it? Buggering orphans at Mount Cashel. Wars on Terror. Residential Schools.
A-and do I not sometimes feel blessed? Even without having in-hand a final & incontrovertible determination on the existence or non-existence of God? (Scope here for a future post, I.I.I.I. - incontestable, indisputable, indubitable ... incontrovertible!)
The single comment from the UVic climate-scientists about remarks on 'The Alberta oil sands and climate' article in the last post is:By posting an exact copy of our article on your website you are in violation on [sic] Nature Climate Change's copyright, and for your own sake I suggest you remove it immediately.That's not an excerpt. That's the whole fuckin' message! For my own sake? A threat?! It's good to know where they are 'coming from' though eh? At least that.
So ... I write back, "Well, it's not quite exactly exact, is it?" - and get no answer. (Yet. But they have stopped things in a way - part of my mind is now all'a time waitin' for the other shoe to drop.)
There were some additional spurts of pundit jizz I missed on this issue:
The oilsands are a symptom of the bigger problem of our dependence on fossil fuels, Andrew Weaver, February 21.
Point missed on oilsands report, say researchers, Mike De Souza, February 22.
Media coverage of oilsands prompts scientists’ rebuke, James Munson, February 22.
Weaver study offers fossil fuels warning, David Suzuki & Ian Hanington, February 29.
"And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more — all hopping through the frothy waves ..." (as Lewis Carroll says of pundits).
Suzuki didn't even write the one under his name I don't think, not a word of it - just a guess. About the best is James Munson's - who does get his knees all wet (clap clap) in the spin of it - but still misses these central questions:
Why is this paper behind a $20 paywall? And why do the authors want it that way? and,
Did Andrew Weaver not see that this was going to happen? He is a 'grown up' according to age and appearance, experienced (but not in Jimi's sense I guess). He even inserted the thin edge of the wedge into the seam for them himself with his disingenuous equivocation: "I thought it was larger than it was."
Doh!? The other one, Swart, is just a pup; but Weaver could easily have known better. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth?
These are just questions y'unnerstan' and double entendres ('amphiboly' sez the OED) not intended as the prelude to a conspiracy theory, no. B-b-but it's getting on towards the end of the day on this particular wrinkle and it's all bollocks'n confusion! And muddy cork-boots up an' down the stairs!
Whose interests are best served by such a state of affairs d'you think? The public or Exxon/Mobil & the Heartland Institute?
When I feel the need of renewal I try to stay right away from stuff like this: Tomorrow is a Lovely Day sung by Vera Lynn (it was included in a BBC series I was watching, The Singing Detective).[YouTube is so fucked up around copyright (I can't even figgure out how they know?). So ... not sure if you can listen to that last one or not though I went to the trouble of posting it so you could. Oh well.]
Some other stuff though, I can't get enough of. There is a sort of canon:
João e Maria (Hansel & Gretel), lyrics by Chico Buarque - conflating all times & tenses (translated lyrics here). This video was taken during one of his shows at Canecão; I might have been there in that crowd near the front that night with my honey - can't say if he sang the same encore each night.Even this morning as I listen to him: "e você era a princesa que eu fiz coroar, e era tão linda de se admirar que andava nua pelo meu país" / 'and you were the princess I crowned and it was so beautiful to admire the one who walked naked through my country' - it brings tears to my eyes, just as it did on that night when I first heard it.
'Coroar' to crown has shades of meaning - a 'coroa' is also an older white-haired person - so when he crowns her princess he is also crowning her dowager (OED: An elderly lady of dignified demeanour). And then there is street slang where 'coroa' is an older gent sidling up for a serving to the troughs of flesh at the termas - the girls like to get their hands on a coroa, simply because they are generally undemanding and generous and kind.
[I am told they also regularly offer lip service, which some of the girls say they enjoy. I saw a thought on oral sex once - I think it was in Roger Scruton's Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy Of The Erotic, I had a copy but I can't seem to put my hand on it today - that called it putting the identity (as embodied in the face) into the sexual act.]
Terra, pronounced 'terr-ha' with a rolled 'r' and an almost-indawn breath, by Caetano Veloso, such a vain fellow - (translated lyrics here)."As tais fotografias em que apareces inteira, porém lá não estavas nua e sim coberta de nuvens" / 'those photographs in which you appear complete, however, where you are not naked but wearing clouds'. Giorgio Agamben might find another facet of his Nudities in that.
Handel's Messiah is in this canon too; when the chorous belts out, "and he shall be calléd, WONderful, COUNsellor ..." - every year I wait for it, to see if it will work on me again even thinking as I do - and it always works.
There's a miracle for you.I no longer turn to prayer in the muddy confusion. Music is a form of prayer though, sometimes (Jock Davidson used to say so). Someone who thinks God has the patent on transcendence just ... doesn't know any better.
City of London -v- Samede and others, Court of Appeal Judgment: Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, 22nd February 2012.Before: THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS, LORD JUSTICE STANLEY BURNTON and LORD JUSTICE McFARLANE
Between: THE MAYOR COMMONALTY AND CITIZENS OF LONDON Respondents - and - TAMMY SAMEDE (a representative of those taking part in a camp at St Paul's Churchyard, London), George Barda, Daniel Ashman, Paul Randle-Jolliffe, Stephen Moore, Persons Unknown Appellants
... it is a decision refusing permission to appeal.
Sméagol aka Gollum; the name somehow combines smug & small (or narrow).
Occupy was such a tremendous opportunity for the powers-that-be to start to get themselves off crack and straightened out. Huge! And instead they blew it - stifled it, dispersed it, ignored it - while the Christians crucified it with faint praise in addition to their standard mealy-mouth hypocrisy. Where is that zero'th card of the Tarot again? And who's the fool?
If the Robo-Call allegations were true it would not be merely 'dirty tricks', it would be a criminal offence carrying serious consequences - impeachment f'rinstance - but, unfortunately, I don't think it is quite true enough.The uncomfortable questions raised by Chantal Hébert in The Star (below) work for me. They seem almost too thoughtful to have come from anywhere in k-k-Canada at all (and they didn't either, byline says Montreal).
If only McGuinty had the balls for such a thing. Of course he doesn't. Moudakis seems to think he is making a fool of McGuinty and maybe he is, but he makes a fool of himself while he's at it.Moudakis gets things wrong to a slightly greater degree than Gable, not from any nice-guy reluctance to be too pointed (as I sometimes imagine in Gable's case), but, I surmise, just bog-standard smugness & troll-induced blindness.
Martin Cohn is much funnier with his, "But your latest demand — that I as Ontario’s premier prostate myself ..." (sadly, the spelling has since been 'corrected'). Oh well.
There are more loose ends unaccounted for:
I am reading the 1989 version and waiting for the 2000 revised edition of Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman. These Polish intellectuals! Bah! Hopefully the later version may include that someone fixed the typos (being generous here, because it looks like he doesn't actually speak English so well - might have done better to write it in Polish then and have it translated eh?) And page after page after page of sloppy overlapping generalizations about Jews (!) he could at least keep them concise. BUT, interspersed, buried here and there, are insights that ring like a bell, a silver one. So.These will simply be 'thrown over the fence' into the next post. All good.
Seven types of ambiguity by William Empson, 1930, pictured at the beginning of John Fowles' The Magus.
Nudities § 10 The Last Chapter in the History of the World by Giorgio Agamben (very short, whole essay is two paragraphs).
The upcoming vote on the revised Código Florestal (March 6) in Brazil's Câmara dos Deputados (in Brazil it seems to go through the Senate first?); here are some recent comments by Marina Silva: Marina Silva diz que ... é farsa. A farce she says. Got that right. All very confusing too, because the 'ruralistas' whom you might imagine to be small holders are really big-time agribusiness - including Laticínios Bom Gosto / Good Taste Dairy Products who are in the 'business' of raping Arquipélago do Marajó and Ilha de Marajó where I found one of the images above. (I didn't know where it is either - you can start here: map, and a much better one here, also available here and here. Yes, it's an island, an archipelago of islands.)
Oh, a-and Andrew Weaver - I am reading Hard choices: climate change in Canada 2004, a collection of essays edited by himself & Harold Coward (some kind of theologian); and Keeping our cool: Canada in a warming world 2008, and Generation us: the challenge of global warming 2011, are in the queue. It seems right to read these books in chronological order - maybe get a better sense of the man. Born in 1961 ... so, early fifties. This report may not be made - I am sort'a hoping that something will happen to end this blog before I finish reading all three.
Some kind of escape - maybe not as drastic as Alan Burke ... but yeah, I would like to be out of here and doing something else. None of the so-called activists will even talk to me. I'd be better off back with the oil barons (the best days, bar none, were spent workin' for Eddie) but that bridge is well burned. Oh well.
Most of the plants in the window-garden died, suddenly, all at once, no idea why (maybe it was the razor clippings?); and after a month or so in shock I stacked them away and after another month or so I cleaned the window.WOWZERS! If the cigarettes are doing that to the windows just imagine what they must be doing to my lungs.
Could that pesky second-hand smoke have killed my beloved plants?! Ai ai AI!Oh, sure, I think I know something about love (nonsense of course, I know no more of love than I know of God). ... A force; but tiny, so tiny as to be almost without effect. Like gravity, locally insignificant - but gravity accumulates over space until it is able to suck the very flesh down off our bones. Love does not seem to be like that: everywhere, ubiquitous, constant; but infinitesimally small and vanishingly improbable; always entirely deniable.
A whisper so low you are not quite sure you even heard it - though it woke you up, a dream was it? A breath on your neck so light you cannot be sure it is warm - but yes, you think it might be warm.
Be well.
Down.
Too good to pass up:
Found at Bizarro by Dan Piraro - two that made me laugh.You can read it "Slow, Children Texting" or "Slow children texting" - funny either way.
Walking down to see the lake this morning and had to step aside for a guy in a suit who was texting as he came up the sidewalk on his way to work. The street is filled with birds goin' crazy for spring - and he is immersed in it, oblivious - he didn't see me or the birds.
Seymour Mayne wrote a poem about Stan on the roof, studying while the Sunday church bells rang all around him - same sort of thing.Maybe a tinge of bitter in the second one - and the bitter on both sides of the equation. These days it's me who's feeling toxic ...
Instead of copyright prohibiting and preventing copying, couldn't they simply ensure that things are copied accurately and with provenance? Even pirated music leads back eventually to the source doesn't it? Wouldn't it be a net benefit if the whole gaggle of lawyers were simply not in it anymore?
And books: I don't know what kind of person tries to read seriously on-line - no one who really wants to know what the book's about - can't be done. Oh, I know they're all buying these 'tablets' now ... I see people using them on the streetcar - nobody I would want to know.
I remember something about the chemistry of memory being less effective for material coming at you from a computer screen, but that was a while ago, something to do with the refresh rate of CRT's - maybe this liquid crystal stuff is different. Anyway, I read a lot and mostly, 99% of the time, I either borrow books from the library or buy them. Having it on-line makes it easier to refresh your memory - Where did I read that? - and facilitates discussion; that has to result in more hard-copy sales in the end doesn't it?
Ach! Wha'do I know. Not'ing!
Appendices:
1. Robo-call accusations raise uncomfortable questions, Chantal Hébert, February 27 2012.
2. The oilsands are a symptom of the bigger problem of our dependence on fossil fuels, Andrew Weaver, February 21 2012.
3. Media coverage of oilsands prompts scientists’ rebuke, James Munson, February 22 2012.
4. Weaver study offers fossil fuels warning, David Suzuki & Ian Hanington, February 29 2012.
5. Point missed on oilsands report, say researchers, Mike De Souza, February 22 2012.
Robo-call accusations raise uncomfortable questions, Chantal Hébert, February 27 2012.
MONTREAL—If there is a tactical scheme behind the so-called voter suppression scandal, it is not readily apparent in the list of allegedly abused ridings put forward by the opposition parties.
Only a small fraction of the 50 federal seats where the margin of victory was less than 5 per cent last May — and where presumably every vote counted — are alleged to have been targeted by fraudulent calls.
Liberal ridings such as Brampton-Springdale and Ajax-Pickering that were known to be high on the Conservatives’ to-win list (and that they did win) were apparently not plagued by such calls.
On the other hand, a substantial number of the three dozen ridings on the opposition list were safe Conservative seats.
Take the Ontario riding of Wellington-Halton Hills. On May 2, former Conservative minister Michael Chong kept the seat with a majority of 26,000 and 63 per cent of the vote. He clearly needed no help to get re-elected.
Chong has emerged as one of the least partisan voices in Parliament. He resigned from Stephen Harper’s first cabinet over a matter of principle. It is hard to imagine that he would have countenanced party-sanctioned dirty tricks in his riding.
In Simcoe-Grey, the Conservatives won by more than 20,000 votes and the aggrieved Liberals ran fourth, behind the NDP and former Conservative incumbent Helena Guergis.
In the Toronto riding of Parkdale-High Park, both opposition parties have complained that their supporters were victims of early morning or late night calls from people misrepresenting themselves as volunteers for their campaigns. In Davenport, the NDP reported the same complaint.
The Conservatives did not really have a dog in either fight. They ran a distant third in both ridings.
And then did Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (majority 16,000 +) or Conservative incumbent Rick Dykstra (majority 13,000 +) seriously need a dose of dark arts to hang on their Niagara Falls and St. Catharines ridings?
A Machiavellian mastermind could always have orchestrated fraudulent calls to a host of ridings where such tricks were unlikely to affect the outcome for or against the Conservatives just to throw anyone off the scent of an orchestrated pattern.
But that sounds like a high-risk investment for a relatively low yield. The Conservative vote is not noticeably more vigorous in the ridings where the opposition is alleging that fraudulent calls took place than in comparable ones.
That is not to say that something is not rotten about the state of Canada’s electoral democracy or that the ruling Conservatives have no responsibility in that deteriorated state. But they are not alone.
Under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives have pushed the line of what is considered fair game in partisan politics. It now basically sits on the divide between what is legal and what is not. The evidence suggests that the closer parties play to that line, the greater the chances that some of their partisans will cross it.
The Liberals just learned that the hard way when it was found that one of their staffers was responsible for leaking details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ private life on Twitter.
Too often, the opposition has been prompt to follow the Conservatives down the same slippery slope. On that score, the addiction of all federal parties to robo-calling is a telling development.
A technique originally used to dispense useful information to prospective supporters is being turned into an instrument of harassment.
When MP Lise St-Denis left the NDP to sit as a Liberal in January, the New Democrats hired a firm to robo-call her constituents of Saint-Maurice-Champlain. The NDP was not identified as the sponsor of the calls and recipients were not told that if they pressed 1 to signal their displeasure with St-Denis, they would be re-directed to her riding office — where they swamped the phone lines for a number of days.
There is nothing illegal about the ploy and NDP strategists profess to be totally comfortable with it. But should it have its place an ethically moral political environment?
Throwing rocks at the Conservatives with one hand will achieve little for the common good if the opposition parties are busy expanding their own glass houses with the other.
The oilsands are a symptom of the bigger problem of our dependence on fossil fuels, Andrew Weaver, February 21 2012.
Back in September the Keystone XL pipeline controversy was at its peak. Proponents of the pipeline were entrenched in their views that the suggested route was the only viable one. Opponents brought forward myriad concerns. Nebraskan ranchers pointed out the absurdity of building a new pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer — the water source of much of the U.S. agricultural belt. The National Congress of American Indians and Canadian First Nations brought forward compelling arguments that the pipeline jeopardized the potential health of their communities and resources. Others argued that it might be “game over” as far as global warming was concerned.
It was in the midst of this controversy that Neil Swart, a Ph.D. student in my lab, and I became engaged in a discussion as to the global warming potential of the oil in the Alberta tarsands. Our hunch was that it was big. We had heard the rhetoric and we wanted to undertake a quantitative assessment as to its veracity. On Sept. 28, we submitted the results of our analysis for publication and after five months working its way through the peer review paper, the final article appeared in Nature Climate Change on Sunday. We received no funding for this research. It was initiated exclusively out of curiosity.
We asked how much global warming would occur if we completely burned a variety of fossil fuel resources. Here is what we calculated:
• tarsands under active development: 0.01°C.
• economically viable tarsands reserve: 0.03°C.
• entire tarsands oil in place, which includes the uneconomical and the economical resource: 0.36°C.
• total unconventional natural gas resource base: 2.86°C.
• total coal resource base: 14.8°C.
Our overarching conclusion is that as a society, we will live or die by our future consumption of coal. The idea that we’re going to somehow run out of coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels is misplaced. We’ll run out of our ability to live on the planet long before we run out of them.
Some might point out that our published calculations do not account for the additional greenhouse gases arising from the extraction, transportation and refining of the tarsand resource. This was deliberate.
The so-called “wells to wheels” approach to tarsands mining includes the natural gas, diesel and coal emissions that arise during extraction and refining, together with transportation of the oil. However, these would come from the other resource pools and shouldn’t be double-counted. The relative mix of such fuels would obviously change in the future as well. We wanted to be consistent to ensure that emissions and subsequent warming from all resources were calculated the same way.
Nevertheless, if you account for the additional “wells to wheels” emissions, our estimates of potential global warming from the tarsands would increase by about 20 per cent. But even this is uncertain. If all refining, extraction and transportation were done using energy from renewable or nuclear power, the number would be close to zero. If it were all done using electricity from inefficient coal-fired generators, it would be higher. Once more the key message is clear. We will live or die by our future consumption of coal. And if everyone in the world had similar per-capita emissions as North Americans, it will be sooner rather than later.
I have always said that the tarsands are a symptom of a bigger problem. The bigger problem is our societal dependence on fossil fuels. As we use up the easy-to-find resources, we start going to more extreme measures to access what is left. The result is increasingly environmentally hazardous approaches to extraction.
None of this discussion takes away from the profound ecological and social concerns involved with the development of the tarsands. I am convinced that the Canadian government could do a better job of regulating the industry to ensure that these ecological and social concerns are properly addressed. In addition, the industry represents the single biggest growing sector of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions.
The atmosphere has traditionally been viewed as an unregulated dumping ground. There is no cost associated with emitting greenhouse gases.
Economists call this a market failure. To correct this failure a price is needed on emissions. This allows individuals and businesses to find the most cost-effective means of reducing their own emissions. In fact, the oil and gas industry has repeatedly called upon the federal government to introduce such emissions pricing. They want some certainty as to “the rules” under which they must operate.
It would be a huge mistake to interpret our results as some kind of a “get out of jail free” card for the tarsands. While coal is the greatest threat to the climate globally, the tarsands remain the largest source of greenhouse gas emission growth in Canada and are the single largest reason Canada is failing to meet its international climate commitments and failing to be a climate leader. The world needs to transition away from fossil fuels. That means coal, unconventional gas and unconventional oil all need to be addressed.
Andrew Weaver is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria. He was a lead author in the UN second, third, fourth and ongoing fifth scientific assessments of climate change.
Media coverage of oilsands prompts scientists’ rebuke, James Munson, February 22 2012.
How does the Canadian media handle a complicated science story? Not well, if this week’s coverage of a study on the carbon emissions of Alberta’s oilsands is any indication.
Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, two University of Victoria scientists, authored a study that compared the carbon emissions of different fossil fuels if they were completely extracted from the ground. The study found the Albertan oilsands to be less destructive to the climate than coal. That news prompted a media flurry so significant that by midweek, the scientists were reaching out in the media to correct the record.
Weaver and Swart’s study was first published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, a partner of the more well-known journal Nature, and was picked up by Bob Weber of the Canadian Press. The scoop, though it balanced the new research with the scientists’ view that all fossil fuel dependence should be reduced, frames the news against the public’s impression of the oil sands as a climate change disaster.
One of the world’s top climate scientists has calculated that emissions from Alberta’s oilsands are unlikely to make a big difference to global warming and that the real threat to the planet comes from burning coal.
“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate modeller, who has been a lead author on two reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I thought (the threat of oilsands emissions) was larger than it was.”
The story quickly appeared on other major media outlets, including the CBC.
Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons, who reached the scientists and wrote a story the next day, described the already-fiery discourse over the study in her column, “UVic’s Andrew Weaver Says Impact of Burning All Alberta’s Oilsands Negligible.”
Since the provocative paper was published on Sunday afternoon, the phones at the University of Victoria have been ringing off the hook, with calls from journalists around the world. In the blogosphere, Swart and Weaver’s paper has been embraced by some oilsands advocates as validation and endorsement of oilsands production, and poo-poo’d by others as old news. Meanwhile, some climate change activists have condemned the findings, with some even suggesting that Weaver has been bought off by “Big Oil.” Not everyone has bothered to read the paper, which takes the more nuanced view that while the oilsands add little to the world’s carbon footprint, they are a significant enabler of fossil fuel addiction.
The story had already taken off in many people’s minds as a public relations exercise — a science-based counterpoint to environmentalists trying to stop the oilsands.
The Globe and Mail picked up the story and framed it as a climate change game-changer ahead of Thursday’s vote in Brussels on the EU fuel-quality directive that would limit oilsands fuel from entering Europe — a vote that before the report seemed all too likely to go through.
... the EU vote comes against a landscape newly shifted by research showing that on a global scale, oilsands emissions are not the dark-shirted villain some have made them out to be. That research, published in the journal Nature and co-authored by one of Canada’s most respected climate scientists, throws a wrench into the debate over an energy source whose reputed “dirtiness” has sparked fiery debate around the world.
While the story repeated the fact that both authors oppose the expansion of the oilsands and call for a switch away from fossil fuels, pro-oilsands players were already counting the study as a feather in their cap.
Travis Davies, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said it is “important” that analyses like Dr. Weaver’s are being done, since it might help calm “the inflamed rhetoric from the other side.”
On Tuesday, Postmedia published a story that put far more priority on Weaver and Swart’s opposition to the oilsands. The authors make that clear in the second paragraph, after they state the study’s findings that coal causes more emissions than oilsands in the lede.
Still, that’s no reason to endorse the Keystone XL or Northern Gateway pipelines, say two Canadian climate experts in a provocative study released on the weekend.
On the same day, Andrew Weaver wrote his own op-ed in the Toronto Star. Free of the rhetorical tricks journalists use to make a story lively, he dryly explains the study’s findings, explaining in detail the context of the scientists’ curiosity (the heated debate over the Keystone XL pipeline) and the study’s limitations.
While Weaver admits the findings don’t conform with what the loudest oilsands opponents have claimed, he doesn’t seem to suggest the findings have changed the oilsands debate for scientists like him.
While coal is the greatest threat to the climate globally, the tarsands remain the largest source of greenhouse gas emission growth in Canada and are the single largest reason Canada is failing to meet its international climate commitments and failing to be a climate leader. The world needs to transition away from fossil fuels. That means coal, unconventional gas and unconventional oil all need to be addressed.
On Wednesday [today], the most explicit attempt to quell any misunderstandings in the media was published in a second Postmedia story, written by Mike De Souza, the wire service’s go-to guy on oilsands reporting. In the article, entitled “Point Missed on Oilsands Report: Experts,” the story is no longer the science at all, but its optics.
It begins:
Two Canadian climate change scientists from the University of Victoria say the public reaction to their recently published commentary has missed their key message: that all forms of fossil fuels, including the oilsands and coal, must be regulated for the world to avoid dangerous global warming.
“Much of the way this has been reported is (through) a type of view that oilsands are good and coal is bad,” said climate scientist Neil Swart, who co-wrote the study with fellow climatologist Andrew Weaver. “From my perspective, that was not the point. … The point here is, we need a rapid transition to renewable (energy), and avoid committing to long-term fossil fuel use if we are to get within the limits” of reducing global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
As the EU heads into a debate over its fuel-quality directive tomorrow, it seems the discussion here in Canada over the oilsands is still far from settled.
Weaver study offers fossil fuels warning, David Suzuki & Ian Hanington, February 29 2012.
It was inevitable that climate change deniers and some oil industry promoters would misinterpret a study by scientist Andrew Weaver before reading beyond the headlines.
A letter in the Calgary Herald actually claimed that “Weaver’s revelation … raises even more skepticism about the entire science behind global warming.” The writer went on to argue that the report by University of Victoria climate scientist Weaver and PhD student Neil Swart is an “awakening for David Suzuki and his environmental followers.”
It’s typical of the nonsense people who understand science have to put up with every day. The study, published in Nature, says the opposite.
Weaver and Swart set out to answer a simple question: “How much global warming would occur if we completely burned a variety of fossil fuel resources?” Their conclusion that burning all the coal or all the gas from the entire world’s resource bases would raise global average temperatures more than burning all the Alberta tar sands reserves is hardly a surprise.
What is surprising is their finding that emissions from burning all the economically viable oil from the tar sands would only contribute to a 0.03°C rise in world temperatures, and burning the entire tar sands oil in place would add 0.36°C. That may not seem like much, but we need to put it in context.
First, the study looked only at the emissions from burning the fuels and not from extracting, refining, or transporting them. The report’s authors explain that these additional emissions “would come from the other resource pools and shouldn’t be double-counted.”
If we are to avoid a 2°C increase in global temperatures, each person in the world would be allocated 80 tonnes of emissions over the next 50 years. The emissions from burning all the tar sands oil that is now economically viable (the reserves) would represent 64 tonnes of carbon for each of the 340 million people in the U.S. and Canada – about 75 per cent of the U.S. and Canada’s global per capita allocation. If we include emissions from the extraction, it rises to 90 per cent or more.
The study doesn’t consider any other environmental consequences of the tar sands either, from water use and pollution to destruction of boreal habitat.
As I’ve said before, we’re not going to stop using oil overnight, so we will continue to use tar sands products, at least in the short to medium term. But the best ways to limit environmental impacts are to slow down and to ensure the highest environmental standards are met and that we are getting maximum value for the oil to which all Canadians have a right.
As Weaver and Swart conclude: “If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than 2 C they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels.”
Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation editorial and communications specialist Ian Hanington.
Point missed on oilsands report, say researchers, Mike De Souza, February 22 2012.
Team calls for rapid transition to renewable energy
Two Canadian climate change scientists from the University of Victoria say the public reaction to their recently published commentary has missed their key message: that all forms of fossil fuels, including the oilsands and coal, must be regulated for the world to avoid dangerous global warming.
Two Canadian climate change scientists from the University of Victoria say the public reaction to their recently published commentary has missed their key message: that all forms of fossil fuels, including the oilsands and coal, must be regulated for the world to avoid dangerous global warming.
"Much of the way this has been reported is (through) a type of view that oilsands are good and coal is bad," said climate scientist Neil Swart, who co-wrote the study with fellow climatologist Andrew Weaver. "From my perspective, that was not the point. . . . The point here is, we need a rapid transition to renewable (energy), and avoid committing to long-term fossil fuel use if we are to get within the limits" of reducing global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
The commentary, published in the British scientific journal Nature Climate Change, estimated the effect of consuming the fuel from oilsands deposits - without factoring in greenhouse gas emissions associated with extraction and production - would be far less harmful to the planet's atmosphere than consuming all of the world's coal resources.
"The conclusions of a credible climate scientist with access to good data are very different than some of the rhetoric we've heard from Hollywood celebrities of late," said Travis Davies, a spokesman from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
"However, it clearly doesn't absolve industry from what it needs to do: (To) continue to improve environmental performance broadly, and demonstrate that improvement to Canadians and our customers . . . in terms of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, as well as water, land and tailings facilities."
Swart and Weaver also note that growth in oilsands and recent debates over a major pipeline expansion project in the United States represent a symptom of the planet's unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels. The commentary said policy-makers in North America and Europe must avoid major infrastructure of this nature since it is pushing the planet dangerously close to more than 2 C of average global temperatures above pre-industrial levels, which is considered to be a threshold of dramatic changes in global ecosystems.
Swart also said their estimates revealed that the relative impact of the oilsands on the climate, per unit of production, would push the average Canadian to 75 per cent of what would be considered their maximum allowable carbon dioxide footprint for an entire lifetime. In other words, this would mean that after factoring in oilsands emissions, the average Canadian would not have much room left to consume fossil fuels for their other energy needs if he or she wanted to do their fair share of reductions when compared with citizens from other countries, Swart explained.
"If we go down this path, the amount of warming will be massive," Swart said.
Governments from around the world have agreed that scientific evidence shows that humans are causing global warming through land-use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, but that it is possible to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change by dramatically cutting levels of greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere.
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