Dramatic temperature increases could threaten Canadian health, infrastructure - G&M

Story: http://po.st/7W9J0X

H/T @Go2CleanBreak  via @globeandmail on Twitter

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Act Now or Face +6 Degrees - Today's Must Read: "Climate Change Endgame" - NYT

"More than a 2-degree increase should be unimaginable. Yet to stop at 2 degrees, global emissions have to peak in 2016. The Carbon Tracker organization has examined fossil-fuel investments around the world (including 1,200 new coal plants) and determined that they would lead to a 6-degree world.

[...]

"The current mode of nibbling around the edges is pretty much pointless."

The Climate Change Endgame - Thomas E. Lovejoy, New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/apl9bep

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NY Mayor Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change, Storms, Civil Rights,

Well, better late than never.

Bloomberg's original op-ed: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-01/a-vote-for-a-president-to-lead-on-climate-change.html

He says that storms have forced NYC to evacuate neighborhoods twice in the last 14 months, which is unprecedented. And the risk that climate change is making things worse requires action.

Background from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/bloomberg-endorses-obama-saying-hurricane-sandy-affected-decision.html?hp&_r=1&&pagewanted=all

(note: possible paywall - free access limits may apply).

Now if Obama finally gets a backbone and stands up for real emissions cuts, rather than talking in generalities and promoting oil and gas along with renewables...  One can only hope.

[Edited to correct typo in Mayor's name. That was a bad one. Sorry.]

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Blackout Speak Out Against Attack on Environment and Democracy

Click here for more info: http://blackoutspeakout.ca/ (will open in a new window or tab).

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Coming Soon to a Province Near You? Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws - Bloomberg

Circumvent lobbying rules? Write your own climate laws? And cheaply,  too -- the sums involved are peanuts to these companies.

Alas, so much for the birthplace of modern democracy. How long before we see this tactic in Canada too?

Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws - Bloomberg

(Via http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/07/exxon-koch.php)

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Nuclear Energy Causes Greenhouse Gas Emissions After All

Buried in the story that I mentioned in my previous post, there was another curious point:

"Saskatchewan's emissions grew 70 per cent — more than any other province —between 1990 and 2009, due to increases in the oil and gas industry as well as potash and uranium mining." [Source: CBC, with quote highlighted via Diigo.]
Refining, transporting, storing, reactor construction, equipment recycling and site decontamination would probably cause emissions too. So much for nuclear being "GHG free".

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

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Canada's greenhouse gas emissions dip - but not enough

Some good news for a change. Unlike temporary dips due to economic conditions, reductions due to less coal being used for electricity generation are a hopeful trend.

The larger picture is still grim and the task ahead is challenging:

"Canada is nowhere close to meeting that commitment. In 2009, Canada's emissions were 17 per cent or 100 megatonnes above its 1990 total of 590 megatonnes. Fossil fuel extraction and production, as well as the transportation industry, were responsible for 42 per cent and 45 per cent of that growth respectively.

"When mitigating factors such as land use and forestry are not taken into account, Canada's emissions grew by 24.1 per cent from 1990 to 2008.

"This puts Canadian emission growth first among G8 countries and sixth overall among the OECD members and "economies in transition" (mostly in Eastern Europe) that signed Kyoto.

"By contrast, U.S. emissions grew just 13.3 per cent during the same period and those of the European Union fell 11.3 per cent.

"Under the Copenhagen Accord, the 2009 successor to the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has committed to reducing emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2020.

"So far, emissions have decreased 41 megatonnes or 5.7 per cent since 2005."

Canada's greenhouse gas emissions dip - Technology & Science - CBC News

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Climate change has doubled forest fires

"...it's already doubled in the last 40 years...and we've published work that shows this is directly due to human caused climate change,” says Dr. [Mike] Flannigan [Professor with the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta and Canadian Forest Service researcher]."

More: Forest fires and climate change - The Weather Network

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Baird's Cancun Position: "All Oars in Water -- Except for Canada's"

John Baird, notorious for his anti-Kyoto antics, is at it again. According to the Globe, the

"...Environment Minister says Canada will be pressing for an approach that leaves no one out, that demands all 'oars in the water'...."

But Canada is in no position to lecture anybody about "oars in water". Having promised to reduce carbon emissions in Kyoto and done nothing about it since then (actually increasing emissions significantly), Canada would have very little credibility when trying to convince other countries to "do as we say but not as we do".

Moreover, since the Industrial Revolution, the rich, industrialized countries like Canada have emitted most of the carbon. Much of it is still in the atmosphere, harming the climate. The fact that countries like China and India have become major emitters on an annual basis recently is not nearly as significant as Baird and Co. would have you think. Even setting aside their much lower emissions per capita, it would be many years before China's and India's share of the accumulating carbon in the air equals that of countries that had been at it for centuries. Confusing flows (annual emissions) with stocks (accumulated pollutants) is such a basic, blatant error that it is clearly nothing more than an excuse for further inaction.

Insisting on this unreasonable position is a sure way to sabotage progress at Cancun -- developing nations are already warning that the talks are in danger. Nothing would please the fossil fuel special interest groups than the collapse of negotiations for at least one more year. For the planet, on the other hand it is total accumulated carbon that matters.

Dr. James Hansen states that

"...we must reduce the [accumulated] CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 ppm in order to avoid disaster for coming generations.

"Humans have caused carbon dioxide to increase from 280 ppm in 1750 to 387 ppm in 2009. 387 ppm is already in the dangerous range. Such a reduction is still practical, but just barely [bolding in original]"

He also warns that

"Continued unfettered burning of all fossil fuels and other human-caused climate changes will cause the climate system to pass tipping points, such that we hand our children and grandchildren a dynamic situation that is out of their control.

"If we continue down this path, by the end of this century envision a future where:

• droughts, heat waves, and forest fires of unprecedented ferocity

• 20% of Earth’s species—about two million species—will be extinct or on the way to certain extinction

• a rapidly rising sea level, with more coming out of humanity’s control

• frontal (cyclonic) storms with hurricane-like winds, which, with rising seas and storm surges, will devastate thousands of coastal cities

But that does not have to be our future [bolding in original]."

We must act now. Obstructionism must not carry the day.

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James Hansen and Climate Change - on TVO Big Ideas, TODAY Sat. and Sun., 5pm Eastern, or Download Online

Check out this very informative and sobering presentation. Hansen is a leading client scientist at NASA, who has been very outspoken about the hazards of doing nothing.* He gives detailed rebuttals to climate change deniers/skeptic claims, warns about being in the danger zone already, and explains the risk of reaching sudden points of irreversible change. On the plus side, he also states that it not too late to act.

The video is already available to download from the TVO show's video podcast feed http://feeds.tvo.org/tvobigideasVideo

Direct link to video file: http://feeds.tvo.org/~r/tvobigideasVideo/~3/DPxmIcuqSF0/007559_480x270_512k.mp4

Note: MP4 video with MP4 audio, Size 215MB, Length 53:30 (MM:SS), Resolution 480x270. May need to adjust brightness/contrast/saturation for best results, depending on your display settings and visual preferences. Subtitles do not seem to be included.

It should be available eventually for viewing online (Flash player, no big MP4 download needed) via their Past Episode page at http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas_pastepisodes

(H/T Sudbury Steve.)


* See Storms of My Grandchildren - a call to action for more about Dr. Hansen's book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

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Global warming hitting Canada hard - The Weather Network

"According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2010 is expected to be Canada's warmest year ever.
"Research shows that temperatures across Canada last winter and spring were an average four degrees above normal, making it the country's warmest-ever winter and spring.
"Arctic temperatures last winter averaged about six degrees above the normal temperature."

Global warming hitting Canada hard - The Weather Network

[sarcasm] Oh no! More inconvenient facts! Quick, call 1-800-DEN-IERS! Whew, I feel better already. [/sarcasm]

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Outrageous! Unelected Senate Conservatives Kill Climate Bill And Democracy With One Vote

Unelected Conservative senators kill Bill C-311 without any debate in a surprise vote -- after the majority in the elected House of Commons had passed the Bill! Canada will be going to the next climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico with nothing but the current, completely ineffectual Conservative plan (putting it more briefly: Canada will come empty-handed).

The sordid details (example from Toronto Star, but almost any other Canadian media source will do):

http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/892053

Read. Weep. Then work for change!

For example: Canada Must Show Climate Leadership - Facebook Group from Green Party of Canada:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sidney-BC/Canada-Must-Show-Climate-Leadership/128764513843374

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Hamilton: Russia’s climate problem is our problem

Tyler Hamilton, with another spot-on column:

Ontario cottage-goers were forced to cancel vacations in Muskoka this month after record-high temperatures sparked massive forest fires in the region.

Dozens of cottages have been destroyed and smoke from the affected regions has engulfed Toronto. Premier Dalton McGuinty declared a state of emergency and warned residents to stay indoors.

Meanwhile, low water levels and unprecedented power demand from air conditioning have forced rolling electricity brownouts across the province, with Ontario’s coal fleet – scheduled for complete shutdown by 2014 – operating at full capacity and making the pollution much worse.

Ontario is in no way alone. Heat and drought have devastated this year’s prairie wheat harvest, causing market prices to double on fears there will be a global wheat shortage.

“What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared during a rare televised speech to the nation.

Now, before you spill your morning coffee or afternoon Bloody Caesar, please note that most of the above “report” is fictional – today, at least. But insert “central Russia” where you read Ontario, “Moscow” where you read “Toronto” and “Russian President Dmitry Medvedev” for Stephen Harper and the story is pretty much bang on.

I think if Stephen Harper actually said those words, I would faint (if I hadn't already from the heat!).

Go read...

Scientists' Open Letter Decries Unfounded Attacks and Threats Against Climatologists

Well worth reading: "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science" - a letter in the prestigious journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689

Science 7 May 2010: Vol. 328. no. 5979, pp. 689 - 690 DOI: 10.1126/science.328.5979.689

(h/t Slashdot)

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Canada tagged as "Fossil of the Year" as climate summit "hangs in the balance" - CBC News

Canada is refusing to play its traditional key role as an honest international broker, keeping a low profile instead even though the Copenhagen Climate Summit "hangs in the balance". If the summit fails (in form and/or in substance), we will share part of the blame due to the Conservative Government's inaction. I fact,

"A coalition of environmental groups at the Copenhagen climate change conference gave its 'Fossil of the Year' award to Canada on Friday. "The citation called Canada 'the absolute worst country at the talks.'[...]

"Canada has been under pressure at the conference over its intention to cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020, when environmentalists had been calling for much steeper cuts. "The Conservative government has also not ruled out giving special breaks to oilsands companies when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions."

CBC News - World - Canada tagged as 'Fossil of the Year'

Shame! Shame!

Update: Link to Fossil of the Day Award web site explaining the reasons for the Fossil of the Year Award to Canada.

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Nature Journal: Climate Science is Sound, Paranoid Interpretation Would Be Laughable If It Were Not Dangerous

There is a great editorial in the leading scientific Journal Nature, busting the myth about the significance of the the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia (UAE) Climate Research Unit (CRU):

"Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

• "First, Earth's cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
  
• Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm.
  
• Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.

"Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world's voracious appetite for carbon is essential...." [bullet points added in second paragraph to improve readability].

(For more on the independent evidence supporting climate science, see my previous blog post.)

The editors of Nature also say that the

"...paranoid interpretation [of the stolen emails] would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill."

On an even more somber note, Nature's editors warn that

"...the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science."

Indeed, the stakes are very high. Trillion-dollar fossil-fuel industries and their allies are trying to keep their profit margins in the face of the biggest global push-back that they have had to face. The evidence to date shows only disinformation campaigns, computer hacking -- plus possibly break and enter and attempted trespass (the latter two allegedly happened right here in Canada). I certainly hope that this is the worst of it.

I also hope that journalists stop blindly repeating sensationalized quotes from the stolen emails, and remember the need for critical thinking, as Jim Hogan argues eloquently Desmog Blog.

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Prentice "Channels" U.S. Policies on Absolute Emissions Caps, "Intensity Targets" Gone At Last

Canadian Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice is on a roll. First, he confirmed his conviction that climate science is clear and we need to reduce emissions despite the "stolen emails". Then, he told a House of Commons committee that his government is giving up the roundly criticized and notoriously ineffectual "intensity targets" approach. They are finally moving toward imposing hard caps on total greenhouse gases emissions.

The reason? Desire to harmonize Canadian rules with U.S. policies. Despite arguing earlier in 2009 that "intensity targets" and hard caps are "not mutually exclusive'', Prentice has finally conceded what the experts had been saying all along. There is no way to make these apples into oranges.

Given that the leaders of our "51st State" government are so wishy-washy on this issue, aren't we in Canada lucky to have elected Obama and a Democratic Congress to lead us at the federal level? Oh, wait...

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Even Prentice Gets It - Climate Science is Clear Despite Stolen Emails, We Must Cut Emissions

Canada's federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice got something right for once:

"[The stolen email controversy] does not change the position of Canada... The science overall is relatively clear on all of this and as a conservationist and as a responsible environmental steward, Canada wants to see carbon emissions reduced." (Sun Media, via Orilia Packet & Times)

The BBC provides a timeline of the controvercy in a sidebar to this story.

Here's why Prentice is right:

"'The emails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus ... that tells us the earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity,' said ... government scientist, Jane Lubchenco. A marine biologist and climate researcher, she heads the [US] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"The emails do not negate or even deal with data from both NOAA and NASA, which keep independent climate records and show dramatic warming, Lubchenco told members of the House global warming committee."

[...]

"The chairman of the [US] Academy of Science panel, Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist Gerald North, confirmed... [that]

"'...even if Jones, Mann and others [whose emails had been stolen] had done no research at all, the world would still be warming and scientists would still be able to show it." (CP via Yahoo! Canada News)

Spencer Weart, former director of the American Institute of Physics' Center for the History of Physics who wrote The Discovery of Global Warming, said that surface temperature data (the subject of the emails) is notoriously hard to deal with. Weather stations are run by people who make mistakes -- or sometimes even move the stations, using instruments that may be off by a few degrees, in an environment that can change around the station over the years. But Weart agrees that surface climate data is not required to prove recent global warming. Studies of stalagmites in caves and temperature changes in near-surface rock layers have confirmed the trends independetly. (CBC Radio's The Current on December 3, 2009. You can listen using the player on the CBC site -- go to the player for Part 3 near the end of that page. The discussion noted above starts around 07:30).

I'll let David Suzuki have the last word for now:

"Sadly for the deniers and for all of us, the emails don't show that global warming is a grand hoax or conspiracy. They do nothing to diminish the decades of overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is not only warming largely because of emissions from burning fossil fuels but that it's worse than we thought. Recently, 26 scientists from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, the U.S., and Australia released a report showing that the impacts of global warming are occurring faster and are more widespread than other reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had projected.

"The report, titled The Copenhagen Diagnosis, summarized the most recent research from around the world, which shows that Arctic sea ice is melting faster than we thought, that both Greenland and Antarctica are losing more ice than predicted, and that sea levels are rising more quickly than anticipated. The scientists conclude that the Earth could reach several 'tipping points' if we keep pumping emissions into the atmosphere at the same rate.

"The report also quashes the myth of 'global cooling' that has been 'promoted by lobby groups and picked up in some media.' The report's authors conclude that 'even the highly "cherry-picked" 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 C per decade.'

"It's astounding that those who deny that climate change exists or that it is human-caused, either out of self-interest or ignorance, are willing to see some grand conspiracy in a handful of stolen emails but are unwilling to see the undeniably clear evidence of the impacts of climate change already occurring around the world.

"Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, world leaders are dragging their heels in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate summit this month. As University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver notes, in abandoning the idea of reaching a binding agreement in Copenhagen, world leaders are essentially saying that they don't believe they owe anything to our children and grandchildren.

"Unfortunately, Canada has a poor record on climate change and international negotiations to address the problem. Our government argues that the economy takes precedence over the environment. It's incredibly short-sighted to think that a healthy economy can be maintained when the health of the planet is failing. And it's absurd to pin our economic hopes on extracting limited supplies of dirty fossil fuels in a world that is increasingly switching to cleaner forms of energy."

[Important Notice]

Arctic Ice is Not Recovering -- And it Will Affect Your Backyard Too

Check out the story about Arctic Slush in the November 28, 2009 CBC Radio Quirks and Quarks show.

"[The researchers] were guided by satellite observations that suggested that solid ice was present throughout this part of the Arctic. What they saw instead was something Dr. Barber says he's never observed before - broken, slushy, decayed ice with a thin veneer of harder ice over it, which their ship pushed through as if it wasn't there. This new kind of ice had fooled the satellites, and suggests that the permanent Arctic ice cover is in even more trouble than had been previously thought."

This makes the Comment by Sara Falconer of WWF Canada to an earlier post in this blog all the more relevant.

To save you time, here's the link to the WWF video about the Arctic in Your Backyard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IFCzdvjW_k

The discussion page is here: http://wwf.ca/takeaction/events/oil_and_ice_discussion.cfm

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Richard Leakey on Climate Change and the Future of Life on Earth - 2009 ROM Lecture - Free Online Video & MP3 Download

"Richard Leakey, professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York is best known for his paleontological work in Africa. His lecture, entitled Climate Change and the Future of Life on Earth deals with wildlife conservation and was recorded at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on May 30th, 2009."

Thanks to TVO's Big Ideas series, you can watch the video (embedded version below) or listen to an MP3 recording of the lecture.



Mp3 File (11.2 MB):

http://feeds.tvo.org/~r/tvobigideas/~3/okowYaRGVdo/BI_Lecture_20091025_834132_RLeakey_0x0_40k.mp3


We went to this lecture on May 30, and it was very sobering. Leaky says that Climate change poses a dire threat to both human life and wildlife in the tropics and hot arid regions. Many animal species world-wide will go extinct, especially if we do not plan for ways to save them. Worse yet, Leaky now says that losing 50-60% of species could lead to a tipping point where more and more food chains are broken, and you have a "complete collapse of life". While he says that it is "unlikely" that humans would go extinct in the process, thanks to our technology, he does not rule it out explicitly. (Listen around 12:15 to 14:00 minutes:seconds.)

Surviving in a techno-bubble on a lifeless planet -- our children and grandchildren deserve much better. Yet this is what we risk leaving for them unless we act now.



(Episode page on TVO: http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bi?1256418000000
Originally aired October 24, 2009 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.)

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