Various governments, including ours, and the oil and gas industry, have put a lot of money into the guesswork technology of carbon capture.
One pilot project, saw captured CO2 being piped 330km from a coal power station in Beulah, North Dakota, to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, where it was pumped underground to help extract oil, a process known as enhanced oil recovery.
But anything that sounds too good to be true probably is, and in Weyburn, there seems to be a bubbling crude, though not with good fortune for a couple whose property has a rumbling in it's tummy: Land fizzing like soda pop: farmer says CO2 injected underground is leaking
A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop. The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground.
Cameron and Jane Kerr own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan. They released a consultant's report Tuesday that links high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus (TSX:CVE) in an attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.
But what started as a series of worrisome problems on a rural Saskatchewan property has now raised serious questions about the safety of carbon sequestration and storage, a technology that has drawn billions in spending from governments and industry, which have promoted it as a salve to Canada’s growth in greenhouse-gas emissions.
Greenpeace, a pressure group, argues that it is impossible to be certain that carbon dioxide will not eventually leak out of the ground. Carbon dioxide forms an acid when it dissolves in water. This acid can react with minerals to form carbonates, locking away the carbon in a relatively inert state. But it can also eat through the man-made seals or geological strata intended to keep it in place. A leakage rate of just 1% a year, Greenpeace points out, would lead to 63% of the carbon dioxide stored in any given reservoir being released within 100 years, almost entirely undoing the supposed environmental benefit.
Months ago Stephen Harper stated that he was going to use the G20 to convince the world's wealthiest nations to abandon tackling climate change until the economy was improved.
BP disastrous blowout has prompted both Canada and the United States to review offshore oil and gas drilling, but the results could be dramatically different given the contrasting nature of the panels charged with charting a new course for the industry. While U.S. President Barack Obama has appointed a panel of prominent people with virtually no ties to the industry, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is relying for advice on the National Energy Board, many of whose board members come straight from the energy sector.
Canada’s largest and most influential business organization has launched a lobbying campaign urging Canadian senators to kill legislation requiring the government to deliver a science-based plan to fight global warming and provide regular reports on its progress.
Where Harper has come under increasing criticism is his environmental policy, or, his lack of commitment to any truly serious program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the end of the day all the photo ops in the world with international leaders won't be able to compensate for a foreign policy which only satisfied Harper himself
So I don't know what Jim Prentice is doing. Maybe he's in charge of stocking "fake lake" with fake fish.
The trouble with having the most secretive government on the planet, and a media that nurtures it's secrecy; is that we have to read online papers from across the globe to discover what's happening in our own country.
I'm not a scientist or an investment specialist by any means. Just a curious old broad who had a light bulb moment.
BP Plc shareholders put a resolution to the annual meeting on April 15 for a review of the risks of the company’s Canadian oil sands project, following a similar protest against competitor Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
A coalition of investors requested the review in a resolution to BP’s annual meeting, FairPensions, the campaign’s coordinator, said in a statement today. The risks include increased carbon costs and reputational damage from environmental damage, according to London-based FairPensions, which represents unions, charities and faith groups.
“There’s now a growing group of investors who are questioning the wisdom of BP’s apparent move from ‘Beyond Petroleum’ to ‘Back to Petroleum’, which these resolutions illustrate,” Louise Rouse, director of Investor Engagement at FairPensions, said in the statement. “Investors are learning from recent shocks that it is in their interest to act as responsible owners.”
About 140 investors back the resolution, according to Duncan Exley, a director at FairPensions. The amount of shares held wasn’t provided.
While growing a nest egg for your retirement, your pension savings could also be paying for environmental destruction, illegal arms sales or the exploitation of workers. That's because the money you pay into your pension fund each month may be invested in businesses with irresponsible practices.
It's interesting to note that KAIROS, one of the first victims of this government's axe, also protested the Tarsands as it related to the future of humanity. They worked in countries being hit the hardest as a result of global warming. But as soon as you bring up the 'humane' word, it becomes a catalyst to the Harper regime and you knew their fate was sealed.
But even worse, they once questioned Israel's possible complicity in war crimes, something that even many Israelis are questioning. Jason Kenney pulled out his old testament, went into a trance, started speaking in tongues and POOF, they were gone.
This brings me to a recent article in the Toronto Star, again about future western investment in the Tarsands:
WASHINGTON-Canada’s controversial tar sands industry took its first retail blow Wednesday as two Fortune 500 companies announced plans to eliminate the high-carbon Alberta fuel from its supply chain.
Are we detecting a trend as investors start to pull out of the project, not because of environmental concerns so much as the cost of cleaning up the oil to meet environmental standards? Perhaps.
Is this why Jim Prentice announced that we are lowering our targets even further and is hinting at an exemption for Alberta?
But what if none of that works, and more and more cautious investors refuse to throw good money at a project with questionable returns? Stephen Harper did promise $800,000,000 of our money for carbon capture, but many people know that's a farce.
We now have to go to Hong Kong for the next stage of the story:
SEOUL/HONG KONG Korean Oil puts Canada on its radar Miyoung Kim and Joseph Chaney RTGAM
SEOUL/HONG KONG - Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC), sitting on a multi-billion-dollar warchest, is setting its sights on Canada as the state-owned company aims to ramp up production and catch up to Asian rivals.
Seoul said this month that cashed-up KNOC will spend $6.5-billion (U.S.) on M&A in 2010 in an effort to cut South Korea's almost total dependence on imported oil.
That goal will put the company in direct competition with Asian energy giants such as PetroChina, Malaysia's Petronas, and India's ONGC.
KNOC may be eyeing assets offered by such Canadian companies as its top oil firm Suncor Energy, No.2 independent petroleum producer, EnCana Corp. and No.3 independent oil explorer Talisman Energy.
In addition, Canadian oil sands company Opti Canada and its peer Nexen Inc. are seen as potential acquisition targets. Their shares moved up as recently as late last year on speculation of bids from Chinese energy giants. So far, no public offers have emerged.
Foreign owned, foreign controlled, and propped up with Canadian tax dollars. Gotta' love neoconservatism.
But why would Korea be willing to invest in a project with a questionable future, because of environmental concerns?
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he will use Canada’s co-chairmanship of next year’s Group of 20 countries meeting to urge members to put economic recovery before efforts to protect the environment.
“Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly.
So where will we find the next bit of news on what's happening in Canada? Maybe I'll check out the Timbuktu Gazette.
As Rick Mercer suggested recently, Stephen Harper's idea of going green is turning his caucus into potted plants.
But in the meantime, just like the Afghan detainee issue and the lobbying scandal that have been put on hold; climate change and what our government plans to do about it, is also off the table for now.
But I'm afraid waiting for this government to do something, will be a very long wait.
While keeping our own media on a 'need to know, but they don't need to know much', basis; he told Bloomberg's when he was in Korea that he will “…use Canada’s co-chairmanship of next year’s Group of 20 countries meeting to urge members to put economic recovery before efforts to protect the environment.”
The Montreal thinkers conference, scheduled for March will include many experts in the field, and will help the Liberal Party expand and fine tune their environmental platform.
It is now an accepted fact here in Canada and around the world that our country has gone from being an environmental leader under former prime minister Brian Mulroney to a laggard under the Liberals – and now a pariah under the Stephen Harper government.
The recent UN climate change conference in Copenhagen made this even more painfully clear as we were given the dubious Fossil of the Year award for the third straight time and dubbed a "corrupt petro-state."
Copenhagen demonstrated an important shift in global geopolitics with emerging powers China, India and Brazil at the main table along with the U.S., while Canada was not even in the room. This is not surprising given Canada's failure to address the most important issue of our time: climate change.
Canada is the only country to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then to wear its refusal to meet our international obligations under the agreement like a badge of honour. At first, the Harper government claimed we needed a "made-in-Canada" climate change plan (as if Kyoto precluded one when in fact it compelled one) and now it claims it cannot produce a Canadian plan without an international agreement in place. This hypocrisy undermines our credibility regarding environmental issues, but also other areas of international affairs, particularly as global warming affects the global economy and global security as well as the environment.
Canadians get it. A new survey commissioned by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute found that Canadians believe climate change poses a significantly bigger threat to the "vital interests" of this country over the next decade than international terrorism.
Some provinces have responded to these concerns by putting their own plans in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This patchwork approach has pitted regions of Canada – particularly oil-producing Alberta and hydropower giant Quebec – against each other and has created great uncertainty for business.
This national leadership vacuum represents a real opportunity for the Liberal Party of Canada – provided it can get beyond its own uneven record on climate change.
Under the Jean Chrétien government, Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and then ratified it in 2002. The intervening five years of "consultations" were largely a wasted period of procrastination, equivocation and outright obstruction by the official Opposition.
The Liberals were strong on rhetoric and weak on action, as Chrétien adviser Eddie Goldenberg admitted in his book when he stated that the then-prime minister signed Kyoto essentially as a PR exercise. It was not until 2005 that a plan took shape under Paul Martin with Stéphane Dion as environment minister. This plan ("Project Green) was quickly discarded by the new Conservative government. Four years after their election, the Conservatives still lack a credible plan of their own.
This summer's meetings of the G8 and, in particular, the G20 – which comprise the world's major greenhouse gas emitters among both industrialized and developing countries – represent an opportunity for Canada to get global climate change negotiations back on track and, in so doing, reclaim our leadership on this critical issue. Although Canada will play host, the Conservative government is unlikely to take up this challenge because it does not want climate change on the agenda.
In anticipation of the G20 – itself the brainchild of former prime minister Paul Martin – the Liberals should present clear and compelling environmental policies to Canadians. This can be achieved by stating that Canada under a Liberal government would rejoin the international community and show leadership by working with G20 countries in forging a credible agreement on climate change.
Furthermore, a Liberal government would work with industry and the provinces to put real measures in place to reduce emissions. The Liberal party recently pledged to invest in green technologies, creating sustainable jobs for the future.
In contrast, the government's recent stimulus package missed a critical opportunity to make these investments (with Canada coming in second to last among countries that used stimulus funding to green their economies), while the EU and China made the most of theirs and the U.S. recently announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for clean energy technology development.
The goal should be clear: making Canada a green energy superpower. The Liberals have announced that they would use this period of parliamentary prorogation to consult on the economy as well as the environment. But Canada is well past the point of consulting on a climate change plan. The challenge now is to create buy-in from Canadians not for mere aspirations but for real action – starting with putting a price on carbon through cap-and-trade and taxing pollution.
The Green Shift fiasco of the 2008 election was rooted mainly in the Liberals' failure to communicate what should have been a straightforward policy: tax more of what you burn, less of what you earn.
The Liberal party must show Canadians that it can muster the massive political will and resources to successfully tackle seemingly intractable problems. The fiscal deficit of the 1990s provides a compelling case in point. The rationale presented was short-term pain for long-term gain – it would be irresponsible to leave such a burden on future generations.
The same logic applies not only to the ballooning fiscal debt, but to the ecological one. If Canada can mobilize around the fiscal deficit, surely we can make headway on the environmental deficit.
Désirée McGraw chaired the 2006 Liberal Renewal Commission's Taskforce on Environment and Sustainable Development. She is co-founder of Al Gore's Climate Project in Canada and lectures in international development and climate diplomacy at McGill University.
The Associated Press has examined the emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, and have determined, that while they raised questions about the politics; they did nothing to challenge the science of global warming.
Young Liberal Miranda Hussey is in Copenhagen, blogging on her experiences and sharing news. This morning she mentioned that she stood in line for four hours, but is still pumped. I told her that Copenhagen is her generation's Woodstock. The memories will last a lifetime.
It was nice to hear from her that Greenpeace was handing out free coffee.
I don't know if much good will come of this though. I just read that there are 1200 limousines being used to taxi people around. Why didn't they at least try to send a positive message by using 'smart' cars instead of 'stupid' limos? Sigh.
LONDON — E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.
The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change.
However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The scientists were keenly aware of how their work would be viewed and used, and, just like politicians, went to great pains to shape their message. Sometimes, they sounded more like schoolyard taunts than scientific tenets.
The scientists were so convinced by their own science and so driven by a cause "that unless you're with them, you're against them," said Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also reviewed the communications.
Frankel saw "no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations.'"
Some e-mails expressed doubts about the quality of individual temperature records or why models and data didn't quite match. Part of this is the normal give-and-take of research, but skeptics challenged how reliable certain data was.
The e-mails were stolen from the computer network server of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in southeast England, an influential source of climate science, and were posted online last month. The university shut down the server and contacted the police. The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total.
One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it.
The e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method. The University of East Anglia is investigating the blocking of information requests.
"I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them."
When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones, who didn't return AP requests for comment, told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."
Mann, a researcher at Penn State University, told The Associated Press: "I didn't delete any e-mails as Phil asked me to. I don't believe anybody else did."
The e-mails also show how professional attacks turned very personal. When former London financial trader Douglas J. Keenan combed through the data used in a 1990 research paper Jones had co-authored, Keenan claimed to have found evidence of fakery by Jones' co-author.
Keenan threatened to have the FBI arrest University at Albany scientist Wei-Chyung Wang for fraud. (A university investigation later cleared him of any wrongdoing.)
"I do now wish I'd never sent them the data after their FOIA request!" Jones wrote in June 2007.
In another case after initially balking on releasing data to a skeptic because it was already public, Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Ben Santer wrote that he then opted to release everything the skeptic wanted — and more. Santer said in a telephone interview that he and others are inundated by frivolous requests from skeptics that are designed to "tie-up government-funded scientists."
The e-mails also showed a stunning disdain for global warming skeptics.
One scientist practically celebrates the news of the death of one critic, saying, "In an odd way this is cheering news!" Another bemoans that the only way to deal with skeptics is "continuing to publish quality work in quality journals (or calling in a Mafia hit.)" And a third scientist said the next time he sees a certain skeptic at a scientific meeting, "I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."
And they compared contrarians to communist-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Somali pirates. They also called them out-and-out frauds.
Santer, who received death threats after his work on climate change in 1996, said Thursday: "I'm not surprised that things are said in the heat of the moment between professional colleagues. These things are taken out of context."
When the journal, Climate Research, published a skeptical study, Penn State scientist Mann discussed retribution this way: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."
That skeptical study turned out to be partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute.
The most provocative e-mails are usually about one aspect of climate science: research from a decade ago that studied how warm or cold it was centuries ago through analysis of tree rings, ice cores and glacial melt. And most of those e-mails, which stretch from 1996 to last month, are from about a handful of scientists in dozens of e-mails.
Still, such research has been a key element in measuring climate change over long periods. As part of the AP review, summaries of the e-mails that raised issues from the potential manipulation of data to intensely personal attacks were sent to seven experts in research ethics, climate science and science policy.
"This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here."
In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a "culture of corruption" that the e-mails appeared to show.
That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.
One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: "I've just completed Mike's (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren't as warm as scientists had determined.
The "trick" that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.
Sometimes the data didn't line up as perfectly as scientists wanted.
David Rind told colleagues about inconsistent figures in the work for a giant international report: "As this continuing exchange has clarified, what's in Chapter 6 is inconsistent with what is in Chapter 2 (and Chapter 9 is caught in the middle!). Worse yet, we've managed to make global warming go away! (Maybe it really is that easy...:)."
But in the end, global warming didn't go away, according to the vast body of research over the years.
None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat. Nor did it alter their support of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which some of the scientists helped write.
"My overall interpretation of the scientific basis for (man-made) global warming is unaltered by the contents of these e-mails," said Gabriel Vecchi, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.
Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann's earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.
"In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown," North said.
Mann contends he always has been upfront about uncertainties, pointing to the title of his 1999 study: "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties and Limitations."
Several scientists found themselves tailoring their figures or retooling their arguments to answer online arguments — even as they claimed not to care what was being posted to the Internet
"I don't read the blogs that regularly," Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona wrote in 2005. "But I guess the skeptics are making hay of their (sic) being a global warm (sic) event around 1450AD."
One person singled out for criticism in the e-mails is Steve McIntyre, who maintains Climate Audit. The blog focuses on statistical issues with scientists' attempts to recreate the climate in ancient times.
"We find that the authors are overreaching in the conclusions that they're trying to draw from the data that they have," McIntyre said in a telephone interview.
McIntyre, 62, of Toronto, was trained in math and economics and says he is "substantially retired" from the mineral exploration industry, which produces greenhouse gases.
Some e-mails said McIntyre's attempts to get original data from scientists are frivolous and meant more for harassment than doing good science. There are allegations that he would distort and misuse data given to him.
McIntyre disagreed with how he is portrayed. "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith," he said.
He also said he has avoided editorializing on the leaked e-mails. "Anything I say," he said, "is liable to be piling on."
The skeptics started the name-calling said Mann, who called McIntyre a "bozo," a "fraud" and a "moron" in various e-mails.
"We're human," Mann said. "We've been under attack unfairly by these people who have been attempting to dismiss us as frauds as liars."
The AP is mentioned several times in the e-mails, usually in reference to a published story. One scientist says his remarks were reported with "a bit of journalistic license" and "I would have rephrased or re-expressed some of what was written if I had seen it before it was released." The archive also includes a request from an AP reporter, one of the writers of this story, for reaction to a study, a standard step for journalists seeking quotes for their stories. ___ (Associated Press writers Jeff Donn in Boston, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Troy Thibodeaux in Washington provided technical assistance. Satter reported from London, Borenstein from Washington and Ritter from New York.
EDITOR'S NOTE _ Find behind-the-scenes information, blog posts and discussion about the Copenhagen climate conference at http://www.facebook.com/theclimatepool, a Facebook page run by AP and an array of international news agencies. Follow coverage and blogging of the event on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/AP_ClimatePool)
WASHINGTON – New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.
British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.
Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 per cent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.
These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.
"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said the study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."
The study doesn't answer the crucial question of how much this worsening melt will add to projections of sea level rise from man-made global warming. Some scientists have previously estimated that steady melting of the two ice sheets will add about 3 feet, maybe more, to sea levels by the end of the century. But the ice sheets are so big it would probably take hundreds of years for them to completely disappear.
As scientists watch ice shelves retreat or just plain collapse, some thought the problem could slow or be temporary. The latest measurements eliminate "the most optimistic view," said Penn State University professor Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study.
The research found that 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace.
The key problem is not heat in the air, but the water near the ice sheets, Pritchard said. The water is not just warmer but its circulation is also adding to the melt.
"It is alarming," said Jason Box of Ohio State University, who also wasn't part of the study.
Worsening data, including this report, keep proving "that we're underestimating" how sensitive the ice sheets are to changes, he said.
