B.C. forests now a polluter, thanks to pine beetle

Not a good situation:

A government report says B.C. forests, often hailed as a giant sponge soaking up harmful air pollution, have become a net producer of carbon dioxide.

The report says the mountain pine beetle, which has killed millions of trees, and massive forest fires in recent years, have transformed the forests from a carbon sink into a polluter.

From the Star. The thing is, the beetles have become much more lethal to forests due to milder winters, so this is an example of a positive feedback with regards to climate change. Dealing with the problem may involve some hard choices, because the best way to mitigate the damage done might well be to harvest all those dead trees before they burn or rot (since either process will release an unacceptable amount of CO₂). The idea of clearcutting huge areas is far from appealing from a biodiversity point of view, since a forest that is clearcut will not return to its natural state for a long time, if ever. However, it is far from normal for such a wide area of forest to die off like this; I suspect it won't return to its natural state regardless. In effect, the forest has already been clearcut; it's just that the trees haven't fallen down yet. Whatever replaces those trees, whether they're removed or not, will be different from what's there now, so maybe they should be harvested and made into furniture, building materials, or biochar.

Just to make things more difficult, this comes at a very awkward time, since with the crash in housing in the US and elsewhere (including here to some extent) the market for timber is way down, and isn't likely to recover in time to use all that material. Perhaps the BC government should be actively harvesting it and making it into biochar, returning much of that material to the soil so as to keep the nutrients in the ecosystem. After all, they just brought in a carbon tax; maybe they should be devoting that money to trying to actually mitigate climate change. But maybe that would make too much sense...

Construction begins on St. Joseph wind farm

Not without hurdles, but it's underway:

Construction has started on the St. Joseph Wind Farm after Manitoba Hydro announced they would loan Pattern Energy $260 million towards the $345 million project.

After years of delays and changes to the original plan, Pattern Energy will have 60 Siemens SWT-2.3 MW turbines producing 138 MW in operation by Christmas of this year.

"These things don't generally take more than six to 12 months to build," Colin Edwards, senior developer Canada said.

The construction may be quick but getting there was not. In 2007 the call for submissions was put out by Manitoba Hydro. In November 2008, they announced they would go with a bid by Babcock and Brown Canada to build a 300 MW wind farm. That deal never materialized after their Australian parent company faced financial distress. The North American wind division was turned into Pattern Energy, with many of the same names that were involved in the first proposal.

From the Altona Red River Valley Echo. Not a moment too soon -- we're going to need a lot more of this soon, especially once the flow rates of the Assiniboine, Saskatchewan, and Churchill rivers start to decline as the glaciers on the Rockies vanish. The more wind and solar capacity we have the better, because when it's producing power it will be possible to reduce the flow rate through the control structure at Jenpeg, thus keeping Lake Winnipeg as full as possible.

National carbon calculator (UK)

The good folks at the Guardian (h/t Marc Lee at Progressive Economics) have come up with a neat little web app where you have to adjust sliders to try to reduce Britain's CO₂ emissions by 80%. It shows how you have to balance electricity supply and demand, and how much of a reduction in travel and consumption would be required. It's quite challenging. And Marc does say this:

They even share the back end spreadsheet, so we may have to mash up a Canadian version soon.

Looking forward to that. In some ways, Canada has it better; we have far more hydroelectric capacity (not to mention solar, given that in most of this country you actually see the sun). On the other hand, our cities are separated by distances that the average person in the UK (or France or Japan, for that matter) can hardly imagine, and thus our transportation costs (for people or other materials) will be much higher. And then there's heating costs...

South Dakota legislature declares that astrology can explain global warming

The stupid never ends, it seems:

Here in the U.S. we have a never-ending competition among the states to see which one can enact the dumbest laws. This past week, the South Dakota House of Representatives passed a law that tells schoolteachers how to present the evidence for global warming. The lawmakers who wrote the bill clearly don’t believe that global warming is a reality, so they simply created a law to promote their version of reality. Interestingly, they used the same strategy used by creationists in their efforts to ban the teaching of evolution: the “teach the controversy” approach, where you claim you simply want children to hear both sides of the issue. But the part that really got my attention was the law’s claim that “astrological dynamics” are one of the driving forces behind global climate change.

Source (h/t Peter Watts).

HRM prepares for rising sea levels

Remarkably forward thinking for a municipal council:

City hall wants to prepare for a potential water level rise, over the next several decades, on both sides of Halifax Harbour.

Regional council heard Tuesday that many properties bordering the harbour — including sites with commercial and public works infrastructure — could be at risk of major flooding due to projected sea level change.

In one scenario, during the next 100 years or so, the harbour’s water level is predicted to rise by at least 73 centimetres, council’s meeting of committee of the whole was told.

It is part of a global trend prompted by climate change, municipal staff said.

Staff said the city should consider site-specific measures to address the rising-water concern. Council heard it will be much cheaper to plan ahead than to dish out money later, should disaster strike.

A harbour research group has been studying the water level in the Halifax-Dartmouth area, Bedford Basin and the Northwest Arm. Council voted to have the group of city staff, scientists and others look at all of Halifax Regional Municipality’s coastal communities.

From the Chronicle-Herald.

The glaciers and the damage done

No doubt you're aware of the reports that the glaciers on the Himalayas are not melting quite as fast as one scientist predicted. (They're still melting, mind you). Gwynne Dyer tackles the issue head-on here:

People who know science and scientists will be disappointed both by the behaviour of Phil Jones and by the glacier incident, but they will not be surprised. This sort of thing happens from time to time, because we are dealing with human beings. But it does not (as the denial brigade insists) discredit the whole enterprise in which they are engaged.

Not all the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035, but a lot of the ones at lower altitudes will -- including some of the ones that keep the great rivers of Asia full in the summertime. That is important, because when they are gone, people start to starve. And we have all met people who are clever in theory but stupid in practice, like Foolish Phil.

The weight of the evidence rests overwhelmingly on the side of those who argue that climate change is real and dangerous. Some 97 per cent of scientists active in the relevant fields are convinced of it; all but a couple of the world's 200 governments have been persuaded of it; public opinion accepts it almost everywhere except in parts of the "Anglosphere." The United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, Britain and Canada, are the last bastions of denial.

Nothing too shocking here. The thing is, though, the "Anglosphere" has an inordinate amount of influence in the world. This "scandal", which is really about the details of climate change as opposed to the fundamentals, has the potential to seriously limit actions to deal with the problem:

U.S. President Barack Obama will do what he can, but his chance of getting even a very modest bill on emissions cuts through the Senate this year has just dwindled to near zero. The American public, worried about its jobs and its health care, doesn't want to hear about it -- and if it does hear, it doesn't believe.

If the United States is out of the game, then China is out, too. Without the participation of the world's two biggest polluters, jointly accounting for almost half of the human race's CO2 emissions, there's not much point in trying for another Kyoto-style deal, even a much better one. If you have any money lying around, put it on geo-engineering techniques for keeping the heat down. We're going to need them.

I have to say I'm not too keen on geo-engineering. Then again, I'm not too keen on the idea of taking drugs that interfere with cell division either, but if I had cancer I'd take them in a heartbeat. The stupid thing is, it shouldn't be necessary, but it almost certainly will be. Let's just hope that it works.

Poll shows Canadians still want action on climate change

The results weren't evenly distributed, though:

More than half of Canadians believe greenhouse gases produced by human activity are a key factor spurring climate change, and they say the planet is in peril if significant action isn't taken soon.

The findings of the Leger Marketing poll conducted less than a week after the end of climate talks in Copenhagen suggest that Canada's political leaders must more clearly explain their plans for the environment.

But the survey's regional results highlight the dilemma climate change presents for policymakers.

The highest support for immediate action on greenhouse gases came in Quebec, where almost 70% of those asked said human activity is a key driver of climate change. They want something done now.

In Ontario and British Columbia, 51% felt this way. But in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, 40% or less of those surveyed shared that sense of urgency. Prairie poll participants were also most likely to say human activity had no impact on global climate change, and most likely to say they were confused about the issue.

From the London Free Press. No bit surprise about the Prairies as a region, sadly (though I'd like to have a province by province breakdown; I suspect Manitoba is a bit more enlightened than Alberta in that regard).

The last refuge of scoundrels?

Jim Prentice is accusing provincial leaders who were critical of his government's approach to climate change of "working against their own country". This is a good sign, because it indicates that the Cons are getting nervous. Indeed, Michael den Tandt thinks they could be in real trouble before long, thanks to the climate issue as well as the Afghan torture scandal. Interesting; we'll have to see how the polls look in the coming weeks.

So they have some kind of a deal...

It appears that the Copenhagen climate talks have produced something or other:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other world leaders — including those from the U.S., China, India, Brazil and South Africa — are leaving Copenhagen with a compromise climate deal and a vow to work out the details.

Of course, "the details" is where one is most likely to find the man in the red suit. In this case, though, there's no need to wait for said details:

Harper called it a "comprehensive and realistic" agreement, while U.S. President Barack Obama hailed it as a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough."

However, the agreement is not binding and does not set new greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Instead, countries are to set their own emission-reduction commitments, which would not be legally binding.

So in other words, it's utterly meaningless, except as a way for the leaders to claim they've accomplished something. And yet, something good could still come of this; the leaders have in effect made a very public admission that they recognize the reality of climate change, which could force them to make some effort to actually do something about the problem. And then there are other possible spinoffs:

The US and Russia on Friday said they were close to an agreement on nuclear arms reduction after presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of the Copenhagen climate conference.

Mr Obama reported ”excellent progress” towards a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired this month, while Mr Medvedev said a deal was “very close”, with only “technical details” to resolve.

Both leaders have pledged to sign a fresh accord leading to further reductions in nuclear arms, after cutting their respective arsenals to fewer than 6,000 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles under the previous Cold War-era treaty.

If only the climate talks themselves could produce such concrete results. Of course, 6,000 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles is still a ridiculous amount of firepower, and it remains to be seen what the new agreement will bring. Still, it's a clear step in the right direction, and there's already a precedent for agreeing to actual numbers. And if we are to face significant climate change, the fewer nuclear weapons there are, the better; things are likely to get ugly in the next few decades.

Climategate -- the best summary I've seen yet

Check it out:

Climate sceptics get it wrong

Who's eating crow now?

The Global Warming Polilcy Foundation (GWPF) was launched by Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, last week to "help restore balance and trust" in the climate change debate.

The think tank was set up in the wake of the 'climategate scandal' that saw scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) accused of manipulating climate change data.

However it has now emerged that a graph used by the GWPF on its website was incorrect.

The graph, that shows global temperatures from 2001 to 2008, showed 2003 was the hottest year when in fact it was 2005.

The organisation have admitted there was a "small error" and have now corrected the graph.

However climate change scientists were quick to accuse the GWPF of double standards.

From the Telegraph.

Harper shamed into going to Copenhagen

I guess the fact that the Obama and Wen are going forced his hand:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will attend the Copenhagen climate change meeting next month after all, his office said Thursday — a day after saying he would not go.

Harper decided Thursday to attend the meeting to work on a new climate change agreement after the U.S. president and Chinese premier announced that they will show up, his spokesman said.

Canada has been strongly criticized internationally for reneging on the Kyoto climate protocol and for refusing to sign on to a new deal limiting greenhouse gases unless developing nations are included.

From the CBC.

Climate change laws years away: Prentice

They have no clue, do they?

The federal environment minister says it may be a few years before Canada tables regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Jim Prentice said the world has to first negotiate a new climate change treaty and Canada and the United States must finish their continental agreement on the same issue.

"I think it's fair to say that this all needs to knit together," Prentice said during a teleconference call from Copenhagen.

Prentice is taking part in the last round of climate change talks before the formal United Nations conference begins next month.

He also dampened any hope an international treaty will be reached in December.

"I think even a few months ago there had been an expectation on the part of the outside world that we would arrive at a full international treaty in December in Copenhagen. That clearly is not going to happen."

From the CBC.

Rising seas create first climate refugees

It's not hypothetical any more:

When sharks started showing up in the garden, Ursula Rakova knew her home and native islands were doomed.

And so the exodus is now underway for Rakova, 43, and the other 1,700 residents of the Carteret Islands, who are in the process of abandoning their ancestral coral atoll 86 kilometres off the coast of Papua New Guinea for higher ground before the sea takes everything. But they will not go quietly, says Rakova, who is in New York City this week forlornly staking a claim for her people as the world's first climate-change refugees.

"The signs are clear: we used to have storms during the rainy season. Now we cannot predict it because they come more frequent and stronger," she said. "We built seawalls and planted mangroves but it gets worse. Last Christmas the storms destroyed homes and the food gardens were devastated. Now we know the sea will wash over our islands. It is heartbreaking but we have to leave."

From the Toronto Star, via Green Assassin Brigade.

Geoff Currier doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change

So it seems, anyway; when the Winnipeg Trails Association and Bike To The Future met with him and John Orlikow to get their opinions on active transportation, Currier came out with this gem:

According to a summary distributed on Friday, Currier told representatives of both organizations, "I believe that if we were to take all the cars in North America off the road tomorrow, it wouldn't have any effect on climate change."

Currier declined to comment on Friday, except to say he had no idea the groups intended to make the content of the meeting public.

"They never indicated to me this kind of report would be forthcoming," he said.

From the Winnipeg Free Press. Well duh... why the hell would you think these organizations would be asking candidates' opinions unless they planned to publicize them?

US generals planning for resource wars

We could have guessed this, of course...

Under the auspices of the US department of defence and department of the army, the US military have just published a document entitled 2008 Army Modernization Strategy which makes for interesting reading against the current backdrop of deteriorating international fiscal, environmental, energy resource and security crises.

The 2008 modernisation strategy, written by Lieut Gen Stephen Speakes, deputy chief of staff of the US army, contains the first explicit and official acknowledgement that the US military is dangerously overstretched internationally. It states simply: "The army is engaged in the third-longest war in our nation's history and . . . the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has caused the army to become out of balance with the demand for forces exceeding the sustainable supply."

Against this backdrop, the 90 page document sets out the future of international conflict for the next 30 to 40 years - as the US military sees it - and outlines the manner in which the military will sustain its current operations and prepare and "transform" itself for future "persistent" warfare.

The document reveals a number of profoundly significant - and worrying - strategic positions that have been adopted as official doctrine by the US military. In its preamble, it predicts a post cold war future of "perpetual warfare".

From The Irish Times, via DrYB/C in this iTulip thread.

More war

Paul Craig Roberts used to be a neocon, but he recovered. Here he points out what most of the world already knows, but the American media won't acknowledge:

With its editorial, “Stopping Russia: the US and its allies must unite against Moscow’s war on Georgia,” the Washington Post has established a world record for the maximum number of lies in the minimum number of words.

Except for the Washington Post, the entire world knows that Georgia (the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, not Georgia USA) initiated the aggression that killed Russian peacekeepers and hundreds of civilians in South Ossetia, peacekeepers who were there with the blessing of Georgia and international agreements.

The true facts are available all over the world press. But the “liberal” Washington Post serves up the lie that Russia has attacked Georgia and conceivably plans to conquer all of Georgia. “This is a grave challenge to the United States and Europe,” thunders the Bush Regime’s mouthpiece, aka, “the liberal media.”

Thirsting for blood, the “liberal media” declares: “The United States and its NATO allies must together impose a price on Russia.”

Here we see the combination of idiocy and delusion in one sentence. The United States has proved that it is incapable of occupying Iraq, much less Afghanistan. Russia has a large trade surplus. America’s NATO allies are dependent on Russian natural gas. Yet the “liberal” Washington Post wants a bankrupt US and “its NATO allies” who are dependent on Russian energy “to impose a price on Russia” for defending its peacekeepers!

Seldom has the world seen such total insanity as the neoconservative Washington Post, a propaganda sheet as far from “liberal media” is it is possible to be.

Thanks to M. Spector in this babble thread. Of course, Russia isn't exactly innocent either, but it's remarkable how much Western media- and leaders- are lining up to defend Georgia. Hopefully it's all just bluster on the West's part, but if not, things could get very bad indeed:

The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 12 Global Research article entitled Georgia, Washington and Moscow: a Nuclear Geopolitical Poker Game , is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after another former member as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine.

Again, I don't think it will come to this; even world leaders generally recognize that a nuclear war between the US and Russia is more than most people, including them, are likely to be able to survive. But this kind of brinksmanship is scary.

I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

Well, that's what this story sounds like, anyway:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Nice. I wonder why that might be? Well, a former EPA official, Jason Burnett, thinks he knows:

More details are emerging about the maneuvers that blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases were a threat to public health and welfare and should be regulated.

White House officials initially blessed the agency’s efforts to create a basis for restricting emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas produced by human activities, but reversed course after passage of an energy bill last December, a former agency official has told a Congressional committee. He said the White House was won over by the argument, pushed by oil companies and others, that such regulation should not be part of the Bush legacy,

The official, Jason K. Burnett, once a Bush appointee and now an Obama supporter, told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that the argument for putting off any carbon dioxide limits was made by “individuals working for particular oil companies, Exxon Mobil,” as well as oil industry trade associations.

From here. Not a huge surprise that this sort of thing happens, of course, but it's great that this got out. Here's hoping the story goes viral.

Sell water to the Yanks or they'll take it, Dyer says

So Gwynne Dyer is now saying that if we don't sell our water to the US, they'll just take it anyway:

Canada must start selling its water to the United States before the Americans decide to take it and the country should also pay Alberta to stop tar sands production amid an emerging global climate crisis, international affairs columnist Gwynne Dyer said Monday.

Global warming and its calamitous fallout coming over the rest of this century is the subject of Dyer's next book. He described the sober picture of what might happen in a lecture to a nearly full house at the Roxy Theatre in Owen Sound.

The London-based, Canadian-born syndicated columnist said British policy makers are secretly worried about a scenario in which even a 2 C increase in daily average global temperatures would turn today's agricultural breadbaskets into deserts.

The American midwest, the Mediterranean basin, the north Indian plain, the Australian wheat belt, "those areas will suffer catastrophic losses of rainfall and will see crop yields fall drastically," Dyer said, clad in his trademark worn brown leather jacket.

Funny thing is, the US is having a hell of a time fighting protracted guerrilla wars at a "safe" distance; having one on their borders would be more than they could handle. Of course, I really hope they're not stupid enough to try, because the consequences would be devastating for both countries.

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Not that it's all that surprising:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Those arseholes are really getting desperate, aren't they? When they so openly try to bribe scientists, it's a sign that they figure they have nothing to lose now. Which means they know they're losing the battle for public opinion. And that is a damn good sign.

Via skdadl at pogge.