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Kaitlin Naughten is an ocean-ice modeller at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Nobody Knows What’s Happening

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About a year ago, the Canadian Conservative government announced that it had a plan to cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% from 2006 levels by 2020. The new regulations were scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2010. I was pretty happy – skeptical of Stephen Harper’s ability to carry this out, and wishing it was an even greater reduction – but still happy that progress was being made.

A few months ago, there was one article buried deep in my local newspaper that announced that the Harper government was giving up on this plan. They didn’t want to hurt the economy, or trade with the States, or something like that, so they were going to wait until the Waxman-Markey legislation was fully implemented. That meant they wouldn’t do anything on the issue until 2012, and even then it would take until 2016 for the laws they’d agreed on to come into force. I recall one interviewee in the newspaper saying that it was pretty ridiculous for a prime minister these days to expect to take no action on climate change for his first 6 years in office – and expect to get away with it.

These sort of political decisions usually make their way through the Globe and Mail, CBC, Rick Mercer, and Maclean’s pretty quickly. But this time, I only read the one, half-hidden article, and despite an extensive search, couldn’t find any other mention of it. I was amazed.

As I mention Canada’s (in)action on climate change in a (hopefully soon to come) video I’m working on, I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight. So I went through the Environment Canada website, which, believe me, is not an easy task. Every time I clicked on a link that said “action” or “Canada’s action plan” it lead me to a page that said “Copenhagen is coming!”

Eventually I found the page that described the 20% by 2020 plan – “Turning the Corner”. It hadn’t been updated in over a year – the last announcement was from August 9, 2008. There was no mention if the plan had been abandoned or postponed. And yet it still said,

“Proposed greenhouse gas regulations are expected to be published in the Canada Gazette later this year, and the regulations finalized in 2009 to come into force as planned on January 1, 2010.”

So they hadn’t done anything on this plan for a year, but were still claiming that it would come into force in four months, all the while making no admission of its abandonment and hoping nobody would notice.

I asked a coworker, who had been just as confused as I was. We called the help number at the bottom of  the page, which, unfortunately, was the central information line for all of the Government of Canada. The employee who answered seemed to know even less than we did regarding Canada’s climate change plans.

“I can’t find anything,” he said. “What’s the name of the report?”

“Turning the Corner,” we replied.

“Okay. Just hang on while I type that into Google.”

Eventually we were sent to another federal website (which is so hidden that I can’t even find it again) which apparently dealt with greenhouse gases. It turns out that all they did was measure Canada’s emissions, and require any industrial plants that surpassed a certain amount to report this to the government – but not have to reduce them. Nowhere was there mention of Turning the Corner or any other kinds of regulations.

The environment section of Harper’s website was even worse. Words like “emissions intensity”, “clean air”, “home energy efficiency”, and “environmental leadership” were tossed around, assuming that nobody would read between the lines to discover how little Harper was actually doing about climate change.

The government employee on the line also gave us the number of the Environment Canada deparment. We called them and were given the number of the secretariat for greenhouse gas management. We called that number and got the answering machine. It was 2:00 PM on a Monday. We’ve never heard back.

Does anybody in Canada actually know what’s going on with climate change? Why isn’t anyone demanding answers? Is our country really so apathetic one way or the other?

At least in the States there’s a major opposition to cap-and-trade, so the government can’t pull the wool over your eyes too easily. At least it’s a controversy which is visible to the public

If any Canadian readers actually know what’s happening, or have any more information, please leave comments – this is far too important to ignore.

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A Well-Documented Strategy

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Exhibit A:

“There is no experimental data to support the hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, or chronic bronchitis………any number of things can influence the onset of a disease. The list includes genetics, diet, workplace environment, and stress…….we understand public anxiety about smoking causing disease, but are concerned that many of these much-publicized associations are ill-informed and misleading……….the media continue to uncritically accept and vigorously promote an anti-smoking agenda…….after hundreds of millions of dollars spent on clinical research, and decades of screaming headlines, we have no more certainty today about smoking causing disease than we did decades ago……….if even a small part of the time and money spent trying to link smoking to cancer were spent instead on studying the other causes of cancer, millions of lives could be saved.”

Exhibit B:

“The claim that human activities cause climate change has not been scientifically proven……….it is a reductionist error and not keeping with the current theories of climate science to attempt  to assign each temperature change to an exclusive single cause………..the use of results from flawed computer models to frighten people by attributing catastrophic future change to current human activities may be misleading and is highly regrettable……..that emotionalism can override objective analysis is illustrated by the headlines………..despite millions of dollars spent by the government on climate modeling and research, many questions about the relationship between human activities and global temperature change remain unanswered……….indeed, many scientists are becoming concerned that preoccupation with anthropogenic global warming may be both unfounded and dangerous – unfounded because evidence on many critical points is conflicting, dangerous because it diverts attention from other suspected hazards.”

Now read the originals.

Exhibit A

“There is no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavourable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape…….any number of things can influence earth’s temperature. The list includes volcanic eruptions, variations in the amount of energy received from the sun, El Niños, and La Niñas – all of which are natural………we understand public anxiety about climate change, but are concerned that many of these much publicized predictions are ill-informed and misleading……….the media continue to uncritically accept and vigorously promote shrill global warming alarmism………after hundreds of millions of dollars spent on climate modeling, and decades of screaming headlines, we have no more certainty today about global warming prediction than we did decades ago………..if even a small part of the money spent trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions were spent instead on fighting hunger or disease in Third World countries, millions of lives could be saved.”

-from the various articles on the Heartland Institute’s global warming page

Exhibit B

“The claim that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer has not been scientifically proven………..it is a reductionist error and not keeping with the current theories of cancer causation to attempt to assign each cancer to an exclusive single cause…………the use of results from flawed population studies to frighten people by attributing large numbers of death yearly to smoking may be misleading and is most regrettable……….that emotionalism can override objective analysis is illustrated by the headlines………despite millions of dollars spent by the government on smoking and health-related research, many questions about the relationship between smoking and disease remain unanswered…………indeed, many scientists are becoming concerned that preoccupation with smoking may be both unfounded and dangerous – unfounded because evidence on many critical points is conflicting, dangerous because it diverts attention from other suspected hazards.”

-from Smoking and Health: 1964-1979: The Continuing Controversy, published in 1979 by the Tobacco Institute

If I hadn’t told you which set of quotes was unchanged, and which I had replaced words like “smoking” and “cancer” with “human activities” and “climate change”, or vice versa, would you even have known the difference?

A Fun Quote

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“Although the most extreme environmental zealots may be relatively few in number, they have managed to gain undue influence by exploiting the gullibility of scientifically illiterate people who are only too willing to believe the planet needs saving from man’s excesses. Perhaps this phenomenon is a psychological throwback to earlier civilizations that offered human sacrifices to the gods to assuage their sins and spare them from punishment in the form of drought, flood, famine, or disease. There are certainly many parallels between modern environmentalism and ancient religions.”

–The Heartland Institute

Two Good Books

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The Heat is On by Ross Gelbspan was an enjoyable book. It didn’t take much effort to keep reading, and I whipped through it in a couple of days.

Much of the book was devoted to the politics of climate change, most notably the PR attempts by skeptics to delay action. There were some well-placed but infuriating examples, especially the story of Benjamin Santer, and how he was suddenly charged with fraud in the 1995 IPCC report by the folks from SEPP and the Marshall Institute. This was obviously an underhanded attempt to damage the IPCC’s credibility to the public, and it lives on today. I was trying to find a decent link from a respectable source that explained this story in more detail, but I got tired of sifting through results from Climate Depot and the SEPP website.

The book also explored how climate change will affect businesses and the economy. “The laws of supply and demand,” writes Gelbspan, “do not supersede the laws of nature – and when those two sets collide, the physical planet is the court of highest appeal.” The last chapter was devoted to possible solutions. There was nothing that set this book apart from others of its kind, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

However, I felt that The Heat is On was a little dated, as it was written in 1997 – before the record-breaking years of 1998 and 2005, before Katrina, before Exxon stopped funding the skeptics. I felt this last point is quite important, as the skeptics were constantly referred to as “industry representatives” or “fossil fuel funded” in the book, while today the skeptics are more representatives of the extreme right-wing community, such as the Heartland Institute. The skeptical community seems more and more like a resistance to regulation, rather than a resistance to getting rid of fossil fuels. Naomi Oreskes refers to this phenomenon as “free market fundamentalism” in her excellent lecture (but resist the urge to read the comments – they’ll annoy you to no end).

Bottom line – there was nothing much that was new or spectacular in this book, but I enjoyed it anyway, and would recommend it to all.

I enjoyed Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm even more. It seemed more structured, more comprehensive, and more solution-oriented. The first half of the book was devoted to climate change impacts, especially hurricanes and sea-level rise. It was quite terrifying, even though I read this sort of stuff all the time.

The second half of the book discussed politics and solutions. Skeptics were referred to as “Denyers and Delayers”, a title I found quite fitting. There was a lot of Bush-bashing.

I found the solutions to be very well thought out and organized. Romm explained how we can’t rely on “new technology” to save us – we need to start now with what we have, which will buy us the time to develop this new technology. He told the success story of California’s energy efficiency program, which amazed me, and which I will likely devote a post to in the near future. I know there are a fair few Californians who read this blog – anyone want to leave their opinions, info, links, etc in the comments?

He discussed why peak oil won’t happen soon enough to save us from global warming, and why hydrogen power is not a viable solution unless and until we can find a way to get hydrogen from something other than fossil fuels. He explored the touchy subject of how to share emission reductions between developed countries and developing countries.

Romm also discussed media, one of my favourite facets of climate change to study. He noted that climate change, when it is reported in the popular press, is subject to a great deal of artificial balance, as “the media has the misguided belief that the pursuit of balance is superior to the pursuit of truth – even in science journalism.” He measured up the two sides of the scientific debate and claimed that the skeptics “remain a group small enough to fit into a typical home bathroom.” He quoted an anonymous editor at a major televison network, who replied to the question, “Why don’t you make the link between violent weather and global warming?” with, “We did that. Once. But it triggered a barrage of complaints from the Global Climate Coalition.” He mentioned a 2006 poll in Time magazine which found that 64% of Americans think there is a lot of scientific disagreement about climate change.

It’s like the media chapter was designed especially for me. I love reading about new topics – but I also love learning more about the topics I already know and love.

I think everyone should read Hell and High Water. It’s an up-to-date, far-reaching, well-cited account of global warming in the physical world and society.

As always, if you’ve read these books, you’re welcome to leave your own thoughts about them in the comments.

Temperatures for July 2009

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Much the same story as June. Much of Canada and the US was cooler than normal, but they are clearly the minority:

(from NCDC, which is part of NOAA)

It was the fifth warmest July on record.

The ocean temperatures, quite notably, were the warmest on record.

One month like this doesn’t prove a long-term warming trend. But when it happens month after month, we can be more and more sure that this isn’t just internal variability.

By Your Own Logic

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The typical conservative holds opinions on issues such as health care, government economics, and international relations that I may or may not agree with, but I respect as their own political beliefs.

Except one. Since when did rejecting the science of climate change become a trademark of the typical conservative? Why is science – and not just the implications of the science, the actual analysing of the graphs – such a political subject?

Think about it. Science is designed to remove political biases and follow an approved method so that repeating the same process will produce the same result. If it doesn’t, the hypothesis is proved erroneous or incomplete.

So why should political opinions influence the honest interpretation of a physical event? As Greg Craven says in his video Why There is Still Debate,

Now, you probably don’t find it surprising that more Democrats than Republicans believe in global warming, and ordinarily I wouldn’t either. But I’d been steeping myself in this question of how do you go about deciding what to believe about what’s going on with the physical world, and this split along political party lines about a physical reality just sort of blew me away. Why the heck should political belief influence one’s assessment of what is physical reality? I just got this ridiculous picture in my head of a Democrat and a Republican standing and looking out the same window—the Democrat saying “Gee, it’s pouring rain out there,” and the Republican saying “No, it’s a sunny blue day.”

The truth lies in confirmation bias. As we explain in the post Science, it is scientifically immoral – but very possible, especially with the Internet – to start with a conclusion that seems politically or socially acceptable and then build a scientific argument around it. To eliminate personal bias, scientists always start with evidence, and then choose a conclusion which seems logical.

Liberals tend to be okay with the idea of fighting climate change, because they don’t really mind regulation, and believe that the government should spend money to help as many people as possible. Preventing future natural disasters and food and water shortages seems like a good way to help people.

Conservatives, however, tend to be very opposed to regulation. Climate change is inconvenient for all of us, but especially for those on the right, as fixing the problem seems to require action that sharply contradicts their ideological beliefs.

The solution to this dilemma, of course, seems to be to decide not to believe in the problem so they won’t have to face the solutions.

Many conservatives take this quite lightly, and don’t think about the issue very much. The people whose views they support also claim that humans are not causing climate change. It seems convenient. So they accept it.

But some of the more hardcore skeptics of anthropogenic climate change make quite an amazing effort to create scientific arguments which support the conclusion they like. As Michael Tobis explains on his blog Only in it for the Gold,

The denialists are now trumpeting a very silly argument that El Nino (a quasiperiodic oscillation with energy in the 2-10 year band) is dominating secular trends in global temperature by an argument that I summarized in seven steps recently.

I would like to start the day with a shorter summary:

1) El Nino dominates interannual variability.
2) Frantic armwaving, accompanied by sciencey-looking charts and graphs.
3) Therefore, warming is predominantly due to El Nino.
4) Therefore, very not the IPCC.

Of course conclusion 4 will resonate with the Not the IPCC crowd. It is the conclusion they want, er, I mean, the conclusion that their serious thought has led them to in the past, right?

The trouble is, their argument goes like this

1) The sun is the source of atmospheric energy
2) Frantic armwaving, accompanied by sciencey-looking charts and graphs.
3) Therefore, warming is predominantly due to solar changes.
4) Therefore, very not the IPCC.

As we explained on the post All Over the Map, skeptics can’t seem to agree on a consistent explanation for why humans aren’t causing the Earth to warm. In fact, each of them seems to have a different theory. They all contradict each other, but they all support the same ultimate conclusion (“very not the IPCC”) so they all endorse each other.

Does this not show blatant confirmation bias?

So I’ll make it easy for the conservatives who refuse to accept the problem of climate change because they don’t like the solutions.

Firstly, they seem to oppose action on climate change because they don’t want to be subjected to economic costs and government regulations unless it’s absolutely necessary. They don’t want to take that chance.

(I’m leaving out the part about how action on climate change could actually help the economy and jumpstart some new industries, as well as how, if we had carbon-free energy, regulation wouldn’t be necessary. Let’s not overcomplicate things here.)

However, how would the government act in the times of a crisis, such as a natural disaster or an invasion? Would they be sure to be democratic and preserve everyone’s civil liberties? Or might they compromise these for the sake of natural security? Might they ration food? Impose a curfew? Call in the army to restrain any looters? Make quick decisions without a formal vote?

How did events such as Hurricane Katrina, World War II, or 9-11 affect people’s freedoms? What can we learn from history here? There’s nothing like a disaster to bring out the draconian side of any government.

Also recall how disasters can impact the global economy. For example, Hurricane Katrina affected the transport of oil and caused the first-ever gas prices above $1/L here in Canada. We can be pretty sure that the economy won’t handle disasters well.

Even the most die-hard conservative skeptics have to admit that they might be wrong. There might be a chance, however small it seems to them, that global warming is worth fighting. And this only covers costs for the economy and civil liberties. It doesn’t go into food security, water security, disease, refugees, continuous sea level rise, droughts and floods, or prolonged heat waves.

I would argue that the economic costs and government regulations that would be necessary for even a mid-range climate change scenario would be much worse than those from mitigating the problem and reducing our emissions. This hypothesis has been quantified in the Stern Review, which suggests that action on climate change would cost about 1% of GDP, while the consequences of inaction would cost about 20% of GDP.

And that’s only GDP. Let’s not forget that not everything in our world can be measured in dollar value. What does the life of a person cost? What is the monetary value of the oceans?

So conservatives don’t want to take action on climate change because they don’t want to run the risk of economic harm or a draconian government.

However, if they accept that they might be wrong, a picture appears of much more economic harm and a much more draconian government.

Isn’t it a better bet to take action, and avoid the much greater damage to civil liberties and the economy, rather than clinging to a strategy that will only be beneficial if all the scientific organizations in the world are totally wrong?

Lightbulbs Aren’t Enough

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When you read about climate change in magazines, the articles almost invariably conclude with a list entitled “10 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint”, or something similar.

Instead of driving, ride your bike, walk, or use public transit. When you do drive, avoid idling and make sure your tires are properly inflated. Insulate your home. Use compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Recycle and compost. Buy local food from farmer’s markets. We’ve heard it all before.

These are important actions to take. They can go a long way to improve local air quality and save you some money. Local food is yummy, and composting is fun to watch. But will they really help fight climate change?

Dr James Hansen, a climatology pioneer with an incredible track record, believes that atmospheric CO2 needs to be reduced to “at most 350 ppm” from the current 389 ppm. Kyoto required an average reduction of 5% below 1990 levels. The Waxman-Markey climate change bill that just passed the US Congress is aiming for an 80% cut by 2050.

It’s an incredible feat in today’s fossil-fuel dependent world for a country to even stabilize their emissions, let alone decrease them, let alone decrease them enough so that CO2 concentrations will stabilize, let alone decrease them enough so that CO2 concentrations will also decrease.

Is it enough just for the government to run a series of ads which encourage bike riding? Is it enough for them to give a tax credit on compost bins? Will that alone cut our global CO2 emissions the drastic amount that is needed? And most importantly, will enough people even make an effort?

Personally, I believe that governments need to take two different kinds of action against climate change.

1) Improve and expand on infrastructure to support a sustainable lifestyle. Basically, make it easy for everyone to follow the “10 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint” list. Create a public transit system which is even more convenient than driving – in Ottawa, where I recently traveled, their rapid-transit buses are so efficient that most (or at least a good chunk of) people ride them to and from work each day. Build bike paths so cyclists don’t have to ride in traffic. Provide a curbside composting and recycling system. Make sustainability so easy for citizens that it won’t seem like an inconvenience.

2) Create legislation and financial incentives, including an emissions target, for industries to move away from fossil fuels and start using clean energies. Citizens and industries tend to care about money more than anything else. If cap-and-trade is designed correctly, it will be in a company’s best financial interests to reduce their emissions. CSS plants will be gold mines. If a carbon tax works correctly, clean energies will cost less than carbon-dense fossil fuels, so people will be more willing to choose them. Their demand will increase and they will become more present in the market.

If you make it easy for people to reduce their carbon footprint, and then it make it more expensive for them not to do so, they will change. If you introduce the freedom to pollute as a currency to industries, they will do what industries like to do, which is to make money and save money.

But simple encouragement will only work on the most ethical of people. And even then it doesn’t go far enough. I would live a far greener lifestyle if transit was better and farmer’s markets were easy to get to.

Until then, commercials encouraging bike riding and energy-efficient lightbulbs are nothing but a facade that make the government look like it’s doing something to support sustainability.

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Sinclair vs Watts: An Update

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(Read the original story on this issue if you haven’t already.)

The DeSmogBlog Youtube channel has uploaded the original video. I’m not sure if Peter Sinclair is aware of this, but somehow I think he won’t mind much. Mr Watts, however, will probably throw another fit.

I will consider the issue a true victory for Sinclair when he re-uploads the video on his account. But for now, at least people will be able to watch the video behind all this controversy.

Falling Short

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I recently created a multi-genre document which explores discrepancies in the way the media reports on climate change.

Falling Short

Apologies that the visual quality isn’t too great. I conveniently lost my digital copy of this file and all I had was a hard copy, which I scanned, losing some of the quality in the process.

Enjoy!

Sinclair vs Watts

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Many of you probably are familiar with Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week channel, which dispels popular climate myths.

Many of you are probably also familiar with Anthony Watts and his blog Watt’s Up With That.

Several weeks ago, Sinclair created a video called “What’s Up With Watts?” in which he debunked the idea that the urban heat island effect is skewing the temperature records – the very premise of Watt’s Surface Stations project. He discussed how the temperature readings in urban centers are calibrated with nearby rural stations so that any heat bias is removed. Most impressive was a graph of the temperature readings from stations Watts deemed satisfactory; they showed the same upward trend as all of the stations together. NASA’s obviously doing a pretty good job of correcting that GISS data.

However, just a few days ago, Watts complained to YouTube and got the video removed on basis of a “copyright claim”. It is my knowledge (although I might be wrong) that YouTube will remove any video as soon as anyone complains about copyright.

The  only mention on Watt’s blog of the incident was a comment from a reader:

“Sorry to post off topic (although the comments are all backslapping anyway) but is there a reason you (Anthony) filed a DMCA complaint against Greenman3610’s youtube video “Watts up with Watts”?

From Youtube:
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Anthony Watts Surfacestations.org”

Surely his video falls under fair use. Relying on the nanny state to attack critics or am I missing something?

REPLY: I don’t care to discuss my reasons here as they are private and unrelated to this discussion. Google agreed that complaint was valid and removed the video. – Anthony”

But as Kevin Grandia from DeSmogBlog writes,

“Quite frankly I don’t know what part of the video Watts would have a problem with. There’s nothing I saw in the video that appears to break any copyright as it relates to Watts.

Now maybe he took issue with the short (credited) clip at the beginning from Will Ferrell’s Anchorman movie…. but I think this is more about a video that thoroughly shreds Watts and his argument that the world is wrong about climate change and he is right.”

If the copyright claim was indeed about the Anchorman clip (most likely to conceal other motives, however – you could spend your whole life filing complaints about YouTube videos that had clips from movies) it will be all too easy for Sinclair to edit that out of the video and repost it.

Otherwise, Watts hasn’t got a leg to stand on. It really exposes a person’s motives when they don’t even write a logical rebuttal when they take issue to their arguments being challenged – they simply censor those challenges instead.