Oxymoronic 'Ethical Oil' Meets Irony

I hate promoting the severely flawed concept of 'ethical oil', so much so that I don't even like using the phrase as it spreads the meme. Still, with the Keystone XL pipeline in the news these days, here's a fact worth punting your way.


The toxic, corrosive Tar Sands crude to be transported by that pipeline will be processed by two refineries.


One of those refineries is half-owned by Aramco, the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia.


Given that the 'ethical oil' propagandists are pushing the false fact that more tar sands oil will mean less oil sold by human-rights-abusing, terrorist-funding Saudi Arabia, this is quite an inconvenient truth. After all, the point of oil is profit, and Saudi Arabia will profit directly from this so-called 'ethical oil' pipeline where it would have made nothing before.



Of course, there's nothing ethical about oil production and consumption.

It drives untenable infrastructure.

It causes, and will continue to cause, armed conflicts, which we will still be involved in because the Tar Sands actually can't produce enough for all of our needs. Heck, looks like it's just going to be refined and largely exported. Meanwhile, Eastern Canada will continue to import oil from abroad.


Oil production and consumption pollutes.

It produces greenhouse gases. The production of crude from the Tar Sands is the most greenhouse-gas intensive way of making crude. It leaves a highly toxic goop behind that we store in huge lagoons. We have no idea what to do with the goop, but we gleefully make it anyway.

It severely disrupts the ecosystem when they extract it (remediation efforts to date are very modest).

And, no matter how much we make, Saudi Arabia will have no problem selling all the oil it wants to somebody. Like the emerging economies of China and India.



The only true point to the 'ethical oil' frame is to shut down debate with a false argument propagandists hope will be of appeal to the masses.


Remember, guns are legal too.

Is a gun made ethically any less deadly?

Planning for one metre sea rise not enough?

BC Premier Gordon Campbell is seeking a consultant to determine a "sea level rise and extreme water level sensitivity index" for the province based upon an estimated sea level rise of one metre by 2100. (See Public Eye and The Hook).

More recent studies, detailed at Climate Progress, are suggesting that planning for a two metre rise by 2100 may be wiser:

• Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100
• High Water: Greenland ice sheet melting faster than expected and could raise East Coast sea levels an extra 20 inches by 2100 — to more than 6 feet.
• West Antarctic ice sheet collapse even more catastrophic for U.S. coasts
• Nature sea level rise shocker: Coral fossils suggest “catastrophic increase of more than 5 centimetres per year over a 50-year stretch is possible.” Lead author warns, “This could happen again.”

That Climate Progress article contains many more current references indicating that the 2007 IPCC predictions may have been conservative.

Richard Alley – The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History

Want to know the history of CO2 and climate? Here's a very recent, popular presentation made by Richard Alley at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual conference.

His audience is filled with scientists, so it may be hard to follow as he's made certain obvious assumptions about the audience's knowledge level.

I managed, so maybe you can too.

If you want to view this larger, go to http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.swf

Otherwise...

We have met the enemy...

“Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Forward!”

—Walt Kelly, June 1953

From Wikipedia.

This hit me earlier while reading over some global warming denialist over-heated mash, and Dawg's blog post regarding SDA Kate. Had to publish it.

As seen from space: Winter is here!

Check out this beautiful NASA composite image of the Earth, showing our Northern Hemisphere winter.

From NASA:

NASA flies three large, multi-sensor satellites that monitor Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans and energy balance. Because the instruments on each satellite take measurements at the same time from the same vantage point, scientists are able to compare observations and tease out connections between different parts of the Earth system. The first of the three satellites, Terra, launched ten years ago on Dec. 18, 1999. In the decade since Terra launched, scientists have gained insight into the intricate connections that shape our planet's climate. The relationship between snow, clouds, and sunlight is a good example. In November, the chill and snow of a Northern Hemisphere winter is on the horizon. Snow covers the far north and high elevations, as shown in the map of percent snow cover in November 2009. White areas show where snow covers the ground completely, while blue points to areas with partial snow cover. At the peak of the northern winter, more than 40 percent of the Earth’s land will be covered in snow. In addition to being an important, life-sustaining source of water, the snow also reflects sunlight, limiting the amount of heat the Earth absorbs from the sun. Image Credit: NASA

"Energy Balance" -- that's all about global warming, folks. Notice too, the implied implication of less snowfall over a smaller area? Less snow, less reflected light back into space, and more warming.

Hard to envision global warming today. The wind chill in Toronto was not kind. LOL.

Past decade is the world's warmest on record

The denialist claim we're cooling. Some have even said we're back towhere we were 30 years ago.

Well, if you're going to lie, lie big.

Fact is, this has been the warmest decade on record -- I'm calling it. And we're at a solar minimum, which is when the sun is not very active. Actually, it's likely the deepest solar minimum in a century. When the sun comes out of its funk, we may be in for some hot times.


Some news reports:

CBC: 2000s warmest decade on record: UN

'Likely' the warmest is the quote. From what I've seen of the data, it will be. The US and Canada have been cooler than average the past year. I know not to gleam much from my Toronto weather, but I'm not surprised.

BBC: This decade 'warmest on record'

The first decade of this century is "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began, say the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Organization. Their analyses also show that 2009 will almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record. Burgeoning El Nino conditions, adding to man-made greenhouse warming, have pushed 2009 into the "top 10" years.

Global Warming theory doesn't mean that each year must be hotter than the last, just that the overall trend is hotter. hot years get hotter, cold years less cold.

2000–2009, THE WARMEST DECADE (World Meteorological Association)

We are up almost one-half a degree C over the 1961-1990 average.

Met Office to release records that show global temperature rise:

This deals mostly with the SwiftHack affair, noting that the CRU will release it's initial data to the public shortly, with the rest to follow once permission is acquired to do so. The CRU is expected to proclaim the outgoing decade to be the hottest yet.

And the mother of all charts: From Climate Progress (<-- read that link for all the news in detail), all three independent surface temperature series, with some lines from me added.

The orange horizontal line and purple vertical line I added. The orange line is the coolest year on this past decade. The purple line is 1980, which is when global warming becomes quite clear. Notice how even the coldest year of the past decade surmounts most of the temperatures of the last 160 years?

The denialists say we're cooling. Right. Of course, they know they can't keep that lie up, so now they're just claiming it's all made up. One big conspiracy. *sigh*

Conservatives consider reducing oil sector's GHG reduction goals

So reports CBC from a leaked Cabinet proposal:

It says that Canada, when setting targets, must take into account that its oil and gas sector will show greater growth than the U.S, in part because of the oilsands.

The draft proposal suggests Canada should set new targets that would be lower than what was originally proposed by the Conservatives.

For example, the proposal suggests that the oil and gas industry would have to cut 15 megatonnes of emissions, rather than 48 megatonnes under its Turning the Corner plan.

The government draft documents make the argument that the U.S. bill gives smaller targets to trade-sensitive sectors such as manufacturing. It suggests the Canadian oil and gas sector, including the oilsands, deserves the same treatment.

This is about transferring wealth from Ontario and Quebec to Alberta. No thanks. How's that? Well, well have to cut more and pay more so they can get away with polluting more. This is perverse.

How very Conservative. They get the bucks, we pay part of their overhead.

I'm sick of subsidizing the oil and gas sector.

SwiftHack / ClimateGate: I'm calling BS on 'expert' McIntyre

I'm calling 'BS' on Steve McIntyre's and the resulting Daily Mail claim that the IPCC is both 'hiding the decline' and hiding the fact that this was done.

For the background science on this issue, see what I wrote yesterday: A ShiftHack Topic: Tree Rings and Climatology

The 'hide the decline' false controversy is nothing more than a widely identifed issue in scientific literature (and elsewhere -- that's for another day) where historicial temperature data derived for analyzing tree rings ceases to be accurate after 1960 in trees looked at in northern areas. We know it's wrong because more accurate instrumental data from things called 'thermometers' say so. So, that data is ignored. Data prior to 1961 widely agrees with instrumental data.

The whole 'hide the decline' issues is officially known as the divergence issue.

The IPCC report clearly discusses the divergence issue on pages 472-473, and explicitly explains that some data is excluded:

...In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifi cally excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’
was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a).

This is an ongoing matter and is still undergoing research. This is widely admitted. Thus, it is not some conspiracy. It is explicitly brought up in the IPCC report, and in the papers it cites.

I can perhaps -- barely -- excuse the Daily Mail for messing this up (that article is replete with errors and falsehoods), but not McIntrye. He's supposed to know better. Indeed, all of these papers are relevant to the Mann 'hockey stick' he keeps assailing. Has he not read them?

McIntrye has been on the divergence issue sicne 2005, yet, having survyed his blog posts, he never seems to read the relavant papers, or undertand what they are saying or explain the widely known divergence issue. Or something.

I don't have time to elaborate further today. I will be back.

It is worth mentioning that this is why the CRU scientists dont; want to cooperate with peopel like McIntrye. They aren't so much involved in science as they are misreperesentation and defamation, coupledwith obvious incompetence.

====
Update:

The IPCC Third Assessemnt Report (TAR) also mentions the divergence (2.3.2.1 Palaeoclimate proxy indicators), though does not elaborate much:

There is evidence, for example, that high latitude tree-ring density variations have changed in their response to temperature in recent decades, associated with possible non-climatic factors (Briffa et al., 1998a). By contrast, Vaganov et al. (1999) have presented evidence that such changes may actually be climatic and result from the effects of increasing winter precipitation on the starting date of the growing season (see Section 2.7.2.2). Carbon dioxide fertilization may also have an influence, particularly on high-elevation drought-sensitive tree species, although attempts have been made to correct for this effect where appropriate (Mann et al., 1999). Thus climate reconstructions based entirely on tree-ring data are susceptible to several sources of contamination or non-stationarity of response. For these reasons, investigators have increasingly found tree-ring data most useful when supplemented by other types of proxy information in "multi-proxy" estimates of past temperature change (Overpeck et al., 1997; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998; 1999; 2000a; 2000b; Crowley and Lowery, 2000).

It does not directly say to truncate the tree ring data as seen on the Hockey Stick, but if you are looking for a reason why the data truncates at 1960, the above is an obvious place to look.

Once I have my hands on all the relevant papers, I will.

A SwiftHack Topic: Tree Rings and Climatology

As I am about to launch into a series of posts dealing with Shifthack, aka 'ClimateGate', I first want to cover some scientific issues central to that smear campaign which are not widely understood. Whenever I write about tree rings, this is the post I will link back to, just to bring people up to speed.

Yes, tree rings. I am writing a post about tree rings, and this is important if you want to understand certain key things about Swifthack, so wake up class, and pay attention.


One of the many lines of research in Global Warming theory is that of paleoclimatology. This is the reconstruction of historical climate change over the entire history of the Earth. There are various techniques used, and for them all, please visit this overview Wikiedia article. I'm sticking to some modest discussion of Dendroclimatology, the retrieval of climate information from tree rings. From the dendrocimatology Wikipedia article:

Dendroclimatology is the science of determining past climates from trees (primarily properties of the annual tree rings). Tree rings are wider when conditions favor growth, narrower when times are difficult. Other properties of the annual rings, such as maximum latewood density (MXD) have been shown to be better proxies than simple ring width. Using tree rings, scientists have estimated many local climates for hundreds to thousands of years previous. By combining multiple tree-ring studies (sometimes with other climate proxy records), scientists have estimated past regional and global climates (see Temperature record of the past 1000 years).

One of the things you can determine from tree rings in an approximation of temperature. Scientists bore into living trees, and also take cross sections from dead undecayed trees (pre-fossil). From research they know that trees growing on the upper elevation tree line have growth lines strongly influenced by temperature, and can thus determine a yearly temperature average by analyzing each tree ring found. This is known as getting temperature by proxy, thus you will see the phrase 'tree ring proxies' and 'tree ring temperature proxies' literred throughout certain discussions concerning Global Warming and temperature.

Another, more confusing phrase and related acronym floating around is maximum latewood density (MXD). This refers to a close look at the level of thickening of the cells walls towards to end of the growing season, and is understood to add more certainty to the temperature proxy.

This does not, of course, give you day-to-day temperature. It only gives a reasonable approximation of each year's average temperature.

This is not a substitute for a thermometer. When confronted with tree ring data and thermometer data, the thermometer will always be more accurate.

Feeling adventurous? Try reading this for more information (warning: pdf).

Tree ring temperature proxies are known to be reasonably reliable because temperature data derived from tree rings have been compared to known temperatures taken by thermometer. So what is learned by that comparison can be applied backwards in time to determined average yearly temperatures for ages which we lack temperature records from.

The famous and much-overhyped* 'Mann Hockey Stick' was formed in part using temperature data derived from tree rings proxies.

The Divergence Issue

This is a known issue, reported over 14 years ago (pdf to the paper), in which the temperature determined from the tree rings ceases to substantially agree for the years 1961+ with the more reliable temperature data taken from instruments. Why this is so is still not fully understood, but common practice is to ignore the data after that year -- 'hide the decline' if you will.

This applies to trees in northern areas, not southern areas.

Skeptical Science explains this issue well, in context of the SwitftHack / 'ClimateGate' emails.

You can read more about the divergence issue in these papers, if you are brave...

Briffa, K., Schweingruber, F., Jones, P., Osborn, T., 1998a. Reduced sensitivity of recent tree growth to temperature at high northern latitudes. Nature 391, 678–682. (Abstract)

Briffa, K., Schweingruber, F., Jones, P., Osborn, T., Harris, I., Shiyatov, S., Vaganov, A., Grudd, H., 1998b. Trees tell of past climates: but are they speaking less clearly today? Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B 353, 65–73. (pdf)

* And I mean overhyped by the denialists. For years they have pushed the false narrative that defeating Mann's Hockey Stick would sink all of Global Warming theory. The theory stands independent of the work of Mann et al.

====
Update December 16, 2009:

The Christian Science Monitor  did a full piece on this issue at http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1215/Climategate-global-warming-and-the-tree-rings-divergence-problem

Factcheck article on "Climategate" finds wild denialist claims "unfounded"

From http://factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/:

In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:

• The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
• Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
• E-mails being cited as "smoking guns" have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to "hiding the decline" isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The "decline" actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.

Go on and read the whole thing.

My research continues. I have much more to add at a later date.

"Let's all thank China for emitting more beneficial CO2. It benefits agriculture"

LOL. That's Fred Singer, Global Warming denialist supreme. Before he was a paid propagandist by oil companies and conservative philanthropists, Singer was in the pocket of big tobacco.

Desmogblog, among other resources (like Newsweek), has a write up on him.

Singer is a favourite at denialist conferences. The Guardian has some entertaining coverage of a small denialist conference.

Worth a read!

Go play in Dawg's Blawg Climate Prediction Contest

Feeling smart? Go play Dawg's Blawg Climate Prediction Contest.

I hear there's a fabulous prize!

Fudging data

It's late, and I'm running tests on code for a client.

The code's been driving me crazy.

Instead of searching and shaping existing data to test my algorithms, I'm adding some code simulating data -- fudge. As I control the data, I can look for a clear, pre-determined outcome. If I keep getting what I expect, then I know the algorithms work. Then, I'll comment out the code, and will let the real data go through the algorithms.

Of course, if I was a climate scientist, this would be all evidence of improper tampering of results.

See Tim Lambert over at Deltoid for more.

In the WTF category: Polar bear cannibalism due to melting Arctic?

You know, there's only one of 19 polar bear populations verified to be climbing, most of the rest stable or declining.

A quick primer on polar bear ecology: It's backwards from you'd expect. They gain weight in winter, lose weight in summer. Why? Because their main diet is seal. They hunt them on the ice during the winter. Less ice, less opportunity to hunt.More global warming = less ice = less polar bears.

Now, it seems that desperate polar bears are eating their young around Hudson's Bay.

Nothing to see here folks...

Harper's Global Warming poison pill

Stephen Harper says he won't reduce our emissions unless China and India agree to do far more. Well it is true that China and India are turning into massive emitters of greenhouse gases, the so-called 'First-World' is the primary cause of global warming to date, and if we aren't doing enough to stop it, why should they? This is the disingenuous position Harper takes: We didn't do anything to solve the problem we caused, now we won't do anything unless you agree to solve our problem.

Of course, the response is predictable, expected and wanted by Harper: they are balking.

The elite Harper works for will be untouched by global warming's worst, having the money and influence to pick and chose where it is best to live and work.

Harper is playing chicken with our children's future, but he's likely to be dead before the worst hits.

Please fire Margaret Wente

I suppose autumn is the season for straw men. The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente certainly provides enough of them.

Not making progress on the global warming policy front? Well, says Wente, it's the fault of unnamed 'apocalyptic scientists' driving the public away. And global warming isn't happening anymore, anyway, apparently.

Apparently, it's not the fault of the lack of political leadership in Canada.

It's not the fault of astroturf organizations pumping out 'experts' and false analysis to discredit the fine and ongoing global warming research.

Apparently, it's not the fault of misleading newspaper columnists.

False information like the "global temperatures are falling since 1998" skeptic BS or Wente's mathematically-impaired variant "...average global temperatures plateaued in 1998, and haven't gone up since" haven't helped.

Are global temperatures supposed to go up more every year? Nope. Straw man. 1998 was a very hot year, maybe not quite yet repeated. But, NASA says that 2005 was slightly hotter than 1998. Not all agree it was -- which is fine. Actually, the five hottest days on record since 1890 have all been in the past 11 years. Regardless, Global warming causing climate change is about change over decades, not a few years.

So, late as I almost am, for Blog Action Day for Climate Change I suggest the following: Fire Margaret Wente.

And, read this: Ice cores show CO2 is by far at the highest concentration in our atmosphere over the past 400,000 years. And climbing.

And, Margaret, it is scary to see. How can it not be when so much is at stake?

Harper chooses donuts over the planet

Harper is AWOL from the huge UN climate change gathering, featuring world leaders calling for renewed effort to deal with global warming.

As the video shows, Harper was instead meeting the mayor of New York and then talking up donuts back on home turf.



Harper will always these days favour sending a message that he is a ‘great economic manager’ (actually,  much stimulus cash is left unspent and disproportionately distributed to Conservative ridings) over sending a positive message over some issue like climate change, which is sadly still a latent issue in many people’s minds.

Conservative spinners know that talking tough on the economy will get them more votes than talking tough on climate change. Face it, even if he did attend, progressives still wouldn’t vote for the dirty oil patch’s favourite man.

Yes, Harper will attend minor functions there. But he clearly is avoiding the climate change issue because he is so weak on it.

Become a fan on Facebook of Harper chooses donuts over planet and get the word out!

This is further to my post from last night. Visit it to find links to the sad trail of news which has led us to this.

h/t today to Scott Tribe for the video.

Harper chooses donuts over climate change

I won't go on at length. Today is the day Stephen Harper avoided an important UN world conference on, among other things, climate change to attend a Tim Hortons PR event.

Impolitical has the coverage.

Harper believes that global warming is a latent issue with voters, and not a active issue like the economy, so this is why he made this potentially vote-getting choice. I hope we can make him wear it.

I simply can't deal with this tonight.


P.S.: By relocating from the US to Canada, I wonder how much money the Tim Hortons head office figured it would save on not having to pay for escalating health care costs?