Sadly, we're doing no better in Canada, though our government has its
doublespeak talking points well in order.
CBC news story
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-failing-to-meet-2020-emissions-targets-1.2223930
Canada failing to meet 2020 emissions targets
Environment Canada says there's been 'significant progress' on
Copenhagen Accord targets
By Kathleen Harris, CBC News Posted: Oct 24, 2013 1:57 PM ET Last
Updated: Oct 24, 2013 8:01 PM ET
Canada will fail to meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reductions targets
under the Copenhagen Accord even with more regulation of the oil and gas
sector, according to a new report and internal government analysis
obtained by CBC News.
A report released today titled Canada’s Emissions Trends shows
projections to 2020 with a significant and growing gap for targets even
under variable economic growth and energy resource development scenarios.
With current measures in place, emissions are now projected to be 734
megatonnes – 122 megatonnes higher than Canada’s target of 612
megatonnes under the international treaty signed in 2009, according to
the Environment Canada report.
But, the report notes “significant progress” and says emissions would
have risen to 862 megatonnes if no action had been taken by consumers,
businesses and governments since 2005.
Environment Minister Leona Agglukaq, during question period on Thursday,
said the Conservatives – unlike the Liberal government before them –
"have reduced emissions."
Agglukaq also noted the Harper government has introduced coal power
regulations and harmonized vehicle emissions regulations with the U.S.
We're getting results," Agglukaq said.
Canada’s commitment under the Copenhagen Accord is to cut emissions 17
per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, which is aligned with the U.S.
An internal government analysis shows that while emissions intensity
continues to decline and Canada is making progress, there will still be
a substantial gap in meeting the target.
NDP MP Linda Duncan, speaking on CBC News Network's Power & Politics on
Thursday, criticized the federal government for its lack of action.
"Environment Canada has been issuing the same report for quite some time
… They are simply saying the same thing again but the government isn't
listening," Duncan said.
An environmental advocacy group decried the report on Thursday saying
the Canadian government is dragging its feet when it comes to protecting
the environment.
"The alarming numbers in today’s report demonstrate a failure to be on
track to meet our climate goals," said Hannah McKinnon, the national
program manager at Environmental Defence Canada.
McKinnon said the federal government could take action by introducing
federal regulation for the oil and gas sectors to see emissions go down.
While more federal regulation to oil and gas and emissions intensive and
trade-exposed industries would lead to greater reductions, the report
concedes this will not be enough for Canada to achieve its target.
'Significant uncertainty'
Last year’s report also projected a sizable shortfall by 2020, but said
upcoming federal policies, in particular oil and gas regulations, along
with other provincial measures, would push Canada to meeting its
Copenhagen commitments.
This year’s report notes that emissions projections depend on evolving
economic and energy variables and are subject to “significant uncertainty.”
"In addition, future developments in technologies, demographics and
resource-extraction will alter the future emissions pathway,” it reads.
The federal government has adopted what it calls a “sector-by-sector”
approach, and has imposed regulations for transportation and
electricity, two of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Plans to further reduce emissions include regulation for the oil and gas
sector; natural gas electricity generation and “emissions intensive
trade exposed industries” including chemicals, fertilizers, aluminum,
iron and steel, cement, and pulp and paper.
The report also predicts that if trend lines continue in all the
sectors, Canada will only cut a total of three megatonnes of greenhouse
gas emissions by 2020.
[Where 'progress' is measured against how badly we could have possibly
done rather than against where we actually were. Of course, we could
meet our target if we simply reduced the size of the tar sands operations.]
For more Canadian government spin, see the Environment Canada piece at:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=en&n=CCED3397-1
[sorry, can't bring myself to even copy and paste this blather]
For a more rational and grounded take on the impacts of the tar sands
from a different perspective, consider this Paul Beckwith piece. I have
heard Beckwith speak once, and read some of his stuff on abrupt climate
change, and I think it is worth following.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/are-albertas-tar-sands-prepared-for-a-torrential-rain-event.html
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Are Alberta’s Tar Sands prepared for a torrential rain event?
by Paul Beckwith
In recent months we have endured incredible tropical-equatorial-like
torrential rain events occurring at mid-latitudes across the planet. For
example, in North America we experienced intense rainfall in the Banff
region of the Rockies from June 19th to 24th and the enormous volume of
water moved downhill through the river systems taking out small towns
and running into the heart of Calgary where it caused $5.3 billion
dollars of infrastructure damage; the largest in Canadian history.
Next, it was Toronto’s turn, with 75 mm of rain falling from 5 to 6pm on
July 8 (with up to 150 mm overall in some regions) leading to widespread
flooding and $1.45 billion dollars in damages. As bad as these events
were, they were dwarfed by the intense rainfalls hitting the state of
Colorado from Sept 9th to 15th.
Rainfall amounts that would normally fall over 6 months to a year were
experienced in less than a week. Widespread flash floods, landslides,
and torrents of water ripped apart roads, fracking equipment and
pipelines on (at least) hundreds of fossil fuel sites (mostly ignored by
mainstream media)
(http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/19/media-ignores-damaged-oil-and-gas-tanks-colorado-floods).
The level of destruction was simply horrifying, as captured by a man
with a plane and a camera. But we have no grounds for complaint, since
the widespread flooding in central Europe from May 30th to June 6th
caused a much larger $22 billion in damages.
So what is happening? Why are we experiencing so many of these severe
weather flooding events that are supposed to only occur every 1000 years
or so? Will they keep occurring? What city will be hit next? Can the
Alberta tar sands be hit by such an event? What would be the implications?
Abrupt Climate Change In Real-Time
Humans have benefited greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000
years - roughly 400 generations. Not anymore. We now face an angry
climate. One that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick
and awakened. Now we must deal with the consequences. We must set aside
our differences and prepare for what we can no longer avoid. And that is
massive disruption to our civilizations.
In a nutshell, the logical chain of events occurring is as follows:
Greenhouse gases that humans are putting into the atmosphere from
burning fossil fuels are trapping extra heat in the earth system
(distributed between the oceans (93%), the cryosphere (glaciers, ice
sheets, sea ice for 3%), the earth surface (rocks, vegetation, etc. for
3%) and the atmosphere (only an amazingly low 1%). The oceans clearly
get the lions share of the energy, and if that 1% heating the atmosphere
varies there can be decades of higher or lower warming, as we have seen
recently. This water vapor rises and cools condensing into clouds and
releasing its stored latent heat which is increasing storm intensity.
(i)Rapidly declining Arctic sea ice (losing about 12% of volume per
decade) and (ii)snow cover (losing about 22% of coverage in June per
decade) and (iii)darkening of Greenland all cause more solar absorption
on the surface and thus amplified Arctic warming (global temperatures
have increased (on average) about 0.17oC per decade, the Arctic has
increased > 1oC per decade, or about 6x faster)
Equator-to-Arctic temperature difference is thus decreasing rapidly
Less heat transfer occurs from equator to pole (via atmosphere, and
thus jet streams become streakier and wavier and slower in west-to-east
direction, and via ocean currents (like Gulf Stream, which slows and
overruns continental shelf on Eastern seaboard of U.S.)
Storms (guided by jet streams) are slower and sticking and with
more water content are dumping huge torrential rain quantities on cities
and widespread regions at higher latitudes than is “normal”.
A relatively rare meteorological event called an “atmospheric
river” is now much more common, and injects huge quantities of water
over several days to specific regions, such as Banff (with water running
downhill to Calgary) and Toronto and Colorado events.
It is well past the time that politicians and governments need to act to
address these issues. This breakdown of the global atmospheric
circulation pattern is well underway now, with a global average
temperature only 0.8oC above the pre-industrial revolution levels. With
extreme weather events this terrible now, it is highly irrational, in
fact reckless, to continue to have global meetings and discussions about
whether or not 2oC is safe. Only 0.8oC is wreaking havoc on global
infrastructure today. As climate change proceeds and accelerates and we
move further from the stable state that we are familiar with (“old
climate”) to a much warmer world (“new climate”) we will experience
worsening weather extremes and a huge “whiplashing” of events
(throughout our present “transition period”).
For a notion of whiplashing, consider the Mississippi River. There were
record river flow rates from high river basin rainfall in 2011, followed
by record drought and record low river water levels in December, 2012
making it necessary for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to hydraulically
break apart rock on the riverbed to keep the countries vital economic
transportation link open to barge traffic. Then, 6 months later, the
river was back up to record levels. Incredible swings of fortune.
Mitigation at a global level is dysfunctional and inadequate
Adaption has not worked out too well for Calgary, or Toronto, or
Colorado, or numerous other places. Let us not be surprised when a
similar torrential rain event hits Ottawa, or Vancouver, or even the
Alberta tar sand tailing ponds. In Alberta, tailings ponds would be
breached and the toxic waters would overflow the Athabasca River and
carry the pollutants up into the north to exit into the Arctic Ocean.
Such an event would be catastrophic to the environment and economy of
Canada.
How can this risk be ignored? Will the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) report AR5 released on September 27th once
again be ignored by society?
[If you haven't researched the Alberta tar sands yet, you could spend a
few minutes here: http://oilsandsrealitycheck.org/]
As I have been known to say, "It's your planet. If you won't look after
it, who will?"
Darryl
On 03/11/2013 7:44 PM, Steve Racz wrote:
NZ on track to miss targets by huge margin, 28 Oct, 2013
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/10/28/policy-politics/nz-track-miss-targets-huge-margin
Climate
Policy & Politics
Reuters Point Carbon
New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise nearly 50 per cent
by 2040, according to new government modelling, taking the country well off
course to meet its commitment to cut emissions in half by mid-century.*
A report from the ministry of environment showed the country’s net
emissions are expected to grow to nearly 90 million tonnes of CO2
equivalent in 2040 from current levels of around 60 million, while the
government target is to bring emissions down to 30 million tonnes by 2050.
“The trend in net emissions is dominated by our projections of emissions
and removals from forestry,” the report said.
A large number of CO2-absorbing trees planted in the country in the 1990s
are set to be harvested at the end of this decade, meaning overall
emissions are likely to rise throughout the 2020s, it added.
Asked by the Green Party in parliament about the projections on Wednesday,
Simon Bridges, associate minister for climate change, said emissions were
projected to rise because of current low carbon prices in the country’s
Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
Critics have said New Zealand’s carbon market is too weak to incentivise
forest-planting, with carbon prices so low that foresters make more profit
chopping down trees to sell the timber.
“We know that as we make progress in international (climate change)
negotiations, that carbon price will surely rise,” Bridges said.
“The emissions trading scheme is a long-term tool, and it is not hard to
imagine that with a good outcome on a new global agreement and leadership
from the major economies, we will need to adjust our own domestic policy
response, as well.”
Domestic emissions permits in the New Zealand ETS currently trade at
NZ$3.75 ($3.15), but companies are also allowed to comply by buying
U.N.-backed carbon credits, which are available for only 30 cents each.
The New Zealand government last year removed legislation that would have
forced big companies to pay for a bigger share of their emissions and
restrict access to international credits - both moves that would have
driven up carbon prices.
It also put on hold indefinitely including in the scheme emissions from
agriculture, which accounts for nearly 50 per cent of New Zealand’s
emissions.
“It is policy incoherence of this breath-taking dimension that wins us
fossil awards at the U.N. conferences – with Warsaw beckoning next month,”
said Greens MP Kennedy Graham on his blog on Wednesday.
He was referring to the infamous prizes awarded by green groups at U.N.
climate negotiations to the countries they deem to be failing to act to
tackle climate change.
The main annual meeting takes place next month in Poland, where countries
will be tasked with making progress towards a 2015 global pact to bind all
nations into curbing emissions from 2020.
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Tim Groser told Reuters on Thursday
that the government had no plans to reform the nation’s carbon market.
He said government will continue to fund research on greenhouse gases from
food production.
“The Government is investing $45 million into the Global Research Alliance
on Greenhouse Gases, bringing together 40 countries to find ways to grow
more food without growing greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.
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