Carbon capture and storage of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions is still 12 to 20 years from being commercialized, but it’s being oversold as a panacea and a silver bullet, however, it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money, there are geological risks to storing carbon dioxide underground and the economics “are deadly,” say experts and critics who believe the federal government should be investing in other environmental solutions such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Jack Century, a Calgary-based retired petroleum, minerals and environmental geologist with more than 50 years of experience in the industry, told The Hill Times last week that carbon capture and storage (CCS) procedures—burying greenhouse gas emissions—could cause induced earthquakes or “micro seismicity” which risk CO2 leakage. He said injecting any gas or liquid into the ground without very carefully studying the geology could become a hazard.

“If you’re not careful, you can inject it higher than the natural pressures in the reservoir you’re injecting into,” he said, noting that if the reservoir is over a fault line or very close to one, it could cause an earthquake. “It isn’t just earthquakes that are a problem, but it’s when you start injecting fluids into the earth and you don’t know what you’re doing, you can start small seismic events, we call them micro seismicity and they can cause fractures, and the fractures themselves can interfere with the reservoir and violate the integrity of the reservoir and cause leakage. It doesn’t become a hazard in terms of earthquakes but it becomes a hazard in terms of escaping liquids and you don’t know where they’re going to go.”

In his book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, author Andrew Nikiforuk says safety issues surrounding CCS has not fully been examined. “Lofty plans to bury 50 per cent of Canada’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is a pipe dream,” Mr. Nikiforuk said. “The Canadian government wants to hide tar sands pollution deep under the Prairies, in salty aquifers near cities such as Regina and Edmonton. But the drilling of 350,000 oil and gas well sites has made Western Canada one of the most perforated landscapes on Earth. ... Even CCS proponents admit that carbon dioxide injected deep underground could find its way back to the surface after an earthquake or via groundwater channels.”

Mr. Nikiforuk is a fierce critic of CCS, saying, “Creating an energy intensive burial system to hide a problem that could be solved by conserving fossil fuels is morally bankrupt. CCS is a last-ditch survival effort that defies economics and shirks logic.”

The International Panel on Climate Change estimates that storing one tonne of carbon ranges from U.S.$25 to $115 and the Canadian Library of Parliament estimated in 2006 that it would take 30 per cent more energy produced at coal-fired power plants or oil sands project to capture storage. In addition, Mr. Nikiforuk said in his book that it would cost $10- to $16-billion to inject 20 megatons of carbon into the ground, which is equivalent to the annual tailpipe exhaust of four million vehicles. “The economics of CCS are deadly,” he said.

NDP MP Linda Duncan (Edmonton Strathcona, Alta.) said “it’s a waste of taxpayer money” to invest in CCS. “If it’s not a proven technology to safe-keep it, then the public should not be bearing the liability,” she said last week. Read more here.

The Obama Administration has painted itself into a corner on climate policy, with no really good options for moving forward. The New York Times characterizes the Administration’s recent actions on climate policy here as follows:

“Has the administration scaled back its global-warming goals, at least for this year, or is it engaged in sophisticated misdirection? Maybe some of both. While addressing climate change appears to be slipping down the president’s list of priorities for the year, he is holding in reserve a powerful club to regulate carbon dioxide emissions through executive authority.

That club takes the form of Environmental Protection Agency regulation of the gases blamed for the warming of the planet, an authority granted the agency by the Supreme Court’s reading of the Clean Air Act. Administration officials consistently say they would much prefer that Congress write new legislation to pre-empt the E.P.A. regulatory power, but they are clearly holding it in reserve as a prod to reluctant lawmakers and recalcitrant industries and as evidence of good faith to other nations.

Industry lobbyists and members of Congress who are engaged in writing energy and global warming bills say they are well aware of the E.P.A. process bearing down on them. “Once the Supreme Court declared carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, E.P.A. had no choice but to act,” said Representative Rick Boucher, a moderate Democrat from a coal-producing region of Virginia. “Most people would rather have Congress act. We can be more balanced; we can take into account the effects on the economy. But if we don’t undertake this, E.P.A. certainly will.”

Still, the agency’s regulations would take months to write and years to become fully effective. Meanwhile, Congress is already starting work on energy and climate legislation, though without significant guidance from the White House, at least in public.”

Republicans must be drooling over the possibility that EPA will take extensive regulatory action on climate change. Why? Because the resulting political fallout associated with any actual or perceived downsides (e.g., like higher energy prices) will fall entirely on Democrats and the Obama Administration. Far from being an incentive for Congress to act on its own, the looming possibility that EPA will take regulatory action is a strong incentive for Republicans to stalemate Congressional action and a nightmare scenario for Democrats. Expect the Republicans to call the Obama Administration’s “EPA will regulate unless you act” bluff.

Then expect a protracted “you go first” stalemate between EPA and Congress as no one will want to be responsible for increasing the costs of energy. As the New York Times suggests, some environmentalists are getting restless, but have so far not spoken out too loudly. This free pass on criticism won’t last forever. “The administration’s caution leaves many environmental advocates frustrated, although most are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of alienating their allies inside government.

One environmental and energy lobbyist with close ties to the White House said the administration had been inhibited by a number of factors, including vacancies in many top policy jobs, an intense early focus on the financial and economic crises, and an unwillingness to alienate business and Congressional leaders with a heavy-handed approach. “With those realities, coupled with the fact that the president himself realizes this is harder to do in the midst of recession, they are basically content to see what Congress will do,” this lobbyist said. “Plus, Henry Waxman has put together a very serious piece of legislation, and that in my mind justifies their lack of forceful intervention. That’s just where they are now.” Read more with comments here.

CENTRAL to discussion of climate change models is the concept of “forcing” and “feedback”.  So, reference is made to global warming from radiative “forcing” from elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the troposphere and then “positive feedback from water vapour”, adding to global warming. 

Everyone talks in these terms, and it is politically correct to do so.  But there are two problems. According to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formalism, their “forcing” can include any amount of internal state variable contribution, as well as external driving function contributions.  And according to this IPCC formalism, there is only one dynamically distinct internal state variable, the climate temperature, that functionally determines the apparently distinct but really merely functionally dependent “feedbacks” of their formalism.

In physics, an external driving function qualifies unequivocally as a cause. But internal state functions must always be counted as effects that are themselves caused by external drivers interacting with internal state functions acting as internal causes.

This important cause-effect structure is erased in the “forcing” concept of the IPCC formalism. It follows that cause and effect will be muddled in work that uses the IPCC formalism for simplified models. The simplified models are made of ordinary differential equations as in the qualitative theory of dynamical systems including deterministic chaos originated by Henri Poincare in the 1880s. Poincaré used the method of phase portraits, which make explicit the presence of several dynamically distinct internal state variables. The IPCC limitation to only one dynamically distinct internal state variable makes the IPCC concept of “feedbacks” verge on nonsense.

Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell explained this in 2008: “We can see from the plotted dots that the satellite observations are consistent with errors in diagnosed model feedback from about -0.1 to -0.8 W m^-2 K^-1”. They showed that the IPCC formalism gives wrong answers.

At Dr Spencer’s blog he comments:
“As those who have been following our work already know, our main conclusion is that climate sensitivity has been grossly overestimated due to a mix up between cause and effect when researchers have observed how global cloud cover varies with temperature.  Significantly, our new work provides a method for identifying which direction of causation is occurring. Well at least I thought it was new way of analyzing graphs. It turns out that we have simply rediscovered a method used in other physical sciences: phase space analysis.”

Drs Spencer and Braswell are leading the field by using Poincare’s method of phase portraits. The two steps forward they are making here are explicit recognition of the presence of several dynamically distinct internal state variables, and clearer recognition of how the IPCC “forcing” concept leads to muddling of cause and effect, when it tries to by-pass or over-ride the difference between orthodox external driving functions and internal state variables.

I hope that the flawed IPCC formalism is on its way out as a result of their work. Read post here.

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character. On the negative side of the environmental ledger are adverse impacts of industrial wind turbines on birdlife and other forms of wildlife, farm animals, wetlands and viewsheds.

Read more here. Read how Spain has had a similar exprience with 2.2 real jobs lost for every green job created and only 1 in 10 green jobs permanent and with a 50% rise in emissions here. Also see these summaries that question the viability of renewables to meet electricity demands and the true costs of slashing emissions here. Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser’s CCNet. CCNet is a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@ljmu.ac.uk ("subscribe cambridge-conference"). 

Also see Let’s Get Real About Renewable Energy by Robert Bryce in the Wall Street Journal here.

President Obama has said that the science of global warming is “beyond dispute,” and therefore settled. This is the justification for the imposition of a carbon cap-and-trade system that will cost $2 trillion. But Obama does not understand science. “Settled science” is an oxymoron, and anyone who characterizes science as “settled” or “indisputable” is ignorant not only of science, but also history and philosophy.

Aristotle taught that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Over the centuries, a few unreasonable persons expressed skeptical concerns. But the consensus was that the physics of motion were described by Aristotle’s dicta. The science was settled. Around the year 1591, an irascible young instructor at the University of Pisa demonstrated that Aristotle was wrong. He climbed to the top of the tower of Pisa and dropped cannonballs of unequal weight that hit the ground simultaneously. Aristotelean professors on the faculty were embarrassed. The university administration responded by not renewing Galileo’s contract, thus ridding themselves of a troublemaker who challenged the accepted consensus.

Galileo is better remembered today for clashing with the Catholic Church over the issue of whether or not the Earth was at the center of the universe. An Earth-centered cosmology was first proposed by the Greek philosopher Eudoxus in the fourth century B.C. About a hundred years later, an upstart named Aristarchus suggested that the Earth revolved around the sun. Aristarchus’ system never proved popular, and he was criticized for being impious. The Earth-centered system was finalized by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century A.D., and remained unchallenged until the sixteenth century. Everyone knew that the science of astronomy had been settled “beyond dispute.” When Galileo insisted that the Earth revolved around the sun, he was castigated by the church for advocating an idea that was not only heretical, but also “foolish and absurd in philosophy.”

Late in the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton demonstrated definitively that Aristotle’s physics were incorrect. He proposed the Law of Universal Gravitation, and explained how the planets move around the sun in elliptical orbits. Newton is still regarded as the greatest scientist who ever lived. He settled the science of motion in such a conclusive way that his system was referred to as an “invincible edifice.”

But the edifice crumbled early in the twentieth century when Einstein showed that Newtonian physics break down as the speed of light is approached. Near the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Neptunian School of geology taught that all rocks had formed by crystallization from a now-vanished universal ocean. Although the evidence falsifying this theory was both plain and abundant, Neptunists interpreted every observation as supportive of their hypothesis. Blinded by an immoderate zeal, they selected and magnified any fact in accordance with their theory, while neglecting those that tended to disprove it. Robert Jameson characterized the evidence supporting Neptunism as “incontrovertible.” But the theory collapsed in a few decades, and today is recognized as an artifact of inexhaustible human folly. The End Of History?

President Obama, a lawyer and politician, would now have us believe that the process of history has stopped. For the first time, scientific knowledge is not provisional and subject to revision, but final and settled. Skepticism, which has been the spur to all innovation and human progress, is unacceptable and must be condemned. But in fact, it is our awareness of what we do not know that determines our scientific level.

Socrates was the wisest man, not because he knew more than others, but because he was the only one to recognize that he did not know. Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit. Read full story here.

Two cool and wet summers in a row have left butterfly numbers at their lowest for more than a quarter of a century. One species, the high brown fritillary, has almost died out in Britain and several others have suffered dramatic slumps.

For a dozen species, last year was the worst on record and conservationists fear that they could suffer long-term damage if there is a third dire summer this year. Even butterflies that were once common garden visitors, such as orange-tips and the small tortoiseshell, are among those to have suffered significant declines.

The weather has had such an impact because heavy rain, of which there was plenty in the summers of 2007 and 2008, prevents butterflies from flying to find mates or to reach the flowers that supply them with nectar. Similarly, butterflies need the Sun in order to become fully active. Several species, especially those that rely on specific types of habitat, have been in decline for years and the bad weather has intensified the pressure already on them from habitat loss and other human impacts. Cooler conditions makes it harder for them to become active.

High brown fritillaries (photo), which are now restricted to fewer than 50 colonies, are the species in greatest danger of dying out in Britain, closely followed by wood whites and Duke of Burgundy fritillaries, which exist in fewer than 100 colonies. “They are the big three at UK level,” said Tom Brereton, of Butterfly Conservation, which surveyed butterfly numbers in partnership with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. “The weather has been a significant problem for some of the most threatened species - 2007 was bad, 2008 was even worse. We just hope that this year we don’t have another dire summer and that butterfly numbers are able to recover.

“If we have a nice sunny year with only bouts of rain, some species will bounce back, but some have got to such a low ebb on some sites we’re not sure if it has tipped them over the edge. A lot of sites are quite isolated and when they go it’s not easy for them to get recolonised.” Once-common species giving cause for concern include small heaths, which slumped 15 per cent last year compared with 2007, small coppers, which fell 29 per cent, and small tortoiseshells, which fell 45 per cent.

“The small tortoiseshell used to be just about the commonest butterfly, and you would see it every year in your garden, but it has become quite scarce,” Dr Brereton said. The biggest decline in a single species last year was the 90 per cent slump suffered by clouded yellows, followed by 66 per cent for wood whites, 65 per cent for black hairstreaks and 81 per cent for painted ladies.

Beside the weather, the main reasons for the decline in butterfly numbers since the monitoring scheme began in 1976 are thought to be the loss of habitats such as flower-rich meadows, the intensification of farming and changes in woodland management. However, some species thrived during the two wet summers. They included two that enjoyed their second-best year on record - the ringlet, which increased in numbers by 35 per cent, and the large heath, which inceased by 66 per cent. The biggest recorded increase last year was set by the northern brown argus, with a rise of 91 per cent.

In today’s That’s the Funniest Thing I’ve Ever Heard moment, the loser of March 27’s global warming debate, climate alarmist extraordinaire Joe Romm, has taken his defeat like a man: he’s officially banned from his Climate Progress website any articles by the victor, Marc Morano.

Attaboy, Joe!

Not only that, Romm actually made the banning official in a CP posting Tuesday (I’m not kidding): “Swift boat smearer Marc Morano, former denier-in-chief (DIC) for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL), is emailing around his bio and his new website to whatever members of the media are aching to tarnish their professional reputations. Marc Morano is unquotable and uncitable. For a journalist, quoting or citing him as a source is the Swiftist way to smear your own reputation.  For anyone other than a rightwing anti-scientific blogger, even linking to his new site ClimateDepot to debunk him gives him the attention and credibility he does not deserve.

I will not be linking to his website nor will I allow any links to his website to appear on this blog.  It is conceivable that circumstances might arise where I refer to something Swift boat smearer Marc Morano has written, but I can’t imagine them right now.”

If I didn’t know who this guy was, and what he looked like, I’d swear he had to be in fifth grade behaving this way. But it gets better: “Yes, I did debate Swift Boat smearer Morano recently - but I was filling in at the last minute as a favor.  As readers know, I believe such debates are pointless if not counterproductive, since we have known for 25 centuries that debates are not won on the facts but by who is a better debater, which is to say, who understands the principles of rhetoric.  In particular, it is very hard to win a debate against someone who just repeatedly makes stuff up.”

Actually, that’s not true at all, Joe. The easiest people to debate are the ones that make stuff up because it’s quite simple to expose their fallacies. The reality is that on March 27, Romm continually stated that Morano was making stuff up, but didn’t explain to the audience what, and didn’t back up his assertions with demonstrable facts. Instead, Romm continued to repeat the same non sequitur, and never once explained why Morano was wrong.

Aren’t you a Ph.D. who claims to be an expert on this subject? Apparently not, for now Romm has picked up his ball and run home, and, in so doing has made climate alarmists the world over look like whining crybabies. Any questions as to why these folks refuse to debate? Of course, there’s likely another reason for Romm’s pathetic behavior: he knows the Obama administration has likely punted on cap-and-trade this year, and with the globe continuing to cool, the window of opportunity for these alarmists to tax carbon dioxide is quickly closing.

Somebody pass Romm a pacifier and his blanket.

Update: Climate Progress’s Romm Responds Unkindly to NewsBusters

The super El Nino of 1982/83 which coincided with world-wide weather extremes sparked significant research into the global atmospheric effects of this phenomenon. When strong correlations were found, a whole new era of long range climate forecasting began. Over the past decade, our understanding of ENSO and other climate factors or teleconnections has grown and extended and enabled skillful seasonal (and I might argue decadal) forecasting. 

Before the winter in October, we used the sun, ENSO and QBO (among other factors) to identify analog years (circled). We picked 1961/62, 1964/64 as the best analogs with 1985/86 also within window of expected solar and ENSO conditions.

They suggested another cold north central winter

The actual temperatures generally were in line with those analogs, especially across the North Central. It was warmer in the southern Rockies and plains where it was dry. The cold in the northeast was concentrated in January.

Compare that to the CPC forecast from last October which in the absence of a clear ENSO state used trends as their tool. This despite the fact they have done a lot of the good research most private forecasters use. Their forecasts have a warm bias, the politically correct position.  They were better in the southern plains but missed the northern plains cold as they did last year.

They are at it again for next winter.

Trends can be useful tool during the times when you are entrenched in a particular regime but can lead to bad forecasts when a new regime develops (like selling at the lows of a bear market or buying at the peak of a bull market). The trend they used was the trend during the recent warm PDO, warm AMO, active solar decades of the 1980s and 1990s.  Now with the PDO in its cold mode, the AMO turned negative and the sun in a superlong slumber, the trends should be and have been reversing both globally and regionally. Good luck CPC. You will need it. See pdf here.