pipelines and carbon tax: 2015

Wednesday 11 November 2015

# 25 Patrick Moore lectured on carbon emissions.

After reading the entire text of a lecture which Patrick Moore, former director of Greenpeace gave in London England on Oct 15^th (see http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/ ), I have to show the other side of CO₂ emissions. From his lecture I learned a few new facts but already knew that the earth is colder than 50 million years ago, that some plants grow better at elevated CO₂ levels and that volcanoes lately only contribute 1% to the CO₂ emissions. He concentrates, on plants without looking sufficiently at potential human suffering. He believes that, under the influence of the UN and the IPCC, scientists only look at how the CO₂ levels are influenced by humans during the last 2 centuries. He does not pay enough attention to what scientists say about rising sea levels 120 000 years ago .when the earth was approaching the same warmth. I will counter his views with articles hyperlinked on this blog and add a number of significant developments related to climate change.

For first time readers I let you know that early in 2013 I discovered how Canada’s oil exports were suffering from pipeline delays causing a $ 20-30 billion dollar revenue loss in 2012. Later on it was confirmed to be $24 billion. It was partly caused by Mr Harper’s objection to a national carbon tax and Enbridge’s reluctance to tell the public how the disasters in the US were caused and how they could be prevented. The problems I found are recorded in post 1. Mainly due to rail transport the losses have been decreased to $ 15 billion per year prior to the price crash. Since 2013 I kept on looking for interesting articles about carbon tax and related subjects, which I recorded as well.

Citing references on the blog I will not only show the other side of Mr Moore’s story but also how important taxing of carbon has become. It not only discourages the use of fossil fuel but can also finance badly needed carbon capture and storage (CCS). With an example I will show that the average politician does not has the time to get involved with the details of climate change, while the media releases a lot about the effects but rarely covers the main cause. I will also list the energy return on investment EROI of energy sources, showing how profitable wind power has become and the improved efficiency of the Canadian oil sands. I will also comment on the safety and longevity of railroad transport, why in particular the coal industry is against a badly needed global carbon tax and the prospects of establishing refineries in Canada to keep more jobs at home. Here are my observations:

Mr Moore’s line of thinking

When you look at the third graph on post 24 you will see that during the last 400,000 years the CO₂ level went during the three previous ice ages up and down between 180 ppm and 300 ppm. Enough plants survived each time when levels dropped to 180 ppm. Since volcanoes lately only contribute 1% to the CO2 supply, Mr Moore feels we should keep on burning fossil fuel. As you can see that is not yet necessary because since 1950 we pushed the level up to 30% higher than it ever was in those 400,000 years.

Following the previous ice age sea levels rose to 9 metres above present levels. That is not only mentioned by Dr Hanson but confirmed by my brother who wrote a paper about pre-historic tide lines in the Netherlands. Seeing how much ice is still around, ready to melt, a similar rise in sea level can be expected. Fortunately we can postpone, or possibly eliminate such rising sea levels. During the 9 meter rise there were no people around. People prefer to live near the sea. Probably the earliest to be flooded were those who lived when Great Britain was still part of the continent. When you google “doggerland” you will be directed to Wikipedia, which shows with maps how those people had to endure a megaflood causing a sea level rise of 1.5 metres in 2 years time. When you google “Lake Agassiz”, which caused the megaflood you will find the history of 8 megafloods. Thanks to the watchful eyes of scientists we are assured that none of that magnitude will reoccur. When you read Dr Hansen’s article referred to on post 24 you can see that future sea level rise has been underestimated and that it won’t be linear.

Despite good progress in developing green energy, the demand for fossil fuel keeps rising because the population increases and the demand per person goes up. Without carbon capture and storage (CCS) we may be going faster towards that 9 meter sea level rise than would have happened without extra human emissions. From the fourth graph on post 24 you can see that human emissions started rising in 1850, just after the start of the industrial revolution. As documented in point G) of post 24, CCS from the air will also be required. Fortunately that is already in the development stage. So far most captured CO₂ has been pumped in liquid form a few kilometers deep underground, where, due to soil pressure, it stays liquid. New methods of storage are being developed and it will all be available some 100,000 years from now when we are cooling down again towards the next ice age and have to give some more CO₂ to the plants to keep them fresher than before. Maybe there will be enough to prevent another ice age.

How much do politicians know about climate change?

Since the media concentrates on the effects of climate change and seldom mentions the causes the average politician can only get informed via the internet, if they have the time to do it. This is best illustrated by what happened just prior to the Canadian Federal election in Kamloops BC. (post 24, point E) The conservative candidate said during a radio interview that only !.5 % of the global warming was caused by humans. He got flak from his opponents and one provincial MLA. They all mentioned obvious signs of climate change but none of them mentioned that since 1950 humans raised the CO₂ level in the air to 30% higher than it ever has been in 400,000 years and that emissions started rising shortly after the industrial revolution began.

Cost of green energy versus that from fossil fuels

Coal is by far the cheapest source of fossil fuel energy. The US is a major producer, also a major user and therefore has a tough time to introduce a carbon tax. As shown in post 12 some oil companies want a carbon tax but the coal industry is dead against it. Wind power is the cheapest source of green energy and even cheaper than natural gas. Alberta has for years been vilified because our oil requires so much energy to extract it and it creates horrible tailings ponds. Much has changed and we can use green energy as soon as a global carbon tax is in place. As shown in D) below, following acceptance of a global carbon tax we will be able to transfer vast amounts of surplus green electricity from British Columbia to Alberta. A carbon tax will also encourage more solar and wind power development in Alberta. Apart from that, the oil industry may soon increase recovery via the toe to heel air injection process (THAI). It will almost double the energy return on investment ( EROI). As can be seen from the figures below we are doing much better than oil obtained from shale and will certainly be better than what some people hope to recover from the vast offshore arctic reserves. It is ironic that President Obama cancels the Keystone XL pipeline based on our “dirty oil” while the US keeps producing much dirtier shale oil.

The EROI is explained by Ajay Gupta and Charles Hall. They emphasise that the return on investment varies widely with quality and location. Also oil and natural gas are lumped together because it often is extracted by the same companies. While a lot is presented as a range and in particular the hydro has a large range, the averages figures below show how much energy is obtained from an input of 1: Hydro 139, coal 50, wind 25, oil and gas 18, wave/tidal 15, oil sands toe to heel air injection process 9, geothermal 7.5 nuclear 6.5, solar 6.5, oil sands conventional without cost of land restoration 6, oil sands conventional including cost of land restoration 5, shale oil 3.5, corn ethanol I.5

The figure for hydro power is so high because their cost per KWh is based on 100 years of operation. Many plants were built at a fraction of the present capital cost. The highest EROI figure for hydro is 267. As shown in post 21 the cost for a new 1100 MW facility in British Columbia is, depending on operating hours per year, 8.5-8.8 c/KWh This is similar to the cost from existing wind farms. The EROI of wind farms is 30 but that includes offshore farms which produce at 22c/KWh while on shore wind power costs 8.5c/KWh That cost keeps falling as more efficient equipment comes on line. For new facilities wind will be cheaper than hydro. That is confirmed by the lowest EROI figure for hydro. It is 11.

Influence of a global carbon tax

It is obvious that a global carbon tax, which allows taxing exports without penalties will influence the above EROI figures substantially, As shown in post 17 at the BC tax rate of $ 30 per tonne of CO₂ the purchase price of coal would rise by at least 70% while even at the present low rate of $50 per barrel the cost of crude oil would go up by only 19%. No attempt has been made to figure it out for the Norwegian offshore tax which is $75 per tonne of CO₂

BC has a carbon tax and a clean energy act. The latter was intended to make lots of surplus green energy available to less fortunately provinces and states. Due to the absence of a global tax there is still far too much 4c/KWh power available on the North American grid so a lot of our green power has to be sold at a loss. A major portion of the cheap power is supplied by coal fired plants in the USA and their price would rise following the introduction of a global carbon tax. We have 31 hydro reservoirs which can even out the flow of irregular green power. Apart from Quebec we have better wind conditions than any other province. The act requires us to generate 93% green power and be self sufficient under all conditions. BC Hydro is obliged to buy all green power which independent companies provide. At times they can’t accommodate it so it is wasted by overflowing reservoirs. Also hydro turbines are forced to operate at lower capacity, which drives up the unit cost. As a result the green power they buy at 8.5 c-9.7c/KWh actually costs 11-13 c/KWh. Our surplus is enormous. We have an agreement with the US to regulate the flow of the Columbia River in exchange for half the extra power they produce as a result. It amounts to an average of 4400 GWh per year, which is 86% of the 5100 GWh per year which the recently approved Site C power plant will supply. We can’t use the Columbia River Entitlement for peak power and since it is subject to renegotiation 10 years after either party demands to do so, it can’t be included in long term planning. As a result we sell it to the US for low prices. The requirement of self sufficiency also creates a huge surplus capacity leading to higher prices. On cold winter nights hydro turbines must be able to deliver the peak loads, which are at least 15% above average. During those cold winter nights there is no solar power available and it may be wind still, hence all power has to come from hydro. All the above facts are documented in post 21

Railway transport

The Quebec disaster gave it a bad reputation but it was caused by extreme cost cutting, which resulted in inadequate sampling and classification of the volatile North Dakota oil. Worse yet, a struggling railroad company was allowed to operate a 72 car, 5 locomotive fully loaded oil train with only one engineer without help of a conductor. In addition he was allowed to leave it parked unattended on a hill for several hours until his replacement would arrive. By far the safest way to transport Alberta oil is as raw bitumen, which behaves like tar and is reheated at the destination by steam coils installed in the special isolated railroad cars designed for that transport. Many are already in operation to transport oil to the Gulf Coast refineries. They are designed to handle our heavy crude and prefer it over the domestic supplies, which the US rather ships North for export through Canada, which is exempt from their export prohibition. A main advantage of shipping it raw is that the bitumen does not have to be mixed with expensive condensate to produce diluted bitumen (dilbit) for transport in pipelines. That condensate has to be imported and that is why the Northern Gateway actually has two lines. Another advantage is that the cars can hold 30% more bitumen than by transporting it as dilbit. Railroads are also useful to deliver oil where there are no pipelines. In 2014 the US transport by rail was 493,000 carloads, which is fifty times more than six years earlier.

Post 18 shows with many references how the railways are taking over from pipelines. If indeed we manage to curtail oil consumption, pipelines will lose business in 30 to 40 years while railways will remain to transport the dwindling amount of oil and many other commodities. The best example is the G7G railway, which was originally planned to carry lumber, ore and general merchandise from the South to Alaska. It now has been redesigned to bring oil from Alberta to the underutilized port of Valdez. For about the same capital cost as the two contested BC pipelines it will be able to carry more than their combined volume. Valdez is 2 days closer to most Asian destinations than Vancouver and Kitimat, hence it saves on sea transport while avoiding the objectionable shipping through BC waters. It has the support and participation of first nations and when transporting raw bitumen, it will probably only require a short condensate line. I heard that it will be electric using cheap new wind power. Since,as described in D), BC Hydro has enough problems with windpower I don’t foresee a hook up to their net until there is a global carbon tax.

Carbon Capture and srorage(CCS)

Cutting emissions by developing green energy will take too long to prevent disastrous sea levels. CCS from all power plants, blast furnaces, beer breweries and other industries will be very effective and is already well developed, as shown in a few lines copied from D) in post 22:

“Canada has 2 of the 21 world’s operating CCS plants (14). China has at least 6 large scale fully integrated projects (LSIP), driven by state owned power companies with help from major international partners (15). A recent article describes the GreenGen project, a billion-dollar facility built with support of Peabody Energy, a Missouri firm that is the world’s biggest private coal company. The author notes . “ Part of a coming wave of such carbon-eating facilities, it may be China’s—and possibly the planet’s—single most consequential effort to fight climate change”(16)”

The cost is expected to come down when the VELOXOTHERM™ CARBON CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY of

INVENTYS THERMAL TECHNOLOGIES INC. starts paying off.They use a large wheel similar to what is used in heat exchangers and a solid absorbent rather than messy liquids. The large wheel made of adsorbent turns about one revolution per minute. On one side of the wheel, the spokes collect carbon dioxide; on the other side, those spokes come into contact with counter-current steam, which releases the CO₂.

As documented under G) in post 24, capture and storage from the atmosphere will also be essential. At least 2 companies, Esenberger and Carbon Engineering have operating facilities to prove that it can be done. Carbon Engineering, an Alberta company uses standardized scalable industrial facilities. Their full-scale design could absorb the emissions created by 300,000 typical cars. Obviously thousands of these facilities will be required around the world. It seems cheaper than building dikes around all low laying areas. Miami and other low lying cities in Florida could be lost to the sea in 80 years time because soil conditions make dike building extremely difficult there.

As shown in detail on several posts a global carbon tax would allow taxing of exports and all that money could via a global fund be used to help less fortunate countries and finance CCS. A carbon tax is far less invasive than is often portrayed. When I talk to fellow British Columbians I note that most don’t know that we reduced the use of petroleum products by 17% while it rose by 1,5% in the rest of the country. Half of them don’t believe that we get all the money back until I show them the tables. Nobody complains that we have suffered due to the tax.

The G7 agreement to limit carbon emission

The G7 leading industrial nations, including Canada, have agreed to cut greenhouse gases by phasing out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century. The leaders have committed themselves to the need to “decarbonise the global economy in the course of this century”. They also agreed on a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to a maximum of 2C over pre-industrial levels.

Environmental lobbyists described the announcement as a hopeful sign that plans for complete decarbonisation could be decided on in Paris climate talks later this year. They criticised the fact that leaders had baulked at Merkel’s proposal that they should agree to immediate binding emission targets.

Coal is an essential reduction agent for steelmaking, Ships, airplanes and the petrochemical industry will for a long time be dependent on oil, hence carbon capture from stacks as well as from the air will be essential.

Why not process the oil here than rather than ship it out raw ?

Several people have asked me that question. The refinery business is very competitive and depends on what routes can be found to ship out the various products. I can only comment with a few points, which I read about but never recorded. Alberta has 4 refineries and a rather recent plan for an additional upgrader was canceled because it could not be justified. Most US refineries are designed to handle heavy Canadian and Venezuelan crude, so that is an established export route. Our Burnaby refinery may shut down because it does not make money. The two enterprises which are planning refineries in Kitimat and Prince Rupert have to find niche markets. Asia has super refineries and distribution networks. They determine their product mix and are only interested in our crude unless we sell specific products at bargain prices.

A main point for any refinery decision will be how long it will operate at full capacity. According to the G7 agreement described above oil will soon become a sunset industry and the return on investment will suffer from it.

Friday 18 September 2015

# 24 Global warming and rising sea levels

A The present trend

The three graphs above show that global warming is real, that sea levels are rising and that since 1950 human activities created far more greenhouse gases than ever occurred during interglacial periods .Additional graphs at the end show where the CO2 came from. Some people believe that a large amount came from volcanic eruptions but many studies show that these eruptions only contributed 1%, (5)
Post 23 explains in detail why the official forecasts for rising sea levels are too low. In Copenhagen it was agreed to limit temperature rise to 2^o C during this century to “avoid the worst impacts of climate change”. Now Dr Hansen and a cadre of co-authors from a wide array of disciplines argue that even 2 degrees is too much, and would "subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm,"(1)

B Details of Dr Hansen’s study

Below are a few of the many explanations which Mr Hansen gave in a recent article,(7)

Dr Hansen analysed studies of geologist Paul Hearty. “Hearty found strong evidence for sea level rise late in the Eemian to 6-9 m above present levels. Hearty also found evidence for powerful storms in the North Atlantic near the end of the Eemian period. (120 000 years ago). Dr Hansen stated “Earth is now approaching the warmth that existed then. Thus several colleagues and I initiated global climate simulations aimed at trying to understand what happened at the end of the Eemian and its relevance to climate change today.”

“Our simulations were aimed to test my suspicion that ice sheet disintegration is a very nonlinear phenomena and that the IPCC studies were largely omitting what may be the most important forcing of the ocean: the effect of cold freshwater from melting ice. Rather than use an ice sheet model to estimate rates of freshwater release, we use observations for the present ice melt rate and specify several alternative rates of increase of ice melt. Our atmosphere-ocean model shows that the freshwater spurs amplifying feedbacks that would accelerate ice shelf and ice sheet mass loss, thus providing support for our assumption of a nonlinear ice sheet response.”

C Present inadequate prevention of climate change

In preparation for the December conference in Paris 29 governments have released their “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs), the vast majority of which are too weak to limit global warming to scientifically advisable levels. The current plans address about 65 per cent of global emissions.

A group analyzed 15 of the 29 contribution promises and rated seven as “inadequate” (Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Russia) and six “medium” (China, the EU, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland and the U.S.). Only two of the plans — from Ethiopia and Morocco — were considered “sufficient.”(2).

Note that the plans of China, the EU and the US’ which are all better than Canada’s are detailed in post 20.

D Retrieval of CO2 from the atmosphere

CO2 stays in the atmosphere for some 100 years and we now have the technology to capture it straight from the air rather than only from smokestacks (post 23 D). So far carbon capture and storage(post 22 D) has been expensive and capture from the air may be even more expensive. Part of the captured carbon can be used to recover oil or in refined form used for softdrinks and other industrial applications.The remainder has to be stored deep underground where there is sufficient pressure to keep it in liquid form. Liquid CO₂ takes up less space, and there is little danger of the gas seeping up to the surface. (8)

A new type of fuel cell could make CO2 purification and storage cheaper, while generating electricity. Molten carbonate fuel cells actually rely on carbon dioxide to operate. They take it in at one electrode. That carbon dioxide is then used to form ions that conduct current to the opposite electrode, where the carbon dioxide is emitted in concentrated form.

When sufficient capacity can be developed the capture from the air we can retrieve all the excess CO2 which we have emitted over the years. If combined with carbon capture and storage for existing power plants we may be able to bring the CO2 level down to an acceptable level

Like encouragement to replace fossil fuel energy with clean energy a global carbon tax will help developing the CCS industry as shown below:

E Plea for a global carbon tax

Canadians, I would urge you to write emails to our party leaders.and suggest to extend the BC carbon tax to the rest of the country. That will strengthen our image and could lead to a global carbon tax. That would allow taxing of exported fossil fuel without unfair competition. The proceeds could, via an international fund, be used to help less fortunate countries and pay companies at the tax rate for every tonne of CO₂, which they capture from smokestacks or straight from the atmosphere. As shown in post 23 the technology exists and this could, like solar and wind, become a thriving industry. Extensive Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) would bend the tip of that CO₂ graph towards horizontal and eventually down. Many people still oppose a carbon tax because they believe it costs them money. The BC tax is revenue neutral and all money collected is fairly paid back, 48% to people and 52% to businesses. There are 17 well defined refund categories(3). People who use less than average fossil fuel get more money back than they paid. That encourages conservation and as a result use of petroleum producs dropped 17% while it rose by 1.5% in the rest of the country.

Americans, you have a well defined carbon tax bill (Sanders Boxer), which will return 60% of revenue directly to households monthly, allot 25% to deficit reduction and dedicate the remaining 15% to green energy”(4) Plead with your politicians left and right to pass it. Carbon tax is too important to postpone. Nobody argues about the need for schools and hospitals and carbon tax should be just as political neutral.

F Additional graphs

Most graphs refer to 1950 as a base line because “Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuels did not become a potentially consequential factor until approximately 1950, and then grew rapidly thereafter. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. The large increase in Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuels since 1950 is quite clear from the graph showing the Cumulative Global Fossil Fuel CO2 emissions. The next graph shows Global Per Capita Carbon Emissions gra ph Obviously, as people become richer they use more motorcycles, cars and appliances.

The last 2 graphs show how specific areas have contributed to the emissions

The total CO2 emissions include changes in land use. “Rates of land-use change, including clearing for agriculture and harvest of wood, were reconstructed from statistical and historic documents for 9 world regions and used, along with the per ha [hectare] changes in vegetation and soil that result from land management, to calculate the annual flux of carbon between land and atmosphere.”

G Additional information in support of CCS from the atmosphere (see reference 10)

The statement under D) that the CO2 stays in the air for some hundred years needs further clarification. It is actually 100-200 years but about 20% stays for thousands of years and that will prevent us from reaching pre-industrial conditions unless we recover the CO2 from the atmosphere. When we would, via CCS from smokestacks end green energy achieve 0 emission the temperature would no longer rise much further but the climate change won’t stop. A lot of CO2 is absorbed by the sea and circulates back and forth between sea and air. Scientists David Archer. Ken Caldeira, Damon Matthews ,Peter Fawcett, Toby Tyrell and Richard Betts have studied this extensively. One of the latest predictions (2007) is that 50% is removed within 30 years, 30% in a few hundred years and 20% will stay in the air thousands of years. Some statements including the need for CCS from the atmosphere are:

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. It doesn't help that the summaries in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have confused the issue, allege Caldeira and colleagues in an upcoming paper in Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences². Now he and a few other climate scientists are trying to spread the word that human-generated CO₂, and the warming it brings, will linger far into the future — unless we take heroic measures to pull the gas out of the air. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years." But if cumulative emissions are high, the portion remaining in the atmosphere could be higher than this, models suggest. Overall, Caldeira argues, "the whole issue of our long-term commitment to climate change has not really ever been adequately addressed by the IPCC

"The longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere is probably the least well understood part of the global warming issue," says paleoclimatologist Peter Fawcett of the University of New Mexico. "And it's not because it isn't well documented in the IPCC report. It is, but it is buried under a lot of other material."

"If civilization was able to develop ways of scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere," Tyrrell says, "it's possible you could reverse this CO2 hangover."

http://www.livescience.com/41690-2-degrees-of-warming-too-much.html

http://desmog.ca/2015/09/10/countries-planning-dangerously-weak-commitments-paris-climate-summit-new-analysis

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/tbs/tp/climate/Carbon_Tax_Report_and_Plan_Topic_Box.pdf

http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2013/02/15/sanders-boxer-set-gold-standard-but-write-off-fiscal-potential-of-carbon-tax/

https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/29/when-did-anthropogenic-global-warming-begin/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/multi-meter-sea-level-rise-is-an-issue-for-todays-public_b_7875828.html

http://www.gassnova.no/en/facts-ccs/what-is-t-and-s?gclid=CPyP5-bspMgCFU1qfgod3_oBGA

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/515026/fuel-cells-could-offer-cheap-carbon-dioxide-storage/

http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Sunday 16 August 2015

# 23 Florida can still be saved by taxing carbon

A) Summary

Recently I had a long on-line debate with the “green majority”. It was on the desmog.ca website (1). I wish politicians could have such debates because different opinions, problems and solutions come forward. They told me that I don’t pay enough attention to the catastrophic effects of climate change, even though I mention some of it in E) of post 22. Since I just read 2 articles showing how badly and how soon Florida will be flooded (2,3), I will discuss that along with further carbon tax considerations. I also found out why some journalists predict sea levels to rise as much as 10 feet by the year 2050,(5), while expert researchers put the upper limit at under two meters this century. (7) In my opinion such a catastrophic rise can only be prevented by a global carbon tax. It will make alternative energy cheaper than that from fossil fuel and make carbon capture and storage more affordable. That will allow the more modern coal based power plants to continue operating. Ultimately we will be able to remove vast quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere to diminish the problems we created years ago. The “green majority” told me that carbon tax is no solution to combat climate change. They figure it can only be done by leaving 2/3 of all reserves in the ground. I see that as a scientific requirement like the 2^o C criterion ( 5,6 ) and the trillion ton communiqué (post 16). I feel that the 2/3 requirement can be achieved when the carbon tax is global and high enough. I urge all environmentalists to campaign hard for a global carbon tax. The fossil fuel does not stay in the ground by just wishing it or opposing a few pipelines. The “green majority” felt that I take a wishy washy middle of the road approach while my ideas are more of an activist. As an environmentalist I just analyse problems as I see them. I record them to show younger people how important carbon tax is. The “green majority” feels that I “use information that is already being published from sources (and frequently paid for by the oil industry to confuse public discourse)”. Almost all oil company information comes from the Carbon Tax Centre, an excellent US organisation which keeps people informed of new development. The “green majority” also objects to green power being used for oil extraction. In British Columbia we have surplus green power which is hard to sell (4), we could supply much more of it but not at the present 4c/KWh price. So until a global carbon tax solves that problem we could force Alberta to buy it for a reasonable price for oil extraction and export clean oil rather than dirty oil. As long as there is demand for oil it makes little difference in the world’s GHG emission which country supplies it. So why should we give our share to others and lower our standard of living?

B) Flood predictions for Florida

Virtually all of South Florida is only a few feet above sea level (2). Should the ocean crawl just one more foot up the edges of this peninsula – something that’s projected to happen in the next two decades, by some estimates – most of the canal systems that keep the saltwater out of the area’s drinking wells would cease to function. A few more feet, and entire towns suddenly turn neo-Venetian, the roads flooded, the infrastructure almost impossible to salvage (2). Few places are as geographically ill-equipped to deal with rising water as southern Florida. Not only is much of the land barely a few feet above sea level, it also sits on a bed of porous limestone and sand, making measures such as dikes far less effective. Higher sea levels would eat away at the barrier islands that buffer the coast against powerful storms – which is hugely problematic, given that more powerful storms are one of the hallmarks of climate change (2). Rising waters may eventually consume large swaths of South Florida, but sudden storms will likely change the geographic and economic landscape first. “Insurance companies are already increasing flood insurance premiums,” Prof. Briceño says. “There is a point when insurance companies will say ‘no more.’ And if you are unable to insure a property with a mortgage on it, your property is worth nothing.” (2)

With the increasing effects of climate change, urban dwellers must brace for a new reality in which extreme weather events are more frequent, less predictable – and more deadly – than ever before. Two to four billion people in coastal regions could be hit hard. (3) And we need to think about where water is going to be 25 or 50 years from now.” “We have a management-by-disaster mentality,”. “What we need to do is take a different approach – to avoid having problems in the first place.(3)

C ) Present predictions of rising sea levels

In order to find out what the present predictions are and how much rise there has been thus far I looked at 4 websites. They have widely different figures but all point out that due to specific conditions the rise will be much faster than anticipated a few years ago.

The first site was the most frightening. It states that: A crucial recent study led by James Hansen, the former director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The study, authored by Hansen and more than a dozen other scientists and published online, warns that even staying within the internationally agreed goal of keeping the planet within the 2-degree Celsius temperature warming limit has already caused unstoppable melting in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The study shows that this will raise global sea levels by as much as 10 feet by the year 2050, inundating numerous major coastal cities with seawater.(5) In the next site Mr Hansen explained that that ice sheets may be more vulnerable than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated and that he looked at studies by Paul Hearty, a geologist. Hearty found strong evidence for sea level rise late in the Eemian to +6-9 m (20-30 feet) relative to today. The Eemian is the prior interglacial period (~120,000 years ago), . Hearty also found evidence for powerful storms in the North Atlantic near the end of the Eemian period.(6) The real reason for such alarming figures is that the study was released on line to be available at the upcoming Paris conference and that the media drew their own conclusions from some of the data. A realistic story of what happened is shown on the third site as follows:

The problem is, all those headlines describe a study, and that study doesn’t predict anything. It certainly doesn’t predict 10 feet of sea level rise by 2100 (or even 2050) as a number of stories have claimed. The choice of journal and the early publicity was deliberate. Hansen badly wanted the paper to come out before the December international climate talks in Paris, and peer review can often take much longer than that. For reference, the researchers note that satellite measurements of Greenland’s melt rate from 2003 to 2013 would imply a 10-year doubling time, but acknowledge that “this high rate may not continue.” It very well may not; that’s a very short time period to extrapolate from, and 2012 was an anomalously big melt year. The latest IPCC projection of about half a meter to a meter this century increased from the previous report. However, a couple of efforts to askexpert researchers for individual estimates put the upper bound of likely sea level rise under two meters this century. (7)

The fourth website I looked at showed how much the sea level rose since we started burning so mach coal and oil products. It shows a graph of tide gauge records. There was no rise between 1880 and1910 but then it starts climbing ever more rapidly to 20cm in 2000. It looks very little compared to all present prediction but the same source explains why the present observations are indicating a much more rapid rise:

Observations of the retreat of glaciers have been, in a number of situations, more rapid than models have simulated. Third, and most important, are uncertainties relating to the potential loss of ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The dynamics of ice sheet movement are not well understood—some ice streams are moving very rapidly, suggesting the potential for contributions to sea level rise of order 10 mm/year or even larger, a rate that is far larger than any of the other terms. There seems even the possibility of a collapse of one or both ice sheets, especially if there is rapid loss of buttressing ice shelves that would reduce the resistance to ice stream flows (9). Capturing these processes accurately in climate models is extremely difficult, while omitting the process that is likely the most important contributor to sea level rise presents quite a quandary—the result being that IPCC’s projections of sea level rise during the 21st century and beyond may be significantly too low.(8)

PS Sept 15^th 2015

I had thought that Dr Hanson pointed out that 240,000 years ago sea levels rose to 20-30 ft above present to show that there is still plenty of ice around and that we will be flooded by that amount if we let it all melt. There is more to it. A lot can be learned from what happened after the ice ages. I found that the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was similar to what is happening at present. During the PETM, 55-million years ago, the Earth warmed by more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit after huge amounts of carbon entered the atmosphere over a period of just a few thousand years

During the Eocene around 1,500 to 2,000 gigatons of carbon were released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1,000 years. This rate of carbon addition -which peaked during the PETM- almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today through human activity. (25) It shows that history can predict a lot of what may happen. More recent history which has been carbon dated can give an even better picture how ice fields can behave

I sent a copy of the original C) above to my brother and sister in-law, authors of the book “Rediscovering Sustainability”. They had careers in economics and law but also closely follow the environmental problems. I found out that my brother had written a paper about the pre-historic flooding in the Netherlands where there is evidence of 9 metres sea level rise and violent storms, throwing boulders some 20 m. further up on a beach. This is in line with Dr Hansen’s findings for other areas. My sister in law wrote a 12 page paper with dozens of references with the title “Biodiversity of seas and oceans under threat”. She wrote it for the Green Economics Foundation and gave a talk about it as well. It explains, among many other aspects, how the present excess of CO₂ in the air causes acidification. That also occurred in the PETM(25,26)

Below are some lines of what my brother wrote me about sea level predictions:

Yes I had seen Hansen’s warning that IPCCs estimate might be too conservative. First of all, I have a feeling that the way IPCC is supposed to provide a unanimously agreed opinion has a built in element of avoiding dramatic forecasts, in particular because there are members whose reputation is at stake. The economist Richard Tol is an obvious example. I am, for example amazed at the lack of reference to Ken Caldeira’s alarm (also cited in my paper) on ocean acidification.

We just do not know how fast the sea level will rise in the next 50 years. IPCC 2007 contained a zero term for Antarctica. As far as I know, the contribution per year of Antarctica was in fact negative around that time: warmer oceans result in more precipitation and on most of Antarctica and Greenland, the dominant form of precipitation is snow. Now there is rain on Greenland, but not as yet on Antarctica..

Until a few decades ago, it was generally thought that the very thickness of ice sheets meant that their bottoms would for the foreseeable future stay frozen to the bedrock, even whilst there was evidence of spurts of much more rapid sea level rise between about 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, which were not really explainable as surface melt. We now know that melt water from the surface can penetrate to the bedrock through crevasses and transform frozen fine clay into slippery clay.

We also know a major part of the Laurentide ice sheet which covered most of North America during the last ice age, slid into the Atlantic, depositing glacial erratics half-way to Europe. Sea level rise at the end of the last ice age included a spurt of about 1.5 m in at most two years. This was associated with a break-up of the remaining barrier of ice between the Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean, releasing the entire content of Lake Agassiz. It must have been a catastrophe on Doggerland (now the Doggersbank off the coast of Essex); there were humans living there then. Although there are now lakes under the Greenland ice sheet, if they would be on a Lake Agassiz scale, glaciologists have not done their homework, whilst both Greenland and West Antarctica have submerged mountain ridges.

D The double function of carbon tax

The most obvious advantage is that the tax will eliminate cheap 4c/KWh electricity from fossil fuel power plants and make wind and solar the cheapest source for additional electricity.(9). That will allow converting all on-land transportation to green electricity resulting in a reduction of the word’s GHG emission. The tax has to be global so that it can be charged on exports without unfair competition from countries which don’t tax their carbon. As shown in post 17 at the BC rate, taxing adds 70 % to the cost of thermal coal and that is why at the moment we export it tax free.

A second advantage of the carbon tax is that by reimbursing companies at the tax rate for all the carbon they capture and store a thriving CCS industry will develop. In Norway, Statoil gains $58 million per year over potential competitors without CCS (12). It is a unique case because their $17 per tonne of CO2 cost for CCS is obtained by stripping it from the natural gas they withdraw from their wells (13) rather than obtaining it from flue gas. There are several ways to capture carbon from coal burning power plants (10) and costs are bound to come down. Some 2011 figures show that CCS for coal fired power plants costs $ 23-92 per tonne of CO2 (11) Union Engineering built over 1000 plants to produce CO2 but is now also involved in extracting it from breweries and flue gas(14). If such companies are paid at the carbon tax rate for every tonne of CO2 they recover it can become a very profitable business. With a stiff carbon tax, Coca Cola, whose drinks emit 3300 tons of CO2 per day (15), could gain a lot by recycling its CO2. At the moment there are at least 2 companies that invest a lot of money in pilot projects to capture carbon from the atmosphere.(16,17) When a carbon tax makes that more profitable we can recover CO2 emitted by automobiles and eventually reduce the carbon already in the air from previous excess emissions.

While Norway with its high tax rate pays $75 per tonne of CO2 captured and stored the question is, who will pay others, like Coca Cola which operate in so many countries? It seems logical to have a huge international fund, fed by export taxes. There is no reason why countries with a lot of fossil fuel should gain even more by charging tax to less fortunate countries. The fund could be used to help countries cope with higher energy cost, effects of climate change and promotion of CCS world wide. CCS could help Canada to come closer to our Copenhagen commitment and may save the US coal industry. It will also drastically reduce China’s emissions and since that country is a leader in CCS development there is hope that climate change will be curbed, See D) in post 22.

E) Carbon pricing history

Originally a lot of carbon pricing was done by cap and trade where large emitters like power stations were give targets to reduce their GHG emissions. Those that could not reach the target were allowed to buy tradable offsets from companies that made more improvements than agreed upon. The system is complicated but has achieved good reductions in emissions both in Europe and in 10 North Eastern US States. It causes energy prices to go up and there is no clear indication how individuals and businesses get reimbursed to deal with the extra cost. People are told that they would share in dividends from the sale of auctioned pollution allowances, but how much will that be?

A revenue neutral carbon tax can be implemented much quicker than cap and trade and is easy to administer. The BC system modified existing tax rates and special credits to return all money collected as fair as possible to those who paid for it, By law the government has to produce yearly tables to show how it is achieved.(18) There are 17 refund categories and of all tax collected 48% is paid out to people and 52% to businesses. The 48%includes 37% for low income earners. It encourages people to use less fossiI fuel, As a result use of petroleum products has dropped 17% while it rose by 1.5% in the rest of Canada. In the US the proposed Sanders Boxer bill(19) will pay 60% of all tax collected to households. As shown in post 12, those people who use a below average amount of carbon get more money back than they paid in tax. That allows them to buy a heat pump system for their home. These have come down in price, use only 20-30% of the energy of conventional heating systems and will run on electricity which, when obtained from green sources, will cut GHG emission. Some people feel that the tax money should be used to subsidize green projects. The heat pump example shows that green projects don’t require subsidies.

F) Political Problems

For far too long carbon tax has been used as a political football between parties, using simplistic slogans without any serious debate. Many Canadians still see it as a tax grab rather than a tax shift. They believe that it will hurt the economy and the poor while the opposite has been shown in over 70% of more than 100 studies reviewed by the World Bank. They were also influenced by powerful organisations which, as late as 2013, did not know or ignored how the tax money flows back to individuals and businesses. As a result they published completely wrong figures on how it affects households (post 1 points 3 and 4). This allows politicians to keep portraying it as a tax grab. The word “tax” is repulsive to many. In the US the Sierra Club asked president Obama to support a fuzzy cap and trade system rather than a carbon tax. Preston Manning, co-founder of our conservative party now supports taxing carbon but does not like the word “tax” (20,21). Like in the horse and buggy days it is easy for politicians to predict job losses without mentioning resulting gains. In the US solar is now a $15 billion business employing more people than coal mining (22)

Since the main media reports a lot about the effects of climate change but little about the cause, politicians can’t be expected to have it all at their fingertips. This is demonstrated by what happened in Kamloops BC

Prior to the Canadian federal election there was an article on desmog.ca showing that the conservative candidate in Kamloops said during a radio interview that human emissions contributed only 1.5% towards climate change. The opposition candidates and one provincial MLA contested it with what they observed. Only one mentioned that is was 95% sure that humans caused it. None of them mentioned that since 1950 humans caused the CO2 level to rise to 30% higher than it ever was during the last 400,000 years and that it started rising shortly after the industrial revolution. I gave one comment and soon got an email from disqus digest telling me that my contribution was among the “Top conversations on DeSmogBlog”. You can see the whole story on http://www.desmog.ca/2015/10/08/conservative-candidate-mel-arnold-hit-hard-after-questioning-man-made-climate-change-cbc. The next day I got views from 7 countries almost all entered via disqus. It included 16 Russians, 8 Americans, and 6 Canadians . They all read post 23 and 24. Now there are hardly any viewers until I or any of you place another comment.

1) http://www.desmog.ca/2015/07/22/grassroots-canada-action-carries-deep-ties-conservative-party-oil-gas-industry

2) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/come-hell-or-high-water-the-disaster-scenario-that-is-south-florida/article25552300/

3) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/shelters-from-the-storm-preparing-cities-for-a-changing-climate-before-its-too-late/article25554271/

4) http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/letters/letter-wind-power-not-site-c-the-way-to-go-1.1940770

5) http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32131-the-new-climate-normal-abrupt-sea-level-rise-and-predictions-of-civilization-collapse

6) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/multi-meter-sea-level-rise-is-an-issue-for-todays-public_b_7875828.html

7) http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-scientists-arent-predicting-10ft-higher-sea-level-by-2050/

8) http://www.climate.org/topics/sea-level/index.html

9) http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

10) http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731989,00.html

11) http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/sites/www.globalccsinstitute.com/files/publications/24202/costs-ccs-and-other-low-carbon-technologies.pdf

12) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/the-world-is-passing-harper-by-on-carbon-tax-issue/article24830670/