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By bigcitylib, on June 15, 2013, at 6:50 am First, from the CAS site:
The Chinese translation of the “Climate Change Reconsidered—NIPCC Report” was organized by the Information Center for Global Change Studies, Scientific Information Center for Resources and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was published in May 2013 through Science Press. However, the Heartland Institute published the news titled “Chinese Academy of Sciences publishes Heartland Institute research skeptical of Global Warming” in a strongly misleading way on its website, implying that the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) supports their views, in contrary to what is clearly stated in the Translators’ Note in the Chinese translation.
(Read more…)
By bigcitylib, on June 14, 2013, at 10:15 am GLEAM, the Great Lakes Environmental Assessment and Mapping Project, has a series of interactive maps of Great Lake Stressors. I’ve included a couple related to Global Warming:
Water Level Change
Water Temperature Warming
Decreased Ice Cover
As you can see, T.O. and surrounding gets off pretty easy in regards to climate-change-related stressors, although it is located in one of the parts of the lakes under greatest stress when all issues are taken into consideration. Our particular problems seem to mostly involve toxins.
By bigcitylib, on June 14, 2013, at 6:59 am And the story links back to me, so you know its got cred.
By bigcitylib, on June 13, 2013, at 6:20 am Breitbart News has reported that the Heartland Institute–an infamous U.S. think-tank that shilled for both the oil and tobacco companies in times past–has teamed up the with Chinese Academy of Sciences to publish HI’s Climate Change Reconsidered documents, which are attempted “rebuttals” of the IPCC consensus report on global warming:The volumes, Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, are chock full of 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data concerning the veracity of anthropogenic climate change. Together, they represent the most comprehensive rebuttal of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings, which have (Read more…)
By bigcitylib, on May 18, 2013, at 4:50 pm When it comes to making the seas rise, our glaciers are kicking ass!The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period, causing the oceans to rise 0.03 inches, or about 0.7 millimeters per year.Nice to know this country is doing something.
By bigcitylib, on May 7, 2013, at 3:58 pm A nice chart, from here:
The graph above compares the price history of solar energy to conventional energy sources. This is what a disruptive technology looks like. While conventional energy prices remained pretty flat in inflation adjusted terms, the cost of solar is dropping,fast, and is likely to continue doing so as technology and manufacturing processes improve.That is all.
By bigcitylib, on April 22, 2013, at 2:48 pm Announcing his environmental platform, Dix said he does “not expect Vancouver to become a major export oil port” as he said appears to be contemplated in the Kinder Morgan proposal.Dix would not definitively rule out the project, saying the company has yet to submit a formal proposal.But he said he it appears the company is looking to increase by “five or six fold” the amount of oil going through Vancouver, which he said an NDP government would not support.
Assuming Dix wins in B.C.–a pretty safe wager at this point–no pipeline to the West (Read more…)
By bigcitylib, on March 22, 2013, at 7:01 pm HONG KONG – State-owned CNOOC, which made China’s biggest-ever overseas energy acquisition last year, said Friday that annual profit fell 9.3 per cent because of higher costs for exploration and for operating in Canada’s oil sands.
[...]
Foreign operating expenses, in particular, jumped by a quarter because a higher proportion of production came from the Canada’s tar sands, where costs to extract oil are significantly higher than conventional crude projects.
Not that I would treat them as in any way equivalent. For example, I like Chinese food.
By bigcitylib, on March 19, 2013, at 1:22 pm EXCLUSIVE / Germany’s largest and most prestigious research institute has pulled out of a Canadian government-funded CAN$25 million research project into sustainable solutions to tar sands pollution, citing fears for its environmental reputation.
[...]
“As an environmental research centre we have an independent role as an honest broker and doing research in this constellation could have had reputational problems for us, especially after Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.
By bigcitylib, on March 1, 2013, at 6:31 am From MERX, where governments post their RFPs and Qs:
The Department of Transport, Strategic Policy and Innovation Directorate, is responsible for ensuring a safe, efficient and reliable transportation system in Canada’s northern regions. TheDirectorate is responsible for managing the Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative to support research and development activities to design, develop, and implement innovative technologies, tools, and best practices; improve and enhance knowledge and understanding of the impacts of climate change on the northern transportation system; improve the resiliency and adaptability of both existing and future northern transportation infrastructure and operations to climate change; and encourage the development
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Feds Ask: How Do We Extract Resources From A Melting Arctic?
By bigcitylib, on February 25, 2013, at 3:01 pm And therefore Peter Kent gets no credit for announcing, for about the third time now, that Canada will follow U.S. emissions standards for heavy duty vehicles made in this country. Because Canada’s demand for such vehicles is too small that makers of them could not survive if shut out of U.S. market. This is not about matching or outdoing the Obama administration’s efforts. Its about reacting, in as minimalist a fashion as possible, to actions your lobbyists were unable to stave off. PS. Pollution Probe likes the gov’s approach! That’s one of Lawrence Solomon’s old “thinktank” type
By bigcitylib, on February 5, 2013, at 6:28 am Jonathon laments:
On Jan. 29, Windsor city council voted 8 to 3 to end the addition of fluoride to the city’s water supply. Local dentists are appalled. And with good reason: Water fluoridation (typically at the rate of 0.5 to 1.0 mg/L) is a safe and cost-effective practice that is supported by six decades of epidemiological data.
And winds up with:
The episode is also a wake-up call for ordinary Canadians who get their health news from reputable sources — such as their own conventionally accredited dentists and doctors, and from peer-reviewed medical literature. In Windsor, this silent
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Jonathon Kay On Junk Science
By bigcitylib, on February 2, 2013, at 5:59 pm This story has not had much pickup, esp. in the Canuck Media. But the Omaha World-Herald seems convinced of its provenance:
An Obama administration official indicated Friday that no decision will be made on the [Keystone XL Gateway] pipeline until at least June.
If true, its probably the most important story in the Canadian news last, this, or next week. Why your standard MSM types are obsessing over the LPoC beauty contest re #lpcldr at the expense of it is beyond me.
By bigcitylib, on February 1, 2013, at 7:33 pm “We’re talking the beginning of summer at the earliest,” said the source, who did not want to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the TransCanada Corp project, which has been pending for more than four and a half years. “It’s not weeks until the final decision. It’s months.”
Here’s the most important bit from the piece:“The fact the administration is taking its time suggests … that it wants to succeed with an airtight story that pleases the primary concerns of both sides,” said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners in Washington.
…which is to say
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Obama Delays Keystone XL Decision
By bigcitylib, on January 29, 2013, at 10:59 am Thanks to AGW. From here.
By bigcitylib, on January 16, 2013, at 7:30 am I think these graphs speak for themselves:
But if they don’t. Simon Donner of UBC says:
…the pipeline expansion would completely undermine not just B.C.’s emissions reduction policy, but the entire country’s emissions reduction policy.
The second graph shows the estimated gap (i.e. necessary reductions) between the most recent national emissions estimate (2010, 692 Mt) and the policy goal for 2020 (17% reduction, ~607 Mt). The emissions embedded in the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline (82.5 Mt) is alone almost as great as the Canadian 2020 emissions gap (85.3 Mt). Add in the original Kinder
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Emissions From Northern Gateway And Kinder Morgan
By bigcitylib, on January 11, 2013, at 6:28 am Chief Justin George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation connects a few of the dots leading from omnibus budget bills C38 and C45 to Kinder Morgan’s expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Most interesting bit from the news release:
[Trans Mountain] is a brand new pipeline following a new route; the existing pipeline was built without First Nations consent; and there have been 78 spills since 1951.
My contention has been that the success of the Trans Mountain expansion project will be a function of its ability to keep to the same right-of-way as the old line. Kinder Morgan has said it will do this where possible.
By bigcitylib, on December 29, 2012, at 9:22 am From Today’s London Free Press:
As Conservative Senator Bob Runciman pointed out in a news release, that approval [for a complex at Ostrander Point], like so many others, was granted against local wishes. The project also “threatens migratory birds and bats and it makes no sense from an energy standpoint,” the senator said.
Runciman points out that another wind farm in a designated important bird area, Wolfe Island, has a kill rate for birds and bats “that is seven times the industry average in Canada, primarily because it is located in the wrong spot.”
The actual number counted between
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: More On Birds, Turtles, And Wind Farms
By bigcitylib, on December 22, 2012, at 12:25 pm From one of the very few media outlets that has bothered to pick up the story, an early Xmas gift:
A major pharmaceutical company has opted to sever ties with a libertarian think tank that provides arguments critical of global warming and the effects of tobacco smoking.
Pfizer Inc., a New York City-based business that boasts of being the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company, decided to cut financial support from the Heartland Institute.
Pfizer’s decision came about after lot of hard-work that started this Spring after the leak of HI’s financial statements and their short-lived and yet now infamous
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Pfizer Abandons Heartland Institute
By bigcitylib, on December 7, 2012, at 9:37 am From MERX:
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses (LFZ) has developed preliminary predictive modelling tools to quantify the public health impacts to Canadian residents from biological hazards with emphasis on the expected direct and indirect impacts of climate change. LFZ requires a Contractor with expertise in predictive modelling of microbial hazards, climate change impacts, population health, and food and water safety to provide technical services to develop risk models. An existing risk modelling framework and database architecture will be expanded upon to include consideration of additional pathogen/product combinations. Additional modules will be added to the
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Study In Place Of Action
By bigcitylib, on December 5, 2012, at 10:37 am Climate change denier Christopher Monckton, adding to the gaiety of nations.
By bigcitylib, on November 8, 2012, at 6:37 am Not just because the U.S. ambassador says not too. But because deciding on the “safest route” in an EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) is just a matter of counting how many streams must be crossed, properties expropriated, and etc, an… . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Keystone XL: Don’t Get Your Hopes Up
By bigcitylib, on October 23, 2012, at 12:52 pm Climate scientist Michael Mann has finally filed his lawsuit:
Today, the case of Dr. Michael E. Mann vs. The National Review and The Competitive Enterprise Institute was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Dr. Mann, a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has instituted this lawsuit against the two organizations, along with two of their authors, based upon their false and defamatory statements accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky. Dr. Mann is being represented by John B. Williams of the
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Suck On It Mark Steyn
By bigcitylib, on October 19, 2012, at 7:09 pm “Wow. Umm. They didn’t tell me I’d have to answer questions like that when I took this job. I think that it’s – I don’t know the total answer to that –,” Wow indeed.
By bigcitylib, on October 16, 2012, at 12:54 pm Not really something worth doing, because its only The Sun, but since it won’t take very long…
In his commentary on the much ballyhooed David Rose story in the weekend Daily Mail (UK), Gunter writes:
One problem with determining whether the Earth is warming is that it’s hard to measure.
The Met says 1998 was the warmest year on record, meaning in the past 132 years for which reliable temperature data exist.
NASA, another leading global climate monitoring agency, says 2005 and 2010 tied as the warmest years.
Interpreting temperature trends obviously depends on what years you choose.
If you
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Refuting Lorne Gunter On AGW
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