Tag Archives: climate change

The better way to climate action?

03 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Renewable energy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Only 3 out of 186 countries filed emissions-reductions plans by the February deadline. So, what actions might REALLY do something, an Ottawa energy economist asks

The 2030 emissions targets will likely be missed by a wide margin, and succeeded by ever more stringent and unattainable targets for the future.

Photo: Financial Post

March 3, 2020

Ottawa-based energy economist Robert Lyman published an opinion in today’s Financial Post outlining the apparent futility of the Paris Accord, and the upcoming climate action meeting in November.

An excerpt:

From this vantage point, the 2030 targets seem likely to meet the same fate as the previous global targets set for 2000, 2010, and 2020 — that is, they will be missed by a wide margin, and succeeded by ever more stringent and unattainable targets for the future.

Canadians remain remarkably ill-informed about the trends in international emissions and the very small role Canada plays. Almost all political parties declare absolute allegiance to emissions-reduction targets that cannot be met and would have virtually no impact on the trends in global emissions if they were. So, what is to be done?

If one is convinced by the arguments that human emissions pose unacceptable risks in terms of future climate effects, then the wise course would be to devote most of our climate-related expenditures, not to emissions reduction, but to actions that will improve Canada’s ability to adapt to the climate changes that occur and to carefully monitoring these changes over time.

If, however, the science and modelling that underpin current projections of climate emergency seem of doubtful credibility, Canadians should adopt a different insurance policy against future harm: focusing on emissions reductions that offer economic and environmental benefits beyond GHG emissions; investing heavily in research and development on new energy technologies; protecting Canadian industry and jobs from the harmful competitive effects of higher energy costs; and assessing proposals for new energy infrastructure according to a broad range of public policy considerations, not just those related to emissions reduction. Climate realism will serve us better than climate alarm.

Wynne government ad would have been banned last year: Auditor General

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

…but the Ontario Liberal government changed the rules so ad promoting its “green” agenda is now allowed.

Farmers Forum, August 2016

By Tom Collins

TORONTO– The Ontario government is once again calling on television scientist David Suzuki to help get its message out, but the province’s auditor general says the latest ad would have been banned under old rules that were changed last year by the Liberal government.

Suzuki spoke to an auditorium of school kids about climate change where Suzuki warned that the earth is in trouble, not enough adults are doing anything, and the results could be irreversible if nothing is done immediately. Suzuki then told the kids they would have to live with the consequences. The talk was for an ad to support the Liberal climate change action plan.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk slammed the ad saying in early June that the commercial doesn’t provide any useful information.

“Instead, it appears to be designed to create apprehension about the effect of climate change so viewers will be more likely to support Ontario’s climate change action plan,” she said in a statement. She said the ad reflects support for the Liberal government.

Taxpayers paid for it.

The much-loved and much-hated Suzuki doesn’t get the same respect from the scientific community. Greenpeace co-founder and scientist Patrick Moore told Brian Lilley of theRebel.media that Suzuki “is not the geneticist who’s using genetics because he’s against all the genetic sciences that we have developed to improve our food and medicine.” Moore, who left Greenpeace when that group abandoned science for ideology, added, “That to me is indicative of someone who has gone astray in their mind somewhere.”

“He id a really good job of popularizing science in his early years but he became political and ideological,” said Moore. “He just does not engage with anybody on a meaningful level who wants to debate with him or discuss with him… they’re feeding him all this propaganda, and that’s what he talks about.”

Suzuki also did a commercial for the Liberals in 2011, supporting then premier Dalton McGuinty for re-election.

The article is on page A21 of the August edition of Farmers Forum, see farmersforum.com

 

Group files court documents for Judicial Review of wind farm approval

01 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

South Shore Prince Edward County: how did a power plant get approved for this? [Photo Point 2 Point Foundation]

South Shore Prince Edward County: how did a power plant get approved for this? [Photo Point 2 Point Foundation]

Canada Newswire

Community Group Files Request for Judicial Review of Wind Farm Approval Process

<!– newsBody:PICTON, ON, Nov. 30, 2015 /CNW/ – CCSAGE Naturally Green (CCSAGE-NG) filed notice in Divisional Court at Ottawa today for a Judicial Review of the Renewable Energy Approval process for the White Pines wind power project in Prince Edward County.

The power project was approved by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change in 2015. Part of that approval included a permit issued by the Minister of Natural Resources and Forests to “kill, harm and harass” endangered or threatened wildlife species.

CCSAGE cited institutional bias, lack of evidence-based studies, disallowance of municipal input, and denial of natural justice in its court filing, which is supported by 1,500 pages of evidence showing that the government’s approval process violated the constitutional rights of citizens and communities as well as international treaties and agreements.

Ontario’s Green Energy Act permits appeals of wind power approvals only on grounds of serious harm to humans, or serious and irreversible harm to animal and/or plant life and to the natural environment, but not on other grounds such as a biased approval process, violation of constitutional rights, harm to local economies, harm to heritage features, diminution of property values, or violation of international treaties and agreements.

CCSAGE NG Chair Anne Dumbrille said that because the existing appeal process is biased in favour of the wind power developers, the group’s only choice was court: “The Environmental Review Tribunal is a government-appointed panel that follows government rules with the result that it allows destruction of environmentally sensitive areas.  Our only recourse is to Canada’s courts, where rules of justice prevail,” she said.

CCSAGE NG was aided by research done by five students from the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

CCSAGE NG is a federally incorporated not-for-profit corporation working to ensure that “Green Energy” initiatives of governments and industry are safe and appropriate for the citizens, wildlife and the natural and heritage environments of Prince Edward County.

SOURCE Wind Concerns Ontario

–>

Ontario needs to learn from Europe’s green energy debacle, says policy advisor

16 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Financial Post, April 14

Ontario will follow the EU at its peril — power rates will soar while industries depart

As the Ontario government announces new unilateral climate policies, Canadian policymakers would be well advised to heed the lessons of Europe’s self-defeating green energy debacle.

The European Union has long been committed to unilateral efforts to tackle climate change. For the last 20 years, Europe has felt a duty to set an example through radical climate policy-making at home. Political leaders were convinced that the development of a low-carbon economy based on renewables would give Europe a competitive advantage.

European governments have advanced the most expensive forms of energy generation at the expense of the least expensive kinds. No other major emitter has followed the EU’s aggressive climate policy and targets. As a result, electricity prices in Europe are now more than double those in North America and Europe’s remaining and struggling manufacturers are rapidly losing ground to international competition. European companies and investors are pouring money into the U.S., where energy prices have fallen to less than half those in the EU, thanks to the shale gas revolution.

Although EU policy has managed to reduce CO2 emissions domestically, this was only achieved by shifting energy-intensive industries to overseas locations without stringent emission limits, where energy and labour is cheap and which are now growing much faster than the EU.

Most products consumed in the EU today are imported from countries without binding CO2 targets. While the EU’s domestic CO2 emissions have fallen, if you factor in CO2 emissions embedded in goods imported into EU, the figure remains substantially higher.

Of all the unintended consequences of EU climate policy perhaps the most bizarre is the detrimental effect of wind and solar schemes on the price of electricity generated by natural gas. Many gas power plants can no longer operate enough hours. They incur big costs as they have to be switched on and off to back-up renewables.

Most products consumed in the EU today are imported from countries without binding CO2 targets

This week, Germany’s energy industry association warned that more than half of all power plants in planning are about to fold: Even the most efficient gas-fired power plants can no longer be operated profitably.

Every 10 new units worth of wind power installation has to be backed up with some eight units worth of fossil fuel generation. This is because fossil fuel plants have to power up suddenly to meet the deficiencies of intermittent renewables. In short, renewables do not provide an escape route from fossil fuel use without which they are unsustainable.

Read more here: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/eus-green-energy-debacle-shows-the-futility-of-climate-change-policies

Global “warmists”: how far do they want us to go?

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

In Canada we hear about global warming and climate change but the rhetoric seldom goes to the extremes seen in other areas. Economist Robert Lyman, who advised the federal government on issues pertaining to energy, transportation and the environment for 37 years, reviews the situation in this paper.

An excerpt:

In April 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body well known for its faulty projections of global temperatures rising, issued yet another report claiming that the science of climate change is “settled” and irrefutable. It also issued a report on the mitigation measures that countries should take. The IPCC’s goal, as approved by governments in 2010, is to avoid a rise in global temperature to no more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. To achieve this, they estimate that greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere must be kept below 450 parts per million (ppm) and the world must stay within a carbon “budget” of about 1000 billion tons of CO2 to 2010.

The IPCC report followed, but was closely related to, the 2013 report of Carbon Tracker, a U.K.-based organization allied with a number of “ethical” investment funds. Carbon Tracker’s report, entitled Unburnable Carbon 2013, compared the carbon budget to the amount of carbon present in the world already proven reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. Its conclusion was that those current reserves totaled almost 3000 billion tons, three times the allegedly available budget.

The recommendations coming out of these two organizations today don’t even make it to the back pages of the financial sections of the newspapers, but they are making their insidious ways through the governments of western countries as they prepare for the next Climate Change “Meeting of the Parties” in 2015. We ignore this at our risk.

Read the full paper here: WHERE THE CLIMATE WARMISTS WANT TO TAKE US NEXT

Paying for greenhouse gas emissions: what’s right for Canada?

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

WHAT SHOULD WE PAY TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS?               Environmental organizations frequently call for Canadians to take expensive measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may accumulate in the atmosphere and eventually result in unwanted climate change. Economists have long studied the question of what premium citizens should be asked to pay in order to avoid the adverse environmental effects of climate change. This premium, often referred to as the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) has been variously estimated to fall somewhere between $20 and $85 per tonne, depending upon the inputs and assumptions used in the analysis. The primary tools upon which this analysis is based, however, are sophisticated computer models that attempt to integrate scientific assessments of the atmospheric effects of increasing GHG concentrations on temperature and other aspects of climate and economic assessments of the effects of these climactic changes on people’s incomes and wellbeing.

There are several problems with the analytical approaches that have been taken to date. Collectively, these problems suggest that the estimated values of the SCC are exaggerated. The modelers are free to use arbitrary inputs or ones that are largely unknown concerning climate sensitivity to GHG concentrations, social welfare and the economic effects of rising temperatures. The rate of time preference (i.e., discount rates) is a policy parameter, which reflects the choices of policy makers, not the objective assessment of analysts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, now 382 parts per million (ppm), should not be allowed to peak above 450 ppm and should stabilize in the long term at around 380 ppm. However, to achieve this, global emissions would have to decline by 60% by 2050 and emissions from industrialized countries like Canada would have to decline by over 80%. In fact, global emissions are rising, driven by economic development in developing countries and especially in Asia. According to the most recent authoritative forecasts, world energy consumption and related emissions will grow by 56% from 2010 to 2040.

There is no chance of a new climate change agreement before 2016 at the earliest, and that would not come into force before 2020. No progress seems likely on the core issues dividing developed and developing countries.

Canada represents only 1.9 % of global GHG emissions, and global emissions are growing at 1.2% per year. Even if Canada disappeared from the earth, global emissions growth would make up for the loss in 18 months.

Based on this, one should question whether any social premium should be paid for emissions reductions in Canada at all.  To make major costly emissions reductions in the absence of international agreement is to accept major economic harm with no compensating environmental benefits.

Robert Lyman, September, 2013

Robert Lyman is an economist specializing in energy issues; he lives in Ottawa.

Readers may also wish to read Ross McKitrick’s latest article on climate change statistics and forecasts here.