On communication of risk in the media: a case study using asbestos

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Blair

I had an interesting discussion this morning with a member of the media on the topic of risk communication. The discussion derived from an Ottawa Citizen article “DND moving 500 staff members into Gatineau building containing asbestos – workers not at risk, department says”. As a regular commentor on how risk and science is discussed in the public sphere, I expressed my concern about the formulation of the article and in reply got some strongly negative responses from the article’s author, Mr. David Pugliese, on Twitter. Now as everyone knows, Twitter is not the ideal environment for nuanced discussion and soon the discussion descended to the point where Mr. Pugliese was directly accusing me of conflict of interest, and called me a climate change denier (since removed). So it seemed a reasonable topic to address in a blog post to explain the nuance of my opinion.

First some background. As many of my readers know, I work for a large multi-national engineering firm called Parsons. I was not actually hired by Parsons, but rather our smaller Canadian firm was recently acquired by Parsons. As such I am not entirely familiar with what the larger entity does outside of the sphere of our former company. Now Mr. Pugliese assures me that my company has contracts with Public Works Canada and he may be correct on that score, however; due to the nature of the company’s internal structure, I derive no income from any activities in that part of the company. Moreover, as I have pointed out on more than one occasion, I derive absolutely no income from my blogging and do not blog on the company dime. Rather, I remain an unpaid shill for evidence-based decision-making. I have entire sections of my blog dedicated to how risk is communicated on topics such as Wifi and Gypsy moths and even talk about soccer fields. As such any claim of conflict of interest is simply laughable, but ad hominem attacks are often used by those who cannot counter points directly.

All that being given, I also have specific expertise in the field of both risk communication (which was one of the topics of my Doctoral Thesis) and have planned and conducted the investigation, monitoring and remediation of asbestos-affected buildings (not for Parsons). So I come into this discussion with relevant knowledge-set. The remainder of this blog post will involve a discussion of the formulation (in the technical writing sense) of the Ottawa Citizen article to show how it either consciously, or unconsciously, drives the reader to negative conclusions and unwarranted (in my opinion) fears. Now before I start, let’s be clear. I do not know whether Mr. Pugliese has any opinions on the topic of risk, asbestos or labour relations. I cannot tell if he tweaked his story to bring in more eyeballs, or even if the report published looks anything like what he submitted to his editors. I also know that editors can do a lot to tweak the direction of an article to draw in eyeballs. So I will restrict my comments to the way in which the report reads on the page and how it emphasized (intentionally or not) one side over the other. The approach used is a familiar one and so before you go any further have a read of the article, I will wait here.

While we are waiting for the others, let’s cover a couple topics important to this discussion. Let’s start with the risk angle. In a previous post “On Science Communication and the Difficulty Relaying Scientific Information to the Public” I introduced some of you to the concept of “dread risk”. As I describe in my previous post: “dread risk” is a term used by Dr. Paul Slovic in his seminal article on risk communication called “Perceptions of Risk“. For those of you without access to journal articles Dr. Roger Pielke discusses the topic in a blog posting. I have previously suggested that any reader who wants a non-technical but compelling read on the subject of Risk should get the book by Dan Gardner of the same name. For those of you not interested in doing that much work suffice it to say: dread risks are risks associated with factors that cannot be seen or felt using our normal senses and can have serious or life-threatening consequences, often a long time after the initial exposure.

Two classic sources of dread risk in our society are radiation and asbestos. Both represent an unseen danger that can have deadly consequences and over which the average person has no control/or knowledge of their exposure. As such the public tends to have an almost genetic fear of these sources of risk. Put the word “asbestos” in a headline and you will pull in readers.

Secondly, understand the dread risk almost always exaggerates actual risk. With respect to asbestos, the fibres are potent carcinogens, but only if inhaled. If asbestos has been correctly encapsulated (typically in wall spaces, under tiles or in attics) then occupants of affected buildings are not at risk. Only if the asbestos is disturbed are occupants at risk. Since virtually every commercial building built prior to 1989 has asbestos in it, an entire industry has grown to ensure that building occupants are not put at unacceptable risk from the existing asbestos. Recognize that building owners will be liable for any associated occupational illnesses, so they become pretty careful to ensure that employees are not put at any real risk. Moreover, regulators are incredibly strict about how asbestos is handled in occupational environments.

Now that our readers are back, let’s get back to our discussion of the article. We won’t consider the headline because we all know that headlines are written by editors to drive eyeballs to articles and writers have little or no control over that content. That being said, absent the word “asbestos” in the title, the article would likely have seen an order of magnitude fewer sets of eyeballs.

Asbestos is first mentioned in paragraph 3 which reads:

She acknowledged the building contains asbestos. “It is contained and encapsulated and does not pose a threat to employees,” she said. “There is no associated health or safety risk to employees who may be relocated to work in that building.”

Note the use of the word “acknowledged”. It is typically used in the context of someone admitting to something they would prefer not to say. No one “acknowledges” that they love ice cream, but PR flacks will often “acknowledge” bad news if repeatedly pressed by courageous reporters. The remainder of the acknowledgment is then put in quotation marks. The author of the piece is simply reporting what was heard while not providing any particular credence to the position/information. In risk communication authors often do this to information they do not explicitly trust. This sows the seeds of doubt into the minds of the reader. Now if the alternative view is similarly placed in quotation marks then the piece ends up reading as balanced, if not then the reader is given an unconscious (and sometimes wrong) impression that the author believes one side of the argument more than the other.

The next two paragraph serve as the counterpoint:

Although a number of employees have raised the issue with the Citizen, Collier said the DND has not received any concerns from employees.

June Winger, executive vice president of the Union of National Defence Employees, said the presence of asbestos is an ongoing problem with many DND buildings. It is not uncommon to see warning signs about asbestos in certain facilities, she added

The first paragraph implies a lack of faith by the employees in their employer by noting that employees are complaining to the media but not their employer. The second paragraph provides the opinion of the employee’s union. Note the absence of quotation marks around the comments by the union representative. This information is so certain that it doesn’t need quotation marks to qualify it.

The next paragraph provides more detail:

“It’s definitely something we are concerned about,” Winger said. “We expect the employer to meet their safety obligations and we’ll be holding their feet to the fire on this type of thing.”   

This paragraph is in quotation marks as it contains a direct statement from the union that strongly infers that the union is of the opinion that the employer would put their employees at risk if only they could get away with it. The union will be “holding their feet to the fire” since they only “expect” that their employer will “meet their safety obligations”, but really are we to believe that? Clearly not, as the union needs to keep their employer’s “feet to the fire”.

I’m not sure why anyone would work for an employer who they don’t trust to keep them safe but then I have always worked in environments where safety of employees was the first, second and third priority of management.

The next two paragraphs are relatively anodyne:

Public Services and Procurement Canada spokesman Pierre-Alain Bujold said testing has been done on the government-owned building. “As with all PSPC buildings containing asbestos, an annual asbestos inspection of every known piece of asbestos in the building is conducted to identify safety concerns and needed remedial actions,” he said. “As a result of these activities, there is no risk to the health and safety of employees working in the building.”

He noted that the last annual inspection at 45 Sacré-Coeur was completed on November 28, 2015. Ongoing monitoring by building service technicians is also being done, he added.

This employer’s response is a pat bureaucratic response with no indication of empathy by the employer. The article then goes back to address the practicalities of the move. In the end we have a 600+ word article that would be mostly ignored absent the asbestos angle.

So what is the take-away from the article? The tone of the article presents an emotionless, empathy-free employer who only “acknowledges” problems (who certainly doesn’t volunteer info). This emotionless, empathy-free employer is forcing employees to endure this dread risk. Those employees, however, are protected by the brave union that will keep the employer’s “feet to the fire” to ensure that the employer meets “their safety obligations”. This is odd because nowhere in the article is there the slightest indication that the employer has ever failed to meet its safety obligations. Rather the quotations from those empathy and emotion-free automatons demonstrate that the employer is doing yearly testing; is maintaining a careful and detailed inventory of the asbestos and has a labeling scheme to inform employees about the location of every bit of asbestos risk.

So re-reading this piece I realize that I may have been too harsh on Mr. Pugliese with respect to risk communication. The article certainly makes abundant use of loaded language and dread risk to pull in readers, but perhaps the emphasis of this dread risk is one derived from a union/employer diametric and only uses the asbestos risk as a foil in that battle? Now I am not one to read the comments on online articles (who has the time?) but I made an exception in this case and I am glad to say that I was not the only one who saw this article as implying the presence of serious risk while, simultaneously, using the language of moderation.

Post-script: Mr. Pugliese has been kind enough to comment on my post. The entire comment, unedited in original format, is provided in the comments section below. A version presenting his comment in regular text and regular tab spacing and including my replies (in inset and in italics) is provided here.

Mr. Pugliese: For someone who says he has “specific expertise” in the field of risk communication, it is fascinating how – in my view – you have jumped to many erroneous conclusions.

You claim to discuss the “formulation” of the article but you were in no way involved in that formulation. You have no knowledge how the interviews were conducted or how the information was provided by employees, unions or the Defence Department.

Reply: you appear to have misunderstood how the term “formulation” is often used in technical writing. “Formulation” includes how the actual report comes together on the written page, not simply the process of writing the article. As such my commentary is entirely valid as it refers to the completed product not simply the physical/intellectual process of creating the written product. That being said, I have replaced the term in the one place where it could be misconstrued.

Was the word “acknowledged” used because the Defence Department was not forthcoming about this issue in the first place? You don’t know do you? But you assume otherwise.

Reply: I make no assumptions, I make a clear statement about the word and its use in this context. “Acknowledged” is a loaded word that is typically used in a specific manner in reporting and by the sounds of it I described it correctly in this case.

Then you write: “The remainder of the acknowledgment is then put in quotation marks. The author of the piece is simply reporting what was heard while not providing any particular credence to the position/information. In risk communication authors often do this to information they do not explicitly trust. This sows the seeds of doubt into the minds of the reader.”
Really? Or was that line put in quotations perhaps because it was the only piece of information that was provided in an email by the Defence Department and the reporter put it in quotations so the reader gets an unfiltered view of the message that DND wants?

Reply: Once again your reply does not address the point. Whether they gave you an expansive interview or a terse one sentence reply, how you place that reply in context in your article speaks to the tone of the article. All I did is provide my readers with that context.

You don’t know do you? But you have assumed motives on my part.
You write: “Note the absence of quotation marks around the comments by the union representative. This information is so certain that it doesn’t need quotation marks to qualify it.”

Reply: I make no assumptions about motive. I carefully avoid making any implications about motive in my post and repeatedly suggest that the tone could be incidental and not intentional. With regards to this specific example, I simply point out how text included without quotation marks is viewed in an article and how it affects the tone of the article when mirroring text in quotation marks. Once again this is technical writing 101 and will come as no surprise to most of my technical readers. My readership is strongly weighted to technical readers and most will recognize the approach once it is pointed out to them.

Or was it because a union official did a 20 minute interview with the journalist while the Defence Department sent a 20 word email? You don’t know but you assume you know and then assign motives.

Reply: Once again that background is not relevant to the discussion at hand: how the article reads on the page. I did not do a background on the piece nor did I attribute any motives. I provided a discussion of the article, as presented in the online edition, in light of technical writing standards and risk communication norms.

You also write: “The tone of the article presents an emotionless, empathy-free employer who only “acknowledges” problems (who certainly doesn’t volunteer info).”
Or is that empathy free tone simply the result of the briefly worded email sent by Public Services and Government Procurement to the reporter? Again, you don’t know but you jumped to conclusions to assign motives.

Reply: No I don’t, neither do I know what the letter/message you sent to the employer said, nor what history you may have with the interviewee in question. Once again this is all irrelevant. If you have a personal animus; were annoyed with the public relations person or simply wrote the article in a particular style that is reflected in how your article reads. Readers don’t get the benefit of the insight you are providing and so are left to read the article as written. It is from that perspective that I wrote this post. 

Posted in Risk, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Debunking the Leap Manifesto’s 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight Annual Energy, Health, and Climate Cost Savings

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Blair

As regular readers of this blog know, I have spent a lot of time debunking components of the still-draft paper prepared by Dr. Jacobson 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World (called 100% WWS hereafter). My last post debunked the claimed health costs savings associated with 100% WWS. Before that I discussed its intellectual incoherence; its general failings with respect to assessing energy costs; its issues with energy storage; its nonsensical aversion to nuclear energy; and its dismissal of limitations in rare earth metal supplies. In my last post, I promised to move forward to discuss Canadian job losses/gains but in re-reading the article I realized that I had not finished addressing the topic of costs savings.

In my last post we discovered that a bit of creative extrapolation combined with a novel use for an obscure concept from economics (value of statistical life or VSL) could result in reported “health cost savings” equivalent to half the actual Canadian health care budget. Today we will see how using an inflated value for the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) one can make it look like Canadians will save thousands of dollars in health and climate costs by implementing 100% WWS when the truth is, as I will show, likely at least an order of magnitude lower.

For those of you wondering where I am getting these numbers, it is from the Solutions Project infographic for Canada for 100% WWS. This infographic provides the talking points that Ms. Klein and her followers from the Leap Manifesto have been using to attempt to discredit anyone who challenges the energy plan in the Leap Manifesto. In my previous blog post I was able to debunk the “Avoided Mortality and Illness Costs” in the infographic. Today I will look at the “Money in Your Pocket” box, which claims that “Annual energy, health, and climate cost savings per person in 2050: $8,887. As I will demonstrate in this post, this important talking point represents another exaggeration which takes the ridiculous costs savings discussed in my previous post and adds it to an outlier estimate for the “social cost of carbon” to provide a resultant value that is completely out of keeping with any reasonable interpretation of the academic literature.

So let’s get on with the topic at hand: understanding how that number ($8,887 in per capita cost savings in 2050) was generated for the infographic. The number comes from column G of Table 6 of 100% WWS. Careful readers will notice that the infographic says $8,887 but the paper says $8,888 but don’t worry, if you try to sweat the small stuff you will never make it through this paper. To figure out where the $8,887 comes from you need to go to the supplementary information that came with the paper, in particular the spreadsheet used to do the calculations. To see the derivation of the number, open the spreadsheet and under tab “Infographic” it appears as cell V23. That $8,887 is made up of three numbers:

  • “Average (middle-value) energy benefit (cost savings) of WWS to each person ($/person/yr)” = -$16 hereafter “Energy cost savings”
  • Middle-value air-quality benefit (avoided damages) of WWS to each person (/person/yr) = $2571 hereafter “Air quality benefit” and
  • Middle-value climate-change benefit (avoided damages) of WWS to each person ($/person/yr) = $6109  hereafter “Climate change benefit”

Now the first number is pretty inconsequential but kills another one of the big talking points that Dr. Jacobson (and the Leapers) uses when discussing his paper in Canada. You see for most countries in his analysis, once he applies his unique algorithms to the data, the net cost of energy under 100% WWS comes out to be lower in 2050 than the “business as usual” scenario using fossil fuels. Thus he can claim a cost savings (which the infographic actually does of $163 per capita). It is interesting that of all the numbers in the infographic, this is the one ($163) I have not yet been able to trace and it may actually represent a typo. The reason I say this is that the infographic admits that average electricity costs under 100% WWS will be higher than the business as usual case using fossil fuels. Given this fact, I can’t quite figure out how he manages to say that we will save money on electricity using that higher priced electricity. But enough about that since we already know that talking point is dead and the number is negligible. Suffice it to say that under 100% WWS electricity in Canada will be more expensive than under the “business as usual” case.

The second number is simply a re-statement of the health costs savings that I addressed in my last post. They simply take that invalid health cost savings number (based on the “value of statistical life”) and correct it for the modeled 2050 Canadian population. Actually, this number once again shows pretty definitively how ridiculous the figure is since the theorized death toll (9,598 by their inflated numbers) results in a health care cost of $2,571 per person. Can you imagine what the health costs would be for the remaining 40+ million Canadians in 2050 if the health costs for 9,598 resulted in a per capita cost of $2,571? Given actual health costs, rather than the ridiculously inflated number, this figure also goes from $2,571 to some amount approaching zero (it, too, is negligible per capita).

The final number is that $6,109 per capita. It represents the “avoided 2050 global climate change costs” from Table 8 corrected for population (once again there is a bit of confusion here as the spreadsheet calls it Table 9 but the paper calls it Table 8). The energy number presented in 2050 is $141.7 billion/year (the 2050 avoided global climate costs) which consists of the 2013 carbon budget (503 Million tonnes/year with a correction factor) multiplied by the “social cost of carbon” in 2050 (in 2013 dollars) used in this paper. This where things get interesting.

Let’s start with a quick primer. The social cost of carbon (SCC) has been defined as:

 an estimate of the economic damages associated with a small increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, conventionally one metric ton, in a given year. This dollar figure also represents the value of damages avoided for a small emission reduction (i.e., the benefit of a CO2 reduction). 

A reasonably accurate estimate for SCC is a necessary first step in any process to justify climate change policy. As a consequence, the US EPA has spent millions of dollars comprehensively assessing the social cost of carbon as part of their mandate to make rules under their climate change regulations. Through their exhaustive process they have estimated a SCC range of  $26/tonne to $95/tonne with a 95% percentile of $212 tonne for SCC in 2050. Given this heavily researched topic, you might be surprised to discover that the 100% WWS paper uses a SCC value of $500/tonne with their range going from $282-$1063/tonne in 2050? Now that is one huge disparity and it seems pretty important so let’s look at it closer.

Well the EPA number is the result of the work of a team of specialists who ran a number of different economic models. It is considered the state of the art and is relied upon by US regulators and the majority of economists out there. As for the 100% WWS number? Well not surprisingly it is a home-grown number derived by the Jacobson team for another one of the 100% WWS papers, specifically his road map to convert the 50 United States to Wind, Water, and Sunlight (100% USA paper).

So how did they get the higher number? For the 100% USA paper they did a limited review of selected papers on the subject (Table S3 in the supplementary materials). In their review they acknowledge the presence of other studies that give SCC values comparable to the EPA number but never address it directly. They then cite a single analysis that suggests much higher potential numbers and a second study that agrees with some of the premises of the first paper. So to summarize, having identified the range of values in the academic literature the paper simply discounts them and uses the one outlier value. Now as a regular reader of the scientific literature I ask: would you accept a consensus number generated using millions of dollars of research and used by almost every critical thinker in the business, or would you use the one outlier that presents a number an order of magnitude higher? Not surprisingly, for 100% USA (and 100% WWS) they chose the latter. They took the higher number and correcting it for inflation they derived the SCC value of $500/tonne in 2050 used in the paper and the infographic. So using a value of $500/tonnes they derived a number of $6109 per capita. Now if we assume the number is closer to the EPA number (say the 3% value of $69/tonne) the resulting savings would be $843 per capita. Adding the three numbers together (-16 +0 + 843) equals a $827 per capita total savings, or almost an order of magnitude less than the value from the infographic.

Now let’s be clear here. Nothing Dr. Jacobson has done is unethical or scientifically inappropriate. Dr. Jacobson is not trying to trick us in any way. He works hard to makes all his assumptions as transparent as possible which is exactly what we would expect from a good scientist. He then he uses those transparent assumptions to make predictions. This is also the work of a good scientist. The only “problem” with his work is that the assumptions he uses are consistently inconsistent with the scientific consensus. There is no law that says you can’t use VSL to assess health costs even though it is inconsistent with the actual definition of VSL. Similarly, there is no law that says that you cannot choose a high outlier value for SCC. Ultimately, it would be at the peer-review stage of the work that the peer-reviewers would be expected to ask pointed questions about the choices made in the paper, but even then, as I noted, all the decisions are transparent so the peer reviewers might even let them go. It is up to the reader, therefore, to recognize that many of these assumptions are manifestly ridiculous and that the resultant conclusions are similarly out to lunch. If you don’t believe me (after all this isn’t peer-reviewed either) then believe an actual peer-reviewed examination of the topic which singles out 100% WWS for its unique assumptions.

Frankly 100% WWS is a perfect example of caveat emptor in the scientific literature. The only problem is that the majority of the people reading it do not have the expertise to recognize where unexpected/unfamiliar/ridiculous assumptions are being made. Frankly, when I first read the paper I missed a lot of the assumptions as well since my expertise is not in the topic of costs/economics. It was only after I recognized the pattern of decisions that I decided to look more deeply into the choices made in the paper. Only then did I come to realize how badly this paper risks distorting the policy discussion in our country by convincing a bunch of science-blind political activists that there is a better way…I address that issue in my postscript.

Postscript

I have been asked online why I am so hard on 100% WWS? After all it is simply the output of one small research group? A project that is mostly ignored by the scientific community or when considered by other experts in the field is often treated like an interesting outlier (an interesting academic/intellectual exercise) rather than a practical solution to our energy needs. Admittedly Dr. Jacobson has developed quite the following based on this work but much of that following is from activists and non-scientists who do not (or are unable to) read too deeply into the work. As I have written, it is such a wide-ranging work that it is essentially impossible to peer review since no individual reader will have the necessary expertise to critique it in its entirety. Still, my very deep reading of the work has convinced me is not a realistic approach to achieving a fossil fuel-free future.

Ultimately the reason I have critiqued the paper so carefully is because in my country a band of activists under the banner of the Leap Manifesto are treating it as a serious blueprint for our energy future. In Canada, the backers of the Leap Manifesto are working across the country to advance the 100 % WWS cause, and in doing so they are setting back the cause of low-carbon energy in the process. Look at the Leapers in British Columbia, fighting the Site C Dam, which represents the biggest, low-carbon addition to the western Canadian power grid in a generation. Site C represents exactly the type of project we will need if we are going to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement. Similarly in Eastern Canada (and the Eastern US) the Leapers and the 100% WWS folk are fighting battles against nuclear power; even though the best science by scientists who study renewable energy demonstrates that any system heavily dependent on renewables needs nuclear or hydro as a quickly dispatchable baseline energy source. If the Leapers did not exist, I would let 100% WWS sit unread and untouched, but because it has become the political touchstone for a generation of science-blind policy activists. Because of this it is up to scientists like myself, who have enough knowledge to debunk works like this one, to bring the discussion back to rational and pragmatic plans; plans that have a real chance at leading us to a fossil fuel-free future. The Leap Manifesto and 100% WWS do not represent such a plan.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Fossil Fuel Free Future, Leap Manifesto, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Debunking the Leap Manifesto’s 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight Health Cost Savings for Canada

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Blair

As anyone interested in the topic of renewable energy knows Premier Brad Wall made the news the other night. He did so by giving a speech where he discussed a number of the figures provided in the “100% clean economy by 2050” plan being pushed by the followers of the Leap Manifesto. As described in the CBC article, Premier Wall took a serious hit on social media for his troubles. So what was his major sin? Well unlike the Leapers who like to take a superficial look at these sorts of things Premier Wall actually took the time to look into the supporting material associated with the still-draft paper prepared by Dr. Jacobson 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World (called 100% WWS hereafter) that serves as the basis for the plan presented in the Manifesto. To get an idea of what Premier Wall had to say look at my post Debunking the Leap Manifesto 100% Renewables by 2050 demand which identifies many of the same numbers as the Premier presented with the benefit of providing links to the original documentation to demonstrate that Premier Wall did indeed get the numbers absolutely right.

So what is this report I am talking about? Well 100% WWS provides a description of a program that theoretically could allow each country in the world to achieve 100% renewable energy (excluding nuclear power and any new hydro). Regular readers of this blog know I have written a lot about the Leap Manifesto. Recent readers to this blog may not know, however, that I have written even more about the 100% WWS project. In fact I have written so much about 100% WWS that it has its own section in my blog. My research on the topic has demonstrated to me that 100% WWS is simply is not a realistic approach to achieving a fossil fuel-free future. As for the Leap Manifesto, some of you might have the mistaken belief that the advocates of the Leap Manifesto did some background research for the programs proposed in their Manifesto. In that you would be wrong. Rather the advocates of the Leap Manifesto didn’t do any energy math themselves, instead they hooked their rail car to the train run by Dr. Jacobson and his team so the flaws in 100% WWS also represent flaws in the Leap Manifesto.

As I point out above, as punishment for the sin of actually presenting the numbers underlying the Leap plan, the Premier was pilloried on Twitter by Naomi Klein and her followers. Because the numbers Premier Wall presented were all correct, Ms. Klein and her acolytes chose not to attack the Premier on that topic, instead choosing to raise a series of claims about the purported health care savings associated with the switch to 100% WWS. As I will show these claims are, to put it nicely: a load of bunk. You might ask where Ms. Klein gets her numbers?  The answer is “The Solutions Project” which is a web site created by Dr. Jacobson and his team to promote 100% WWS.

So now the obvious question? What is wrong with these health cost claims? Well as I will show below the health cost claim made in 100% WWS begins with a scientifically unjustifiable extrapolation and then multiplies that extrapolation with a number completely unrelated to actual health care costs. The result is a scientifically unjustifiable factoid that has been used to shout down their opponents. The claim Ms. Klein keeps citing is from  the Solutions Project infographic for Canada. The infographic claims that implementing the 100% WWS program will save $107 billion a year in health costs and avoid 9598 air pollution related deaths a year. Now you are probably thinking to yourself that $107 billion sounds a lot for of saved health care costs and, of course, you would be right. Consider that in 2012 Canada’s total health care spending was $207 billion. Cutting $107 billion out of that sounds miraculous, and it would be miraculous if it were true, the only problem is that the number is simply a figment of someone’s imagination and does not reflect what 100% WWS actually says.

To explain, the number used in the infographic comes from Table 7 in the report “avoided air pollution PM2.5 plus ozone mortalities”. As indicated in Table 7, under the plan it is theorized that the application of 100% WWS would result in 9,598 avoided air pollution-related mortalities per year in Canada by 2050. That is a pretty impressive number, but where does it come from? Well that is an interesting question. The answer is that it is an unrealistic extrapolation from an incorrect baseline. To explain: in the paper Dr. Jacobson et al. look at global estimates of deaths caused by exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone. They present a range (4-7 million deaths a year) and use that number to estimate the number of deaths per country. Now their initial number is entirely correct. The World Health Organization reported that 7 million premature deaths were attributable to air pollution in 2012. Unfortunately what Dr. Jacobson et al. fail to mention is that:

 more than half of those premature deaths, 4.3 million, were attributable to indoor air pollution, largely fumes from coal- or wood-burning cookstoves in places like Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Africa.

Another 2.7 million premature deaths were tied to outdoor air pollution, mainly in the cities of East Asia and South East Asia. The researchers linked this pollution to fatal conditions like heart disease, strokes, or lung cancer.

Read that carefully, almost all the deaths are attributable to energy poverty in the developing world  and/or bad environmental regulations in the developing world, almost all occurred in Asia and Africa. Now, in 100% WWS the authors make the assumption that the deaths attributed to air quality are evenly distributed across the world. They take those huge number from East Asia and using statistical tools they allocate those deaths evenly across the entire world based solely on populations. By taking these deaths in East Asia and Africa and allocating them to Canada they calculate that in Canada 14,373 deaths were associated with PM2.5 and ozone in 2011. Taking that incorrect baseline number they then apply some correction factors to account for improvements in medical care between now and 2050 and present us with a yearly death toll of 9,598 in 2050. The problem is that this number is ridiculous on its face, so let’s fact check them for a minute. According to Environment Canada:

The ozone component of the Air Health Indicator model indicates a slight increasing trend since 1990 and suggests that about 5% of cardio-pulmonary mortalities were attributable to ozone exposure overall at the national level. The fine particulate matter component of Air Health Indicator suggests neither an increasing nor decreasing trend between 2001 and 2010. About 1% of cardiopulmonary mortalities could be attributable to fine particulate matter exposure.

According to the Statistics Canada causes of mortality statistics for 2009 (sorry most recent I could find) cardiovascular disease of all kinds kill approximately 68,000 Canadian a year. According to the Environment Canada statistics 3400 of those could be attributed to ozone (mostly from automobiles) and 680 to particulate matter. That comes out to 4080 deaths which is a lot less than the 14,373 used as a baseline by Dr. Jacobson. Using the correction factors presented in Dr. Jacobson’s spreadsheets, the number of deaths attributable to fossil fuels in 2050 would drop from the 9,598 in the infographic to a considerably smaller: 2725. While 2725 sounds like a lot of people, remember that is about the same number as die in car accidents every year and we aren’t looking to abandon the automobile because of automotive-related deaths.

Now let’s go back to that absolutely wrong claim that the 100% WWS program will save $107 billion a year in health costs. By simply looking at actual health care costs we already know that that claim is a load of bunk but the interesting question is: what is the basis for the claim? Well in the paper they take the number of lives saved (9,598) and multiply it by a factor called the “value of statistical life” (VSL).  The VSL is a very contentious term in economic research. The best description I could find on the topic is

A  willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimate values the change in well-being that would result  from changing the risk of death; it is measured by how much wealth a person is willing to forgo to obtain that reduction in the risk of death. Similarly, a willingness-to-accept (WTA) estimate is measured by how much more wealth an individual would require to accept a given increase in the risk of death. Summing such a measure across individuals can provide an estimated value of a “statistical life” (VOSL). Rather than the value for any particular individual’s life, the value of a statistical life represents what the whole group is willing to pay for reducing each member’s risk by a small amount. For example, if each of 100 000 people is willing to pay $ 40 for a reduction in risk from three deaths per 100 000 people per year to one death per 100 000 people, the total WTP is $ 4 million, and the value per statistical life is $ 2 millions (with two lives saved).

While that text is really quite challenging what is clear is that a VSL does not represent a real health care cost. Rather VSL represents a cost a society is willing to pay to avoid a death. As the literature points out VSL differs tremendously across countries and more interestingly based on the way people die. The VSL for deaths caused by children’s playgrounds differs from those to protect bike riders in cities. In Canada the current median estimate from the research is a VSL of about $4,688,000.

For the 100% WWS paper Dr. Jacobson chooses a VSL of $10,470,000, which as an American number is swollen by their litigous culture. He then takes that number and starts his unique manipulations for dates etc…. I will say it again in case anyone is confused: VSL is an interesting and controversial concept in the field of economics research but it has absolutely nothing to do with actual health care costs and cannot be used to estimate health care costs. the two are completely unrelated. To demonstrate how nonsensical this would be consider that the Canadian population is approximately 36 million and the Canadian VSL is about $4.5 million. Using the math presented in 100% WWS this would result in Canada’s health care costs being in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, but we already know that our actual total health care spending is around $207 billion?

So let’s look once more at the numbers we keep getting thrown out at us? We have an initial mortality number associated with fossil fuels that is based primarily on indoor air mortality in Asia and Africa. That number was then smeared evenly across the globe and used to extrapolate a Canadian mortality figure. Then instead of subjecting that extrapolated number to a reality check (say by looking at Canadian health statistics) the authors of 100% WWS blindly applied their own patented extrapolation system to establish what that number would look like in 2050. Essentially we can’t even argue that they made an educated guess because anyone making an educated guess would at least have done a reality check to see if their number had any relationship with reality before dumping it into their model.

Having derived their magical number of avoided premature mortalities by 2050 they then multiplied that number by another number (the value of statistical life) which as we have shown has absolutely no relevance to the topic at hand. What they have done is multiply a magical number by a completely irrelevant number in order to come up with a final number that they call in their infographic “avoided health costs per year”. This “cost” represents over half Canada’s total 2012 health care budget and represents 4% of our national GDP. As I have have shown this number, is in no way related to actual health care costs and so certainly does not represent a health cost saving.

Looking at this blog post I remain amazed that we have not seen this number debunked before as the numbers step way beyond ridiculous to the absurd. My only explanation is that no one has taken 100% WWS seriously enough to actually look at how they generate their outputs. To be kind, the spreadsheets provided to document the calculations form a rat’s nest of inter-related and under-documented Excel sheets and more interestingly, some of the numbers come from the previous spreadsheet created for the 100% USA report (which has an even more challenging set of spreadsheet tables). That being said, having demonstrated that the health care savings costs are so wrong only causes me to want to look into their jobs numbers, but the night is late and I do not have the energy to approach that problem tonight. Suffice it to say that with respect to health care costs, the numbers provided in the infographic and trumpeted by Ms. Klein, and her acolytes, has simply no basis is reality and should not be part of any substantive energy debate.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Fossil Fuel Free Future, Leap Manifesto, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

On the global climate change math supporting BC LNG

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Blair

Nov 4, 2016

I am re-posting this blog with the news that Woodfibre LNG has just been approved. The post below refers to the PNG LNG project which was only proposed to use electricity to compress its gas. Woodfibre LNG has committed to doing so. In doing so, it will be one of the lowest GHG sources of LNG in the world and the discussion below becomes even more relevant.

Original post

Yesterday a group of 90 scientists and climate activists sent a letter to the federal cabinet to argue against federal approval the Pacific Northwest (PNW) LNG project. The activists argue that the project would

make it virtually impossible for BC to meet its GHG [greenhouse gas] emission reduction targets, and would undermine Canada’s international climate change commitments

This morning the British Columbia Minister of the Environment suggested that the 90 activists had taken a myopic view of the situation. The proponents of the project, meanwhile, argue that the project is good for the environment. Now reading these differing statements you might think that someone is not telling the truth. In reality, all sides are correct and that is what makes the environmental debate such an interesting one. I will spend the rest of this post explaining how these apparently mutually exclusive statements are all true and how the Paris Agreement has actually served as a perverse disincentive discouraging international efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Let’s start with the climate activist’s side of the story first because it is by far the easiest. They are completely correct that if the PNW LNG project is approved it will make it harder to meet our international obligations under the Paris Agreement. In doing so this demonstrates the biggest weakness of the current international process to fight climate change (the Paris Agreement). As I have described in my previous posts on the Paris Agreement and its effect on British Columbia’s energy picture, under the Paris Agreement Canada has committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to 30% below our 2005 levels by 2030. As described by the climate activists and scientists, the PNW LNG project would add between 18.5% and 22.5% to British Columbia’s total GHG emissions. Now that increase would make it virtually impossible to meet British Columbia’s GHG targets by 2030. So it sounds like a slam dunk, the project shouldn’t go forward. The problem with that logic is that it takes the classic environmental credo “think globally and act locally” and turns it on its head. But how can this be?

Let’s start with some simple truths about the world energy picture. According to the International Energy Agency:

Globally 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity and more than 2.7 billion people are without clean cooking facilities. More than 95% of these people are either in sub-Saharan African or developing Asia, and around 80% are in rural areas.

From a human health perspective, the indoor air pollution associated with that energy poverty, on its own, kills between 3.5 million and 4.3 million people each year. In response to this global tragedy a number of Asian countries are working hard to get electricity to their poorest citizens. Because it is cheap and easy to produce the go-to source of this energy has been coal. India, on its own, has approximately 455 coal power plants in their energy pipeline with an estimated 519,396 megawatts of installed generating capacity on its way. China, meanwhile, is still piling on the coal plants even as it attempts to diversify its energy mix with renewable and nuclear energy alternatives.

The problem for these countries is the simple reality of energy math: coal represents the cheapest, most easily accessible and fastest way to get energy to its people. The problem is that tonne-for-tonne it is the worst power source from a greenhouse gas perspective. Now a lot of activists argue that these countries should switch to renewables but that is simply not an alternative. Renewables work well in combination with other baseline energy sources but cannot be the basis of an energy grid in a developing country, irrespective of what the 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight people will try to claim. Other activists claim that LNG will simply replace nuclear. Personally I think that is pretty cute; the same people who have spent the last 30 years fighting every advance to nuclear energy are now complaining that the world is not generating enough power using nuclear technology.

These countries’ alternatives to coal are nuclear, which is expensive, technically-challenging and for which the international lenders have been hesitant to supply funding; hydroelectric which comes with its own set of problems in densely populated countries; and natural gas. Now we all know that natural gas is a much better solution to the current energy crunch than coal. It produces approximately half the emissions of coal and has been described as the bridge fuel for these countries. As I will no doubt hear:

In the long term, natural gas plants do indeed produce less warming than coal, the researchers found. But that result comes with a caveat: without high-tech carbon storage, neither gas nor coal can achieve the type of greenhouse-gas reductions demanded by international bodies such as the IPCC.

Okay, now let’s look at this from a global perspective. It is accepted dogma that no first-world government on the planet is willing to go into energy poverty in order to meet climate change goals. It is similarly understood that no matter what the activists have to say there is simply no way that these 2.7 billion people are going to stay in energy poverty in perpetuity. So LNG is not the perfect solution but it is the best of many poor choices.

Talk all you want about the future risks of climate change but right now these Asian countries are seeing millions of their citizens dying yearly due to energy poverty and they want to deal with that problem now. So to repeat myself, due to the state of the technology and the state of these countries, their alternatives for baseline power are coal, nuclear or natural gas. Being environmentally aware many have decided that natural gas is the preferred option over coal and have built plants that need LNG.

Now let’s go back to the PNW LNG project. According to Environment Canada (not the proponent but Environment Canada):

The greenhouse gas intensity for the Project would be 0.27 tonnes carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG produced, but the proponent stated that this ratio could be less if additional engineering solutions  to mitigate greenhouse gases…. Of the twelve worldwide projects compared, the average greenhouse gas intensity is 0.33 tonnes carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG

So doing the simple math the PNW LNG project has a 18% lower greenhouse gas intensity versus our average competitor. Moreover, according to life cycle analysis of LNG, the raw material acquisition energy cost for LNG is equivalent to 3% – 4% of the energy generated by the LNG. If the British Columbia government can electrify the process then the PNW LNG project can operate at an intensity equivalent to 80% of our competitors. What that means is that if consumers in Asia use British Columbia LNG the global emissions for the LNG will be 20% lower than existing LNG sources. If this LNG replaces coal as an energy source the global benefit of using BC LNG is even greater. So from a global perspective this is also a slam dunk, we sell our LNG to Asian clients and in doing so prevent the emissions of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have come from using coal or dirtier LNG sold by our competitors.

See what happened here? Both sides are correct, neither is wrong.

This brings us back to the perverse disincentive of the Paris Agreement. Because the Agreement is between state-level actors, all the math is based on national emissions. You essentially get no points for helping your neighbours. The problem with the process is that not all countries are part of the Paris Agreement and, more importantly, we all share the same planet. From a greenhouse gas perspective, energy decisions in Asia will affect British Columbia just as as much as energy decisions in BC will.

This brings us to our dilemma. By exporting LNG, British Columbia can have a net positive (good) effect on global emissions by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that will be spewed into the global atmosphere. We can provide a fuel with some of the lowest carbon intensity per kilowatt/hour generated and in doing so help reduce global emissions. Unfortunately, in doing so we will likely exceed our national NDC limits and look like bad guys under the Paris Agreement. So what do we do? Well the climate activists and scientists have made their opinion clear. They want to meet our Paris Agreement obligations even if in doing so has the perverse effect of incresing global greenhouse gas emissions.  They are the neighbour who keeps a spotless front yard but will not step onto the sidewalk to pick up the garbage that is strewn there.

The BC government, on the other hand, has taken a different view. They are looking at the big picture and see an opportunity to help the world reduce global emissions while starting a lucrative industry in BC. They have written legislation to make BC LNG as low-emitting as possible while working to change the accounting system to not count all the emissions from our export fuels against our Provincial carbon budget. That way they can show leadership on a provincial level while also showing leadership on an international level.

Which side is right? Well it really depends on how you look at the world. As a pragmatist I think the BC government is on the right path. I recognize that all the work we do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in BC can be undone with the flick of a pen in China or India. I see the opportunity to help the BC economy while making a difference on the international stage. I refuse to take the myopic view that BC meeting its local commitments is more important than controlling global emissions. I might be wrong in this, but I have yet to read a cogent argument that makes me think that may be the case.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Climate Change, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

On #elbowgate and Crybullies in the environmental and political spheres

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Blair

Yesterday Canadians were introduced to a relatively new phenomenon. One that is well known to anyone in the resource extraction industries or with right-of-center views but is much less well known elsewhere: the concept of crybullying and the existence of crybullies. You might not have ever heard the term so let’s start with a definition. A “crybully” has been defined as:

Someone who uses the perceived righteousness of a social justice cause as a pretext to abuse others, and then plays the victim when confronted about that abuse.

We have all seen it but most have not known what to call it. For a classic example of crybullying (or crymobs in this case) watch this video where a reporter simply trying to take pictures of a demonstration in a public space is physically assaulted by protesters. The photographer, who is standing still, is repeatedly bumped by these protesters who then turn around and demand that he be arrested for assaulting them. These activists have a simple approach as Daniel Greenfield (who has written a lot on the topic) points out:

If you don’t fight back, the crybully bullies you. If you fight back, the crybully cries and demands a safe space because you made him feel unsafe.

As for yesterday’s event, the Canadian House of Commons was preparing for an important vote, but prior to the vote the members were milling about on the floor after a break. The House was being called to order and the Honourable Members were moving to their seats. At this point two members of the NDP caucus apparently decided that it would be funny to physically block the path of a senior member of the Conservative party: MP Gord Brown. The best video of the exchange is available here. As MP Brown tries to get to his seat, the NDP member in grey repeatedly moves to block MP Brown and the female MP in grey (MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau) joins him in doing so. MP Brown repeatedly tries to get by and is repeatedly blocked. At one point MP Ellen Brosseau is seen laughing about the activity to a fellow MP in red. Prime Minister Trudeau, clearly tiring of the antics, decides to intervene and in doing so brushes MP Ellen Brosseau.

Now remember here, MP Ellen Brosseau is a former bartender at a campus pub. I’m not sure about today, but in my days as a bartender getting a tray of drinks across a bar often involved a lot of pushing and physical contact. Unfortunately, while MP Ellen Brosseau can apparently handle a room full of drunken revelers she apparently cannot bear the trauma of brief physical contact with the Prime Minister. So instead of shrugging it off, she immediately recoils back like she has been hit by a charging bull. Her reaction is reminiscent of a classic by Christian Renaldo or one of his fellows trying to draw a yellow card in a soccer match. Like Renaldo she couldn’t leave it there and felt the need to take the act to the next level. She later spoke in the House and reported that she was so traumatized that “she had to leave”. Apparently she left the Chamber to sit outside where I’m guessing they probably sprayed her with the magic spray the trainers use on the sidelines of soccer games that allows the “injured” players to heal miraculously in time for the next whistle.

Now any teacher knows exactly what happened there. The two NDP MPs were bullying Mr. Brown. They repeatedly blocked his way and then laughed as they were doing it. MP Brown didn’t know what to do as almost any response would get him in trouble. Should he push them aside and get called out for being violent or should he simply wait it out? Being a good Canadian he simply stands there and takes the abuse from his fellow members. The hall monitor (Mr. Trudeau) finally intervenes and the bullies immediately claim victim-hood and demand that the hall monitor be punished. Happily in schools they know how to handle these sorts of things but apparently not in the House of Commons.

Now if this was a one-time affair it would be nothing to talk about, but in our modern era the crybullies are gradually winning the battles and gaining in strength and the reason is simple. Being a crybully gets results. In the House case MP Ellen Brosseau got an apology out of the Prime Minister. On the street the crybullies are winning as well and they are winning because the government and the media have encouraged their behaviours.

When the protesters broke a court order on Burnaby Mountain were they thrown in jail and sent before a judge? No most were simply escorted down to the bottom of the mountain and were not charged. Only the repeat offenders were actually arrested and even then they acted outraged. I think the funniest thing I read during the protest was this:

Wiping away tears, protester Emily Cook said a friend, whom she did not identify, was arrested outside of the injunction zone just as he was telling an officer he didn’t want to be arrested.

“They did not give him the option. They gave him no warning he would be arrested. They put him in zap straps,” she said.

Here was a person breaking the law and he felt he shouldn’t be arrested because “he didn’t want to be arrested”.

In his book “Uncivil Obedience: The Tactics and Tales of a Democratic Agitator” noted former civil rights activist A. Alan Borovoy made an important point. There are two ways to protest: you can protest within the confines of the law (uncivil obedience) or you can choose to break the law (civil disobedience). If you choose the latter then you must be willing to accept the consequences of your actions. What a lot of the current generation of protesters seem not to recognize is that there is no “right” to commit civil disobedience. I listen with decreasing interest to protesters who argue about their “rights” since most appear to have no clue what a “right” actually means under the law/constitution. Most activists these days appear to believe that they should be allowed to block roads and break the law with impunity.

The real problem with activists these days is that the government has trained them to believe that they can use the tactics of civil disobedience but that will not suffer the consequences of their actions. The government has enabled the protesters. In the case of Burnaby Mountain the police actually were asking the protesters which ones wanted to be arrested instead of simply arresting the lot.

The whole civil disobedience approach hearkens back to the days of the Clayoquot protests when the protesters blocked the logging roads. As I have written previously, the major difference between the civil disobedience of 1993 and that of 2016 is in the consequences of the protesters’ actions. One feature of the protests in 1993 that has apparently been forgotten by our current generation of activists, was that back then the protesters did not simply get to walk away after being picked up by the police. These protesters were arrested, charged, and had to face the consequences of their actions in a court of law. As described in the Wikipedia article on the subject “of the 932 people arrested, 860 were prosecuted in eight trials with all those prosecuted for criminal intent found guilty”. As recounted, many of protesters ended up spending a reasonable amount of time in jail. Can you imagine a modern environmentalist discovering that their actions would get them sent to jail? Moreover, this was not a Conservative or Liberal government that had them arrested and charged, the government of the day was NDP. Their allies put them in jail. You see the government of the day recognized that their role was to ensure that the law was obeyed.

The media, meanwhile, is also to blame for encouraging this type of behaviour. Credulous reporters breathlessly recount all the horrors rained down on these crybullies. Activists storm a building and demand the right to scream with loudspeakers at the people inside and the online report includes complaints that the security team was being “disproportionately violent”. These activists force their way into a building and then the media reports that “no one was expecting such a rough reception”. I’m guessing that if I forced my way into the Vancouver Observer’s offices and started yelling into a megaphone into the editor’s face her response would be less than cordial.

To conclude this piece I will quote Daniel Greenfield again. Now to be clear here, I normally disagree with almost everything the man has to say but on this topic he is bang on:

Crybullies are everything they claim to abhor. They are narcissists who complain about selfishness. Completely incapable of human empathy, they whine that no one cares about their feelings. They are prone to cowardly acts of violence, but demand safe spaces. They are bullies who say they’re bullied.

As Canadians we have to nip this new form of protest in the bud. Instead of painting MP Ellen Brosseau as the victim we should make it clear that she was the bully and MP Brown was the victim. We have to point out the truth of the matter and call out the crybullies for what they are. Reporters need to report what is actually happening and not simply repeat the crying of the crybullies. We need to hear who was the actual aggressor even if (especially if?) that ruins the easy narrative. Put simply the media and our government need to stop being the crybullies’ patsies and enablers. Canada works because we have one law for everyone, but that is changing because our current governments lack the courage of the NDP governments of the 1990’s to simply enforce the law evenly and fairly for all.

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Uncategorized | 17 Comments

On climate change, forest fires and the scientific method

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Blair

As regular readers of my blog know, I have spent the last few days being lambasted by any number of climate activists, social scientists and Google experts about my examination of the science behind the cause of the fire in Fort McMurray. As I discuss in my Huffington Post blog We Can’t Blame Climate Change For The Fort McMurray Fires the scientific consensus is forming around a combination of a Super El Nino and poor forest management practices as being the cause of the fire. Throughout this virtual flaying I have come to recognize that the majority of the people who have spent this week insulting me, and apparently a number of the people writing articles about the fire, have very little understanding of the scientific method. The rest of this blog post will provide a back-up for that very broad statement.

Hypothesis Testing

Let’s start with the obvious thing readers should understand about the scientific method. When someone proposes a hypothesis then it is up to them to provide the evidence to support that hypothesis. So when all these pundits suggested that climate change was the cause of the forest fire in Fort McMurray, it was up to them to demonstrate why that was the case. It was not up to me to prove otherwise. However, that was not what we saw in the discussions to date. The consensus among the commentariat was that since I differed from their general agreement that I was somehow responsible for proving that climate change was not the fundamental cause of the fire. That is not how science works and thus I was a bit surprised when a number of scientists jumped on the bandwagon demanding that I support my position. Happily for me, I had the data on my side.

In my posts, I have provided the information that has been used by the forest scientists to suggest that climate change was not a significant factor in the fire. I have pointed out how the warm, dry Alberta winter had been long predicted by the research community based on the El Nino modelling. As I have also pointed out, the pre-eminent expert in the field of El Nino modelling made the very specific statement that:

There is no conclusive evidence that the occurrence of El Nino (frequency and intensity) is influenced by climate change…El Nino occurrences did not switch in frequency or intensity due to climate change.

Lacking a need to pile on I didn’t go into detail about how this year actually represented a Super El Nino and how the failed El Nino of 2014 actually started the process of drying out the forests a year earlier. I didn’t point out that when the Super El Nino hit in 2015 the ground was unusually dry even for the start of an El Nino year. Moreover, because this year represents a Super El Nino the heating was even greater than ever, resulting in record temperatures that can be directly attributed to the El Nino (and not climate change). In my post I also provided the results of the Flat Top Complex Wildfire Review Committee Report which warned that the forest management practices of the past had increased the risk of large and potentially costly catastrophic wildfires. Considering that the trees surrounding Fort McMurray are hard-wired for fire combining the effects of the 2015 Super El Nino and the failed forest management practices of the past, the forests were ready to burn and burn they did.

The response of the non-science-trained commentariat was that I had failed to prove that climate change did not have even the smallest additive effect on the El Nino or on the state of the forests prior to the fire. Now as I have already pointed out, it is not my responsibility to prove a negative, but let’s be generous and continue this with a discussion of the concept of significant figures.

Significant figures

Now significant figures protocols are something every science student learns in first year and with the exception of analytical chemists and engineers they proceed to ignore for the remainder of their careers. The critical thing we teach first year students is that all measurements have a degree of uncertainty and that uncertainty has to be considered when attributing blame for an event. Let’s now consider the change in temperatures associated with the Super El Nino. As described at Wikipedia (yes I’m being lazy and using Wikipedia) “on May 3, the temperature climbed to 32.8 degrees Celsius accompanied by relative humidity as low as 12%. The situation intensified on May 4 when temperatures reached 31.9 degrees Celsius and winds gusted to 72 km/h”. We are talking about temperatures ranges over 20 degrees Celsius above the climate normals for May in Fort McMurray and winds that are not even on the charts.

I have yet to see any attribution of high wind speeds in Alberta on climate change so let’s start by stating that the winds (which dried the forests and fed the fire) are 100% the result of El Nino and not climate change. As for the estimates of the effect of climate change on temperature; I’ve seen estimates from as low as 0.85 degrees Celsius to just over 1 degree Celsius. So at best the temperature increase might represent less than 5% of the El Nino effect. Combining the two we have a temperature effect of less than 5% and a wind effect of zero percent. That is the definition of not significant in my book. For some, however, that tiny possible incremental increase might be considered enough to claim victory. That of course assumes that climate change actually had a negative effect on the state of the forests in Alberta. As for that topic:

What does the science say about climate changes effects on forests to date in Alberta

The funniest part of this whole adventure had to be an exchange I had today with one of my biggest detractors. This individual has stalked my every discussion thread adding his/her two cents. This individual is clearly not schooled in the scientific method and is one of the people who keeps insisting that I prove that climate change did not have an effect on the fire.

As “proof” that I was wrong this individual provided me with a link to a recent paper Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013. The paper’s abstract reads like it should provide overwhelming support for the premise that climate change had an effect on the fire. Now happily for me I had previously read the paper and that was important in this case. You see there is an issue I have noticed in this generation of climate activists and journalists: they depend on media guides and abstracts rather than reading the full papers themselves. As a young scientist I was always reminded that there is a reason why we write and read papers and not just the abstracts and that is because the paper is where the information is and the abstract is not designed to provide the full nuance of a paper.

While the general finding of the research was “an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length” this represented a mean value and did not actually reflect all portions of the map. A careful read of the paper actually shows that in Alberta (and the Fort McMurray area), the effects of climate change was actually a decrease in fire weather season length. For those who wonder where I get that look at Figure 3a in the article. Some might argue that Fig 3b shows a possible increase in the last few years (depending on the pixel size) but reading the figure information you see that the “increase” is simply an increase in the second half of the period as compared to the first half. The net effect over the period from 1979 through 2013 was negative. This would explain to the activists why Natural Resources Canada (NRC) says:

This complex combination of influences makes it difficult to identify clearly whether any measurable changes in the patterns of wildland fire over the last few decades can be linked directly to climate change. Nevertheless, pattern changes do appear to be underway.

In Canada’s northwestern boreal regions, for example, the annual amount of forest area burned by wildland fires rose steadily over the second half of the 20th century. Some of this increase has been attributed to climate change.

By contrast, in Canada’s southern boreal forest, the annual amount of area burned seems to have decreased during the 20th century. This trend might be the result of climate change causing greater amounts of precipitation over time in these regions.

However, analyses of fire history suggest that it is the effect of climate variability on precipitation regimes that is the primary reason for the decreasing fire activity in southern regions.

For those of you who refuse to read quotes let me paraphrase. Irrespective of what you may have heard about the boreal forests in general, you have to remember that the boreal forests cover up to 55% of Canada’s land mass and a lot changes over that 55%. What that means is that even if large parts of the boreal forests are drying up, the specific portions of the boreal forest in question, (i.e. near Fort McMurray) have not necessarily been doing so. Now look at Tables 3 and 5 of the paper, both showed an absence of an effect for North American boreal forest. That is what the research says, not me Blair King environmental scientist, but the specialists in the field. The research says that in Fort McMurray the effects of climate change since 1973 has been a shortening of the average fire season and wetter than average conditions. Once again that is what the science has been saying not me. It is not as if the scientists have been hiding these facts, the NRC put it right out there on their web site. So when I write that climate change did not cause the fire that is what I mean and it is not because I say so but because that is what the science says.

Let’s conclude this post where my earliest blog post began. Let’s go back to what Dr. Flannigan has said on the topic. As I have written, Dr. Flannigan has been very careful with his language and has repeatedly stated: “it’s impossible for scientists to say global warming caused this specific fire” and “this is an example of what we expect — and consistent with what we expect for climate change.” His wording was carefully chosen and deliberate. It presents a warning about future conditions while making no claims about current conditions. There is a reason why an expert in the field says such things. Because it is true. So even as the commentariat and the climate activists have attempted to reverse the onus of proof and ignored the scientific method the data was out there all along. I will say this again so that no one can call me a “denier”. Climate change is real and over the long term it will likely result in an increase in fire risk in Alberta’s boreal forests. But in 2016 the science says that the net effect of climate change has been a decrease in fire season length and wetter than average conditions. These are not the conditions that enhance fire risk, they reduce fire risk. Now you can understand why the scientific consensus is forming around a combination of a Super El Nino and poor forest management practices as being the cause of the fire and not climate change.

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

On the profound illogic of the “attack-first” climate activists

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Blair

Last night I wrote a shorter version of my Fort McMurray fire article for my regular blog at the Huffington Post titled: We Can’t Blame Climate Change For The Fort McMurray Fires. [As always, I had no say in the headline so don’t criticize me on that topic.] The Huffington Post piece took my earlier blog post and updated it with some new information and shortened it to meet the Post’s strict word limit. Now usually when I finish a blog I let it sit for a bit to allow me time to consider alternative formulations, but since I finished it very late last night I decided to go ahead and hit “send”. Typically the editors at the Post hold my articles in the edit queue for a day or two and so when I woke up this morning I decided to edit the piece one more time to soften the conclusion. Imagine my surprise when I looked online, before breakfast, to discover that the piece was already online.

My hesitation last night in sending the article had nothing to do with the content, but rather dealt with how I anticipated the article would be received. I am a writer who tends to do a reasonable amount of research for my articles since the point of my blog is to provide evidence-based blog posts. The problem was that the more I researched the more the research clearly indicated that climate change did not cause the Fort McMurray fire. The problem was that the information I uncovered was more nuanced than I typically include in a blog and was somewhat challenging for non-scientists to understand given my word limit. More problematically, a lot, and I mean a lot, of climate activists have a tremendous amount of emotional energy invested in blaming the fire on climate change and my blog post would really skewer a lot of sacred cows.

My concern in posting the blog was that I would get a backlash, but even I was surprised by the profound illogic and vitriol directed my way today. Since I spent much of the morning chaperoning my daughter’s first-grade field trip and had a series of meetings this afternoon, I encountered this fury in short but intense bursts during my lunch and coffee breaks. The rest of this blog is going to address some of the most egregious failures in logic I encountered today.

On quoting experts:

From a purely logical perspective the most obtuse set of negative comments were directed at me for my comments about El Nino. As I described in my piece, the former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and one of the preeminent experts on El Nino, Dr. Fredolin Tangang, has made some very definitive statements about the absence of links between climate change and El Nino. The climate activist responses to these statements were mixed. About half the people who sent me angry tweets, or commented about the topic at the Post, simply ignored Dr. Tangang’s research and claimed that there was a link between the two phenomena. These are the same people who quote the IPCC freely when it agrees with their point of view; but in the one case where the consensus research does not agree with them then they simply ignored that pesky fact. It is common knowledge that climate change increase the frequency and intensity of El Nino events and nothing the experts can say will change the spread of that factoid.

The second group were even more entertaining. They accused me of heresy and blamed me for what they perceived as my bad science. These people disassociated the information from its formal source and attributed it to me instead. That is they ignored the source of the quote and simply attacked me personally for my bad taste in citing a researcher in context while providing a direct link to the research in question. Let’s say that again since it makes so little sense. I cited one of the preeminent scholars in the field, an icon of the climate research field, who made a statement based on his life-time of research and people expected me to justify that opinion and attributed the information to me personally? They don’t seem to get that it is not up to me to justify Dr. Tangang’s life’s work or the written conclusions of the IPCC. My responsibility as a scholar is to correctly cite his research, to place that research in context and to provide links to demonstrate that my interpretation was correct. Reporting his opinion doesn’t make it my opinion and doesn’t place the onus on me to justify that research.

On complex research and the difference between correlation and causation

In a similar vein to the attacks on me for citing Dr. Tangang; I was also attacked for quoting Dr. Flannigan and Ms. Elizabeth May in context. As I noted in my piece, Dr. Flannigan and Elizabeth May both state categorically that this fire was not caused by climate change. That being said, Dr. Flannigan is on record as pointing out that the amount of area burned each year has more than doubled since the early 1970s. The direct quote is “this is a result of human-caused climate change. There’s a lot of year-to-year variability with area burned, but we have doubled”

Now to the uninformed these two statements sound mutually exclusive and yet Dr. Flannigan has repeatedly made both statements in the same interviews. So the alternatives are that Dr. Flannigan doesn’t understand his own research or that the two statements mean two different things. My bet is on the latter. You see there is a difference between correlation and causation and the fact that the fire was not caused by climate change does not mean that conditions in the area have not changed due to the effects of climate change. Specifically, based on the models, the land in Alberta is supposed to get drier as the temperature rises which means that a fire, once it has started, will be harder to fight and stop and is more likely to burn or to burn more extensively.  According to Dr. Flannigan’s research the conditions have not changed enough to be a proximate cause of fires, or even the main reason for their spread, but it can still enhance the fires to some extent. He sees the effects and identifies a strong correlation but does not have the data to demonstrate causation.

Going back to my earlier point, I am not responsible for coming up with these theories I am responsible for reporting them fairly; which I did within the word limit provided to me by the Post. As I described in the Post, it is clear that El Nino is responsible for the elevated temperatures in the Alberta this winter/spring and poor forest management practices are responsible for the size and extent of the specific fire in the Fort McMurray area. Did climate change have an effect on the El Nino? Not according to Dr. Tangang. Did climate change have any effect on forest management practices in the forests to the south of Fort McMurray? Absolutely not. And that is why Dr. Flannigan and Ms. May have repeatedly said that climate change did not cause the fire.

A thought Experiment

Having addressed the illogic of the activists who spewed their vitriol in my direction today, let’s do a thought experiment about the facts of this fire with respect to its causes and possible policy implications. Let’s start by supposing I am right, that climate change did not cause the fire. What does that mean in the context of the climate change debate?

Well if climate change is not the cause of the fire then for the believers in climate change (like myself) this should serve as a cautionary tale. It is a warning of things to come. Recognize that absent the full effects of climate change we had a catastrophic fire that left thousands homeless and destroyed over 100,000 hectares of forests. Once again, this is without the full effects of climate change. Now imagine what it will be like once we add full-blown climate change to the mix? The story only gets scarier doesn’t it? From an activist’s perspective this is the baseline scenario and things can only get worse from here unless we do something about climate change right now. There is no intellectual down-side to accepting the conclusion of the researchers that the fire was not caused by climate change since that scientific truth only makes it clear that we need to work hard to fight climate change since doing so would have an economic benefit of reducing future costs associated with massive fires.

In this scenario, the only benefit for demonstrating that climate change be considered the cause is sentimental (and for some truly sad people maybe some schadenfreude). It might allow the activists to show the world that they are right after all and to rub that fact into the faces of the skeptics; but it does nothing to build their case. Rather the opposite is true.

On the other hand, if climate change was the CAUSE of the fire then what more do we have to fear? Since the effects are already here and it is too late to address climate change at a local level a pragmatic government would direct all available resources to fire mitigation and forest management rather than investing heavily in options that would have a minimal effect of addressing climate change in foreign areas still unaffected by climate change. After all the critical effects are already here. In exchange for a few minutes of satisfaction the activists cost themselves all the resources and the good will necessary to make the changes necessary to fight climate change. All the money would go to mitigation instead, pretty ironic isn’t it.

As for the skeptics, well since they don’t believe in climate change their approach would be to go directly to mitigation in both cases. Don’t waste any money on fighting climate change and spend more money on forest management and address the interface zones. Sounds a lot like the activist’s “this is climate” scenario doesn’t it?

In carrying out my thought experiment I am reminded about the big problem with the climate activists out there these days. They seem to live off emotion and not logic or science. Repeatedly I was told that it was my responsibility to prove that climate change did not cause the fire. But that is not how science works. The null hypothesis is that climate change is not having an effect and data is required to prove otherwise. Dr. Flannigan and Dr. Tangang clearly understand these ideas and Ms. May clearly was reminded of the fact which resulted in her providing her clarification press release. Now if someone could point it out to the rank and file in the “attack-first” group. The foot soldiers whose first instinct is to attack any idea they don’t understand. These people who make honest scientists think twice before hitting “send” on a blog post that is 100% correct but is, at the same time, politically incorrect because it goes against their easy narrative. You think I am exaggerating? Try looking up the name Roger Pielke Jr. on Google and see what happens when a good scientist makes the mistake of speaking out against the popular narrative armed only with good science and the truth. He never stood a chance.

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

On fighting climate change, running a marathon and climate activists crying “wolf”

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Blair

My most recent post on the Fort McMurray fire lit up my social media feed and the most interesting replies came from a number of climate activists who suggested that I was going about my blogging all wrong (“walking the wrong way” as one commenter put it). The consensus amongst this minority was that climate change was a sufficiently important topic that we should take advantage of every opportunity to advance the cause. They suggested that when in doubt we blame climate change irrespective of whether the particular issue at hand (in this case the Fort McMurray fire) can actually be directly linked to climate change. My reply was to point out that I simply want to ensure that scientifically defensible data is used in the discussion and for that I was repeatedly called a “denier” and was told that I am “detracting from required action”.

I am not a “denier”. Rather as I have written numerous times at this blog; I accept the reality of climate change and strongly believe that we need to move towards a fossil-fuel free future. As for my being a paid shill? The only type of shill that applies to me is as an unpaid shill for evidence-based decision-making. What I am is a pragmatist and as a pragmatist I recognize that not everyone agrees with me on the topic of climate change. There are legitimate scientists who feel that while climate change is happening the future risks posed by climate change are being overblown and, yes, there is quite certainly a small cadre of people who will fight against any action because it upsets their favoured status quo.

Of particular concern, the vast majority of Canadians don’t have an informed opinion on the subject of climate change. They are the people who are busy living their lives and raising their kids and do not have the time to become experts in a field of this complexity. This mushy middle needs to be brought onside because it is their tax dollars that will pay for the changes and their votes that could quash any move to make the changes. Insulting their intelligence will get you nowhere and being insensitive to the plight of the residents of Fort McMurray will only win you enemies in their ranks.

Regarding the whole “This is Climate” thing; generally when people say things like that I like to use the analogy of the boy who cried wolf. Too many times the activists have cried “this is climate change” to extreme weather events that are clearly not climate change. Extreme weather happens and would happen irrespective of climate change. As a consequence, the public has started to tune them the activists out as the recent University of Montreal study showed. In the fable the wolf is real and he eventually arrives and the boy’s sheep are devoured because no one believed the boy, all because he cried “wolf” too many times. I explain that we are trying to build the consensus necessary to make huge changes and you don’t build consensus with tall tales and misrepresentations. Tell the people the truth, and only the truth, and they will begin to believe you. Exaggerate or mislead them and you will get caught out in your exaggerations and half-truths and when you are caught out you will lose them and with them any hope of making a real difference.

Well it is clear that my analogy, while apt, is getting stale. That being said, I would like to suggest a second analogy that describes my personal approach to climate change. It is built on my past experiences as a running coach and so if you will indulge me for a paragraph or two I will explain.

As a younger man, I was a semi-competitive runner. I raced the steeplechase at university to some small success. Our coach was old-school and believed in paying back to the community. So in addition to coaching us, he trained us to coach other athletes. As a consequence, we volunteered at local high-schools teaching track and when I stopped running competitively I still helped teach running clinics through the local community center. In my time, I have introduced many people to running by coaching learn-to-run clinics and I helped a similar number looking to improve their times in 10 km and half-marathon clinics.

Learning to run long-distances is not a natural thing for many people. You have to break long-held habits, you have to change the way you eat and you need to be careful to ramp up your ambition slowly to avoid overuse injuries. Most healthy adults can work themselves up to finishing a 5 km in a matter of weeks and most recreational runners can improve their fitness to run a good 10 km. Most serious runners, meanwhile, can stretch themselves out to run a reasonable half-marathon. It is only at the marathon distance that you need to be a truly dedicated runner to get the job done. Running the marathon takes dedication. You have to put in the hours and have to build up your base gradually or you will injure yourself and be out of luck. It means getting up early and running 4+ times a week including at least one long run each week, rain or shine.

Now let’s bring this topic back to climate change. Beating climate change is like preparing for a marathon. It means getting a lot of people on your side and working hard on a day-to-day basis. It means a lot of honest, hard work and that work can’t be faked. You can’t cheat. You have to build that base fairly. You have to tell the truth; make the best case you can and admit when you don’t have all the cards or all the answers. If you try to build that base by misleading the public or stretching the truth then it is like skipping your long runs, on race day you will start out fine but peter out long before the finish.

Keeping to the running theme, when I think of the Leapsters who suggest that we can get off fossil-fuels by 2030 it brings me back to my marathon analogy. Right now Canada is a relatively healthy non-runner and suggesting that we can get off fossil-fuels by 2030 is like suggesting that this non-runner can win next year’s Boston Marathon. Now, the Leapsters and the 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight folk, repeatedly argue that it is theoretically possible and that is technically true, But let’s be honest, it is not actually possible. Maybe, if we work incredibly hard we can qualify for the race; but there is no chance we can actually win the race in the limited time provided. Betting your life savings on winning the race might certainly be the sentimental choice but it is not the pragmatic one. Especially when you know that spending those same dollars on a balanced energy plan can actually make a real difference.

If I have to leave this post with only one message it is this: don’t mislead people by saying “this is climate change” about things like the fire in Fort McMurray when others will point out, quite correctly, that this is an expected consequence of an El Nino weather event. Instead put it a different way. Explain to them that this is a foreshadowing of a future to come under climate change. Right now the worst fire seasons typically follow an El Nino and only come around every 4-5 years. But under a climate change scenario it will be like having an El Nino year every year. We can do the work to avoid this bleak future but need to start taking action now. A message like that can resonate, and more importantly it can’t be turned around on you like a half-truth can. If we are going to make the changes we have to do the hard work and part of that is living with the data we have, not the data we wish we had. It means telling the truth and admitting we don’t have all the answers, because and once more I going to be honest here, we really don’t have all the answers.

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

On forest fires climate activist aren’t just insensitive, they are also wrong

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Blair

As anyone with any awareness of Canadian events knows, the City of Fort McMurray has undergone a complete evacuation because of an out-of-control wildfire. The news has kept me with one eye locked on my media feed as I have marveled at the resilience and dignity of the people of Alberta in this hour of need. As many have suggested, this is not a time to worry about the politics, but rather one to worry about and pray for the people displaced by this natural disaster. From a political perspective our leaders have shown admirable gravitas with Prime Minster Trudeau treading the cautious line dealing directly with the wildfire without using it for political advantage. At one point in the day, it looked like Green Party Leader Elizabeth May might have decided to attempt to make political hay from the fire, but she quickly issued a correction and has since shown the calm and restraint we expect from our leaders in times like these.

Unfortunately, while Canadian political leaders have performed well, many climate activists out there have tried to use this natural disaster to score points. As I noted  above, Ms. May’s first press conference sought to link the fire to climate change although she later prepared a press release saying:

“No credible climate scientist would make this claim, and neither do I make this claim. Rather, we must turn our minds in the coming days to the impact of increased extreme climate events, and what we can do collectively to respond to these events.” 

The claim in question being that the fire was directly related to climate change. That being said some far less socially aware people have decided that a human disaster is exactly the right time to push their political agendas. The most obvious case being a post at Slate written by Mr. Eric Holthaus titles: Wildfire Rips Through Canadian City, Forcing 80,000 to Flee. This Is Climate Change which I have seen re-tweeted more times than I can count.

Before I go any deeper into this discussion, I’d like to clear up a few points. As anyone familiar with Alberta geography knows, the City of Fort McMurray is located in the southern edge of the Canadian boreal forest. As any forester will tell you the boreal forests  are hard-wired for fire. As Natural Resources Canada puts it forest fire:

is as crucial to forest renewal as the sun and rain. Forest fires release valuable nutrients stored in the litter on the forest floor. They open the forest canopy to sunlight, which stimulates new growth. They allow some tree species, like lodgepole and jack pine, to reproduce, opening their cones and freeing their seeds. 

Forest fires are simply a way of life in the boreal forests and interface fires (fires that jump from wild lands into neighbouring communities) are a particular concern for any town that has been carved out of the boreal forest.

As for climate change, the science on that topic appears to be equally clear. The climate change models tend to agree that climate change will likely result in increasing severity and intensity of future forest fire regimes. The problem lies when activists, not satisfied with what the models project; decide instead to over-egg the sauce in order to score petty political points. As an example, let’s consider Mr. Holthaus’ article in Slate.

The first section of the article is nondescript as it repeats what has been reported in any number of articles elsewhere. Climate change is not mentioned until almost half-way though the article. This seems odd to me since the title of the report specifically insists that “This is Climate Change”. One would expect a lot of meat justifying this rather definitive statement. In actuality rather than meat all Mr. Holthaus provides is some very weak tea. The only paragraph that has anything to do with climate change appears right in the middle where he writes:

One thing that is certain is that this fire has a clear link to climate change. Canada’s northern forests have been burning more frequently over recent decades as temperatures there are rising at twice the rate of the global average. A 2013 analysis showed that the boreal forests of Alaska and northern Canada are now burning at a rate unseen in at least the past 10,000 years. The extreme weather of recent months is also closely linked with the ongoing record-setting El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which tends to bring a warmer and drier winter to this part of Canada. Last month, Canadian officials mentioned the possibility of “large fires” after over-winter snowpack was 60 to 85 percent below normal and drought conditions worsened.

Now the first sentence is unreferenced and frankly unsupported. The second sentence presents a statement that confusingly, is directly contradicted by the reference provided in the text presumably to support it. The citation leads to a Natural Resources Canada (NRC) page that says the following:

This complex combination of influences makes it difficult to identify clearly whether any measurable changes in the patterns of wildland fire over the last few decades can be linked directly to climate change. Nevertheless, pattern changes do appear to be underway.

In Canada’s northwestern boreal regions, for example, the annual amount of forest area burned by wildland fires rose steadily over the second half of the 20th century. Some of this increase has been attributed to climate change.

By contrast, in Canada’s southern boreal forest, the annual amount of area burned seems to have decreased during the 20th century. This trend might be the result of climate change causing greater amounts of precipitation over time in these regions.

However, analyses of fire history suggest that it is the effect of climate variability on precipitation regimes that is the primary reason for the decreasing fire activity in southern regions.

The NRC statement clearly says that it is difficult to identify whether climate change is to blame. Yet Mr. Holthaus states the opposite that “there is a clear link”. I’m not sure how Mr. Holthaus squares that circle. Moreover, the NRC clearly points out that in the southern boreal forest (i.e. where Fort McMurray is situated) the annual amount of area burned seems to have decreased and then attributes that decrease to climate change? But Mr. Holthaus uses that same citation to support a completely different (and contradictory) claim.

At this point I can only guess that maybe Mr. Holthaus is unfamiliar with Canadian geography. My suspicion is further reinforced by reading his next sentence about the 2013 study. Now being a scientist I am prone to linking to the actual study in question  rather than a ThinkProgress.org  (Climate Progress) report on the study. Looking that the actual study (and not the slanted reporting of it), I discover that it deals exclusively with the upper northwestern portion of the sub-arctic boreal forest (in Alaska). This would represent the “Northwestern Boreal region” in the NRC quote above. It has absolutely nothing to do with the boreal forest around Fort McMurray, it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You see people forget that the boreal forests are huge covering up to 55% of Canada’s land mass and that this land area cannot be treated as if it was one single unit.Put another way, central Alberta and central Alaska are a long ways apart and experience very different climatic conditions.

The final few paragraphs of this section of the article further link the forest fire to the recent El Nino. This is a fair comment as one clearly understood downside of El Nino is reduced precipitation and an early fire season for Northern Alberta and the BC Peace District.

Looking at the supporting information provided with his article, it is clear that Mr. Holthaus failed to link the fire to climate change. Rather, the references he provides in his piece actually make it clear that climate change is not a likely major contributor to this fire. Rather the fire is a natural occurrence that may have been hastened by the effects of the recent El Nino. It is hard how anyone could realistically read those references and conclude: “This is Climate Change”.

Now I suppose I could end this piece here, but as I indicated above, I firmly believe that climate change will eventually result in increased incidence and size of wildfires in the west and so I was wondering if any signal was yet evident of that trend. Being a scientist, I decided to get the data and see what it had to say. Specifically, I downloaded the NRC National Forest Database, Forest Fires Tables- Statistics by Province. Because the files are not spreadsheet ready I had to fix them up and then I ran them through a statistical software package for environmental applications (called Pro-UCL) that I happen to have on my computer. Specifically, I looked at the data for area burned (in hectares or ha) in the Province of Alberta from 1990 through 2015. What I found was a dataset with a lot of variation.

The mean area burned for the 26 year period was 170,961 ha while the standard deviation was 229,086 ha. Any statistician looking at those numbers would recognize that we have a messy set of data with a huge difference between the lowest value (1961 ha in 1996) and the highest value (806,055 ha in 2011). Looking at that information, the 2015 value (491,768 ha) isn’t even particularly high for this dataset. To see if any trends existed in the data I ran some Mann-Kendall tests on the data. A Mann-Kendall is a test used to try and identify trends in data where you have no basis for believing the data fits a known distribution. The results of the Mann-Kendall analysis was that the number of hectares burned does not show any evidence of a significant increasing or decreasing trend over the time period covered (1990-2015). When I shortened the time period covered to start at  year 2000 the p-value actually got worse (approximate p-value of 0.482). That p-value represent is pretty definitive indication that no trend exists in the recent data.

So what is the take-way from this blog post? Well the climate models indicate that in the long-term (by the 2091-2100 fire regimes) climate change, if it continues unabated, should result in increased number and severity of fires in the boreal forest. However, what the data says is that right now this signal is not yet evident. While some increases may be occurring in the sub-arctic boreal forests of northern Alaska, similar effects are not yet evident in the southern boreal forests around Fort McMurray. As for Mr. Holthaus, I would recommend that he edit his article to better reflect the citations he provides since he certainly does not do them justice in his article’s current iteration.

My final word is for the activists who are seeking to take advantage of Albertans’ misfortunes to advance their political agendas. Not only have you shown yourselves to be callous and insensitive at a time where you could have been civilized and sensitive but you cannot even comfort yourself by hiding under the cloak of truth since, as I have shown above, the data does not support your case.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, General Politics, Uncategorized | 68 Comments

Debunking the Leap Manifesto 100% Renewables by 2050 demand

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Blair

My vocal challenges to the viability of “The Leap Manifesto” have earned me some negative feedback and as such I figure it is necessary to back up my opinions with a few numbers. In doing this I will differentiate myself from the folks at the Manifesto who appear averse to presenting any numbers to support their ideas.

Now the problem with the field of renewable energy is that there are a lot of people who love to wave their hands and make claims about the future. One of the bright lights of the field, whose light unfortunately dimmed too soon, Dr. David Mackay had an expression, “It’s not so much that I’m pro-nuclear, I’m just pro math”. In renewable energy the math counts, and as this post will show the math is against the idea that we can reach the Leap Manifesto goal of 100% Renewable Energy by 2050.

Now a lot of the info in this post is cribbed from an earlier post More on 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight and the Council of Canadians “100% Clean economy” by 2050 goal. My intention on this post is to provide a lot less detail to make it easier to read and understand.

In the Leap Manifesto they only supply two references, one is to how they will achieve a “100% renewable economy by 2050”. It is:

Jacobson, M., et al. Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy 39:3 (2011).

Ironically, that is not actually the right reference. The document they provide is the supporting document for Dr. Jacobson’s masterwork. The basis for the “100% clean economy by 2050” plan is a still-draft paper prepared by Dr. Jacobson 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World (called 100% WWS hereafter). As suggested, 100% WWS provides a detailed break-out of what it would take for each country in the world to achieve 100% renewable energy (excluding nuclear power and any new hydro). You note that big proviso. Dr. Jacobson is very anti-nuclear energy and does not like large reservoir or run-of-the-river hydro so he has excluded them from the mix. Since the authors’ of the Manifesto are citing Dr. Jacobson’s work I will assume for the sake of this blog post that they feel the same way.  In Table 3 of 100% WWS the breakdown of energy sources by 2050 in Canada is presented:

  • Onshore wind 37.5%
  • Offshore wind 21%
  • Solar PV plant 17.7%
  • Hydroelectric 16.5%
  • Wave energy 2%
  • Residential rooftop solar 1.5%
  • Commercial/govt rooftop solar 1.7%
  • Geothermal 1.9%
  • Tidal turbine 0.2%

At the outset the numbers look challenging, but not necessarily impossible. Being a practical guy, I thought I should dig a bit deeper to see how these numbers pan out. It ends up those numbers are presented in an associated spreadsheet. In Table 2 of the spreadsheet is the list of new units necessary by 2050 to achieve the 100% Renewable goal. These are:

  • Onshore wind: 39,263 new 5 MW units ( + 1939 units currently installed)
  • Offshore wind: 21,555 new 5 MW units (currently no units in Canada)
  • Solar PV plant: 5122 new 50 MW facilities (currently 13 similar facilities)
  • Hydroelectric: Uses currently built facilities with efficiency gains
  • Wave energy: 27,323 0.75 MW installations (currently no unit in Canada)
  • Residential rooftop solar: 4,206,934 units (currently 2% of units installed)
  • Commercial/govt rooftop solar: 248,867 units (currently 2% of units installed)
  • Geothermal: 50 new 100 MW facilities (currently no such facility in Canada)
  • Tidal turbine: 1980 new 1 MW units (currently no units in Canada)

So let’s start with the easiest ones first. According to the plan in order to meet our goal we will need 27,323 wave devices (covering a physical footprint of about 14 km2) and 1980 tidal turbines. With zero wave devices installed to date in Canada at the end of 2015 we have to install 804 of these systems per year to meet our goal. There is one hitch to this plan. No one has yet to come up with a design for a fully-functional industrial scale wave installation. There are lots of pilot projects and one unit in Australia looks promising but before we can even start the planning process a design needs to be completed. Absent even a design for a unit it is unclear how we are going to meet our goal of 804 a year starting yesterday.

As for that footprint of 14 km2 we know that environmentalists go out of their way to encourage large industrial users to cover huge swathes of their marine foreshore with industrial power plants, so that won’t be a problem either.

As for the cost, absent a design it is hard to tell. Dr. Jacobson estimates that the wave devices will cost $130 billion (all figures US dollars) plus approximately $8 billion for the tidal units. So about $140 billion dollars to meet 2.2% of our energy needs….this stuff isn’t cheap you know.

In order to achieve our 2050 goal we also need to install over 60,000 – 5 megawatt wind turbines between today and 2050. That means 1764 a year or 5 units a day between now and Jan 1, 2050. To put the scale of this challenge into perspective: as of September 2015 British Columbia had 5 onshore wind installations with a total of 217 wind turbines and an installed capacity of 489 MW. Nationally we are 5% complete in our goal for 2050.

As one of the two coasts British Columbia would be responsible for close to half of the 21,555 offshore units needed to achieve our 100% WWS goal. As of September 2015 we had zero offshore wind facilities. Getting from zero to 10,000 in 34 years, in our regulatory environment, shouldn’t be much of a problem, heck according to BC Hydro they have up to 300 potential wind energy sites being investigated for project development. Of that group offshore represents 43 project with an installed capacity of 14,688 MW. This represents 4 percent of the 368,000 MW of nameplate capacity called for in 100% WWS by 2050.

From a cost perspective wind, while not ultra-expensive, is not cheap either. Using Dr. Jacobson’s numbers the onshore wind component will cost $273 billion dollars while the offshore wind component will cost $380 billion dollars….these numbers keep adding up don’t they?

Now the solar side is much more advanced and given the money and the will it should be possible to achieve Dr. Jacobson’s goals. You notice I said “given the money”. By Dr. Jacobson’s calculations it will only cost $527 billion US dollars before 2050.

Looking at the total math for this project Dr. Jacobson calculated that it would cost approximately $1.340 trillion (2013 US dollars) to build the new installations necessary to meet our 2050 goal. Correcting for inflation that comes out to $ 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars. Using today’s currency conversion that comes out to $1.8 trillion Canadian dollars which needs to be spent by 2050.

Now assuming we spread the costs evenly between 2016 and 2050 (34 years) that comes out to the low-low-price of $53 billion per year to build that infrastructure. Remember we haven’t considered the infrastructure necessary to build that infrastructure (roads etc…) or the costs to do the environmental assessments on all those projects, we are simply talking about the capital costs of the actual units themselves. Talking about environmental assessments, given Canada’s history of welcoming large industrial power facilities, I am quite certain there will be no delays in initiating the construction of all these facilities…just look at how smoothly Site C has been progressing in BC. There have been no added legal costs or anything like that have there?

Now that I have covered the power sources, I will address what I view as the biggest Achilles heel in the 100% WWS goal for Canada: power transmission. As I noted when talking about the high-speed national rail line, the Manifesto writers appear to be an urban lot and seem to have forgotten that Canada is what they call a big country. Consider that to achieve 100% clean energy in 2050 virtually every community in Canada will need to be connected to a national grid since cities like Yellowknife will need to import a lot of power in order to continue to exist. Under 100% WWS the citizens of Inuvik won’t be allowed to use diesel generators during the 6 month winter, when the ice has blocked up the coast and the wind can disappear for days at a time. They will thus have to import electricity from down south. Now I admit to having picked a couple extreme cases to make my point, but recognize that Canada’s vast and challenging geography has limited our ability to create a nationally integrated power grid. Even the most optimistic view has a new grid costing $25 billion and taking a couple decades to build. A more realistic appraisal puts the cost of a national backbone of 735 kV transmission lines at around $104 billion and taking 20 years to complete.

Once the national backbone has been built can we then start work on all the feeder lines that will have to go to every city, town and hamlet. Building transmission lines in Canada can be intensely expensive. Consider that the Northwest Transmission Line project in BC is looking to cost over $2 million a kilometer to build. Yet in order to work the 100% WWS proposal requires that these lines be built. As for the costs? If your single main line is $104 billion and we will need 10’s of thousands of kms of feeder lines then even taking into account the existing infrastructure we are talking in the low trillions to connect all our communities.

As I have said more times that I would care to admit in this blog: I am a pragmatist. As a pragmatist I tend to live by the credo “moderation in all things”. The 100% WWS model pushed in the Manifesto fails because it does not believe in moderation. It places tight, and poorly supported, restrictions on a number of important baseline clean energy technologies and in doing so results in a proposal that is ruinously expensive. Looking at the numbers above, the costs would be prohibitive for Canada consuming over $100 billion a year just for this one Demand and we haven’t yet included the high-speed railway. At the Manifesto web page they have an analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) that suggests some ideas for how can pay for the Manifesto’s demands. That document uncovers almost $50 billion/year to help pay for the demands. The problem is, as I show above, just the basic installations for 100% renewable by 2050 already devours that entire total and then some. Add in the power grid and the high-speed rail and you have more than doubled the total. The CCPA suggests that we should simply borrow to pay for this infrastructure. Can you imagine the legacy of debt we would place on our children, our grand-children and our great-grandchildren if we suggested borrowing $100 billion+ a year for the foreseeable future to fund this infrastructure? Admittedly we live in an era of low interest rates but they will not last forever. Adding several trillion dollars to our national debt is simply a non-starter.

To conclude, the truth is that while the 100% WWS by 2050 plan is clearly not possible that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work hard to achieve its underlying goal of low or no carbon energy with a strong renewable component. I believe strongly in renewable energy, but as I have written before I believe in regionally-appropriate renewables. The problem with the proposal pushed in the Manifesto is that it is hobbled by some of the personal views of its creators. It omits some pretty obvious energy solutions like further large-reservoir hydro in Quebec, Labrador, Ontario and BC, run-of-the-river hydro across Canada and, of course, further nuclear power. A country like Canada that is blessed with an abundance of hydropower opportunities should not ignore those opportunities because the urban writers of the Manifesto rely on one engineer from California who doesn’t particularly like that technology. Put simply we cannot ignore the potential of nuclear and hydro energy in a post-fossil fuel energy mix. To summarize what I have written above: when an apparently innumerate representative from the Leap Manifesto assures you that 100% WWS is possible by 2050 the correct response is: “only in your dreams…only in your dreams”.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism, Fossil Fuel Free Future, Leap Manifesto, Uncategorized | 52 Comments